The “Good News” Starts with Bad News

Growing up in an evangelical family, I was told over and over again that one of the most important things I could do was to share the gospel—the “good news” of Jesus’ plan of salvation. The past twelve years spent outside of evangelical circles has made clear to me, though, that the “good news” actually starts with very bad news. 

In the non-evangelical world, people don’t walk around thinking that they’re going to hell. They just don’t. I don’t think I fully realized this, as an evangelical child and teen. I was homeschooled, and wholly ensconced in the evangelical world. The idea that we were all sinners bound for hell apart form Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was so ingrained in me I couldn’t imagine anything else.

The reality is that sharing the “good news” of the gospel—salvation through Jesus’ sacrificial death—starts with sharing bad news—that all are sinners, destined for eternal torture in hell.

I should have seen this. After all, I was taught that the first step in sharing the gospel was to ask people if they had ever sinned, and then go down a list of items convincing them that they were bound for hell for something as simple as lying to a parent or stealing a pack of gum as a child. This is how most evangelization techniques begin—with convincing people they are sinners.

Even the Romans Road, perhaps the most well-known evangelization sequence, starts with “all have sinned” and “the wages of sin are death.”

Step 1: Convince people they are sinners. Step 2: Explain that sinners go to hell. That’s real chipper, isn’t it? But notice—the good news is contingent on the bad news. Without the bad news that we are all going to hell, you can’t have the good news that we can be saved from eternity in hell through Jesus.

It’s not just the Romans Road. There’s a “sixty second gospel” method going around as well. It, too, starts with convincing a person that they are sinners on the way to hell. Only then does it get to the good news.

Look around and see if you can find a guide to sharing the gospel that doesn’t start with bad news. I don’t think it exists. The “good news” of the gospel is dependent on the bad news of sin and hell.

As a child growing up in an evangelical community, I didn’t see the centrality of bad news to the gospel because the idea that we are all sinners destined for hell was so intuitive to me. It was all I had ever known. I thought that everyone knew, deep down, that they were a terrible sinner destined for eternal punishment.

The reality is that most people don’t believe they are terrible, undeserving sinners. This is both a good thing—thinking you are a terrible, undeserving sinner isn’t exactly good for your mental health—and the reason so many evangelization guides start with convincing targets that they are terrible, undeserving sinners.

Evangelicals, of course, believe that everyone is a sinner, whether they believe it or not. That’s their prerogative. They may want to think, though, about calling the gospel something other than the “good news.” But then, “can I share the ‘complicated news’ with you” doesn’t quite have the same ring.

I have a Patreon! Please support my writing!