Throughout my life I tried to live out “The Great Commission”. The Bible speaks of going into all the world and making all men disciples. In the church, it is understood that men could not be disciples unless they accept Christ. I built a ministry on trying to share that message with people all over the US as well as other countries.

Now, as I am trying to step away from ministry and promoting a message I believe to be wrong, I am contemplating what it means to go preach the gospel to every nation. Why did I feel compelled to proselytes?

As a Christian it was important to share God’s message with everyone. I did not want anyone to go to hell. I wanted everyone to enjoy eternity. I also wanted everyone to let God work in their lives while they were still here on earth. It would have made them better people and would have improved their lives.

Also, God commanded me to go. The Bible says preach the gospel to all creatures throughout the entire earth. God obviously wanted me to share His word with others. I was taught that the only reason God did not take people to heaven immediately after they gave their lives to him was so they could be used by Him to spread the “Good news”.

Sharing the message that Jesus died, was buried, and rose again for all sins was the greatest single thing a Christian could do with their life. The greatest good I could do was to share that with other people. I felt that being an evangelist or missionary would have been the highest called God could have bestowed on someone.

How could I not share His message if I truly loved others? How could I not obey God if I truly loved Him?

I see it differently now. Let me start by telling you things I use to believe about God.

-According to the Bible no man could save anyone, only Jesus could do that.

-The Bible says no man seeks the father.

-God knocks on our hearts and draws all people to him.

-God wants everyone to be saved.

-The Holy Spirit convicts people.

-God did and does everything to give everyone a chance to be saved.

-Man alone keeps himself out of heaven.

-Man rejects god.

-God is/was all-powerful and does not need any assistance.

-God chooses to use people, but he does not need people to accomplish anything.

-God is in control.

So, why should I have devoted my life to sharing his message? He did not need me to share with anyone. If he convicted people in their hearts, my message or my testimony was not responsible for them getting saved or believing in Jesus. The Holy Spirit was responsible for their conversion. I have heard many times that all men, in their hearts, know they need god. All men are born that way. You may have heard “We all have a god shaped hole in our hearts”? Everything god does it to bring people to himself. It would seem that my message was not really a part of anyone actually “coming to Jesus”.

Did god need me to get the ball rolling in someone’s path to salvation? Again, god is perfect and all men are without excuse. I have been told and I have told numerous people that man can look at nature and tell god is real. God speaks to man when they have no one to speak with about god.

The bible, to me, is clear that no man comes to the father but by Jesus. It is also clear that there are no exceptions. The Bible says no man can say “I never heard of Jesus. I didn’t know how to get to heaven.”

So, god is responsible for all men knowing about himself. We are told god uses Christians to share the gospel. That is god’s plan and is why people are without excuse. How can that plan work perfectly considering we have free will and we make mistakes? We are to believe god uses people as his method of spreading the gospel. He uses humans that constantly make mistakes. What if a Christian forgets or chickens out when god wants them to share the gospel with someone? When they die they will go to Hell. That cannot be because god is perfect and just. So everyone must know the truth before they die.

If someone doesn’t get told how to get to heaven by a Christian then one of three things must be true. 1. They must either already know about Jesus because god made them aware. 2. God will step in and let them know some other way. 3. People do not truly have free will. They will always share the gospel when god wants, and never make a mistake while doing so.

That does not make sense. First of all, we have to have free will or the whole sin thing would fall back on god and he is pure and perfect. He cannot cause us to sin. Next, if god is just going to step in and make people aware of how Jesus died for them without Christians telling them then Christians aren’t really helping. They might actually be hurting the cause. Humans make mistakes. Some Christian must eventually make a mistake when they share about Christ, and that would lead someone astray.

Really, if god can share his perfect message without using men it has to be a much better way to share the story. God is perfect and would never make a mistake in how he gives his message to someone. Humans make mistakes all the time. We can only make the process worse. We can never make it better.

The only other reason left I can think of as to why God would choose to use people to share his message is for our benefit. Maybe it is to make us better? I don’t see how it would make us better. We follow his will, learn about him, pray to him, etc. We could grow closer to god and be more like him without sharing his message. Sharing wouldn’t be necessary to be a better Christians.

We really don’t need God to command us to tell people how great he is or what he has done. Like anything we really love, we would probably tell people about how great god is and the amazing things he has done for us without prompting from him. For example, NY, Yankee fans do not tell people how great their team is are because George Steinbrenner commanded their parents to tell people about the Yankees and then their parents passed along George’s commands to them.

Sharing about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus cannot be for our eternal benefit. The Bible says we will get new, perfect bodies in heaven. Heaven is perfect. We will be perfect. We can’t be better than perfect. We aren’t practicing for heaven. Everyone there will already know Jesus.

So why are Christians commanded to tell everyone about Jesus? It cannot be because a supernatural god cannot get his message out without using people. If god’s followers share his word it can only make the process less productive or even mess it up.

If he doesn’t need people, then he is just giving us busy work. If it is just busy work is it like giving a 2-year-old child a washcloth while you bath them? You are doing all the cleaning, but you want to keep them occupied. It serves no real purpose.

Each person has one life to live on this earth. It would be a tragedy if we were meant to waste part of our lives on busy work. I spent more hours than I can count in my life trying to share god’s message and trying to get better at sharing his message. I missed time with my family, my friends, and others that I loved trying to fulfill the command to share the gospel. If that was just busy work then I wasted countless hours, money, and personal effort that I could have used to make my life better and the lives of those around me better. I could have even directed those resources into something that might have made the world a better place.

A god who tells people to use their lives to share his message when he doesn’t need them in order to get his message across is a sadistic god who gives commands for his own pleasure and voyeuristic enjoyment.

What I now believe to be true is god does not exist. Churches and religions must recruit members and must make money to exist. People wrote the bible without any god inspiring them. They commanded people to share the message and used it as a tool to gain authority over people and to grow the church.

I believe the message to share, the real truth, is “god does not exist, do not waste your precious life perpetuating that myth.”