Still not Ranting, but Some Resentment Expressed Nevertheless

Boy, you take one step back from the verge of a self-righteous rant, and suddenly the precipice just doesn't seem as inviting. The rant I was going to dive into yesterday, of course, was a hypothetical response to a particular brand of evangelism that seems popular today, a brand popularized by Australian evangelist Ray Comfort (along with former Growing Pains star Kirk Cameron and radio/TV personality Todd Friel, whose show Wretched can be watched here).

Comfort calls his style "The Way of the Master" since he sees it as the evangelistic style most closely patterned after the example of Christ. Briefly, the Way of the Master uses impromptu, one-on-one encounters between an evangelist and a stranger (often called a "fish"--as in "fishing for men"--by some of Comfort's followers). "Hooking" the fish with some kind of lead-in, which could be anything from a provocative question ("If you had only three minutes to live, what would you do?") to a novelty prop, such as the "one million dollar bill"--actually a Bible tract shaped like an oversized bill with President Obama's face on it-- that the evangelist offers as a prize to whomever can prove that they are a "good" person (though you may want to consider this story I found prior to purchasing these bills).

And the "good person test" forms the crux of the Way of the Master approach. The evangelist gets the fish to declare whether or not she is a good person. Then (really, no matter what she says), the evangelist leads the fish through four or five of the Ten Commandments (typically, lying, stealing, adultery/lust, and blasphemy/using God's name in vain). When the fish inevitably admits that she's lied (stolen, lusted, etc.) at least once in her life, the evangelist confronts her with the awful truth: that she would, if she were to face God now, be judged guilty and sentenced to Hell. Having led the fish to a realization of her own wretchedness before God, her imminent damnation, the evangelist follows up with the Good News (i.e., Christ's substitutionary atonement, the availability of repentance and salvation, etc.).

I've spent a lot of time on this blog so far outlining some problems I have with this style of evangelism, which (in less formal ways) defined many of the styles to which I was exposed growing up in the Southern Baptist Church. Indeed, I've developed an active distaste for fear-based evangelism. Why? Because the God it presents isn't someone I'd care to know. One minute (in the context of the Way of the Master narrative) He's holy and utterly righteous, the Uncompromising Judge that will rightfully condemn you to an eternity in Hell for even one lie. The next minute--namely the minute you have a panic attack about the idea of burning for eternity--He swoops in as the Ultimate Lover who sacrificed Himself for your sins.

The Way of the Master depends upon the fish making a decision for Christ out of grateful relief that God saved her... from Himself.

Imagine if a person were to act this way: threatening you with severe (to say nothing of everlasting) bodily harm for even a minor infraction one minute and then magnanimously saying, "That's OK. I've beaten myself up in your place, and if you dedicate yourself to me, I'll let my self-pummeling serve as a substitution. If you choose not to turn to serve and love me, though--POW! But it's your free choice."

Add to this scenario a set of followers, each of whom has taken the guy's deal, who are simply confounded that you would have any sort of problem with this setup. "How can you be so ungrateful?" they ask, "You're the one who violated his laws. He's absolutely right to judge you guilty; you deserve the hurt that's coming to you. We all do. But he's so merciful that he'll not beat you up at all if only you'd repent of your rebellious ways."

I hate to draw this comparison--it's crude as all get-out--but doesn't that mentality seem an awful lot like Stockholm Syndrome? Or, even cruder, battered spouse syndrome? "He's so good to me. He doesn't beat me up even when I deserve it." I've often had the sneaking suspicion that, in their heart of hearts, fight-or-flight Christians would commit deicide--just snap and kill the God of that story--if they thought they could get away with it. Certainly I attribute much of the resentment I feel toward certain strands of evangelicalism to a lingering distaste for that narrative.

In any case the God of fight-or-flight evangelism is not a God I care to worship. Worse, recall the lesson from Good Goats: we become like the God we worship. God, please save me from being like the guy in that story.

But perhaps I'm being overly reductive. I'll try to deal with some of the obvious counter-arguments to the criticism I've laid out here tomorrow.