Spreading Jesus

This last weekend, while building walls and towers with toy blocks so that my son could destroy them, I heard my doorbell ring. When I opened the front door I looked on two professionally dressed young men on my porch. Their postures were perfect, their expressions were solemn and by way of a salutation they gravely nodded their heads at me. I knew instantly that they both loved Jesus.

“We’ve come to talk to you today about something extremely important,” one of them informed me.

For a moment I felt relief: perhaps this wasn’t about Jesus.

“We’re going around today to tell people about how families can be helped by the Lord,” said the other.

My spirits plummeted once again. Unless they were under the mistaken impression that we lived in a feudal subdivision, they were Christians and intent on telling me about Jesus, His Father the Lord – who is also the same person – and the Holy Spirit, who is the love that exists between the Father and the Son and who is also the same person. I knew something already of their religion, which provisionally has been categorized as monotheistic pending resolution of the above paradox, and had even, in my youth, taken part in their cannibalistic ceremonies. I was uncertain which variety of Christian they were – whether it was the kind who believed Adam and Eve were from Jackson Mississippi, the kind who wouldn’t let women become priests nor allow their priests and nuns to marry, or the type that believed that people at birth were already immutably predestined for either Heaven or Hell – but I’ve always appreciated people who try to protect me from burning of any sort, not to mention been impressed by any entity whose possessive pronouns are capitalized, so I decided to allow them their sales pitch, although I resolved to be honest and forthright with them.

“I’m agnostic,” I said so that they could adjust their angle. After all, a restaurant approaches herbivores and carnivores differently.

“You don’t have any beliefs?” asked the first.

Before I could respond that I had many beliefs – Evolution, for instance – the second said, “You’re not sure what you believe. Maybe you believe in God, maybe you don’t.”

“I don’t see any evidence for God, either for or against,” I amended.

This second proselytizer immediately understood, and he baited his hook with what he assumed, given the circumstances, was his choicest worm.

“We actually have some Scriptures which we think are good evidence for God.”

Figuring that this Scriptural evidence was likely as good evidence of Yahweh as a comic book collection is good evidence of Thor, I replied, “I really don’t see any evidence either way. But thanks for stopping by. Good luck to you.”

All things considered, I felt good about the exchange. It had been short, I had managed to prevent them from baptizing my son and, but for my last two sentences, I had maintained my sincerity. Even then it was the sort of insincerity which is generally excused on the grounds of politeness, like when you tell your wife that her new hair cut is sexy.

But the encounter made me reflective. As much as the second young man had understood the best way to convince me, he had been naively optimistic about the tools in his possession. From the point of view of a door-to-door salesman of Christ, when someone says they are agnostic you immediately know some things about them and are left with two decent options. You know with a great deal of certainty that they were not taken to Skeptical Sunday Schools as children and simply inherited their agnosticism. They are agnostic not out of desire to be uncertain, but rather because the existence of a deity has not been demonstrated to their satisfaction (I myself am not against the idea of a deity per se). In fact, they likely were raised as believers of something and have consciously rejected, or at least put on hold, the belief. Your two options are either to quit their porch and look for more promising prospects or provide the empirical evidence from your experiment that indicates that God exists and encourage them to try and reproduce your results. If you are confronted with an agnostic, Scripture, even when capitalized, will not be considered admissible evidence.

It also occurred to me that there were a few changes that could be made that might entice more agnostics to become Christians. I list them below in decreasing order of probability.

1. Look happy. If people seem to be having a good time I might be enticed to pretend I believe in God just to partake in the general gaiety. In contrast, the moping faces I saw on my porch might have led me to look for a new savior had I already been a Christian. Remember, there are other religions to compete with. Just because Jews slice penises and Muslims have a ridiculous dress code for women doesn’t mean you can’t lose followers to them. People will do the damndest things for a savior who makes them smile.

2. Get rid of the Sunday worship requirement. In America, this conflicts with football, and there is ample evidence that football is real. Even if it didn’t conflict, it’s not convenient to have to get out of bed and go to church on Sunday mornings. Let people decide what time is best for them to worship, and put no requirements on how often they need to do it. Furthermore, worship is a problematic word. Make it a celebration instead. Apart from a celebration helping you with your moping problems, there is something awfully suspicious about a Being who can create the universe but somehow needs me to get up on Sunday mornings to tell him he kicks ass.

3. Incorporate porn into the liturgy. Obviously, this will be an adults-only part of the celebration; maybe while the kids are at Sunday School. This particular bit of advice should be seen in the broader context of taking a more sex-friendly approach to religion. The popularity of sex persists despite all efforts to quell it. So far, you have been lucky to keep your followers after berating them and making them feel sick and perverted for their constant masturbating and lurid desires. This may work for people who actually believe that Jehovah destroyed entire cities for this sort of behavior, but agnostics simply aren’t going to accept it. Rather than fight sex, which is not intrinsically anti-religious and presents no inherent problems for you, use it to your advantage. The people who have stuck with you despite the way you make them ashamed of their genitals will be grateful, and the people who have kept away from you might just rethink their decision. The prospect of watching Father O’Flannagan take Mother Superior six different ways on the altar might just fill the pews. It also might keep Father O’Flannagan’s hands off my son’s pecker. One quick note: if #3 is to be pursued in earnest it might do to put the nuns and priests on a strict diet and workout regimen.

We could delve further into the topic, but this is enough for now. The Church has done surprisingly well considering the paucity of benefits it offers in this world. I can’t imagine a car dealership taking car payments in this life while promising the automobile in the next – no matter how fabulous the automobile is supposed to be – and still running in the black. Nevertheless, one can always increase membership. I offer some suggestions for doing just that and pass on.