Salespeople & the Great Commission

I’ve never been a good salesperson. Allow me to explain. I’ve sold used appliances at a Sears outlet while I was in college and I was helpful to my customers and all, but I didn’t do well when it came to getting people to buy something they didn’t set out to buy (a maintenance agreement, for example). The thing is…I don’t like putting other people in that kind of situation because I hate those situations where it feels like someone is trying to pressure me into buying something that I hadn’t planned to buy. I hate being solicited. I've had times when a salesperson comes to my house unnannounced and I invite them in only to engage in a seemingly friendly conversation in which they are gathering clues about me that will help them make the sale. They use persuasion tactics in which they describe your problems and offer their product as the solution, using slick techniques that back you into a corner where it looks like the only wise decision for you and your family is to buy what they are selling. That really irritates me.

All of this irritates me mainly because when people talk to you in this “sales” mode they don’t seem like they are truly concerned about you or your needs. Instead, they seem to be talking to you as a means to an end, or some desired result (more business, more money, more sales, more commission, etc.). Matter of fact, when people get into this "sales" mode they don't even seem human anymore. Their voice changes and so does the look in their eye. In their calculating glances, you have now become a potential customer (or convert). I also see this happen a lot in religion especially when the issue of conversion comes up.

Throughout my life I have been approached both by people belonging to the Nation of Islam and by people belonging to various Christian denominations who have evangelized to me by using “friendly conversation” as a means to convert me to their belief system. The fact that this happens makes me reflect on those people that join a religious tradition because it is promoted as a product to buy instead of being attracted to a religion because they are seeing people’s lives being transformed by it. Hey, show me a humble servant who is living a transformed life with sincerity and integrity and you've got my attention; but if you approach me like a "spiritual salesperson" you will piss me off.

Let me speak about my own faith for a second. I consider myself a Christian, a follower of God in the way of Jesus. And to be honest, I might not be a Christian had someone not pulled me to the side and talked to me about Jesus and salvation when I was younger. I suppose God works in mysterious ways. But in recent years, I have come to question a lot of what tradition has taught us about what it means to follow Jesus and what it means to have salvation. I wonder if we have distorted Jesus' message and mission over the centuries. For example, were followers of Jesus supposed to be salespeople or servants? Were we assigned to go out and "win souls" or were we sent out to help people live in ways that glorify the God that Jesus talked about? Were we supposed to get souls into heaven or were we supposed to live out the values of the kingdom of God and teach others to do the same? From what I read in the Gospels, Jesus told his disciples (students) to go forth spreading the “good news,” healing the sick, casting out demons, blessing others, and making and baptizing disciples of all nations (more students) who would be taught to obey the commands that Jesus gave them. And come to think of it, wasn’t Jesus’ greatest command for us to love God with our entire being and to love our neighbors and enemies as much as we love ourselves?

I fear that much evangelism leans more toward what I call a "password theology," the belief that only those who know the proper passwords have access to God. We seem to focus more on getting people to say the right thing instead of showing them how to do the right thing (and I say this realizing that many good-hearted people may disagree as to what the "right thing" would be). I believe that people should be motivated to join a religious tradition because they see transformed lives and feel sincere love, not because they were manipulated by threats and/or sales techniques.