Outside my favorite baseball stadium there stands a man with a very loud megaphone screaming at arriving families about how they’re going to hell. How their wickedness is the cause of all that’s wrong with society. And how he has the answer on how to fix it all. It’s rude and obnoxious. Abusive theology, and sooooo disrespectful. I’m embarrassed to even mildly be lumped into the “Christian” camp with someone like that.

But I get it. I’ve done it.

Growing up in a conservative, Evangelical church I was taught how to have an agenda with other people—someplace you’re guiding them toward. It’s called evangelism. It’s not necessarily manipulation…wait…yes it is. The way I learned to do evangelism was to carry the belief that I’ve got the Answer and I want you to know it as well, because obviously you don’t know the Answer or you’d be going to my church. Carrying through with this logic, once a person discovers the Answer for themselves, then their problems will be taken care of, nothing more to worry about or fear. But I had to be very sneaky about it as I carried out this covert mission. (Don’t worry, my perspective has absolutely changed.)

Read any writings about evangelism and they will talk about the value of developing a relationship with someone before you try to win them over to the God-side. “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” is a popular saying. Caring for people is a great value to maintain, but having a hidden agenda behind it makes for some rotten smelling cheese festering in religious corners.

Calling these efforts a “rescue mission” allows the troops to feel ennobled to sneak behind enemy lines in disguise in order to build trust with the enemy so we can pull them out from the sin battle they’re trapped within.

But first you have to identify the enemy. Which can make a person’s life miserable if they’re always on the lookout for who’s the enemy. (To me, these kinds of people show themselves to be unsafe. I would never dare tell my secrets or my hurts to someone who is constantly pointing fingers at all the wrong they see.)

This was a primo way to learn how to be a controlling person—have an agenda, and work inconspicuously to bring it to fruition. It was all based on knowing the truth and wanting other people to know the truth. To help the blind to see and the deaf to hear, metaphorically. Which, in theory, is a really good way to live.

As far back as elementary school I was trained to evaluate who was good or bad, in or out, saved or unsaved. In retrospect, this made me grossly judgmental and arrogant. Self-righteous to the core. This “I have the answer” mentality is something I have carried around with me for most of my life.

This way of thinking quickly creates a false division between people. I was on one side of a giant spiritual chasm and everybody else was on the other side, and unity was only possible once everyone was on our side. Our mission was to get everybody to come together under the same denominational banner, though we would have simply settled for the “Christian” banner. Until then, we would bicker and point fingers. Which created nothing but chaos and dissonance in my heart. This Us vs. Them mentality did nothing but help me feel like an outsider.

My friend Amy told me how she related to this: “My well-meaning Christian ‘grid’ has caused me to judge and even alienate not only others but myself. This is not the community and love Jesus calls us to live in, and it’s not the love he modeled. It makes for distance and disconnect. When I stopped to feel the feelings, I resonated with the conflict and dissonance. I think it’s the Jesus in me and the Human in me having an honest, healthy battle, and I’d like the Jesus in me to gain some ground.”

Fortunately, I woke up one day and realized my best intentions had turned me into a depressed, fear-driven, score-keeping, self-righteous man, living in glass-bubble isolation, lacking compassion and any idea of what grace was all about.

Attractive, right?

This was when I really wanted to die to myself and my way of doing things so I could finally breathe.

But, fortunately, this is also where I felt held by God. I could have run far away from the church, trying to find a way to quell my inner-chaos with new, non-religious approaches. But instead of leaving the arena, I decided to search for the meaning underneath it all—to enter the maze under all the memorized rhetoric and dogma, and, hopefully, reach the center: the hope-filled epicenter of the Christian life. To find a place where love is truly the language the world hears from me.

At this point, most Christian books you read will say something along the lines of, “And the answer I found was Jesus,” and everybody applauds. To which I want to raise my hand and say, “What do you mean? What is it about this Jesus that is the answer to what you’ve been looking for?”

Ready for the answer? Jesus came to show us how to die.

<<mind blown>>

And I’m not just talking about his actual death, because hopefully crucifixion is not in the cards for any of us. I’m talking about the way Jesus showed us how to live by showing us how to die—by dying to our self, giving up our agenda of proving our self-worth, and continually letting love for all people (especially the outcasts) be our agenda. Jesus also showed us that, even when it looks like the end, it’s not the end. That’s the kind of leader I can get behind.

I look forward to exploring more of this topic in the coming weeks. And I’d love to hear your thoughts about evangelism. How do you think we can share the love of God in healthy, respectful ways?

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