On Fishing for Men
How many cases of “rejection of Christ” are in fact rejections of our distortions of him, and how shall we who put forward these homemade Christs escape judgment for it? The True Christ stands above and beyond, and in judgment upon, every church tradition and self-presentation, and is dauntingly (for the would-be evangelist) present in the soul of every believer at every stage of his pilgrimage, to speak through intuition for or against the various traditions. I have found that these believers, still formally profane, are not that easy to deceive, and must be dealt with honestly if they would enter the fold of the visible church. Indeed, perhaps the greatest problem of modern-day “evangelism” is to objectify these people into mere unbelievers, as empty heads who need to be baited like fish rather than spoken to as men, to bring them to church.
S. M. Hutchens is a Touchstone senior editor.
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