The Religion of the Belt

I have always thought evangelism was about getting people to "pray a prayer" in which they would accept Jesus as their Saviour and then be on their way to heaven. But I wonder if this approach isn't more about the person who's trying to "evangelize" than it is about the one being "evangelized" to or even about Jesus. When you lay down the 4 Spiritual Laws or the Romans road (both detailed blueprints for how to compel someone to be a Christian) and then a person prays to accept Jesus, you can put another notch in your spiritual belt. You have converted someone.

But when this approach is used I'm not even sure what we've converted people to. Is it just a list of some "facts" that are important for people to give mental assent to? If we're converting people to believing that Jesus is the way to salvation and that they just have to agree with that to be saved, then I don't think we're converting them to Christianity. As James says in talking about mental assent to the things of God, "Even the demons believe that--and shudder." When we convert people to the religion of the belt, where it's just about praying a prayer and getting others to do the same, we miss what Jesus was all about.

I'm not saying a prayer yielding one's life to Jesus is a bad thing. In the context of a living, growing, active, striving, struggling life lived in pursuit of being like Jesus it can be a great step. But that's what it is, a step, a piece, one small part of a journey. We must be about walking on the path that leads to life and helping others to do the same. We must help people come to a faith that matters now, not just in some seemingly far off place called heaven.

To convert something means to change it into something new. You can't convert water into ice and still call it water. This is why Paul says that after we begin to follow Christ we are new creations, we are not what we were. The religion of the belt does not communicate to people that they become new creations. People who have been converted from pursuing death to pursuing life. I'm not saying that no one has ever found this path through a canned presentation of the "gospel". But when they do I wonder if God is working more with us and through us, or more in spite of us. God is great and will draw people to himself, but I think we reflect Him to others better when we walk with them to convert them to the way of Jesus than to the religion of the belt.