A How-Not-To Guide.

Man oh man, sometimes it pains me to be a Christian.

I was an unfortunate witness to an interesting event this Tuesday past, and I will now recount my tale to you.

As with all of my stories from Cologne, the introduction finds Neil and I in the cab of the F-250, driving along Pandosy Street, during the heat of the day. (Ok, so we're not always on Pandosy, but whatever.) The light several cars in front of us switches to its red stage, forcing us to stop. To our left: nothing. To our right, however: the hospital. Now, for as long as I have been here, there have been people from various Christian groups marching in front of the hospital bearing placards denouncing abortion. They have various signs with various slogans set up along the boulevard as well, managing to cover about two-thirds of the block that the hospital exists on. Mostly the protestors are older-looking people, seemingly well-mannered Christian-folk pacing and making use of their constitutional right to peaceful protest. On this particular afternoon, only two persons manned the sandwich boards. They were an elderly couple, both appearing to be close to their eighties, rather frail and weak looking, though determined. As we are stopped there, a young woman who appeared to be in her early to mid-twenties comes walking past, saying something to the couple. She keeps on walking, apparently no harm nor foul, when the man decides to respond. His comment struck some sort of chord in the woman as she immediately turned around and walked up to him in a bit of a huff, talking quite loudly and pointing at herself and then at him. A short-lived yet heated debate ensued, finally culminating in the woman walking over and spitting on one of the signs on the grass. The man, by now rather irate, slaps the woman hard across the face, reprimanding her with, "Don't you dare do that again." The woman, looking in disbelief at the man, proceeds to shove his shoulder, instructing him to "Back the f*ck off." She restrains herself and walks briskly off, barely holding back her quite audible rage. 'That was interesting," I thought to myself, believing the drama had come to an end, when the man decides he's not quite done with her yet and takes off after her. He shouts something at her when he is about 15 feet away, she snaps and comes barreling back down the sidewalk and decks the man to the cement with two angry fists to his chest. The old man's frail body whips back and smacks down hard on the concrete where he lies prostrate for a brief moment before picking himself up and yelling once more at the enraged woman. She keeps walking away, no longer interested in anything he has to say. The light turns green.

Man, that sucked to watch. Especially because this man had all of his Christian ideals and slogans and whatnot all over his chest on the sign he was wearing. What good is that going to do? Does he really think that he's going to be able to bitchslap the world into thinking that abortion is wrong? Does he honestly believe that the way to reach the people is to literally reach out and smack them?

All I know is that this man was probably not the example that Christ had in mind. I'm not sure who he was trying to imitate out there, but it certainly wasn't Jesus.