Well I agree that we need to remind people the stakes are high, but I honestly think the 1980's RUINED Christianity for a lot of people. All the hell and fire and brimstone televangelists and Born-Again folks running around screaming from the rooftops about Beelzebub, the lake of fire, and getting saved while cheating on their wives, collecting obscene amounts of money from gullible people, and living scandal finally affirmed what liberal atheists and agnostics had opined about for years---Christianity is a hypocritical bunch of hot air. The more we focus on the flames and sulfur, it seems the less we get through to people.
Good example is the Garden of Eden. The West focuses so much on God, in his FURY and anger, thrusting Adam and Eve out of paradise to give them a firm kick in the butt and teach them a lesson and punish their idiocy/disobedience. In the East we focus on the two trees---one is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the other is the Tree of Immortality. God did not want Adam and Eve to immortalize their sinful nature by eating tree 2 after tree 1, so he expelled them to protect them. It was for their own good, not wrath or fury or anger. God is impassible.
Most people that come to Orthodoxy who want the Ancient Faith and not some modern-concocted individualist interpretation are THRILLED to hear of a loving God, a Father, not a monster. God is love, and our own ego and sin put us in the prison. I tend to focus on the John the Baptist idea of dying to self over the "Sataaaaaaaaan!" evangelical television guy in the white suit yelling about!
