My daughter starts a new job today as a social worker, so I prayed there would be a Christian co-worker in her office. Then I started to worry: What if it’s a Christian like me? (This is a variation on the worry of a father who watches his 16-year-old daughter go off on her first date and hopes the guy is not like he was.)

When push comes to shove you know what a Christian should be like. When your daughter’s soul is at stake, you don’t need a seminary class. Demoninational affiliation becomes meaningless. You want someone who is more charismatic than not, even if you yourself have always avoided charismatics; someone who talks about Jesus at socially inappropriate times. You want a person who is not so “sensitive” to the cultural situation that it’s never going to be the right moment to bring up the subject.

You don’t necessarily want someone who has done it all right in her life. That’s fine. But I would prefer a person who has done business with God, maybe has a telltale limp like Jacob. She will not be appalled at anything my daughter has done because she knows her own heart. She will not be put off by my daughter’s initial disdain. She will know the Bible well, but will not be proud of doctrinal correctness. She will be a person who is more or less regularly overcome with emotion at the thought of Jesus’ love.

She will find time, by hook or by crook, to reach out to my daughter with the gospel, because, after all, she’s really only an ambassador moonlighting as a social worker.

Last month, Indian affairs officials from the Brazilian government photographed from the air an Amazonian tribe that seems to have had little or no contact with the modern world. Pictures show men, women and children staring up from thatched huts and men painted with yellow and red attempting to scare off the airplane flying above them.

The flyover is the latest development in a controversy over “uncontacted” indigenous tribes and whether governments should prohibit outsiders from crossing paths with them. Groups like Survival International say about 100 tribes around the world have avoided or cut off any contact with outsiders, and half of them live in Brazil or Peru. The government of Peru has pledged to investigate the existence of uncontacted tribes on its side of the border, and to find out if illegal logging is driving them from their native lands as some allege. Disputes over land encroachment are central to indigenous issues: The French oil company Perenco is involved in a lawsuit in Peru that will determine whether it can drill in a remote jungle area inhabited by natives.

Actress Julie Christie is helping Survival International promote an isolation policy toward tribal groups. Survival claims tribal lands should be protected from logging and from outsiders who could introduce foreign sicknesses to the natives. (An unfamiliar virus such as a flu bug can overpower and kill a significant portion of a tribe’s population.)

Last March, representatives of the British television company Cicada Films were accused of unwittingly introducing an epidemic that left four Matsigenka Indians dead while the filmmakers scouted locations for the Discovery Channel’s “World’s Lost Tribes” reality show. Cicada Films denies causing any such outbreak. Brazilian activist Sydney Possuelo, featured in a 2003 National Geographic story, once favored modern contact with tribes but changed his mind after seeing the sicknesses and cultural challenges indigenous people face as a result.

Survival International doesn’t exactly express a positive attitude toward America, which it lists among its 2007 “terrible ten” list of abusers of tribal peoples’ rights for being one of four nations that voted against the UN’s “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.” The UN Declaration, adopted in September of 2007, grants broad national rights to natives and contains language that could cause problems for yet another group Survival isn’t positive about: missionaries.

New Tribes Mission seeks to establish indigenous churches around the globe, but Venezuela stopped the group’s work among indigenous groups in 2005, when, as WORLD reported, President Hugo Chavez denounced the agency in a speech and accused it of spying for the U.S. and exploiting indigenous people. (Hundreds of indigenous Venezuelans later marched in protest of Chavez’s speech.)

It’s hard to understand how providing medical care and literacy is exploitation, especially among indigenous groups where the life expectancy of men and women is lower than average and suicide rates among youth are alarmingly high, but New Tribes and other mission organizations may face increasing opposition as governments like Venezuela’s and Brazil’s restrict outside access to tribes. In the process, those governments seem to be promoting the ideology of the “noble savage” and assuming it’s in the best interests of indigenous people to have no access to the modern world, or to the gospel.

If you had a bit of spinach stuck between your teeth, or body odor so bad your co-workers were snickering around the water cooler, would you want someone to tell you? Then if you know hell is real, and you know people who are headed to a Christ-less eternity, should you not tell them?

That’s how my friend Jayne Clark introduced the three-day topic of the Judgment at our women’s retreat at Harvey Cedars Bible Conference in New Jersey last weekend — and I couldn’t escape the logic of it.

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a sermon on hell. I mean one that lingered there and let you smell the sulfur, not just a passing poetic reference.
There is, of course, that famous Jonathan Edwards sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” And I’m ashamed to say that, like old Barnabas, who “was led astray” by peer pressure in an unrelated matter (Galatians 2:13), I was slipping into the camp of people who say nice things about Edwards in spite of that little trip to woodshed in Enfield, Connecticut on July 8,1741.

But Jayne helped me remember how I myself got saved. This Christian guy at L’Abri took a fancy to me, and didn’t fancy me being damned, and kept saying, “Andree, please become a Christian.” It was as unsophisticated as that.

“Therefore, let every one that is out of Christ now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation….’Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountains, lest you be consumed’” (Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”).

Perhaps you’ve heard about a certain Scientology video in which Tom Cruise spends ten minutes blathering incoherently about his religion and laughs loudly, frighteningly, and for no apparent reason. “If jumping on Oprah’s couch was 8 on the scale of crazy, this is certainly a 10,” observed Gawker, where the pirated video was originally released.

A renowned Hitler expert compared it to Nazi propaganda. And of course, American comedians parodied Cruise’s creepy nonsense and maniacal laughter to hilarious effect. The video is reportedly so embarrassing that the Church of Scientology has attempted—thus far unsuccessfully—to have it removed from the internet.

Of the numerous overly-interested responses to this thing, the most noteworthy came last week from the Christian Post, in an op-ed column by Jane Dratz entitled—ready for this?—“How to Share Your Faith Using the Tom Cruise Scientology Rant.” Of all the many peculiar things turned into witnessing tools, this has to be among the strangest.

The column presents some (very) basic information on the Church of Scientology, followed by bullet points containing the appropriate Christian rebuttal. Then, it suggests using the Tom Cruise video as a “springboard” for evangelizing unsaved co-workers.

Keep in mind that Tom Cruise’s cultural capital is hovering somewhere in the red—he’s almost universally seen as a possibly psychopathic religious zealot who for some reason wouldn’t let his wife out in public long enough to star in the Batman Begins sequel. So while both educating ourselves on popular religions and sharing our faith are great things to do, how is this guy a good introduction to Christianity? I mean, incoherent, Hitler-esque cult propaganda just flows into a presentation of the four spiritual laws so naturally, how could we resist?

In all seriousness, it’s time to stop recommending that we turn even the strangest of cultural phenomena into a shallow proselytization strategy to be deployed on our personal social circles. If you need to talk about Tom Cruise to witness to someone, maybe you should just keep your mouth shut.

Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, has a book coming out this week called The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.  He admits that many of these kinds of books have been written and that the best is probably still Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, but Keller probably knows the sophisticated, urban, and urbane audience better than most others, and so his book may be worth reading.  And, Lewis’s audience was a little different:

The questions are now not just philosophical (e.g. Is there evidence for God’s existence?) They are also now cultural (Doesn’t strong faith make a multicultural society impossible?), political (Doesn’t orthodox religion undermine freedom?) and personal. Also fifty years ago, when C.S. Lewis was writing, there was general agreement that rational argument and empirical method were the best ways to discover truth. That consensus has vanished. Today there are deep disagreements over how we know things and how certain we can be about anything. Most of the older books presenting Christianity now are only persuasive and even comprehensible to a very narrow range of people.

These books seem only to persuade those who are on the fence and looking for reasons to believe, as opposed to those looking for reasons not to.  As the Devil says to Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov: “Proof is the last thing you need.”  But I’m sure this new book will be great for those who can be persuaded by it.

To be in, but not of, the world is a commonly heard admonition among Christians. Continuing with my exploration of the chief points made in UnChristian, the authors find that many young people perceive the church as not only sheltered from the real world, but separated from the mysterious and awe-inspiring God of the Bible. In the first instance, they perceive that Christians are neither intellectual nor culture-shapers, but rather people who huddle in enclaves and denounce outsiders. In the second instance, they describe the Christian services they have attended as frequently boring and devoid of spiritual vitality.

Of course, the so-called Christians who answered this survey aren’t really Christians, and can therefore be disregarded. As for the non-Christians, well, they’re biased against Christianity from the start, so we can ignore them too.

Just thought I’d go ahead and write a basic script for a number of comments that will follow this post. Feel free to copy and paste the above to save yourselves time.

But back to the book. A man I respect a great deal, Mike Metzger of the Clapham Institute, captures the challenge facing Christians quite nicely:

“…if you only practice purity apart from proximity to culture, you inevitably become pietistic, separatist, and conceited. If you live in close proximity to the culture without also living in a holy manner, you become indistinguishable from fallen culture and useless in God’s kingdom.”

I used to think it was less perilous to my soul to err on the former side — if I only interact with Christians, and only read approved Christian books, and only listen to approved Christian music, and so on, then I’ll be less likely to sin. Now I’m not so sure. I’m thinking of how Christ spoke to the Pharisees versus the prostitutes.

Perhaps what is most biting about this section of UnChristian is that non-Christians perceive something that many Christians I know have felt, which is a lack of spiritual richness. The remedy may be something non-believers won’t like, such as a deeper focus on scriptures, and more reverence in church services. But perhaps they would like these changes very much. Perhaps the watered-down, “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” sermon is a turn-off to the non-believer after all, despite the good intentions of those who deliver it. I suppose that’s something for church leaders to work out. Most likely there is no one best formula, for the Lord calls us through a variety of means, none of which have any power without his work.

Regardless, it’s distressing that instead of deriding Christian services as weird, or over the top, or sheer lunacy, non-believers call them boring and uninspired. Even if they were simply bent on saying something unkind, wouldn’t it better that they call us crazy than irrelevant?

Editor’s note: See Tony’s other three posts in this series, “Anti-homosexual Christianity” “Hypocritical Christianity” and “Target-shooting Christianity,” as well as his column in the Jan. 26 issue of WORLD, “Going negative.”

Another theme that emerges in UnChristian is the perception among young people outside the church that the Christians with whom they come into contact see them as possible converts rather than people. Their experience is captured in a story from a young man interviewed for the book, who tells of a nice stranger who seemed interested in getting to know him. They chatted, exchanged numbers, and later his new friend called and invited him to a Bible study. He declined the invitation, and never heard from the guy again. He left the experience feeling like he had only been this person’s latest conversion target.

The problem with a story, of course, is that we can envision many justifications for why the guy never called back. One of the authors of UnChristian, in fact, tells a similar story, of meeting someone who seemed interested in learning more about Christianity, and then losing his email address. Perhaps the person he met felt as the young man interviewed for the book had felt, like a sales target. A single story, or handful of stories, can always be explained away. That’s why multiple data points can be useful, to give a picture of how many hundreds of people feel. When these hundreds are selected following survey protocols, their opinions in turn can be reliable indicators of how thousands more feel.

The survey evidence in this case is troubling. While nearly two-thirds of Christians surveyed felt that outsiders perceived their efforts at evangelizing as genuine, only one-third of young people outside the church reported believing that the Christians who reached out to them genuinely cared for them. These are not fleeting interactions, according to the survey — 82 percent of these young people have attended churches, 65 percent reported having conversations in the last year with a Christian friend about faith, and 53 percent report being approached in the past year about becoming a Christian.

An additional problem, the authors of UnChristian write, is that only three percent of self-professing Christians between the ages of 18 and 41 embrace a biblical worldview, reflected in affirmation of essential Christian tenets such as the sinlessness of Christ, the unearned nature of salvation, the evangelical imperative, and the truth of the Bible. They find, further, that only nine percent of older Christians completely embrace a biblical worldview.

Compounding the problem that many outsiders feel like targets rather than valued people, in other words, is the reality that most self-professing Christians can’t articulate the primary tenets of their own faith, leaving them ill-prepared to evangelize.

I suspect that the latter problem informs the former; if we do not understand Ephesians 2:8, and have not confronted the depths of our own depravity, which in turn illuminates the inner workings of grace, then we are likely ill-suited to treat non-believers with the mercy that has been poured out on us. We will be unable to see that they are trapped as we were trapped. We will see them as sinners only, not brothers and sisters. If we are pounding the pavement without a genuine understanding of our own salvation, then something other than the love of Christ may be compelling us. Our desire to trumpet our own righteousness, perhaps.

The remedy offered by the authors is simple and difficult. First there is thinking: “We are learning that one of the primary reasons that ministry to teenagers fails to produce a lasting faith is because they are not being taught to think,” write the authors. There is also loving: “We do not look like Jesus to outsiders because we do not love outsiders as Jesus does.” And there is listening: Listen “…to what God is telling us, within the context of Scripture, prayer, crises, and relationships.”

Of course it would be three things I struggle with, thinking, loving, and listening. But notice how the three admonitions get at a problem we’ve all seen in various churches. In some cases, we focus so heavily on doctrine that we forget to love. In others, we get so caught up in loving and affirming everyone in our path that we forget the unchanging law of God. And too often, we are so intent on getting others to hear us that we forget the essential element of communication, which is that people tend to hear better when they feel that they are being heard. UnChristian suggests that too many Christians are neither speaking truth in love, nor taking the time to listen. I wonder if we’ll listen to these authors and others, or stop our ears and tell ourselves we’ve nothing to improve?

Editor’s note: See Tony’s post from last Friday, “Hypocritical Christianity,” and his column in the current issue of WORLD, “Going negative.”

I took a tour of America’s Keswick, a Bible-based addictions recovery ministry in Whiting, New Jersey, near the shore. Dina, the staff writer, told me about Bill P., who showed up at Keswick with the double problem of drug addiction and homosexuality — except he didn’t see the homosexuality as a problem.

Counselor Jim F. wasn’t sure how to handle it. Should he tell Bill in no uncertain terms that he was not welcome to the four-month program unless he was seeking to be free of both? He could have gone that route and been within his rights. But Jim decided to welcome Bill and handed him a Bible and suggested the newcomer read for himself what the Bible says God requires.

Bill read, and came to repudiate the gay lifestyle on his own. He later said that the highhanded approach would have made him pack up and leave the first night.

Today Bill is free of addiction to drugs and homosexuality and is part of the family of instructors at America’ s Keswick. There are several different ways you can handle any given counseling situation, but just as I’m learning on my Jetta that only experience teaches smooth gear shifting, only experience walking with the Holy Spirit gives discernment as to which tactic is best (Hebrews 5:14).

I wrote an article for WORLD two years ago about A Way Out, a ministry in Memphis that rescues women from prostitution and topless dancing.  More than anything, I was struck by the fact that I just didn’t know many Christians who were down in the cracks of society looking for people to help.  A Way Out is way down in the cracks, trolling for hookers and handing out Bibles, picking up hookers from apartments where pimps with guns want to shoot them (the volunteers), you name it.  I thought about all this while reading an article about XXXChurch, who visits porn conventions and hands out Bibles that look like this:

In case you can’t read that, it says, “Jesus Loves Porn Stars,” and it’s a Bible.

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There’s a new billboard on Cheltenham Avenue in Philadelphia. Giant letters spell out “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John4:18). I drove past and smiled and thought, “God, you’re so sneaky!”

That’s because I remember how my Jewish friend Jenny was converted: someone had given her a Bible, and she prayed, “Jesus, if you’re real, let me know it.” Later, driving to the Pocono Mountains she saw a billboard displaying a large picture of Jesus with outstretched arms and the words “Jesus is with you.”

And then I remembered that an ocean and a few decades away C.S.Lewis had noticed the same thing — how God places these salvation “trap doors” everywhere, in the unlikeliest places.

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it was ambush by wardrobe during a game of hide-and-seek. In Prince Caspian it was a passenger train. In Voyage of the Dawn Treader, it was a framed picture of a ship.

I’m sure there is lots of statistical proof that billboards, door-to-door gospel presentations, TV evangelism, short-term youth group missions trips, and “the fours spiritual laws” are ineffective. But you need to see Jenny about that. I myself was sucked into a spiritual vortex thirtysomething years ago on my way to the life of a hitchhiking vagabond