Summary and some pre-response clarifications

So, for the past few day's I've been crawling into the mind of a particular kind of evangelist, namely the kind whose primary tactic for convincing people to convert to Christianity consists of three basic steps: 1) convince the person that, in the eyes of God, they have sinned; 2) convince the person that, because of that fact, they are doomed to an eternity in Hell; 3) present the person with the Gospel--that news that Jesus (God in the flesh) paid that penalty for everyone if they only turn to him.

This style of evangelism, which I experienced (and practiced) throughout my childhood and which is today exemplified in Ray Comfort's "Way of the Master" system, generates no small amount of resentment in me. I've alleged that this particular narrative suggests that God operates like a mercurial, unstable tyrant, an omnipotent bully who threatens you with Hell for violating the least commandment and then expects a life of gratitude, love, and service for saving you from God's own wrath.

Given the gravity of that charge (my inner Southern Baptist child is quite alarmed that I'd even write such a thing), I wanted to makes sure I gave the strongest, best rebuttal I could think of. In other words, I don't want to create a straw man out of the Way of the Master (WotM), misrepresenting its theology in reductive ways only to crow about how easily I can knock down that misrepresentation.

Thus my three forays into the mind of a WotM: three defenses against the argument I leveled. Briefly, they are as follows: A) God's law is a natural condition of reality, not a random assortment of preferences God conjured on the spot. Breaking that law brings consequences just as surely as stepping off a high-rise building results in a fall. Complaining about the unfairness of Hell is like complaining against the unfairness of gravitation. B) The real focus of the WotM isn't Hell; it's God's love. If you believe that God is God (omnipotent, transcendent, etc.), then you must come to appreciate the magnitude of God's sacrifice in becoming Jesus and dying on the cross for us. To call God petty after that sacrifice... well, that's a whole lot of ingratitude (and gall). C) Hell is unpleasant but necessary. Transcendent moral truths require eternal consequences. If no negative consequences for doing wrong existed, distinctions between right and wrong would disappear. The ethical universe demands ethical laws. And even here--God gives you an out-clause. Are you really going to spit in God's face for letting you off the hook of universal justice?

Those are my hypothetical three counter-arguments against myself. Now, before I respond to them (as myself), I want to make a few disclaimers.

First, there's nothing new under the sun. What I've been doing over the last few days is an exercise in Christian apologetics (from the Greek, apologia, meaning defense or justification). To be blunt, over the two millennia of Christianity, many, many people--thinkers and poets and saints of far greater experience, education, and spirit than I--have engaged in apologetics. Scholars make careers out of studying the history of apologetic thought. Nothing I've come up with here is novel, and it's my own ignorance that prevents me from expressing my attempts at apologetic in modes as sophisticated as, say, Thomas Aquinas.

Second, there's nothing new under the sun--part two. For at least as long as there have been apologetics, there have been critics of the faith. I would be surprised if even my initial critique had not been made many times over--often by Christian thinkers themselves. Again, mea culpa for re-inventing the wheel (it is a blog, after all, and not a research paper).

Finally, I doubt that there's anything, argumentatively speaking, that's new to Ray Comfort and company. While I have theological and ethical problems with his technique, I respect the fact that he's been refining this technique (actually a set of techniques) for many years. He's spoken to thousands of people (more?), engaged in hundreds of in-depth conversations with just about every argument against his technique that you could think up.

Oddly enough, though, his latest apologetical project aims squarely at atheists, particularly militant atheists like Richard Dawkins. His newest book, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, but You Can't Make Him Drink exemplifies this direction of his ministry.

I'm fascinated by his website and its techniques (confrontational anti-atheism?), and I'll likely discuss those down the way. But I find it interesting that that in following the anti-atheist apologetic path he side-steps an infra-Christian criticism: namely, that from a Christian perspective "the Way of the Master" has faults.

Comfort has many proteges, among them a lively little podcast/radio show called "Last Words Radio" (LWR). LWR is made up of an affable bunch of folk in California who basically practice the Way of the Master and other open-air preaching techniques and talk about it for an hour or so every Saturday (though they have said that they may be ending the program due to funding difficulties). Their program, which I typically listen to as I work out, features a casual grab-bag of reports from the field, live evangelism segments where a host talks to a "fish" on the phone, and ruminations about evangelism in general.

And often--every week--the hosts marvel at how the biggest source of resistance they face on the street comes not (or not usually) from militant atheists but from "people who claim to be Christian." I wonder if this is the case with Ray Comfort as well. If so, I wonder if he hears anything like my argument. And I wonder how he responds to it and why that response--and the situation that provokes it--isn't more common in his writings.

Which of course makes me wonder in turn: how will I respond to my own counter-arguments?

More tomorrow,

JF