One of my favorite thought experiments is to imagine I've never heard of God or Jesus. And some people knock at my door one morning and try to sell the concept to me. "WTF? Burn for eternity because of a talking snake and some fruit? God knocks up a virgin so he can come to earth and have himself killed? I'm sorry, this just doesn't make any sense."
Anyway, I have several ideas (as usual) about how they sold it:
1. Priests, Guns & Money - back in the good old days, the missionaries often tagged along behind invading/exploring armies. Recently on some Internet thread, I saw someone claiming Islam was a "convert or die" religion while Xianity wasn't. Huh? Well, how abut the Albigensian Crusade, which was Xians killing other Xians and forcing them to convert. And we have first-hand accounts of how the natives in the Americas were "converted." Usually with the choice of "Jebus or death."
2. Bait and Switch I - "Hi, we're from the advanced Western world. We bring you medicine so your kids won't die, clean water and literacy. Oh yeah, and...uh...Jesus. You have to buy Jesus first before you get any of the good stuff. "
3. Bait and Switch II - in my admittedly jaundiced opinion, many modern "missionary trips" are nothing but vacations. Back where I grew up in East Jesusstan, I once heard a family friend bragging about her daughter going on a mission trip to Africa.
I imagined someone slogging thru the jungle like Albert Schweitzer, risking all sorts of exotic foreign disease and danger.
Turns out the kid's mission trip was to..Johannesburg.
Even that pales beside the e-begging of the pastor at my Mom's church. He put up a web page asking for donations to send him and some cronies on a desperately needed mission trip to convert the backwards heathens in London. Yes, the one in England.
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