We don't need to be constantly

proclaiming our faith to others. As a matter of fact, doing so often spills

over into becoming spiritual pride, which is just as destructive and sinful

as any other kind of pride.

I feel frustration because

I believe you are obscuring and misrepresenting the central message of

Christianity. Jesus and the New Testament writers do tell us to spread

the word, but they don't say it's our main purpose.

In my view and in the view

of centuries of Christian writers and thinkers, the Christian life is

in some ways mainly an internal thing. We are supposed to root out our

own sinful nature and be kind, loving, forgiving, and patient with others.

(As a matter of fact, when it comes to our neighbors, I think there are

more injunctions against judging them than perhaps anything else other

than simply loving them.)

Always telling Christians that

they ought to witness at every opportunity shifts the focus from the internal

to the external, and seeks to prove one's faith through external actions

that very often have little to do with actually loving our neighbors.

Rather than preach to them,

we ought to be kind when they make us angry; rather than tell them to

believe in God, we ought to show them through our patience and generosity

what a belief in God can do.

Christ said we should be fishers

of men, and to do so we need to use different bait and tackle for different

fish. Some may respond to aggressive evangelizing, as you advocate, but

I believe many, many people are repulsed by it and require a subtler approach.

There is no doubt the evangelical

movement has been successful in gaining many converts and saving many

souls. But it has also been responsible for alienating a perhaps larger

group in our society by its overreliance on emotionalism, moral self-righteousness,

and its intransigent stance against science and reason as threats to faith,

rather than as buttresses of it.

Besides, your characterization

of St. Francis was quite wrong and mildly if not overtly anti-Catholic

in tone. First of all, in St. Francis' day there wasn't a bunch of nonbelievers

to be converted. (The rise in nonbelievers didn't begin in earnest until

Protestantism gained strength and fragmented Christianity.)

Second, his whole purpose was

to put God's love into action and reinvigorate the faith by preaching

to the common man in his own language and removing Christianity from its

more legalistic and dry dogmatics. If you were to choose a Catholic to

pick on, you should have picked St. Augustine, who was much more strident

in his emphasis of the internal nature of the Christian life.

Also, your column a few weeks

back when you scoffed at the congregant who died of a heart attack after

several years of looking down upon lower-income members of his church

was incredibly contrary to the spirit and requirements of our faith.

You should have forgiven that

man his all-too-human weaknesses instead of chastising him and mocking

him in his death. Loving people like him is what our purpose is, not preaching

on the corner for our own prideful satisfaction.

I thought it interesting in

your article that quotes to back up your contention that the most important

thing we can do as Christians is to convert our non-believing brethren

were few and far between, and I think I have a reason: although as Christians

we are commanded to spread the good news, loving God and loving our neighbor

takes precedence over anything else. That is our purpose.

Or at least, I think it can

be reasonably argued that loving God and our neighbor is a more important

purpose than constantly "witnessing" to our neighbors, many

of whom find that particular practice off-putting and insulting and who

come to have a negative view of Christianity as a result of it (me included).

Trey Hoffman

Member of St. Andrew's Episcopal

Church

Peachtree City