Last Spring I found myself walking on the campus of my alma mater, UCLA, when a scene unfolded before me: I saw a large crowd of students surrounding a few men who were holding signs with about a dozen police acting as satellite surveillance around the perimeter.
I love Bruinwalk because there is almost always something politically charged going on, and if not, I am being offered donuts and other sweets by the student clubs, but today I could tell that something was slightly different.
When I got closer to the crowd I saw the provocative signs: “It’s not okay to be fat,” “Women are property,” and a man wearing a shirt that read, “Turn or Burn in Hell.”
The man at the center of attention was a relatively unknown yet controversial street preacher named Dean Saxton. Most of the students were asking him simple questions that he had terrible answers to, and I wasn’t that interested in what he had to say. I was more interested in one of his colleagues, the man with the message of salvation or damnation on his shirt.
He was off to the side with some students arguing what sounded like theology. I sat down directly next to him and listened to the conversation. From the get go he was incredibly rude to the students by name calling just about everything short of fighting words. I asked him if I could interject and he said that he didn’t want to be interrupted, so I waited until I could speak my mind.
Before I describe what I said to him, I want you to know that all of my friends and colleagues know that when it comes to politics, I do not shy away from the discussion. In my early days, I would describe myself as argumentative, but now I am aiming to avoid trading rhetoric for rhetoric in exchange for something that transcends that. Admittedly, I am still learning how to do this, but because of this reason, I decided to take a different approach with this man rather than argue against his hate speech.
I said to him, “I hear what you’re saying, and see the way you’re acting, and I see that your shirt read, ‘Turn or Burn in Hell,’ but I got to say, judging from the way you’re treating these students I think you’re already living in it.”
He did not like that. I will be the first to one to admit that I may have come on too strong in my approach, but the more he spoke, the more pain I saw.
There were at least four brave women arguing against his points, instead of actually addressing them he would call them ‘fat’, ‘ugly’, or ‘whores.’ He said that I was quoting a pedophile when I quoted St. Augustine and called me a ‘canker sore’, and then – most telling – he went off on a tangent about how his ex-wife was a whore who cheated on him.
One woman told him that she identified as a Christian, and that she disagreed with what he was saying. She asked him if he thought she was a ‘slut’ because she was wearing yoga pants. He responded that if she wore that in church he would be distracted. When I told him it’s not her responsibility for what can and cannot distract a man, quoting Matthew 5:29, in which Jesus says to pluck out your eye if it causes you to stray, he got up, said, “I’m done,” and walked away.
I didn’t leave with a sense that I had “won” the anything. In fact, I think I could have focused more on his pain, rather than inevitably prove him wrong. But what I learned from this experience was that this man was living in pain, and it manifested into something awful. I believe that on some degree, we are all living in pain; we just wear that pain differently.
I do not suggest we ignore provocateurs like the one I encountered. Instead, I suggest we speak our truth, but to do it with love.
I am no spiritual authority; I just spoke my truth to this man. I don’t think I got through to him, but I was hoping that I could have possibly planted an idea in his head. Yet if I were to go back and do it again, I hope the first sentence to come out of my mouth would be the exact same one.
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