# 8 – Religious Expression

We encountered a lot of signs of religious expression on this trip, from evangelical Soviets in Portland to Mormons in the Salt Lake City Tabernacle to the Silversmiths at the Navajo Nation. The one experience I had that really sticks out in my mind was our last day in Chicago. Rashina and I were walking out of the food festival that was going on in one of the major city parks. We topped the hill and looked down through the crowds and saw about four guys standing there, two holding signs up, one with a sign draped over him, and another on a bullhorn. All of the messages coming out from the signs and the bullhorns were screaming of hellfire and damnation for everyone in the crowd unless they turn to Jesus and REPENT, REPENT, REPENT.

At first, I was pretty amused, because, well, no one was stopping, obviously. I was reminded, as I often am, of the Rob Bell video “Bullhorn.” Bell is an Christian pastor in Grand Rapids, Michigan who seems to be voicing and guiding a lot of the up-and-coming Christian church, one that has been ridiculed by its elders and super-conservatives because of its seeming flexibility. What I dig so much about Bell is his approach towards living life and his means of evangelism, which is just loving some one without any expectations of needing them to come to faith so he can put another notch on his spiritual belt. He advocates the trampoline style of living the Christian faith over the brick wall, meaning one that is flexible, realizing you are not going to know everything just because you are a person of faith and the beauty of inviting some one to jump on that trampoline with you, instead of the brick wall mentality, where it is rigid and meant to keep people out. Thus, I return to the story.

Being a former Christian from the rural Southeast, when I see people throwing the words of hell around at passersby, I get angry in less than a second, being one of the three things that make me lose my cool in no time. I walked up to the guy with the bullhorn, who was in the middle of the phrase, “Hell is what awaits you. You must repent or you will burn in hell for the rest of eternity.” I asked him how this was working out for him, if any one was stopping to listen. He said the had heard a lot of name-calling and profanity but no one was stopping to accept Jesus as their “lord and savior.” He then, as fate would have it, asked me if I was a Christian. I said that I was not, to which he asked why. I replied, “Well, because of people like you. This is not the way you spread a message.”

Just about this time, a heavyset biker-looking guy comes over to me and begins to intercede in our conversation. By this time, Rashina had urged me for the tenth time to walk the hell away, citing that the conversation was useless and these guys are just jokes. I entertained him in conversation for a second and he also asked me the question of am I a Christian. I replied No yet again, and then he proceeded to tell me that my parents were perverts and heretics, and that they are to blame for me not being a Christian, as he thudded his Bible left and right in my face. I told him he was obnoxious, and that again, the reason I am not a Christian is because of people like him. I told him that Jesus was not proud of his behavior and that he, in all actuality, might be the one on a one-way path to hang out with Satan. I told him that the Christian God was about love, to which he told me to pull out any verse in the Bible that ever mentioned God was a loving God. The conversation was getting useless and I was incredibly heated (by that time he was yelling about an inch away from my face), Rashina and I took off, not without a slight jab by me letting him know that I would see him in hell.

The reason I believe this perturbs me so much is because the game is an end-journey that seems to be more about control and a pat-on-your-own-back (the playground mentality). I’ve heard enough from the pulpit about the atrocious sins of the world and how so much of it is on its way to the bad place. I admit that when I was a Christian, this just fed my insecurities in staying within the confines of my comfort zone. Judgment is comfortable, after all.

I want to leave this blog with a story from Donald Miller – At Reed College, rated as the most godless place of higher education in the country, there were a small group of Christian students. Miller and a friend decided to audit some classes and start a group meeting weekly or so with the Christians on campus, to which about four came out. During the annual festival usually containing lots of nudity and drugs, they set up a “confession booth” in the middle. After a couple of hours of no one coming in, finally one guy did, asking, “So am I supposed to confess my sins here?” Miller was there and replied, “No.” What followed was Miller, as a Christian, confessing the sins of the Christian church and asking the guy’s forgiveness for the Crusades, for Televangelism, for being very excluding, for all the hate that has come out of the Church, etc. The rest of the festival there was at least a thirty-person line in waiting for the confession booth and a means of understanding began to be created between the small Christian community and the outside, mainstream community of Reed College. The trick here is humility. Perhaps, the church should follow Miller’s example.