Imagine going to a Starbucks that asks you for your name so they can put it on your take-out order. When your order is ready, the barista calls out your name, alerting you that your latte is ready. Imagine you told the barista your name was “Satan is Lord” or “I’m a Porn Star” or “Starbucks Sucks.” Ha! Ha! Ha! The barista will have to call out your “name” and everyone in the shop will have to hear it.
This is the approach Eric Hovind, the son of convicted felon Kent Hovind, uses when eating at a Taco Bell.
When asked for his name by the cashier, Hovind says his name is “Jesus Christ is Lord.” When his order is ready, the cashier calls out “Jesus Christ is Lord.” Way to get in a word for Jesus, right? Way to make a likely unbeliever perform like a seal with a bouncing ball. Hovind embarrassed this young woman, all so he could “witness” to other people in the store.
One commenter on the video had this to say:
This is hands down the best witnessing technique I’ve ever seen. Hovind gets Taco Bell, it’s degrading to Taco Bell employees, and nobody gets “saved.”
I agree.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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If I were the Starbucks employee I’d love to have the nerve to shout out something like ‘Jesus Christ is bored’ or ‘Hey folks Jesus is in the joint’, but Hovind isn’t the sort who’d appreciate the humour and I’d be fired. Might just get away with the first one I suppose on the back of bad eye sight?
Obviously, their message isn’t sufficient if they are resorting to these cheap techniques.
Wow, I haven’t heard anything from Eric in a long time, and frankly find this to be even more stupid than the “Creationist Minute”. Evangelists of any creed or worldview need to look carefully at what they are doing. Annoying people isn’t going to make converts, it’s going to make people hate you. This reminds me of a Christian minister that would start evangelizing in public theatres when a movie would end. The problem is that many of the Marvel movies have part of the movie after some of the credits. So you have this raving lunatic spouting nonsense while you’re trying to enjoy the conclusion of your movie.
You could make a case for this as taking the name of the lord in vain if you really believed that nonsense.
He reminds me of the business owners who made their employees wear facemasks emblazoned with “Trump 2020” in the early days of the pandemic.
gee, he look as stupid as the Trump boys.
poor desperate dears. Nothing like making themselves look like morons.
I read “Eric Hovind…” and immediately knew nothing was going to be very good about him. I was right, which is a pity.
Whys it only Evangelical Christians who tend to do this? Because they feel smug, and because they’ve huge sense of entitlement.
Flip the situation and they’ll blow the fuck up in anger. Happens a lot about many things (and especially about lgbtq rights in my region), they cry persecution when they’re the oppressors.
SH—Being a transgender woman who lived as a white, presumably heterosexual man—and a former Evangelical—I think I have some insight into the mentality you describe.
Although I’ve never been wealthy, I enjoyed privilege I didn’t know I had until I lost it. In other words, my “before” picture was a reflection of one of the people you describe. When you have privilege you don’t realize you have, it becomes entitlement—which, by definition, is for you, but not for others. That’s why they get angry when LGBTQ people or members of racial “minorities” win the same privileges—i.e. rights—they enjoy.
I was thinking one could call the alternate pronouciation of Jesus, and poor Eric would never catch on and never get his order.
“Hay-zoos? Is there a Hay-zoos here?
and gee, this also shows a christian intentionally lying to someone. I guess they ignore their supposed god’s words about not lying.
Couldn’t the staffer say something like ‘Order is ready for someone calling her/them/himself “Jesus is lord”.’ They could even use a tone of voice implying faint disapproval, even a subtle suspicion that the customrr is a Blasphemer.
IBNBOB, that’s exactly what they should do.
“Annoying people isn’t going to make converts”… Making converts is not the point for people like Hovind. It is convincing themselves that they are morally superior to and smarter than everyone else on Earth, and his behavior serves this purpose very well.
Good point ❤️❤️