Applying Dan Strange’s magnetic points to conversations with Roman Catholics

The following Vatican File is an excerpt from my forthcoming book Tell Your Catholic Friend. How To Have Gospel Conversations with Love (Brentwood, TN: B&H Books, 2025).

In my conversations with Catholic friends, I have found it useful to reference the five “magnetic points” expounded by British theologian Daniel Strange.[1] There are five fundamentals that all human beings are looking for and to which they are magnetically drawn. Because of their universal presence in people’s lives, they can be seen in Catholics.

According to Strange, each religion responds in various ways to these five questions. Their responses are points of attraction for people to be drawn to them. The questions are:

 

1. The search for totality: a way to connect to reality

2. The need for a norm: a way to live

3. The yearning for deliverance: a way out of oppression

4. The sense of destiny: a way to control

5. The reality of a higher power: a way to measure up to the supernatural

 

According to Strange, “these magnetic points act as a kind of ‘religious anatomy’ of fallen human beings.”[2] Other religions suppress God’s truth and seek to substitute it with an alternative account, resulting in a messy combination of beliefs and practices.

According to Strange, every religious conversation touches on one or more magnetic points. It is up to us to succeed in conveying the message of the Gospel by showing how the Good News is the right answer for relating to the world, living according to God’s will, being set free from sin, relying on divine benevolent providence, and living in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Every religion, Roman Catholicism included, provides improbable and insufficient answers to the magnetic points. The Gospel subverts these answers and fulfills the magnetic points. In the darkness of human existence, only the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ can bring light.

Truth is found in Him. This is the complete and living power for people, the power long suppressed and rejected.

Dan Strange comments: “[T]he gospel of Jesus Christ does not bypass the magnetic points, but is the subversive fulfillment of the magnetic points.”[3] 

The Gospel does not replace the points but presents a Person, Jesus Christ, who fulfills them and grants them to those who believe: in fact, “our hope is not in a ‘what’ but in a ‘who.’”[4] Here is how he does it.

1. Totality. Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much” (John 15:5). He connects us to Himself, freeing us from our isolation.

2. Norm. Jesus says, “Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17). He provides a moral norm for life and death, based on His own character, without degrading into moralism.

3. Deliverance. Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He alone brings a finished deliverance; we cannot perform it ourselves and are liberated from guilt and shame.

4. Destiny. Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). For those who trust Him, their destination is not enslavement but wholeness in resurrected bodies.

5. Higher power. Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). He is the Highest Power who became a human being we can know and love personally.

It is up to the church to be a magnetic people, living out the Gospel in a way that testifies to God’s authority, God’s control, and God’s presence in and over everything.

In our conversations with friends, Strange suggests four moves to employ the magnetic points: entering our neighbor’s world, exploring his belief system, exposing its weaknesses and faults, and evangelizing by presenting Jesus, always communicating the Gospel “holistically and humanely.”[5] 

Strange’s magnetic points also apply specifically to our Gospel conversations with Catholic friends. A few examples can be briefly mentioned, especially as far as the points related to totality, norm, and higher power.

Totality. Roman Catholicism provides a sense of belonging to a bigger story and community. Catholics feel a part of something historical, global, cultural, and institutional.

Unfortunately, the totality Roman Catholicism offers is not grounded in the biblical Gospel and has multiple cracks in it.

Often, Catholics become disillusioned with the institution, develop skepticism, and look for totality either in family traditions that are embedded in religion or secular options.

Jesus Christ grants a far better and deeper identity. He gives us a place in His historical and global family.

In biblical terms, we become a branch among many grafted into the vineyard (John 15:5), living stones within the spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5), ears of wheat in God’s field (1 Corinthians 3:9), sheep within an innumerable flock (John 10:16), members never disconnected from the whole body (1 Corinthians 12:27).

Without neglecting the particular identity of each person, the biblical vision is strictly collective. In short, submitting to Jesus’s leadership as our head involves becoming members of His body (1 Corinthians 12:12).

As a community of believers, the church, as imperfect as it is, is nonetheless our spiritual home where fellowship and support can be found.

Norm. Over the centuries, Rome has developed a detailed moral code for the faithful. There are norms for all aspects and moments of life, often presented in moralistic terms.

To be a good Christian, you must perform these norms as your duty. In our contemporary world, many Catholics want to be disentangled from the moral framework of the church.

They experience it as cumbersome, if not oppressive, an imposed and impersonal code. The opportunity is there for us to present Christ as the One who fulfilled God’s requirements and gives the good life we long for but cannot find apart from Him (John 10:10).

Christ’s truth liberates us and gives us the desire to follow Him and His ways.

Higher power. Many Roman Catholics relate to the supernatural formally through Jesus Christ but practically through the mediation of Mary and the saints and in the context of ritual acts or ceremonies such as the “sacramentals” that may include blessed water or holy oil.

Access to the supernatural, including miracles, visions, and the afterlife, is mediated by channels other than Christ alone and is often intertwined with superstitious practices.

The Gospel invites us to fear God alone, who is the Lord of all, and presents Jesus Christ as the only one who died, rose again, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us.

Jesus has conquered death (1 Corinthians 15:55-57) and has given us a spirit not of fear but of power, love, and sound judgment (2 Timothy 1:7).

Leonardo De Chirico, theologian and evangelical pastor in Rome.

[1] Daniel Strange, Making Faith Magnetic (Epsom: The Good Book Company, 2021). One needs to be aware that Strange draws and develops the five points from the work of Dutch missiologist Johan Herman Bavinck (1895-1964), whose many years of missionary experience in Indonesia have been a source of precious missiological insights.

[2] Strange, Making Faith Magnetic, p. 27.

[3] Strange, Making Faith Magnetic, p. 88.

[4] Strange, Making Faith Magnetic, p. 89.

[5] Strange, Making Faith Magnetic, p. 93.