We have new neighbours across the road and, because we didn’t hide quickly enough, they invited us over for a coffee.<\/p>\n
Now, when you’re a pornographer working from home in a nice, quiet, suburban neighbourhood, you do your best to stay on the good side of the neighbours and not attract attention. I’m also freakishly antisocial and try not to talk to any of them, just because it’s easier that way. And I’m a hermit.<\/p>\n
Anyway, we couldn’t find an excuse to avoid it so we headed over yesterday morning for our little get-to-know session. It went well enough for half an hour (“Yes, I work from home, I make my money advertising Amazon”) until, suddenly:<\/p>\n
“Have you thought about dedicating yourself and your heart to God?”<\/p>\n
Yes, they were born-again Christians, and they were out to convert. While I broke out in a cold sweat and thought of ways to escape (ENEMY TERRITORY! ENEMY TERRITORY!), my husband engaged them in a robust conversation about how God doesn’t exist.<\/p>\n
The were firm in their faith. We were firm in our atheism. We agreed to disagree and things ended pleasantly. Still, I was so full of adrenaline I had to go for a long walk on my treadmill to calm down. I hated the whole thing. I felt horribly uncomfortable and kind of offended. Their brand of Christianity is so opposed to my politics and my life in general that it’s unnerving to have someone try and push it on you.<\/p>\n
And that’s the thing. I don’t mind that they’re into God, but I do mind that they felt it was OK to ruin a perfectly good conversation with bible bashing. They were so sure they were right, and didn’t hesistate to tell us we were wrong. You don’t see atheists inviting Christians over for coffee and then abruptly saying “So, when are you going to give up on all this mumbo-jumbo?”<\/p>\n
And maybe we should be doing that because their style of Christianity is not content to be a personal pursuit. They’re out to make everyone follow their beliefs, by law if necessary. Their religion pushes intelligent design, and campaigns against gay rights, abortion and contraception – stuff that I’m fairly certain Jesus didn’t mention at any point. These people are out to ban porn but think there’s such a thing as a “just war.” <\/p>\n
Maybe people like me should make more of an effort to challenge this world view, because it’s this kind of fundamentalism that causes more problems than it solves.<\/p>\n
By all means, believe in God, but leave me and everybody else alone to choose our own path.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We have new neighbours across the road and, because we didn’t hide quickly enough, they invited us over for a coffee. Now, when you’re a pornographer working from home in a nice, quiet, suburban neighbourhood, you do your best to stay on the good side of the neighbours and not attract attention. I’m also freakishly antisocial and try not to talk to any of them, just because it’s easier that Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[83,917],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings","tag-atheism","tag-religion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}