The Freedom to Believe (Vol. 3, Issue 6)
-(college)-
April 21, 2005 Thursday. 2:05 pm. UCI campus. If you happen to stumble across the Career Fair and Ring Road, you might find an older man with a white moustache, white hair and sunglasses trying to dominate the area in which he stood. He holds a giant picket sign above him. It really is huge. On one side it reads, “Jesus is the way” or some other spiritual prophetic saying, and on the other: “ISLAMIC BELIEFS are SATAN’S LIES.”
Yes, it did say that. In nice, big, bold, red and black letters. This guy paraded up and down the path through the career fair with it, consistently returning to a spot directly in front of the steps leading up to Langson Library. Hard to believe his audacity. Hard to believe the entire UCI student population didn’t just jump him. Apparently, he’s been there all week. I saw him before, but I had only seen the nice side of the poster. A couple days ago it had been reported he was yelling out, preaching hard with this massive sign exploding over his head, probably thinking it was his halo.
But today, he was just marching up and down with it. No loud preaching this time. A girl in my writing class came a little late, and told us all about this guy with this big ass sign, she was flabbergasted, as we all were. I was thinking to myself, “Man, I can’t believe that.” It made me angry. She said that there was this whole crowd around him, and even police started to show up. I was told that no one really said anything. Well, I made my way out of the Humanities trailers and started my semi-long walk to the bus stop, and as I was walking up Ring Road, I saw it.
I was so infuriated. I debated with myself for a good five or six minutes over whether I should confront the man or not. I was definitely not fine with this man's approach to spreading the "word" of Christianity. Something had to be said. I decided I was not going to let him go without me telling him what I thought. I just had to get to that guy. I was scared, but determined. I saw people turn their heads in awe at the guy. Many slowed down. You could tell people were pissed.
I had to say something to him. I stopped him just before he reached the end of the booths. We were standing practically in the middle of it all, with Cornerstone Café to the right of us. I called out to him; he was only four feet away now.
“Excuse me,” I spoke boldly and clearly.
“Yes?” The man half-turned in direction of the voice. I walked around and faced him. “What religion are you?” I was speaking calmly, but I could already feel the indignation in me rising.
“Christian. I’m a born-again Christian,” he told me with such self-righteous pride.
I pointed high up above to what he was holding. “What’s with the poster?”
He said something to me like, “I’m just spreading the good word” or something, but I asked him, “Why Muslims?”
“Because Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world.”
“So?” He really did not have a response for this.
“I’m Roman Catholic,” I told him angrily–each word that came out of my mouth was filled with so much heat and so much repulsion. I said, “I’m Roman Catholic, and I don’t appreciate this sign.” I put great emphasis on the word “appreciate” and gestured firmly to the sign again.
“I don’t care what you think,” the guy told me so smugly I wanted to sock him. “I’ve been here for four days, doing this.”
I shook my head. “This is wrong.” I started to move away, and closed with, “You need to reconsider what religion you really are.” I walked away from this man, and as I did so, I felt my knees wanting to give a little. I trembled inside from that confrontation. I seriously doubt I had any impact whatsoever on that man. But at any rate, my dignity stands.
This was not the first time I encountered a person like that.
I’ll never forget the day I heard the most condemning statement in the world. “You will go to HELL if you do not believe.”
Now, I myself am a Christian. Roman Catholic to be exact. And I have a problem. Not with the atheists. Not with the agnostics. Not with the Buddhists or Muslims, or with the Jews. I have a problem with my own, with the Christians. All too often, I read message boards on every site from IMDB.com to comingsoon.net; I attend rallies or go to events, promoting Christianity, and something never fails to come to my attention…the fact that multiple believers of Christ say “You will go to hell because you do not believe!” and I turn to look at them, with mischief in my eyes. Not because it’s funny, not because I think it is the truth, but because they have no right to say what they just said–to give themselves that power, that authority to say ‘only Christians deserve that passage to heaven’ or ‘only Christians will be saved!’
The problem I have with this is that people of one faith tend to judge other people, from other cultures and other religions, by their standards. And most of the time, we don’t even do it consciously. It is called ‘ethnocentrism’. We form our opinions of someone from another culture around the standards and expectations (and ways) that we are used to because that is how our society, our culture, gave them to us. Our ‘worldview’ shapes our perceptions for us, and it is not even intentional on our part; that is just the way our minds work. I believe this is a disadvantage to us understanding other cultures around the world.
All I am saying is that in my heart, I know it feels wrong to accuse people, telling them that we’re right, and they’re wrong. Two or three years ago, I went to this big Fourth of July celebration at one of the local parks. It was a huge event. I will always remember that this preacher, this Christian preacher, stood up in front of this crowd of a thousand people, and shouted to all that “If you do not believe in God, you WILL spend eternity in hell! You will not be saved!”
It was almost a threat. And the more I think about it, it WAS just that – a threat. There was only hostility in his voice…his exclamation was MEANT for non-believers. What a petty route to take. To try and scare people into becoming Christians. I just shook my head in disappointment and detestation, standing there in the back of the crowd. I could not believe the statement he just made. It’s one thing to stand up and defend your faith, but it’s another to stand there and condemn others to hell. The preacher stood there, celebrated by hundreds of zealous Christians, teaching the same message that was written upon the sign held by the lone picketer on the UCI campus. Of course, that man on campus was clearly a belligerent example of a close-minded, Christian bigot. However, there are others still who foster their prejudices more quietly, and yet, maybe just as strongly.
We Christians need to stop professing that people not of our faith will go to Hell. Just because they do not believe, it does not make their lives any less worthy of greatness. So c’mon! STOP with those “predictions”. Who really knows who will go where when we die? Yes, I believe in God, but I believe in the freedom to believe or not to believe, too.