final commission of the Redeemer to his chosen apostles! Imagine a man visiting a sick friend in the hospital only to be informed it is now his turn to perform the brain surgery!
All this, I say, was by no means our invention. It was an unexpected by-product of the Protestant printing press. Once the devout got the scriptures into their feverish little hands, they read every paragraph, no matter who was addressed in it, as if it were intended just for them. They read the Great Commission of Matthew for world evangelization, and they thought they themselves were receiving marching orders!
One supposes it to have been sheer luck that none of them read Jesus’ words to Judas, “Go thou and do likewise” in the same spirit, or there should have been mass hangings for Christ.
And who could have foreseen the boon thus bequeathed! “Witnessing” became one of the most important devices to propel the believers into a fervid existence aping the stories of the Bible and pretending they themselves were part of the narrative of the Acts. Feeling themselves to be on the front lines, those who took it seriously felt they were no longer mere spectators, and the quality of their religious zeal reached a new level from which it has never since fallen.
Oh, to be sure, even this comes at a cost, because none of them can make the adjustment easily. There is no one, no matter how devoted to his faith, who easily adjusts to behavior that will cause all his acquaintances to think him a fanatic and a kook. This is why we teach their clergy to threaten them, not with going to hell (we’ve already sold them the ticket out of there and cannot renege), but with bearing the responsibility if another goes there when a word from our Christian might have rescued him. Picture the poor fool, sitting in a bus seat or on an airplane, fretting that, if he does not somehow strike up a seemingly casual conversation, and then pretend to spontaneously turn it to religion so that he may witness, he will henceforth have his seatmate’s blood on his hands for eternity! It is not far from what the believer himself would easily recognize as paranoid delusion, as if the man next to him began to confide in him concerning the dangers posed the human race by flying saucers.
But it has to be done! Of course, it is good if the person targeted does actually convert to faith, embarking on a tasty course of zeal and piety of his own! The more the better, that’s for sure! I say so as a gourmet. But there is more! It is just as good if the witnessing target turns away unpersuaded. Why? Nothing else has quite the same effect of sealing off our protégés from the secular world, that world unappetizing to our kind. The more alienated the Christian becomes from his or her friends, relatives, and acquaintances (“Uh-oh! Here he comes!”), the more firmly ensconced he or she becomes in the Christian peer-group. The dynamics are the same for any member of any group whose creed places them on stage in a drama that is larger than life (in their imaginations), whether it is a Communist or a science fiction fan.
The more seriously your man can be led to take his responsibility to “personal evangelism,” the easier it will be to do, since the stares and snickers of “sinners” will bother him less and less. This is because he recounts his evangelistic forays to his Christian compatriots, he rises higher and higher in their esteem. Like a salesman with the highest commissions. Here is something new to be good at, and a new audience to impress. He will learn to care what fellow believers think of him more than what outsiders think until he develops an implicit contempt for the latter, and the Christian begins to think of himself as a happy member of a born-again Super Race.
More next time, old man. Right now I am late for a halo polishing and wing grooming.
Your affable uncle,
Needletoe
V
My dear Wiltwing,
Now where was I? Ah yes: witnessing, personal evangelism. I have said it has a double benefit in that it does sometimes work, giving us new converts and thus new menu items as their piety grows, and the very act of witnessing alienates our protégés from their friends and acquaintances who suddenly feel they are being used (which they are) or invited to leave the world of conventional sanity (which they are). Once a Christian believer “puts it on the line,” takes a public stand in this fashion, he will feel he must stick by it. Otherwise, if he suddenly reneged and admitted, “Look, I, er, guess I got sucked into some kind of cult, some sort of trip,” it will be a disgrace others will always hold against him. He will always be the butt of jokes, cringing whenever the whole business comes up, which it will, again and again. Anyone can easily anticipate this. And so it will seem less embarrassing to just stick with it with a straight face: “I meant to do that!”
I mentioned the galvanizing effect of witnessing, how it makes them feel they are actors in the twenty-ninth chapter of Acts. They are playing a game we cannot lose. Our clients simply cannot get discouraged. On the one hand, suppose the contact does accept the evangelistic offer and converts. The believer rejoices and puts a notch in his gun belt. On the other, suppose the target declines, whether with indifference or, even better, hostility: our man congratulates himself on having taken a stand for Christ, even on having experienced a modicum of “persecution” for his faith—or as close as he is likely to come to it.
Either way, our hold on the believer, the witness, is reinforced. The “soul-winner” has renewed self-confidence, more to be proud of, more to show for his faith. Here is a satisfied customer. And the unrequited witness can congratulate himself on his courage, and his skin is thickening. He will be less reluctant to witness again. But his successful evangelistic encounters also strengthen him by adding another vote that his beliefs are true. The continued plausibility of the whole thing depends on his remaining within a circle of fellow-believers who affirm his beliefs, making it as hard to doubt them as it is to doubt one’s value while amid everyone’s compliments. If the witness gets another to switch sides and agree with him, the “world” has decreased by one, while the Church has increased by one. The Democratic Party seems all the more true and noble when one learns that a formerly staunch Republican has switched parties—or vice versa! It is all quite far from logic. But the only reasoning faith is interested in, after all, is rationalization.
Evangelism is always based on emotion, on people feeling that “something is missing” from their lives, namely, a sense of purpose, happiness, a group of friends. A sect promises these rewards to any new recruit. Naturally they welcome a newcomer, and they have plenty for him to do, from prayer meetings and Bible study, to evangelism and bringing potato chips to the church picnic. His time is filled; he has assignments, and this is all he needs to think he has “purpose in life.” Look closely into the matter and you will find that actual reasons, appropriate warrants for believing the extravagant things he is taught to believe, are entirely lacking. He doesn’t even care about them. And this situation is hardly to be regretted. Certainly not by us. If reason began to rear its ugly head, our cause would be quite quickly lost. But if one becomes committed to a cause through an emotional experience, reason, which had nothing to do with getting him into it, will have even less to do with getting him out of it. On the other hand, imagine someone converting to religion because the arguments of its advocates seemed to make sense to him. In short, he will have been persuaded by a weighing of arguments and evidence. That is not faith, none that does us much good anyway. It does not run deep. It is inherently tentative, provisional, because the habit of mind does not change, and the same individual will remain receptive to new ideas. If some other argument sounds better to him one day, he jumps ship, and that does a lot of damage. Believers watch him leaving and inevitably ask, “What did he see that I’m missing?” Obviously, that is why we suggest that any such apostate must have had shameful reasons. He must have preferred sinning and given up his faith so he wouldn’t have to feel guilty fornicating or taking drugs, or what have you. Believers are very happy to surmise the worst about former coreligionists in order to lapse back into a happy complacency.
But most are stuck more firmly by their emotional bond. Even so, sooner or later, some villain is sure
