{"id":2408,"date":"2009-11-20T09:43:03","date_gmt":"2009-11-20T17:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=2408"},"modified":"2009-11-20T09:43:03","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T17:43:03","slug":"why-do-christians-evangelize-instead-of-just-feeding-the-hungry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2009\/11\/20\/why-do-christians-evangelize-instead-of-just-feeding-the-hungry","title":{"rendered":"Why Do Christians Evangelize Instead of Just Feeding the Hungry?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Soup<\/a>I was recently interviewed by a student writing for the Stanford Daily<\/a>. A group of off-campus Christians had put on a controversial outreach activity and he wanted to know why Christians share their faith. Apparently my answer wasn\u2019t pithy or interesting enough, because I didn\u2019t make it into the final article<\/a>. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

His questions (which he asked separately but which I combined for my answer): \u201cWhy do Christians try to spread their beliefs? With so many other problems in the world, why expend so much energy on spreading the gospels instead of, for example, feeding the hungry?\u201d<\/p>\n

My emailed response: <\/p>\n

\nJesus said that he is the way, the truth, and the life \u2014 he even said that no one could come to God apart from him. So the same compassion that compels Christians to build hospitals and orphanages and feed the hungry also compels us to share the news that everyone can be reconciled to God through Christ.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In addition, we know that by spreading the gospel we also increase the number of people who are feeding the hungry and otherwise doing good deeds. We know from research that religious people give more to charity than nonreligious people do, and so we see that compassion and evangelism are not antithetical. If anything, they reinforce each other.<\/p>\n

In summary, we share the gospel with someone because we believe that the gospel meets their deepest needs and will also catalyze them to likewise go meet the spiritual and practical needs of others. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He asked me more questions than that, but I didn\u2019t have time to answer them before his deadline. And even this answer was kind of rushed. If I had my answer to give over again I probably would have put a line about heaven and hell in there, but as it is I feel pretty good about it.<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re not a Christian and wonder why we keep urging you to trust in Jesus, I hope my answer helps you understand our motives. We love you and we love Jesus, so we want to arrange an introduction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was recently interviewed by a student writing for the Stanford Daily. A group of off-campus Christians had put on a controversial outreach activity and he wanted to know why Christians share their faith. Apparently my answer wasn\u2019t pithy or interesting enough, because I didn\u2019t make it into the final article. \ud83d\ude42 His questions (which \u2026 Continue reading \u201cWhy Do Christians Evangelize Instead of Just Feeding the Hungry?\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reasonable-answers-to-honest-questions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-CQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2408"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2421,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408\/revisions\/2421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}