I’m just posting this because many many months ago in a thread I don’t recall enough about to find, David B, Me and a few other Big Ten campus alums were comparing notes on our favorite Campus loonies (AKA preachers). This pic is one my roomate took on the U of Illinois quad of Mad Max, a legend on the campus.
I’m just being cautious by putting it in GD. and to make it past muster, lets see what I can come up with…
So, what type of person do these guys (who seem to dedicate some serious resources) expect to recruit? Generally these are going to be successful, well educated, stable, upper middle class kids who are quite comfortable in their lives. The general stereotype of the converts are people lost in life, desperate, or poor and looking for something to live for. These kids aren’t the type to listen to someone elses idea of what their life should be like. They are independant thinkers, something (to me) contrary to the entire concept of “faith”. And the strategy of the preacher is seemingly counter productive too. They basically all tell the students they are evil, and everything they do is sending them to hell. Now if they were trying to be reasonable and rationalize it, I could see some inquizative kids at least giving it a look. These guys say such outrageous things, how can they expect any of what they say to carry any validity?
I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
One week, one day, 13 hours, 26 minutes and 20 seconds.
342 cigarettes not smoked, saving $42.80.
Life saved: 1 day, 4 hours, 30 minutes.
[quote]
Generally these are going to be successful, well educated, stable, upper middle class kids who are quite comfortable in their lives.[/quote}
Hmm i get sucessful and upper middle class, but where do you get well educated and stable from? There are always people who are lost in their life, its just cults can make more money off of these guys.
Its impossible to have a group of independent thinkers
I don’t think they’re picky. If they can get a convert each year, they’re probably happy. And as nutty as they are, there were always a few hanging around, going to talk to them after the show. Heck, I remember one chick who took over for Max during a break to preach on how she hurt herself on her bike, and she prayed and her cuts and bruises were healed in several days (forever more, she was known as “bicycle girl” to us). Apparently, she is unfamiliar with bactine and Band-Aids…
But that’s just it. Where better to find those types of people than in a bunch of kids who are living on their own for the first time in their lives? No mommy and daddy to protect them. They sink or swim on their own, and a lot of them sink. That’s why cults like to hunt around campuses also – and really, Max and his ilk are just slightly-more-mainstream cult leaders.
I think you’re wrong there. Not everybody is as together as you or me.
I don’t think that’s counter-productive. They want the kids to stop sinning. So they tell them to stop. They tell the kids that even though they think they are happy, they really aren’t. Some fall for it.
How many people poisoned themselves at Jonestown or Heaven’s Gate? Even the looniest of belief systems can get followers (witness the great success of Scientology). He preaches at several campuses each week – he’s bound to get a few here and there.
Oh c’mon Dave, you think you have all the answers, but judging by the closed-mindedness of your post, peppered by your self-assuredness, one can see that you are hiding from God, behind a veil of anxiety.
Jeez Dave, did you ever think that these kids might need someone to tell them that they might be writing checks on their moral or spiritual accounts that might bankrupt them? Or do people intrinsically know when they are doing something wrong?
So Dave, all religions are populated with psychotics?
No one will condone what happened at Jonestown or Heaven’s Gate. I don’t think the point of religion is to die. It is to be reborn, actually.
Mad Max is my favorite proselytizer, too. Why, I remember this one scene in the first movie where he’s sitting there with his honey, exhausted after a day’s work, and laments, “Sometimes I wonder if the only difference between me and the scum I fight against is this bronze badge.” He has a depth of understanding that goes beyond the cops-and-robbers role he chose for himself in life.
That Beyond Thunderdome movie was a bit much, though.
A word of advice, because I’m in an awfully nice and concilliatory mood today:
Unless you truly want to pick a fight, it might not be the best idea to tell David, or anyone, that the reason they act as they do is because they are “hiding from God.” You know full well that such a statement will only irritate and annoy.
I assume you did so unintentionally; I’m quite certain you didn’t post simply to irritate people, right?
Andros, of course he would never do it purposely. Don’t you know that he has all the answers and everybody else is hiding from God or hates God and religion or whatever?
Speaking of which, Pashley said:
Got that Cracker Jack degree in psychology, didja? Well, as usual, you’re wrong. But I don’t expect all the evidence in the world to convince you, because you’ve shown that you’re immune to evidence. There’s nothing “closed-minded” in my post – I was dealing with reality. Come visit some time.
Nope. Especially not this nutcase or other nutcases like him.
Some do. Some don’t. None need a wacko preacher to tell 'em.
David, that pic was shot in Fall of '94. He was still out and about in Urbana last I was there in Fall of '99.
I’m not sure I argee that their methods are logical. I mean telling them that they will burn in hell for having hair longer than shoulder length? I can’t believe they get more than a convert or two a year, if that.
Seems more like something the University would pay him to do as entertainment for the student body. It just too damn odd.
Jeez. He was getting old and tired before I left in '91!
Oh, I didn’t mean to imply it’s logical, for it certainly isn’t that. But it still can work occasionally – if only for the 1 or 2 per year. The cults around campus are much more devious in the way they get new converts. I know one that had one person become friends with a potential new inductee, find out all their problems, etc., and then report back to the Bible study leader. Then, next Bible study, the leader would “randomly” open to passages that just happened to address the problems in the new person’s life. It would seem that God was speaking directly to this person…
And the best part is, they didn’t need to pay him! It was free! Which is why I scheduled my classes around when he’d be there.
Maybe he’s just trying to preach to the converted.
Back in my Pit topic on Chick tracts, someone (forget who off the top of my head), posited the intriguing theory that the tracts are written less as ways of bringing people to Jesus than they are written to reassure the person who hands them out that what they’re doing is the right thing.
Think about it. Most of the Chick tracts are hideously misinformed, if not out-and-out lies. Anyone with a reasonable understanding of the subject can easily rebuff the arguments the Chick tracts make against Mormonism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, role-playing games, evolution, etc. If these tracts convert anyone, they convert people who have only the vaguest grasp upon their own religion and are willing to believe the most outrageous lies about the ‘false pretenses’ of their own beliefs. Rather, the Chick tract is designed to appeal to the person who passes them out- by presenting the evangalistic Christian as a handsome, strong, righteous force fighting against obvious evils.
Thus, Mad Max and others may make their splash less from converting lost sheep (pun possibly intended) than from emboldening other Christians on campus that “it’s alright to speak of your faith and beliefs and to try and convert others into the True Faith.”
Either that, or the church leaders decided, “Hell, we’ll never convert those radical-atheistic college kids anyways; let’s get that lunatic Max out of our hair by sending him there to preach.”
JMCJ
“Y’know, I would invite y’all to go feltch a dead goat, but that would be abuse of a perfectly good dead goat and an insult to all those who engage in that practice for fun.” -weirddave, set to maximum flame
There are always people who are lost in their life, its just cults can make more money off of these guys.
