My Encounter with an Extreme Christian

What I am about to relate to you, the inquisitive reader, is completely factual. None of these occurrences are from the imagination.

I stepped into a Caribou Coffee one day, and to my surprise, I found exactly what I was looking for: two highly intelligent, artistic individuals who work for their passions quite deeply. They were playing chess by the wall, and my mother and I decided to venture forth and meet them. They were kind-spirited and easily liked, and they had a fine amount of artistic qualities within them; One writes in his journal about the highest complexities of existence, the other was a painter and sketch-artist.

Their names were Mike and Josiah. It became clear that both of them were Christian soon into the conversation, as my prying questions quickly took hold. The difference between the two of them, though, was obvious: one took his faith to an extreme, the other did not. Since I consider myself an open-minded individual, I did not take this as a particularly negative thing. Perhaps this was a mistake.

Not to mean any ill will toward either of them, but there is something strange about befriending an intellectual Christian. I remain friends with them today, and while I enjoy their conversation immensely, I will never go into any conversation about religion with either of them ever again. This is why:

Josiah was the first I went to ask my religious and philosophical questions to. He was the less religious of the two. I quoted from Nietzsche, I asked questions a typical skeptic philosopher would ask, I had no answers, just questions. He seemed to be fine with it, and while he had some sort of rebuttal to each of my claims, he in no way attempted to push his religion upon me. I was fine with this. We were good friends.

Mike was the one who completely exploded with energy. I kicked an emotional hornet's nest the night I asked him the questions of philosophy that had been rolling around in my head. Mike is the kind of man who takes his religion with immense seriousness, Mike is the man who will push his religion upon you when you are not looking, Mike is the man who is borderline fanatical about his beliefs. He wasn't always this way, but he certainly became a Christian zealot in his mid-teens, and fast.

I walked into our usual meeting place, the Caribou Coffee, feeling quite depressed and anxious, as I usually do. I have been struggling with these symptoms for years, and haven't really found any cure. But, I don't think there is a "cure" per se, such a word evokes ideas of such simplistic circumstance. The poison has a cure. Life... life has no cure. You take what you have and you work with it, you strive for what you love, and you do this because you want to, not because someone tells you to, or an idea, such as God, tells you to. It's about you. So began our conversation.

Again, I quoted from Nietzsche, I asked my usual skeptic philosopher's questions, except this time there was something dreadfully different. He wanted me to become a Christian, he was pushing it on me, and he was doing it with such emotional power I also was swept up into the maelstrom. I couldn't help but feel tears in my own eyes, but more from my concern about him than anything. Here sat a man writhing with anger and energy, simply shaking with emotion, about this one subject: religion. He preached of the glory of God, the hopelessness of humanity without him, and the depravity of all human beings. He spoke of how humanity is inherently evil, cursing human actions and praising the supposed greatness of God and his love. Tears welled in his eyes. His fist struck the table. I had never seen him the way he acted that night, never would I have expected him to become so incredibly ferocious about his beliefs. Out of friendship and pushing our differences aside, these differences which I so terribly had brought to light, I told him to calm down. He didn't want to. He wanted to be angry. He wanted to feel the rage and, as he said it, "fire", writhing in him. He went so far as to say that God was calling me, to claim that all of my many maladies and nuances, my perfectionism, my anxiety, my depression, my love for art, the way I saw something different in him and Josiah, were all signs that God himself was reaching his hand through the heavens and grasping at me. I haven't seen such a grand display of human emotion in my life. I tried to get him to see that I simply would not use God as my path, but he would never let up. He even said to me that feeling sick and anxious, angry, and alone, is all part of the process of becoming a Christian. This, I believe, is what is most upsetting to me. My only want for him then was to calm down, but he wouldn't do this either. I applaud his passion. But I think he is wrong.

I think he is wrong for having pushed this upon me. I think God is wrong. I have thought this throughout my entire teenage life, however naive or foolish that life may be. I think God is a violent, malicious maniac of a deity, obsessed with power and obsessed with brainwashing the youth to do these things. Obsessed with making us believe that feeling sick and anxious and depressed is "okay" and "part of the process of becoming a Christian". I will not have it. There is something in me that screams "This is BULLSHIT!" I will respect my intuition and stay far, far away from this thing we call Christianity. There is something horrible about it, like a stench that I can't quite place. Christians, or any religious follower, have something dead inside them. Something about them has been brutally murdered, and it is not fair. Some of their humanity has been lost for this "greater good". What insanity is life cursing life itself? What insanity is all of this? This is true insanity. That's how I feel about religion. If you feel differently, that's entirely okay, but know that this is how I feel, and it's not going to change.

Mike found his cure for depression in his faith, I'm not going to take that route, and it's something he cannot accept. So be it. It is my life. I rely on no crutch. I seek no afterlife. I want to help people, I want to love people, and that's what I'm going to do, God or no God. Enough with it. I still remain friends with Mike and Josiah, it's just this difference that will prevent us from becoming any closer. That's fine, as far as I can tell. We're all different, we can't all be expected to worship the same God, or to worship any god at all.

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."
--Friedrich Nietzsche