Don’t Sugar Coat It. Just Tell Them.

“The late Joseph Bayly wrote a delightful little book some years ago called The Gospel Blimp, which lampooned the earlier forms of this kind of evangelistic absurdity, back when inane evangelicalism was still slogging it out in the minors. It is hard to imagine what a man of his gifts would do with the embarrassment of riches he would face if he were here — trite evangelicalism has now had a long, sustained career in the majors and is now in the hall of fame. Born-againers are everywhere, and in virtually everything they touch they seek to make the holy things of the living God into a laughingstock. The faith that produced Augustine and Ambrose, Chrysostom and Calvin, Hodge and Edwards, is now busy trying to evangelize the world by acting dumber than a bag of hammers” (A Serrated Edge, p. 70).