Website owner:  James Miller

  HOW THE EVANGELICAL COMES ACROSS TO OTHERS              6/79


   How does the evangelical come across to the non-evangelical?  
   What kind of impression does he make?  The impression is one of 
   arrogance, presumption, and self-righteousness.  One of 
   irritating, disgusting hypocritical piousness and presumption.  
   Why?  Because the first and only thing the evangelical wants to 
   know about you is "Are you saved?" or "Are you a Christian?"  
   And you are at an immediate disadvantage because he is really 
   asking if you have complied with his evangelical formula for 
   salvation (i.e. the act of "accepting Christ as Savior") and if 
   you have not, no matter how religious you may be, no matter how 
   seriously you may take the things of God or how much faith you 
   may have or how seriously you follow God's teachings and 
   commandments you are unsaved, a non-Christian and are going to 
   hell.  You are immediately struck by the presumption and 
   arrogance with which he uses the term "Christian" for he has 
   usurped the word, bent it so as to make only him and his group 
   "true Christians".  In his mind only those who have complied 
   with his formula are true Christians.  To him all the world is 
   divided into two camps --- the saved and the unsaved --- and 
   the saved are those who have complied with his formula.  It is 
   a black and white world.  All that really matters in life is 
   whether you are "saved" --- and that means whether or not you 
   have complied with his magical formula for salvation.  And as a 
   consequence of this belief the evangelical carries the 
   compulsive feeling that he is supposed to be always witnessing, 
   evangelizing and trying to "win souls".