Posted July 28, 2026
Today’s headline is not a theoretical question. A recent Washington Post article reports that “self-described evangelists are seizing the opportunity to share their faith with other passengers, whether fellow travelers asked for the word or not.”
Such passengers constitute the quintessential “captive audience.” As one airplane evangelist explains, “When I have a gift and I have a life raft, if you’re drowning, I want to give you that life raft so you can be saved.”
Jesus said of himself, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18). If everyone on earth has a terminal disease and I have the only cure, shouldn’t I do everything I can to share it? From preaching on airplanes to witnessing to diners in restaurants to knocking on my neighbors’ doors, what could I be doing that is more urgent than sharing Christ with as many people as I can?
And yet, if surveys are to be believed, 80 percent of Christians do not consistently witness, and less than 2 percent are involved in the ministry of evangelism. I think such reticence has something to do with what is in the blockbuster movie The Odyssey. Or, more accurately, what is not in the film.
To make his version of Homer’s epic poem, Christopher Nolan enlisted a remarkable all-star cast. But here’s who is not in the movie: the gods upon whom Homer’s original work depends.
If you know the film but not the book, you’d never know that Zeus, Achilles, Poseidon, Hermes, Helios, Laertes, and Princess Nausicaa are not just mythical figures, but actual entities who interact in very real ways with Odysseus and his men. Their omission was intentional for Nolan, as he explained:
One of the things I needed to crack was how to approach mythological elements in a sort of real-world way. The big breakthrough creatively in thinking about the gods was that everything that is now explained by science was once supernatural. Lightning, thunder, earthquakes, volcanoes . . . people are literally seeing gods everywhere; not even the evidence of gods, they’re seeing the actions of gods. . . . the evidence of the supernatural is all around these people. It’s very much part of their lives. And I think it’s quite a lot of fun to tap into that.
Take note: the “supernatural” that was once considered real is now “fun.”
William Butler Yeats famously wrote:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The last two lines explain the calamity of those that precede them.
Radical jihadists are convinced that the Allah they serve is real and wants them to attack the “infidels” they believe are attacking Islam. For example, the suspect in the Berlin attack tried to join the Islamic State, and a man accused of stabbing two people near Manhattan’s Central Park reportedly yelled “Allahu Akbar” during the attacks. No one could say that the al Qaeda terrorists who perpetrated 9/11 or the Hamas criminals who invaded Israel on October 7 lacked “passionate intensity.”
However, if you and I “lack all conviction,” we will fail to counter their abhorrent ideology with biblical truth. We will shrink from paying a price to share Jesus because we’re not convinced in our hearts that sharing the gospel is worth such a price.
To be clear: I’m not advocating for preaching to passengers on airplanes, but only because I question whether this is effective, not because I doubt whether sharing Christ is urgently essential. The great missionary Hudson Taylor was right: “The Great Commission is not an option to be considered; it is a command to be obeyed.”
However, I’m not simply asking us to try harder to do better.
In his letter to the Magnesians, St. Ignatius of Antioch (died AD 108) wrote: “Now that we are his disciples, let us learn to lead Christian lives.” How? “Put aside the old worn-out leaven which has grown old and sour, and turn to the new leaven, which is Jesus Christ.”
Note that Ignatius did not identify the “new leaven” as teachings about Jesus or belief in him. The leaven “is Jesus Christ” himself.
Jesus is obviously the greatest evangelist who ever lived. When our lives are fully yielded to him, he loves through our compassion, speaks through our words, and persuades through our actions. He walks our planet in our bodies as he did in his own, doing through us today all that he did then (1 Corinthians 12:27).
This is why Jesus could say, “Whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do” (John 14:12). In his incarnate body, he changed the world forever. In two billion Christians, what could he do?
Healthy children grow to be adults. Healthy Christians grow to be like Christ. Your Father says your life is not fully formed “until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19).
How will you make his aspiration yours today?
“A Christian is a mind through which Christ thinks, a heart through which Christ loves, a voice through which Christ speaks, and a hand through which Christ helps.” —St. Augustine
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