all pictures copyright 2010
My brother leads a team from North Carolina every summer for a two week trip to London. The purpose of this trip is to pass out New Testaments and the Jesus film on dvd, in Arabic, to those living or vacationing in London, who may otherwise never have access to hearing about Jesus. There are other Christians that come together from South Africa, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon (and Germany
) to do this, and at their own cost. Now, to those of you who may already be rolling your eyes, let me make one thing clear: we are not trying to convert anyone. Only God Himself does this. Also, distributing New Testaments, contrary to what you might think, theoretically should be acceptable to any believer in Islam. The Qu’ran itself states that all Muslims should read the Torah and the New Testament (Linjeel, in Arabic). Ironically, the two books contradict each other fiercely, so I’m not sure what Mohammed was thinking when he wrote that, but let me get on with the story.
We passed out packets of the above every weekday and Saturday. Sunday we took the day off from distribution, and went to an area of London called Speaker’s Corner. Speakers Corner is a unique part of town, where any person, crazy, sane, or somewhere in between, can get up on a makeshift stepladder-stage and say whatever is on his or her mind. There are the usual crazies up there-the white supremecist, the black supremecist, the guy who hates England and is a boxing a large image of an Englishman; someone who loves America and claims the USA is the best nation in the world. No one was paying attention to those guys. But there were two people with crowds around them. One was a Muslim man, debating atheists on whether or not God exists. The other was a Christian man, challenging the Muslims to read the Qu’ran and the Bible, taking questions and answering in such a logical way, the crowd was dumbfounded.
Except for the guy next to me. I had moved toward the front of the crowd, curious to see how the speaker was handling questions, as well as to hear what the Muslim guys at the front were saying. As it turns out, they were clearly there only to try and distract others from listening to the speaker. The guy next to me was shouting insults, slander, violence, and curses at the speaker. He kept shaking his banana in the speaker’s face, just inches from his nose. My brother later told me that he knew who this man was, and they he had before thrown things at the speaker, hit him in the face, and threatened his family’s and his life. He was riling up 6-7 other guys around him, just trying to make noise so that the crowd couldn’t hear what the speaker had to say. The speaker handled the riotous bunch of guys with calm and ease, and continued speaking courteously, logically, and with authority. If anybody did throw out a question or challenge, he could answer this immediately, and usually used the Qu’ran to do so. In fact, the speaker was making the most sense of anyone there, and had a crowd of about 80 people or so around him at any given time for 2-3 hours. People were dumbfounded with his answers. You could see that the people passing by were listening. Those were the ones he was speaking to. Not these disrespectful men.
Well, as I was trying to listen, and Banana Man next to me kept shrieking out curses and insults, limiting my ability to hear, I turned and said something very tactful*, like, “Could you pipe down? I’m trying to listen.”
*note the sarcasm
In a split second, the following happened. Banana turned to me and shouted something I won’t repeat, but very close to, “You f’ing cow %$(!!$…..” and so on and so forth. In that moment, I’m not sure what got into me. I’m not an angry person, really. I looked into this man’s eyes, and saw a glimpse of what so many women in the Arab world must feel on a regular basis. This man felt he had the right to call any woman a derogatory string of insults without being questioned or insulted back. He said it just like you might call someone “silly”, but there was hatred, venom, poison, and arrogance in his face and tone of voice. Something deep inside of me, something between selfish pride and thoughts of the injustices suffered by so many women around the world (and granted, at much greater cost than these words) filled me with a huge amount of anger. What happened next, I am kind of ashamed to say. I forced his stupid banana out of his hand (so that he had one less thing to wave at me or anyone else), and I smashed it on the pavement! At this, he and his band of friends continued and intensified the choice names they were calling me. But I didn’t care. He tried to grab my purse, but it was around my wrist. I snatched it right back. “Hands off!” I shouted. He looked shocked to be spoken back to, much less being void of his fruit. “You might get away with this kind of treatment somewhere else, but it doesn’t happen here, buddy!” Once the moment of anger calmed down, I apologized for taking his banana. It was bad of me, to be sure, and I recognize that this was a futile attempt at controlling the situation or offering some melodramatic redemption for all of womankind. I offered to pay for it, and the story goes on and on in a few other details that I won’t bore you with. He calmed down, and, after a few more words on how evil & violent I was** turned back to insult the speaker with more fierce, useless, and violent words.
**me! Really, Banana Man? I’m the violent one? Well, maybe a little, but….sheesh!
The experience was shocking to me-that I could see in his face that he felt the right to demean me, the speaker, and, really, anyone he wished. He felt he had just as much right to do that as to help an old lady across the street. I was so grateful in that moment, to be in a place where freedom and justice of some kind exist for all people, man and woman. I was glad to know I was safe, or could call the police if need be. It is hard to believe that some people live their whole lives under this kind of oppression, that I barely caught a teensy glimpse of.
During times like this, I am reminded again of my weakness, my pride, my selfishness, my need to feel “right”. We all want to be right. We all want to be “okay”. We want to be perceived as good. Why? Why does this matter to us so much?
We are not good, by nature. And, we do not become good by being religious or going to church. In fact, that makes us even more blind. Rote religious fervor is always a bad thing, in fact, a dangerous thing, since it puts the emphasis on what we do; on our own efforts to be good.
We see our badness most obviously in our closest relationships. There is selfishness and pride in the heart of those closest to you. They hurt you with it. And, if you are honest with yourself, you see it all the more in your own heart, your inner thoughts, and the way you hurt yourself and others with it.
I wholeheartedly believe that we are only good when God makes us good, and He says this only happens when we follow Jesus. We are not good because of our efforts to follow Jesus. It is faith: that He is the ultimate Good, and that He has the power to change us in a real way. This is the power of his dying on the cross. This is the “gospel”. That Jesus did for us, what we can’t do. We can not make ourselves “okay”. We can’t fix ourselves. We need Him.
http://israelsmessiah.com/prophecy/messiah/fulfillment_probability.htm
http://www.bprc.org/topics/fulfill.html
