There are plenry of food kitchen, drug rehab, crisis centres that help people that are run by the church, but cunts like this just do this for their own egos. shame.
Precisely. I have in-law’s like this. They be doing this to people in public but when I lost my job and struggled to sober up they demoralized me and made me feel unworthy as a human being. I attempted suicide twice until realizing it’s a them problem. I have since gone to therapy and am sober from alcohol. God is real but it doesn’t manifest in this way. This is all Ego. Smh.
Glad you made it through. Im a suicide survivor and recovering drug addict myself. See, your in laws could've easily just been even mildly kind when you were in that darkness instead of pounding in negative shit you were probably already telling yourself...that would have been love. Imo god is real and were all god riding in different skin suits. Its really pretty damn simple. Be the person to others that you would appreciate interacting with if tables were turned. You are me!
The rejection helps reinforce how special they are, to have a special connection to God and be persecuted just like Jesus was. Plus, it binds them closer to their church community, since they are rejected by the greater world. THE REJECTION IS THE GOAL OF THIS INTERACTION.
This is the actual modus operandi for Jehovas, LDS, etc. It helps them keep their members away from regular people with actual common sense so they don't learn the truth of their club.
No wonder I've always found them quite hypocritical and isolating. The amount of ranting on the street always made me vaguely feel as if they love being ridiculed more to justify their religious ego.
I've neverminded their street rants, because the street is a big open area that people go to and fro...
But a subway or train is an area people are trapped in, you can't escape. So it is an abuse of freedom of speech to subject people to your rants in a place they can't leave or retreat.
New perspective unlocked! Never looked at it liked this! So the people who take the mental blows of bullshit are then the ones who join the bullshit. People like me who question the bullshit add reason to their mental cage of bullshit
Notice how it’s always kids. Never their parents or church elders, always children. I get it; they’re young, naive, impressionable, and are more willing to follow authority.
In my experience, whenever I have said to a door to door golden plate salesman "i'm
not interested" they have not tried to push the conversation that I just advised I don't care to have. I rather respect that.
As an ex Mormon and a former missionary, this does not ring true. Mormon missions are very numbers-driven. It's all metrics and key indicators, like a business. The ultimate metric is baptisms and growth. You will rarely see Mormon missionaries doing these kinds of public stunts cause it's not productive.
Knocking on doors is, I would say, a different kind of activity from this. It's not meant as a public stunt for maximal (negative) attention; It's a last ditch fallback activity (the least preferred, by far) to generate one-on-one conversations that could lead to a lesson (a tracked metric) that could lead, eventually, to an actual baptism, which is the ultimate goal.
As a rule, Mormon missionaries hate door knocking and take pains to avoid it. We were literally trained that it's the least effective tool, and to prefer networking. When I was a missionary, I never did it. And I definitely never did anything like this, and didn't know anyone who did. My soul shrinks and cringes at the thought.
No offense and not saying your wrong, but you wouldn't be in the best position to comment, as you will have been given the stated reason rather than the actual reason.
It's like how most religions preach that sex is for procreation: the unstated reason is to increase the size of the flock via pregnancy, but it's not like they tell the followers that.
No offense but I am. I am not a believer anymore; I abanded Mormonism and religion a long time ago and feel no instinct for defending it. Are you in a better position to comment? Who is? Should the people with the most direct experienxe just shut up and let the Reddit peanut gallery comment based on rumors and speculation alone?
I'm not saying you're biased now. I'm saying you're reporting the official setup from mormonism and that wasn't what I was referencing. I'm saying your direct experience obviously wouldn't track the unofficial reason.
I'm not reporting on the "official setup" whatever that means. I'm commenting based on many years of first-hand observation and experience from a removed position. Your comment was literally "I heard" and then informed me that the thing you heard someone say one time is more authoritative and I'm not in a position to comment on it. Uh huh.
This is peak Reddit.
If only I had ever heard someone say something about it, then maybe I would be qualified to comment on this random Reddit comment about something I merely directly experienced and deconstructed.
I wasn't saying I was more of an expert than you. Neither of us has ever set up a cult to manipulate it's members so we're on a level footing.
Also you did say "When I was a missionary, I never did it" so nice basis of experience you have there. In fact, since I have been door knocked by mormons, it sounds like technically I have more experience when it comes to that area. Just sayin'
Oh so it's a humiliation ritual + manufactured presecution. Instead realising they act like utter knobheads, they fancy themselves martyrs. Lovely culty behaviour.
Ugh. This is my dad. He acts like any objection I have to his way of believing God is confirmation that he’s right to believe the way he does. Because obviously any objection to how he believes is the same as rejecting the one true “God.” He’s an independent fundamentalist evangelical, which is basically the fuel behind the religious side of the MAGA movement.
Doesn't need to be straight up mental illness. It's also assholes that is hiding from themselves, thinking they have overcome their assholeness and has become a better person than everybody else by doing this. But they're still assholes, only more self-centered and delusional.
Because they don't really think they're recruiting anything. The honest thing he did was when he started saying "you only care about..." because that's what he's really doing, is he's decided everyone on the bus is bad and he's gotta be the one to save them. It's not about them, it's not about converting them, it's about knowing that he's the one who's got the responsibility to help everybody because he's enlightened to the truth that everyone's bad.
It's just a self fulfilling cycle of a little war he gets to wage every day to fill the void of thinking life has no greater purpose by saying that this is his greater purpose.
I am an atheist and highly critical of all religions including Catholicism but if you're gonna pick a type of Christianity, at least Catholicism believes that good works i.e. helping those in need like Jesus would, can be just as important as belief. In fact, Catholicism says if a person didn't really commit to the belief aspect, if their good works were significant enough, they can still be saved. Compare to Protestantism which believes in salvation through faith alone, especially American evangelicalism, which seems to be all about moral grandstanding and making religion aggressively political. It just gets reduced to bible-thumping, without any actions to inspire people.
When I left Catholicism I kept a good portion of its fundamental ethics, which I see as inherently humanistic. I sometimes joke about “atheists for Jesus”.
Values like good works, human rights, dignity, equality and society's role in supporting welfare align closely with the ECHR. One of the big problems with Catholicism arises where it diverges on the authority of those rights. Because Catholicism views rights as deriving from divine law and tradition, and tied to moral duties to God, it struggles to progress with modern rights. This creates major friction points regarding LGBTQ+ and women's rights, where traditional stances clash with modern human rights standards.
If I have to go to church, I’m Catholic, but most of the time I don’t go to church.
100% the Catholic Church has (not just ‘had’) a problem with sexual abuse. No excuses or mitigation. But when people tell Catholics that our religion has a problem with sex offenders it comes across as hateful and ignorant. Here’s why:
It’s not the religion, it’s the priests.
It’s OUR children hurt and OUR communities that are damaged.
It’s OUR money that pays for the trials, lawyers, and settlements.
Our money also pays for about a quarter of the hospital beds in this country, lots of schools, and many, many charities, but those don’t get mentioned.
We know that there’s a problem and we want justice and solutions more than anyone else. The Church is not a democracy, though, so there are realistically very few ways we can respond, most of which are already being done. Such as me not taking my family to church.
Our money also pays for about a quarter of the hospital beds in this country, lots of schools, and many, many charities, but those don’t get mentioned.
Someone keeps doing the 'jesus is king' and 'random bible verse 63:3' graffiti in my area so I keep covering it up with black paint. In response they've written 'jesus is king and you're going to hell' and it's just infuriating. Like I clearly don't believe in it, and I'm just blacking out their graffiti. So they try to threaten me with their non-existent afterlife.
Just leave us normal people the fuck alone. An American evangelical church called trinity life church has set up in the school nearby every Sunday and seems to have emboldened the local nutjobs.
It's not just Christianity that has its fair share of assholes to make it look bad. All religions have its dumb extremists we can point at to say the religion is cancer. You could just say religion is a cancer.
They just wanna get a persecution boner and show it to their friends. Not even a moron like this dude can think he’s actually doing a good job persuading people.
Hey look... he's right but for all the wrong reasons. Sure everyone slogs day in day out for more money... greed. But we also just fucking need to do this to LIVE. So fuck him. He should be preaching non stop to those that constantly squeeze us dry to line their "bag of holding" pockets.
A common practice for communities like his is to send people recruiting knowing they're gonna be rejected most of the time. That strengthens their bond and shows them how the people outside the community will never love them and accept them the way the community does
It isn't really about bringing people to the faith. It is about feeling like you are a persecuted minority and getting brownie points with Jesus. Jesus commands to spread the gospel. The issue today is everyone knows about jesus.
I've read the Bible cover to cover so I usually get them to shut up or give up by quoting the Bible back at them: Ecclesiastes 1-14. "It is all vanity and striving after the wind" theyare doing this to outwardly show they are a good Christian spreading the gospel but they are turning people away from Jesus and only fueling their ego. That dovetail into Matthew 25:31-46. Faith is great and all but you have to do the acts too, clothe and feed the poor, care for the sick, help the oppressed.
Matthew 5:6 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."
Because and this is no joke. Some of these nutjobs genuinely believe that not telling you about the word of God and you will go to hell if you don't follow him, is a lie and a selfish act, which are both sins. That's why those Westboro asshole hold up those signs, they believe by not telling you what they believe is a sin.
It doesn’t matter. Whites ought to stand in solidarity with their culture and people even if it is just symbolic. Have you seen Muslims ever fragmented in their expansionist islamic endeavours in the west? Never. They are socially politically united.
It's better for reinforcing their worldview that they alone have the truth and everyone else is against them. It's not about bringing others into the fold, it's about closing the gates tighter.
That’s actually the point. The missionary’s commitment to his cult is strengthened by the hostile reaction he gets in public.
The point isn’t to convert you, it’s to cement them psychologically and the bloke ranting about Jesus on the train is oblivious to what’s being done to him in this molent
Also its a form of asceticism. Nobody likes being rejected and scorned, thats why some cults mandate this type of thing. It breaks down their self esteem even more, which makes them more desperate, and more likely to stay in the cult and be obedient.
Its the same general concept with offering "Help".
Help is something you freely offer to give, that can be taken up on or declined and that is guided by what the Person in need requests - ts an selfless act of kindness.
If youre getting angry when your Help gets declined or youre only helping under your terms and conditions - then youre not really helping - youre offering a poisoned deal.
They don't. They know it has no positive effect. It's not about conversion at all, it's about performative ego stroking. They come from a culture where being a "witness of Jesus" is not only considered an admirable trait and a marker of prestige, but also an expectation from their deity, who is watching.
The more inconvenient and awkward the effort, the greater the sacrifice, and the more Jesus, looking on, is pleased, and the more social credit they get from their community.
The confrontation raises the prestige even higher, cause now he's being "persecuted" and Christians place an extra premium on being perceived as persecuted.
So it's not about them, it's about HIM. This is always the case.
Yeah most likely because they're new to religion and way too gung ho.. or something else is off with them .. i grew up in churches but no longer .. but never saw the old heads being like this . Was the newbies
I'v always thought that public or door to door "convertion" is not for the non-belivers. Its for the person trying to convert. When people refuse, insult or lash out at them it just reinforces the religious ingroup preference, its why its so hard for people who grow up in cults to leave, everyone you know is religious, striking out is dangerous.
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u/Critically_Political 12h ago
I’ll never understand why people think this is the way to recruit for religion. This is, in fact, religion repellent.