What do loons get out of their looniness?

[elfs]

What's in it for him?
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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

[ibsulon.livejournal.com]

As I was once *that guy* -- or close enough (dramas in the street with evangelism) -- we were told to think of Matt 5:12 when these things happened: "Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Further, you think of these individuals as people going to hell -- if anything you do can save one or two people from an eternity of torment, why worry about a little scorn?

(The problem being, of course, that the deity in question doesn't exist.)