My wife was in the courtyard of our apartment complex talking to the daughter of a neighbor. The seven-year-old exclaimed, “But in light of the suffering in the world, how can you say that God exists?!” Now how many American seven year-olds do you know who would respond this way at the mere mention of the name of God?
That neighbor has now become a believer but her daughter continues to wrestle with questions and doubts concerning a relationship with God through faith
As I mentioned in the earlier blog entries “RELIGIOUS SMOKE”, the Crusades and the Inquisition irreparably marred the European psyche. At about the same time that the United States was experiencing a tremendous spiritual revival, C.S. Lewis stated:
“Certainly I feel that very grave dangers hang over us. This results from the apostasy of the great part of Europe from the Christian faith. Hence a worse state than the one we were in before we received the Faith. For no one returns from Christianity to the same state he was in before Christianity, but into a worse state; the difference between a pagan and an apostate is the difference between an unmarried woman and an adulteress.”(“Letters,” 89)
C.S. Lewis' "Letters"
In the 16th through 18th centuries Protestant believers fled to North America to escape European politico-religious persecution. In 1776 on the New Continent, the United States consequently inaugurated religious freedom and separation of Church and State as founding principles to protect people from the tyranny of the power of the monarchy wedded with the authority of the Church.
In 1789 on the Old Continent, France inaugurated state secularism to protect people from the tyranny of the power of the monarchy wedded to the authority of the Church. Seeing no other way to uncouple the authority of the Church from the power of the Monarchy, the French revolutionaries overthrew both, and promoted secularism as the remedy to the problem of Christendom that had been plaguing the Continent for centuries.
The Rights of Man
So France and the United States arrived at two opposing prescriptions to the common menace of Christendom (the majority Church wielding domineering political power). To protect people the United States promoted freedom of religion, Europe promoted philosophical secularism.
The United States is admittedly pragmatic, while Europe is hubristically philosophical. Take for example the American philosopher Benjamin Franklin’s aphorisms: “a penny saved is a penny earned,” and “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Now compare the tenor of Franklin’s sayings to some European philosophers:
“God is dead” (Nietzsche).
“God’s only excuse is that he does not exist” (Camus).
And “even if God did exist, it would change nothing” (Sartre).
“God’s only excuse is that he does not exist” (Camus).
And “even if God did exist, it would change nothing” (Sartre).
Friedrich Nietzsche
Albert Camus was the second youngest-ever recipient of Nobel Prize for literature in 1957
Jean-Paul Sartre received the Nobel Prize for literature, but refused it.
Just as Jesus and his apostles formed the foundation of Christianity, just as the Founding Fathers formed the foundation of the United States, the Enlightenment philosophers formed the foundation of today’s Europe. And much of Europe's intellectual foundation was resolutely anti-religious, laid to protect people from suffering and death at the hands of Church authorities empowered by the monarchy.So what? Pragmatically speaking concerning evangelism "one size does not fit all" cultures and in diverse contexts “different strokes for different folks” are in order.
As we all know, one faces obstacles when sharing the good news of Christ even in the United States where 35% of the population is evangelical, where laws were designed to promote religious freedom, where the mindset is pragmatic, where there is a favorable religious past—Christians made significant contributions to societal wellbeing.
How much more then does one encounter obstacles when sharing the good news of Christ in France where only 0.5% of the population is evangelical, where laws were designed to protect people from religion, where the mindset is philosophically anti-religious, where the atrocious religious past has marred Christ's reputation.
In light of these stark differences, it simply makes sense that one might use quicker, more direct approaches when sharing the gospel with an American, than with a European; it takes time for the European to overcome the visceral reaction against Christianity, to work through the intellectual questions, to discover who Jesus really is and what life with Him might truly be like.
C. S. Lewis captured the heart of these differences by simply saying that one does not woo a divorcée as one does a virgin.
