A Missionary’s Nightmare: “This Doesn’t Work For Me”

Our times are a nightmare for any missionary. The issue of salvation is the one people treat the most liberally. I myself tried to inform friends and family of this issue of salvation. The most frequent answer I received was: “this doesn’t work for me.” This is so brainless that it is hard to analyze properly, therefore I will use parables. Our Lord used to speak in the same way.

Imagine the following scene: a young boy from a balcanic third world country goes to the US. He finds out that everybody has a driver’s licence there. He is told that he should get his too. And imagine that he responds to this with a why. The reader unfamiliar with the US should know that it is the country whose citizens question their system the least. Civil law is a religious belief, nobody questions it. Imagine the boy in the story starting to question things. “Why would one need to drive since we in the third world have public transportation? We take it for granted, and when I came to the supposedly most developed country on the planet, I expected more not less. With all this pro-choice propaganda, one lacks the option of not driving? And why is the drinking age twenty-one years? In which third world country has one seen such a thing? And the issue of showing a picture ID for a simple beer, not to speak of political correctness? In a commie dictatorship it was enough not to criticize the camarade president, and here you can’t criticize anybody. Sexists can only be men, racists are only whites. Isn’t this racism and sexism? And see the psychological sensitivities! No matter where you step, you are touching a nerve! Oh no, people have no rights here! This doesn’t work for me.” Then imagine the American reaction to this. “If you don’t like it here, you are free to go.” But this reaction doesn’t take into account how much it cost for the young boy to get there. The ticket was around a thousand bucks in a country where the average salary is about two hundred. So, for the boy in the story, this was a huge financial sacrifice. In addition, he lost some friends and gave up some job opportunities in his country, and why? Because he was expecting something better, not worse. He fell for the lying propaganda of the West. He felt deceived. Going home would be difficult because the departure meant irreversibly burning several bridges. His compatriots didn’t have the possibility of leaving, so they became envious of him. Integrating into that society again was next to impossible. The punchline of the story is that the average American would not look favorably on an answer of the type “this doesn’t work for me.” Yet outside the US there is still life, while outside of the Church there is no salvation. Nobody likes such an answer. But if it’s about the most important thing on this side of Heaven, people respond in the most liberal way. If one said that being forced to drive or having to show an ID for drinking a beer didn’t work for him, people would consider him a wacko. But when it comes to the most important issue, anyone can say that. Funny how people who never question anything would question this. “But why? Who are you to tell me that this is the only way to be saved?” And then comes the final verdict: “Well, it doesn’t work for me.” Even Bp. Williamson, in one of his rare lucid moments wrote that if one answers like this, the problem is with him, not with God. If it doesn’t work for you, you have to make it work, or else you face an icky eternity. Nobody says that going to the dentist doesn’t work for him. People are very careful when they choose their dentist or gynecologist. Ironically, they are the most careless when they choose their spiritual leader.

In 2009, my father introduced me to a retired university professor, thirty years my senior. She lived through the changes of the Vatican Two apostasy. She suffered under the commies for attending church. But when I described the situation to her, and presented the conclusion that the changes were bad, and if she cared for God, she must make a sharp U-turn and rush full speed backwards, she said: “That was a liberation to me. I found it very liberating.” In essence, whatever mattered to her was not truth but convenience.

And one could go on with the examples. Once I made friends with a departmental secretary. She talked to me about the Bible, her faith and all the related issues. She described that in the small town we were living in she attended the ‘Colonial Baptist Church’ because that’s where her fellow darkies were going. Then she switched churches because she found this one ‘stuffy.’ (So it was convenience again, not truth, right or wrong, true and false.) Once I felt pity for her and I explained my position. I explained why she is wrong and how she can rectify it. I told her this was the only way, and why. She never contacted me again. So should we wonder that God gives no graces to convert? The Church is eclipsed, and now we know why God has permitted it: because nobody cares for Him. A gynecologist or a dermatologist can be more important.

Many people are going to hell, people say. But when it’s about losing one’s business, nobody says that. I suggest the reader listen to the sermon of St. Alphonsus about this.

I personally speak very seldom to my acquaintances and relatives about the issue of salvation. And I only do it when I am sensing some interest. But it never worked. I only managed to convert some through  the blog. Thank God I’m not a missionary. If I were, my life would be an absolute nightmare.