Sunday, August 02, 2009

An annoying little bastard

Street Preacher I shot this annoying street preacher (second photo) on Saturday at Balbo Park in San Diego. I was killing time when I heard the obnoxious rantings of this fellow. His spiel was typical. Jesus is your lord, you will go to hell when you die if you do not accept Him now. You are a sinner. You need salvation, blah, blah, blah.

He used an amplified speaker to get his voice out. He occupied the center of a popular intersection near the Natural History Museum. He paced in front of large annoying signs that proclaimed echoed his message in lettering painted bright red. This guy screamed, “Notice Me!” with every ounce of his being. Yet nobody would look his way. Nobody would even walk near him or his partner. His effort was wasted.

There were two small things that made me feel good. Five kids with classical instruments were off to the side. The only played when the pastor did his preaching. They were subversive, playing load, and playing to disrupt. It was great. I watched as one of the Christians tried to get the young musicians to stop. One kid game the Christian the bird and pointed to their donations bucket. I walked over and slipped a buck in.

The other thing was a comment a man made to his wife. He said, “I want to punch that guy in the nose.”

His wife said, “Honey, that would not be very Christian.”

Husband said, “But he’s giving real Christians a bad name.”

Real Christians, I almost snorted.

Comments (7)

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Then idiots like that would be the first to accuse gay people and atheists who refuse to live in the closet of "flaunting it" or "shoving it down" people's throats. Ugh.
1 reply · active 828 weeks ago
Oh, I heard him talk about the evil of gay marriage. And he said this with dozens of gay couples enjoying a day in the park. It pissed me off.
I never tire of the "real Christian" thing. One rarely gets to see such blatant defense mechanisms from well adjusted people, and I find it fascinating.
You seem to have a good eye for photography. I'm not a big fan of black and white but you seem to catch some good shots of people.

Until the real christians decide what it is that makes someone a real christian, I doubt there will be much progress. I am glad I live in a smaller town. We seldom get anyone doing the street preaching thing and when we do it is usually one person that has a sign and no loudspeakers.
1 reply · active 828 weeks ago
I shoot a lot of black and white because I'm color blind and people say my choice of colors makes them slightly ill. So it's good black and white or sickly color.
How do you shoot black and white with a digital camera
1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago
Two way. You can convert in post processing or you can use a camera like the Nikon D300 which has a black and white setting. I do both.

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