I routinely sell items on several websites (amazon.com. half.com and ebay). I like doing this for several reasons. It reduces clutter in my household and it provides a little extra cash flow at the same time. With every order sold I enclose a business card with my contact information on it so the buyer can, well, contact me, should the need arise. Now being a pastor my business card has church information printed on the front and a clear Gospel presentation on the back... but it still is "my" card.
I sold a book the other day and very quickly mailed it out to the buyer. I am always striving to go above and beyond and try to mail orders out the same or next business day (well before required by the listing website). I will sometimes ship 1st class instead of media mail if the cost isn't too prohibitive even though the buyer has only paid for the latter. Of course, I enclosed my business card.
Each of these websites has a place to give feedback concerning transactions. This particular website goes with a 5 point system. 5 being the highest. For my efforts in getting this person their book so quickly I got this feedback:
4 out of 5: "Religious business card enclosed. I did not like that."
To which I replied, Seller Response: "I enclose my business card with my information on it in case someone needs to contact me. How silly would it be for me to not use my own business card? How insecure do you have to be to be offended when a person encloses their business card? I am sorry they were so easily offended but I do not think its fair to rate me lower simply because they don't like my business card."
Now this may seem like much ado about nothing but is it? I routinely get business cards when I purchase on these sites, I get religious material sent to me, etc. I don't get bent out of shape about it and I don't "grade" the person on that but grade them rather on what you might expect: was the item as advertised, was it shipped in a timely fashion, etc.
If they send me religious material or even secular material I don't want I just toss it in file 13 and move on. So why would a person give less than excellent feedback when they got excellent service? Is it because they are insecure in their spiritual state and don't like to be reminded of it? Could it be they are under conviction of the Holy Spirit and it is hard to "kick against the pricks" (Acts 9:5)? Is it because they are so blinded by Satan that they must call evil good and good evil? Is it as John 3:19-20 puts it: And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
Hmmm. Makes you think doesn't it?
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I think the root of this is the fundamental attitude shift in this country to abolish, disprove or turn away anything with a Christian tone. There are a myriad of reasons why people do this, whether it is past pain from a bad church experience, atheistic upbringing, relativistic beliefs, or flat-out stubbornness and even wickedness and delight in sin.
I do think that you're right in the fact that the root effect of much of this trend is caused by the Holy Spirit convicting people of their wrong beliefs and thinking. They then push Him away because He reflects themselves as they are, and not as they would like to be, and as they see a reflection that they don't like, they try to make themselves look better and push that reflection away so that they and others don't have to see it.
And, they don't want to surrender to Jesus and accept Him as their Savior because they don't want to give up control and the ability they have to cover up their sins to look good to others and to keep that reflection away. I'm not a psychologist, but I just pretended to be one there.
By the way, you wrote a comment on my blog, and I just wanted to let you know that you have an awesome site. I'd like to sift through it some time and see if I can turn your sermon points into personal devotions / bible study.
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