Evangelism Options

[yummy_delight]

A good friend of mine and I recently got into a heated debate about evangelism. We're both Christians, but we have very different ideas about evangelism. When my friend started getting really involved in church a few years ago, he also became a rampant evangelist. He believes that by bringing more people into the church he is not only saving them from eternal damnation, but also doing his duty as a Christian. He has often quoted Charles Spurgeon, saying "Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter," essentially stating that you can't truly be Christian without evangelizing non believers.

I, however, don't like the idea of evangelism at all. Although I'm a devout Catholic, I dislike the idea of evangelism because I don't believe that anybody, myself included, has the right to force his or her beliefs on someone else. I think that everybody has a right to be whatever the religion they choose. Perhaps it's because I have a different idea about God than other people. I don't think that God sends honestly good people to Hell just because they don't believe in him. There are such things as Christian people who are hypocritical, paying lip service to God at church on Sundays, and still go about causing harm to other people. In my opinion, these people are less deserving of heaven than the good-hearted people whose only "fault" is that they don't believe in God. I think that my duty as a Christian is to be a good person and have a positive impact on the world, which doesn't necessarily mean that I HAVE to be an evangelist.

I'd just like to know what everyone else's opinion is on this, not merely from a Christian standpoint, but from another religion's or atheist's perspective as well. Do you approve of evangelism? Are you an evangelist? Do you think that evangelism is a necessary requirement for all good Christians?

[sdingfelder]

Good morning, insomniac.

In no way did I mean to imply that you were stupid. If it came off that way, please forgive me. The reason I mentioned the Shema is because we were talking about how you can believe in Messiah and still believe that God is One.

The Hebrew word "echad" means "composite one". God uses this word to describe Himself in the Shema, but the same word is used to describe a husband and wife after being married in Genesis 2:24. If "echad" means "one and only one", there's no way that a husband and wife could ever become "echad".

I'm just curious (because the Jewish community considers jews for jesus taboo), were you raised in a jewish environment or a messianic one?

I was definitely not raised with any knowledge of Messianic Judaism. The name "Jesus" was worse than a 4-letter curse word in my home. My father had no tolerance for anything Christian. He was the president of our synogogue (a Conservative one) for a number of years (this was a political position and not a religious one -- he wasn't a rabbi) but something happened that got him so angry that we simply stopped going to shul.

Really, all we ever did growing up was hold Passover and Channukah. In those, though there was zero opening of Tanach - zero reading of Scripture. It wasn't until I was much older that I actually started reading Tanach for myself -- this only after realizing that it was not authored by men. When I actually read the Exodus for myself, I realized that these were MY people that had to sprinkle the lamb's blood on their doorposts and walked on dry land after the Red Sea was parted. Your people, too.

Being Jewish growing up never meant anything except that I was separated from 95% of my friends because they had no idea why I couldn't eat bread for 8 days. My parents never even explained to me what being Jewish meant. It was hollow tradition.

I coudn't encourage you enough to please read Tanach for yourself. Read Isaiah (Yeshayahu) 53 (written over 700 years before Messiah's birth) and see who it clearly refers to. Read Zechariah 12:10, Zechariah 9:9, Micah 5:2, Isaiah 9:6. After you're done with those, there are plenty more to follow -- if you're at all interested.

Prove to yourself why the first people who followed Christ (which is simply Greek for Messiah) were Jewish people. Please.