“I don’t go to church.” I reply after an uneasy pause. I brace myself.
“Oh.” The instant and obviously judgmental tone, the eyes flicker downwards, the heaviness of awkwardness tightens our throats.
Why do I fear that question so? Why does that simple aspect of my life cause me to cause me to avoid conversations, skirt key topics, and completely veil my belief system as though it were a hideous, perturbing growth?
Because of that critical tone that immediately erects an impenetrable barrier. Because of the friends I have lost because I am not a Christian. Because it seems like whenever I profess that I am agnostic I am categorized and stored away as a Satan worshiping freak whose greatest love is murdering newborn babies and feasting upon their flesh. And there is nothing I can do to change it.
It doesn’t matter if I live the life of a saint. It doesn’t matter if they are the ones attending parties drunkenly on the weekends, sleeping with each other, and essentially embodying every meaning of the word hypocrisy there is. I will never be anything less than absolute scum in the eyes of the classmates that bear crosses round their necks.
***
It suddenly seems to most that I know nothing of science, reason, common sense or decency because I believe that what is accepted is not always right. My personality is limited in the eyes of others; surely I cannot be fun, lively, or different from the others. I have been boxed up into a stereotype based off a radical few and forced into a stuffy, judgmental disposition that is not my own.
Not only that, but I hear in one ear lectures based on tolerance and acceptance, and in my other ear I hear people ridiculing my belief system, joking about what I consider sacred, and laughing at a book I daily find comfort and guidance in.
I am made into something I am not, and all because I happened to say, “I am a Christian.”
***
The belief in a God and his commandments is just as dear to a Christian’s, or any member of any religion, heart as the idea that there isn’t one to an atheist. The very point of tolerance is just that – to tolerate. On both sides. A fair and objective attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one’s own. It seems too often that people demand tolerance and do not themselves put it into practice. On both sides of the argument, look past judgments and tolerate, knowing that it does not mean to agree with and support, or that your ideas will be agreed with or supported. Insults and shouting has always been an ineffective way of helping others to see your point.
