Conversation with an Evangelist

Recently, while I was sitting in a thrift shop waiting for my wife while she was shopping, a gentleman approached me and engaged me in a conversation about God. At first I thought he was just waiting for his wife and wanted to converse to pass the time. It started something like this. He asked what my feelings were about the afterlife. He looked to be at least as old as I am, and at our ages the question takes on particular importance. As the conversation continued, I realized that he was not just passing time but actually was trying to convert me to his point of view. He is apparently a fundamentalist Christian evangelist. I found the conversation interesting because I have a particular point of view on the subject of religion, and I wanted to bounce those ideas off of him to see what a person with a point of view different from mine might think of them. At first we found many points of agreement. We both believe in God, but ultimately we hit a brick wall. He believed the Bible, including the New Testament, to be the word of God and every word is the absolute truth. He believes his interpretation of that truth to be the only interpretation. I believe the Bible was written by people, and therefore not necessarily every word must be exactly correct. I think that the Bible gives hope but no guarantees. I think that much of what is predicted in the Bible may very well come true because it was written by people and it is possible that achievements that seem impossible now might actually come to pass through the efforts of human intelligence in the future. I think the time of the Messiah might actually come at some time in the future, but it will not be contingent on how much we pray or whether we believe in God, but through science, reason, and technology, in other words the cumulative efforts of people. Meanwhile religion plays an important role in keeping our hopes alive until that time.

So we parted. He did not convince me to believe as he does. I did not change his beliefs and did not want to change his beliefs. If his beliefs work for him, who am I to tell him to change? He gave me some small pamphlets and his phone number to call him if I have any questions. I later threw away the pamphlets and the phone number. I don’t like long phone conversations. If he had given me an e-mail address I might have been tempted to renew the conversation or maybe not.