You’re a Fisher of Men? Alright, I Cut Nets!

I posted earlier that I didn’t like pushy Atheists any more than I like any pushy religious people.  This isn’t true.  I find fundamentalist fanatical Jews more distasteful than other religious zealots because they make the rest of their coreligionists look bad, and I don’t like looking bad.  Fortunately, there aren’t very many of them, because there aren’t very many Jews.  The lunatics I come across most often as an American, are of course, the ubiquitous Evangelical Christians.

My parents raised me to believe in an ideal that seems rather quant now, and you might even say I’m old fashioned in this respect.  I believe that religion is between an individual and their conscience (with a chosen deity or group of deities as possible third parties) and not something that needs to be shouted from the rooftops.  I have nothing wrong with fervent believers.  I just can’t stand the vocal ones who like to shove their piety down my throat.

At my university, our particular band of enthusiastic Christian proselytizers likes to accost students as we drag ourselves from class to class and say with cheerful condescension, “I want to talk to you about Jesus!”  It was all I could do not to run right to the first Campus Crusader for Cthulhu I saw and join in, despite the fact that H. P. Lovecraft was a racist anti-Semitic Anglophile with an obsession with inherited guilt.  Mostly, I just content myself with one liner comebacks.

Proselytizer: I want to talk to you about Jesus!
Fish: Does he know you’re talking about him behind his back?

When I first enrolled, I mistook their catchphrase for an invitation to theological discussion and debate.

Proselytizer: I want to talk to you about Jesus!
Fish: Really, because I’d like to talk to you about Maimonides.
Proselytizer: Your what?

This wasn’t quite the reaction I wanted, so I tried again.

Proselytizer: I want to talk to you about Jesus!
Fish: Really, because I’d like to talk to you about Buddha.
Proselytizer: Satan!

This is all extremely childish of me, but I despise being accosted, and this is the only way I know to fight back.  Besides, it makes me feel a whole lot better.

I’m not the only one who does this.  Many of my friends feel compelled to find an outlet for their frustration with these people that doesn’t involve knocking them to the pavement.  One of my friends actually managed to get one to run away.

Male Proselytizer: I want to talk to you about Jesus!
Straight Male Friend Who is Clearly Very Secure in His Sexuality: That’s so sad; I was just about to ask you out.
Male Proselytizer: Evil homosexual! *scampers*

Sadly, many religious overly vocal Christians are otherwise quite nice people.  Upon finding out that I was Jewish (and therefore not Christian, a formerly good friend of mine felt terrible that such a nice girl like me was going to hell.

Religious Friend: You’re going to go to hell, you know.
Fish: If there is a God who would be so cruel as to send people to hell simply for not worshiping him, I would go to hell gladly rather than bend my knee to Him.
Religious Friend: But He doesn’t damn non-believers; he saves believers!
Fish: If we’re talking about an all-powerful god, He would have had to set up the situation that damns non-believers in the first place, wouldn’t he?

If these zealots annoy me as much as they do, I can’t imagine how much they annoy the private pious non-Evangelical Christians who must feel as if these noisy self-righteous arrogant Christians have hijacked their faith.

I think I'll wear my star of david today.  Usually I don't, because zealots see it as an open invitation to harangue me about accepting Jesus Christ as my personal savior, but today, I think I'm not going to hide.