Orthodoxy: Getting our theological ducks in a row.

ORTHODOX 'ɔr.θə.dɑks adjective. Correct; conforms to what’s commonly or traditionally believed true; generally accepted as right.

2. Usual, conventional, normal, customary.

3. [capitalized] Of the ancient churches originating in the eastern Roman Empire, which formally split from the Roman Catholics in 1054.

[Orthodoxy 'ɔr.θə.dɑks.i noun.]

Christianity is primarily about trusting and following Christ Jesus. We read what he taught, agree with him, and do as he said; we join his kingdom, with him as our king.

An important secondary thing (and you just know people miss the point and turn it into the primary thing) is what we believe about Jesus. How we understand him, and who we understand him to be, are mighty important things. ’Cause when we misunderstand who Jesus is, we follow him wrong. Aren’t even following him at all, in many cases: We’re following an imaginary Jesus who looks a lot more like us, and our biases and prejudices… or who looks more like the cult leaders who got us to believe in their imaginary Jesuses.

Obviously people had wrong ideas about Jesus while he was still walking the earth. Definitely didn’t stop after he left: There were Pharisees who were pretty sure his kingdom couldn’t include gentiles, or Greeks who were pretty sure Jesus can’t have come to earth in a physical body, ’cause animal matter is icky and gross. There were Egyptians who objected to the idea Jesus is God, and said he’s gotta be a lesser god, not the God. Don’t forget all the con artists inventing new religions, who decided to throw bits and pieces of this new middle eastern religion into their mixtures to make themselves sound more exotic. (Nope, it’s not a new practice. Humans have always been doing that.)

So… what’s correct and what isn’t?

Who decides orthodoxy?

Well, here’s where things get tricky. How do we determine which Christians, and Christian beliefs, are orthodox, and which of ’em are wrong, heretic, or even evil? How do we sort the wheat from the weeds, the good from the dumb, the gold from fool’s gold, the kosher hot dogs from the pure pink slime?

Well, every church in Christendom claims they have the solution: They’re orthodox. Believe ye in their doctrines, and ye shall be saved. Believe ye not in their doctrines, and out you go. Either they’ll kindly ask you to go elsewhere, or they’ll formally excommunicate you, and hand you over to Satan, 1Ti 1.20 ’cause they’re pretty sure God won’t have you.

I agree every church’s leadership has the ability to decide for themselves what they believe, and how firm they’re gonna emphasize those beliefs. Fr’instance one of my previous churches believed Christians shouldn’t drink. No, the bible mandates no such thing; it only recommends we don’t get drunk. Ep 5.18 But that church ministered to a lot of alcoholics, and the leaders felt those who could drink might mislead those who can’t. So it’s more important to protect weaker believers. Ro 14 Makes sense, right? But is this a make-or-break issue, where you’re going to hell if you drink? Absolutely not.

…Except one of the church’s leaders believed strongly and vocally that if you drank, you probably were going to hell. Drinking meant you thought so little of your fellow Christians, you were so selfish as to do your own thing without taking other people into consideration, that you were essentially an antichrist. He doubted thoughtless people like that were even saved. To his mind, people whom God truly saved people would never, ever do that. To him this was a make-or-break issue. Drink, and you’re heretic.

Now who died and made him God?

But that’s how it works when individuals get to decide what’s orthodox and what’s not. All of us have our favorite beliefs, and most of us will turn ’em into priorities and absolutes—and not just for us personally, but for everyone. Every Christian has to think and believe as we do.

Or we’ll go the opposite extreme: We’ll dismiss and permit all sorts of things. We’ll call it “generous orthodoxy.” But our liberalism will allow things we really shouldn’t. Paul had to rebuke the church of Corinth for not just including a guy who was banging his stepmother, but for being proud of how inclusive they were. 1Co 5 Look, we gotta be gracious and embrace sinners, and forgive them everything, same as God forgives us. But Jesus expects us to turn from such sins, and stop doing ’em, not make accommodations. A church which doesn’t teach likewise isn’t following Jesus.

So while churches are free to set a standard—and really oughta—do they set a universal standard, true for every Christian everywhere? Well, some of us think we do. Fundamentalists in particular. Disagree with their doctrines and they’ll insist you’re not a real Christian. In fact some of ’em are mighty sure they’re the only real Christians, and when the rapture happens the only ones we’ll find in heaven are Fundies, the first apostles, and Ronald Reagan.

But realistically though: Who sets the ultimate standard? Who gets the final word?

I say Christ Jesus. Should be Jesus, right? I mean, why’re we calling ourselves “Christians” otherwise? If we’re gonna be judged in the End by him, obviously he determines what’s correct and what isn’t. That’s the whole point of his teaching, “You’ve heard it said… but I tell you” Mt 5.38-39 —he defines Christianity. Not me. Nor my favorite Christians. Nor my favorite church. Nor my favorite beliefs, faith statements, creeds, or anything else. We don’t get to the Father except through Jesus, Jn 14.6 and that’s true of our beliefs as well: We don’t “get” God unless Jesus interprets him for us. He sets the standard—and he forgives us when we fall short of it, as we will.

Beyond Jesus, we got the ancient creeds. And this part gets controversial for Fundamentalists, who insist they get to define orthodoxy; not some ancient “Catholics.” (Even though the creeds were written long before the Roman Catholic Church came into existence.) Whenever heresy became a serious issue in the Roman Empire, the emperor would call a council of every leading Christian and have ’em sort it out. I believe their conclusions are consistent with the scriptures, and so has nearly every Christian since. Their conclusions aren’t comprehensive—there are still a lot of wrong ideas they never got round to addressing!—but they got to all the important ones, all the Christianity-defining ones. So they defined orthodoxy too.

Misusing orthodoxy.

Two common mistakes Christians make about orthodoxy.

First, faith righteousness: Many Christians think we’re only saved when we believe all the right things. That if we get any of our beliefs wrong, Jesus’ll say, “Whoops, you didn’t pass the orthodoxy test,” and it’s off to hell. This is what they mean by “saved by faith”: If you put your faith in the wrong beliefs, it doesn’t save! It condemns.

It’s absolutely wrong, of course. We’re saved by God’s grace alone. The Protestant slogan sola fide, “faith alone,” refers to how we’re justified, not how we’re saved. We trust Jesus, Ga 2.16 the one whom the Father sent us, Jn 6.29 and it’s through this faith God grants us grace. Ep 2.8 Not through our individual orthodox beliefs; it’s through trusting Jesus.

The reason Christians teach faith righteousness is pretty simple: They don’t understand grace. As we can tell by how utterly graceless they get, and how quick they are to condemn. Much as they correctly point out we’re not saved by works, they somehow wanna slip into the mix, without anyone really noticing, the hard work of sorting out our beliefs and becoming orthodox Christians. And convince us if we don’t do it, we’re not really saved—because they don’t believe, can’t believe, God might extend his grace to heretics. They’re not gracious, so they wanna remake God so he’s ungracious too.

Second, the idea since orthodoxy doesn’t save, it’s not important. Or not that important. Hence many a Christian figures we can believe as we like, since all roads lead to God anyway, and God’ll forgive everything and sort us all out.

Look, the reason God saves us is so we can do good works. Ep 2.10 Not so we can sit on our growing behinds and bask in his salvation. Now that we’re saved, we got work to do! And just so we get cracking on the stuff God actually wants us to do, instead of the busywork our Christianist culture does instead, it just makes sense to get to know the actual God, instead of the Christianist interpretations which con us into doing anything and everything else—preferably things which get their candidates elected. Stand back and look at what they expect us to do. Now, if Jesus is just gonna overthrow all these works once he returns, stands to reason it’s a colossal waste of our time, effort, money, and passion.

If we want a growing relationship with God—heck, if we want a relationship with him period, instead of just taking him for granted—it only makes sense we’ll try to get to know him as he really is, and not just embrace whichever interpretation of him is most convenient. We’ll trust him enough to actually tackle the things he tells us to do, instead of preemptively assuming they’re impossible, unfathomable, too righteous for unrighteous humans to approach (sola fide notwithstanding), too perfect for imperfect humans to do without ruining everything. We’ll embrace God instead of embracing cop-outs.

After all, Jesus came to earth to reveal God to us. Jn 1.18 Dismissing Jesus’s mission as irrelevant doesn’t strike you as the most Christian of behaviors, does it?

Evangelism… in a “Christian nation.”

There’s a myth going round the United States that we Christians are a tiny, oppressed minority, shrinking all the time thanks to the insidious forces of paganism and nontheism in our secular culture.

It’s rubbish. And I know; Christians don’t wanna believe it’s rubbish. A lot of us are deeply invested in the idea the world’s only getting worse… and they believe Jesus will intervene once it’s the worst it can be. (Whereas I don’t believe he’s forced to wait for us to get depraved enough; he’ll return whenever he wants.) But statistics don’t confirm their deeply-held beliefs. True, the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian is going down. The Pew Research Center pegged it at 65 percent in 2019. But that’s just pagans who believed themselves Christian, recognizing they’re really not. They’re coming out of the closet.

As for me, I share Jesus with people, like every Christian should. Most often by chatting with strangers in coffeehouses, but sometimes I’ve gone door to door. You wanna find out how truly secular your community is, try tabulating them like a census worker: Go from house to house, and meet ’em where they live. What you’ll find out is Christians are hardly a minority. We’re the vast, overwhelming majority.

Some towns are more pagan than others. In more devout towns, 99 out of 100 figure they’re Christian. In more pagan cities (i.e. San Francisco or Portland), it’s still more than half. On average I’ve found two out of three identify as Christian… so yeah, about the same as the Pew Center’s findings.

So when you go forth and share Jesus with people, you’re largely gonna find they know him already. Or at least think they do.

There’s not just one list of the Spirit’s fruit!

When we Christians wanna list the Spirit’s fruit, most of the time we go off the Paul’s list in Galatians.

Galatians 5.22-24 KWL

22 The Spirit’s fruit is: Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness.

Goodness. Faith. 23 Gentleness. Self-governance.

The Law isn’t contrary to any such thing.

24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus, crucify our flesh with its impulses and desires.

We might go with alternate translations of some of these words, like longsuffering and temperance and faithfulness (which is a really inaccurate interpretation of πίστις/pístis, “faith”). But generally yeah, that’s the proof text we memorize, wear T-shirts of, tattoo on our wrists… and don’t follow ’cause we think fruit grows spontaneously.

But I gotta keep reminding people it’s not a comprehensive list. The Spirit produces more fruit in us than that. And elsewhere in the bible, you’re gonna find other lists of his fruit.

Colossians 3.12-15 KWL

12 So like God’s chosen and beloved children, put on:

Compassionate mercy. Kindness. Humility. Gentleness. Patience.

13 Supporting one another and forgiving our own,

when one of us might have a disagreement with another:

Like the Master forgives us, you forgive too.

14 Over all these things, love, which joins the whole together.

15 Have Christ’s peace, into which you were called as one body, govern your minds. Be thankful!

Because Paul and Timothy didn’t bluntly say this was a list of the Spirit’s fruit, Christians quibble about whether it really is. And of course the reason we wanna dismiss it… is because we don’t care to do it. Bad enough we struggle to show any evidence of the list from Galatians; now there are four more behaviors—mercy, humility, forgiveness, and thankfulness—we gotta fake!

And of course there’s the command the apostles used at the top of the list: Ἐνδύσασθε/endýsasthe, “put on.” The NIV renders it “clothe yourselves,” ’cause yeah, the ancient Greeks used this word to describe putting on clothing. So these traits don’t automatically come from within, as Jesus pointed out. Not unless we, with the Spirit’s help, first put ’em there.

But we’d rather imagine humans are inherently good, or that the Holy Spirit within us has fixed all our selfish impulses—and therefore we need do nothing but sit back and let the goodness flow out of us. And of course it’s rubbish, but it’s popular rubbish, and why so many Christians produce no fruit, and instead highlight any substitutes for fruitfulness we can imagine.

References to individual fruits.

The Spirit’s fruit is God’s character. It describes his personality. It describes Jesus’s motives: This is what he thinks of us, and how he behaves towards us. And if we’re following Jesus, and are letting the Spirit guide us, this is how we’re gonna come to think and behave. We’re gonna adopt God’s attitudes. Our character is gonna become his.

So that’s how we define fruit—and how we immediately recognize when the scriptures refer to the Spirit’s fruit. We don’t need the Colossians list to state, “This is the Spirit’s fruit”—we know it’s the Spirit’s fruit, because we know these traits are part of who he is. We recognize him. We realize, “I gotta be this way too”—not “Aw crap, more stuff to do.”

And we can easily identify when other bible verses refer to fruit. Like this one.

1 John 3.17 KWL

Whoever might have worldly wealth, and might see their fellow Christian in need,

and closes off their sympathy for them: How is God’s love abiding in them?

God’s gonna be sympathetic to his needy kids; therefore we need to be sympathetic towards his needy kids. That’s his fruit. Lacking it suggests we lack other fruit, if not the Holy Spirit himself.

God’s gonna be gracious. Fair. Forgiving to a level we’re just not gonna see in many humans. Generous to a level we’re especially not gonna see in many humans. Honest and truthful; he may not tell us everything, but he’s never gonna lie. Jesus demonstrated how much he hates hypocrisy, so integrity’s a fruit too.

Face it: The list of fruit is pretty darned near unlimited. God has all sorts of great character traits, and there’s no reason his kids can’t share them! Our list of his fruit certainly isn’t limited to Paul’s list in Galatians. Anyone who claims so, is obviously trying to evade their own character development.

And yeah, there are lots of those people in the world. I’ve seen ’em be mighty proud of it on social media. “This is me; this is who I am; I’m not gonna change; take it or leave it.” You notice it’s never the kind people who post such things; it’s always the a--holes. Those memes are their fruit.

God calls us to far, far better. We gotta be like Jesus. 1Jn 2.6 We might start working on that with our actions, but what’s really gonna bring about permanent, transformative change is our character. So we gotta get cracking on that, and get fruity.

How often ought we pray?

Ask any Christian, and we’ll likely admit we don’t pray as often as we ought.

Well, nuns, monks, and the people who staff prayer rooms, might be exceptions. Yet even some of them will admit they oughta pray more. Why is this? Well, some of it is because it’s true: We could pray more than we do.

For a lot of folks, other than saying grace, they don’t pray daily. Or they pray maybe two or three minutes a day… then beat themselves up for not praying 10 minutes a day. Or 30. Or an hour. Or even longer.

Okay. For a moment, let’s stop doing that and seriously think: How long does God reasonably expect us to talk with him?

Why should every Christian prayer become as long as the longest phone conversations you could possibly have with your friends? (And considering how much of these conversations consist of really dumb, frivolous, irrelevant stuff, should our prayers ever become that dumb?)

Much of the reason a lot of Christians have this idea of prayer as a marathon race, comes from this simple little two-word verse—

1 Thessalonians 5.17 THGNT

ἀδιαλείπτως προσεύχεσθε·

—and if you don’t know ancient Greek, that’s adialeíptos proséfhesthe, “unstoppingly pray.” Or as the KJV puts it, “Pray without ceasing.” Or the NLT, “Never stop praying.”

Never stop? Never ever stop? Is that even possible?

How do we physically do that? Don’t we need to take the odd break for, say, sleep? Should we band together in some prayer organization, like a “prayer watch” or monastery, which makes certain every day, 24 hours a day, someone is talking with God?

See, this is the traditional way “pray without ceasing” has been interpreted: Constant, unrelenting, unending prayer. We got the idea no matter how much we do pray, God isn’t satisfied. He’s like a helicopter mom who won’t be satisfied till we get a phone surgically implanted in our head so she can talk at us 24/7. Because God loves us so much, he wants us to talk to him all day long. Hence all the prayer centers and monasteries.

Is this what God meant by “Pray without ceasing”? Of course not.

You might recall the Genesis story of Eden, where the LORD used to personally hang out with the first humans. Was he with them all day long? Clearly not, ’cause the humans apparently had enough free time to go talk to serpents, and get talked into sinning. If chatting with us all day long was God’s original plan for humanity, we should see some of that in the Eden story, wouldn’t you think? Same as when Jesus more fully explained God to his students: Did he instruct them to have nonstop prayer gatherings?

Certainly there are times for nonstop prayer meetings. Like when the first Christians met to pray for the Holy Spirit to come to them. Ac 1.13-14 Sometimes we expect the Spirit to do something big, so we pray for that. The rest of the time, we pray as usual. And that’s what the apostles were instructing the Thessalonians to do in 1 Thessalonians: Pray as usual. And don’t quit praying as usual.

Dialíptos means “[one who] falls down, takes a break, drops the ball, skips, slacks.” It doesn’t mean “[one who] stops.” It’s an instruction to keep up our prayer life. Don’t take a break from it. Don’t skip it. Don’t slack on it. Don’t quit your regular practice. Keep it up.

When the apostles wrote to Thessaloniki, their readers were Christians who were overly concerned about the End Times. (Sound like anyone you know?) The Thessalonians were so fixated on End Times paranoia, they dropped the ball on various things we Christians oughta do. Like care for the needy. Like obey God’s commands. ’Cause why follow commands when the End is near? Start digging out that End Times bunker!

Likewise they slacked on their prayers. And that’s never gonna help. If you don’t stay in regular contact with God, you’re gonna go heretic on him.

So no, it doesn’t mean to constantly, never-endingly pray. Talk to God as long as you talk to God. If you need to speak with him more, do. If you don’t… well, pray the Lord’s Prayer at least. Check in with him. Keep an ear open in case God has anything to tell you. You’re not the only one who talks during prayer, y’know.

Don’t feel so guilty about not praying as much as other Christians. Honestly, you’re probably praying more. No, I’m not kidding. A lot of the people who talk a lot about their strong, devout prayer lives are giant hypocrites. And a lot aren’t—but it’s not your duty to play “Spot the Hypocrtite.” Just concentrate on yourself, and pray without slacking.

Those who do pray without ceasing.

However, some Christians are called to pray a ton. No, not everybody. Ignore those folks who insist it’s everybody.

Certain women and men dedicate their lives to prayer and good deeds, and function as professional prayer teams. In older churches they’re called monastics, or individually, nuns and monks. And prayer is their job. Yeah, they do other things, but those other things are side duties: Prayer is their job. Several times a day (and once in the middle of the night, ’cause they believe prayer is more important than sleep) they drop what they’re currently doing, and go pray together. They frequently live together in a prayer community, called an abbey, cloister, convent, friary, nunnery, priory, or monastery. But that’s not all of them; many groups live in their own homes, and only get together for prayer.

No, these monastics aren’t just not found in older, liturgical churches. Newer charismatic churches have rediscovered the idea, but don’t call themselves monastics, and put their own spin on what their prayer teams look like. Many of them have day jobs. Their prayer sites are either at churches, or special prayer centers, houses, rooms, or towers. They pray the very same things monastics do, but in a more contemporary style. More recent worship music, fr’instance.

All these groups pray several times, even 24 hours, a day. They pray formal prayers or off the top of their head; they pray the psalms and other scriptures; they pray for all the requests they have, or the requests others make of them. Anything and everything.

It’s a lot of prayer. And that’s not counting all the other prayer functions we Christians get involved in: Prayer-based small groups, the church’s prayer teams and prayer chains, vigils, and watches. Sometimes five times a day, sometimes more. Some of us Christians pray a lot.

And God might want you to pray just as often, and devote your life to prayer. That’s fine. But it’s not a ministry for everyone. Like I said, ignore those folks who insist everybody must pray that often. Pray as you can, when you can.

If you don’t pray five times a day, relax. God doesn’t require you to. It’s a nice habit to aim for, but first we need to start by praying once a day. Don’t run marathons when you’re winded after jogging round the block once. Start with once a day. Don’t push yourself beyond that till you feel ready.

Candlemas: Remembering when Jesus got presented in temple.

In Leviticus the LORD told Moses the following.

Leviticus 12.1-8 KWL

1 The LORD told Moses, 2 “When you speak to Israel’s children, say,

This is about a woman who conceives and bears a male.

She’s ritually unclean seven days, just like she’s unclean during the days of her period.

3 On the eighth day, circumcise the flesh of the baby’s foreskin.

4 Have the mother sit 33 days, for purification from blood.

She mustn’t touch anything holy, can’t come to sanctuary, till her purification days are full.

5 If she bears a female, she’s unclean two weeks, like her period;

have her sit 66 days, for purification from blood.

6 When the mother’s purification days are full, for a son or daughter,

she must bring a lamb, born that year, for a burnt offering,

and a pigeon chick, or dove, for a sin offering.

Bring them to the meeting tent’s door, to the priest.

7 The priest offers it to the LORD’s face, to cover the mother.

She’s now ritually clean from her bloodflow.

This law is for any woman who begets male or female.

8 If the mother can’t find enough at hand for a lamb, bring two doves or pigeon chicks;

one for burnt offering, and one for sin offering.

The priest covers her, and she’s ritually clean.”

2 February marks 39 days after Christmas—representing the week after Jesus’s birth, then the 33rd day after that. This’d be the day Mary finished her ritual purification after giving birth, so off she and Joseph went to temple.

Luke 2.22-24 KWL

22 Once the days were fulfilled for Mary’s purification, according to Moses’s Law,

they took Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord,

23 just as it’s written in the Lord’s Law:

“Every male who opens a womb will be called holy to the Lord.” Ex 13.2, 12

24 And giving a sacrifice, according to the saying in the Lord’s Law:

“A pair of doves, or two young pigeons.” Lv 12.8

So that’d make today Candlemas, the Christian holiday which remembers Jesus’s presentation in temple. It’s called Candlemas because traditionally, Christians bring certain candles to church to have ’em blessed, then use these sacred candles the rest of the year for various customs, rituals, and religious practices. The candles are a reminder Jesus is the world’s light—and when we follow him, so are we.

In some countries, Christmas decorations don’t come down till Candlemas. (I know; plenty of western Christians put ’em away before New Year’s Day.) Because now the Christmas and Epiphany season is over. Tomorrow we go back to regular time—the period between Christmas and Easter, or Easter and Christmas. (Which, in 2020, ain’t long. Ash Wednesday is on 26 February.)

Churching new mothers.

Childbirth is a dangerous time. Our survival rate nowadays is really good… but in prescientific days, this wasn’t the case. Any complication would turn fatal, for either the mother, or child, or both.

So a lot of cultures developed the custom of celebrating new mothers. Believe it or not, this includes the 39 to 72 days the LORD set aside for ritual purification. During the time women were ritually unclean, they were expected to stay home—to not interact with anyone else, lest they make others ritually unclean. But most importantly, they didn’t have to perform any tasks outside the house, didn’t have to go back to work, and weren’t obligated to go to temple or synagogue: They could stay with their newborn baby, and concentrate on their little one. Or, if childbirth didn’t go so well, they could otherwise recover. Or mourn.

Since Christians don’t really bother with ritual cleanliness anymore (the Holy Spirit indwells us, so when are we ever ritually unclean for worship?) it often meant the end of this rest time for Christian women after childbirth. But various Christian leaders recognized the need for some form of maternity leave, and this evolved into the custom of churching new mothers: Forty days after giving birth, the mother was expected to come to church and be publicly blessed.

But till then, she wasn’t expected to come to church. She could stay home and recuperate. (And Irish folk tradition added if she didn’t stay home, the fairies might get her. Disney movies have really sanitized how people imagine fairies; in folklore they’re evil spirits, so… not good.)

Some churches mixed together some of their churching traditions with their Candlemas traditions, so new mothers might bring candles and get ’em blessed. Other churches might have the new mothers take 40 days off, but not hold a blessing for them till Candlemas itself, and then bless all the new mothers at once. And if churches believed in baptizing babies, sometimes they’d do that too.

Of course, churches which aren’t liturgical don’t always hold special times of blessing for new mothers. Which is a shame. New babies are a big deal! Motherhood should be recognized. So if it’s not a formal part of your church, see if you can get something started.

Proselytism: Don’t force Jesus upon people!

PROSELYTIZE 'prɑs(.ə).lət.aɪz verb. (Try to) convert someone from one belief to another.

[Proselyte 'prɑs.ə.laɪt noun, proselytism 'prɑs(.ə).lət.ɪz.əm noun.]

From time to time, when we Christians share the good news of Christ Jesus with other people, we get accused of “proselytizing.”

It’s one of those words which, to quote Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride…

Giphy

Properly, to proselytize means as we see in the definition above: You’re trying to convert someone. And you’ve not made it an option: They must become Christian. They will become Christian. You’re gonna try every tactic you can to make it so. You’ll promise outrageous things, you’ll fudge a few details, you’ll threaten ’em with hell. Whatever it takes.

Forced conversions, hard sales pitches, and death threats (and hell threats) are all definitely forms of proselytism. Is that really what we’re doing?

Well… sometimes it is. And it should never be. God’s kingdom runs on grace, and if our presentation of the gospel ever turns into proselytism, it means we took the grace out of it. And a gospel without grace arguably isn’t even the gospel.

I know, I know: Certain dark Christians love to bring up hell. Largely because it terrifies them, so they’re pretty sure everybody needs to be warned about it, and warned away from it: You don’t want to go there! I get that. And it was probably a huge motivator for them, when they first turned to Jesus. But the result is they put it front and center when they preach the gospel, and now their gospel is about hell-avoidance instead of love, joy, grace, forgiveness, and other fruit of the Spirit that we’re gonna find in the kingdom in abundance. Worse, they don’t care about these things: “Get off that lovey-dovey crap and warn people away from hell!” Which just goes to reveal their own fruitlessness—a serious character defect which makes them the very worst people to share the gospel.

Still, when pagans encounter that kind of hostile, negative, fearmongering gospel presentation, in which the good news is very, very bad, they think it’s proselytism: It made ’em feel bad. They define proselytism based on whether it made ’em feel bad. On whether they didn’t like it.

Nope; proselytism is determined by pressure. Was the gospel forced upon you? Then it’s proselytism.

Doesn’t matter whether it was forced upon you in a hostile way or a kind way. I got the kind version: Mom was determined to raise her kids Christian, so church wasn’t optional. I was going, period, whether I wanted to or not. This was never an issue because unless I was sick or exhausted (i.e. valid excuses), I wanted to. In other families it was a huge issue: I had high school friends who absolutely didn’t wanna be there, and left church as soon as they were no longer under their parents’ rules. But parents have every right to raise their kids under their religion; really, they suck at religion if they don’t.

It’s just proselytism has a serious danger built into it: Because it’s not optional, it’s deficient in grace. Which means there’s a very real chance it’ll turn into legalism, or hypocrisy and dead religion. Or, once the kids grow up and leave the dead religion, they may presume all religion is like that… and we wind up with apostasy and nontheism.

So pour on the grace! And when you evangelize, for the love of God don’t proselytize.

Proselytizing Christians.

As I said, it’s okay to proselytize your kids. But if you were proselytized as a kid, or proselytized by an evangelist when you got older, you’re gonna wrongly think it’s okay to proselytize everybody else.

Seriously, everybody else. Certain political conservatives like to imagine the United States is a Christian nation, and as such everybody in it oughta be Christian. So they push Christianity upon everyone. We made “One nation under God” our official national motto (regardless of whether we get under him any), and put it on our money and our pledge of allegiance: If people balk at the motto, we don’t just accuse ’em of being godless, but unpatriotic.

Such people also insist we should be allowed to put up Ten Commandments monuments, crosses, and other religious iconography, in public parks, public schools, or public buildings. Texas even changed the science textbooks so they state God created the universe about 6,000 years ago, and who cares if actual science suggests otherwise.

So when we share Jesus, we don’t ask people whether they’d like to hear about him. Don’t have time for that. We just corner ’em so they can’t go anywhere, and tell ’em—whether they have the time, the curiosity, the interest, the receptivity. Because they need to hear it: They’re going to hell otherwise. Now is their hour of salvation. Now is not the time for kindness, patience, self-control, or grace. Fruit of the Spirit? Only gets in our way.

And instead of fruit, one of our substitutes becomes “evangelism.” You’ve seen these Christians at work: They leave tracts instead of tips for their waiters. They correct us in the workplace break room whenever we do or say something which isn’t Christian enough for them. They who won’t leave our front porches when we insist, “No thank you.” They’re the reason people believe evangelism and proselytism are the same thing.

Jesus doesn’t teach proselytism.

When Jesus first sent his Twelve to practice evangelism on their fellow Jews, he taught ’em to share. Not push. Bless, not condemn. Give, not collect offerings. Do for people, not demand they only receive the gospel from you, ’cause you worry if you give ’em free stuff, they’ll only turn to Jesus for the handouts. (As if the kingdom runs on stinginess, not grace.) You know, like proselytizers don’t do. Like so.

Matthew 10.7-15 KWL

7 “Preach as you go, saying this: ‘Heaven’s kingdom has come near!’

8 Serve the weak. Raise the dead. Cleanse the leprous. Throw out demons.

You received it free. Give it free.

9 Don’t accept gold, silver, or bronze into your moneybelts.

10 No bag on the road. Nor two tunics. Nor sandals. Nor cane.

For the respectable worker merits their provisions.

11 Inspect whatever city or village you enter: Who’s the most respected in it?

Stay with them till you leave, 12 and when you enter the house, bless it.

13 When the house is respectable, your blessing has to go into it.

When it’s not respectable, your blessing has to go back to you.

14 Whoever doesn’t accept you, nor listen to your words:

As you go out of their house or town, shake their dirt off your feet.

15 Amen, I promise you: It’ll be more bearable on Judgment Day

for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than that town.”

Evangelism is about effectively communicating the good news: The kingdom’s near. Jesus is its good and benevolent Lord. He wants us to join his kingdom and be our Lord. Because ultimately he will be Lord, whether we embrace him or not. It’ll be way better if we embrace his rule willingly, than live outside it in misery when he finally takes his throne. Plus there are the many benefits of living under our King early.

True, we want people to come to Jesus. But after we’ve shared him, we’re done. We did our duty. They accept him, or they don’t. And we need to stop thinking it’s our responsibility to keep pushing them to accept him. It’s not. We need to shake that off. It’s why Jesus told his apostles to do so literally: Shake the dirt off your feet when you leave. Leave ’em behind. Not because we don’t care about them anymore, but because we’re done. Hopefully God will give them another chance, as he tends to. But we’re done.

We simply share. Inform. Convey information. That’s all. There’s a place and time for going directly up to people and asking them point-blank, “Do you know Christ Jesus personally?” When our goal is to share good news, to make sure people are informed, and can make rational decisions to follow Jesus, there’s everything right about it. That’s all our job consists of.

Everything beyond that is the Holy Spirit’s job.

• Quelling nervousness or hesitation: His job.
• Dealing with objections and concerns: His job.
• Getting obstacles out of their way: His job.
• Making sure people come forward at an altar call: His job.
• Numbers of converts: His job.
• Making sure the commitment is serious: His job.
• Finalizing decisions for Christ: His job.

It’s not like we have no job. But as you can see, our job isn’t as big and stressful as your average proselytizer makes it sound.

“But we have to preach the gospel!”

I’ve heard Christians say, “Well, there’s a fine line between proselytism and evangelism.” There is not. Evangelism shares information. Proselytism demands, ignores the Holy Spirit’s timing, and insists the time is now. It takes salvation into our own hands instead of leaving it in God’s. It’s loveless. It’s faithless. It’s wrong.

If a person says no thank you, proselytizers aren’t done. They don’t trust the Holy Spirit enough to leave them in his capable hands. They’re not gonna be patient. They’ll insist on “closing the deal”—on badgering them to say some form of sinner’s prayer, some sort of half-hearted commitment (which usually doesn’t pan out) just so they can put another notch on their belt. Or get another jewel in their crown. Whatever way they keep score.

’Cause that’s what it’s really about: Keeping score. Numbers. Getting converts. Growing their cults. Success rates. Which, because they’re willing to fudge the numbers a bit, tend to be reported as way higher than they really are. But few of their “success stories” are real. Those folks have no plans to follow Jesus in the day-to-day, and were often coerced into making a purely contractual relationship with him: “I said the sinner’s prayer, so I did my part; you just get me into heaven. Okay? Amen.” Don’t have to be religious ’cause they’re under God’s grace. Which means they’re fruitless… which implies they’re not under grace.

Now, had the Holy Spirit actually been involved at all—where he convicts ’em, gets ’em to repent, points ’em to Jesus—you’d see a whole lot more enthusiasm on their part. Without having to manipulate their emotions, play on their fears, promise them things Jesus never would (“Turn to him and all your problems will go away!”) and other sales pitches which spread Christianism instead of God’s kingdom.

Quite often the Spirit will actually lead someone to Jesus despite the sales-pitch tactics. But the fact the Holy Spirit cleans up our messes, is no defense for fruitless, unkind behavior and thinking.

And quite often, the reason a lot of Christians balk at practicing or learning about evangelism, is because of these yutzes and their morally questionable behavior. I don’t blame ’em for being disturbed. They should be. Any form of trickery, misdirection, wordplay, hidden flaws, false arguments, false promises, confusion, anger, hypocrisy, misquoted scriptures, false urgency, bribery, emotional blackmail, threats, temptation, or coercion, has no God in it. Justifying any of this evil, because they might “win souls,” is calling good evil, and evil good. Is 5.20 When people turn to Jesus, when the Spirit has been successful and enters their lives to fix and regenerate them, it’s a miracle. The very last thing Christians should be involved in, is faking miracles.

Some pagans have never met a proper evangelist. Or they have, but they’ve been burned by dark evangelists, and assume all Christians are like that. And to be fair, some pagans are just plain hostile towards Christianity altogether. So they accuse everyone who shares Jesus of proselytism, just to make us go away. All the more reason we need to avoid proselytism. Give them no ammunition.

Fruit doesn’t grow spontaneously.

Fruit of the Spirit is the product of cultivation. If we actively follow the Holy Spirit, if we seek his direction and adopt his attitudes, in short order we’re gonna share his attitudes.

And if we passively just figure, “I’m Christian, so I’m going to heaven, so I’m good,” we’re not cultivating a thing. We’re not producing fruit. We’re the same selfish people we’ve always been. Maybe with a few Christianese labels slapped onto our bad behavior in order to justify it to ourselves, but ’tain’t fooling God any.

Sadly that’s the default in Christianity. Lot of fruitless Christians out there. We figure since we don’t earn our salvation, we don’t need to work for anything. We can just sit on our widening western rear ends, do no heavy lifting whatsoever, and God will do all the work.

• Instead of resisting temptation and obeying God’s commands, we do cheap grace.
• Instead of demonstrating we’re Christians by our love, Jn 13.35 we demonstrate it by rattling off our statements of faith.
• Instead of pursuing a continual, growing relationship with God, we say the sinner’s prayer, and figure that’ll do us till kingdom come.
• Instead of testimonies about what God’s currently doing in our lives, we tell the same old 30-year-old come-to-Jesus story, and figure that’s the only testimony we’ll ever need.
• Instead of going to church, and becoming an integral part of that support system, we find a church where the services are only 60 minutes long—if we ever physically go, ’cause they live-stream it on their website!—and that’ll do us for the month.
• Instead of sharing Jesus, we share Facebook memes.
• Instead of financially supporting our church, we offer lots of moral support. And hey, there’s more where that came from.
• Instead of reading our bibles… nah, we don’t offer any substitute. We just don’t read it. We did watch that The Bible miniseries when it was on Netflix, though.

Thanks to these practices, we presume the Spirit’s fruit works the very same way. We have the Spirit within us, and he’s gotta be doing something in there, right? So we figure he’s growing fruit. It’s developing all on its own, with no input nor effort from us. We’ll just magically grow fruity.

Yep, I’ve even heard testimonies about it. “So one day, after I became a Christian, I got into an argument with a co-worker, and he just made me so angry! I was gonna take him out back and punch his lights out. I usedta do that sort of thing all the time before I became Christian; just wailed on people. But for some reason—I really can’t explain it!—I didn’t wanna beat the tar out of him. I just felt this weird, peaceful feeling. I felt love for that guy. I can only think it came from God.”

Now, a lot of fruitless Christians lie about what constitutes “fruit” in their lives, so I won’t put it past ’em to likewise lie about their testimonies. More likely they weren’t angry enough to go curb-stomp their antagonists, and since it wasn’t blind rage, maybe it’s love?—maybe it’s a God-thing? But no, the Spirit’s fruit of love isn’t typified by the fact he keeps us from our rage-induced acts of felony battery. Yes he can do such things if he wants, but there’s a far greater chance we accidentally drank a roofie.

There are red flags aplenty in the testimonies of fruitless Christians. We get love which doesn’t look like love, kindness which isn’t all that kind, joy with just a bit of evil mixed in, and I’ve met pagans with way more patience than many a Christian. Fact is, these “testimonies” describe the one moral victory they experienced within a lifetime of compromise, capitulation, and doing as comes naturally. This isn’t in any way a habitual fruit of the Spirit. They have no such things. That’s why they constructed entire stories about these rare exceptions.

Real fruit isn’t the rare exception. And it doesn’t come naturally. We don’t “just change.” We obey God. That’s the soil the Spirit’s fruit grows in. No soil? No fruit.

We’re commanded to produce fruit.

Whenever I say this, I get pushback from people who insist fruit does so grow spontaneously. Because it’s what all their fellow Christians tell them. It’s all they’ve ever heard. God does all the work, and our own works are as filthy rags: We’re not gonna grow righteous through works!

Except I’m not even talking about righteousness. I’m talking about fruit. They’re not the same thing at all. Fruit doesn’t make us righteous; faith does. Ro 3.22 Fruit only makes us fruity. Which is important too. But righteousness is a whole other deal.

And the reason I say we gotta make an effort to grow fruit, is ’cause the bible tells us we gotta make an effort to grow fruit. In fact we’re ordered to produce the Spirit’s fruit. Why would Jesus order us to do these things if it’s just naturally gonna happen on its own? ’Cause it’s not: We gotta intentionally produce it.

• LOVE: Gotta love one another, Jn 15.17 love neighbors, Lv 19.18 love enemies, Mt 5.44 and love God. Dt 6.5 Doesn’t really leave anyone out. Basically, love everyone.
• JOY: Gotta seize every chance to have joy. Jm 1.2 Rejoice in the Lord always. Pp 4.4 Shout for joy. Ps 33.1, 66.1 Rejoice even when persecuted. Mt 5.12
• PEACE: Don’t be anxious or afraid, but peaceful. Jn 14.27 Pursue peace. Ro 14.19 Live in peace with one another, 2Co 13.11 as much as we can, Ro 12.18 making every effort to do so. He 12.14
• KINDNESS: Be kind. Ep 4.32 Make it part of your character. Cl 3.12 Especially in leadership and servanthood. 2Ti 2.24
• GOODNESS: Oh come on. The whole Law is about being good.
• FAITH: Put your faith in God, Mk 11.22 ’cause you aren’t justified otherwise. Ro 5.2 Stand firm in it; 1Co 16.13 put on its breastplate. 1Th 5.8 And if good works aren’t in any way connected with it, it’s dead faith. Jm 2.17

And so on. Gentleness, self-control, mercy, generosity, humility, truthfulness—we’re commanded to do and uphold these things, and in so doing produce fruit. There’s no command against these things. Ga 5.23 But there are many commands, directions, and exhortations for these things.

This idea we’re supposed to passively wait for the Spirit’s fruit to arise in us? It’s like supposing once we set foot in a dojo, we’ll magically know kung fu. Really, all we’ll know to do is posture, and how to make Bruce-Lee-style chicken noises. Same with fruit of the Spirit: It takes practice. Start obeying God: Start doing ’em.

“But I’ve gotta feel them first. If I don’t feel love, isn’t it hypocrisy?” Sometimes this is a fair question; sometimes it’s a cop-out. Yes, we oughta feel love for others. Despite all those Christians who insist love is only an action, and neither a noun nor a feeling, love’s a feeling too. Jesus felt compassion, Mk 8.2, Lk 7.13 and that’s love. Ideally we should also be compassionate. But love isn’t just a feeling, so if you’re not feeling compassion yet, it’s okay. Don’t fake the feelings; that’s hypocrisy. Just do the actions. Start there. The feelings will come later.

But like I said, the “I gotta feel it” excuse is quite often used as an excuse to do nothing. Partly by Christians who don’t know the difference between spirit and emotion; partly by Christians who believe fruit is spontaneous, and are waiting for the fruit to appear before they act. Which is like waiting for the bandages to appear before we start bleeding: Doesn’t work like that. We act when we see a need. We don’t psyche ourselves up first; it’s not a performance.

It is possible for emotion to lead to fruit. But not always to the right fruit. The emotions of a coward won’t lead to bravery: People are brave because they act despite fear.

Besides, anybody can psyche themselves into feelings. Actors do it all the time. (Liars too.) With a little effort, I could feel warm feelings towards everybody in the world; I don’t even need pharmaceutical enhancement. But regardless of my feelings, if I don’t act in love towards anyone, I have no fruit. Just feelings. Useless, fruitless feelings.

Fruit grows with practice.

The reason we’re ordered to do these fruits in the scriptures, is because they don’t come naturally. Human nature is self-centered. I don’t care what optimistic humanists have told us all our lives: We humans have to learn to think of other people instead of only ourselves, or ourselves first. And when the going gets rough, most of us revert to pure selfishness. It’s our survival instinct. Gone wrong, but still.

Despite the Holy Spirit within us, we Christians still have selfishness as our default mode. It’s not going away just because we’ve attached Christian-sounding labels to all our selfish behaviors. It’s only going away when we follow the Spirit, and do the good works he’s assigned us. Ep 2.10 Time to quit the excuses, quit waiting to feel something first, and obey. Go and do.

I admit: I don’t always feel it when I initially obey. Way more comfortable to ignore my neighbor, and figure, “Hey, at least I don’t hate them,” than actually do for them. Mt 7.12 If I really don’t feel like doing anything for my neighbors, it’s really easy to fall into resentment. (Especially with the devil tempting us to indulge that feeling.) But if I do as James instructed and order myself to feel joy, Jm 1.2 if I call out to God and ask him to get rid of my bad attitude, I’m gonna resist that resentment. Working on that gentleness, y’know.

Nope, erasing our negative feelings isn’t the Holy Spirit’s magic reward for obedience. He doesn’t just pour out endorphins like a pharmacist gone mad. It’s for the purpose of serving him better, and loving others better. If my rotten attitude might interfere with the job, the Spirit helps me shove it aside. When it makes no difference, sometimes the Spirit has me deal with it on my own. Oh, he’s there to encourage and empower me to do the right thing, but I have to defeat my selfishness. I have to resist temptation. I have to stop sinning. That’s the self part of self-control.

Same with you.

Fruit of the Spirit isn’t easily gained, nor easily grown. It’s a struggle sometimes. It gets easier. But not when we passively expect it to just grow, spontaneously, with no help from us. Christians who think this way, either turn into giant hypocrites who try to hide all their awfulness, or turn into those irreligious slacker Christians who shrug and say, “Christians aren’t perfect, y’know. Just forgiven.”

We choose to pursue the Spirit’s fruit. He’ll help; he’s the one making the fruit grow way faster than it really oughta. But we’ve gotta make the effort. So do.