Trail to Hell

http://vimeo.com/27773475

The video that you can view at the link above scares the crap out of me.  Not the way that the producers were intending however.

A local church is using the Halloween season to put on an extremely graphic, dramatic portrayal of humans committing major sins as a way to "scare" people into "making a decision" for Jesus.

Attendees (you must be at least 12 years old) will see reenactments of drug abuse, drunk driving, porn addiction, abortion, homosexuality, and suicide.  As a result of being shocked by these grisly and disturbing images, the church webpage claims that there is a 60% rate of salvation. 

Their web-page says that 5000 people have come down the Trail in the past and that 3000 of them have committed their life to Jesus.  That seems like a staggering statistic and I am deeply afraid that many of those, who were scared into a confession of faith, did not have true repentance and regeneration as much as a deep sense of dread that they would end up in flames - thus their choice to invoke a "get out of hell free card."

Being born again isn't about being scared for your own well-being.  Its about acknowledging the depths of your own sin, your inability to get right with God, and the plan of salvation that culminates in Christ's atonement for you.  I fear that making so much out of these "big" sins may cause people to fail in seeing how depraved they are in their everyday envy and lust.

I am also very afraid that conversion by guilt or fear, when true, is harmful because it sets a new believer into a heretical mindset of moralism instead of an abiding love and trust of Jesus and God's grace.

The church uses Jude 23 as their proof text:

...save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. (ESV)

Of course, the church (like so many) pulls the passage out of context and uses it to make a point they want to make, not the point that the author intended.  In context, that passage is dealing with how the elect should handle false teachers.  It is directing us to "show mercy with fear," not in terms of scaring non-believers with scenes of grusome sin and images of eternal flame.  Rather it is saying, we should show mercy to the the false teachers because their coming was fortold and they don't have the gift of Christ...all the while, our mercy should be sprinkled with a healthy dose of fear...fear that we may be taken in by their lies.  Fear that their falsehoods would be associated with us in some way as we are merciful to them. 

The verse is about us having fear as we deal lovingly with false teachers, even as we hate their worldly teaching.  Its not a verse about being merciful to unbelievers by using fear tactics to scare them into largely nominal faith in Christ.

I know that, even in the midst of such confused methods, God is still active and there are individuals being born again.  I praise God for that.  I just wonder if there is a better, more biblical way of using our time and energy to reach the lost than a theatrical portrayal of horrible sins, in an effort to try and scare people into Heaven?