I had a bizzare and uncomfortable experience just now.

Over the weekend, I was stuck on this six hour bus ride from Dayton, Ohio to Champaign, Illinois, and I was right in the middle of all the damn tuba players. I was sitting next to one of them (a cool one), and somehow, the conversation turned to religion. I honestly don't remember how. The guy that I was sitting next to was "questioning," but the guys in front of and behind us were die-hard Jesus freaks.

I don't know what possesed me to ask them this, but I posed the question: If you believe that belief in Jesus Christ is the only way to get to Heaven, don't you think it's your responsibility to show me the way?

The one in front of me hemmed and hawed and gave me some bullshit answer, but the guy behind me decided to step up and rephrase the bullshit answer in a more confident way. He said that belief in Jesus was the only was FOR HIM to get to Heaven (why the rules are different for each person, I'm not sure), but that God is just, and when I die, he will judge me justly. However, God would not allow one of his children to go astray, so if I am meant for it, He will show me the way.

So I guess the implication was that, yes, if I continue to refuse to believe in God and Jesus, I will go to hell, but since it is God's responsibility to show me the way, the dude I was talking to could wash his hands and not have to feel guilty for not doing his part to save my immortal soul. Of course, since God is the one who will either choose or not choose to have me be born again, He therefore is just kind of deciding on my behalf whether or not I will go to hell. But I didn't say that.

Anyway, just now, JUST now, I was eating dinner in this little cafe. It was kind of crowded and loud, and there was a large group of twenty-ish white boys sitting around a table talking. As the crowd thinned out, I was able to hear what they were saying. They were having a Bible study. And one of the guys was the guy I talked to last weekend.

I could tell he was looking at me, but I refused to make eye contact with him. I just looked out the window and strained my ear to listen in on their discussion.

They were talking about the Holy Ghost coming to Jesus on the cross. They were talking about the nature of the Holy Ghost, and how they had "experienced" Him/It in their own lives.

It absolutely blows my mind. Here's a group of intelligent, partially-college educated young men; they can look at Roman mythology, at Egytian mythology, at Indian mythology, and take it all in a historical perspective; but when they look at Christian mythology, for some reason they say, "This mythology is DIFFERENT. This mythology is REAL."

It's absurd, to borrow Brian's word of the day.

Of course, I understand why they want to believe that way.

I was sitting alone in a restaraunt (and, in fact, it has been weeks since I've had a meal in the company of anyone but myself), and I was staring out the window into darkness while vicariously participating in a conversation I was definitely not a part of. And I thought,

God. It would be really great to be able to believe that I'm not alone right now.

That I'm never alone.

That there's always some kind of ambiguous parental figure right there to protect me from the harsh realities of life and warm the lonely autumn nights.

But of course, God isn't real.

posted at 9:14 PM by Alison

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