Hark, the herald angles sing

I swear to God this is a true story,

I caught the very late 2:05 to West Trenton today. It was fairly crowded and I thought I would take the chance of getting stuck in the middle of a three seater and sit on the end next to someone. She was an aged black lady with a very nice hat. She wore thin rimmed glasses and a lot of blue eye shadow and looked me straight in the eye when I sat down and said "hello." To the two seater next to us was another older black gentleman with an even nicer hat. It matched his shoes. He had a pencil thin mustache just above the lip. He was sitting next to another nicely dressed lady and an older man who was obviously was seated in front of the lady next to me.

Between Suburban Station and Market East she was talking to the people next to us causing me to lean back in my seat so she could see them as they conversed. I offered to switch seat with her so that she could speak more comfortably with her friends. She said "no thank you sir, but would you like to sit in my seat so you can look out the window?" "No", I replied, "I have my book and don't really look out the window anymore." She smiled, very nice.

Well at Temple she decides to take me up on my offer and I get up and switch seats with her, sit down and resume reading. I would suppose it was about 15 minutes later the man now in front of me turns around and asks, in the most concerned of ways, "Do you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior?" I knew it was coming before he even opened his mouth."No" I replied, "I do not accept Jesus as my lord and savior, but I would agree that he was a very important man."

"How do you mean important?"

"I mean I think he taught people to be nice to each other and set a good example in a Roman world that was completely self centered and incredibly violent. I think he may have been the first to really get the message of 'Love thy neighbor' and 'Treat others as you would want to be treated' across to a mass of people, which, in time lead to a better society. I think he was a rebel who showed the way for non-violent resistance and allowed people like Martin Luther King Jr. Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas K. Gandhi to peacefully change the world for the better for millions of human beings."

Sadly, they had never heard of Gandhi, and insisted that MLK was not that significant because while he gave people rights, he certainly did not save their souls, that our souls were born with sin and we needed the light of Jesus to cleanse ourselves. He asked if I thought that people were born with sin, I think they call it 'original sin', and how I thought we could get rid of this original sin if not for Jesus?"

I outright disagreed with him and interrupted him halfway through that last sentence. "First of all, I don't think that people are born sinful," I replied. Accepting that means you think people are inherently bad or even evil. "That doesn't seem right", I said, "I cannot even began to believe that babies are born sinful, that God would banish a baby that died at birth to hell. If God was all powerful and still gave us free will, the right to decipher right from wrong with are own facilities, then he could judge us if we were to choose against his advice. A baby has no free will, it cannot choose to do good nor bad, so how could God, your God of 'infinite wisdom and ever lasting mercy, allow a baby to suffer awfully, and forever, ever and ever in eternal hellfire. How terrible is this great god of ours?" I told him I thought that it was life that made us bad. By making poor decisions and giving in to temptations that we should know to avoid, we become 'sinful' and trend away from Godliness.


The older lady sitting to my left asked about my book. She said she knew I was "reading the word" just from watching me. I handed her "The Brothers Karamazov" and told her it was pure literature about the belief of God, and contained one of the most read ideas about the absence of an almighty. She took the book, looked at the cover, which is only an abstract painting of an old Russian town, and thumbed through the pages. She then took out a little pamphlet of white paper and placed in somewhere in the center of the pages.


I have it here:
Its "A Very Important Gospel Message." The small type is mostly filled with bible versus. There is an address on the back and the pastor's name, the man in the two seater with the nice hat. He is Rev. Myers. You go Rev. You looked truly like you were certain about your beliefs. I always kind of thought a lot of these preacher types were just in it for the money, but Rev., you looked enlightened. He asked me what, in fact, did I believe in then?" I told him I think the most important thing is to be considerate and nice,


My stop came too quickly. I stood up and shook hands with the man in front of me, my grand inquisitor. I hugged the older lady, shook hands with Rev and simply waved to Rev's wife. She said they would pray for me and the rest all nodded. The older lady looked like she was moved to tears and started with her "Aww Jesus, Jesus, blessed be Jesus!" I would bet my reading eyes that all four of them went to church and prayed for me that day, and I'm glad. I'm glad those people were able to find their happiness in this crazy, messed up world and hope they are right and will live eternal lives of infinite joy.