Worrying, About Me

I LIKE THE LADY, although she's rather standoffish towards me. I think I know why. She's worried about my eternal soul, and its ultimate destination. She plays piano as the senior center where I sing with the gospel group every Monday morning. We had our conversation several years ago, the one in which I told her that I am not religious, and she asked me if I was happy, as if somehow religion and happiness are intertwined, with a causal connection. The other day the lady who sits next to me in the gospel group, who is herself a Buddhist, told me that the piano lady is "worried about me". I knew instantly what the worry was all about. She is worried that since I am not a Christian, my eternal soul is in danger, and that I might spend eternity in hell. My Buddhist friend related that the piano lady noticed a pretty ring on her finger, and asked about it. "Oh, that's an image of the Buddha". She further related that the piano lady instantly recoiled in apparent horror at the blasphemous jewelry. My Buddhist friend does not attend church, nor do I. You can be a Christian and a Buddhist simultaneously, but not a pantheist and a Christian. We both sing gospel for several reasons. Its the only game in town; there's no secular singing at the senior center, although I am hatching a plan to install a karaoke machine. That might not fly, but what the heck, I can try. We both like to sing, although neither of us is especially fond of washing away our sins with somebody else's blood. Then too, we are open minded, a concept novel to the conservative evangelical Christians who populate the senior center. You worry that someone might not be on time to pick you up, and you might miss the start of the movie. But I stongly suspect that the pentecostal piano lady is being disenguous, and is deceiving herself about her true motives. You worry that someone might fall off the ladder and get injured. You worry that you might flunk a test. But under no circumstances do you "worry" that someone who does not accept the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and savior might spend eternal torment in hell. If you truly believe that someone might not be saved and might not go to heaven and might spend an eternity in torment in hell, you don't worry, you panic. You feel a sense of horror and dread. That is, unless you are an uncaring emotional zombie utterly without compassion. You panic, you baptize the person by force if necessary, but you most assuredly do not worry, any more than you feel midly concerned and annoyed about the number of mass murders in America per day, week, or year. If you truly are sufficiently mentally ill to believe in hell, you don't worry, you freak out. No, she's not worried about me, she's worried about her seeming inability to live in a world in which everyone's religious beliefs duplicate her own. She's worried that she she hasn't the power to control everyone, to "save" the unsaved. She's worried that her own religiosity isn't being positiively reinforced by that of those around her. She is worried about her self esteem, not about me.