Date: 03 September 2008 12:44:17
The ranty street evangelists have clearly decided it's too cold to be ranty street evangelists, and have turned into ranty Tube evangelists instead. No staying power, some people, it was a positively tropical 14C as I left for work this morning.
So I'm sat there, all innocent-like, reading today's chapters in my “Read the Bible in a Year” plan (Baruch, Sirach and John), and someone gets on.
“Repent or burn! Repent or burn! You must repent or burn!”
Argh. It's far too early for this sort of stuff. Shut up.
He sees me.
Double argh.
He sees the book on my lap, and it's kind of obvious it's a Bible - the handy tags marking the books are a dead give away.
“Sister, will you join me in preaching to these people?”
“What, me? No!” (with added harmonics of “get lost, you loon”).
“But sister, we are called to spread the Good News!”
“Sorry, but I don't call 'repent or burn,' Good News. Whatever happened to 'God loves you,'?”
And then I closed my Bible, which has got “The CTS** New Catholic Bible” stamped on the front in big gold letters.
“You're a Catholic?” in the tone of voice most people reserve for “you're a typhoid carrier?”
“Yes.” He sort of lost interest after that, and thankfully shut up and got off at the next stop.
[Lest you think I hate all street evangelists, there is one I really like. She goes up to people, gives them a flower and a huge smile, says "Jesus loves you," and goes away.
That's it. No tracts, no "repent, you 'orrible little sinner, or it's the fiery pit with the worms for you," just a pretty flower, a big smile, and "Jesus loves you."
And funnily enough, people say "thank you," or "does He?" or "how kind," rather than "eff off and die, you miserable sod." She'll stop and talk if people want to, but otherwise, she goes on to the next person].
*Weirdness Quotient. It's like IQ, but with Weird™.
**Catholic Truth Society.