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Merged Chick Tracts

What always gets me about this tracks is that

1. It assumes that no one who isn't Christian actually knows the story of Jesus Christ. They recognize the name but know nothing of the story behind him. The only reason they don't believe is their complete ignorance of what the gospels say, to the point that they don't even know the crucifixion aspect of it.

2. Upon hearing a few sentence retelling of the Jesus story from a complete stranger, these people are instantly converted. They just instantly believe it because someone they've never met before told it to them.
 
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A character of a different religion not drawn as a caricature with distorted and exaggerated features? I don't believe it. I will need to see the provenance of this comic before I accept it as a true Chick Tract.
 
In the 11th panel: "My cousin died in the tower because of you people." Nine years later and people are still saying this. Mark Twain was right - "There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce."
 
I'm amazed at how he can be kind enough to assume that not all muslims agreed with the attacks and can be good people, yet at the same time say they will all burn in hell without jesus and are incapable of good deeds for non-muslims.
Which is as far as I know the quran an actual lie, I seem to recall that good deeds are an even more integral part of islam than of christianity and I've never heard that these good deeds should be limited to muslims.

Of course, according to him everyone not following his subsect of christianity is outright evil and incapable of any form of altruism, but its nice to see he doesnt discriminate between us sinners. We're all equally depraved to him.
 
Schrodinger's Cat said:
2. Upon hearing a few sentence retelling of the Jesus story from a complete stranger, these people are instantly converted. They just instantly believe it because someone they've never met before told it to them.
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The Sociologist Rodney Stark has done extensive studies on conversions to various religions (and Christianity in particular). He's found that although there are often large immediate emotional responses to large revivals and evangelism from strangers the retention rate and commitment is very short lived. On the other hand, by far the most successfull and long-term commitments / conversions to a religion are when contact and information is shared between family and friends - from one respected / like / loved person to another.

I know ... it's shocking.

Of course, for those of you who don't want Christianity spread effectively the good news is for many of the more evangelistic churches they seem to put the majority of the time / money / resources into evangelizing strangers.
 
Here's a story you might find interesting. (Keep in mind I don't look at various people as categorized as "going to hell" / "not going to hell". And even back in the 1990's I didn't. Also keep in mind - according to Jack Chick I, as not being a True Christian, will be burning in the flames with apparently most other people. :) ) ...

In the early 90's when I was volunteering with a church youth group one of our activites was to go to the city and go up to strangers and do a religious survey. There were a few reasons: 1) to get the teens used to talking to strangers about their faith (Huh? Don't we teach kids to not talk to strangers? Anyway .... ) 2) To learn about the variety of beliefs out there, and 3) Ultimately to ask them if they've ever heard the gospel and would like to hear it.

For our group's responses there was about 1/3 who didn't want to talk, 1/3 who were happy to share what they believed, but not hear what we believed, and interestingly 1/3 who had heard something about Jesus, but weren't religious and didn't really know it. They actually listened. (although none were converted.).

The discussion that stands out the most to me was the guy who turned out to be a Muslim. I asked him questions about his faith and he asked some about mine. He was adament that Muslims were supposed to show respect to Christians and Jews (People of the Book he called them). He respected Jesus, but had never read abut him. It wasn't too long of a discussion as I didn't know enough about Islam to ask more questions and he didn't have many more questions of me (although he said he'd read about Jesus in the Bible at his hotel).
 
I guess I'm jaded, but the most shocking thing to me was the "raiment (clothes)" part. Does Chick think people don't know what "raiment" means? Or that if they don't know, they won't consult a dictionary? It's an old-fashioned word, yes, but no more so than much of Bible-speak. Or did he think it sounded dirty, that someone who didn't know the word would think it was something obscene? "OMG, they took his raiment! Just like on that website I showed you!"
 
A Christian Sceptic said:
The Sociologist Rodney Stark has done extensive studies on conversions to various religions (and Christianity in particular). He's found that although there are often large immediate emotional responses to large revivals and evangelism from strangers the retention rate and commitment is very short lived. On the other hand, by far the most successfull and long-term commitments / conversions to a religion are when contact and information is shared between family and friends - from one respected / like / loved person to another.

I know ... it's shocking.

Of course, for those of you who don't want Christianity spread effectively the good news is for many of the more evangelistic churches they seem to put the majority of the time / money / resources into evangelizing strangers.
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I'd be willing to bet that a large number of conversions in the US are due to marriage between people of different faiths. How devout the conversion is will always be open to argument. Paris is worth a Mass, so maybe that nice girl in Accounts Receivable is, too.

Although as a lapsed Catholic I'm always somewhat shocked by how casually some denominations of Protestantism convert--I've known many who just start going to a different denomination's church because "it's close enough". Is there no brand loyalty?
 
A Christian Sceptic said:
On the other hand, by far the most successfull and long-term commitments / conversions to a religion are when contact and information is shared between family and friends - from one respected / like / loved person to another.

I know ... it's shocking.
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Its not, its a nightmare, my mother has enough awful things to think about me already without adding sinning and not going to church to the list
:D
 
TragicMonkey said:
Although as a lapsed Catholic I'm always somewhat shocked by how casually some denominations of Protestantism convert--I've known many who just start going to a different denomination's church because "it's close enough". Is there no brand loyalty?
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Well - maybe this will clear things up (or not) but as a person who's gone from church to church of various denominations trying to find a good match, I don't look at it as "converting" to each new church's particular denomination. True - we've (my wife and I) mainly have gone to various churches on the protestant side so maybe the hop from Catholic to Protestant (or vice versa) might be seen as more of converting, but within the Protestant side it doesn't appear to be quite the same.

And the closeness of a church can be very important - as we've gone to a church we agreed nearly 100% theologically, but it was not in our community and we never felt part of it or could be that involved in it. We now go to a church that we don't agree with near as much (but we agree enough with to be comfortable in) and it has more of our friends and community members in so we enjoy it more.

Of course - that church we went to outside of our community sent a person from the welcome committee out to visit and answer questions. He couldn't answer any of my questions about what the church actually believed (I had to look at their website) and finally admitted he just went because it was his wife's church. haha.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Sounds like what Protestants need is a strong hierarchy to codify and enforce standards.
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Why?

BTW - I haven't yet attended a denomination which doesn't clearly have a foundational set of beliefs stated and written down. They also have mission statement, organizational charts, etc. - what most large organizations usually have in order to function efficiently.
 
The part about that tract that I found hardest to suspend my disbelief for was that a guy was just casually driving around New York City looking for batteries and then spotted a store he'd never noticed before. Sure, uh-huh.
 
Cainkane1 said:
... Ok this is an ok pamphlet until the muslim converts. I kinda appreciate the humanity in this tract though.
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I've witnessed similar conversions (rare though they are), so as far as Chick Tracts go, this one seems more realistic to me than all the rest.
 
Fnord said:
I've witnessed similar conversions (rare though they are), so as far as Chick Tracts go, this one seems more realistic to me than all the rest.
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I do agree that for a Chick track this is not nearly as unrealistic or offensive as I had expected.
 
A Christian Sceptic said:
Here's a story you might find interesting. (Keep in mind I don't look at various people as categorized as "going to hell" / "not going to hell". And even back in the 1990's I didn't. Also keep in mind - according to Jack Chick I, as not being a True Christian, will be burning in the flames with apparently most other people. :) ) ...

).
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Better than being among the last eaten when Cthulhu devours heaven and hell and all the ships at sea!!!:D:jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp
 
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