What do loons get out of their looniness?

[elfs]

What's in it for him?
Hosted on Flickr!. Click to enlarge.

Okay, by now, with the Easter season come and gone, most of you have heard the riff about the definition of Christianity:

A cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father will let you live forever if you pretend to eat his flesh, drink his blood, and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that he put there a long time ago as punishment for all humanity because a rib-woman made from a dust-man was convinced by a talking snake to eat fruit from a magical tree.

As deliberately offensive as this accurate assesment may be worded, I have to wonder what believers like this guy get out of their lonely, abuse-filled ritual on public streetcorners. I mean, he just stands there once in a while, holding up this sign and waving at passersby. I mean, does he really think he's going to get anyone who's not already on board with his tribal message to sign up right there and then? I mean, come on: one out of every five self-identified Christian college-age kids thinks Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple in the Bible. What's the point?

Comments

[scyllacat.livejournal.com]

Not that it's relevant, but I always read that verse (in the picture) about the same as the Buddhist teaching that attachments (sin) to the world keeps us from reaching enlightenment (glory of God) -- basically true. So, it's less offensive to me than those that tell me that UNLESS I worship the Zombie Jesus I burn in HELLOMGWTF!

But there's nothing in Christianity, AFAIK, that says anything you do has to be effective. So, whether you're Fred Phelps or Billy Graham, as long as you're "preaching the Gospel" it doesn't matter how many people you freak out.

Norman Vincent Peale believed in positive thinking (sympathetic magick!) and miraculous results, and you see how no one ever talks about HIM anymore.