Dealing With the Church Lady

THE CHURCH LADY at the senior center was adamant; there is only one God, and the only way to approach the one and only God is through Jesus Christ, Lord and savior, the son of God,and, simultaneously, God. I mildly remarked that others beg to differ, that among the ancient Greeks, Romans, and modern Hindus there is a veritable plethora of gods, verily, seemingly a god for each and every occasion. For yet other peole, I webt inem there is no god at all, and, despite what she and other Christians may think, atheists tend as a whole to be as intelligent, well educated, and morally virtuous as people of faith. That, unsurprisingly, went over like a winged angel made of lead. I half expected the church lady to either violently assault me, pull out a crucifix and attempt to exorcise me, or to smack me over the head with a hard copy of the good book. Instead, she merely frowned and shook her blue haired head "no". I cannot abide people who, fervantly devoted to their own religious beliefs, refuse to respect those of others, and insist that anyone who fails to embrace the one true religion , which always just happens to be theirs, is doomed to suffer eternal torment of some sort. To her I merely mentioned that there are thousands of religions in the world, including several preeminent ones, that they all serve the same purpose of providing comfort and inspiration to their votaries, and that it is essential that religious people of all faiths accept and respect this fact, instead of proselytizing others, and condeming to eternal torment those who refuse to accept the propagandizing, the attempt at bullying and brainwashing. Of course, she was having none of it. She refused to accept her moral responsibility of respecting the religious choices of other people as valid and corrrect for them, if not her. A little old church lady can just as easily think and behave like a thuggish gangster as As Capone ever did. I said to her that whenever, wherever, and whomever she tries to lead to salvation through her lord and savior Jesus Christ, the person she is trying to lead is almost certainly at least as intelligent and as well educated as she, and undoubtedly quite capable of arriving at their own religious truth without her or anyone else's assistance, and that people have the inherent, inalienable right to choose their own religious influences, and that, finally, she may not be qualified to influence anyone, in terms of choice of religion, except herself. She took this as an insult, exposong her sancitmonious arrogance. "Well thank you very much", was her caustic, sarcastic remark. It was now my turn to fantasize about smacking her over the head with a book, not the Bible, but maybe something by Christopher Hitchens, a Thomas Paine pamphlet, or even a Mark Twain novel,since Twain ranks among America's greatest novelists, humorists, and atheists. When I took the tact of infoming her that we live in a land of freedom of religion and freedom from religion, that America's founding fathers were generally not Christians, were staucnhly supportive of separation of church and state, and that therefore any true Amerian who condemns non Christians merely for being non Christians is acting contrary to the true patriotic American spirit, she up and told me that she didn't want to hear it. Another mindless Christian, refusing to hear demonstrable truth, only because it contradicted her preconceptions and biases. When I fell silent at her insistance, she took advantage of the opportunity to go for the jugular, as cowards in combat will often do. Here came the emotion and the tears, intended to but failing to evoke the sympathy and surrender from me she coveted. (I won't be emotionally blackmailed by an intellectual thug.) She prays for me, she whimpered. I don't want to hear it, I told her.