Sunday, November 4, 2018

Making Great Conversationalists: Chapter 11 - Part One

I apologize for the sporadic posting recently.   Life is good - and rather busy right now.   Because of the severe teacher shortage in my state, I've been subbing 4 days a week on top of multiple-medical appointments Tuesday with my son. 

Honestly, the added income has been nice. I know in CP/QF land the fact that I'm working outside of the house while my husband looks for more steady employment is supposed to end in affairs, divorce, wayward children and the complete collapse of Western Civilization - but this seems to be a tenable and fairly pleasant situation for us.   My husband misses having a consistent job - but I think he'll be settled into a new industry pretty soon.  I find working out of the house to be invigorating and allows me to enjoy the time I spend with my son more.  My husband is really good with our son - and he and Spawn are getting even closer as my husband is the primary caregiver more of the time than I am.

 My son is doing well across the board. Weekly PT has greatly increased his torso strength and I suspect he'll be walking independently in 3-6 months. His current goal is to get his physical therapist to admit that she's really a demon sent to torment him - which is deeply ironic since she'd go to the gates of Hell and back for him.  Toddlers may not be the best at judging people.   ( :-P )   He'll be having eye surgery in early December.  Patching and glasses have corrected his lazy eye a bit - but not enough, so his opthamologist will be performing outpatient eye surgery to loosen a muscle in each eye to correct his vision.   I'm amazed what a difference nearly 2 years makes; if he had needed surgery when he was tiny, I would have been a nervous wreck.  As the mother of a robust, thriving toddler, my main concern is that applying "eye ointment" for a week after the surgery sounds....gooey.  (I think my actual words were "Man, that's a skill I was hoping to wait for the next kid for.")

And then our house was hit by the plague.  There is some evil, evil cold going around that hit my husband hard and had me laid up for the better part of a week.  The little guy, however, seems to be getting over his bout with it in good time so we are very, very grateful for that.

And then I realized that I managed to erase the few thousand words of transcription I had done for the blog before the plague hit.   Turns out that while my transcription software is good there is no software good enough to handle Michigander accent complicated by stuffed-up nose.   Today is the first day my transcription equipment was reasonably accurate so I can start blogging again!  Hurray!

More good news: The end of this book rapidly approaches!

Chapter 11 of Steven and Teri Maxwell's work "Making Great Conversationalists" has a title of some kind - but it should be titled "How to Lose Friends and Isolate Yourself through Evangelizing Badly".   Here's the very beginning of the chapter where little Thomas approaches his grandmother with CP/QF created fear:

"Why, Thomas, you are way too young to be worried about anything. What is bothering you?" Grandma asks.

"I have been thinking about how Jesus saved me last month. I was so excited when I prayed and asked Jesus forgiveness and accepted him as my savior. I have Jesus living in my heart now. I haven't heard you talk about Jesus saving you, though. I am worried that you don't have Jesus as your savior and that you won't go to heaven when you die but will go to hell! Jesus died on the cross for our sins. I love you so much, and it scares me to think of you not being in heaven with daddy, mommy, Christie, and me. Grandma, are you saved?" (pg. 177)

Thomas should be doing normal little kid things like convincing Grandma that an extra chocolate chip cookie is critical for his optimal growth or trying to pet Grandma's ancient, ornery cat.   Being terrified that Grandma isn't going to be in heaven when she dies isn't normal.  It's certainly not healthy for Thomas.

This kind of fear-mongering-meets-childish-pleas-for-others-salvation places the adult in a super-uncomfortable situation.  What is Grandma supposed to do?  If Thomas was an adult, I'd pull out the Bible and read through Matthew 25:31-46 which is the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.  Once we've read that, I'd point out that on Judgement Day God seems to put no stock in how often a person talked about having Jesus in their heart but relied on whether they helped other people.  Because of that, I don't talk much about having Jesus in my heart but instead work on helping others.   Thomas, though, is a kid.  Am I supposed to tell him that his parents have mangled the Gospels beyond all understanding and are using him as a form of emotional manipulation? Am I supposed to flip the emotional manipulation around and ask him how he feels about the fact that I doubt his Mommy and Daddy are going to heaven - but there might be time to save Thomas and Christie if they get to work now?    See, I feel queasy and slimy at the idea of doing that - but the Maxwells encourage their followers to do the same things with their children.

I wonder how much of the "success" of cold-calling evangelical techniques is due to the fact that most people are far too polite to tell their neighbors or random strangers that their sudden impulse to "share the Gospel" is as obnoxious as if I tried to convince the Maxwells that they need to start watching Star Trek - right now!

 Here's a great example of why neighbors in Maxwell-land learn that no good deed goes unpunished:
When John was 14, we had a neighbor who was unsaved. The neighbor was retired school teacher who asked John to help him troubleshoot a problem with his lawn mower. While they were working, they talked. John was able to lead the discussion to spiritual things and eventually present the whole plan of Salvation. The neighbor rejected what John told him, preferring to remain agnostic, but he John knows he did with the Lord wanted him to do. (pg. 178)

The Maxwells are so oblivious to other people that it makes my eyes water.

Why did the retired school teacher ask John to troubleshoot a problem on his lawnmower? 

Teachers know people in the community and finding someone to fix a lawnmower is not hard so if the retired schoolteacher asked John to help him, we can safely assume there is a better reason than that the best choice was the local 14-year old.

 Most, if not all, of the Maxwell boys had lawn mowing businesses during their teenage-years; the Maxwells include daily schedules for Joseph and John with "mowing" time in "Managers of the Homes" and "Managers of their School".   Asking the neighbor's teenage kid to "help" you fix an issue you are pretty sure you know how to fix on a lawnmower would be a nice way to give them some more business while showing the kid a new skill.  Plus, teachers like to teach so an afternoon or two with a teenager fixing a mower is likely to be fun for the retired teacher as well.

How do the Maxwells repay him for this kind - and rather sweet - act?  They remind John that the guy is an agnostic and have John try one of the Maxwell traps to convince people that they should be saved. 

Ironically, as a retired teacher, I'm sure the Maxwell's neighbor has been a mark for salvation attempts before.   I had well-meaning students try and save me in alternative-ed so I'm assuming it happened to this guy, too.  Personally, I fell back on a very dry, detailed and dull explanation of the separation of church and state and how I choose to keep my religion (if any) out of the classroom to prevent undue influence on minor students.  The important part is to keep talking about minutia until the teen's eyes glaze over just a bit before changing the subject to the next task at hand.

In the next post, we'll see how the Maxwells think "The Good Person Test" and "Roman's Road" should be used - and yet they have no examples of anyone being converted by either test.

10 comments:

  1. Hooray, you're back :)

    Glad to hear spawn is doing well - I had a lazy eye & had the whole patching/surgery rigamarole when I was 4.

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    1. We are happy that Spawn won't remember any of the surgery. He's a brave little dude - but no part of this surgery sounds fun. The good news is apparently toddlers recover really fast and have a very high success rate.

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  2. I shouldn't be surprised if that retired school teacher was a bit worried about the homeschooled kids and made up an excuse to have one of them over to check on his well-being.

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    1. Yeah, I think the Maxwell clan would set off alarm bells for a lot of people including former teachers.

      My experience with homeschooling families in my area has been mostly positive with students who seem to be at grade level in the main subjects and who can integrate themselves into a set of similar age kids without any major support from adults.

      The Maxwells....well, the education of the kids can't stand up against even the most basic scrutiny in English, science or social studies. Their math curriculum is just barely adequate in my state - and only because they used a lot of time to work through Algebra II. And that reminded me - the methods by which they decide a kid "knows" math are extremely sketchy.

      I should probably write up an overview of "Managers of their Schools" - but that book is a slog even by the poor standards of Maxwell writing.

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  3. Okay, I admit to being a Star Trek evangelist but a) only with people I already know and b) I have actually won converts!

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  4. It was just painful to read about the conversation with the neighbor. I remember feeling like I was supposed to be evangelizing like that. I even remember a friend in high school who was did things like that and sat me down to show me exactly how she led people through the Romans Road. I just could not bring myself to do it.

    So I lived with the guilt that I was probably "ashamed of the gospel" and that Jesus would denounce me like I was doing him. It's pretty serious shit they put on people.

    The problem with taking the approach this kid did is is that you ruin a potentially nice relationship with someone in order to alleviate your guilt. So you leave feeling relieved and also like you can never really look them in the eye again.
    It's a shitty way to live.

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    1. I'm sorry to hear that you went through all that angst around converting people. In my experience on being on the receiving end of "Roman's Road" a few times, I doubt your friend managed to convert anyone using either Roman's Road or "The Good Person Test" or whatever the conversion trick du jour.

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  5. Glad to hear you're all doing well (apart from the monster cold)! My son had the same surgery as a toddler and it really was pretty minor and straightforward (let me know if you want a link to the post I made about it at the time). Hands down, the worst bit was the eye ointment afterwards. I'll warn you right now that that is not going to be a one-person job, so if your husband does end up in employment by then make sure you've got someone else lined up to help. Best of luck.

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    1. Thanks for the tip! I'll start getting people lined up!

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