Super Bowl Outreach: Cursing "Christian"

We were at Jackson Square on Saturday night before the Super Bowl, in the amphitheater across from the CBS NFL stage. Hundreds of people were passing by as our brother Marcos Fernandez was preaching.

 

I was distracted by the crowds for a moment before I noticed that a woman was standing directly in front of Marcos, yelling at him. I approached her and asked her to step away from the speaker as she was pulling at his arm. Marcos was perched on a narrow footstool to give himself some elevation, and I was concerned she would pull him down or push him over.

 

“Ma’am,” I said, ” I’m the team leader. If you have an issue, you can address it with me,”

 

She ignored me and continued to shout loudly at Marcos, pulling on his arm. A New Orleans police officer approached her.

 

Now an approaching police officer is always a sign that a conversation is about to ensue. I stood back for a moment presuming that the animated woman, clearly aware of the officer, would cease her efforts to unperch Marcos.

 

To my amazement, however, the woman raised her hand to the officer to keep him away! He looked at her like a cow looking at a new gate, and I realized that he was considering which of a dozen different charges he might level against the verbose challenger. I thought to myself, “This is going to end badly.”

 

I quickly stepped in front of the woman and gently moved her away from Marcos. I asked her why she was so upset.

 

“I’m a Christian,” she said. “And my Jesus doesn’t preach hate!”

 

Now I had overheard her expletive-filled comments to Marcos, which prompted me to doubt her profession of faith. 

 

“Really?” I said. “So why are you so upset? My friend is just warning people of what happens if they should die in their sins. You don’t object to that, do you?”

 

Clearly she did. “My Jesus is a god of love! He doesn’t tell people they’re going to hell!” (I used the lower case ‘g’ for reference to “her Jesus” since she obviously had contrived a deity she was comfortable with.)

 

“If you’re a Christian,” I asked, “shouldn’t you be grateful that someone is preaching Christ to such a large group?” I used my reasonable voice, usually reserved for people who profess to love Christ and His people, and those with serious questions about eternal matters. In this case, it was more for the police officer who was still pondering the woman’s immediate fate.

 

Another brother was documenting the confrontation with his phone’s camera, just in case we needed some evidence of the events. She whirled around at him, hurling another expletive his way. 

 

“I’m a Christian!” she shouted again. “#$%@ you!” Turning to me, she launched into another diatribe, asserting (a) “her Jesus” was loving, and (b) that my friends and I should… well, the pictures say it better than I ever could.

 

What was happening here is very common. This woman probably attended a very liberal church, one that accommodated a lot of open-mindedness, but very little biblical obedience. Her hatred of God’s word, her idolatry in creating a Christ to suit her sins, and her indulgence of rage were manifestations of her slavery to sin. “For the time is coming,” Paul warned Timothy, “when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from the truth and wander off into myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

 

Myths like “my Jesus” being a “god of love,” rather than the Savior of the world, who died so that men might live forever; the spotless “lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world;” who warned us all to “repent, and believe the gospel,” for He is coming again, “to judge the living and the dead.”

 

False “Christian,” beware, and tend to your soul.

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