Hercules or Lazarus?

Hercules at the Crossroads has been painted many times. It’s a classic depiction of choice.

At a fork in the road, the mythic hero must decide which path to take. There is a scantily clad woman enticing him to go the way of vice. Another woman, matronly and scolding, urges him along the much harder path of virtue. What will he do? Well he’s Hercules. He will choose the difficult path of virtue, obviously. That’s what heroes do. And the moral of the story is: Be like Hercules.

There is such a thing as Herculean evangelism. It treats those outside of Christ as, essentially, the hero who must decide. There are two paths ahead and the evangelist’s role is to press on the non-Christian the costs and benefits of each option. With this paradigm in place, different evangelists will approach their task in different ways. Some will entice their hearer with the carrots of kingdom blessings. Some will warn them with the sticks of judgment. Some will emphasise the present benefits of life in Christ. Some will focus on the future destinations: either heaven or hell.

Most of the arguments I hear about evangelism are debates between these schools of persuasion. You might have, on the one hand, an evangelist who is mainly about the ‘carrots’ and mainly about the here and now: Come to Jesus and know fullness of life today. But another evangelist steps forward who sounds like the polar opposite. This one is mainly about the ‘stick’ of future judgment: Come to Jesus or eternal hell awaits. Scriptures might be cited (or not), theological justifications are given (or not), personal experiences of the strategy are offered (or not). But while the argument rages, it all conceals a profound agreement. As they fight over the methods of persuasion they both treat their task as the same: urging Hercules towards a decision.

But our non-Christian friends are not really like Hercules at the crossroads. They are much more like Lazarus in the tomb. They are not strong protagonists with the world at their feet (however they might consider or present themselves). And Jesus did not simply make a path so that modern-day Herculeses can boldly step along it. Jesus is a Saviour for those who are dead in sin and have no power to save themselves. It’s not the hearer who is the decisive agent in evangelism, it’s the word of Christ: ‘Lazarus, come out!’

At Lazarus’s wake-turned-reunion it would be ridiculous for the now recomposed corpse to consider himself the hero. It’s unthinkable that he would regale the family with stories of how he weighed up the word of Christ against the benefits of remaining dead. ‘I counted the cost and chose to obey.’ He can certainly reflect back on the fact of his obedience to Christ but none of this was the product of his resolve. No, he simply heard the voice of the Son of God and what else could he do? He found himself in alignment with the Resurrection and the Life. When you compare John 5:24-30 and the Lazarus story (John 11) you realise that Lazarus’s experience is an enacted parable for conversion. We’ve been called from the death of sin by the almighty voice of Jesus. We have crossed from death to life and none of it is our doing.

Compare this with the ‘decision’ model. If we do evangelism at the ‘crossroads’ we reverse the roles of Jesus and ourselves. We cast the human actors as Hercules and Jesus as the mere rewarder of those who choose correctly. We make ‘decision’ into the essence of faith, we make the human will the almighty arbiter and we make evangelism into, essentially, a challenge more than an announcement. But faith is not about decision so much as dependence. It is not something we push out of ourselves by our willpower. It is pulled out of us as Jesus, in His word, reveals His glory and goodness. That is our task, to proclaim Him. Because we are not the hero. He is.