Sharing My Faith

Back in my Campus Crusade for Christ days, I was taught that phrases like "sharing your faith," "sharing the gospel," or "witnessing" amounted to a sales pitch, whereby I, the Christian, try to convince you, the non-Christian, to "put your trust in Christ," which by the way you will do by praying the "sinner's prayer."

It's only been in the last five years that I've come to see just how absurd this is. How on earth could you get from the New Testament to any kind of formula like the above? The problem is in forcing a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, caring about people, and, on the other, caring about their standing before God. The result: well-meaning Christians end up feeling guilty for not inserting Jesus into every conversation they have with non-Christians. It's crazy, and I mean really crazy. Like psychosis crazy. Like half of the evangelical world needs to be de-programmed.

St. Francis of Assisi is credited as saying, "Preach the gospel always. When necessary, use words." Old-school evangelicals have a saying too: "Preach the gospel always. With words. With arguments. With really sweet rationale and rhetoric. With whatever it takes to get people's butts into heaven." But is this really what Jesus had in mind when he told his followers to preach the good news to all creation? Of course not.

Here's the reality: The extent to which I truly care about someone is the extent to which I bring the gospel to them. Sure, that could mean telling them about Jesus. But in my experience it more often means really listening to somebody, sending $20 back to the dishwasher, noticing a neglected person and engaging him/her in conversation, hanging the "Do Not Disturb" sign on a hotel room door nob to give housecleaning a break, stopping to help a person with a flat tire, sponsoring a little boy named Abraham in Ethiopia.