My abject failure at proselytizing--Part 1

Jesus was an enigma in many, many ways.  He told his disciples to go "therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." Matt. 28:19-20, the so-called "Great Commission."

Yet, earlier in Matthew, we read that Jesus told the Pharisees: " But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves."  (One of the seven woes)  Matt. 23:15.  Yet, the scribes and the Pharisees were the believers of Second Temple Judaism.  They were the ones who tried to keep the Mosaic law.  They were the "church goers" so to speak.

My Christian friends are going to say that you reconcile these two passages, because the "woe" preceded conversion of an individual to Christ, and the "Great Commission" succeeded it.  This is a possible interpretation.  In fact, this may be the best interpretation.  But viewing my own soteriological history, and how it affected others, I have another interpretation.

Growing up Southern Baptist, it was my God-ordained duty to convert others to Christianity--to follow the Great Commission.  I told everyone about Jesus.  Folks at my church thought I was going to be a preacher.  That's how vociferous I was in carrying out the Great Commission.  For thirty (30) years, it never worked.  In hindsight, those thirty years were three lost decades--thirty years without the Holy Spirit.  In hindsight, I did not truly know the Jesus of the Bible.  In hindsight, the Jesus that I was proclaiming was not the God that is revealed in Scripture, but rather the wrong Jesus that is proclaimed in most "Christian" pulpits.

Only after I ceased trying to carry out the Great Commission did some of my friends come to believe that Jesus was God.  None of these so-called conversions resulted from my proselytizing.  Some of these conversions were nothing short of miraculous.  I didn't do anything except befriend them.  In some cases, they befriended me.  I didn't seek them out to try to share Jesus with them.  Rather, we were or became friends.  I didn't purport to have any sage advice about God to pass along.  Instead, I listened to what they had to say about their families, work, their hopes and dreams.

As our friendships deepened, they asked about Jesus.  They were the ones to bring Him up.  They knew that I was a Christian, but I didn't beat them over the head with it.  It turns out that we all have broken hearts--broken over this fallen world, broken over our own sinfulness, broken over death, broken over sick children, broken over difficult marriages, broken over sibling rivalries, broken over difficult fathers and mothers.  As we shared our hearts with one another, Jesus became the answer.  I didn't have to tell anyone that Jesus was the answer.  As we discussed life in this world, there was only one answer--the friend of sinners who experienced all of the difficulties that this world has to offer.