"Evangelization: New and Old"

Sunday, March 23, 2014

It seems this week the uncannily aimed reflection book is going to be challenging my approach to evangelization.  Which, I admit, is the one element of the gospel of the Samaritan Woman at the Well that I've barely covered despite exhaustively writing about just about everything else.  (Nice homily, Father Shane, that was also a slightly new angle for me, but I like it!)

I went through a phase when I was a teenager when I read some obnoxious books (for the record, the Left Behind series pairs BADLY with The Fountainhead) and became what I fear was an obnoxious person.  I went to a Jewish friend's house and tried to convert them.  Yeah.

The family, luckily, received this with kindness and looks on it as an act of love.  I did mean it that way, and even in my fervor I acted out of caring and love and fear for salvation.

But as I grew up and shook off the horrifying sanctimony of the Left Behind branch of end times nonsense and jettisoned the few Ayn Rand principals I hadn't managed to mangle in my secretly leftie heart into something I now realize what entirely different than what she was trying to say, I came to believe that there's just no way that God would damn nice people seeking Him through a religion they grew up in rather than Christianity.  It was actually my sister who planted the earworm that eventually bore that fruit.

I have explained before, probably not as well as I think I have, that I believe that all religions show a face of God exactly BECAUSE I believe that the Christian religion is true (or at least truest, it's a human institution at this point, after all, staring down the face of the Infinite).  The God of Love in the Bible is doing everything EVERYTHING to reach us, just sneaking and powing and changing His very nature to be more like us in order to meet each of us on the level that we will receive Him.  Of course He sets up all different kinds of paths to spiritual oneness with Him.

I imagine it's harder without the Eucharist, but then I think that about Protestants too.  I admire people of faith even more when they don't believe that they can go to heaven every Sunday at Mass.  For staying strong and true without that particularly remarkable grace.

That makes evangelization tricky, though.  Yes, I suppose we could all target the atheists, but I've even found in them souls who are seeking God through that ironic lens.  I told my best friend, an atheist, that I respond to her as a woman of faith: someone who has a text they trust to contain answers or at least a pathway to enlightenment, she cares about doing right, she spends time thinking about all of the important questions, and she has a moral code that she respectfully believes everyone would be better off if they followed.

Perhaps that's what evangelization can be for someone like me then -- respectfully trying to help people make it easier on themselves.  The go-to answer for people like me is to be an Example out in the world, but that's a lot of pressure for someone who hates the idea of purity.

What I could be instead is someone who tries to help people find God in whatever way they already know to find Him.  After all, if God doesn't mind meeting us through any avenue we listen to, then why should I be picky about what conduit they choose?  My job is just to help them tune in, whatever way I can.