Have you noticed the advertisements popping up lately in the Daily Lobo asking “What bugs you about religion?” with an anecdote from some individual’s answer to the question?
I didn’t think much of it until I started seeing similar fliers all across campus. A distinct pattern is in each answer — well the published ones anyway. First, people explain in a sentence or two what bugs them about religion. Then, paradoxically enough, they turn right around and explain exactly why Christianity is just so swell.
“Cru,” what could that cryptic word mean? I started thinking this sounded a lot like Campus Crusade for Christ, but I couldn’t verify my suspicion from the ads and campus fliers. So I checked out the widely publicized Web site.
Guess what, they are the CCC, not that you’ll find it easily on its site. I say that because in classic small print, at the bottom of a very long Web page in a font size deliberately too small to actually read, the group admits that “CRU is a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ.”
The only other place you can find it is in coincidental mentions in the news announcements, hardly an official method of establishing an association with the good ‘ol CCC.
Why is this? Is it so utterly ashamed of its past behavior that it would go to such lengths to dissociate itself from the CCC, and if so, why not break off entirely and form a new group?
What “bugs” me more than anything else is how this all started: with the question, “What bugs you about religion?” As if this group is really concerned with that particular issue. It’s a method to draw your attention, and it has succeeded fabulously.
Maybe the group does care what bugs you about religion. If so, I suspect it’s for the purpose of fixing the problem and making sure no one is bugged by religion so we can all be saved.
Evangelism is one of the worst forms of disrespect. It demonstrates that you place no value on other people’s beliefs, that you don’t even acknowledge that there is a value in other people’s beliefs.
You want to know what bugs me about religion? First and foremost, evangelism, but a close second is the deception the Cru exhibits in spades. Still glad you asked?
Keith Wiley
Computer science
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