Religious Differences

Today this really nice couple came in and sat at my bar. They honestly were very sweet and I enjoyed chatting with them ... right up until this particular exchange made me a little uncomfortable. Just a little bit, though.

We were talking about books on tape, good books, and the wife said that the best book she'd read in a really long time was The Shack. I think that's what she said. She said what made her buy it was a positive review from Michael W. Smith on the back. (I know who he is from my teenage years.) And she said it was a Christian book, that "nonbelievers" could also enjoy it, but that believers in Christ would enjoy it that much more on a different level.

I just smiled and nodded ... because they were nice people, and I don't need to burden them with the responsibility of creating new social religious standards. Here is what I found strange about the entire exchange: It's Sunday; I'm obviously not at church -- instead, I'm working behind a bar; I am not wearing any kind of Christian jewelry. But the default assumption as to my religious beliefs is that I must be a Christian. It's amazing to me because growing up, the school I went to was always blathering on about how oppressed and marginalized Christians are in modern society. And I totally ate it up and believed it as a kid and a young adult. But the fact is -- Christians are neither oppressed nor marginalized in American society today. I don't by any means wish my religious beliefs were considered the default for anybody -- although of course, I do think that if more people thought the way I do, the world would be a better place. But who doesn't think that?

And it was also strange because I obviously felt a connection with these people; we were having a good conversation. I am under no illusions that, had I stopped the conversation about the book right there and said something along the lines of, "Actually, I don't believe in Jesus Christ as my lord and savior -- I celebrate each equinox and the cycles of the moon; I'm a pagan," then it would have (probably) changed the dynamic between the three of us. I wonder what they would have said or thought about me. Talk about marginalized ... I have a feeling that they would have paid up and left right then and there instead of hanging out and chatting.

And that's fine. That's their prerogative; I understand that most people don't have the first clue about what paganism is and what it means and the moral codes involved (yes, there are moral codes). It just seems supremely ironic to me that, as a teenager, I believed I really was marginalized, in the minority, as a Christian, because that's what the adults told me. And now here I am, part of a religion that is not even organized and is certainly not in the mainstream. I know what marginalization is now.

Maybe that's just the universe's way of teaching us ... making us into the things we thought we once were.