The New Road

Hell's Best Kept Secret

I was intrigued by some anti-evolution stuff I saw on "The Way of the Master", so I looked into some other topics. The fun parts begin in the 'Answers to 100 common questions' section, where you find nuggets like this:

Imagine for a moment that you are standing on the sea-shore gazing at a large ocean liner. The sun is shining. There is no wind and the sea is calm. To your amazement, about thirty people suddenly dive off the end of the ship and cling to a lifeboat. You shake your head in disbelief at their foolishness. Then without warning, the great ocean liner strikes an iceberg and suddenly sinks, taking all on board with it.

Those who looked like fools in abandoning the ship were actually wise, and those who seemed wise by staying on board were, in truth, fools.

The world scoffs at those who abandon the ship of this world and cling to the lifeboat of the Savior. But Christians know that this great pleasure-cruiser will eventually come into contact with the immovable iceberg of the Law of God, sink into hell ...and take all those on board with it.

Hmmm... Ok, right. That's if the boat actually sinks. What happens when the boat doesn't sink. To use this analogy, they would have gotten off the boat 2000 years ago and would still be waiting in the middle of the sea while the boat went into port.

Some Evangelicals believe that we are all going down the tubes "Real Soon Now"™, but that's been the case for 2000 years. What makes anyone believe it's going to happen tomorrow, this year, or any time soon?

Anyway, reading that lead me to "Hell's Best Kept Secret". Which basically tells evangelicals that to preach that God is love and such won't work. In fact, according to these guys, 80-90% of people who take Jesus Christ as their savior bail out after a short time. Wow! That's an amazing statistic.

So what these guys want evangelicals to do is to go up to random people, spout a personalized doom and gloom story, then talk about how Jesus can save them. And apparently, this "Way Of The Master" is a new idea. Which, I can personally attest, is not new at all. In fact, it's the only experience I've ever had with any form of Christianity. It's always been about the threat of eternal damnation.

You can watch the video or not, I don't care, but there is one interesting little segment in it where the Aussie dude talks about this 'parachute' scenario. Basically our hero is a guy sitting in his seat, with a parachute on, waiting for the plane to crash because the flight attendant told him that was going to happen. Then another flight attendant spills hot coffee on him. The Aussie explains that our hero isn't troubled by this (because he knows the plane is going to crash) or is even more eager now to see the plane crash. Whoa! Wait a second! So this silly analogy ends up telling evangelicals that they should be eager to see the rapture where everyone dies? Nice.

Listen, I've got no problem with people following lots of Jesus' teachings. He was clearly a great guy and did a lot of good stuff. And if you follow his philosophy you will do well by yourself and others. If your church is preaching that then good on them. But when your church starts saying that you should pray for rapture when we all die, doesn't that seem like a big red flag? Does to me.

As an aside I find this type of confrontational proselytization extremely rude. Clearly I can't just go up to someone and start bashing their faith, nor do I want to. So why do these folks feel they have the right to bash my faith and my beliefs?