“Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” How often have you heard that question in the context of evangelization from a well-meaning Evangelical friend? Our Protestant brothers and sisters often criticize us Catholics for what they perceive to be a lack of a personal relationship with the Lord–and, to a degree, they may have a point. We frequently deflect conversations about the existence of God and what he has done for us by diving into abstract theological and philosophical explanations of why we believe what we believe. It’s not that we actually lack a relationship with our Lord; we just too often fail to speak about our own relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
One tendency among us Catholics, it seems, is to dive deeply into good things about our faith, discussing liturgy, theology, and morality, and then to take our passion for these things too far and to become insular and exclusive about them. How many times have we used “Catholic” words in conversations with other Catholics so that we can feel smarter or more involved, or how often do we fail to explain them to others who don’t know what these rich theological terms mean? (I do it all the time: guilty as charged. #sorry)
So let’s talk briefly about one important, foundational word and how it has real, practical effects in our life.
Gospel means “good news”; in Latin, it’s evangelium, and in Greek it’s εὐαγγέλιον (and before any of you start with the “it’s all Greek to me” jokes, it’s spelled euangelion using our Latin-based alphabet and means the same as our English word does). From these words we get the words evangelism and evangelization, along with all their various derivatives, like evangelical and such. If gospel means “good news”, how well do we present this aspect of our faith to others, especially the increasingly non-religious people of our generation? It’s no secret that many people, when they think about Christianity, don’t associate it with self-giving love but rather think of hypocrisy and judgment. Sadly, these critiques have a point all too often.
How we present our faith to others matters, and how we think about it ourselves affects how we present it to others. If we see our belief in God solely as adherence to a moral code, we will present our belief as such. If we engage with our faith solely as an intellectual pursuit, we will attempt to evangelize others similarly.
How, then, do we evangelize more effectively?
Firstly, we must renew and deepen our own relationship with the Lord. We speak of God as having three persons in one God, and it’s no coincidence that we use the term “persons” in this context. We cannot enter into a relationship with something inanimate; we don’t speak of our relationship with our phone in the same way in which we speak of our relationship with our parents or spouse. The relationship between two persons stands apart in the world as something important, something unique. Likewise, our relationship with the One who created us should stand apart in our lives, not because this relationship is lesser than those which we tangibly and visibly encounter every day but because this relationship is greater and more fundamental. If we hope to show to others, especially agnostic or atheist friends, the importance of God and how our relationship with him affects us and makes us love more, then we must remember that this relationship is similar to regular relationships but also much greater. Like in a normal human relationship, we must converse with God, but it’s not all talking; we also must listen. We spend time with him. Unlike in a normal human relationship, however, we must put God above all else, as Jesus reminds us when he draws on the book of Deuteronomy:
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38).
Matthew 22:37-38
Secondly, we must work to remember that the Gospel is, by its very definition, good news. If we can’t present it as such to others, if we can’t remember that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16), then we need to take some time to rediscover that love in our lives, because God is love and in that love is present to us and draws us to himself. The Lord wants us all to be saved (see 1 Timothy 2:4). In a world of condemnations, both external to ourselves and internal, we truly can and should encounter the Gospel of Jesus Christ as good news. Let’s show that good news to others. As an example, the idea of going to the sacrament of Confession is that we may start out imperfectly, going out of fear of what will happen if we don’t repent, but eventually we work toward repenting not from fear but because we are truly grieved by our sinfulness and how we turned from the Lord. 1 John 4:18 encapsulates this idea well:
There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.
1 John 4:18
So let’s remember in our evangelization that we want to present the Gospel as good news, not as fear of punishment.
Thirdly, and finally, let’s not fear talking about our relationship with God. If we hope to share the Gospel effectively, we must not shrink away from sharing how God’s redemptive love has changed us in our own lives. It’s difficult, and some will mock us or roll their eyes, but we must remember that God provides the grace of conversion; we just cooperate as the Lord asks. We can and should put our theological and philosophical arguments at the service of accompaniment and evangelization, and in so doing we strengthen our sharing of the Gospel. In the end, however, we absolutely must remember that our faith is a relationship and that the Lord calls us to share this faith in the midst of real, human relationships.