{"id":40429,"date":"2014-01-07T13:29:09","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T20:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/07\/want-to-bring-people-to-the-faith-try-this-instead.html"},"modified":"2014-01-08T08:18:05","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T15:18:05","slug":"want-to-bring-people-to-the-faith-try-this-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/07\/want-to-bring-people-to-the-faith-try-this-instead.html","title":{"rendered":"Want to bring people to the faith? Try this, instead"},"content":{"rendered":"
Want to convince people to join your religion? Don't read chapter and verse. Don't threaten, cajole, harass, or condemn them.<\/p>\n

Instead, tell them about how your faith has brought you joy, how it has brought you contentment, how it has stirred your soul, how it has made you a better person.<\/i><\/p>\n

Better by far than telling them, though, is to show them<\/i> through your actions. Let them see<\/i> how this was the right thing for you, and may be for them, too. Don't hide your beliefs under a bushel, but don't treat your faith as a prima facie<\/i> case as to why they should believe, too.\u00a0And don't simply say, "Being a Christian (or whatever) has made lots of folks better people." \u00a0Demonstrate it with yourself,<\/i> in talking about who you were and in showing<\/i> who you are. \u00a0<\/p>\n

If you can, it's a hugely effective, very personal argument for most people; if you can't — well, maybe you better work on that, first.<\/p>\n

It's not automatic. Folks aren't going to automatically drop to their knees and accept Jesus as their personal savior just because you held the door open for them, or spent Superbowl Sunday working in a soup kitchen, or something like that. It takes time to influence\u00a0in this way. It might not happen today, or tomorrow. It might be years,<\/i> and long after the other person isn't around you any more — but if your example was a good one, they will remember it.<\/p>\n

That's how you persuade. That's how you lead.\u00a0That's how you bring people to God (or Allah or the Buddha or whatever belief system, religious or otherwise, you want to bring\u00a0them to).<\/p>\n

The alternative is to get into arguments with them, and, assuming you don't spoil your case with\u00a0doltitude\u00a0like the below, it will all eventually boil\u00a0down to "God told me so, so it must be true."<\/p>\n

To which one can expect the retort, "Nuh-uh."<\/p>\n

To be followed by "Uh-huh," "Nuh-uh," "Uh-huh," and pretty soon everyone is sounding — well, childish. Which hardly brings glory on whatever faith you're touting.<\/p>\n

The nice thing about this approach is that you don't even have to be actively proselytizing for it to work. \u00a0If the tree is known by its fruits (or whatever parallel metaphor you want to use), then being a good tree is good thing in and of itself, and if it demonstrates something that brings people to the faith, then all the better, right?\u00a0\ufeff<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

\n \n <\/div>\n

This May Be the Worst Argument Ever Made for Why You Should Believe in God<\/a><\/p>\n

View this post on Google+<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Want to convince people to join your religion? Don't read chapter and verse. Don't threaten, cajole, harass, or condemn them. Instead, tell them about how your faith has brought you joy, how it has brought you contentment, how it has stirred your soul, how it has made you a better person. Better by far than … Continue reading “Want to bring people to the faith? Try this, instead”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106,110,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plusposts","category-religious-zanies","category-religion-me"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10054,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/09\/18\/the_popes_speech.html","url_meta":{"origin":40429,"position":0},"title":"The Pope’s Speech","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 18-Sep-06 7:05am","format":false,"excerpt":"Much brouhaha, especially in the Islamic world, over a recent speech by Pope Benedict XVI in which (to gauge by most media reports), the Pope spoke favorably over a Byzantine...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":41352,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/03\/06\/christian-pastors-being-arrested-by-the-police-for-their-faith.html","url_meta":{"origin":40429,"position":1},"title":"Christian pastors being arrested by the police for their faith!","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 6-Mar-14 3:41pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Except that it's all a fake. For a video. To be thrown out on the Internet without any sort of note that it was staged, as a means of demonstrating what the police arresting pastors would look like. Which the local sheriff's office oddly went along with, and is now\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3367,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/12\/13\/the_wheels_of_t.html","url_meta":{"origin":40429,"position":2},"title":"The wheels of the gods grind slowly …","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 13-Dec-02 3:22pm","format":false,"excerpt":"... but, for Bernard, Cardinal Law, they have finally ground exceedingly small. Good frickin' riddance. May he sit in a monastic cell for the rest of his life, contemplating the...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"The Law didn't win","src":"\/blog\/images\/law_smallheadshot.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":137396,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/10\/26\/our-faith-compels-us.html","url_meta":{"origin":40429,"position":3},"title":""Our faith compels us"","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 26-Oct-18 10:17am","format":false,"excerpt":"It's good to see Christians -- see coverage of Christians -- standing up for what Christ in the Bible spoke regarding caring for the poor and for one another, rather than the modern Christianist leadership doctrines of profit, nationalism, and control. By raising again the message of the Social Gospel\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":43312,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/01\/gops-faith-czar-only-good-christians-are-gop-christians.html","url_meta":{"origin":40429,"position":4},"title":"GOP's Faith Czar: only good Christians are GOP Christians","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 1-Jul-14 11:01am","format":false,"excerpt":"And the only people of faith worth the party's outreach efforts are, apparently, the folk most likely voting GOP already.\ufeff GOP Faith Outreach Director Offended By Christians Who Vote Democratic The Republican National Committee recently launched a new outreach arm called GOP Faith to build \u201can army of activists to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":41835,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/28\/i-find-your-lack-of-faith-disturbing.html","url_meta":{"origin":40429,"position":5},"title":"I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 28-Apr-14 5:52am","format":false,"excerpt":"Some fun at Liege Cathedral with a belled and fully operational carillon. \u00a0(H\/t +Scott Randel\u00a0for the link and the title.)\ufeff View this post on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40495,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40429\/revisions\/40495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}