4/8/26

Today at CSUF, we met with a few of our student disciples on campus to do whiteboard evangelism together as well as disciple and minister to them. We set the whiteboard and chairs up, opened our time in prayer and listening, and wrote down our question for the day: "What gives you hope when you suffer and worry?" I anticipated a day of conversations oriented around security and confidence in the providence of God - inviting the nonbelievers into this and challenging the believers to obey Jesus in this - but my conversations were not exactly as anticipated.

As I talked with *Andrew, the Christian student pictured above to my right, two guys walked up to the whiteboard - one seeking to engage (whom we've previously engaged with) and another who happened to be walking with him. *Andrew and I invited the second guy, *Parker, to share what he thought about the question on the board, and he joined us for conversation. Our conversation was very interesting to say the least, and I wish I had a recording of it to share because I'm not sure how well I will be able to describe it as it had very little logical flow and was primarily *Parker evading very simple questions altogether. This is how our conversation went:

It began by asking *Parker the question on the board, to which he answered, "God". We inquired into what god he was speaking of, and he responded, "God - just the letters, G-O-D." Already off to a weird start, we continued to inquire as to what *Parker's religious beliefs are, but as we continued to ask questions, *Parker told us that god can be a number of things. He told us that God can be anything from a tree, to a light pole, to a stoplight. I asked him whether or not his god is a personal being, and he affirmed that his god is personal, has a will/volition, is good, and is omniscient (all-knowing). Puzzled by his seemingly scattered theology, I asked him what the will of this personal god is. At this point he spoke out of both sides of his mouth saying that all powerful forces we experience such as death, oppressors, rapists, murderers, etc. are all part of the will of god as they are "unstoppable", but he also said that we can choose to resist and disobey the will of god. This is partially out of order, but our conversation circled around a few times, so please bear with me. His initial response to the whiteboard question was followed by the reasoning that we find some sort of comfort knowing that when we suffer, we experience god - I believe that's how we began talking about the nature of his god and the nature of various sufferings. I can't fully remember how we arrived at it, but we found ourselves discussing the nature of morality - either objective or subjective. I think it was somewhere in the conversation of how we deal with suffering and whether suffering is real, but this detail is a little blurry. Either way, the topic of morality came up, and boy was it a trip!

I asked *Parker, in response to his strange statements regarding the will of god and school shootings, if he believes there are things which are objectively right and wrong. Again, he was mixed in what he said and didn't really answer the question. So, I asked him very directly, "If I were to bring a random 5-year-old here and shoot them dead for no reason, would that be good or bad?" This is an easy question that no sane person would answer is good to happen, but *Parker kept avoiding answering my question by changing the subject to weird and obscure scenarios other than this simple question. However, I wouldn't let him get away with it, and I told him to stop running and answer my simple question. He finally answered it, and he told us that shooting the kid would be good. I asked him why that would be good, and he said it is good because the gun worked. I told him that what he just said is insanity and that he knows that's not actually good. I then pressed him on how he's coming to these morality conclusions, to which he gave various responses all leading to his feelings being the determiner. So, I told him that he thinks that he is god himself. It was a very interesting exchange, and I wish you could just watch the video yourself for a fuller picture of the conversation, but the ending of the conversation was very curious.

I essentially told him that everything he's said about morality, the nature of god, and suffering has been grounded in absolutely no evidence and is completely fabricated by his imagination. Previously he had told us that part of why he believes this stuff is because of things that he's experienced while on hallucinogenic drugs - kids, don't do drugs! He talked about seeing dancing trees that talk and that's how he determines what's real about our world. I challenged his weak reasoning as I told him that we both know and operate in the reality that mushrooms distort reality, not clarify it. I asked him if he would want to know if there was an objective God and morality that did exist, and he answered, "yes". So, I told him, in brief, that the biblical Jesus is that God who has revealed Himself to us and made His will known to us. *Parker seemed to have some biblical awareness by his comments, but I told him that the true God has been revealed in Jesus and what is recorded about Him in the Gospel accounts. 

Along with a few other things, *Parker concluded our conversation by saying that he would look into our God, Jesus, if we learn about the thing on the back of his jacket. He then turned around and lowered his backpack to show us a large image of Baphomet (you can look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about). He asked us if we knew what that was, and I said, "no", though I was pretty sure it was satanically associated. He told me to look it up and read about it and that we would discuss what we each found from our study next time we cross paths. We shook on it, so I'll be eager to have the conversation next time we see each other. Baphomet is an interesting image/icon as it's had a number of associations, but they are all within the realm of the occult. From what I can best deduce, this was *Parker's way of communicating that he is a theistic satanist who is involved with the occult. This explains a lot of the conversation as the moral and theistic grounds are very confusing and twisted with that belief system. There's the possibility that *Parker is merely trying to be an edgy college student, but his association with Baphomet is dangerous regardless. I pray that we will talk again and I'll have the opportunity and boldness to act as the Spirit leads in rebuke and correction of this demonic expression. Please pray for the deliverance of *Parker from these demonic traditions and antichrist movements as well as the power of the Spirit of God in the expelling of these spiritual forces.