Evangelism

Evangelism is something I've been thinking about lately, and then discussions on the subject popped up on a blog I follow, The Pen and Parchment, which didn't dampen my enthusiasm. :)

The word "evangelism", aside from being hard to type this morning, has a relative connotation, in the sense that it's often applied to the hawking of any belief system. I discovered that's not what the word literally means, however. It's a Greek compound word, from "eu", meaning good, and "angelos", meaning angel, or messenger.

So, an evangelist is a good messenger, and evangelism is a good message, or good information. Of course, anyone might think their beliefs are good, but goodness isn't relative to people, but to God. I don't want to get into a discussion on whose God is real, or whether there's one at all; it's enough to say that perpetual motion and God are the same thing. That is, God is Incorruptible, and everything else wears out. Perpetual motion versus entropy is good versus evil, and redemption from the power of entropy is the good news the human race needs. (My upcoming non-fiction book, The Quest of the Incorruptible, is all about this topic.)

Anyhow, I realized that an evangelistic story is simply a story that has good information in it, regardless of how it's labeled. That is, the book doesn't need to include an altar call, or explicitly state Christian core beliefs, or even say it's Christian. If it has something of the mystery and wonder of Incorruption in it, it's evangelistic. George MacDonald's The Golden Key is an excellent example.

So, while I've tried to avoid what would be called evangelizing in my fiction, the whole point of my writing all along has been to express good information through stories (however well I've achieved that). Despite my best efforts, I'm evidently doing some evangelizing. :)