College cam­puses have long been a haven for diver­sity. They are places that reflect the diver­sity of our world and they are places where peo­ple can express their beliefs.

When I came across a state­ment on the side­walk in the quad that said, “Jesus loves you!” I didn’t think any­thing of it because things are writ­ten in chalk all over campus.

A few days later, I was walk­ing past that same state­ment, but some­thing was def­i­nitely dif­fer­ent. The mes­sage had been changed to say, “Jesus gives babies HIV and con­dones genocide.”

I was taken aback by the new mes­sage. As a Christian, I took huge offense to the defile­ment of the orig­i­nal version.

I do not feel that it is my place to judge oth­ers. Many peo­ple are brought up in a cer­tain cul­ture and are raised to believe in a par­tic­u­lar reli­gion. I under­stand this and believe that as long as some­one is a good per­son that is all any­one should care about.

Acts like this are a per­fect exam­ple of judg­ing oth­ers and not being accept­ing that there are peo­ple in this world with dif­fer­ent views than that of your own. No one was forc­ing any­one to look at that mes­sage, and if some­one didn’t like the mes­sage, they could have just ignored it and kept walking.

People may be igno­rant to the ten­ants and beliefs of reli­gions that they are not them­selves a part of. Ignorance, fear or anger do not grant a per­son license to belit­tle the beliefs of oth­ers sim­ply because they feel threatened.

I under­stand how one might find it frus­trat­ing to have a reli­gious mes­sage forced onto them. However, this was just a mes­sage pro­mot­ing some­thing that an orga­ni­za­tion on cam­pus believes in. There was no rea­son to lash out and make such an inap­pro­pri­ate statement.

There are many dif­fer­ent reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions on cam­pus as well as peo­ple who hand out fliers about dif­fer­ent types of reli­gions. There are diver­sity offices on cam­pus that work hard to pro­mote tol­er­ance, accep­tance, and a diverse atmos­phere on cam­pus. Obviously there are some on cam­pus who have not yet received this message.

As adults, col­lege stu­dents should have the word “mature” attached to their sense of self. Being intol­er­ant, rude, and hate­ful are not char­ac­ter­is­tics that con­vey matu­rity in my book. Everyone should be able to express them­selves openly; no one should have to hide who they are and what they believe in from the world.

Aristotle said, “It is the mark of an edu­cated mind to be able to enter­tain a thought with­out accept­ing it.” You don’t have to accept some­one else’s reli­gion, but you should accept that they have a right to believe as they choose.