May 6, 2021
Story time.
I was recently approached and given a Bible tract.
Since it had been so long since the last time this happened to me, I was starting to think that perhaps the Church had declared them ineffective and not worth the time spent creating them and the money spent printing them.
But that has proven to be untrue.
I was in the student union of a large university here in my state. This is one of my usual spots I go to get out of the house to get some work done. I’ll buy breakfast and a coffee from the shops in the union, set up my computer, and work for several hours.
I was approached by a college-aged girl. I’d estimate she was a freshman, perhaps eighteen years old. She said, “Hey, has someone given you one of these yet?” I could tell she was uncomfortable approaching random strangers and starting a conversation.
She handed me a piece of paper the size of dollar bill. The paper had actually been printed to resemble money, except it was a million dollar bill.
“No,” I told her, accepting the fake money.
“It’s not really a million dollars,” she said, trying to force a casual vibe to cover up her nervousness. “I just wanted to let you know so you didn’t feel short-changed.”
“I figured it wasn’t,” I said. Obviously, million dollar bills do not exist.
“Just read it over when you have a chance.”
And with that, she was gone. She’d done the job she’d been instructed to do, and now that it was over, she fled.
It was at that point it finally clicked into my brain what I’d been given. I hadn’t been handed a Bible tract in so long that I was kicking myself for not spotting it sooner.
I flipped over the million-dollar bill and found a dense paragraph on the other side explaining that I needed to stop lusting, stop taking the Lord’s name in vain, and accept Jesus as my savior before I die and go to hell. Heavy stuff, don’t you think?
The exchange only lasted a couple seconds, but I felt two distinct emotions at the same time: relief and regret.
I felt relief because, little did the girl know, she’d just handed a Bible tract to a guy who’d walked the same path she was on now and who now has written a book and a blog about deconverting from fundamentalist religion.
I felt regret because I hadn’t realized what was happening until she’d already run away. If I’d seen it sooner, I would have invited her to sit.
- I wanted to tell her I knew precisely how it felt to be a freshman at a big university and to be scooped up by the campus ministry who casts a wide net onto oncoming freshmen, promising to protect them from evil college parties, drinking, drugs, and sex.
- I wanted to tell her I knew precisely how it felt to be told to evangelize in the same manner despite the fear and awkwardness—my body and heart’s way of communicating to me that there was something wrong.
- I wanted to tell her I knew precisely how it felt to be afraid to follow my better judgement and go against the manipulative and intrusive evangelistic tactics of the campus ministry.
I stood up from my table and looked around the union. She was gone. She’d moved fast.
I left my computer and started looking for her. Not because I wanted to chase her down and try to “save” her, but because I knew there was a guy inconspicuously supervising it all from the sidelines. A guy who’d roped in a team of nervous freshman that he’d guilted into doing his dirty work under the guise of “training” and “equipping” them.
That was who I wanted to speak to. If I was going to sit there and write a blog about deconversion, then of course I needed to get up and confront this shit when it happened to me in real life. This guy would almost definitely be more confident and self-assured that what he was doing was right. I’d feel no guilt about getting in his face.
Unfortunately, I never found the girl or her ring leader. She’d vanished from the student union like a thief in the night and blended in with the throngs of college students that were walking around. Her puppet master evaded me as well.
This renewed my resolve to return to the student union to do more writing in the future. I like to rotate the places I go when I leave the house to write, and since I’d been going to the union for a while, I was considering retiring it for the time being. No longer.
The thing about these evangelistic efforts is that they don’t go away. If I keep showing up to the union and sitting alone, making myself an easy target, it’ll only be a matter of time before another lost freshman tries to rope me in. Next time, I’ll be better prepared.