From: Sam Dodsworth Newsgroups: alt.books.cs-lewis Subject: Re: Best Non-Narnia CS Lewis Date: Fri, 15 Aug 1997 11:44:39 +0100 Organization: Annexia Free Press Distribution: world Message-ID: References: <6278.2161.uupcb@lunatic.com> <33ED2B46.61D5@sprynet.com> <33F13740.77B1@sprynet.com> <33F1D43B.7100@sprynet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: aristos.demon.co.uk X-NNTP-Posting-Host: aristos.demon.co.uk [158.152.230.146] MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Newsreader: Turnpike Version 3.01 <7c0azr3XvpMr4dZzpifF$I+pPf> Lines: 56 Path: ultra.sonic.net!samba.rahul.net!rahul.net!a2i!sierra.net!psyber.com!news.greennet.net!news-xfer.netaxs.com!europa.clark.net!158.152.1.94!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!aristos.demon.co.uk!sam Xref: ultra.sonic.net alt.books.cs-lewis:8540 In article <33F1D43B.7100@sprynet.com>, Michael writes >Sam Dodsworth wrote: >> >> In article <33F13740.77B1@sprynet.com>, Michael >> writes >> > At times, I wonder what good it all >> >is. Are lives being changed? Or, as I fear, is the Christian population >> >merely feeding itself rather than a hungry world. >> >> Or perhaps the rest of the world just isn't hungry? >> >Touche, Sam! > >There is another possibility, however. Could it be that, in large part, >what the world has seen of Christendom (through literature and art) >hasn't inspired much of a desire to know more? > Possibly...but that's really, in an oblique sort of way, my point. By far the largest part of the Christian evangelism that I've encountered seems to be based on the assumption that unbelievers are "hungry" for the True Faith and have only to be told the basics, of which they were presumably unaware, to begin the process of conversion. The fact that this sort of evangelism is so rarely effective suggests that the actual situation is very different. My own observations suggest that people can (roughly) be divided into two categories: a minority who are interested in religious matters and an overwhelming majority who aren't. The minority tend to gravitate rapidly to one cause or another, while the majority tend just to "go with the flow": a hundred years ago they were nominal Christians and today they're nominal agnostics, but the underlying attitude is, IMHO, the same. Evangelism of the "God loves you! Film at eleven" school is only really effective on people with an interest in religion who aren't already heavily commited to another system... a subset of a minority. This is what I mean by "maybe the rest of the world isn't hungry". Christians naturally find the Christian creed attractive - if they didn't they wouldn't be Christians - but because they do they sometimes assume that everyone else will feel the same if they can just present their point-of-view clearly enough. I think that this is usually not the case, and that the failure of Christian evangelism stems from a failure to allow for the fact that to convert people to your own system you've got first to unconvert them from their existing beliefs. >For more on that subject I would recommend reading works by the late >Francis Schaeffer. Such titles as: Escape From Reason, He is There and >He is Not Silent, and/or, What Ever Happened to the Human Race? > Life's probably too short, I'm afraid. I'm working my way through Chesterton's "Heresy" and "Orthodoxy" at the momenent, though, if that's any consolation. Sam Dodsworth (sam@aristos.demon.co.uk) "Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve." - Karl Popper