An Apology For the Sign-Bearers

As a Chris­t­ian min­is­ter, I apol­o­gize to the cam­pus com­mu­ni­ty for for my well-mean­ing but mis­guid­ed broth­ers who bore the signs on White Plaza yes­ter­day.

You recall them, no doubt. They bore such charm­ing slo­gans as “The sin and the sin­ner go straight to hell togeth­er,” and “Warn­ing: For­ni­ca­tors, Drunk­ards, Thieves, Adul­ter­ers, God Haters, Liars, HOMOSEXUALS — JUDGMENT.”

I know you find it hard to believe, but they were under the impres­sion that they were act­ing with kind­ness and even love. They were try­ing to tell you some­thing impor­tant in the best way they could think of.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, their method under­mined their mes­sage.

To them, and to all the sign-bear­ers scat­tered across the cam­pus­es of Amer­i­ca, I direct the next few remarks.

I know you are doing your best to hon­or God, but when you bring such signs onto cam­pus and pro­voke stu­dents you are not accom­plish­ing your goal.

In fact, I sus­pect that a care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of the Bible will lead you to rethink your actions.

Observe:

Always be pre­pared to give an answer to every­one who asks you to give the rea­son for the hope that you have. But do this with gen­tle­ness and respect, keep­ing a clear con­science, so that those who speak mali­cious­ly against your good behav­ior in Christ may be ashamed of their slan­der. 1 Peter 3:15–16, NIV

Gen­tle­ness and respect may have been your aspi­ra­tion, but the mes­sages on the signs belied your intent. You may not under­stand why, but peo­ple found your mes­sages extreme­ly dis­repect­ful. Respect is mea­sured by the recip­i­ent, so if an entire com­mu­ni­ty tells you that you are act­ing in a way that they find offen­sive and insult­ing then you must take them at their word and rethink the way that you com­mu­ni­cate your mes­sage.

Con­duct your­selves wise­ly toward out­siders, mak­ing the most of the time. Let your speech always be gra­cious, sea­soned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every­one. Colos­sians 4:5–6, NRSV

My broth­ers, I humbly sug­gest that you act­ed with a great lack of wis­dom, as any­one who has spent time min­is­ter­ing on the col­lege cam­pus could have told you. Indeed, we would have made the point with great fer­vor. Some­thing like this hap­pens once or twice every year and it always detracts from the work of God on cam­pus — I have nev­er once seen it help.

If you doubt the effects of your vis­it, I direct you to the unof­fi­cial Stan­ford blog’s per­spec­tive on your actions.

If any place will not wel­come you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a tes­ti­mo­ny against them. Mark 6:11, NRSV

And this, to me, is the clinch­er. Jesus told his dis­ci­ples to move on when peo­ple did­n’t want to lis­ten. And that’s the mod­el we see through­out the New Tes­ta­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Paul. Paul, con­trary to his rep­u­ta­tion, was very can­ny and was a mas­ter at non-intru­sive evan­ge­lism. He sought to preach in places where peo­ple expect­ed to hear preach­ing. He went to syn­a­gogues, philo­soph­i­cal venues, and lec­ture halls and talked to peo­ple who were ready to lis­ten.

And so while I applaud your inten­tions, I beg you to rethink your evan­ge­lis­tic strat­e­gy and see if there is not a wis­er way to engage stu­dents with the claims of Christ.

And to the cam­pus com­mu­ni­ty I reit­er­ate my apol­o­gy. They meant well, but they act­ed in a way that caused many of you to have a low­er opin­ion of Christ and His fol­low­ers than you did before.

Ear­li­er today I was read­ing an arti­cle about Ein­stein’s reli­gious views and I was struck by the fol­low­ing com­ment: “I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the lumi­nous fig­ure of the Nazarene.”

If your per­cep­tion of Christ is shaped large­ly by the sign-bear­ers and oth­ers like them, then I urge you to look at Jesus your­self. Read the gospels and ask around in your dorm. I promise that you will find some Christ-fol­low­ers who would love noth­ing more than to have a respect­ful con­ver­sa­tion with you and help you to see why Jesus is still wor­shiped after these many years and across these many miles.