I got stuck on the trolley for about 45 minutes last week. I also got stuck being a Christian

The trolleys were broken down in the tunnel and we were beyond the diversion point. We just had to wait it out. Instead of being consumed by my fantasy novel I struck up a conversation with the man who sat down next to me. It started with our common inconvenience- a trolley in front of us was broken down in the tunnel and we were stuck behind it and very late for work (we weren’t stressed about it because it was the day after the big snow and we were already heroes for showing up at all). It went deeper when I simply asked him “what are you reading?”

I might have been leery to ask this man this question- he seemed a bit eccentric and I could tell by the titles I spied on his photocopied reading material that his interests were a bit weird too. He was excited to tell me that every clergy person was a charlatan and religion was just a power grab.

I listened and agreed with some of his points- scientists could now describe the forces at work which caused the sun to rise or the moon to be eclipsed which made ancient stories about gods and their daily celestial responsibilities seem false. Religious people had leveraged their spiritual power throughout history to control unlettered people groups.

My new friend considered himself very lettered and he was sure that if we all just thought about things for ourselves logically we would reach the same conclusions that he had reached. I held my tongue as he insulted all religious people but eventually got a turn to speak. I contended that his evaluation of logic as the utmost criteria for reality was not unassailable- how do you logically describe love? I rejected his overly individualistic approach to truth and pointed out that it was just as much an inheritance of the western philosophical domination system as all the other homogenizing force he decried. And I told him that I trusted my own experience of God and appreciated how the stories that had been passed down to me resonated in my heart and with my desire.

As soon as I expressed my faith I was lumped into a category. I was foolish and beguiled. I was a bleating sheep. We danced around our points for a while but I don’t think I swayed him. He did concede to me that I wasn’t stupid, just that I had made a choice based on criteria which he had chosen as less important than his own criteria. We parted ways with a smile and a handshake which I consider a victory. At the very least he met a nice articulate Christian who took him seriously.

But afterward I was discouraged. Maybe I should have just read my fantasy novel. I didn’t like being lumped. At one point I said, “Listen, you don’t know me, you can’t put that on me.” He was putting all the deceit and power of Christian history on my shoulders, but more so he was insisting that my faith was blind. The moment I have faith I am deceived. I don’t think there is a way to win that argument. If I had the opportunity I would just have to prove to him that I wasn’t what he thought I was. Arguments won’t win the day- only time, relationship and love. That’s why Circle of Hope organized ourselves into cell groups- so we could create spaces for someone like him to have that opportunity. God will have to work with this guy a bit more before he’s ready to get into a cell but if he did, it would be great fun! Let’s pray for those we know like him and pray for more opportunities to make a way for people to get in or at the very least to have the conversation.