Rant – Jesus Money?

I hate ‘fake money’ religious tracts. You know the kind, they’re designed to look like a real folded bill, usually a twenty or hundred. When you open it up, it has a prayer or verse on the inside.

First,I hate religious tracts that operate on guilt. You take the ‘money’ off of someone’s desk, or pick it up from the side of the road and you feel even worse when you find out its about God. It’s the same thing as the tracts that are designed to look like scantily clad women to draw people in and then smack them with the guilt train. It’s an insulting way to evangelize to people and puts the Christians who use these in a very bad light. Oh, sure, I want to talk to you about my personal relationship with God…let’s just forget the fact that you tried to trick and/or shame me into this.

Secondly, it’s mean. The entire concept of this tract is to make people either steal/find it or to hand it to people as actual cash. If I was a waitress who was left this as a tip, or a kid who got this in my Halloween bucket…I wouldn’t even bother reading the message. I would call you a jerk and throw it out. How rude is it to make someone think they got a windfall and it all be a trick. Which is bad enough if you are handing it out to people outright…if you are just leaving it places it’s even worse.

I have seen these tracts at bus stations and bulletin boards, on floors and on desks. People seem to delight in leaving them places that make it look like it was just causally dropped. They leave them in places where there’s a high chance that people might take it. In fact, that’s pretty much the whole point of these tracts, to entice people to pick them up. But who are they enticing? The single mom on the bus who could pay her bills for the week with a $100? The homeless man who could eat a warm meal with $20? The struggling student? The man with loads of debt? Anyone who picks up these tracts could think they’ve finally gotten a break, only to realize it’s just someone trying to be clever. I can’t imagine they would be feeling like any message on that fake bill would be one they would want to hear.

At best, these tracts are a cruel trick and at worst they are used to humiliate and guilt people. Neither is a good way to start off a conversation about God.