Bible Tracts...

[Deleted07]

I was just pondering if you ever hear of anyone being 'saved' through these Gospel/Bible Tracts you see many fundies handing out... A quick google search lead me to this document:

http://www.pinpointevangelism.com/Gospe ... monies.pdf

 

With Testimonies, which I'll leave you to pick apart their authenticity.... But at the end I was irritated at this brazen paragraph, and mainly the bold line...

 

 

Quote

Identify where or when you want to begin using tracts. Plan to have a tract with

you when you eat in a restaurant so you can leave one with your generous tip. Look for

an opportunity to share a tract with the cashier at Wal Mart after you check out. Have one

ready when you go through the drive-thru at a fast food restaurant. You can give one to

the person who takes your money and the person who gives you your food if you are

prepared (you have to be quick though!). The possibilities are really unlimited. Just ask

yourself, "Where do I have contact with unbelievers? (Just about everywhere)", and then

consider using a tract there.

 

So seriously, WHO is to say that the waitress who just served you, or the person who just checked you out in walmart, are 'unsaved'??? That just really irritates me!!! Especially the fact that they are pointing out the (seen as) more menial and 'poorer people' jobs...

 

I freely admit I am probably taking this personally, but its something that does irk me! Especially with fundies.

 

 

Should just mention:

I've work as a cashier for the last 7 years, and I love it most of the time, most people are really nice and I love to chat and meet people and swap stories. But this just really reminds me of SOME of the rare condescending types that you might get come through, who seem to think you are some type of TV caricature; uneducated single mother, who is only doing that 'menial' job because you can't do any better. (I've been to University and not a Mother by choice and choose to stay in this job because it suits me.)

[debrand]

I found a bible tract laying on a display table at the NC Zoo in Asheville. It irked me so much that I threw it away. When I was younger I found those tracts in public restrooms all the time.

[Esther]

Instead of reacting to Thomas’s anger, the stranger simply turned away to a nearby

doorway, put his hands together, closed his eyes, and began to pray. To the amazement of

Thomas, who was still watching, tears started to fall from the strangers eyes

And that's where I stopped reading. I have an utter loathing for this sort of sentimental, overly emotional, martyr-like 'devotion'. It's condescending and awful and seriously - if you hand me a Bible tract and I tear it up and you stand around in a doorway and cry, I'm gonna RUN, not walk, away, because I'm gonna think you're seriously mentally disturbed.

[Peas n carrots]

And that's where I stopped reading. I have an utter loathing for this sort of sentimental, overly emotional, martyr-like 'devotion'. It's condescending and awful and seriously - if you hand me a Bible tract and I tear it up and you stand around in a doorway and cry, I'm gonna RUN, not walk, away, because I'm gonna think you're seriously mentally disturbed.

This this this!

I hate the fire and brimstone combined with the sickly sweet conversion. Do people really act like that in the real world? I tend to think it's stretched, but then again I'm a godless Yankee!

When I was in high school I worked at a fast food restaurant. I would find chick tracts in the bathroom on a regular basis. I always wondered why there, and then I wondered if the fundie washed their hands first. Ewwww

[Kaylee]

I used to see Chick tracts in the mall and places fairly frequently, and usually ended up getting one or two a year while trick or treating. I always thought they were kind of cheesy and were sort of a cop-out even for witnessing - like you don't want to take the time to actually talk a person so you just hand them that crap.

All that said, in a very roundabout way, it was a chick tract that helped get me back into fundyland. After leaving religion for several years, I got deeply into some of the fundy blogs and was looking for a local church. Hubby and I were out one day driving and stopped to pee, then decided to hike to this cool little waterfall near the rest stop. We got back, and a fundie church group were having a picnic, and the look caught my eye- all the women with long hair in skirts & dresses. (I remember I was wearing a headcovering/scarf but felt sort of ashamed because my skit was knee-length and all of them were wearing calf-length or longer skirts and dresses). Anyway, I was curious but we didn't actually talk to anyone. When I went to the bathroom before getting back in the car, there was a track that had contact info on the back. I got in touch with thm, and they gave me info on a fundy church in my city. I was already saved, and still though the tract itself was cheesy and over the top, but the contact info on it did lead to me getting back in church and becoming all fundy-fied again for several years,

[freejoytoo]

In Liverpool we got a lot of Jehovah's Witness tracts. Some friends of mine cut out the particularly funny pictures and stuck them on the fridge. They're good for entertainment value.

[terranova]

So seriously, WHO is to say that the waitress who just served you, or the person who just checked you out in walmart, are 'unsaved'??? That just really irritates me!!! Especially the fact that they are pointing out the (seen as) more menial and 'poorer people' jobs...

I think when it's the Maxwell's that are handing out tracts to waitresses instead of tips, they don't consider anyone who isn't in their family and/or resthome church really and truly "saved". They have their own little sect of Christianity going on.

[Daenerys]

I found a bible tract laying on a display table at the NC Zoo in Asheville. It irked me so much that I threw it away. When I was younger I found those tracts in public restrooms all the time.

Ha, the restrooms I go in are more likely to have cards for sexual health centres!

[Witsec7]

In Liverpool we got a lot of Jehovah's Witness tracts. Some friends of mine cut out the particularly funny pictures and stuck them on the fridge. They're good for entertainment value.

I use Chick tracks for making humorous kitchen magnets. :lol:

[Lillybee]

I was at a nearby tourist attraction yesterday. I found a nasty tract about Catholics hidden in a free mag about 101 things to do in my city.

[Milly-Molly-Mandy]

I saw one in the bus stop glass partition area where the timetable is. It was an anti gay one too, and as I live in the area with the highest gay population in Australia (my area is nicknamed DILDO-double income, little dog owners) I was pretty pissed off and managed to use a stick with some gum to get it out of the glass partition. I then tore it up.

Ha.

Only took 20 minutes...luckily the fricken bus is always late. Or early. Never on time. sigh.

[freejoytoo]

I just love how in all Jehovah's Witness tracts we'll all be going to Heaven looking like we've come from the seventies and get to hug lions. Which kind of confuses me because if a lion is 'tamed' in Heaven how exactly does it survive if it can't kill and eat anything? I also wonder if we're given some kind of drug because the pictures depict people with such glassy eyes!

[godlytomatosoup]

I live in the area with the highest gay population in Australia (my area is nicknamed DILDO-double income, little dog owners)

I haven't heard that one before, so now I'm trying to work out where you live. I'm going to guess somewhere in Sydney, but if you're down here in Victoria, then maybe Thornbury?

[formergothardite]

I saw someone had a track to the person in the drive through at Burger King yesterday. This is the first time I have seen that. When I got up there they were tossing it in the trash.

[fundamentalistnomore]

I don't know if anyone has seen FishwithTrish before, but this is absolutely one of the worst examples I have every seen of passing out a tract. Having worked in a restaurant, basically there is nothing you can do but smile & take it. :evil: :evil: :evil: Then of course, there are those that think leaving a tract instead of a tip is the right thing to do. Nice. I know every time I pay my bills, my creditors accept tracts instead ca$h. :lol:

[lilwriter85]

I read through those testimonies and I think the one about the teacher and the lawyer sounds really fake.

The last time I got a tract was when the JW's showed up at home last year. When I was a teenager, there was a church youth group in my area that used to hand out tracts in grocery store parking lots. When I worked as a waitress in college, I never received a tract.

Tracts instead of tips are the worse.

[donks]

I don't mind being handed a tract. Every one I get is one that they can't brainwash some poor slob with, cause mine is headed straight to the trash can! We have all kinds of groups here that hand them out at railroad crossings on nice days (when ppl have their windows down, I assume. I've never seen them out in bad weather, just nice days)

Got one handed to me one day on my way home from work. Threw it onto the car seat and drove on. Once I got home I had a bit of a shock. It was for the Klan. YUP. I actually burned that one in the grill!

I used to get JW turning up on my doorstep quite a bit. I found that a large pentacle windchime on the front porch keeps them away nicely. ;)

[Deleted07]

What gets me is the assumption, that someone who you haven't even met is going to require your spiritual advice. And also the audacity to believe your religion is the one true! When a lot of them aren't much different.

[lilwriter85]

What gets me is the assumption, that someone who you haven't even met is going to require your spiritual advice. And also the audacity to believe your religion is the one true! When a lot of them aren't much different.

This. I sometimes wonder about people who hand out tracts. I have talked to a few Christians who dislike handing out tracts, mainly because they feel it is wrong to get spiritual advice to strangers. I have a friend who is ex JW. Her parents and siblings are also ex-JW. She told me a couple of years back that her mom really hates the face that she spent a lot of time going around from house to house trying to preach to strangers.

[lilwriter85]

I was at a nearby tourist attraction yesterday. I found a nasty tract about Catholics hidden in a free mag about 101 things to do in my city.

Yup, tracts will turn up in free magazines, free pamphlets, and library books. Back in the 70's, my aunt went to a bookstore and found a tract with Bible verses in a copy of Stephen King's Carrie.

[darareaksmey]

I am in a drug study for a condition I have and I visit a doctor every month for a fasting lab. Her office is in a bank building, and the past few visits I have found a different chick tract stuck in the inside paneling of the elevator. I always take it--or at least I do if the elevator is empty--because they are so amusing, and it gives me something to read in the waiting room. But then it goes right in my purse, and right in the trash at home, so as not to damage anyone else's psyche.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

I see a lot of tracts at bus stops. Always the church stamp on the back is some small church I've never heard of (even when the bus stop in question is right across from a mainstream Methodist church).

Lately I've seen them written in Arabic. I can't read Arabic but the content is obvious from the pictures. We have a sizeable Arabic-speaking population in my town (though the vast majority of Arabic speakers also speak English and are engineering graduate students). Sometimes I steal the tracts for collage fodder.

Weird thing is, I don't get many Jehovah's Witness pamphlets here in the US. In Japan I would get them (yes, there are Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan, and if you think they're weird and stand out in the US, over there it's even more weird since Christianity itself is a weird niche thing). They'd leave them in the mail slot or occasionally come calling, usually a firm "I'm not interested" was enough to send them away, I hear the American ones are more insistent.

Weirdest thing I get are occasionally HANDWRITTEN letters, addressed and stamped to me personally, asking me if I'm saved and if I'd like to go to church. I never answer, but I wonder who has the time to put in so much effort (and where do they get my name, the phonebook I guess?). I sort of feel badly for them wasting all that time, but... they need to be saved from their nonsense.

[pixydust]

I hated it when I worked in retail and people would try to hand me a tract! Thankfully, I was the manager of a small, independant store and my boss didn't care if I pissed people off, so I always turned them down. :snooty:

I did see a pile of tracts in a magazine rack in Walmart last week (is that lazy or what?!? Wouldn't Jeesus want them to tape them to boxes of condoms or slip them into the trashy $3.54 romance novels?), anyway, I took them all and threw them away. I should have kept one and shared the snark worthiness of it with you all, but alas, my recyle bin needed salvation!