Tracts, Predation, and Charity

I’ve had this experience a few times and it feels, I must say, predatory.  You feel like a target, a prize to be won, an it. And yet. “As I was walking from the restaurant to my car,” writes Leon Brown,

I had one gospel tract in my pocket. I had purposed to give it to someone in route to my vehicle. Literally, that was my plan. I wanted to place the tract in someone’s hand, continue walking, get in my truck, and leave. That did not happen. When I gave the tract to a man standing in my path, he asked, “What’s this?” . . .

When he asked me to explain the material newly placed in his hand, I felt like he was inconveniencing me. I did not have time, or so I thought, to explain the law and the gospel to him. If he had just read the card, he would have received all the information he needed.

Although I felt inconvenienced, I am thankful the Lord ordered my steps in a different manner. I was privileged to share both the law and the gospel with him. Once the conversation ended, he said, “This is what I needed.” I was shocked. He later began attending church with me.

Had I been the man on the street, I might have put between “what” and “this” three other words, the first of which is “the” or if feeling more civil said something like “I don’t know you.”

When Catholics and others think about evangelizing others, we like to think of what Evangelicals call (if I remember right) “relationship evangelism” and doing good works and making the church the kind of place that draws people in — all ways of building a friendship with others before we present them with the possibility of making a life-changing commitment. You should like people for themselves and not as subjects for the sales pitch.

And that’s right . . . but: What if we’re failing in charity? The evangelist we find so amusing, or so annoying, handing out pamphlets on the way to his truck may see the people he passes better than we do. He may see them merely as targets for this month’s sales report, but he may see them as souls in peril, and as men and women in need right now of the mercy of God. Some of them will find a tract from a passing stranger just what they need, or an address from a Catholic street preacher.

You don’t save drowning people only after you’ve spent enough time with them to become friends, because then they’ll be dead.