On Monday and Tuesday of this week, a middle-aged man has camped out in the middle of the grass between the Tate Center and the Zell B. Miller Learning Center (MLC for short) with signs and a gallon of water with a rowdy crowd circled around him. Today, I decided to just “go check it out” and see what all the fuss was about. Just seconds into his current rant, I got heated. A few minutes turned into thirty and I found myself really pissed off.
To preface, I walked up to a sign that said “you deserve hell” and this man saying, “Ladies, close your legs!!” He then proceeded to list of all of the potential STD’s a human being could possible contract while simultaneously pointing and screaming at random women in the crowd, screaming and mocking, “I see that face. I know you got it!”
My first question – how does this pertain to God in any way?
My second thought – why is he only condemning women?
My second question was quickly answered when the next three minutes of his speech consisted of the crudest, most misogynistic comments I have ever heard. Most of which are too obscene to even repeat. I fell into his trap of wanting to go up and yell in his face for falsifying everything I have ever been taught and believed in. So many people in this world have no idea why anyone would believe in a god, but the fact that this man is insulting my God and spreading lies physically hurt my heart. I felt the anger increasing in me as he continued to rant his nonsense.
The crowd around me seemed to feel the same way.
One student – wearing a bright red Georgia sweatshirt of course – promptly threw his belongings into the grass, shouting rebuttals as he strutted into the middle of the circle, inches from the man’s face
Somehow the conversation jumped to vegetarianism, and some girls were mocking this man’s definitions of sins when it comes to eating meat.
“Christians don’t sin!!” he then spat out.
I genuinely laughed out loud when he said this.
Immediately, a blonde girl ran out in front of this man but faced the crowd instead. She said, “Y’all, I apologize for this man. I apologize for all that he is saying because this is not what God tells us. I am a Christian and I am not afraid to tell everyone here, but my God teaches love. He shows love to every single one of you. Ignore this man, he has no idea what he is talking about!”I was so impressed with her courage to say exactly what I had been thinking in my own head that I couldn’t help but give her a little “whoop whoop” cheer.
I know that I sin. I know that I was born a sinner and will continue to struggle with this as long as I’m on this Earth. In a way, his sign is correct. I do deserve to go to Hell. Out of frustration at this man’s ignorance and the harm I felt he was doing, I even said a few “bad words” myself, as a Christian.
But I also know that because God died on the cross for my sins, I don’t have to go to Hell for any of them. I accepted Christ into my heart when I was 7-years-old and I publicly proclaimed my faith the summer before came to college.
But not everyone is like me. Not everyone has the same life story or beliefs or relationship with God. This man does not know where each listener is in their lives or what they’re going through right now, today. Maybe someone is struggling with their faith and this man just claimed to be a minister of the Word yet is portraying a God not even I want to know. What struggling child of God would want to hear that their God thinks they’re going to hell? This scare tactic might work on a child, but is this the relationship God wants with us? One dictated by fear? Pretty sure the Bible I read tells a different story.
(Signsreading "Love Not Hate")
What this man is speaking of is not God’s love. He doesn’t understand the grace, the mercy, the kindness that God offers to all of us daily, no matter what we’ve done or where we’ve been. This man is talking about condemnation and judgment that is not from God.
My God would not look down upon on his daughter and call her a “whore” for having premarital sex, or for wearing shorty-shorts, or for any reason, actually.
Romans 10:8-9 says, "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."
It's as simple as that: if you believe that Jesus is your Lord and Savior, you're going to Heaven. End of discussion.
God spent time with every kind of person, in every stage of life, not the religious people who the Bible refers to as “the righteous,” because He wanted them to feel His love and acceptance. He reprimanded the righteous because of the way they judged the sinners. There was very little that made God angrier than this.
In John 8:7 He turned to the crowd, ready to stone an adulteress, and said, “You who is without sin, throw the first stone.”
I believe that this man at Tate is essentially trying to stone those of us on this campus while the Lord says that it is not our job to determine others’ punishment for our sins.
You, sir, are claiming to speak in the name of God but are actually spewing vile condemnation that are actually hurting your religion rather than spreading the Word and bringing nonbelievers to Christ.
Who is going to give His life to a higher being that thinks that joining a sorority is the doorway to a 'blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth," (Matthew 13:50)?
My initial thoughts on this man were that he was conducting a scientific experience or just pranking us for fun; that there’s no way this man actually believes the horrid lies he’s filling students’ minds with.
But after speaking to one of the cops who eventually arrested this man for “assault of a student” (apparently he tried to punch the student in the red sweatshirt), he told me that the organization that this man is with is purposefully coming to free speech campuses and locations around Georgia to evoke physical assault on himself, giving him the ability to sue the school.
So maybe he has said all of this simply to incite, knowing that this is a topic that evokes emotion.
Well, I guess he got some of what he wanted: one student felt so strongly that she stood up for her faith in front of a crowd of strangers (including their Snapchat videos), and another student risked physical harm to argue with him up close. Now that is something I’m inspired to see as a Christian.
I personally thank the Lord for Officer Cowan and his partner who got this idiot off of our beautiful campus.
