Listening Evangelization

Taking a pause in  covering the FYCV material,

the following is a reflection on "threshold conversations" and "listening evangelization" from Forming Intentional Disciples by Sherry A. Weddell:

A threshold conversation is a supportive, inviting, open-ended, prayerful act of listening evangelization. In such conversations, we must listen to more than the facts: we need to hear the emotion and meaning behind the story as well. During a threshold conversation, the goal is not catechizing or correcting their ideas — no matter how wildly inaccurate their beliefs or perceptions of the faith or the Church might be. It is also critical to remember that a threshold conversation is not faith sharing. During this conversation, we focus on listening to the other and set aside the need to share our own story. Neither is it counseling or apologetics, and certainly a threshold conversation is never judgmental.

Boarding a plane, a man was in my assigned aisle seat.  He apologized but explained that he was undergoing cancer treatment and needed to be able to get to the restroom easily. I sat next to him in his assigned seat, I said, “If you want to talk about it, I’m available. I worked my way through graduate school on a cancer unit.” “Mark,” then began a conversation about mortal illness, suffering, family, and hope.  After an hour, I felt a clear prompting of the Holy Spirit: “Where is God in all this for you?” The conversation took off again with even greater energy about God, faith, Christianity, family, life, death, and hope. When Mark left the plane, he gave me his card, and I told him that I would pray for him. Mark died a few months ago, and I still pray for him.

Borrowing From Science (#3-2)

Let’s now turn to science and borrow the same approach science uses for dealing with a lack of absolute, definitive certainty: Critical Rationality.

Previously I wrote about Strong Rationalism and its demand for proof from those who believe in a creator, even though there is no such proof for Strong Rationalism.

While acknowledging that there is no proof that eliminates any potential for doubt that a creator exists - just as scientists have to do all the time when dealing with a lack of definitive proof - we can assert, that the evidence for the existence of God is nonetheless overwhelming and beyond reasonable doubt.

First some thoughts on doubt. Each of us is deeply interested in seeing the case for God go one way or the other.  Each individual is heavily vested in one outcome or the other.  We have lived our lives up till now based on specific beliefs – whether acknowledged or not.  To change those beliefs necessarily leads to changes in behavior. Most often, a person’s mind will jump ahead to those behavioral changes and emotions will work to override reason to embrace a faulty logic. For example, if a change in belief is going to cause me to give up my lifestyle, emotions will kick in to keep the mind from going down a path of reason. Consequently, any specific evidence for a creator God is likely to be rejected.  However, an initial appeal to science and Critical Rationality just may provide an avenue for the Holy Spirit to being bringing about conversion.

Science AND Faith (#3-1)

Francis Collins is a physician-geneticist noted for his discoveries of disease genes and leadership of the Human Genome Project.The human genome consists of all the DNA of our species, the hereditary code of life.  Then-President Clinton announced the epic, scientific discovery of the human DNA sequence map saying, “… this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind.” “Today,” he said,“we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.”

 
Francis Collins, had worked closely with the president’s speechwriter strongly endorsing this statement by the President, and when it was his turn to make comment, Dr. Collins said, “It is humbling for me, and awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God.”

In his popular book, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins argues that if you believe in evolution as a biological mechanism, you cannot believe in a creator God.  And yet, in Francis Collins, we have an eminent research scientist, former head of the Human Genome Project, who believes in evolutionary science, AND believes that the fine-tuning, beauty, and order of nature point to a divine Creator. [ in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Collins, who is not Catholic, to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.]

Here then is what Dawkins says can’t exist, someone with a firm belief in evolution as a biological mechanism, and who knows God. Collins, though in a minority, is not alone. 

The Final Irony (#2-6)

I conclude this section on ironies of those-who-don’t-know-God with a quote from Somerset Maugham, atheist author of Of Human Bondage from another of his books, The Summing Up:

“If one puts aside the existence of God and the survival after life as too doubtful… one has to make up one’s mind as to the use of life. If death ends all, if I have neither to hope for good nor to fear evil, I must ask myself what I am here for, and how in these circumstances I must conduct myself. Now the answer is plain, but so unpalatable that most will not face it. There is no meaning for life, and life has no meaning.”

Note that Maugham, although clearly aware of where his atheist thinking lands him - that life has no meaning - nonetheless lived as if it did. If he did not believe deep inside that life has meaning, what compelled him to write?

Finally, those-who-don’t-know-God do not believe in a creator, however, they should want it to be true. Most care deeply about justice for the poor, alleviating hunger and disease, and caring for the environment. Yet many of them imagine that the material world was caused by accident and that the world and everything in it will eventually simply burn up with the death of the sun.  Ironically their own worldview undermines any motivation to make the world a better place: Why sacrifice for the needs of others if in the end nothing we do makes any difference?

Next time: rationale for concluding there is a creator God.  In Christ…