I Was Shot by Jesus Today

I was walking by a 7-11 and was moving towards a crosswalk to get across Hawthorne when a man in his late forties approached me and asked if I had committed my life to Jesus Christ. Now, I’m not one to usually be rude to witnesses of any particular faith, I just mentioned I’m fine and to have a good day, but this wasn’t enough for this fella as I watched the orange hand tell me I was stuck there. He became very persistent that I hear his message and that I consider letting Christ into my heart and to repent for all my sins. I then went with strategy number two: I told him I was Jewish.

That is when the train went off the rails for this self-righteous man. He became very aggressive and told me that it was even more important that I repent for I was living a life of sin not accepting Jesus as my personal savior. He started saying anti-Semitic remarks that I wasn’t feeling comfortable with.

I told him to leave me alone and to save his breath for someone who truly needed the saving, but this just angered him more as I waited for the damn white man to appear on the sign so I could walk away from this crazy person.

He was getting me angry enough to want to start an argument with him, but knowing that people of this kind of faith would not listen to reason, so I just jumped into Hawthorne and jogged to the other side as he yelled that I was going to live eternally in hell.

I was pissed. Half of me wanted to re-cross the street and lay into him, argue his silly myths and belittle him, but I knew that would only strengthen his conviction, so I kept on walking.

I’ve spent too much time this afternoon thinking about what I could have said. I have read the bible and studied it. Most of the time a lot of these evangelicals don’t have a lot of biblical knowledge, so it becomes frustrating to even try to discuss something that someone just believes with no education. I know, how pretentious of me, but if someone is going to accost me on the street corner, I’d like to be arguing real points, not someone’s gut instinct faith.

I have seen people try to argue with street witnesses before, and the hotter the arguer becomes the more the faithful will feel conviction in his belief. I don’t want to turn this man into a martyr. He ends up going to his clubhouse and says he had to battle evil and was able cast off the devil-in-disguise. He becomes a hero.

I don’t necessarily want to demolish someone’s faith. I don’t really care what people believe. I have my own opinions about gods and religions, but as long as I’m not being threatened, I keep them to myself more or less. That was not the case when I was younger. I felt compelled to destroy religion and everyone’s faith because I saw religion as one of the most horrible institution on earth. I still do, but I’m too old for a result that is only a dream.

Once a sidewalk preacher at Portland State with the whole fire and brimstone speech accosted me, so I decided to engage the man in conversation. I pretended that I had never heard of Christianity before. I said I grew up somewhere where Christianity doesn’t exist and here I was in Portland State University hearing about Christ’s good work for the first time.

I had him start at the beginning, and he was excited to educate an active listener, so he started at the beginning. I really had to keep myself calm as he told me about the bible and the stories. I had to pretend that this was all new to me. I had to think how an adult would react to this story for the first time.

I had to bite my cheek several times as I had him repeat certain points. I asked him to repeat the Virgin Mary story again and I could tell that he felt ridiculous repeating that God impregnated a woman, or an angel on God’s behalf, and the Son of God was conceived.

That experience gave me hope that I could be polite and non confrontational, but still get a point across, but most people won’t believe that I haven’t heard about Christianity before, so that tactic doesn’t work anymore.

Other times I just tell them I’m Jewish and that’s that. Of course the Jews for Jesus don’t take that as a conversation stopper, and so I have to find other methods to get them off my back.

Then I remembered Jesus saying, “You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.” John 4:22, and it seems pretty clear that Jews for Jesus would be Jews not Christians.

Unfortunately, this street preacher really angered me and took me some time to calm down. He invaded my space and condemned me to hell for both not accepting his savior and for being Jewish. It took me awhile to get away from what I should have done or said to counting my breaths.

I don’t believe in any gods, nor do I subscribe to any religion other than baseball. I live my life the best I know how, and if I die and some punk ass god is going to condemn me to punishment for not accepting such a silly story, than that god is weak and all too human.

In the gnostic gospels Yahweh is an evil demiurge that creates our world, but is not omnipotent, but is a lesser being to something much bigger than him. I like this idea that the god that most people I know worships is nothing but a bitter old jealous demigod and has to answer something that is so awesome and powerful, we don’t even dare worship it.

I’ll just leave the god stuff to the god people and I’ll keep living my life and hope I don’t run into any street preachers until I calm down.