If you're of a certain age and are a Protestant, you remember those famous (or famously corny) tracts published by Jack Chick. Fred Carter, the largely-unknown illustrator of those tracts, recently died. I found these wacky pamphlets slightly scary as a kid, but unintentionally hilarious as a teenager. I had a whole bunch of them. Kudos to you, Mr. Carter, for giving me so much entertainment (albeit not in the way you probably intended). As an adult, I actually admire some of the artwork (much of it by the late Mr. Carter). It's well above the comic-book standard of the time. The stories still crack me up. Jack Chick is the prototype for every fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist caricature ever dreamed up in Hollywood, and he hung in there until just a few years ago. I always felt that there was a great American satirical novel to be written about a fictionalized Jack Chick character (like a modern version of Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry). Chick was one of a kind, a true American original.
May Fred Carter rest in peace and joy with his blessed Savior, Jesus. My experience with Chick Tracts was different from yours, Ananias. Someone left the tracts at the laundromat my young family and I frequented on a weekly basis. We were RC at the time. Sitting around waiting for the washers and then the dryers was boring, so I'd read the tracts. Some of the statements about the RC faith were exaggerated and erroneous, but the overall effect on me was positive; they encouraged me to read the Bible more and they corrected me on some of my bad RC theology. They prepared me emotionally for my eventual departure from the RCC, which held me captive (having taught me that I'd be damned forever if I left the denomination and didn't repent & return). When I felt led to send some gospel tracts to our Anglican brothers and sisters in Nigeria, the only kind of tract for which I could get dependable transportation (since mail and packages are regularly stolen en route in Nigeria) was Chick tracts; a small ministry transported and hand-delivered several thousand copies of The Only Way from me to the Nigerian Anglicans, for which they expressed great gratitude. Here they are, praying over the tracts and asking God to bless them and to produce a harvest of souls. Incidentally, I am currently teaching a 3-part Sunday School series at our parish on the topic, "Sharing the Faith." We'll be looking at and discussing this tract and others (comparing & contrasting) next Sunday.
Oh, I have no particular beef with the underlying theology, really. It's just that the tracts themselves are such a fixture of a certain era in my Evangelical youth -- I often thought that a bit more subtlety in the message would have gone a long way. But then, a subtler story would have gone against the comic-book style, I suppose. Chick had a genius for this sort of presentation -- love him or hate him, you have to admit that nearly all Protestants know him, or at least his works. I often think that Chick was born in the wrong time. He would have been a great scenarist for the morality plays of the Middle Ages (well, apart from his dislike of the RC church generally and his dislike of Jesuits in particular).
I used to see those by the paper towel dispenser or tucked into the mirror at truck stops in the Midwest. Not so common these days.
The hardware store where I work has one pop up in the men's room a couple times a year, as well as a local Baptist church's in-house knockoffs. I should probably be ashamed to say I always throw them away, but I do just that.
It's never too late to modify behavior as long as one is alive. Someone else might be impacted in a positive way by reading one of those.