To Former Evangelizers: How Did You Try To Convince Happy Non-Christians That They Ought To Become Christians?

[Chikirin]

Did you try to get them to see that although they seem happy, that they really aren't? To get them to see they have a God shaped hole?

 

Or did you try to get them to see that although they are happy now, they won't be happy when they are in hell

 

Or appeal to greed by promising them massive amounts of happiness in heaven that would make their current happiness pale in comparison?

 

Let me know if I've missed anything.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

With my brother, it was the friendships I had through church, and the seemingly inside information that I shared with my other brother that drove him to find Jesus. That and a dream or two. There were no real arguments that I gave that did the trick, just me pressing ahead as though it were all true. His previous atheism hadn't been well considered, so it was fairly easily undone.

 

Now that I'm on the outside, he and the other brother are still inside. Nothing I say really has an effect, though he and his family are not True Believers, but it is nevertheless how he views reality.

[ConureDelSol]

I didn't.  Usually I pushed them away instead.  Not on purpose, mind you, but by saying the "You're going to Hell and I'm going to Heaven" type of thing.

[Akheia]

It was just about impossible. After a few abortive attempts and logical fallacies (especially the appeal to consequences--ie, "But but but you're going to HELL!"), I gave up and figured they just weren't ready yet. I thought that the reason so many people convert while in the throes of major distress was because that's when they were finally ready, that their walls and boundaries against God had to be at a low ebb so they were ready to receive his word. I never thought God himself did all this, of course; I had a very benign view of that end of it at least and thought I had a very humane rationalization for why vulnerable people converted more often. Oh, and I usually thought that these happy non-Christians were just deluded and really unhappy but didn't realize it. Only a Christian's happiness was real happiness. It feels weird typing all this now but that's what I really thought at the time.

 

Happy pagans and religious nontheists like Buddhists, especially, flummoxed me. Like many evangelicals, my world held "Christians" (divided into "TRUE CHRISTIANS, like me, and all the fakers, which were all the non-UPC folks) and "atheists" who had rejected TRUE CHRISTIANITY. Someone who had a spiritual affiliation that wasn't God and still managed to be happy was wearing a bulletproof vest against Christianity--they were so sweet and gentle as they totally rebuffed my arguments, and I could see they seemed genuinely fulfilled and content with life. They agreed with my major premises--that there was truth beyond objective facts, that there was a spiritual underpinning of the 'Verse, that morality came from somewhere--but their take on the answers to those things was so much more nuanced than mine. Worse than someone who rejects the Bible utterly and heads off 180 degrees from it is someone who rejects it utterly but heads off at a 45 degree angle. It was a problem that I had no idea how to tackle.