I need to remember that Christians are always on the hunt for new converts. I tend to forget because I don't think about it much. They never stop, ever, nor are they likely to.
I had some time to kill last Wednesday night. My wife’s flight from Dallas was delayed because of some nasty thunderstorm, so her 8:30 pickup was more like 11:00. I killed time with a sundown dinner at Kincaid’s in Redondo Beach. A couple of beers and a big piece of prime rib sure hit the spot.
I arrived at LAX by nine and started to do some people watching. I shot the picture with my blackberry PAS. I was bored and had no prospects. Plus my foot was starting to hurt. I noticed a man with a three ring binder working the exiting crowd. I thought he was trying to sell limo services. I was wrong. He was witnessing.
He worked the crowd hard. His attention seemed focused on single male travelers, or younger Muslim women. The Muslim women wanted nothing to do with him. I counted 11 conversations, all were quick. The men he stopped all talked to him. A few even exchanged hugs. I stopped counting after 15.
The Christian witness was a tall black man in a poorly cut suit. He looked neat, but you could tell the suit was his witnessing uniform. I started to wonder if he were on his own or if this was a group witnessing technique. I walked from terminal 4 to terminal 5 looking for people like him. I spotted two more dressed almost exactly alike. One was older and one was much younger, like 18 or 19.
I walked back to my bum proof bench to wait. Time passed slowly. A young woman started talking to me. She was worried that her friend had not arrived to pick her up. I listened to her story and offered some advice. It was a pleasant exchange. Newcomers to LA do not realize how big the city is. We talk about distance in terms of time. 30 miles at 5 pm is 1.5 hours, at night its 20 minutes. I think the Christian witness thought I was horning in on his territory. I had no luggage after all. He walked over to talk to me once the girl departed.
After asking what I was doing (I told him waiting), he started his spiel. He was nice. His three-ringed binder held laminated pages with neatly typed bible verses and phrases. I starting thinking of Reverend Wayne Pearly Gates and three-ringed binders from Snow Crash.
The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder — its DNA — xerox it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left-turn lane…
Without asking if I was a Christian, he asked if I would like to pray with him. I declined. He started to show me bible verses that were important to him and to talk about his walk with Jesus. It was here that I told him I was an Atheist and that he was wasting his time. He seemed agitated at the news that I was an Atheist and said the most bizarre thing, “Jesus loves you, but God will curse you for rejecting his love”. He walked away and did not look back.
I waited another 30 minutes for my wife to arrive and then started to walk to her gate. I noticed my ankle was swollen and hurt like hell. God had cursed me with a gout attack. The next two days would be living hell. If you’ve never experience gout, just imagine crawling across broken glass and then rolling around in rubbing alcohol, the pain is comparable.
Ok, I know God did not curse me. I shot myself in the foot by drinking beer and eating lots of protein. But that asshole of a Christian had wished me harm for no good reason other than my atheism and it pissed me off. I keep thinking he thought himself a winner in our exchange and it bothered me that he went back to his work free to curse the next free thinker to cross his path. He talked to 23 people in an hour. If he and his friends keep it up, the numbers are huge. They will never stop.
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