Representing Jesus in Leicester Square, London

I don’t think they were. We got to Israel/Palestine. I’ve read about Jesus, pretty sure these people do not represent his teachings, let alone him.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

I was in Leicester Square, Central London hoping people would be willing to write about their day.

Read more about that here.

A woman came up to me and asked if they could do an interview about humanity. She mentioned that they are talking about God and Jesus, so I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take part, but then I am against judging people too soon, so I agreed, but I said I’m interested only in a conversation about humanity.

A guy sat next to me, holding a microphone in one hand and a copy of the Holy Bible in the other.

I wasn’t happy about them interrupting my work, especially since they didn’t seem too bothered about disturbing me. I was raised to believe that we shouldn’t bother another person; if they are busy, let them be. And they could see I was busy.

I should have said that I was busy, and I should have told them to go away. This is how we deal with rude people. But, I didn’t. I felt that I agreed to the interview, so I had to see it through.

The conversation was neither here nor there. In short, I don’t think the guy, John, was prepared to talk about religion in terms of evidence. It seemed like he wanted to bring up verses from the Bible, and I wanted to talk about our deeds and consequences of our deeds.

In fact, somewhere down the line he said something like ‘faith in Jesus is the only way to forgiveness’ — Something like that, not sure what he said exactly. And I replied that I think our deeds matter more. Not that faith doesn’t matter. I think it does. I think it acts like a great motivator. And it could keep us firmly on the path of righteousness and morality. However, faith without righteous and moral deeds is, in my opinion, fake! Sorry, but that’s what I think.

For me, God ‘breathed His spirit’ into us so that He is in everything we do. But we are only a very small part of God. God, the Almighty, also gave us guidelines on proper behaviour. In fact, I said to John:

“Forget the differences between religions. We have no right to talk about those until all religions respect at least those things that they all agree on: Don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t kille, be kind and so on.”

When I see a world that respects all those things that religions have in common, I will believe we’re at the stage where we can talk about our differences. If we can’t respect what we have in common, how can we possibly expect to respect our differences?

In my view, and this is not something I mentioned in my chat with John, God likes to test us. Everything in this life is a test. Being rich is a test, being poor is a test, being smart, stupid, woman, man, whatever, everything is a test. And one of the greatest tests is our differences.

Now, we can murder one another and remove that test — I don’t think God likes this, because it is obvious that God likes to test us.

Or we can exercise patience, tolerance and understanding, and find a way to live with these differences. God seems to be fond of patience, tolerance and understanding. So my bet is that God does NOT want us to murder one another.

I ended my conversation with John on very polite terms. This was more like what I was expecting from someone claiming to be religious. At the end, he was very kind, and we parted on good terms.

However, just to my left, the woman who had approached me was talking to a young man and telling him how Israel is in the right, because the Bible said that the land belongs to Jews.

I tried to stay out of it, but I only lasted about 30 seconds. I had to get involved. Something in me just couldn’t let it go.

I am not proud of losing my temper. But this woman and I spent the next 10–15 minutes shouting at one another. She went silent on a few occasions. One was what I said:

“So if I convert to Judaism, can I go to Israel and kick a Palestinian family our of their home?”

She went silent for a moment and then repeated her ‘safe sentence’: Hamas is to blame, if Hamas surrendered it would all be over.

She went silent when I said that Hamas is irrelevant. Though this time she tried to say ‘how could I think that’, so I replied that Hamas didn’t even exist until the 80s. She went back to her ‘safe sentence’.

BTW, I felt uneasy just mentioning Hamas. Isn’t that weird? Do I have to be afraid to raise my voice against murder and torment of 1000s, maybe even millions of innocent people, because of ‘Hamas’? And it was as if Hamas was killing them, as if Israel had nothing to do with it. I agree, October the 7th events were bad. But Israel has cast a deep, dark shadow over that day.

I asked the woman if she knew collective punishment. She went silent again, and then again when back to her ‘safe sentence’.

At one point I said “Do you understand that that was 3000 years ago?”

And she was like “Is the word of God not true any more?”

I didn’t get a chance to say: “Yes it is true, but that’s about something more than 3000 years ago. Things have changed. Not that the change reduces the initial truth, it’s that it’s a change.” I firmly believe that if Christians were meant to ‘bring Jews back’, Jesus would have said that in no uncertain terms, probably multiple times. For all we know, after 3000 years, I might have a claim in Israel, I might be DISTANT relative of those who were given the ‘land’ — BTW, LAND not a country. And certainly not to murder people who were already living there and received the Jews. To me, this is all so insane, I find it hard to imagine anyone can believe in this. But, I still believe in freedom of religion, so believe whatever you want, but respect the laws.

And, yet another BTW, there is no such thing as moral superiority. Moral people are too busy with themselves, observing their every act, to worry about how they compare to others. Therefore when a person is better in conduct, more moral than others, they don’t see it. ‘Moral superiority’ exists among those who are arrogant, and arrogance is not a moral virtue, hence, in reality, they are not morally superior. It’s one of those ironies of life.

This woman believed in ‘moral superiority’. I am not clear who is more superior, her group of Christians, or the Jews who had the right to torment Palestinians, but moral superiority was all over our conversation. Moral superiority that, according to her, I simply had to accept, no questions.

It seems like they are trying to recreate the world that Jesus came into, almost like Jesus can’t come unless they recreate that world.

Jesus can come anywhere in the world. And Palestinians do not need to die for Jesus to come. In fact, I might be wrong, but Palestinians were there when Jesus came the first time. So, if they had to recreate the world for Jesus, leaving Palestinians alive should be part of it. That would be rational, at least a little in a completely irrational way of thinking. Right?

Long story short, apart from Hamas and her beliefs, the woman had no other argument for the genocide that Israel is currently carrying out. The woman had nothing to say about Israel’s brutality for many decades. It made her seem so cold, unfeeling, heartless.

At one point I looked at her camera and said “Sorry Palestinians, you have to die, this woman has beliefs.”

To say that I stormed off the square would be an understatement. She made me furious. I believe she looked down on me for being a humanitarian. Probably because Jesus was not a humanitarian? Oh no, wait. He was. He was a huge humanitarian. Hmm… Odd!