Evangelism: a dishonest and soulless campaign
One great difference I noticed between Evangelicals and Catholics is that, at least, the later are concerned with teaching virtues.
I don’t think Catholicism is the culmination of spirituality, but I have to acknowledge their merits. Whenever we were met with their Evangelistic efforts, it was noticeable their concern that we were able to discern between good and evil, also, they would try to make room for honest reflection. At least, this was my experience with them.
With protestants, in the other hand, there was always more of a concern that we believed certain key things.
As I was a very young child, while our parents were in the regular worship service, we, the kids, would stay in a room with other kids and one or two female “teachers”. It wasn’t a bad experience at all. They would teach us about some Biblical story, there would be a ludic thematic activity and a prayer.
Still, there are two episodes that were quite remarkable to me. In one of them, the teacher mentioned Jesus and God in the same sentence, as if they were separated beings. I asked if they were two gods then (because I knew Jesus was God), to which the teacher just replied with a cold and distant “no” and moved on. She didn’t care to elaborate or put any effort to clarify a kid’s confusion. Just a “no” was enough.
The second occasion that was well recorded in my memory was when this same teacher showed us the animated movie “Prince of Egypt”, which tells the story of God’s people being delivered from Egypt.
As you can imagine, we enjoyed it, because it is a very well made and entertaining film. They paused every now and then to explain certain things and had to skip a few parts because of the time. But it was a pleasant experience overall.
Until, as the movie ended and we saw the heroes making their way into the promised land, the teacher decided to give us additional Biblical details. She said “and then they spent 40 years lost in the desert, walking in circles”.
I know that the story in the Bible itself is even worst, but couldn’t they just allow us to fantasize about a happy ending for a while?
When I recall these events, what I feel is that everything was incredibly soulless. We were not supposed to understand it or enjoy it. We were only supposed to believe X and Y and move on. If there is a word to describe this whole modern evangelical movement, the word is insincere.
People are constantly forcing themselves and others into “staying in the faith”. As if they were playing tricks on their own minds to do something they know deep inside that isn’t so true at all. But there is this strange hope that if they keep believing, they’ll get some sort of reward eventually.
Everything is very artificial and devoid of honesty. There is a lot of playing pretend going on.
I remember seeing a Presbyterian pastor that is very famous in our country telling that, in university, his professor was an Atheist and shoved a lot of Atheist literature into him, to the point he was almost becoming an Atheist himself. Explaining the situation to another believer, his friend was quick to offer him an “antidote” and gave him a lot of Christian books to counter the Atheist rhetoric.
This “confession” made it very clear to me that he is aware his belief is just a fruit of his environment and not something he authentically believes. Religion, for a person like this, is just a game of ideas, an exercise of justifying a certain abstract concept and forcing yourself to believe in this system of ideas.
At some point I had to admit to myself that the whole thing doesn’t work and that I was just being pressured into believing on it by others. But many won’t take this step and I think this has a lot to do with the apparent comfort of convenient lies.
There was also a person in my family who would always say that we must always be a good example for the sake of making a good “Jesus propaganda”. She said it more or less as a joke, but it expressed her feelings very well. When it was the case of something Christian of incredibly bad taste, like annoying preachers or awful gospel music, she would justify it by saying that “at least the Word of God is being heard”.
Because, at the end of the day, all that matters is their message being put out there, no matter how dishonest or shameful are the methods they have to employ to do this. No matter if they have to pretend to be nice to gain newcomers. Or to use fear and shame as a tool. As long as it makes people believe the Gospel, it is all fine and well. It is all a big marketing campaign!
