Selling Salvation

Well, Easter has come and gone. I would have to say that overall, this Easter was pretty good. Saturday night I attended a Catholic Easter vigil service. It was very nice. I didn't even notice it was three hours long. I am pretty sure they had about a million baptisms. After each and every baptism, they sang a little song. The way they played it, it was pretty hokey. It made me laugh. It went something like "you have put on Christ, you have been baptized, alleluia, alleluia, you have been baptized." It had some sort of musical feel, it was great. One of Brian with a big C's roommates was getting confirmed, so that was cool. Now, let me get to the main point of this whole post:

On Easter morning, I went to a service. It was a very nice, very typical Easter service, you know with lots of singing, lots of kids running around, and of course the "oh it's Easter Sunday, so this a great Sunday to whip out the plan of salvation day." It seems to me that the only time I hear sermons directed towards non-Christians are on key days like Christmas and Easter. That's cool; I know that is when most non-Christians will maybe grace the door of the church building. The pastor of this particular church said that he wanted to talk about the resurrection of Christ, and that his main goal was to "convert" the non-Christians to Christianity. That was cool with me too, although I am not a big fan of the word convert. I know it says in Matthew 26 or 28 or 16 (I'm not sure) to Go into all nations and preach the gospel... so he should do that. The problem I had with all of this is that it seemed so much like a sales pitch; I expected the projectors to spit something out on the screen to the tune of "send in three easy payments of 19.95 and you too can be a Christian!" Now, he was not saying at all that money was involved in the process of salvation, but it just seemed like an infomercial. He would talk a little, and then give off some verses, and then say now listen to this person. Some person would get up there and talk about their life before Christ and how their life has changed and now is just so absolutely wonderful. He had a few different people get up there and talk. Like I said, overall it just felt like a sales pitch. It kind of made me uncomfortable when I thought about it after the fact. It seems sometimes we try to lure people to Christianity by giving them this sugar-coated view of it. We make sure not to bring up the fact the true commitment to Christ is going to be hard. Oh no...then people wouldn't want it. We just want them to get their fire insurance, or as Tyanna would say "dunk them and leave them."

Now here is what I think:

Some people quite possibly are turned off from Christianity because a lot of people who profess to be Christians aren't truly committed to Christ. If people actually saw people committed to Christ, they may be more willing to come to Christ themselves. They will see that it is hard, but know that there must be something there for people to be willing to endure hardships that come with Christianity. They will see that there truly is a happiness that is brought about by a true commitment to Christ. They don't want a sugar-coated sales pitch. All they want is to see people with a true commitment. I think that we can evangelize much better through actions than through words. Our words don't mean anything. If we are willing to help other people, they will see true religion which is this: to take care of the poor and visit the widows or something to that effect. I don't know if any of this made sense. I just get sick of hearing these sales pitches that may make people feel all giddy, and then they say a "salvation prayer" and Ka POW!!! They are Christians! I think there is more too it than that. Alright. That's all for now.