People Should Not Persuade Others to Join Their Religion Essay

I agree with the statement ‘People should not persuade others to join their religion’ because it’s the persons choice. Everyone has the right to choose what religion they want, or don’t want, based on their own reasons and feelings and no one should try and influence them into choosing one religion that they may not actually believe in but have been persuaded by others that it is the best religion to choose. Traditional Christian Missionaries would most likely disagree with what the statement says. They believe that they should go around spreading the gospel to persuade people to join Christianity because it is a job that God wants them to do. They take passages from the bible like John 14; No one can get to God except through Jesus, and John 3:14; Whoever believes in Jesus will not die but have eternal life, literally and use them to convince others that they have to join the Christian faith because it is the only way they can truly be connected with God. I do not agree with this point of view because if they are following their faith to the letter, then most religions teach that God will always be there for you even if you don’t have a faith so you don’t have to believe in Jesus to connect with God. However the fact that they have based what they believe in on the bible shows at least that they are trying to do what they believe is right and what God has told them and what they are supposed to do. Alternatively, modern missionaries might also agree with the statement because, instead of trying to persuade people to join Christianity, they do good work and evangelise because they believe it’s what God wants them to do. They believe God does not need them to convince others to join Christianity but just to spread his word to everybody because they are all one in Jesus Christ no matter what their faith is and as long as they keep spreading the gospel rather than using it to encourage people to join their faith they are doing what God wants and if people do convert to Christianity because of it then it has been their choice to do so. I think this is a much better view of what a missionary should do because it means they can still spread the word of God to people who might need to know about it so it can help them and they can still do the good work that God wants them to but they are not trying to be bias to any religion and they do not take away anybodies right to choose the way that they feel or believe. Atheists do not believe in any religion or God which is why some people may believe that they need to be persuaded to a become religious because they  think everyone needs to believe in God or a God and everyone needs to have a faith. However I don’t think that atheists would want to have anybody trying to persuade them to join their faith because they do not think any God exists. They may also argue to people who say that everyone has to have a faith that their faith is that they believe that the Wholly Other is not real. They would probably agree with the statement if people have chosen what they want to believe in then people should accept what they have chosen. Overall I agree with what the statement says because it is everyone’s human right to have a choice about everything they believe and other people trying to change that shouldn’t happen.