Emerging From Lockdown 103: Credo

Once, many years ago, my father and I encountered a man.

He was standing on a street corner, telling everyone about Jesus Christ. He had a little soap box he was standing on, and a Bible in his hand. And everyone was walking past, trying to avoid eye contact. Like you do. I wondered about this, for a while.

The next week the guy was there again. Nobody stopped. Nobody listened. It was all hellfire and damnation and wickedness preaching.

On the way home I asked my dad why? Why do that every week if it didn’t have an effect? I’d been brought up a Christian – most of those people who were hurrying by had also probably been brought up Christian. I mean, what was the point of trying to convert people who either didn’t want to be converted or already identified with the religion you were preaching?

“It’s not about you” said my dad. “It’s about him”.

“Some people feed compelled to test their faith, not because they love it, but because they fear it. They feel themselves slipping from the path, and its a path that they so desperately want to be both true and theirs and theirs alone. So long as everyone is walking past, their self belief is actualised. They are alone with God in their own private universe. The last thing they want you to do is stop and listen”.

I think about this a lot some days.

We don’t have a lot of rabid anti-maskers in the UK. We do however have some rabid-Brexiteers. Many of them are the same people, driven by self belief. Facts are irrelevant. their own life experiences are irrelevant. It is the belief that matters.

Credo.

There are a lot in the States.

And they don’t just stand on a street corner. They go into stores, demanding confrontation. A lot of store owners feel threatened by this – not for the loss of custom – I’m sure very few of the folks who demand to browse mask free are the secret millionaires they pretend to be. That’s just another abuse tactic. Threaten you with loss of sales, threaten you with bad publicity, sometimes actually threaten you.

But like the street preacher, I honestly suspect that the last thing they want you to do is roll over. It was a test of faith for that guy – his own private martydom. And its a test of faith for these folks too. Faith in their fallen leader.

Anti-maskers, Qanon, Trump.

These all align. You know that to be true. This? Is Trumps gospel. Come unto me you Karens and Bobs so that I may grant you the kingdom of anti-mask heaven. For it is for you and you alone.

I know its scary. It’s threatening. It’s one star reviews. When you scale it up its the risk of actual prolonged COVID outbreaks wherever these folks gather to pursue their own masturbatory sacrament of death.

This was not about you, and it never was. And I want you to understand that.

This is not about lost sales or lost customers or even public health. These are people who were promised the world and betrayed. And this is their way of feeling important. Bully pulpit street preacher guy? If he stops at any point, what was the point of all the times he pressed on, in the rain and the sleet and the indifference. He could have been sat in the pub, or watching wrestling on TV or masturbating frantically into a sock.

So now he has to keep doing it, day in day out. Because otherwise he once chose wrong, believed wrong, he thought the Martians were coming when he heard Orson Welles and now the Martians have to come, because otherwise he is just a fool, on a box in the rain, screaming at the universe to validate the pain of his existence.

This is your difficult customer.

Lots of movements through history promised the secrets of the universe for the price of belief and tax free donations. We were our own secret society once. Remember the days before D&D was cool? And there is an irony here.

What we do – our stores – they are about encouraging people to join us. Encouraging people to play, to embrace belonging, not because of entitlement or self belief or backing a political horse that turned out to be a dead donkey and beating up on others because you can’t look in the mirror.

You don’t need a street pulpit for that.

Just a game shop