Street preachers should listen to what they try to convey

%C2%A0

 

As a native Californian, the idea of “Bible Belt Christianity” was something I had only heard rumors about when I came to Kentucky last year. I decided to get lunch in the Student Center one day freshman year and was confronted by a stranger who told me I was going to hell.

I hadn’t said a word to the man, and I stayed silent the whole time I was walking past. I listened to him condemn me for sins he failed to mention.

The man was careless and responding out of his own emotions, two mistakes many Christians make that can lead them astray as well as deter others from finding answers.

If you want to manipulate any religious or even philosophical works in whichever way you see fit and apply that to your own life, then you are within your rights, even if it may be contrary to those religious and philisophical studies.

But if your goal is to preach on the side of a street or in the middle of college campuses, then out of courtesy and love for the lost souls looking for answers you had better make sure everything you are saying is correct, said out of love instead of your emotions, and follows the textual examples you were called to imitate.

I don’t write to condemn a man for his actions, but to condemn the idea that erratic emotions and motives have any place in understanding and serving God.

You cannot appease what feels good to you and what is right before God because in many cases what feels good in your heart is sin — like spreading hatred when you are exasperated to relieve it from your own heart.

The Pharisees felt right in their hearts when staking heretics and the eventual savior of the world to a cross. The crusaders felt right when they murdered millions of innocent people and pillaged land that was sacred to God’s people.

The Islamic terrorists currently murdering Muslims and Christians alike feel justified not because they are submissive to the words of the Prophet Muhammad, but because they stopped searching for the truth in Islam as soon as they could make a weak argument for their own desire — to spread hatred and pain.

Most main religions in the world operate under two premises. One: at the heart, or beginning, of every faith there is a “perfect” being who creates the ideology, logic and purpose that form the “truth” which is the perfect understanding of the word. Two: we are all human, and by definition it’s impossible for us to reach full understanding of the truth.

You will never perfectly describe God. You will never perfectly eradicate sin. But you can try, and you can be submissive to God by pursuing those ends. To this God promises answers and a fruitful life.

Street preachers who evoke fights with innocent passersby only encourage wrath and prolong the effects of their hateful comments on the undeserving students, teachers and faculty they attack.

[email protected]