Religion

It's a touchy subject ain't it?

I was working one night, closing the store down with a couple of my co-workers. One of them came over and playfully took my phone to check it out. (Let's call her "Jen") Jen searched through my pictures and asked me who this particular person was. "That's one of my youth group boys whom I teach." As if she had the most awful taste in her mouth, Jen's immediate response was "Ew, you're a Christian?"

My other co-worker (Let's call him "Bob") overheard this and assured her that there was nothing wrong with what I believed in. For the next half an hour, Jen decided to strike up a conversation about how she moved away from her faith. Bob too shared about how he eventually moved away from his faith as well.

It's not something you'd normally talk about with your co-workers who aren't close, or when you're hanging out with your friends at a party-- religion. Something always goes sideways, and that night it did. Jen struck up rhetorical questions like "If God existed, than why did He let the holocaust happen? Why did he cause so many wars?" and more peculiar ones like "Can you have sex in heaven?" They were all excellent questions. Jen was on a roll, and began questioning my actions as a believer. "Jae, do you watch porn? Don't you have porn on your computer?"


Ok, whoa.

It's all good to talk about religion with me, but there are more sensible ways in carrying out a mutual conversation. I knew Jen was trying to prove me wrong, or say that I'm no better. And at that moment, I was thinking: what if I told her I was a Buddhist? Or if I believed in Islam? I wonder if she would've given me more or less heat.

There was nothing wrong with what she was telling me. If I was in her position, I think I'd like to get more creative with making up more counter arguments against the Bible. And that can never get tiresome; I mean really, it's a given to ask an infinitive amount of questions about something that you don't clearly see in front of you.

But, it's interesting to see how anyone could easily dump so much unwanted responsibility onto another person. I say that I'm a Christian, and a person against it will bring in a lot of preconceived ideas about who I am. In this case, I'm expected to be a monk.

One of the many methods of holding onto any kind of belief is gained through accountability. It's encouraging to find that the more I come across people like Jen, the more I find them accountable to my own faith.