If you’re not deeply entrenched in Christianity, you might not have heard the phrase “The Great Commission.” You’ve probably heard about it anyway, though. The term refers to the message of Matthew 28:16-20, where Jesus tells his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” There are a few other places in the New Testament where Jesus says something similar, and it’s basically the scriptural basis for evangelism.
At the same time, there’s “The Great Commandment,” which is essentially the Golden Rule. Both God in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament remind people to “love your neighbor as yourself” or some variant thereof. Now, if you’ve ever been the victim the target on the receiving end of evangelism, you might be wondering what happens when the Great Commandment and the Great Commission inevitably come into conflict.
Having had such thoughts before, I was really happy to read this post over at John Shore’s blog, called How Is “Convert, You!” Loving Others? In it, he explains what he’s heard from non-Christians — that Christians’ attempts to convert them are actually offensive and push them away from the faith. He encourages Christians to knock it off!
For Christians to solve their “I love you” / “It’s a shame you’re you” conundrum, all they have to do is realize that what Jesus tells his disciples at the end of Matthew was critical at that time. When he said those words, almost no one but his audience had heard of Christ or his message; then his disciples needed to get out there and spread the word, in order to ensure it survived at all.
But today? Not so much with the urgency. Today, Christians can rejoice in the fact that the Great Commission has been fulfilled. It’s done! It’s over! Yayeth! Christianity is, and has long been, firmly entrenched virtually everywhere in America. Television, radio, video, the Internet, almost as many churches as there are Starbucks: there are infinite information streams about Christianity available 24/7 to any and all. No Christian has to worry about anyone out there being ignorant of Christianity. Everybody knows about Christianity. Which means that in America today, it’s very safe to trust that the reason for which any given person is not a Christian is because they have weighed the evidence and chosen not to be a Christian. (And it’s likely that one of the reasons they so decided is all the Christians forever running around telling everyone else what they should and shouldn’t believe. Most people aren’t keen on joining a club of apparent crazies.)
I was so relieved. A Christian who gets it! And not just a random dude, a dude who’s written several books about Christianity, and who makes his living doing so. People read what he writes. People write about what he writes, and people read that. And this guy understands that (many of the) people who aren’t Christian have thought about it but just don’t think there’s evidence for Christianity. Going around and shouting about hell isn’t going to provide us the evidence we require.
So, hooray. The Great Commission is fulfilled. Maybe Christians will stop putting so much emphasis on evangelism now…?
ORLANDO, Fla. (BP)–By an estimated 3-to-1 margin, the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force report was adopted June 15 by messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Orlando, Fla. …
“We are still brothers and sisters in Christ. We differ on no article of faith. We are guided by our shared commitment to the Gospel itself and to the articles of faith identified in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. The Southern Baptist Convention is a convention of churches that is committed to a missional vision of presenting the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations. We are a Great Commission people.”
(Source.) So … the Great Commission has not been fulfilled. Still really important if you’re a good Christian. Get all up in everybody’s faces about Jesus, pronto!
This seems like a really fundamental disagreement on what being a Christian means. Interestingly, I found out about John Shore’s writing and about the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force from the same website. Their about page says that they “want to be robustly biblical, richly theological, constantly elevating what God himself in his own Word makes central.” What has God made central in his own Word, then?
How can we tell what real Christians really believe?
mist42nz on 
Christopher on 
“How can we tell what real Christians really believe?”
Don’t take the word of Christians for it. Feel free to read the book yourself. I think you’ll find the message is fairly obvious.
Hi Thabiti, and thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately, I have read “the book” myself and I find lots of very contradictory messages. This is in fact exactly what led to the formation of 38,000 different Christian denominations. One group finds a place where it says that God “will reward each according to his works,” and another finds a part that says “A man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ.” Another group finds the statement that both are essential. Another group fixates on the part that says the most important thing is to be “born again.” Who is right? It’s hardly obvious. In fact, the existence of such contradictions on so many seemingly essential points of theology is a huge indicator that Christianity is just an agglomeration of centuries of people making stuff up.
Thabiti… really? I have trouble believing you even believe what you wrote. Christians have spent literally millennia debating the meaning amongst themselves, so I think it’s pretty clear that it’s not obvious.
More importantly, though, the question is what Christians believe. Unless they’re lying, they’re correct by definition. Maybe it isn’t what the bible “really” teaches, or what they “should” believe, but if you’re debating with someone, you don’t debate against what someone else tells you your opponent should believe. You debate against what they’re actually arguing for, and that means there’s a problem when that’s unclear.
unauthorized authoritarians
a very brief competitive analysis of xian cult behavior
Without Paul of Tarsus, hard salesman without peer, xianity would not exist. Of course, Paul never met Jesus — he hallucinated the risen one, a hellenistic world savior who would soon return to destroy Rome, its armies, and free the oppressed.
A religious group will strive to have a high entry cost, but also a high exit cost. Conversion to an authoritarian belief structure will have a high psychological “cost” in terms of submission to the will or priest-pastor-rabbi-imam. Exaction of money or goods will increase “convert” buy-in. As will demands on time given as unpaid labor.
De-conversion, opting out, is “insubordination.” It will engender trained-in guilt responses thus raising the barrier to exit.
Fierce anti-competitive practices: apologetics, law suits, intimidation, attacks on public education, putting supporters in elective office to further politico-ideological agenda and social control of “those not with us.”
The group will have strict internal “quality” control mechanisms for detecting and eradicating “aberrant” behavior — including invasive monitoring, guiding, goading, purging, excommunicating. The ultimate membership unit is the classical “cell” — a small group meeting to address quality of behavior of each participant.
Extreme need to communicate the “good news” as part of adult recruitment. Right-wing religious groups have pioneered in use of electronic media ever since the 1920s.
Although in the beginning religious groups must recruit vigorously to thrive, bringing in completely naive subjects (already indoctrinated children) lowers entry costs, and retention costs (quality control).
Pro-natalism, which masquerades as pro-life, obviously follows as a growth strategy — so also home schooling to increase indoctrination and retain control of older children.
the anti_supernaturalist
The author’s eloquent use of words associated with Christian circles interests me. Thanks for your thoughts on Christianity and evangelism. Your polemic, from what I read, touches on the inconsistencies that present themselves in the lives of Christians and their modes of interpretation. Any human being who is able to exercise their God-given faculties (rationally) can correctly assert this. Perhaps there is more to your argument elsewhere. Can you point your readers to a more consistent approach to life? Does there exist a belief system/philosophy/mythology/science without inconsistencies? By the way, I like the title of your blog.
Welcome, Jarod! I really appreciate (and am flattered by) your feedback. I don’t advocate that anyone follow a particular set of explicit teachings governing particular behaviors, and I especially don’t advocate following a “mythology.” Given that other people are trying to promote their sets of explicit rules about particular behaviors, I think pointing out inconsistencies in those is worthwhile. In this particular post, what I was really trying to illustrate was the difficulty of pinning down exactly what being “Christian” means, when there are so many different ways that Christians interpret their religion.
I think the better way to make decisions about particular behaviors and life in general (compared to following some set-in-stone set of rules) is to be constantly reflecting on your actions as they relate to your interests, including in that the interests of others you care about, and re-evaluating your decisions as you reflect on how well they meet your goals and serve those interests. I haven’t written anything on that in particular, but it’s a good idea for a future post. If you’re interested in more on this, I’d point you to the I Am An Atheist blog and the “2Q” system explained there. That’s a really stellar example of this type of reflection.
You are welcome and I must admit that I initially neglected to visit the “about” section of your blog. It seems to me that your views sound a lot like Hume’s naturalism. You wrote, “I believe that there is no aspect of the world that is beyond investigation, unquestionable, to be taken on faith.”
I disagree with your assertion that you are not trying to advocate anything. You would be doing a great disservice to yourself by dismissing the fact that you are writing about something that is important to you. It seems to me that your authority is your own ability to reason. I believe that Christian theism is the only position that “gives human reason a field for successful operation and a method of true progress in knowledge” (Van Til). In other words, knowledge build on the epistemology of Christian theism takes the mind where it was meant to go. And yes, this epistemology is a product of faith in the living God that made us rational, beloved beings in His own image.
Well, I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t advocate anything — rather, that I don’t advocate system that lists a specific set of behaviors that are Always Right and another set that are Always Wrong, or something like that. I do advocate an approach to decision-making that emphasizes logical inference from the available evidence, thoughtful consideration of ethics, etc. This is obviously pretty different from saying “I believe in the teachings of [insert ancient leader]” or “I am a follower of [insert philosophy/philosopher].” You’re right that if you are looking for a particular term that approximates my approach, “naturalism” is a pretty good one — but I won’t promise that I stand behind everything ever said by Hume, for example.
I’m honestly not sure what you mean when you say “knowledge built on the epistemology of Christian theism” — are you saying that you assume the tenets of Christianity as axiomatically true, and then deduce further knowledge from there?
NFQ,
Thanks for your the reply. I wanted to let you know that I’m not ignoring your question. I’ll reply this weekend when I have a little more time.
Respectfully,
Jarod
Here’s what I mean:
It’s my assertion that our knowledge (humanity’s) is analogical to God’s. God is the ultimate interpreter and we reinterpreters are finite. We think our own thoughts after God’s thoughts, that is to say, God is always presupposed in our thinking whether we acknowledge His existence or not. Our knowledge is necessarily related to God’s knowledge. All facts exist by virtue of God’s interpretation. Our reinterpretation does not somehow nullify the reality of The Interpretation.
[...] about the Great Commission? I wrote about it here. Bottom line: it’s about converting people, not about building houses for them.) I guess [...]
Checked this on your recommendation, and yes I did find this interesting. I find it very unlikely that one guy, no matter how popular his books, is going to have a massive change on proselytizing. To be fair, there are a number of christians who already don’t feel the need to advertise themselves, but obviously that’s an idea that’s not going to spread as much, because no one’s spreading it. It’s one of those sad catch 22s.
[...] ineffective in a post titled “How Is ‘Convert, You!’ Loving Others?” (h/t No Forbidden Questions)And that’s where the logic board of so many Christians seems to blow: they can’t grasp why [...]