READING THE PAPERS
Robert Meyers

Much fun is had by writers who lampoon the charitable attitude by asking, “What does it really matter what a man believes? Aren’t we all headed to the same place, anyway?” They then say that it makes all the difference in the world what one believes, that character is determined by what one believes, and that even a sincere man — if he believes the wrong thing — will pay a high price for his error.

Applied to religion, in a certain way, such comments seem to back up Church of Christ authoritarianism. We know that if a man eats poisoned food sincerely believing it to be pure, he gets sick anyway. We know that if he trusts his business partner sincerely, but has the bad luck to be linked to a traitor, he will suffer grievously. Sincerity is not enough, we know, in many areas of life.

The thing that goes wrong with the analogy is the attempt to make it apply too widely. The problem lies in sorting out those things which cause ruin if one’s belief about them is erroneous, and those things about which one may be honestly mistaken without ruinous consequences. It is imperative that this distinction be made clear, else we distort and falsify the analogy.

One must try to learn what the essentials of the Christian commitment are, so that his sincere belief in them will lead to the development of mature character. But he will find in this progress that there are many matters of opinion or interpretation about which men are so thoroughly divided —obviously good men, too — that it is clearly not ruinous to be wrong on such points.

To make it more concrete, the child who sincerely believes that gratifying every whim he has is the way to happiness is destined for some terribly unhappy hours. His sincerity will not save him. But the child who has learned better and can live unselfishly, but has accepted his father’s notion that all men who use a piano or preach in robes are woefully imperfect, may not be seriously harmed by the latter. He may exhibit in it a quaint provincialism; he may derive a measure of self-satisfaction from his own fancied superiority; but he is not going to come to any tragic consequence because of what I and millions of others would call a misapprehension.

Our constant quarreling about differences of opinion will only be settled, I think, when we agree at last on the bedrock essential of Christian faith. We can probably make a rather sharp line between those who believe in and accept Jesus Christ as the Lord of life and those who reject Him. The thousands of curious niches and odd corners in the building raised upon that foundation need not ruin us. Our minds are strange and they are not alike. Your house may seem quaint indeed to me, bur I shall be happy to find it bedded firmly on faith in Jesus Christ and a sincere attempt to know His will. If I find one of your windows slightly askew, or a brick out of place, I shall regret your failure to construct so perfectly as I have done but I shall not impugn your Christianity.

KNOCKING ON DOORS

A Christian gentleman in a Church of Christ magazine writes on proselyting. He says that it seems to be taboo to most Americans. Knock on doors, offer tracts, try to discuss religious topics and just see what happens, he exclaims. You come away thinking most folks don’t appreciate attempts “to convert them to a different religion.”

He explains why this is so. The modern “ecumenical craze” is the prime villain. One should observe the semantic game the writer plays. It is not the ecumenical movement, but the “ecumenical craze.” The whole thing is belittled and made ridiculous even before he defines it as “the great push toward religious unity.” He says that he wants Christian unity, of course, but he argues that the present surge is based on the idea that “it does not matter what you believe.”

Apart from the simple fact that the last statement is not true of the ecumenical movement, it leads to distortion. Those with ecumenical spirits do not feel that one belief is as good as another. Why do we go on saying this, unless we are too simple to know better or too warped in spirit to tell the truth? What the ecumenicist really thinks is that belief in Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world is the great uniting belief. That belief is better, for them, than any other belief. But within the framework of that commitment, they make room for many differences of opinion about interpretation. They realize that men will not agree on exactly what Jesus meant when he said this, or what his disciples meant when they did that. They feel that many of these differences of opinion have not been worth the trouble they have caused in Christendom. They urge men to hold to their distinctive opinions, but to rise above them in loyalty to a common Lord. Calling such views the “ecumenical craze” does not help us much or reflect a sense of responsible journalism.

The writer says that this emphasis on unity, based on its not mattering what one believes, has ruined house-to-house proselyting. Why try to teach anybody anything new? asks the writer. His pose is one of grieved innocence. He is a lamb of helpfulness who has been chased from the door by the wolf of religious apathy. I really think it is better to be quite truthful about what our house-to-house proselyting attempts to do. We are not merely trying to bring new truth; we are trying to lure various kinds of Christians from their respective church folds into our own. We want them in a different camp, a different party. We feel that their interpretations are not only not as good as ours, but that this fact damns them all.

No matter what facade of charitableness he first presents, such a person soon makes his purpose crystal clear. The good Presbyterian, who knows to what degree he honors Jesus as Lord of his life, sees that his visitor is not out to get him introduced to the saving Christ but to get him into the party with the right opinions. His own Christian charity leads him to treat his visitor gently most of the time, but he soon makes it quite clear that he does not wish to be converted from one Christian group to another. He cannot see why he should. If he asks why he should change, our visiting doorknocker has to drop his evasions and tell him plainly that as a Presbyterian he is going to hell. (And as long as one thinks that way, this is the honest and manly thing to do. I have much more respect for the old fire-eaters who said this than for the mealy-mouthed salesmen of partyism who now use a vocabulary of slick glibness to disguise their sectarianism).

At about this point, the usual technique is to switch over to tales of Jesus and how he went about proselyting. If He did it, so should we, the argument runs. If He wanted to change men’s beliefs, so should we. This looks good until one peers at it too closely. Then it falls apart. Certainly Jesus was “the most active Proselytor of all time.” But He was not knocking on doors trying to get one group of His followers to join another group. He was not busy persuading every follower of His to be of unanimous opinion on every conceivable question. He was trying to turn men from inadequate religion to life-giving religion, or from heathenism to the life of Christ-centered faith.

Any disciple of His who goes out in His name to persuade men is following in His steps. But those who knock on doors and try to prove that not using an instrument is the royal road to heaven, or that the fruits of the Spirit only grow on trees that wear proper labels, are doomed to increasing disillusionment. It is true that such proselyting is “socially unacceptable” nowadays, and the trend will increase. That kind of proselyting is taboo, and ought to be. — Friends University, Wichita, Kansas.