 |
| 2 people meeting in a coffee shop. Image source. |
I just saw this May 6 post from Keith Giles, BETRAYAL: From “He Gets Us” to “He Tricked Us”. It's about how the "He Gets Us" ad campaign has posts on the internet asking people to share information so that "you can have someone local talk to you about how you’re doing and pray for you." The impression people get, when they respond to this, is that they can be connected to some nice stranger, whom they can share their problems with, and this nice stranger will encourage them, and that's all.
But, it turns out, the "He Gets Us" campaign [allegedly?] sends this information to a company called GLOO. ("He Gets Us" denies this, but look at Giles's blog post to see the evidence.) GLOO is intended to be a resource for churches that allows them to get information about people in their local area who may be interested in coming to church. But, Giles found out, anyone can make a GLOO account and pay 49 dollars a month to receive personal information about total strangers.
And there's this example in Giles's post:
Pastor Janice was speaking at a women’s conference out of state. To emphasize the need for their women to reach out to their lost friends, Janice shared a story of how their church used a service from a company called “GLOO” to receive cell phone info from local women who were looking for emotional and spiritual support.
She then explained to them, in great detail, how GLOO collected data from people who responded to the “He Gets Us” campaign and shared their text info with pastors for outreach.
What happened next was horrifying.
Janice pulled out her phone and proceeded to read Kathy Wilson’s very intimate, personal and private text messages to every woman at the conference.
Janice then continued to share even more private information about Kathy. She mentioned what Kathy did for a living, what days of the week she was at a certain public place offering services to her clients, and what city she lived in.
Later, that sermon was uploaded to the church website in El Paso where Janice and her husband were pastors.
Ohhhhh nooooooo.
I wanted to blog about this because I used to "do evangelism" a lot when I was evangelical, and I can confirm that in the world of evangelism, there was not much awareness of our obligation to not go around blabbing to other Christians about our evangelism targets' personal information.
The way it typically worked is this: A Christian believes that their non-Christian friends are in danger of going to hell, and they need to "share the gospel" with them and convince them to become Christians. But the idea of going up and randomly asking someone about their religious beliefs is very scary for the Christian, so they get their Christian friends to encourage them and share tips about how to do it.
Then the Christian manages to have a conversation with a non-Christian friend, and talks about a bunch of personal things. They ask the non-Christian what they believe and why- this is often a very emotional thing and could be connected to traumas they have experienced. (And, please note, the Christian also shares personal experiences from their own life, and talks about what it taught them about God.)
The non-Christian, however, continues to not be a Christian. The Christian is kind of confused about this, seeing as how they had such a good conversation about the very deep reasons why each of them believe what they believe. What's it gonna take to get this person saved, the Christian wonders.
So, the Christian goes to their Christian friends who have been supportive of their evangelism efforts. They ask, "What should I do? What can I say to my non-Christian friend to convince them to accept Christ?" And they share the details about the non-Christian friend's personal life, so the Christians are able to analyze the situation and come up with some suggestions.
Yeah, that's how it works, if you really want to put in the effort to try and do evangelism effectively. You get non-Christians to tell you details about their feelings and their beliefs, not because you actually care about those things, but just so you can mine them for spots you can shove Jesus into. And you share the personal information with your Christian friends, so they too can help you find the spots to shove Jesus into.
When people are in danger of going to hell, why would you bother with inconsequential things like "respecting people" and "not blabbing their personal information to everyone" and "being genuinely supportive of people's choices instead of acting like you know what's best for them"?
Another aspect of this blabbing was when we gave "testimonies" about our evangelism efforts, in order to encourage everyone to get out there and do evangelism more. Sometimes at our Christian group meetings in college, one of us would stand up in front of the whole group and talk about how we had met someone and had a conversation about Christianity- how "God" had "given us an opportunity"- and these testimonies frequently did include details about what kind of negative experience the non-Christian was going through, or what their reasons were for not believing in Jesus. Or, sometimes the person we had talked to was actually a Christian already, but we didn't think their Christianity was genuine, and we told the whole group the reasons why.
I think that, as humans with a God-given conscience, most of us do have an instinctual feeling that we shouldn't just go around talking about personal things that other people have told us. I can remember many times when I was evangelical, when my Christian friends and I talked about evangelism strategies to target specific non-Christian friends, but we did NOT share all the information that said non-Christian friends had told us. For example, I told my Christian friends that I had "shared the gospel" with someone, and told them about what I said and what he said and asked for suggestions about what else I should say to him- but I didn't tell them his name. Didn't want them to know it was him, because they'd met him before and I felt like it would be weird for them to know all these details about him. I mean, it's still creepy, what we were doing- trying to convince people to change their religion- but my point is that I didn't blab to the full extent I could have. Because I felt like he wouldn't want that. And I remember when I gave a "testimony" in front of the whole group, thinking about how it was in public and therefore I shouldn't say anything that I wouldn't want getting back to the non-Christian in question.
My point is, I remember instances where we didn't spill all the juicy details that we knew about our non-Christian friends' lives. On some level, we had a feeling that it wouldn't be right. (The anecdote in Giles's blog post, about a Christian mentioning someone's workplace and whereabouts and personal problems, in a sermon that is posted publicly online, is SHOCKING to me. At the same time, though, it's very believable to me that there are Christians working hard to do evangelism, who have zero awareness of the fact that their evangelism targets wouldn't want their information broadcast to the whole church.) But we existed in the context of this evangelism ideology, which said it was necessary to tell other Christians why our friends don't believe in Jesus, so we can brainstorm ideas to get them to change. It's a belief system which requires you to be invasive and creepy.
When we did evangelism training, there was never any training that said "you should respect people's privacy and not tell other Christians what they said." Even though many of us had a conscience which hinted at that, we bought into this ideology that said we needed to convince people to "get saved." So we needed to ask other Christians for help when we weren't able to convince them on our own.
This is why, now, I don't want to talk to evangelicals about what I believe. I know they're not going to listen to me out of a genuine desire to understand me- no, they'll only be looking for places where they can point out why I'm wrong and get me to change. I know they're going to go off and tell their friends about me, misrepresenting what I said. I know they're going to pray for me, and tell God things about me that aren't true.
In an ideology which pushes Christians to do evangelism and get people "saved," there's no room for respecting people's privacy. No, it's all about getting information about the very personal reasons that people believe what they believe, and looking for how you can exploit that to push them toward your brand of Christianity. And of course you tell those things to other Christians, so they can "help." Of course you do.
---
Related:
Yep, I Totally Did This Creepy Evangelism Strategy
"My Evangelism Isn't Working" is a Very Creepy Thing to Say
This is so normal. We just don't usually say it in front of other people.
No comments:
Post a Comment