There is a crowd today on one of the busier sidewalk intersections on campus. Instead of heading back to their dorm rooms to wrap up homework assignments and goof off online, students are crowding around handful of men preaching. The words of these men will be repeated throughout the next few days, along with the more notable shouts and arguments students are throwing back at them.
They’re preaching hellfire and damnation on every one of us.
In the bathroom between classes, a few girls are talking. “Don’t they know that positive messages go further than negative ones?” “Yeah, I’m not at all inclined to embrace something so antagonistic.”
The audience members laugh. They stand and watch, they shout back, with strong disagreement. They are so far above this small minded damnation of all of our sins, real and imagined, it could not possibly be the case that this sermon has netted them. Dripping with derision, priding themselves on their clear and eloquent refutation of this damnation, the crowd continues to gather. Obviously we are wiser than this exclusivity of salvation. Obviously their message of hate bounces off and if they wanted to have any kind of impact they would come and preach a sermon of acceptance. “Come to us with love, and maybe we’ll listen.”
There is an idea that if the religious speakers came with open arms, not trying to convert with fear, not threatening hell, but preaching a message of love, those beautiful bits of the Bible where Jesus tells us to love our neighbors and take care of the poor, then we would listen.
Except that for the past five or six weeks, one of the Christian organizations on campus has had a table at this same intersection every Wednesday. They don’t preach, they don’t demand conversion, and they don’t tell those of us who are not part of their particular faith that we are wrong. They hand out kool-aid and hot coco, depending on the weather. They do it because they want to live the message of love that they see as central to their faith. Regardless of who we are, they want to make our day a little better.
At most, I’ve seen about six people at this booth. I stop by between most of my classes because a friend of mine helps man it, and it’s unfortunately rare that me chatting with him gets in the way of anyone else getting kool-aid. Today he pointed over to the crowd gathered around the hellfire accusations. “That’s the impression of Christians that we’re trying to fight.”
If love is more effective than hate, why do we let hate draw a crowd? Why do we stand and listen? Why don’t more people sit in the sun sipping kool-aid, appreciating the generosity demonstrated regardless of faith? I don’t belong to their group, am not even sure if I consider myself a Christian, and yet they welcome me week after week and I take a few minutes to sip a cup of coco and gather my energy to finish my day.
If I were to eavesdrop on conversations throughout the cafeteria tonight, I would hear plenty about the message of hate sent by the grey headed men shouting accusations and damning us all to the fiery pits of hell. I would hear nothing about the hot coco at a table not twenty feet away.
There’s something sad about all of this.