Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts

Friday, April 12, 2013

Have You Been Blessed Lately?

I was recently at a birthday party for my childhood friend, Nancy.  When she was 30,  she was snagged by religion.  It probably saved her life.  She became an evangelical singer.  All her friends are evangelicals, and every single person at this party, except me, was an evangelical.
My friend, the birthday girl, asked everyone to stand up one at a time and introduce themselves to the group.  One woman said this, "I first met Nancy when she was singing at the Christian Fellowship event at the Marquis Gardens Banquet Hall.  It was so God.  People were overcome with the spirit and fainting.  The waiters were wondering if they should call an ambulance.  One guy must have had an angel on his shoulder.  He was swaying and dancing with the spirit - his eyes closed -- and somehow didn't trip over any of the bodies."

I came out as an atheist to the people at my table.
"Being an atheist must be so hard," one said.
"Why?"
"Because you have no one to pray to."
I nodded sadly.

A few days earlier I was in a woman's washroom at the Charlotte, NC, airport. This washroom had a large jolly greeter with a very loud voice: "GOOD AFTERNOON, WELCOME TO CHARLOTTE.  HAVE A GOD-BLESSING DAY. GOD BLESS, BE SAFE GIRLS, GOD BLESS, GOD BLESS, GOD BLESS, LADIES ONCE AGAIN, GOD BLESS.  GOD BLESS, GOD BLESS, GOD BLESS GIRLS, HAVE A GOD-BLESSING DAY."  I'm not really sure what else she did besides bless people or perhaps watch their luggage while they went in a cubicle (where I hid from her booming voice and scribbled down her words verbatim).  As I was leaving, I noticed her tip jar and stuffed in a dollar. She then blessed me a few more times. Clearly this godly marketing tool was working.

Maybe I'm becoming more tolerant.  One Sunday morning some years ago, I was on a bus travelling from Hamilton to Toronto, normally a 50-minute trip.  A woman stood up at the front of the bus and began preaching, entreating us to repent and accept Jesus.  I yelled, "Driver, can we have some quiet."  The bus driver asked the woman to sit down, but she kept preaching, mentioning also that the unrepentant woman (me) would surely face God's wrath.  The driver pulled off the highway to a police station.

The officers came on board and escorted the woman off.  I hope she had a God-blessing day.  This added at least 20 minutes to our trip and I had to face the wrath of the other passengers.  The bus driver said that she preached on the bus every week.  Sometimes passengers slept through it.  Sometimes they resented being a captive audience.  In those cases, he turned her over to the police.

What would you do?  Sit back and repent or loudly protest?