Daily 49er - Think for yourself, don't just agree

Recently, signs and posters have been sprouting up around the campus of Cal State Long Beach.
 
You have likely all seen the ubiquitous yellow signs that ask the vague question, "Do you agree with John?"
 
No, it's not a fashionable new cult, but merely a group that agrees (apparently whole-heartedly) with a CSULB student who has publicly declared the need for God in his and everyone else's life.
 
What is initially disappointing is seeing legions of college students marching around campus in identical yellow T-shirts, proclaiming their allegiance to the cause.
 
College, which is supposed to be where you go to learn how to use your brain to analytically examine all evidence presented to you, has produced a group of pod people as insidious as Rush Limbaugh's deplorable Dittoheads.
 
Of course, the argument could be made that colleges are merely breeding grounds to indoctrinate the young to a certain left-leaning worldview. Or, maybe I've just taken too many general education classes.
 
Faith is something that is very important to people's lives, but it is something that should happen on a personal level, regardless of whatever this or that holy book might say.
 
The urges to go out and persuasively (or forcefully) make others believe like you do have brought us historical highlights like the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the genocide of countless indigenous populations, thanks to well-meaning and disease-carrying missionaries.
 
Seeing a gaggle of yellow T-shirt clad students congregating in my path gives me the same sense of unease I feel when I look out the front window and see Jehovah's Witnesses creeping down the street, arms full of Bibles and pamphlets.
 
With world events getting scarier by the day and our psyches as yet unrecovered from Sept. 11, it is understandable that people need to make sense of the world.
 
But just because some bad things are happening around the world and here in America does not mean that Armageddon is upon us.
 
Bad things happen all over the world every day and have throughout history.
 
It is only American narcissism and vanity that leads some to believe the horrific events that have befallen us portend the end of the world.
 
And please save yourself the time of searching out that perfect Bible verse that will prove me wrong. It is just that sort of selective interpretation that gives some people the self-righteousness to go out and forcibly convert the heathens.
 
If we truly used the Bible to guide our lives, men would be enjoying their sexual rights with their brother's widows and we'd spend our time trying to figure out compensation when we kill our neighbor's slaves.
 
Oh, and there'd be a lot more smiting.
 
For the sake of those who have given these issues much thought and are firmly convinced of our beliefs, please go back to having Bible study in designated rooms at designated times where people who are interested can seek you out. And leave the rest of us alone.
 
So, to make a short story long, no, I don't agree with John.
 
Phil Witte is a journalism major at Cal State Long Beach.