Do me a favor. Imagine for a minute that you are back in college. You’re in the middle of midterms and your busting your tail to get everything done. Next week, you’re going to Florida for vacation.  You’re a strong Christian, who loves God and has worked hard to live a life that honors him. You strive to live a pure life that is honoring and glorifying to God. Finally, you fly down to the beach. Ahh, sweet bliss. You go out to the beach, open a cold beer and plan on having a fun day.

Now, change gears a little. You’re out of college but you and your friends have been going to Florida for years.  You fly down, slip into a bathing suit and grab a cooler and some chairs and head to the beach.

Suddenly, in the middle of your throwing a football back and forth a Muslim shows up.  Now, he’s not just trying to engage people in conversation and talk to them, he’s with a group of friends and they’ve brought a P.A. system with them.  It squeaks every five minutes or so.  He starts yelling that you’re a whore and that you are on your way to Hell.  There’s no discussing with this guy. In fact, if you come up close to him, he’ll point his finger at you and call you a whore/drunk/slut , whatever over the PA system.

Now, you could move. You could pick up all of your stuff and head on down the beach but should you have to do that? Does this Muslim, who just says that he’s doing Allah’s work when the cops show up, have the right to make you listen to him? Does he have the right to call all who don’t follow the Koran pagans? Do you have a right to some level of peace and quiet?  Should the Muslim be arrested?  Can I be honest? I think that he should be.

When the good Muslim is confronted, he points out that many of his religions earlier followers debated people publicly and openly. When you point out that happened in synagogues and other places where it was expected and not on a vacation front, our happy Muslim begins to praise Allah for the persecution he is under for sharing Allah’s good news. When you call the police and they show up and threaten to have he man arrested, he again praises Allah, and mumbles about the persecution he is under. He laments the state of our country that won’t allow him to make you listen to his “preaching.” Finally, in a desperate act you fling a football his way that knocks him out cold. One of his compatriots will later write about how blessed he almost was to have died while serving Allah.

Parenthetically, imagine if this same Muslim street preacher showed up at certain ODM’s/ADM’s vacation? Can you imagine the blog posts? After you have fun with that for a few minutes go back to your vacation…

Would you be angry? Would you just want the guy to shut up so you could enjoy your vacation? I imagine that a lot of these people felt the same way about a man preaching at them about Jesus.