 The truth is that all of us have many people in our lives that are seeking to influence us and persuade us for many different reasons. You know, growing up as children, our parents, hopefully are trying to mold us, trying to influence us to behave, to do our homework, to brush our teeth, right? We grow up as children and loving parents are loving because they try to influence their children. The worst thing are when children are ignored and their parents do not pay attention to them. Teachers as well seek to influence and persuade their students, our doctors try to persuade us to exercise and eat properly. So we grow up in a world in which there are many people throughout our lives who are seeking to influence us, to persuade us to mold and shape the way we live our lives. Hopefully they do it with tact and they do it with sensitivity, but it's a normal part of life. On the other hand, there are people who are seeking to influence us and persuade us, but not for our benefit, right? When you go into a store, the salesperson is not necessarily interested in you purchasing the best suit that you can possibly buy. The salesperson is interested in having you purchase a suit in their store, right? It's very unlikely that you're going to go to the shopping center and one of the salespeople is going to tell you, you know what? I don't think that our merchandise is really the best for you. I recommend that you go to our competitors at the other end of the mall. It's not going to happen and if you go to a place to purchase a car, you're probably not going to find a salesperson who is going to tell you, you know what? I'm not quite sure we have the best cars for you, but if you go about three miles down the road, our competitors probably can take care of you much better. Salespeople are interested in making sales and they're not interested in necessarily making sure that you have the very best product for you. Their agenda, their goal, their interest is self-interest as opposed to our teachers, our parents, our doctors who are trying to influence us and persuade us for our benefit, for our benefit. What we'll be looking at tonight is the phenomenon of not necessarily salespeople in the traditional sense of the word. We're not going to be looking at traditional salespeople, but we'll be looking at a different kind of salesperson which we'll be referring to as missionary and cult recruiters. And the truth is that missionary and cult recruiters are not interested in helping us make the right kinds of decisions for ourselves. They're not really interested in having a genuine exchange of ideas. The person who is seeking to convert us is not really interested in hearing what we believe. They're not really interested in having an open dialogue. They have a one-track mind and it's basically to sell, to convince. So it's important to understand that the people we'll be encountering, cult recruiters, missionaries, are essentially salespeople. That is what they're interested in doing. They're interested in persuading us to accept their spiritual path and their beliefs. The scientist Louis Pasteur once famously quipped that fortune favors the mind that's prepared. Fortune favors the mind that's prepared. And so understanding the influence tactics of missionaries and cult recruiters and using our intuitive critical thinking skills are vital components to be able to resist their agenda. Tonight what we're going to try to do is outline some of the tactics that are employed by missionaries and cult recruiters and by familiarizing ourselves with these tactics we can be better prepared when we encounter them. That's our goal for tonight. Before we begin I think it's very important for me to clarify that not all missionaries are paid professionals. We often make that mistake of assuming that missionaries are people that work for a missionary organization, they have an office, they report to a superior and that's really not the case. The truth is that for most of us the missionaries we will encounter during our lifetimes are friends, neighbors, sometimes even relatives, business associates, classmates, co-workers, people that are part of our lives, people that we know, people that we have relationships with and they will seek to influence us to embrace their faith. And it's important to understand that these people begin with a huge advantage over the paid professional missionary. The paid professional missionary basically is seen by most of us as intrusive. They're often seen as the spiritual equivalent as the kind of person that calls you up at home, cold calling to make sales. We don't welcome these kind of intrusions into our lives. We don't welcome the kind of person that might stab us on the street when we're busy rushing off to a meeting or the kind of person that might knock on the door of our home. We don't know who they are, we're not interested in what they have to offer and yet we find that professional missionaries are often intrusive. And so they have to overcome the tremendous advantage that our friends and families and neighbors and business associates have which is they already have a relationship. They don't need to develop one. One of the things that social psychologists speak about is what they refer to as the illusion of invulnerability and it affects almost all people. And what social psychologists have found in extensive studies is that people are much more likely to assume and believe that bad things will happen to other people rather than to themselves. For example in many many studies people report that they're much less likely to believe that they will be sued. They assume that if anyone's going to get sued it's going to be other people. People when they're surveyed and polled will report that they don't believe that they will ever get divorced. It's going to happen to other people. We tend to think that others will become victims of crime. When people are asked, do you ever see yourself maybe becoming a victim of crime? Very people think if it happens to them. We always assume it will happen to others. People tend to think that others will contact, contract serious diseases that will experience natural disasters in an entire list of the kind of bad things that happen in life. Most people do not believe it will happen to them. Obviously it's going to happen to some people but most of us assume it only happens to others. Of course this also applies to people's assessment of how impervious they are to social influence and persuasion. Most people tend to report that they are immune to the kind of tactics that are used by influencers and persuaders and they tend to see themselves as much more capable of seeing through the ploys and the tactics that are used by salespeople, by manipulators, by persuaders, by conveyers of propaganda, etc. Most people tend to believe that they know what influence peddlers are up to and that we can see past their tactics and we believe that the only ones that will be influenced by them are others. There was a study that was done by Jonah Berger who was a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in conjunction with the professor at Princeton Emily Pronin and they studied the factors that go into influencing car purchases. When people purchase a car what factors go into them making that purchase and they looked at a whole range of factors that people assume influence decisions to purchase a new car and they range from factors like the price of the car, the gas mileage, the safety rating, reliability, as well as social influences like what do our friends think of a car like this or is this a prestige car or a cool car or a car that has high status and what these two professors found is that almost everyone they surveyed believed that social influence like factors such as what will my friends and family think of this car or is this car cool or high status almost everyone believed that these are important factors for everyone except for themselves. Most people reported that for themselves these are not important factors at all. Most people believe that they're able to see through advertising sales pitches and that they believe that advertising ploys are so obvious that they have absolutely no impact on them. This is what's commonly believed by almost everyone. They believe that advertising does not affect them. Most people believe they are totally immune to advertising. However, this is not how advertisers feel. Advertising spends hundreds of billions of dollars. Hundreds of billions just in North America each year alone. Hundreds of billions of dollars on advertising. Why do they spend all this money? Because they don't just believe that advertising works. They know after careful study that advertising works and yet most people agree with them. They say yes advertising does work just not on me on everyone else in the world. There's a new field out it's relatively new field called consumer or retail anthropology. These are people that put us under a microscope and when we enter a store they have cameras that study the way we walk. What we look at they study our eye movements. They measure exactly how long people stay in stores and they compare how long men stay versus women categorized by age. They will measure very carefully how long it takes people to purchase an item after first seeing the sales sticker. These are people that study us extremely carefully very scientifically and they know much more about ourselves than we do and yet we still convince ourselves that we are much more sophisticated than they are and so this illusion of invulnerability this illusion of invincibility is something that plagues all of us. It's something that's very difficult to escape. When it comes to spiritual persuasion and spiritual manipulation it's important to understand that most people become more vulnerable at certain times during their life. Most people are more vulnerable to conversion to other religions or to recruitment into a cult usually within a year of some transition or crisis in their lifetime. It might be something as innocent as moving to a new city transition or someone retired. There are many transitions in life and during the year that takes place after those kinds of transitions people are much more vulnerable to being recruited into another religion or cult and all the more so when people go through a crisis in life. If they go through an illness or a close relative has gone through an illness they have a death in the family a loss of a job a breakup of a relationship any kind of crisis that people go through in life renders them much more vulnerable to being influenced to convert to another religion. Before we actually start to study tonight the kind of tactics that are used by manipulators and influencers it's important to understand that there are things that we can do to build a strong foundation so we're less likely to be influenced by others. Number one is to have a strong knowledge base of Torah and the beliefs of Judaism. We always say that knowledge is power and that clarity is power and so the more clear we are about who we are what we believe why we believe it and we have our facts clear and we have our knowledge that's developed deeply it's less likely not impossible but less likely that we will be influenced and persuaded by others. But the truth is that very few people are convinced by force of logic to convert to another religion. It's not common that people are simply persuaded by the force of a logical argument to change their religions for most people there's another dynamic that's going on. In the Bible we know in the story of Joseph when Joseph was thrown into a pit the Bible describes that pit it says, the pit was empty it had no water in it. Now our sages who analyzed this verse said well duh if the pit is empty it has no water in it so why does the Bible have to tell us it had no water it just could have said it was empty and we would know it had no water. So the sages in the Talmud say yes it had no water but it had scorpions and poison snakes that was in there when it told us that this pit was empty there was no water it was telling you yes there wasn't water but there were very dangerous things in that pit. The point I'm going to make is that this is very true of our spiritual constitution when our soul is empty it doesn't stay empty for a long time we know that nature of poor is a vacuum and when there's a vacuum it will get filled up by something and one of the greatest dangers is not really a lack of knowledge so much but it's a lack of a satisfying spiritual life. Most people who convert don't have a lack of information in their brain although that's often a factor but usually the problem is a hole in the soul a hole in the soul there was something about their spiritual life that's not satisfying that's not fulfilling and when people are not nourished by a satisfying and fulfilling spiritual life which in terms of Judaism is a personal relationship with God that leaves them vulnerable to others who were claiming to offer that just by analogy if someone has a strong and satisfying marriage we know what the reaction will be if someone says you know what I have someone I like to go out and date with someone who has a strong and satisfying marriage is not going to be interested in going out on a date with anyone they're very happy with the life they have and so if someone has a strong and profound and satisfying and nourishing relationship with God if they're walking on a path within Judaism that is a path of growth and a path that is nourishing them they're not going to be vulnerable to an alternative spiritual path and one last factor I would mention is that it's critical for people to have a satisfying and fulfilling and nourishing community family life and friends in the Talmud Honi Honi Hamagal was a Jewish ripped Van Winkle he falls asleep for 70 years and he wakes up and he looks around he doesn't recognize a soul we're all my friends where is everyone and he screams out in pain give me friendship or give me death that people who feel alone people who feel alienated people who don't have support people who don't have communities people who don't have satisfying family lives and satisfying friendships are much much more vulnerable to others who are offering those things tonight we're going to focus on a fourth factor which is a basic understanding of the tactics that are employed by missionary and cult recruiters this is not going to be a comprehensive list of all the tactics that are used I'm just going to share some of the major tactics employees that are used and hopefully it will be helpful the first I'm going to discuss is something that I refer to as camouflage and deception when I was living in Philadelphia in the early 1980s I was traveling on a city bus and I ran into a fellow who struck up a conversation and he noticed my keep eye here's a Jewish fellow and he strikes up a conversation telling me about the synagogue he goes to and about his rabbi and he was as far as I understood creating the impression that he's just a fellow Jew living in Philadelphia what he didn't bother telling me was that his synagogue was a messianic synagogue it was a Jews for Jesus synagogue so what he was basically doing was camouflaging who he really was there wasn't full disclosure in order to gain our trust and in order to gain credibility and those are two very important factors we're much more likely to be influenced by people we trust and people we see as credible so one thing that missionaries often do is claim to have a traditional Jewish upbringing and a traditional Jewish education often claiming to have had a strong Jewish educational background even claiming to have gone to Yeshiva and while these claims may be true they're often not true it may not be a deliberate deception when people claim to have come from a very traditional Jewish background many people simply may not know what it means to have come from a traditional Jewish background many people might think if their grandfather spoke Yiddish that they were raised in a traditional Jewish home one of the things I've been doing for the past 30 years is every summer I attend one of the major messianic Jewish conferences in North America and there are several hundred to several thousand people at these conferences and often this is what I'm told people tell me that they grew up in an orthodox Jewish home and they were raised in a traditional Jewish family and I say oh that's great and I asked them when you were raised as a kid what was your favorite food that you ate on Shabbat and people would often say oh I love my mother's chicken soup that was the best and I'd say to them do you remember what blessing you recited when you had chicken soup and I met with blank stares now if someone grew up in a traditional Jewish home that was Torah observant so they're reciting blessings on food from the time they can speak practically five and six-year-old kids are trained in reciting blessings there aren't that many blessings to learn there's a handful so anyone that grew up for five ten fifteen years eating their mother's chicken soup would know exactly what blessing it was even if they had not been reciting those blessings for 10 or 15 years so it's a very very simple way of really puncturing the claim when people say that they grew up in a traditional Jewish household often what happens is people will exaggerate or inflate the degree of their Jewish education again the purpose of this is to gain credibility the implied messages this is an important thing to understand the implied messages that yes I went to Yeshiva I had a strong Jewish education and I came to believe in Jesus meaning that I must have been able to overcome all the traditional Jewish objections to belief in Jesus after all I had a strong Jewish education I knew quite a bit I really knew the entire Bible practically so the claim to have had a strong Jewish educational background is a way of really circumventing you know the problem of ignorance leading to a faith in Christianity meaning that if I came to believe in Jesus and I had a strong Jewish educational background don't worry you don't need to bother yourself with years of research I did it for you what some missionaries may do is present what they will claim to be the traditional Jewish objections to Christianity they'll say well let me explain to you why Jews don't accept our beliefs our beliefs meaning those of us who've come to believe in Jesus they'll say well the traditional Jewish objection might be x y or z or z and then they will claim to show you the problems with all those Jewish traditional objections what is the problem with this offer of help on their part so I'll give you an analogy if you imagine that you're on trial for a serious crime and the prosecuting attorney the crown attorney presents the case against you and says to the jury into the judge look your honor and members of the jury this person had the motive for committing this say this murder God forbid and the person had the opportunity for committing this crime and here's the evidence that they committed the crime the person might go on to say and your honor and members of the jury I want to tell you that this person has hired a very clever defense attorney and this is what their defense attorney is going to say and they go through they rehearse three or four of the points that they claim your defense attorney is going to offer on your defense and then they're going to refute each one of those points and then the judge pronounces you guilty and you're going to say guilty my attorney never got a chance to present my side of the story and the judge says what do you mean the the prosecutor just told us exactly what your attorney is going to say so what you're going to say is excuse me but I would prefer that you heard my attorney's point of view from him and nothing the prosecutor so you're not going to hear a fair presentation of traditional Jewish objections to Christian beliefs from the Christian missionary his or herself what you want to do is get those objections from knowledgeable and believing Jews themselves second techniques that's used by both missionaries and cult recruiters is called traditionally love bombing salespeople will often flatter and charm prospective customers to prime their their receptivity obviously you're much more likely to make a purchase from someone who you like and who you feel a connection to so what is done by both salespeople and skilled missionaries and cult recruiters is to try to build rapport to compliment people to use your name quite a bit it's flattering when someone remembers your name so often when you introduce yourself to people they forget it after 30 seconds someone that's skilled might mention your name several times during a conversation they might smile at you a lot it's an incredibly powerful rapport builder is to smile at people there may be touching of a non-sexual nature when a person puts their hand on your wrist or on your arm that builds a certain connection your poor they may show you that you have a lot of things in common sometimes these are real sometimes they're not real it's not difficult to fake things that you have in common there was a study done where people were trying to raise money for cystic fibrosis research and they had a group of university students who were given a survey to fill out about something very different they weren't aware of what would be happening next and after they filled out the survey the students were asked if they would contribute money to the cystic fibrosis research and what the researchers found was that if the person making the request had the same first name as the person they were asking to they were appealing to people gave twice as much money now it's not difficult to fake that here the researchers knew the people's names because they just filled out a survey about something else so the people asking were able to put on a name tag having Lisa or Debbie or Robert when they were approaching the people with these names but when we meet people it's not difficult to feign this kind of commonality this is often done by salespeople salespeople have discovered that it's easy to find something you can have in common you ask people where they're from i'm from Ottawa oh my uncle lives in Ottawa where are you from i'm visiting from California California my aunt teaches at a high school in California there's no way these people will understand or know that you're not telling the truth but it's very easy to say something to give the impression that you have a lot in common missionary and cult recruiters invest a tremendous amount of energy in building friendships and companionship the question is are these real friendships and real companionships or are they cultivated in order to appear to be real friendships it's easy for people to do favors to offer to take people shopping this often happens when people first encounter Christian missionaries they'll be offered many kinds of favors helping drive you to their congregation if you don't have a car giving gifts giving you a Bible and what happens is once you receive favors and gifts from people it's much more difficult to say no to them it's much more difficult to resist anything they ask you to do join us for Bible study how do you turn people down for that simple request after they given you a nice gift or they've done you a favor or they've been developing a friendship or relationship these cultivated relationships can seem very real and can actually be intoxicating especially to people who were starving for these kinds of relationships but it's important to remember they may not be real friendships they may be tactical friendships they may be friendships that are cultivated in order to carry influence and one of the ways that you can test whether these friendships are real is to see what happens if you don't accept their beliefs I often tell this to people in counseling because people often come to me and they say that they're part of a congregation where the people are so friendly and so warm and they feel so much camaraderie and I say do you think that these people will still accept you if you tell them now that you've rejected belief in Jesus and I know from experience when people have told me what happened when they left their congregations or they didn't leave they told the members of their congregation that they no longer have these beliefs often what happens is they are vilified they are rejected there are campaigns against them people tell others that they were never really a true believer in the first place people are told that these people must have some secret sin that they're harboring but it's easy to gauge whether friendships are real and whether they're tactical it's always important to remember that just because people are friendly and nice and warm it doesn't prove that their beliefs are true people can be friendly and warm and nice and helpful but everything they believe may not be true it may be false a third tactic that's employed all across the board is what's traditionally referred to as good cop bad cop what happens in the traditional classical good cop bad cop routine is that the bad cop so to speak is threatening and intimidating he threatens the prisoner intimidates the prisoner is not at all nice the good cop is supportive he seems to protect the prisoner from the bad cop and what happens is the prisoner or the subject in order to maintain the good will of the good cop is much more likely to cooperate with anything that's requested that's the dynamic of good cop bad cop and missionaries will often use this dynamic in order to influence and persuade for example the missionary might denounce the bad Christians the evil Christians the anti-semitic Christians they may speak about the crusades and the pogroms and the holocaust and the inquisition and all the Christians that have been anti-israel and the people that are behind the bds movement today so those are the bad cops but we we love israel we support israel we love jews we support jews and so that dynamic right there renders the jewish person much more likely to feel beholden look how nice this person is they don't hate me look how wonderful they are they support israel the truth is and all of you know this that we can appreciate the good people the good that people do we can appreciate the support that people have for israel without accepting their beliefs people who don't believe the same things we do can do good things and they could actually love jews and support israel it doesn't mean that we have to then accept all the things that they believe another tactic that's used is what we refer to as assuming superiority sometimes what a proselytizer may do is ask many questions with the expectation that we will not know the answers because the truth is that the vast majority of jewish people are not bible scholars and so they will ask many questions in order to elicit as many i don't know responses as possible what happens when you keep on saying i don't know is that it establishes their authority and their credibility you're put in a position of being someone who is ignorant who's someone who needs to be their student they're able to assume the posture of teacher they're going to provide you with the knowledge that you so sorely lack this is a tactic that's really done to intimidate people of course if we are not well versed in the bible if we're not well versed in Judaism studying is worthwhile but we don't need to study from foreign sources we don't need to study our bible from christian missionaries there are plenty of reliable jewish teachers that we can study with we don't need to study with people who are seeking to convert us another tactic is something that i refer to as cover up there are a number of missionary training manuals that advise missionaries and i'll be paraphrasing they say in the initial stages of evangelism don't emphasize the deity of the messiah what are they saying here what they're basically arguing for is a non-full disclosure to the jewish people are trying to convert what they will do is focus their discussion on we believe that jesus was the messiah and that becomes the narrow focus of their discussion as a matter of fact if you look at the tag line of jews for jesus what they say is our mission is to make the messiahship of jesus an unavoidable issue for the jewish community but the focus is on simply as jesus as the messiah what they don't tell the jewish people are speaking to is that we actually don't only believe jesus is the messiah we believe jesus is god we believe we believe jesus created the world we worship jesus as god we pray to jesus that's a very different discussion but they realize that for jewish people that's a very difficult thing to hear they understand that for jewish people speaking about whether someone is the messiah or not the messiah is a conversation that they're able to have but to raise the idea that jesus was god they know off the bat that that would be a tremendous turnoff to jewish people and so they just don't go there they wait they might often gloss over uncomfortable christian beliefs like the idea which is clearly taught in the christian bible that all non christians will burn in hell forever that's a tremendously uncomfortable christian belief it's clearly taught in the christian bible many times and christians themselves struggle with this for believing christians there are books that have been written about this kind of topic what do we do with this it bothers even us so of course it's going to bother the people that we're trying to convert and so what happens is these kinds of uncomfortable issues are simply glossed over or finessed by christian missionaries another very serious issue that comes up is what i refer to as exploiting ambiguity what this means is that we all find ourselves today living in a very confusing and frightening world we live in a world where very little is black and white and the world that we live in is to a great extent very gray and living in a world of grays is not easy it's often confusing it's difficult what do i believe what's right what's wrong and people lose their bearings it's uncomfortable living in a world that's ambiguous it's uncomfortable living in a world that's gray it's uncomfortable living in a world where things are not crystal clear and missionaries capitalize on this problem psychologists speak about a manipulative approach that they refer to as fear then relief it's called a fear then relief technique and what missionaries often do is pray on our emotions by amplifying our fears in life there are plenty of things to be afraid of in the world today we can be afraid of global terrorism we can be afraid of crime we can be afraid of war we can be afraid of premature death of serious illness of economic collapse there are plenty of things that are going on in the world today that can make us nervous they're now saying just passed a law in the united states today that you can't go on a plane with anything bigger than a cell phone right air travel used to be a little much a little simpler than it is today today your shoes come off your laptops go away your tablets go away pretty soon you're gonna have to go on a plane with a bathing suit that's what it's becoming and we live in a world that is frightening we live in a world that's scary and what missionaries tend to do is to take the fears that all people have but they may try to zero in on the kind of fears that you personally might have and then they amplify those fears they dwell on those fears and they offer simplistic and simple resolutions to those fears and that simple simplistic resolution is if you have faith in Jesus everything will be okay you don't need to be afraid of dying because you'll have eternal life if you believe in Jesus you'll live forever you don't need to be afraid of all of these things that threaten death and illness in this world because Jesus is the universal solvent for all of these problems it's very alluring it's very tempting to have a simple solution to life's complex problems a way out of the confusion a way out of the gray some missionaries may seize upon the guilt that all of us feel when we have moral failures in life none of us is perfect every one of us has done things that we're ashamed of every one of us has sinned as the bible says and we don't feel good about it and we feel guilty and missionaries seize on these failures they seize on this guilt and again they offer a simple answer if you will believe in Jesus all of your sins will be forgiven just believe in Jesus and all of your sins are forgiven that certainly can sound very tempting what the missionaries offer is a life of certainty over a life of ambiguity the sages our sages say burry vishema burry adiff do you have something that's clear and certain and something that's not clear and uncertain the clear and certain is much better it's much stronger unfortunately the clear and the certain may be certainly wrong but the fact that it's certain and someone says it with confidence they always say that the best salesperson is the person that believes in their product and the salesperson that believes in their product a thousand percent will be much more successful in selling their product might be lousy but the salesperson believes in it and portrays confidence and certainty they have a huge advantage but the truth is that there are no simple solutions to life's problems and what is the proof the proof is that when you get to know Christians they suffer from the same problems that all human beings have Christians have not found a panacea a magic bullet to get out of the kind of problems that all human beings have but they offer people this kind of promise another tactic that's used is what i refer to as manipulative logic there's a very popular challenge that was put forward by c.s lewis the famous christian author and it's used by many missionaries and here's the challenge they say jesus was either a lunatic a liar or who he said he was and the claim is that he claimed to be god i don't believe that jesus did claim to be god but this is the belief of christian missionaries that jesus claimed to be god and so they offer this challenge that jesus was either who he said he was he is the lord or he must have been a lunatic or a liar that's the equation that's put forward the assumption is that you're not going to feel comfortable it's not polite it wouldn't be politically correct to say jesus was a liar or jesus was a lunatic you can't say those things so then you're fourth into the third option which is okay he must have been gone now believe it or not people actually fall for this kind of logic what i call manipulative or faulty logic the fact is that you're not forced into the third option it's like a parent who says to their child that doesn't want to put on their winter coat oh you don't want to put on your blue coat or you don't want to put on your green coat and the child says i don't want to put on the green one well then take the blue one now the the presupposition here is that you want to put on some coat but the child was resisting anything and the parent very cleverly tricks the child basically it's a good kind of trickery a good kind of manipulation by narrowing down the choices right the choices is not the blue coat the green coat or no coat what the parent says is oh you don't want to put on the blue one or the green one so the missionary has artificially narrowed our choices the fact of the matter is that there are other options than saying Jesus was a lunatic or a liar you could say that he was mistaken he was wrong about himself he was not correct when he thought that he was the messiah doesn't mean that he was evil it doesn't mean he was insane doesn't mean he was a liar it could mean that he was wrong he was mistaken he was misled about himself but this kind of manipulative logic is something that's often used a related problem is what i call short circuiting thought there are ways in which manipulators circuit our thinking process what will sometimes happen is that missionaries will denigrate any desire we have to carefully evaluate and examine their claims we may want to think about it we may want to study we may want to examine we may want to have them prove it in an indisputable way and the missionary might say you know what you're too much into your head you've got to open up your heart or the missionary may say you're too proud a person that wants to use their head you're too proud and it's a manipulative way of getting you not to think one thing that i do with missionaries ask them to tell me how many times does the Torah does the Jewish Bible tell us that we should follow our hearts how many times does the Jewish Bible tell us that when we're going through our lives we should base our lives upon our emotions upon our hearts after all the missionary is saying you're too much into your head you have to open up your heart of course the answer is never because our bible repeatedly warns us against following our hearts in the Shema that we say three times a day the bible says don't go astray after your heart the prophets warn your heart is very deceptive it will lead you astray so our bible never tells us to follow our hearts what our bible tells us is to follow our mind because that's the tool that god gave us for navigating through life if you want to know what's right and what's wrong don't base it upon how you feel base it upon your mind your ability to think and reason we were hard wired as human beings we were hard wired to appreciate truth we were hard wired to be repelled by falsehood that's how god created us we have an attraction to truth we have a repulsion to that which is false the Torah says in the book of Deuteronomy chapter four via data hayon you shall know this day you have to know things with your mind but there's a problem with your mind it's a problem with your brain the mind has no real power or strength by analogy you can think about our mind as the steering wheel of a car what your mind can do is to tell you which way to steer the car which way to steer your life but if all you had was a steering wheel you would never get anywhere what you need is gasoline you need an engine and the gasoline is not your brain your brain is basically impotent your brain is very good at pointing you in the right direction what gets us to do things in life what gets us to move what gets us to get up and go that's our emotion and so that's why the bible says in Deuteronomy chapter four you shall know this day you have to know what to do but then the bible says but then bring that knowledge to your heart once you know something then what you want to do is marshal your emotions behind what you know once you're pointing that car in the right direction then you could push on the gas pedal it's not as if we ignore our emotions but we want to put them in a proper place but the missionary encourages us not to think too much to use our heart to open our heart the missionary often pressures us into making a quick decision a quick commitment what's preventing you from accepting Jesus into your heart right now that's a sales tactic what's stopping you from buying this Mercedes Benz right now what's getting in the way of buying it right now why do we have to buy it right now why can't i think about it so the missionary will often pressure us into making a quick commitment rushing us to make a decision or the missionary might engage in a form of manipulation which goes like this why don't you pray to Jesus and ask him to reveal himself to you if you have a problem if you're not sure why don't you pray to him and ask him to reveal himself to you of course this is like putting the car before the horse once you pray to Jesus you're accepting him already but that's a very tricky way of getting us to make an acceptance before we make a real decision this is what we call in sales getting your foot in the door technique for the missionary to be able to get me to pray to Jesus and then say well and have him reveal himself to you it'll become clear they've got their foot in the door big time at that point experts on persuasion like qualdini point out that making a simple request a painless request like can you fill out this questionnaire or maybe could you accept this bible or how about joining us for a bible study things that are easy to do that once we exceed to a simple request it's infinitely easier for people to make the next request that's much more complicated and much more difficult so beware of making simple commitments beware of doing something which seems painless and harmless they found that when the koreans captured american soldiers in the korean war and they wanted them to make treasonous statements against the united states they would never have been able to get them to do that immediately they first got them to do something which was simple and easy like can you write a postcard to your family saying that you're okay now the truth is that soldiers are not supposed to do anything that they requested to do by the enemy other than give their name rank and serial number but what the koreans did in order to manipulate american soldiers was to make painless requests simple requests harmless requests and they found that once these soldiers ruling to comply in the most simple innocent ways with their captors it was much easier to then take them to the next step which was writing treasonous statements against their government finally missionaries engage in what i refer to as manipulated spirituality they might ask us to ask god for a sign if you're having difficulty accepting jesus into your heart ask god for a sign he'll share a sign with you he'll give you a sign and then what they do is they interpret virtually anything as a sign that confirms their belief in jesus because everything that we go through in life can be interpreted anything can be interpreted even the most innocent experiences or missionaries might fabricate or manufacture miracles they might tell you stories of miracles that happen to them and these miracles may not necessarily be true because people are fascinated by miracles they're taken in by miracles and these miraculous events may be either totally fabricated or exaggerated of course missionaries don't encourage you to think about where the miracles prove anything every religion in the world has miracles that they experience so we know one thing that miracles could never prove which religion is true our bible in deuteronomy chapter 13 says that false prophets can do miracles the bible there says because god is testing us to see if we'll be loyal to him or we'll be taken in by the miracles of the false prophet and finally missionaries will often make the confusing claim that passion implies truth people are often very taken in by passion if you see christians in their church services crying and weeping and falling on the floor there's an assumption that people are only asleep make that it must be true if they feel it so strongly if they're if they're so vibrant in their faith the more forceful people make an argument the more it creates the impression it must be true and what this does is it confuses emotion with credibility emotion never proves credibility or truth we know that people can get very very emotional about things that are totally not true so in conclusion we should realize that missionaries will use all or some of these techniques that we discussed tonight and maybe even others one thing that many missionaries will do is try to wear you down they won't give up they'll keep on calling you they'll keep on asking you to come to their services they'll keep on inviting you to bible study and they hope to ultimately wear you down until you succumb and you give in so what do we need to know so we need to rely on our instincts god has blessed us and has given us instincts for a reason if at any time in life you feel uneasy about anything if you feel that you're being pushed to commit to something if you feel confused by an experience you're going through and you feel uneasy about it if you're feeling you know what i should you have a compelling feeling you know i should and you don't really feel it's the right thing to do you're being pulled maybe i should join this church but i don't feel right about it anytime you're having these feelings of uneasiness take a break separate yourself from that environment speak to someone get a second opinion anytime in life you're going to make an important decision look both ways before you cross the street you don't need to do that for trivial things in life if you're going to buy a sweater you don't need to do weeks of research because the worst that will happen it will be at $50 but when it comes to big decisions in life like who we're going to marry what religion we're going to accept if it's not the one that we were raised in even things like what college i'm going to end up going to look both ways ask people for advice get a second opinion if you go to your doctor one day and he says you know we got your x-rays we're going to have to amputate your leg you don't say when can we book the first appointment you're going to say you know doc i think i want to get a second opinion if you're going to buy a house in toronto you're spending close to a million dollars now you don't want to buy it because it looks nice you're probably going to want to hire a home inspector to make sure that the foundation is okay the roof's okay the boiler is okay so anytime that there's a big decision in life be careful look both ways get a second opinion do your research there are groups out in the world today called elgats large group awareness training seminars your friend might invite you to a weekend retreat the purpose might be to overcome stress to learn how to improve relationships to gain more self-esteem these sound like great things you may have a great time at this kind of experience and then there's an invitation to sign up for a six-week course which is going to cost a bit more money so maybe before you make that second step do a little bit of research go online and research this organization you might end up seeing that you know what there are lots and lots of red flags about this kind of group lots of red flags if you do this research before you get sucked in totally you have a chance of pulling yourself out but after you've gone to the second program the six-week seminar and then you've gone away for the 12-week seminar and you've spent thousands and thousands of dollars and you've ended up now volunteering for this group and now you become a volunteer for free and you're investing hours and hours and hours of your time each week and someone says to you you know what I heard about this group that you're in and there's a lot of problems with it it's going to be very difficult for you to pull yourself away so as soon as you begin to think about joining something committing yourself to something do your research and if it turns out that this opportunity has lots of red flags there are hundreds of stories of people who've been through this experience and they've had huge problems there are articles that have been written about this group scandals about this group maybe think about whether or not it's possible to learn to have self-esteem in a program where there are no red flags maybe learn about how to manage your stress in a program where there are no complaints that have been filed maybe it's possible to learn how to better your relationships in a seminar where no one has had complaints but that's the importance of doing research and you should realize that once you're in a group that's trying to manipulate you they will have pat answers to every single complaint that is raised against them do a cost-benefit analysis maybe it's possible to get the benefits of this kind of group from a place where there are no downside there are no red flags and finally don't feel guilt-tripped about saying no we're very polite here in Canada it's hard for us to say no but don't feel guilt-tripped about saying no no thank you i'm not interested there's no need to be rude to people there's no need to be insulting but if it turns out that we are being sold and we are being manipulated it's perfectly legitimate for us to say i'm not interested no thank you have a nice day shalom aleikum