Hot Sauce Evangelism

If you come over to my house, it is very likely that you will go home with these two bottles of hot sauce. The arbol sauce (on the left) is something my friend Tammy introduced me to. If you put this stuff on your turkey sandwich, it will change your life. Arbol mayonaise is the most amazing stuff. Once I was hooked, I began looking for other places to use the arbol sauce and found many, two of my favorites are in soup, and in gravy. The chipotle sauce on the right is a little sweeter and not as spicy as the arbol, but is incredible on hamburgers and meatloaf.

I buy these sauces by the case and eagerly hand out bottles to anyone who comes over to my house.

So why am I so eager to share my discoveries in the world of hot sauce with anyone who walks in my front door, and yet I am strangely silent of the subject of Jesus Christ, who is way better than hot sauce?

Well, I am very sure that my friends who I give hot sauce to will be happy. I know the hot sauce is good.

In the same way, maybe, I also know that any attempt to "give them Jesus" is not going to be good, unless something happens to them similar to what happened to me, when I somehow switched from skeptic to believer. I completely have the ability help someone who loves spicy food enjoy their meals. I have no way to help those people who think "hot" is something to be avoided.

Here are two lessons to learn from the hot sauce story:

1. I am a slime because I have the faith to share my love of hot sauce, but not the faith to share my love of Jesus. Maybe I don't even love Jesus as much as I love hot sauce.
   
2. Maybe I am actually doing the right thing, and instead of being fearful and timid, I am being wise.
   

The only thing that works for me is to let both of these be true. Anything else is really uncomfortable and wrong-feeling.

Comments

[Ducky]

Michael, perhaps what you are bumping into is a conflict between two strong forces:

1) the desire to help people by telling them about something that helped you
2) the desire to live by the Golden Rule and to treat people as you would have them treat you

Presumably, you wouldn't want <insert least favorite religious group> to try to convert you. You might even find yourself getting very angry if <insert least favorite religious group> pitched you. You might become very distressed even if they are very polite about it if it completely goes against what you believe: imagine how you'd feel if someone started explaining to you why he thought that polygamous marriages with girls <insert your daughter's age> were a Holy Thing.

Because you can't know someone's religious inclination, you can't know if you are in their least-favorite-religious-group or not. Thus, you can't know if you would be causing them distress or not. Thus, you can't tell if you would be violating #2.

[Hot Sauce]

Try these hot sauces

[ian]

hi Michael,

I think you're in the right place:
"I am a slime..."

Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. (Lk. 5:31)

let the healing begin!