Unhelpful

Chick Publications wants you to be a better person. This is accomplished by twisting phrases to mean whatever the tract writer wants (a favorite obsession of fundamentalist religions everywhere), using fearmongering, outright deception, and scare tactics.

Open minded people everywhere share a common experience at cringing at the subreption within these texts. It reminds me of a story from my childhood.

In my neighborhood, we had something called “The Five Day Club” every summer. Some holier-than-thou proselytizer would have some volunteers from their church come into the neighborhood, round up all the little child-heathens, and tell us bible stories, morality fables, etc.

There was a rather perverse incentive program. We’d get candy for memorizing certain biblical verses and for bringing friends. At the end of each session (which seemed like hours but was probably only 90 minutes or so), lemonade and cookies were served. Even though I was young, say, 7 or so, I found it curious to be lectured on generosity followed by having one of the neighbor’s kids large, well-fed parents making sure we only took a single cookie.

To sum it up, it was kinda like AMWAY for Jesus children. In terms of cookies and candy, it was a smashing success; in terms of life lessons, it probably ended up teaching many of us lessons other than those intended.

I suppose this process was supposed to instill a sense of reverence of Jesus and the bible into us. What it ended up doing was teaching us that adults would give you candy for memorizing stuff that you didn’t really understand, and that if you let people tell you stories, you’d get cookies and drinks afterwards.

Being competetive boys, God’s Candy Competition wasn’t quite good enough. My cousins and friends would try to “out-do” each other by getting “saved” more than one another. Often, there was a pool party afterwards, during which we lorded our piety over one another.

“I was saved 24 times”

…I would feel bad because I was only saved eight times. I was a slacker before my time.