It seems every time the weather warms up, angry preachers decide to come to our lovely campus and disrespect our students. As I watched the preachers yelling about hell, judgment and whoredom, I was proud of my fellow students.
A sign in front of the Union reads, “You are loved. You are forgiven. You are a new creation. You are set free. It is response from students who encounter the preachers on campus earlier this month.
Whether it was the same-sex couple embracing in the face of hatred, the Christian students telling people about the free love of God or the guy gently reminding everyone “Only Jedi go to Heaven,” Ole Miss made me proud.
On my walk to class, I noticed a sign in front of the Union. In large font it said, “You are loved. You are forgiven. You are a new creation. You are set free.” The sign brought a smile to my face from a distance, but as I got closer it broke my heart, because the fine print said, “If you place your faith in Christ.”
The phrase places a condition on the love of God, which raises a question: if only the people who place their faith in Christ are loved, what does it say about people who don’t place their faith in Christ?
The street preachers were so disturbing because they claimed they knew exactly who God loved and did not love. My problem with the sign in front of the Union is that it critiques the street preachers’ gospel of conditional love by offering another gospel with different conditions. The sign is kinder than the preacher’s sign, but it still creates an in-group loved by God and an out-group that is unloved. I keep hearing that this sign is a beautiful response to the preachers last week, but I am going to call it what it really is.
The sign is just another claim that God only loves people who fulfill the requirements, and this week the requirement is belief rather than behavior. No one is protesting this week because the sign says God’s love is conditional based upon faith in Christ, and most of our students do have faith in Christ.
However, the sign is still claiming certain students are unloved by God, which is exactly what made people so upset last week by the street preachers. Our UM Creed States, “I believe in respect for the dignity of each person,” and I am troubled by a sign that implicitly states that non-Christians are not loved by God.
Obviously, I am not suggesting the students who made the sign in front of the Union are the same as the street preachers from last week. The street preachers seemed utterly unkind in their delivery, and the sign this week appears to have only the best intentions. But I must be honest about how the sign hurts me— a 20 year-old boy experiencing religious growing pains.
I would love to be loved by God, but religious belief doesn’t always come easy for me. Believe me, I have tried. If God does exist — and I deeply hope he or she does — I hope divine love is not something I must earn. I hope divine love is not conditional upon my ability to believe the right thing.
Josh Law is a junior biology and religious studies major from Birmingham, Alabama.
