Angry evangelism and some remedies

I don’t know how much evangelism is angry evangelism, but from what I’ve seen I’m going to say a non-zero amount.

Some gospelling is angry gospelling. Given that the word gospel means ‘good news’, you’d think that the angry heralding of good news would be absurd. And it is. But that doesn’t stop it happening.

Perhaps you’ve seen it in the wild. Or felt it within. It can rear its head when the stubborn rapscallion you’re seeking to enlighten shows no regard for their soul, when they deny their sinfulness, when they question the Bible, when they thwart your attempts at a straight gospel presentation or when they raise thorny questions of their own. When our approach does not go as planned, when the tables are turned and we’re stumped for an answer, when we’re sneered at or pitied for our unfashionable views, when our conversation partner has the audacity to hold actual non-Christian beliefs – shocking, I know! – in all these situations, how do we feel?

Sometimes we feel anger, don’t we? Just a little bit? Occasionally?

And occasionally the evangelist will respond to these roadblocks by bringing out the big guns: the reality of God’s wrath; the certainty of death; the finality of judgment. These can be unleashed as a way to blast through the resistance or to retake the conversational high ground. Certainly such truths are Biblical and vital in their own way. They can and should be the truthful diagnosis issued by a loving physician. But at times they are unleashed as a response to the roadblocks. So easily they can be wielded as the weapons of the angry evangelist.

If angry evangelism is sometimes a temptation, what is the remedy? Let’s remember the nature of…

1. The gospel

The gospel is good news. It announces that Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, has come to take charge of His handiwork: to take the wheel of this world and bring us home; to take our sins to the hell they deserve and to take us to the heaven we don’t. In the gospel we have what William Tyndale called ‘good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad, and maketh him sing, dance, and leap for joy’.

2. Our past

We were once enemies of the gospel, resistant to truth, and careless of our souls. And we didn’t pull ourselves up by our bootstraps into spiritual respectability (we certainly weren’t berated or mocked into the kingdom). The ‘kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared [to save] us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.’ (Titus 3:4-5) It’s that same ‘kindness’ that will lead our friends to repentance (Rom.2:4).

3. The world

Sometimes angry evangelism arises when Christians have spent their time chiefly among other Christians. We may share an office with Muslims, agnostics, atheists and others, but perhaps we haven’t really shared life with those whose goals, loves and beliefs are very different to ours. And we may not have spent much time thinking about life from their perspective. In that case non-Christian views and assumptions can surprise us. Threaten us even. But we should not be shocked. Think of the nature of…

4. The unbeliever

According to 2 Corinthians 4:4 the unbeliever cannot see the light of the gospel. Their mind is veiled. Their will is bound. If they resist our message we should not take it personally. Apart from the work of the Spirit, what else can they do? Such spiritual blindness should lead us to pity, not anger.

And finally, we should consider…

5. Our position

The Christian never has to win an argument. We don’t have to win anything. The vindication of Jesus, the triumph of truth, the success of the kingdom – these are not in doubt. We never need to prove Christianity (still less, to prove our cleverness or moral superiority!). Equally we don’t need to fear losing the argument or losing face. We are utterly and eternally secure. So then:

‘Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor.15:57).

There’s no room for angry evangelism here. In Jesus we have nothing to prove, nothing to lose, and everything to offer. It’s enough to make an evangelist ‘sing, dance and leap for joy’!