She knows what she’s doing. This is the desired outcome. It’s not about preaching the gospel. It’s about supporting the narrative that Christians are persecuted, even if you have to deliberately generate the appearance of persecution through ridiculous behavior.
I think a good way to handle these might be to get everyone on the plane to start chanting “troll” in unison at her. By doing so:
You directly call out the disruptive and bad-faith behavior, rather than attacking them based on their message.
You make it so they have no useful footage for their socials. Post a video of one person confronting you? Easy to claim victimhood based on religion. Post a video of a whole plane calling you a troll? You look like the bad guy.
You make it a group effort that people can participate in with little risk or effort. It takes much less courage to join a chant of, “troll! troll! troll!” than it does to personally and individually call them out. Plus, chants are just fun.
You completely drown them out. Let her bitch all she wants. No one will hear her over a hundred people shouting “troll” in unison.
I agree with all but point 2. She’d salivate at having an entire plane “persecuting” her. Looking like the victimized minority in a society against you is the fiction that these morons are trying to portray. They want to feel like that last few good Christians in a world turned against them while ignoring that the vast majority of our society believe more or less the same shit as them or at the very least, treat Christianity as the default in the US culturally.
Yes. It reinforces the idea that the world is corrupt, fallen, that it won’t accept them. That only the cult will accept them. It reinforces the separation of cult and world, and makes cult the only attainable form of community.
Community is the cult’s greatest weapon. Gangs, religions, the manosphere, neo-Nazi… so many groups work by finding the isolated and disempowered, offering them a community that will adopt them (conditionally). Isolated people swallow the conditions readily in order to have a community, even an unhealthy one. Humans are social creatures.
Getting your members to do behaviours you know will see them rejected (like door-knocking) reinforces the indoctrination that only your cult can offer community. Even if they have doubts or discomfort, they won’t leave.
In my wayward youth I was heavily into church and went to a conference where you went to classes about evangelising and apologetics (arguing your beliefs) and then approaching people out in public to talk about Jesus. The success rate is low but it’s not zero.
Some of my strongest convictions against Christianity come from learning they told flat out lies in the apologetics classes and used lots of logical fallicies.
She knows what she’s doing. This is the desired outcome. It’s not about preaching the gospel. It’s about supporting the narrative that Christians are persecuted, even if you have to deliberately generate the appearance of persecution through ridiculous behavior.
I think a good way to handle these might be to get everyone on the plane to start chanting “troll” in unison at her. By doing so:
I agree with all but point 2. She’d salivate at having an entire plane “persecuting” her. Looking like the victimized minority in a society against you is the fiction that these morons are trying to portray. They want to feel like that last few good Christians in a world turned against them while ignoring that the vast majority of our society believe more or less the same shit as them or at the very least, treat Christianity as the default in the US culturally.
The basic door to door proselyting strategy (which has a 0% success rate) to make sure they don’t leave the cult, then…
Yes. It reinforces the idea that the world is corrupt, fallen, that it won’t accept them. That only the cult will accept them. It reinforces the separation of cult and world, and makes cult the only attainable form of community.
Community is the cult’s greatest weapon. Gangs, religions, the manosphere, neo-Nazi… so many groups work by finding the isolated and disempowered, offering them a community that will adopt them (conditionally). Isolated people swallow the conditions readily in order to have a community, even an unhealthy one. Humans are social creatures.
Getting your members to do behaviours you know will see them rejected (like door-knocking) reinforces the indoctrination that only your cult can offer community. Even if they have doubts or discomfort, they won’t leave.
In my wayward youth I was heavily into church and went to a conference where you went to classes about evangelising and apologetics (arguing your beliefs) and then approaching people out in public to talk about Jesus. The success rate is low but it’s not zero.
Some of my strongest convictions against Christianity come from learning they told flat out lies in the apologetics classes and used lots of logical fallicies.
When I read your post I heard Stewie Griffin in my head say “Flat out lies and logical fallacies? Well you don’t say!”