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I tried to engage the preaching woman, but she refused to talk to me. I made a comment to an atheist who made a sign to counter the “YOU DESERVE HELL” sign that simply said, “You Deserve Respect.” I told him that as a Christian, this kind of behavior embarrasses me, but he didn’t have much to say to me. He was too busy yelling at the preachers. I walked away feeling helpless. A crowd had formed around this hateful woman, and it felt like there was nothing I could do about it. I got emotional. I felt angry. I wanted to cry. I know that God can do anything and that He can use anybody, even wretches like these street-preachers and me. But I also felt like every sentence these people yelled put the people in this crowd farther from meeting my Savior.

A little while later, I walked back to try again. I decided to engage the one with the “YOU DESERVE HELL” sign because she wasn’t preaching, and nobody was talking to her. I sat on the grass, introduced myself with a smile, and asked for permission to ask her a few questions. She was happy to oblige. My goal was to convince her that some methods of communication are more effective than others. I think some people feel like as long as you’re doing God’s work, you don’t need to worry about being effective. “Just let God do the work!” “God cares about obedience, not success!” Yes, God is doing the major heart work, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to be effective. We’re the hands and feet of Christ. He wants to use us to do His work. We should take that really seriously. Our conversation didn’t go very well.

This must be Brother jed and Sister Cindy, a pair of travelling "evangelists" that are, ironically, members of the ultra-liberal United Methodist Church. Jed does not believe in substitutionary atonement, but appears to hold a "moral government" pelagian view similar to that Hugo Grotius and Charles Finney. In that view, Christ's death was a public display of God's justice, but it did not accomplish an actual, vicarious atonement of sin on our behalf. The cross only served to show the severity of punishment for sin, if God actually recompensed sin. Having been shown the example, we're supposed to be "scared straight" and to stop sinning on our own power.

FWIW, the encounter described above reminds me of your earlier thread Is the Bible embarassing?.

Then they, too, will suffer the Lake of Fire, if they reject the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. It amazes me how many, many so-called Christian groups out there just plain and simply cannot accept the clear Gospel call. They just have to add “this or that” to the mix. Of course, I think that this centers around that most evil of sins, PRIDE. Mankind thinks that a little bit of Jesus is good enough and that we will take care of the rest of the check, thank you very much.

Tragic, and I PRAY with my Lord that He forgives me when I fall into that trap of Satan.

Thanks for a good read.

I know a young college girl that was involved with some type of outreach that involved (I think) a booth and/or T-shirts with the slogan that was something like “I'm a Christian, and I'm sorry that .....”

I think it was more of a personal “I'm sorry”, but perhaps it also included being sorry for some of the things out there that people think are representative of Christianity (such as the Westboro Anti-Gay Church, Hell & Brimstone street preachers, etc.)

The whole thing was to engage in conversation with non-Christians - and it worked out very well.