Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The Importance of Being Christian

I've had a few conversations in the recent past (recent past being that period of time between whenever "now" is for any given point of time and whenever "now" was at the time I posted in the blog three posts ago. If I blogged daily, then the recent past would be in the last 3 days. As it stands now...the recent past started about 4 months ago) which were trying to figure out why it's important to me that a significant other in my life be Christian. Either that or I imagined that these conversations happened (a very likely possibility. My memory over the last 4 months isn't perfect, and it's prone to invent conversations).
While driving home the other day, the reason hit me. I mean, it's never been an issue that was a question for me. I know that "she" (whomever "she" might be, someone I currently know or someone I haven't yet met) is, she'd have to be Christian, but it's important that I be able to explain to others why this is.
The easiest way I found to explain it is to just phrase some hypotheticals. Imagine that you met the woman1 of your dreams, but she completely refuses to acknowledge the existence of your dad2. Now, I'm not saying that she ignores him or that she doesn't like him, but that she simply is convinced that he doesn't exist. She may put on airs that it's okay that you have conversations on the phone with him, she's polite (but condescending) when the two of you have dinner with your parents. She enjoys talking to your mother, but when any of you discuss Dad, she starts to look uncomfortable as though you're talking about an imaginary friend.
When Dad (who's right there at the table with you) tries to talk to her, she's oblivious.
Somehow, this situation is completely absurd when discussed in these terms, but when it comes to Christianity, non-Christians seem to puzzle over the fact that Christians can't seem to be bigoted and/or biased against people who refuse to subscribe to this "crazy notion" that God exists, interacts with us daily, and is a very real part of our day-to-day lives. I don't see where the puzzlement is. If those two people try to build a relationship, at the foundation is this part of each person which thinks (at best) that the other one is fundamentally crazy. And not the good kind of crazy.

1I'm a guy and a chauvinist at that. My writing follows the absolutely "horrid" trend of using masculine pronouns instead of the socially-correct-but-stylistically-abhorrent "him or her" or even worse "s/he"-type constructs. I'm also going to write as though you're me and let you do the work of substituting the appropriate other characters/situations/whatever.

2Everyone has someone in his or her life who is important to the person. It could be a relative or a good friend (or both). Whatever, it's not important. For sake of ease-of-writing, I'm going to refer to this person as "Dad." Replace this character with whomever makes sense for you.