Christian Charm and Courtesy

 

Many religious beliefs should lead to intolerant and harmful actions but the believers don’t have the guts or the support to live out these beliefs. An example is how Catholics claim to believe that everybody is in danger of Hell and sinners need to be warned. They don’t act as if people are in such danger. Actions speak louder than words and actions speak louder than professed beliefs. They do not really act like they believe the religion fully.

 

The Christians today advocate trying to look at things from the sinner and the non-Christian's view. They urge that rapport be created and courtesy be adhered to every step of the way.

 

The Christian give the following rationale for courtesy and charm towards unbelievers and sinners.

 

#The Christian community is not a haven for saints but a hospital for sinners. Therefore do not ridicule or laugh at the other person's views for it will likely put him or her off the faith. They need to see Christianity as attractive.

 

That is not a reason for courtesy and charm. The Church says that God may use others to help us but he is the doctor. He helps us with his supernatural grace, he works the miracle of change within us transforming us into the good and holy image of himself. So the Church should say, "Severely reprimand those who do not believe or who do not obey. Do not fear that you can put them off. God can grant them the miracle of faith. It is unbiblical to think we can charm or argue a person into the faith - faith is a gift from God and is supernatural." It should make the reprimand an option if not a demand. Jesus was very reprimanding.

 

#To promote Christianity as true and other faiths as false is the language of confrontation. It attacks the other person. Instead of that, try and help the person see that Christianity is attractive.

 

But it is manipulative to have a person think more about what a religion is going to do for him than whether it is true or not. And we are confronted about our bad maths at school and it does not mean we never learn maths. If the sinner is to be loved and the sin hated then it follows that to attack the sinner's errors is not to attack the sinner.

 

If you are courteous to a person in case you put them off your Christian faith or religion, then it follows you would be nasty or could be if you thought you could get away with it or if it would help after all. How authentic are you?

 

Jesus never worried about courtesy - for him he was saving people from an eternity in Gehenna - Hell - and his message, "Repent and believe before it is too late!" was an urgent and frantic one. There was no time for pleasantries. You might say the end of the world didn't happen and he was talking as if it were around the corner. But that is not the point. If Hell really exists then his actions were logical. It is better to aggressively warn a person in case they die tomorrow.

 

The Christian faith claims to be the law of Christ. With law, you cannot say, "I didn't know Jesus that you forbade x and y and z. I am innocent." Ignorance is no excuse. If it were, there would be no law. A murderer who thought that killing abortionists was legal would get off if he lied that he didn't know it was illegal. The apostle Paul wrote of the disobedient whether they were Jews or Greeks as having no excuse for their disobedience to divine law. And this even though the Greeks did not have a God-based or Scripture-based religion like the Jews had.

 

Belief is not a choice. You just think what you think. But religion often says that when belief is combined with a desire to obey that believe in love it is to be called faith. Faith is a choice.

 

If you believe belief is a choice or faith is, it follows that charm is necessary to get people into the Christian fold. This as we have seen is heresy.

 

Do miracles happen? All believers can say is, "Reliable and honest people say they do. If we do not believe then why believe anything anybody says?" This argument in fact does not help at all. People say the same thing whether it is alien abductions they want to believe in, or miracles that prove the Devil is God or miracles that prove Jesus is God. If we are going to accept the existence of something as extraordinary as miracles merely on the basis of an assumption and an argument we don't really believe then if we get converts, there is no getting away from the fact that we manipulated them.

 

Courtesy is often used as a manipulation tool. As religion claims to be about supernatural facts and things for which there is no decent evidence, clearly we should be more cynical about its charm than charm exercised in any other field. For example, you can and will find the crafty salesman out. But how can you prove say that Catholicism is wrong if it has you looking after a soul you do not have?