Thursday, February 08, 2007

Fools

So, I'm pretty upset about something that's going on at my school. Evidently someone is placing Christian tracts in the books in our library. The worst part is that they're evidently singling out Jewish history/study books to place them in. Now, there are two sides to this.

First, the library shouldn't be upset because it doesn't destroy the books and it's not really hard to take the piece of paper out and throw it away. This idea has merit, but I don't agree. Perhaps you figured that out, because I put it first. I'll explain why I don't buy it later.

Second, the library is right to get pissed because this is defacement of private property. Well, I'm not sure it's actually defacement, cause no permanent damage is done to the books, but it's certainly annoying and people have a right to use books from a secular library without feeling pressure to change religions.

Those are both valid sides of the debate, though I lean more to the second side. This is despite the fact that I'm one of the leaders of our (rather) active Christian fellowship on campus. My opposition to this practice stems from a different cause. First, it's ineffectual. It's crap. No one will ever be converted because of a tract they picked up in a book at a library while they were trying to do research in college. They're too busy to read the stupid thing, but not busy enough not to get offended. People who read books that have been targeted in this fashion just get annoyed and get mad at the Christians who did it. That's all Christians, in their minds.

I know that the organized Christian group on campus was not responsible. However, I also know that we're the ones who will be held responsible in the minds of the campus. I am very upset that our valid, effective, and helpful ministries will be undermined by the foolish actions of people who probably don't even go to my school.

The worst part is, if I explain this to anyone who was affected by it on campus, they won't believe that we didn't have anything to do with it...cause of course we wouldn't take credit for it!

So, thanks a lot, whoever you are. You just made life more difficult for the Christians on my campus. That would be acceptable if you were to reach even one person, but I doubt that that happened. Sorry.

So, I repeat. Fools.

3 comments:

  1. Gahh. pushy Christians make life so much more difficult for us other Christians. They give us a bad name because we now have to prove that we are not pushy jerks to non Christians. Don't they realize that they are (usually) not helping at all. Sorry that your group is probably going to get blamed for the library incident.

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  2. We actually should be ok, I'm going to be talking to the librarian and hopefully that will smooth things out...

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  3. by the way, it's good to hear from you. Feel free to drop me a line off-blog if you'd like...

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