The Creeper Who Followed Me Home

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that I have a sign on my forehead that reads “In Need of Salvation,” a blatant statement to the world that I have fallen from grace.

Note: I am posting this with the knowledge that this post is going to rub a lot of people the wrong way, but that’s okay. I’m posting it anyway. You can stop reading now if you so desire.

As I was about to leave Upper Campus just now, a man who introduced himself as Jonathan* began talking to me, asking me my name and where I come from. The United States, I said. Yes, you are right, I do not sound Capetonian. Jonathan, it turns out, is a pastor on campus, and it seems he had a hidden agenda of talking to me about my religion. Hoping that he would get the hint that I was in the middle of something on my computer, I continued with what I was doing and purposely showed little interest in the conversation he was trying to make. He did get the hint, but that didn’t mean I had escaped being the subject of yet another lengthy evangelization.

I put my laptop inside my backpack and headed to the bus stop where I would take the shuttle to Lower Campus. Much to my dismay, there, at the top of the steps, was Jonathan. Yes, I am finished with my “work,” I said, but now I must go and catch the bus. Why am I taking the bus? Because I don’t want to walk to Lower Campus alone. I prefer to take the bus, that’s why. (I didn’t come off as sounding this hostile in my verbal speech, of course.) I handled the situation in the best way I knew how.

Long story short, Jonathan followed me (actually he walked beside me and talked about religion) the whole way from outside the library, to the bus stop, on the bus, off the bus, and to the gate outside of my house. Now, you might be asking yourself why I allowed this guy to follow me the whole way home. Well, I knew that it would be safer for me to be at the bus stop where there would be more people around. Same thing with when he got on the bus – there were people around. And when he got off the bus and walked to the gate outside my house, I knew that our security guard would be there waiting.

All this time I listened to his claims about Christianity and responded with my own polite rebuttals. I didn’t, however, ask the question that I really wanted to ask—namely, Do you believe in Jesus Christ on your own volition, or because the people who colonized your ancestors forced it upon you? (Jonathan was originally from the Congo and has lived in Cape Town for nearly a decade, so the question would have been legitimate and supported by historical fact.)

At one point on the bus ride he handed me his cell phone and asked me to enter my number. Rather than explaining that I don’t give my phone number to random people that follow me to my house, I politely entered a made-up number.

Let me clarify here that I do not believe that all Christian pastors behave in this manner, nor do I believe that Christianity is inherently bad. However, I do believe that this is a terrible way to go about sharing God with someone. And I have very, very negative feelings toward evangelism, conversion, war and conversion in the name of any god.

*I am using a pseudonym for the mere fact that, as it was pointed out to me so well, “Jonathan” is very well-known on campus. Indeed, he told every person that he met and greeted on the way down to Lower Campus that he had not seen them in a while – where had they been? Since he knows so many people on campus, and since I am here until June, and since someone could potentially find this blog at random on the internet, I have decided to call the man Jonathan. That is all.