Pointlessly Propagandizing

WHEN I WAS IN SIXTH GRADE, fifty years ago, my teacher told the class that is it best to never discuss religion or politics. Most people, at one time or another, have probably been given the same advice. It disappointed me. A precocious twelve year old, I remember thinking that the admonition precluded the two most interesting topics in the world. It seemed unfair. I didn't think I could follow her advice. By the time I was ten years old I knew I was not interested in being a christian, because the religion seemed utterly bizarre to me, and still does. By the time I graduated high school, I had become a liberal, and still am. I've had quite a few political and religious conversations in my life, and they used to go fairly well, but the older I get, the more combative they become. The rule of thumb is; its okay to have conversations on these topics as long as you do so with people with whom you generally agree on them. That makes it more civil, if more bland. I can recall forty years ago having these conversations with relatively little acrimony, or so my memory tells me, but those days are gone. And so, at long last, having given the matter some thought and a great deal of testing for half a century, I have finally decided to take my sixth grade teacher's advice, which I should have long ago. We live in divisive, angry, contentious times. Best one hold one's thoughts. At the senior center, I think I am the only non christian, and the only liberal democrat out of the bunch. More reason to hold my tongue. One day one of my friends, a ninety year old with a good mind and good education, told me he wanted to give me some reading material about cats, of which I have four. What he gave me was a slim sliver of paper about cats, and a sheaf of printed right wing propaganda. I couldn't resist. I expressed to him surprise at the amount of right wing propaganda, and the lack of cat material, and that I felt I had been duped and blindsided. He told me that his real purpose was to try to, as he said, change me. Fat chance. i can't count the number of times throughout my life people have tried to reconstitute me as a Christian, as if a few well chosen words might suddenly turn my religiosity on its ear. I always thought that in old age it would stop happening, but it hasn't. Do people ever stop to think that an intelligent well educated person who has lived several decades is still in the process of forming a belief system? Do people somehow think they have a magic ability to change another person's fundamental beliefs? Apparently so. Why? Why don't Christians understand that people who are not Christians are not deprived or lacking anything, and don't need to be changed? I cannot imagine anything more arrogant than thinking that someone should change her religiosity or political ideology, as if they're saying, "I'm a Christian, and since I embrace a faith of my choosing, its the true faith, and so should be everyone's." When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine, Goethe said. How can anyone be so arrogant as to suppose that another person, any other person, should reinvent himself in the image of a propagandist?