For a number of years, the owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team paid a Russian psychic healer tens of thousands of dollars a year to simply watch their games on television and think positive thoughts for the Dodgers baseball team. This went on for a number of years. We don’t know whether the Russian spiritualist had any impact on the outcome of their games, but we can be sure that he enjoyed the extra cash.

In 2007 a Miss Teen America judge asked the contestant from South Carolina how to remedy the disturbing fact that one in five Americans cannot locate the United States on a world map. Unfortunately she was part of the one in five.

A college student was unable to comprehend how it was possible to travel downhill and north at the same time. She thought it violated the laws of physics. I am glad she was not in one of my physics classes.

A similar group of one in five Americans believes that witches are real, that the sun revolves around the earth, that the lottery is a sound financial investment, that aliens from other plants abduct humans, and that the apocalypse will happen in their lifetime (and that they are part of the group that will experience the rapture).

I must make a distinction here. To “believe in” something in our day and age usually means that you have thought about it rationally and have come to some conclusions. This world view is a direct descendent of the Enlightenment Era, the Age of Reason starting with Isaac Newton in the 1600s– tracing through the industrial revolution all the way to our “post-modern” era today. Things can only be true or false if they can be apprehended by human reason. The scientific method of theory, hypothesis, experimental fact, and proof or rebuttal is the queen of rationalist thought, and it trumps any other way of knowing.

Our Enlightenment or scientific world view makes us unconsciously divide matters into things that can be examined critically with science and logic versus a set of matters that can only be grasped with the human heart. Some scientists, academics, and rationalists tend to classify matters of the heart as second class. Religions fall into this group of matters of the heart.

At the time of Jesus, our rational world view and especially its application to matters of the heart would be incomprehensible. Jewish thought at that time held that the human heart was the seat of emotions, intelligence, reason, and wisdom. When making a decision. whether about what fruit to purchase in the marketplace, ethical decisions. or how to be a faithful Jew, the human heart with all of its faculties would guide you into making righteous choices.

It is true that some schools of Greek philosophy and rhetoric infused early Christian writings, beliefs and practices; especially the writings of Paul. Setting that aside for a moment, you just cannot apply deductive reasoning to things like why a soldier in combat would jump on a grenade and willingly sacrifice himself for his colleagues; or why a mother would sacrifice herself for her child; or the existence of God; or a human being son of God; or why a loving and supposedly all powerful God would willingly sacrifice her child. Things like that just don’t add up.

But if you are in the trenches and bullets are whizzing by your helmet, you will instinctively appeal to a higher power. They say that there is no atheist in a foxhole. Likewise if you have a dread disease or even the threat of one, your friends, family, and church will all pray to a higher power on your behalf. Some modern neuroscientists claim that our brains are literally hard-wired to believe in a power or a deity greater than and outside of ourselves.

In the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, we are commanded to go out and baptize all peoples into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We need to follow this commandment with humility and deference to others. Some scholars have pointed out that a substantial number of those killed by European Crusaders were in fact Orthodox Christians.

The Trinity, in which we will stand in a moment and profess our belief, is in one sense a shorthand summary of the unique claims of the Christian faith: that God’s son was truly human and ascended to heaven, and that in his place we have the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth. But there is a cautionary note before we go out and bludgeon others with our hard-headed rational belief that we alone possess the truth.

What we don’t know about other peoples, other cultures, other world religions is whether the risen Christ appeared to them in some form or whether the Holy Spirit is working through their culture, their system of beliefs – even their religion. We can never know these things, therefore blanket condemnation of other beliefs and world religions is a product a human arrogance, and has no place in truly following Jesus.

Who then should we baptize? Who should we seek to convert as believers if we cannot call other religions “unbelievers?” The harvest is plenty. We are talking about those who have rejected God or a community of faith in any form: Those who spend their time on the golf course or at the lake or at home and who come to church, synagogue, mosque, or temple only rarely if at all. Those who openly reject God in any form and who ridicule religions and their believers as hypocritical. You know who they are.

Do not bother to engage the world out there in a rational discussion about your faith, because it is not rational. You will lose the argument before you begin. All you need to do is show them how your heart has changed. Show them your gratitude, your patience, your love, your wonder, your joy, your peace. Show them the matters of the heart and how THIS particular community of faith has made a difference for you. You cannot be a faithful Christian alone at home. In order to follow Jesus you must participate in a community of faith.

God’s grace, peace and mercy have been given to you. You are asked to share that with others. Bring ‘em here and we will baptize them into the sacred mystery of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have lots of room in here. Don’t you think it’s time to fill these empty seats?