Evangelism

Evangelism

Evangelism is the spreading of ideas, often forcefully, on others regarding what people should and should not do. You first encounter with evangelism will be at home. Your parents will encourage you to behave in a certain way. They will encourage certain behaviours and squash others. They will tell you what you should be doing and when. When we begin school, we have a whole new set of new rules imposed upon us. More things that we are supposed to do and more things we should not do. If we attend a church the level of should and should nots are ramped up even further. There are plenty of people that want to let us know what we should be doing. What, how, when and with a hazy why.

Morals and ethics, creep into our lives. It creeps in, in many ways. It is everywhere, even in books and films. Those that write books or commission films subtly offload their moral codes on to the audience. They are spreading their beliefs. They subconsciously alter what we consider to be right and wrong, good, and bad. Writers influence our opinions. This may or may not have been intentional, but it has an effect. The characters portrayed in the stories are used to nudge us to be like the good guys in certain regards. Copious amounts of coercion are found in stories, fables, and a wide range of articles. The authors of these stories attempt to get you to be like them. They suggest things, advise and prompt. The advice may suit you, the advice may be good for many, but it is their advice, and it is advice that stems from the way they see the world. It is how they want things to be. Journalists tell us the news. Do they tell it the way it is or the way they see it. Their commentary mirrors their moral code. They highlight certain stories, deliberately playing down the importance of others. They use their medium to markedly raise the profile of some events, events which they think people should care about the most.

Evangelists revel in their perceived authority. They wag their finger at you. They do not care if they encroach on your freedoms. Lots of arm-twisting rhetoric is used to get us to abide by their commands. The most forceful win, but only until their reign comes to an end. Anyone can get caught up in evangelism of sorts. Some encourage us to protect the environment or be more charitable or abide to rules of a book. It will, however, be according to their interpretation, their point of view. None are ever whiter than white. All evangelists have an element of do as I say and not as I do.

People may not specifically use the should or ought word, instead they imply it. If I were you, I would… Well, you are not me. That is not the way I want to do it. When you ask why? Why must I do it that way? Some will be rather vague. They will tell you that is just the way things should be done. Ultimately it is simply the way they prefer things to be done. Their preference, their opinion, their habits.

Sometimes we pay for advice, we seek therapy. Advice can be essential to achieve certain objectives. People can help us. However, advice given when we did not ask for it can be rather annoying. Instead of advising people we can discuss someone’s problem allowing them to work out a solution by themselves. People like to take credit for what they do. This credit provides the aura of being masterful. They can’t take the credit if the person they are helping feels as though they have resolved the situation on their own.

There are plenty who think of themselves akin to football managers. The experience garnered over the years gives them the justification to govern players on the pitch. A football manager and the players will at least be sharing the same aim, that of winning the match. In other walks of life, we want to instil beliefs into anyone that will listen. Those that won’t listen are pushed and prodded to take heed. Those that want everyone to take notice are the evangelists. I say, evangelism is a sin.

We may discover a new way of doing something. We may devise a better strategy. We may find a new recipe, a faster way to stitch or an easier way to repair something. Should we keep that knowledge to ourselves, or do we tell others about it? Spreading knowledge to help others can be most welcome. Spreading know-how is one thing, spreading moral messages may not be quite so welcome. How far, how wide do we want to spread our knowledge, beliefs and ethical codes? We could publish details and any that stumble across it can read what we have to say. We could promote it a little to get more to take notice. Given that we believe that what we have to say has some merit we might promote our contribution extensively. The promotion reaches a point where we can be labelled an evangelist. We do not like it when people have better ideas, or ideas that work better for them. An evangelist wants to change your opinion and harass those that won’t take notice of their opinion. What you see as opinion they see as fact.