Me vs. a Born Again...about Christianity and my Family

I was shopping for fake flowers in a dollar store today when another woman joined me, marveling at the selection.  She started up idle chatter about the great prices, then told me how she gave thanks to God for the great prices because, as a born-again Christian, she gave thanks for everything.

I'm not sure God wants credit for the low-paid workers in China who made these products, I thought, but kept my mouth shut.

Then she went on about how she's been a born-again for 19 years, and she understands God, but she isn't religious (by which she means she doesn't follow anything that she doesn't believe belongs in Christianity), etc. etc., and... "are you a Christian?"

"No, I'm not," I responded evenly.

She makes this overly sad face, like she was on a stage, then "hides" it like she didn't want me to see.  "What are you?"

You really shouldn't ask questions you don't want an answer to.  In that light, I consider answering to be my own little contribution to karma.  "I'm Wiccan."

Another pouty face.  To her credit, she didn't go crazy on me.  "Is that like witchcraft?"

I'm good at explaining Wicca.  I'm less good at trying to get to a useful answer working backward from questions like this.  "No, it's not witchcraft.  It's..."

"Are you like a white witch?"

Which part of "not witchcraft" didn't you understand?  Also, in retrospect, maybe my problem in explaining just came from her not letting me finish a thought.  "No, it's not like that.  It's a religion."

"What do you believe then?"

"Well, we're polytheists and..." and we don't believe in proselytizing in dollar stores.

"What does that mean?"

I'm beginning to weep for your lack of education.  "It means I believe in multiple gods."

Another pouty face.  "So, you, like, work magic thinking it's for good?"  She doesn't even let me address that one.  Perhaps she was sensing my frustration at the fact that anything I said magically transformed into a confession of wearing a pointy hat and mumbling over a bubbling cauldron.  "Well, you should own a Bible.  An authorized one though, because you wouldn't believe all the nonsense versions people are publishing today."

Who the hell "authorizes" a version of the Bible?  I didn't ask, because, unlike her, I don't ask questions I don't really want to hear the answer to.

I smile.  "Thanks, but I already own one.  A couple actually."

"Well, that's good."  And she starts going on about how awesome Christians are, as if I've never met one.

"Actually, I was raised Christian.  Most of my family still is Christian...."

"Are they born-again?"

 "No."

"Oh....they're not Christian, they're religious."  She says it like it leaves a nasty taste on her tongue and making a show of trying not to roll her eyes.  "They haven't really come to know God.  They follow all these man-made ideas, and that's not what God wants, and without God you can't really understand love and compassion."...blah, blah, blah.  Somewhere in her tirade she also bragged about insuring all of her Christian friends, so when they died they could support widows and orphans, which was just kind of creepy.

Wait a minute....you just tried, at least in your own mind, to understand what I was as a Wiccan, but you go all preachy about my Christian relatives?  How messed up is that?

And then she walked off, saving me from blowing a gasket.  A couple minutes later, however, she returns and starts right back up again.  And now my patience had officially ended.

"Ma'am, I understand you're trying to be helpful, but I'm not going to listen to you criticize people you've never even met.  Your child also appears to be rather humiliated by you lecturing strangers about religion."  Because her roughly tween-age daughter kept shamefully wandering away from the conversation.

"Oh, no.  She's just learning disabled.  She had grand mal seizures and now doesn't know how to deal with people."

Why...why on earth would you tell me that?  Why not just say your daughter's really shy, rather than give her medical history to a complete stranger?  Because, you know, she totally needs a medical condition to explain why she doesn't want to be part of this conversation.  I actively kept from responding, because I'm pretty sure whatever I tried to say would come out as "You're a terrible mother in public."

Meanwhile, the lady still has other issues to address.  "I don't mean to insult your family!  I'm sure they're very nice people.  And if they were here I would say so and hope that they could sit down and actually read the Bible, rather than just blindly following the religion in which they were raised."

And this is when I made a revelation about myself.  I'm actually pretty patient about people not understanding my religion, in part because of that amount of nonsense that is out there about it.  But I will not put up with people making ugly, stupid presumptions about my family's understanding of God.  There's just no excuse for it.  There are millions upon millions of non-born-again Christians putting a positive face onto their religion.  And to start making your criticisms personal, directing themselves specifically at my family?  Oh, no, you didn't.

"My family does not blindly follow anything. We were raised to think for ourselves.  They have studied, and made decisions on that study.  They are Christians, they do understand God, they are honestly good and charitable people, and I have nothing against them or their faith.  I dare say my mother knows the Bible; she has been attending Bible-study for decades.   She also teaches confirmation..."

"Confirmation isn't in the Bible, you know."

"Neither are cars."

Dead stop. It was like her brain just rear-ended itself, which was kind of amazing to watch. "What?"

"Cars aren't in the Bible.  Doesn't mean it's bad for a Christian to have a car." ...or a confirmation, which was my point.

She decided to have none of my logic.  "Well of course not.  Only the Amish believe that.  Or..is there another cult too?  No, just the Amish."

Great...now she doesn't even need me to have someone to argue with.  She's debating with herself.  Also, that's totally NOT the reason why the Amish don't own cars.

"So what Church does your mother attend?"

"She a Methodist."

"Oh!  Maybe she's a Christian after all.  Is she a born-again Methodist or a Baptist-based Methodist?"

What the hell is a "Baptist-based Methodist"?  I think of Methodists as being in two groups.  There are "our" Methodists, and then there's the "no drinkin', no smokin' no havin' fun kind of Methodists."  It's only in the last decade I learned there was such a thing as a born-again Methodist (George W. Bush is one).  Not sure if they are a third group or if they're intertwined with the "no drinkin', no smokin' no havin' fun kind of Methodists."

"Well, she's not a born-again," was the only answer I could provide to that rather limited question.

Pouty face again.  "She should read the writings of John Wesley.  He's got some really great stuff about all the things that religion makes us do that has nothing to do with God's plan...like the idea that the unbaptized will go to hell, as if God would send an innocent child to hell because he wasn't baptized..."

And heaven forbid my Mom actually read something of the denomination's founder before she decided to join, or like John Wesley is some secretive figure that most Methodists have never heard of.  We learned about him in Sunday School.

I kind of stopped listening as she went off on another rant.  Clearly there was no point in telling her that most denominations do not believe that baptism saves a person, or that I suspected she had no idea what Baptists believe. Heck, Mom would even agree on the whole value of personal relationship over empty ritual - if only the conversation wasn't being held in a dollar store with a stranger that didn't invite the damn conversation - but that doesn't make her a born-again, thank God.