Christmas: it’s that time of year. Joy to the World. Handel’s Messiah. Cookies and fudge. Eggnog. Shopping. Evergreen trees decked with ornaments and lights. Cards. Presents. Ugly sweaters. Family gatherings. Excited grandchildren. Ah, the wonders of the Christmas season.
But there’s one aspect of Christmas hated by non-Christians, and that’s their Evangelical relatives and friends using the holiday as an opportunity to evangelize those they deem lost and headed for Hell.
From tracts stuffed into Christmas cards to Christian-themed gifts, evangelistically-motivated Evangelicals make sure that their non-Christian family members and friends know that Jesus is the Reason for Season and that unless they know The Prince of Peace, They will Have No Peace.
Even worse are those Evangelicals who make a concerted effort to talk to unsaved relatives about their spiritual condition at family Christmas gatherings. Told by their pastors to use the Christmas season, with its focus on joy and family, as an opportunity to witness to the lost, Evangelicals make concerted efforts to put in a good word for Jesus whenever they have an opportunity to do so.
We’ve all been there. We’re hanging out with our family at the annual Christmas gathering: eating Mom’s food, swapping childhood stories, drinking wine, laughing, and enjoying life. And out of the corner of our eye, we see Evangelical Uncle Bob coming towards us. Oh shit, we say to ourselves, not THIS again. “This” being Uncle Bob snuggling up to you so he can tell you for seemingly the hundredth time that Christmas is all about Jesus, and that the greatest gift in the world is the salvation that God offers to every sinner. Sinner, of course, being you. And as in every other year, you will politely listen, smile, and think in your mind, just one time I’d like to tell Uncle Bob to take his religion and shove it up his ass. Your thoughts will remain unspoken, and after your evangelizing relative is finished extolling the wonders of Jesus and his blood, you say to him, just as you do every other year, Hey, Uncle Bob, how ’bout them Cowboys? You know that there is one thing that Uncle Bob loves to talk about almost as much as his savior Jesus, and that’s America’s team, the Dallas Cowboys.
Several years ago, Fundamentalist Calvinist pastor John Piper reminded his fellow cultists of the importance of giving non-Christian relatives prayed-over, Bible-saturated books during the Christmas season. Piper wrote:
The Christmas season is ripe for “reviving your concern” (Philippians 4:10) for the spiritual wellbeing of friends and family members. We may lament the expectations of gift-giving and the excesses of holiday spending, but we can take it as an opportunity to invest in eternity by putting God-centered, gospel-rich content into the hands of those we love.
Next to the Bible, perhaps the most enduringly valuable gifts you can give this Christmas are books soaked in God and his grace. Online articles, sermons, and podcast episodes change lives and sustain souls, but they don’t make for typical material Christmas gifts. Printed books, on the other hand, wrap well, and can be just as life-changing and soul-saving, and more.
As Christmas approaches, we wanted to remind you of our recent titles from the team at Desiring God. We’ve done our best to saturate them in the Bible and fill them with God and his gospel, and we’ve prayed over them again that they might be a means of God’s grace not only for you, but also your loved ones…
Randy Newman, Senior Teaching Fellow for Apologetics and Evangelism at the C.S. Lewis Institute, suggests that Evangelicals look for opportunities to share bits of the gospel:
I know this sounds counterintuitive. In fact, to some, this may sound like downright heresy! Some of us have been trained to “make sure to state the whole gospel” or “their blood will be on our hands.” To me, that sounds a bit like a lack of trust in the sovereignty of God. In our day of constant contact (through email, texts, tweets, etc.) we can trust God to string together a partial conversation at Christmas dinner to a follow up discussion the next day, to a phone conversation, to numerous emails, etc. Some of our unsaved family members and friends need to digest parts of the gospel (“How can God be both loving and holy?”) before they can take the next bite (“Jesus’ death resolves the tension of God’s love and his holiness.”)…
Back in the days when I was a fire-breathing Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preacher, I encouraged church members to use the Christmas holiday as an opportunity to witness to their unsaved relatives. Hell is hot and death is certain, I told congregants. Dare we ignore their plight? Remember, the Bible says that if we fail to warn our wicked relatives of their wicked ways and they die and go to Hell, their blood will be on our hands. Despite my attempts to guilt church members into evangelizing their relatives, not one member reported successfully doing so. Most of them, I suspect, ignored my preaching and said nothing to their relatives. And those who did likely made half-hearted attempts to interject Jesus into family Christmas discussions. Regardless, not one person was saved as a result of our Christmas witnessing.
Let me conclude this post with a heartfelt, honest appeal from non-Christians to Evangelicals bent on witnessing to family and friends during the Christmas season:
Christmas is all about love, joy, peace, and family. Religion, like politics, is a divisive subject, and talking about it will certainly engender strife and resentment. I know that you think our negative response toward your evangelistic effort is the result of our sinfulness and hatred of God. What you fail to see is that our irritation and anger is the result of your unwillingness to value family more than you do Jesus. Besides, we’ve heard your Jesus shtick before. We get it: we are sinners, Jesus died on the cross for our sins and resurrected from the grave three days later. If we want our sins forgiven, we must repent of our sins and accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. If we refuse God’s wonderful offer of salvation and eternal life, when we die, we will go to Hell. See? We heard you. There’s no need for you to keep doing your best imitation of a skipping record. If we ask you a question about your religion, then, by all means, answer it. We asked, and we wouldn’t have asked if we didn’t want to know. However, if we don’t ask, please keep your religion to yourself. If you truly love and respect us, please leave us alone.
If you choose to ignore our request, we will assume that you are determined to be an asshole for Jesus. While we will likely walk away from you, we might, depending on our mood, decide to give you a dose of your own medicine by sharing why we think your God and Jesus are fictitious. We might even challenge your so-called Bible beliefs. You see, we know a lot more about Christianity than we are telling. It’s not that we don’t know. We do, and we find the Christian narrative intellectually lacking. While Jesus gives your life meaning, purpose, and peace, we have found these same things in atheism, agnosticism, humanism, paganism, or non-Christian religions. We don’t need what you have because we already have it.
Most of us who are non-Christians will spend the Christmas holiday surrounded by believers. In many instances, we will be the only non-Christian in the room. While we love the Christmas season — with its bright colors, feasts, and family gatherings — contemplating the fact that we will be the only atheist at the family Christmas gathering can be stressful. We understand that Christmas is considered a Christian holiday. When Christian prayers are uttered, we will respectfully bow our heads. When Christmas carols are sung around the hearth, we will likely join in (many of us like singing Christmas songs). We will do our best to blend in.
Please, for one day, when we are all gathered together in expression of our love for one another, leave Jesus and your religion at the door. By all means, if you must talk about Jesus, seek out like-minded Christian family members and talk to them. When talking to us, let’s agree to talk about the things we have in common: family, childhood experiences, and our favorite football team.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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i’ve heard that “know jeezis, know peace, no jeezis, no peace” aphorism bandied about a lot, and it’s true… the people who say that will, literally, give you no peace! 👎😖
I agree, Bruce. IMO, the best way to “share Christ” (if you’re a Christian) is to respect other people’s space and work on yourself. How you treat and respect others shows me all I need to see. Family gatherings at Christmas, or any other time of the year, is not the place to intrude or interject your religious hobby (let’s call it what it is for these folks) to others who don’t share the same interest.
Interestingly, we usually do holidays at my sister’s house. Even though she and her family are non-religious (she and I were raised Pentecostal and her husband was raised Catholic), she always asks me to pray over the food. I say the Catholic meal prayer which lasts about lasts about 10 seconds. Even though I do pray on my own, I actually feel a little self conscious doing this publicly (outside a gathering of fellow Catholics), mostly because growing up at large family functions with my dad’s family, meal prayer time became an ordeal where all my religious relatives could subtly show how righteous they were to us non-evangelical folk.
I suspect my sister asks me to do this because my 82 year old mom is there with us. She still goes to a fundamentalist church, but she has mellowed out a lot on overt religious behavior. She has made peace with the fact I became Catholic, and everyone else seems ok with my meal prayer. That’s the extent of my religious behavior at these family functions, unless someone specifically asks me about my personal religious journey. Even then, I just explain how I got to where I am. I do not use this as a seque to “evangelize the lost” or to use fear to convince them to become Christian. I grew up listening to these comments masquerading as questions, and I saw it all as a religious version of an Amway sales pitch.
John—You mention the “religious version of the Amway sales pitch.” The ex-husband of a woman I know, who couldn’t hold down a job, became an Amway rep at the same time he had a “revelation” and decided, per his interpretation of a few Bible verses, that he was going to make all of the decisions for both of them—never mind that at the time (late ‘80s-early ‘90’s) she was making more in actual dollars than most people make today.
(Ironically, I knew him at the time because we went for early morning training (bicycle) rides, but I didn’t know about his then-wife and my current friendly acquaintance.)
On another topic: Why do Evangelical men seem to have a particular passion for (American) football, and the Dallas Cowboys in particular? Don’t get me wrong: I like the sport as much as anyone else. But it seems to me that Evangelical men have a particular passion for it and “America’s team,” even if they’ve never been anywhere near Dallas. (Full disclosure: I am a San Francisco 49ers fan even though I have lived most of my life in or near NYC. But I have at least been to SF several times.)
Thanks, Velovixen. That’s very interesting concerning your friend’s ex-husband.
In the mid ‘90’s someone I went to school with, who I hadn’t heard from in at least 10 years, found my name in the phone book and called me out of the blue. He flattered me with a bunch of compliments, even though I didn’t really know him all that well after elementary school. He then said he was a “small business owner”, was expanding his business and needed a partner. He said he was a distributor for some new revolutionary house cleaning products that were only sold through his company. Of course he invited me to a meeting. I forget the name, it wasn’t Amway (he made sure several times to assure me of that).
I get to the meeting and everyone is dressed to the nines (except me and my wife). I am offered ionized water by at least 10 different people. Some ambient Enya-like music is playing in the background. They all have these leather bound Covey planner covers that instantly trigger a flashback to the Assemblies of God church I attended as a child- they looked like the leather Bible covers everyone carried and showed off. I then discovered my friend and his companions, along with being “small business owners” in a pyramid scheme distributorship of dish washer and washing machine tabs made using secret military technology, were also all evangelical Christians too. It was like Jonestown meets Costco.
After a few talks I told my friend I had a real job and wasn’t interested in his new hustle. I never heard from him again after that, even later on Facebook. He now sells real estate and attends a new “yay-Jesus” hip non-denominational church. I drive by it often, the parking lot is filled with mostly large full size pick ups or newer Mustangs and Dodge Challengers. You know, the kind of cars Jesus would own.
All this to say I find Amway/Advocare type schemes and evangelical Christianity to be very much alike. They put a high amount of value on the appearance of worldly success, both financial and organizational growth. And they both are high energy/high demand communities which not only ensnare the participant, but their families as well. And don’t get me started on their politics.
As far as the Dallas Cowboys, other than watching an occasional Cincinnati Bengals game, I’m actually not all that much into sports. I know, amazing right? I’ve actually met a few other guys like myself- we’re kind of low key and off the radar, but like Bigfoot we do exist 😀.
One reason I like having holiday functions at my house is that we can just skip the pre-meal prayer. At my Christian relatives’ homes in Nashville, there will be a “bow your head and close your eyes” prayer (though short). At my in-laws’ it depends – in recent years my mother-in-law has been wanting to say a prayer before Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, though one of her sons abd 2 grandchildren are atheists, and one son has Jewish children (the other son is now back into Hesus because he’s had some trouble with the law the past couple of years, but his grown children don’t have much to do with him so we don’t see them at family gatherings). My devout evangelical brother texts me on major holidays a how are you and a Bible verse related to whichever holiday. I ignore the verse and engage with how they’re doing. It’s good not to have to deal with proselytizing too much.
John—You mention the “religious version of the Amway sales pitch.” The ex-husband of a woman I know, who couldn’t hold down a job, became an Amway rep at the same time he had a “revelation” and decided, per his interpretation of a few Bible verses, that he was going to make all of the decisions for both of them—never mind that at the time (late ‘80s-early ‘90’s) she was making more in actual dollars than most people make today.
(Ironically, I knew him at the time because we went for early morning training (bicycle) rides, but I didn’t know about his then-wife and my current friendly acquaintance.)
On another topic: Why do Evangelical men seem to have a particular passion for (American) football, and the Dallas Cowboys in particular? Don’t get me wrong: I like the sport as much as anyone else. But it seems to me that Evangelical men have a particular passion for it and “America’s team,” even if they’ve never been anywhere near Dallas. (Full disclosure: I am a San Francisco 49ers fan even though I have lived most of my life in or near NYC. But I have at least been to SF several times.)
I’m glad I don’t have to put up with Christian hypocrisy at holidays anymore. The most religious relatives are dead, and the young ones just don’t care about it. My older brother is getting into Judaism because of his current girlfriend, and because he found out my dad’s family line were probably Jews exiled from Spain. She’s mostly a cultural Jew, and Jews don’t go around preaching anyway, so it’s not an issue.
I don’t miss the passive/aggressive Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving prayers of my mom, pleading for love and family unity, while she covered up the abuse of my dad. I don’t miss the pathetic attempts by my older sister to keep this crappy tradition. Now, our family gatherings are peaceful, and all beliefs, or non-beliefs, are accepted.