Evangelized!!!???

Last evening, as I was leaving a local hospital (in my clergy duds, no less!), a fellow walks up to me and asks, "Father, may I share something with you?"

I responded, "Sure." Whereupon the gentleman hands me a piece of religious literature boldly emblazoned with the words, "Religious, but don't Know God?"

I said, "I don't think I need this."
He said, "Are you SURE???"
I said, "Yes, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior when I was 7 years old and he has been my friend ever since."
He said, "Praise his Name!"
I said, "Amen"...and walked away as quickly as possible.

Since the fellow wouldn't take his literature back, I looked at it when I got home and noted the artwork on the front of the leaflet was a pair of hands, folded in prayer, with a rosary draped over them. It was as I had suspected, my interrogator had assumed I was a Roman Catholic priest.

I won't go into a line by line exegesis of the content of the document, but here's one thing for sure. The presupposition behind it is that everyone is going to Hell, unless they have prayed some sort of prayer similar to the one I prayed so long ago as a little kid in the church of my childhood.

Now, I'm not arguing about professions of faith -- people make them all the time and those professions prove meaningful and life-changing for many, me included, even when the event happened over 44 years ago. What I found challenging (actually maddening!) in the encounter was the air of superiority that accompanied the exchange.

To "evangelize" in the classic New Testament usage, means to spread the "Good News", the Gospel of Jesus. Spreading this news isn't about condemning people or pre-judging them about whether or not they  "know" God. The more I think about the encounter, the more I wonder how we Christians as a whole have missed the point of spreading the Good News.

Some Christians (and regardless of how I may feel about having a brother in the Lord question my relationship with the Lord, the guy is still part of the Body of Christ) seem to think the way to tell the Good News is to lead with themes of judgment, fear, sacrifice and death.

Others of us (particularly Episcopalians) have so equated "nice and well-mannered" with being a Christian that we never actually mention our faith out loud at all, hoping instead that our actions will somehow interest people around us enough so they initiate a conversation on matters of faith.

In the meantime, I suspect there are any number of people who are ready to hear Good News of mercy, forgiveness, wholeness, healing and life...if some of us would only tell them (and not assume a piece of literature can do so on our behalf).