thanks, hops.
I'm a Christian, but have Jewish ancestors on my mother's side. My will divides my estate, if there is one at the material time

, among the Christian peace churches and Yad Vashem [after making provision for the care of any surviving pets].
I don't evangelize for three reasons, all of which I must emphasize are my reasons, not anything I'm advocating to anyone else.
One, first and foremost, is that I'm simply not credible. I'm much much too flawed and damaged to be a poster child for the transforming power of anything [except the negative transforming power of prolonged emotional abuse, which I wouldn't recommend to anyone ever]. And I know it. I'd be a counter-advertisement to anything I ever tried to sell on that basis. Assuming I could manage to get even one sentence out without laughing myself silly at the sheer nerve of it, for me.
Next, and this is controversial, I - personally! this is just me talking now, and only my opinion! - have always been ill at ease with anything that feels
to me like 'marketing God'. Even a whiff of deity-as-commodity is enough to make me head for the hills. That's partly why I've been unable to find a church; church-as-commodity affects me the same way. I'd have made a lovely Welsh or Irish anchoress, around say 1200, but I don't do well at all in the here and now, with this attitude of mine.
Third, and this is really the rock-bottom core of it for me: that free will thingy. I have read the Old and New Testaments through from Gen 1:1 to Rev 22:21, in multiple translations and paraphrases, and the one thing I find constant throughout is that free will thing. To me, it is the whole point of the whole thing. We were created
free to choose. We remain
free to choose. If one looks at the gospels one does not see Y'shua ben Yosef engaged in compulsion; one sees teaching, informing, frustrated impatience at times, but huge amounts of forbearance and the kind of love that extends itself and serves. He never tried to force anyone to believe anything. He simply told them things, behaved consistently with what he taught, and left it to them to choose.
If I can put it this way, it appears - to me - that Christ himself considered human freedom to be sacred. Of course, psychologically, there are sound reasons for this: a choice made under compulsion, whether brainwashing or the desire to impress one's boyfriend, is no choice at all. It is unlikely ever to be internalized... which is why cults are so rigid and authoritarian! ... but the bottom line is, if I have understood all this aright, then our freedom is sacred,
even to God! -- and in that context, the making of some choices are really much more like sacraments than like anything else.
Thanks for letting me get this off my chest. It seemed like the appropriate time and place. I prefer to talk freely of what I believe, but that is because it would be both dishonest and disingenuous for me to do otherwise, especially here where the link between healing and belief is so brightly illuminated as we work together.
It is up to others to decide for themselves how much of my talk is reflected in my walk, and what that signifies.