The Failure of the Soap Box Preacher!

When I was a missionary at the University of Colorado, there were many days I would pass the student union of campus and there would be a preacher yelling at the students passing by!  He would yell something of the following:

"You are all going to hell if you don't repent"  "Homosexuals are doomed to hell" "Stop your Fornication, Stop your Masturbation, You need to repent!"  Of course this would draw a confrontational crowd, while many others remained apathetic as they walked by probably stating in their minds "here we go again."  Anger would arise in students that stuck around and they would in turn yell back at the preacher.  In the end, there was no spiritual progress.  Anger would reside in the crowd and the preacher walked away with a false sense of pride because they felt persecuted on behalf of the Lord.  It was a complete failure.  Why?  The preacher didn't preach the Good News, which is the Gospel.  For how is it yelling, "Your going to Hell," any Good News at all?!?

Before I go into why this is a complete failure and not true Christianity, I do want to clarify a few things.  I do believe we are body and soul.  And I do believe our physical actions have the ability to turn us away spiritually from God and in the end bring us to eternal damnation.  Hell is part of what Jesus Christ proclaimed and taught, usually in the context of parable of people ending outside the gates with gnawing and gnashing of teeth.  God permits hell to exists because God will never over power our free-will decisions, otherwise we would never be able to freely love.  I believe evil, which includes hell, is an absence of God.  In the end, Hell is a place where God is absent.  I believe we see hell clearly in our physical reality.  I believe it was Pope Benedict that pointed to the following truth: Don't believe there is an eternal hell?  Then how can you explain how so many people are living in a physical hell right now?  Through anger, depression, darkness, sadness, grief, loss of hope.  It is clear that hell is real!

But why will the Soap Box Preacher proclaiming hell ALWAYS FAIL!  Because he doesn't start with Love!  It is our encounter with Love that our sin comes to the forefront.  It is in the midst of Love, which we receive through Grace, that we become distasteful of our sins.  I love the calling of the Apostle, Simon Peter in Luke chapter 5.  It's not until he comes to know who Jesus is after his encounter with the Lord before he falls to his knees and says, "Depart from me Lord for I am a sinful man."  It is in Love that the ugliness of sin is revealed.  It is in the encounter of the Lord that allows us to understand the actual consequence of living outside of that Love! 

Well didn't John the Baptist preach the need to repent? "Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand."  My friends, John the Baptist was in the desert.  People went out to him because they were searching for God's message for them.  They were seeking out a prophet for guidance.  He didn't go into other people's faces, but he desired to bring people closer to God and prepare people for Jesus Christ.   

Another example, let's look at St. Paul, the greatest evangelist and preacher.  St. Paul goes into Athens, where there are countless statutes to false gods and idols.  St. Paul was surrounded by people living in fornication and false idolatry! What does St. Paul do and say? "You are all damned to hell for what you worship!"  NO!!!  He doesn't say that, he says;

"I believe that in every way you are very religious. For I have passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To an unknown god.'  What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you" (Acts 17:22-23). 

St. Paul understood that he needed to bring the people to encounter with the unknown god and from there he could then address their sin.  Yes, St. Paul does correct various communities harshly in his letters found in the Scriptures, but these communities knew Paul.  The knew of his love for them, and Paul knew that they had encountered the Love of the Lord before he addressed their need for correction!

It is then no surprise that we find this same foundation of encountering love before addressing one's sin in many of the spiritual gifts of the Church.  One in particular comes from St. Ignatius of Loyola.  He was the founder of the Jesuits and he came up with what are called the Spiritual Exercises.  The exercises are based on meditating on four parts: Sins (of the world and ourselves), the Life of Christ, the Death of Christ, and His Resurrection.  But before you could go into the first stage on the meditation on Sin, your spiritual director needs to make sure that you know one thing!  You know what that one thing is?  That you have encountered and experience the Love of Christ!!!

University campuses don't need soap box preachers proclaiming hell!  What the University campuses, and to be quite honest what we all need, is a soap box preacher proclaiming from the depth of their heart and being that WE ARE LOVED!  That we are worthy of the love!  That we are his sons and daughters of God!  It is when we encounter the Lord is when we will start to remove the sins from our lives!  Let us not be afraid to yell of God's love for us from the roof tops!