Tip #20 Don't Tract, Interact.
Jun. 7th, 2015 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastI think one of the core attitude problems of a lot of evangelists and apologists is the expectation that you can affect without being affected, change others without changing yourself. Being already a true believer of (insert true faith here), you're not the one that needs to change. And, if you do, you're sure God will achieve that, not some non-believer that just needs to get right with said deity.
That can be part of what leads people to stick to a script over having an evolving conversation, what leads people to reply with dismissive semantic arguments rather than interact with the substance, what leads people to refuse to acknowledge error. It can also be what leads to more blatant examples, such as drive-by posts on the web-forums of non-believers or...
Or Tracts.
There are a number of kinds of tracts, each kind both a special snowflake of failure and sharing in the general failure of tractdom.
There is the straightforward biblical excerpt tract, unadorned save by, potentially, some illustration. This possesses, at the same time, both humility and hubris. It doesn't add anything to the excerpt. It just presents text. But, it does assume that someone who will pick it up has A. never heard the claims therein before and B. will convert based only having first noticed that such claims exist.
Some tracts attempt trickery. For instance, you can purchase, in gross, little fake $50s. They're not counterfeit currency, because they're obviously fake before someone attempts to spend them. They're just meant to trick the subject into picking it up and then getting A. the message that there are more important things than money and B. a bible verse.
Of course, this has the same failure as above. But, it compounds that with a lie... one that can be quite malicious. Someone told me of a time they were in desperate need of money, not for some special indulgence but in order to be able to eat for the rest of that week. Said someone found a fifty dollar bill and found, for the moment, an amazing sense of relief... only to have reality crash down around ears.
By the way, there have been some reports, by waiters, of people using these in the place of a tip. If you have done so, please specify your church so that it can be shunned by the community until fumigated of such blatant-yet-oblivious self-righteousness.
There are still more types yet, but none more full of failure than the chick tract. Jack Chick has written, over past few decades, many a tract on many a topic, all from a very conservative, protestant, anti-catholic, anti-Muslim, anti-evolution, anti-feminism, anti-... you get the point. All that hatred would be merely off-putting, if these tracts weren't filled with an amazing amount of factual error, misunderstanding of human nature, and heaping helpings of hubris.
If these tracts were sold in a comic-book shop, purchasers would think them exaggerated parodies of the way conservative Christians view the world and expect it to operate. But, they're not, so purchasers don't. No, they're left around so that someone can pick them up at random and learn dinosaurs are dragons, that D&D is a tool of the devil, that homosexuality is a choice, that all rock and roll music is from the devil and sounds the same (including Christian rock), etc.
Chick tracts leave the one who picks them up, at first out of mere curiosity then out of morbid curiosity, a choice. One can either laugh that people think this is, in any way, an accurate description of reality, or cry in pity for such people.
All tracts involve the use of a basic failure to acknowledge non-believers as people, rather than characters in one's fantasy of "bringing people to ____" without even so much effort as talking to their faces.
It's an egotistical and lazy fantasy of cheap goodness and its use just makes your faith look worse and worse for the association.
No, you must interact. You must be prepared to be, as you attempt to affect others, affected yourself. You must not treat that as a bad thing. That's the basic notion of interaction, of fellowship, of being a person dealing with persons.
That can be part of what leads people to stick to a script over having an evolving conversation, what leads people to reply with dismissive semantic arguments rather than interact with the substance, what leads people to refuse to acknowledge error. It can also be what leads to more blatant examples, such as drive-by posts on the web-forums of non-believers or...
Or Tracts.
There are a number of kinds of tracts, each kind both a special snowflake of failure and sharing in the general failure of tractdom.
There is the straightforward biblical excerpt tract, unadorned save by, potentially, some illustration. This possesses, at the same time, both humility and hubris. It doesn't add anything to the excerpt. It just presents text. But, it does assume that someone who will pick it up has A. never heard the claims therein before and B. will convert based only having first noticed that such claims exist.
Some tracts attempt trickery. For instance, you can purchase, in gross, little fake $50s. They're not counterfeit currency, because they're obviously fake before someone attempts to spend them. They're just meant to trick the subject into picking it up and then getting A. the message that there are more important things than money and B. a bible verse.
Of course, this has the same failure as above. But, it compounds that with a lie... one that can be quite malicious. Someone told me of a time they were in desperate need of money, not for some special indulgence but in order to be able to eat for the rest of that week. Said someone found a fifty dollar bill and found, for the moment, an amazing sense of relief... only to have reality crash down around ears.
By the way, there have been some reports, by waiters, of people using these in the place of a tip. If you have done so, please specify your church so that it can be shunned by the community until fumigated of such blatant-yet-oblivious self-righteousness.
There are still more types yet, but none more full of failure than the chick tract. Jack Chick has written, over past few decades, many a tract on many a topic, all from a very conservative, protestant, anti-catholic, anti-Muslim, anti-evolution, anti-feminism, anti-... you get the point. All that hatred would be merely off-putting, if these tracts weren't filled with an amazing amount of factual error, misunderstanding of human nature, and heaping helpings of hubris.
If these tracts were sold in a comic-book shop, purchasers would think them exaggerated parodies of the way conservative Christians view the world and expect it to operate. But, they're not, so purchasers don't. No, they're left around so that someone can pick them up at random and learn dinosaurs are dragons, that D&D is a tool of the devil, that homosexuality is a choice, that all rock and roll music is from the devil and sounds the same (including Christian rock), etc.
Chick tracts leave the one who picks them up, at first out of mere curiosity then out of morbid curiosity, a choice. One can either laugh that people think this is, in any way, an accurate description of reality, or cry in pity for such people.
All tracts involve the use of a basic failure to acknowledge non-believers as people, rather than characters in one's fantasy of "bringing people to ____" without even so much effort as talking to their faces.
It's an egotistical and lazy fantasy of cheap goodness and its use just makes your faith look worse and worse for the association.
No, you must interact. You must be prepared to be, as you attempt to affect others, affected yourself. You must not treat that as a bad thing. That's the basic notion of interaction, of fellowship, of being a person dealing with persons.
no subject
Date: 2017-03-11 05:44 pm (UTC)