Do the Good Works of Believers Attract People to Faith in God?

By Brian Lowther

Tourists pass a Gypsy beggar, Venice, 2007. By Ted Pushinsky - Flickr/Renegade98

A Hunch and a Hypothesis

In the Roberta Winter Institute we’ve held a hunch and a hypothesis for quite a while that might just be completely mistaken.

First, the Hunch

Our hunch is that the good works of believers attract people to faith in God.

Shortly before his death, Ralph Winter wrote an essay entitled, The Future of Evangelicals, which appeared in the book MissionShift: Global Mission Issues in the Third Millennium. In this essay he wrote:

…the usual way in which individuals come to faith is primarily by viewing the good works of those who already have faith—that is, by seeing good works that reflect the power and character of God.

Then a little later in the same essay he wrote,

… in order for people to hear and respond to an offer of personal salvation…it is paramount for them to witness the glory of God in believers’ lives—seeing the love and goodness in their lives and deeds, and their changed motives and new intentions. That is the reality which gives them reason to turn away from all evil and against all evil as they seek to be closer to that kind of God and His will in this world.

Is this true?

Do the good works of believers cause people to seek to be closer to God? Many passages seem to suggest as much. Matthew 5:16 comes to mind. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven.” Other examples include Mt 15:30-31, Mk 2:12, Lk 5:26; 17:11-16;18:43, Jn 20:30-31.

A historical example comes to mind as well. John Wesley was on board a ship bound for America in 1736. A group of Moravians were also aboard the ship. Over the course of the voyage Wesley came to admire the Moravians’ humility and meekness. One day a life-threatening storm occurred. Waves nearly engulfed the ship and the main mast split into pieces. Everyone screamed out in terror—everyone except the Moravians. The depth of their faith was apparently such that they quietly prayed and sang hymns in the midst of the storm. Wesley took note of that.

How about you?

Did a believer’s good works or admirable character attract you to faith in God?

1. Was it their personal character (love and goodness in their words and conduct)?
2. Was it a transformation (change in motives and behavior)?
3. Was it their good works (generosity or helping the poor, the sick, orphans, widows, etc.)?
4. Or was it something else completely?

In my own story, it was the transformation I witnessed in my father. My dad was a drinker and smoker since his early teens, and a life-long agnostic. He came to faith when he was 44-years-old and immediately quit smoking and drinking, stopped going to bars on the weekend, started treating my mom, my siblings and me differently. It was the epitome of a 180-degree change, a complete reversal in thinking and behavior. It had such a powerful impact on me that within three months—on the day after my 18th birthday—I started following Jesus in a very serious way and have never looked back.

Now, the Hypothesis

Our hypothesis is that innumerable numbers of people would come to faith in Jesus (i.e., evangelism and discipleship would become profoundly more effective and fruitful) if the body of Christ marshaled its resources and significantly helped eradicate the next disease.

This hypothesis comes partly from something Ralph Winter often said, “Historically, the mission enterprise more than any other thing has fallen on the heels of the impact of medical missions.” And it comes partly from the results of the eradication of smallpox in 1979.

In his book Viruses, Plagues and History, author Michael Oldstone called the eradication of smallpox, “one of the greatest accomplishments undertaken and performed for the benefit of mankind anywhere or at any time.” What would be said and believed about Jesus if his followers teamed-up to eradicate the next major disease, let’s say malaria, or AIDS?

Let’s say a bunch of churches, denominations, mission agencies, philanthropists, Christian universities, etc., committed massive amounts of funding, human resources, and collective resolve and together formed the International Coalition for the Eradication of Malaria (for example). How much more would God be glorified if it were clear that it was done for that very reason? I think it would be talked about by nearly every thinking person in the world and in the pages of every newspaper and website.

But, is this true? And if so, would it affect the fruitfulness of evangelism, discipleship, missions, and church-planting?

There exists a fairly similar example right under our noses. The Rotarians have been at the forefront of the Polio Eradication Campaign since its inception in the mid 1980’s. Since that time they’ve contributed countless volunteer hours and over a billion dollars in funding, resulting in a 99% decrease in cases of polio worldwide.

Yet, even though I’m very passionate about the cause of disease eradication, I don’t have a burning desire to join the Rotary Club.

Do you?

Testing Our Hypothesis

I’ve thought about why, and—as embarrassing as this is to admit—I’ve decided it is because polio hasn’t affected me personally.

So, I wondered, what if the Rotary Club had eradicated a disease that affected me personally? Then would I join?

That disease would undoubtedly be pancreatic cancer, which took my beloved grandfather fifteen years ago. It’s the same disease that took Michael Landon, Luciano Pavorotti, and Patrick Swayze. Let’s say—prior to when my grandfather was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer—the Rotary Club set out to eradicate it, and they largely succeeded. If those circumstances were in place, would I be a member of the Rotary Club today?

Would you, if it were a disease that had affected you very personally? Would you donate money? Would you participate in any of their activities or fundraisers? Would you pray about their efforts?

I would. But I don’t think I’d join a local club.

Why Not?

I think it’s because I don’t have a close, personal relationship with anyone in the Rotary Club.

According to Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity, people come to faith not because of good works, or doctrine, but because of the faith of multiple people they trust. He says that people overwhelmingly come to faith as a result of relationships.

To quote mission researcher Justin Long, “If a person does not have a relationship with a believer–in fact, several relationships with several believers whom they respect–they will likely not [come to faith].” [1]

This holds true in my story. It wasn’t just because of my dad’s transformation. It was also because of my relationships with my Uncle Mark, my Uncle Mike and my friend Will. All these men were my elders. I respected them. I liked them. It was inevitable.

So much for our hypothesis.

But wait just a minute. Even though something as far-reaching and world-changing as the Rotary Club eradicating pancreatic cancer wouldn’t have caused me to join the Rotary Club, it would have had an impact on me. It would have said something to me about the Rotary Club. It would have resulted in a secret admiration in me for them because of the great service they had done for not only my grandfather and me, but all of mankind. I may have sought out friendships with them.

And given Rodney Stark’s research, if those friendships developed to the point that I knew multiple people in the Rotary Club whom I respected, I probably would have joined the Rotary Club. Think about it. If your three closest friends/mentors were part of the Rotary Club, wouldn’t you be inclined to become a member?

Brian Lowther is the director of the Roberta Winter Institute. 

The point is, missions and disease eradication fit hand and glove, and the opportunities for close cooperation should be fully explored. Because the good works of believers can and do attract people to faith in God…as long as the additional ingredient of social proximity is also in place.

End Note

[1] This quote is from a blog entry that is no longer online.

From a World-Renowned Mission Strategist to a Disease-Eradication Activist

Ralph D. Winter speaking at the dedication of the Ralph D. Winter Library at Olivet University in July, 2007

As we continue on our website tour, this week we're highlighting The "Why" of the RWI, which recounts the fascinating story of how a world-renowned mission strategist became a disease-eradication activist.

Around the late 1990s, Ralph Winter began to realize that the Good News being shared around the world was being followed up with some very bad news. God loves you, we preached, and Jesus died to save you, but He also gave your child brain cancer and may inflict pain on you to deepen your spiritual life.

Winter was deeply concerned by this distorted witness, distorted theology, and distorted view of God in the church. "If we continued to explain that a mysterious good hides behind all suffering, if we continued to take the Biblical phrase 'all things work together for good' to mean that God . . . is somehow the author of the evil itself, we would continue to see the Christian faith blossom around the world today only to watch it fade tomorrow."

Find out how he decided to pull back the curtain on the puppet show and reveal suffering and disease for what they really were—tools of a jealous and vicious opponent to God.

Life is War

Compiled and condensed from the writings and speeches of Ralph D. Winter
By Brian Lowther

Here is an analogy: Not many people alive today lived through World War II. Those of us who did can recall the utter transformation of a nation involved in all-out war. Swarms of “servicemen” (including women) swirled about on planes, trains, and buses, heading off to ports of departure for the various “theaters of war” around the world. Eleven million were sprayed out across the globe in the Army, Air Corps, and the Navy. But 200 million “civilians” staying behind were equally occupied by the war. As millions of men disappeared from their jobs women back home took their places. A largely women’s workforce (“Rosie the riveter”) built entire ships one every fourteen days, medium bombers one every four hours. It was no longer a peacetime situation. Crime dropped, and thousands of industries were transformed. Factories that once made cars now built tanks. Others that made nylon stockings now made nylon cords for parachutes. Still others made new things like ammunition, thousands and thousands of vehicles of strange new types, plus thousands of ships (six thousand of which went to the bottom in the Atlantic war alone).

Don’t you know there is a war on?

I vividly recall that even domestic activity was extensively bent and refitted to support both the true essentials of society as well as the war effort. The gasoline being burned up by war vehicles on land, armadas of ships and submarines at sea, and hundreds and even thousands of fuel-burning planes in the air, did not leave enough gasoline for anything but truly essential use at home. You could be fined $50 (today that would be $500) for going on a Sunday drive with the family if that trip did not include some war-related or crucial civilian-related purpose.  I mean, you can’t believe the strictures on the civilian population during an all-out war like that.  Coffee totally disappeared as a non-essential: incoming ships had no room for such trivialities because more crucial goods took their place. Women saved their bacon grease to make explosives and planted victory gardens. People on the coastlines drove twenty miles per hour after dark with their headlights partially blacked out, or volunteered as air-raid wardens or donated their rubber raincoats and tires and bathing caps, even though they couldn’t be recycled for military use. Any idle moments or carelessly disposed materials were instantly challenged by “Don’t you know there is a war on?” 

An authentic U.S. ration booklet from World War II. These instructions appeared on the back cover of the booklet: "Rationing is a vital part of the war effort.  Any attempt to violate the rules is an effort to deny someone his share and will create hardship and help the enemy. Be guided by the rule: “If you don’t need it, DON’T BUY IT.”

Now I wish today, I wish today that Christians would say that also and they would say it often to another Christian who is blowing his time or his money or his interest on something that is very trivial. “Don’t you know there is a war on?”

(See reconsecration.org for more of Ralph and Roberta's thoughts on the subject of wartime lifestyle.)

Captured by the War

There has never been another war the scope of the Second World War. Our country has never really been jeopardized [since then]. We weren’t jeopardized by the Viet Nam War, or the Korean War, or by what happened in Rwanda.  We have never been running for our lives [like we were in] the Second World War.  The point is that every single citizen of this country—like in no other period since then—became captured by that war.  

The famous philosopher of yesteryear, Mortimer Adler, made the observation that what the world needed was the “moral equivalent of war.” That is, an attitude of all-out war effort not fighting against flesh and blood, but a similarly massive, urgent, intense, sacrificial concentration of human beings against not humans but human problems. I would add, against an enemy that is not human and whose very existence is denied apathetically by even most Christians today. Not since World War II has America seen all out mobilization of the general population to support the cause of attaining victory over what was almost universally acknowledged to be a great evil.

Wars in the past have typically gotten started because of some massive and aggressive challenge, like the sinking of the Lusitania (WWI), or the bombing of Pearl Harbor (WWII). The closest thing to that might be a global plague of the sort that killed from 50 to 100 million people in 1918 - far more people right after World War I than were killed in the war itself. But even that might not lead to the kind of total war which the United States and other nations experienced in what we call the Second World War.

Pearl Harbour bombing December 7, 1941--CC BY-NC-SA by akwccr

There is no likelihood that the equivalent of a Pearl Harbor is going to happen that would rally the social resources of the world, or even Christian resources, or more particularly, the Evangelicals. But it is easily possible to imagine that the force of the Lord’s Prayer “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” would require us to do everything we possibly can, not just to exhibit fantastic personal sacrifice, but to mobilize as much of the Christian world and the non-Christian world as possible.

Ok now, one of my experiences getting into the war: I was at Cal Tech, already in my second year there. And the Navy and the Army both said, “We need some of these college students to join and especially those with engineering and scientific training. And we will pay their tuition until they graduate and then make them officers.” And this was a pretty good deal, because it wasn’t an option. It was only one of two or three inevitabilities. “You either do that, you go with the Army, or you get drafted. You don’t have any other choice.” Well, you know most students signed up for either the Army or the Navy in their officer program. And so, I got in the Navy.

All of a sudden the whole school was taken over by the Navy. And it was now a military training base. We were studying all the same engineering things and science things. But there was now a new course called “The History of Naval Warfare” and a few other things. And so, we were being prepared for being officers in the U.S. Navy. 

Ralph Winter - 1943

Among other things, we were issued new clothes. We couldn’t just wear our own clothes. They shaved our heads. They changed everything. They had a whole new vocabulary.  In the Navy they didn’t have walls and floors and ceilings. They had bulkheads. Every word practically, was different. People would say all kinds of crazy things like “Knock it off.” At night I thought to myself when I was first in the Navy, “What do they mean by knock it off?” They mean, “Shush up! Be quiet.” That was just a Navy phrase. But it became so customary that it eventually sounded perfectly fine.

Everything is subordinate to winning the war

The thing I do recall is, the clothes we were issued––the shoes, the pants, the other garments we were given––were absolutely high quality stuff. Now, my family was never really a poor family, but we never bought stuff like that. And the navy took very good care of you. You didn’t have to say, “Now let's see, I think I need to get my teeth cleaned.” [That] was on a schedule. Your whole life was scheduled. The Navy was really basically, a very good operation to belong to. Talk about safety and care and concern. 

When somebody joins the Navy and he gets all these nice clothes, got his hat, got his belt, got his shoes. There is always a meal. You never have to lift a finger. You have a place to sleep. All this is worked out, and he says: “My, this is really great. I just love the Navy. The Navy has been so kind to me. I just want to glorify the Navy. The Navy has just taken my life and given me new clothes, and a new life and a new vocabulary” and on and on and on…  and he keeps saying this and saying this and saying this. Pretty soon somebody is going to say: “Wait a minute, we didn’t give you these things to [make you] happy. We gave you these things to fight a war and to give your life if necessary." 

You see, the Navy didn’t really care about me, they cared about winning the battle. The war was more important than any one person’s life. They were training us to give our lives. In the battle of Midway, there were seventy-five planes that took off after those Japanese ships. They knew they were never coming back, they didn’t have enough gas to get back. They were doing it, not to save their lives, but to give their lives. They were winning a war and everything was subordinate to that. 

Missionary Call

Up until now, in your church you may have gotten the impression that you get the missionary call and off you go. You lose all your possibilities of being a rich businessman or a great computer programmer because now God is going to waste your life as a missionary. Either that happens, or it doesn’t.  Either you’re called as a missionary, or you can just live your life. Try to get the best job possible. Try to marry the right person. Get the right kind of house. Get the right kind of car. Maybe get a boat, and just have a great time! “My this is really great, I just love God. The Lord has been so kind to me. I just want to glorify the Lord. The Lord has just taken my life and given me new beliefs, a new life, new friends, new vocabulary. He is so good, so good, so good, so good, so good, so good…" 

And God says, “Wait a minute, I didn’t give you these things to enjoy them merely, or simply to praise me. I gave you these things to fight a war and to give your life if necessary."

I don’t believe there is such a thing as a missionary call. Is there anybody here who has accepted Christ but not accepted his commission? If you have not accepted his commission you have not accepted Christ! You can’t divide between Christ and the work he is doing and the purposes he has. 

And God says, “Wait a minute, I didn’t give you these things to enjoy them merely, or simply to praise me. I gave you these things to fight a war and to give your life if necessary."

He who seeks to save his life will lose it

America today is a “save yourself” society if there ever was one. But does it really work? The underdeveloped societies suffer from one set of diseases: tuberculosis, malnutrition, pneumonia, parasites, typhoid, cholera, typhus, etc. Affluent America has virtually invented a whole new set of diseases: obesity, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, venereal disease, cirrhosis of the liver, drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, battered children, suicide, murder. Take your choice.

Labor-saving machines have turned out to be body-killing devices. Our affluence has allowed both mobility and isolation of the nuclear family and, as a result, our divorce courts, our prisons and our mental institutions are flooded. In saving ourselves we have nearly lost ourselves.

Now when Jesus said, “He who seeks to save his life will lose it,” he may have been referring to something like this. We really don’t have any basis for assuming that all God wants of us is to make each one of us a wonderful, glorious, worshipping believer. 1 John 3:8 says “The Son of God appeared for this purpose that he might destroy the works of the devil.” And “As my Father has sent me, even so I send you.”  John 20:21

The Bible more than any other thing in my life has really stopped and stunned and changed my life. And it’s something that you can’t laugh off.  I want to refer you to 2 Corinthians 5:15. He died for all so that they might have nice uniforms and a place to stay and food to eat and just get along wonderfully? No, that's not what it says. It says, “He died for all that they who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and rose again.” Do you know what that means? That means you have no options. You cannot say, "God has not called me." God has called you. You’re all part of the war effort. Let me read it again. “He died for all that they who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and rose again.”

What would happen to this world if more evangelical Christians were to realize that God blessed them with money in order to make them a blessing, not to pamper them?
~Roberta Winter