This is going to be a long post, but please stick with it. It's important.
I went to Rhetoric class today and heard some people talking about there being a street evangelist in Powell plaza yesterday. Apparently he told some people that they were going to go to hell for wearing blue jeans and dyeing their hair red. He told a deaf student that being deaf is a sin. (Like he can CONTROL that.) The students that were talking about it said that the evangelist and his group were coming back today.
It was strange for me because a few weeks ago I was back in my hometown and I taught at youth group about exactly this kind of situation, and how to handle it. But I'd never actually seen anyone like this in real life, never actually been there for it. For all my talk, I kind of realized I wasn't really equipped to talk to this guy. So I texted Andrew, my youth director back home. (Thanks, Andrew, you're the best.) He gave me some awesome ideas, and Emily and I decided that we wanted to go down and actually listen and see what this guy was about.
I was kind of nervous, and didn't eat much at lunch, because I knew I wanted to speak to this man. So we went down after lunch and just listened for a while. There were three men there, but only one was talking. The other two were just kind of standing there. And there was a little kid with them, maybe seven or eight years old. (It was weird for me, because he looked exactly like my cousin Grant when he was that age.) They'd attracted kind of a crowd - I want to say maybe thirty people. When we got there the preacher had just been asked - if you take the Bible so literally, how can you wear 'mixed fibers' or eat food that isn't kosher? He responded by saying that those laws were only set down for the Israelites, and that we don't need to follow them now, that we only need to follow God's moral law.
I admit, I don't know whether that's true or not, but whatever.
I was curious, so I just asked him what he considered to be the moral law. He pulled out his Bible and read from the New Testament. (Which is good, I guess, because a lot of the Old Testament was refuted in the New Testament, and I was going to be really irritated if he started preaching from the Old.) He quoted 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. 'Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.' (That's what my version has it as; his translation was a little more formal.) He then went on to say that those people - the 'fornicators', as he called them, were going to hell.
I pointed out that Jesus told us to love everyone, regardless of whether or not they were 'fornicators'. He agreed with me (sort of). I was having a hard time getting a word in edgewise, but I did my best - I said "Then shouldn't the message we're preaching be one of love? That God loves these people and wants to be closer to them? Not that they're going to hell?"
He told me that the truth was a hard one, and that it wasn't his fault that people didn't like what he was saying. I am not even exaggerating. He said, "If people don't like my message, that isn't my fault." I asked him how he could justify that if his mission was to save people. He told me that he didn't judge his preaching by how many he saved, but by whether or not what he was saying was 'glorifying to God'.
I wanted to tell him that it sounded like he was only glorifying himself, but I figured that would be an attack on him personally. So I told him I respected what he was doing, and that he had the courage to stand in front of everyone and speak from his heart, but that I couldn't respect a message that was about hate. I said that the message of Christ should be preached in such a way as to draw people in, not to push them away.
The sad thing was, I know I didn't change his mind at all. He quoted some verse from one of the Gospels where Jesus talks about the world hating him for the message he preached. And then he just went on talking. Someone asked him if he ever sinned, and he said no. It's that kind of thing that just irritates me. Because NO ONE is perfect, except for Christ. Yeah, we're supposed to try to be like him, but we CANNOT be without sin.
I wasn't the only one there that was talking back to him, but I was definitely the only one keeping my cool. After a while Emily pointed out that there were students standing around with sandwich boards. We were kind of worried at first, because the first one we saw was a girl, and on the back of her sandwich board it said "God took my mother and my best friend, and I despise him." But when she turned around, it said "Yet I can do ALL THINGS through Christ who strengthens me." I was sick of listening to the preacher, so I went over and talked to one of the sandwich board guys.
I said, "I just want to thank you for what you guys are doing. People need to see this side of the message."
He smiled, and he was like, "Yeah, we'd been planning this for weeks, and then this guy shows up... but one of our guys had a feeling, like God spoke to him, and told him that something would happen on Tuesday that would strengthen our message. And then he showed up."
I was completely taken aback. I mean, how cool is that? Almost like God sent this evangelist to give the sandwich board people something to refute.
I thanked him again, and left, and came back to my dorm so I could write this, but my hands were shaking so bad (because I was angry) that I couldn't type, so I got up and started punching my mattress (because that's just what I do) and accidentally slipped and hit the bedframe and busted open one of my knuckles. (Oops.)
Then Emily came back (she'd stayed to listen a little longer) and told me that he'd said that Jesus never tempts us beyond something we can handle. (Which is a good point.) But Emily asked him a hypothetical question. If you were living in a third-world country in extreme poverty, with no legitimate or legal way to feed your family, and you chose to steal, would you still go to hell? And get this: he said YES. Un-frickin-believable. He said he'd pray to God to help his family, and then if he got no answer, then he would accept that God meant for them to die of starvation, and let them die.
That isn't the way to help people. That isn't what God wants us to do. God loves everyone, and he wants us to love everyone, because it is through the grace of God that we are saved, and not through anything we can do. We are ALL sinners. There is no way for us to live completely without sin, because we're only human, and God knows that, and accepts us for who we are. THAT'S what we should be telling people. THAT'S the truth.
