Write about a time when a belief of yours was challenged. How did you respond?
My beliefs get challenged all the time.
But to choose one, let’s talk about the fact that most of the people I feel close to are not religious or religion-friendly. That’s fine, except for the part where they want to tell me all about what they do and don’t believe, but do not want to extend me the courtesy of hearing what I think. Mind you, I am not trying to convert anyone to anything. They will talk at length about their spiritual thoughts and beliefs, but as soon as I say, “That’s cool, here’s what I think…” I get cut off and told they don’t want to hear it. I’m truly interested in hearing about their beliefs, so I ask questions and let them elaborate, and I listen to what they have to say. I just wish I could have a turn.
That, however, is a minor annoyance compared to when they just out of the blue go on some kind of rant about Christians. They take a broad brush to the huge spectrum of Christians, and that’s about when I say, “Oh, you mean me. You mean people like me. ” That almost always takes people by surprise.
There was a time when I wouldn’t do that. I would stand there feeling somewhere in the awkward to humiliated range, wanting nothing more than to escape. Then one day, I realized that the person who was in mid-rant didn’t realize that they were talking about me. These days, I just calmly point that out.
I can’t claim to have come up with that all on my own though. A zillion years ago, I was reading about privilege in Mother Jones, and one of the possible responses they gave for responding to racist jokes or comments was, “You’re only saying that because you think I’m white.” That inspired me to stop letting people just say hateful things by pointing out what they are doing.
And I get it. It annoys me that conservative evangelicals seem to think they represent what a “Christian” is, but my solution to that is to simply reclaim that title, whether they like it or not.
The Mia Experiment 