The other day, I was on the bus on my way to my French lesson and I ended up having a very interesting conversation with a man on the bus. It started with small talk in French about my reusable bag that folds into a pocket. (It's pretty handy, never knew it would be a conversation starter!) He was curious about where I got this bag because he had never seen anything like it. I offered my answers as best I could, then he realized that French wasn't my first language. He asked me "what's your language?" and I told him English and he switched to English just like that.
He asked me where I was from. He got a little excited when I said I was from San Diego. He said that was his favorite city that he had been to in California. He said he had visited San Francisco and Los Angeles as well and still called San Diego the best. (I was a little proud of that) So then the conversation goes along the normal questions that I get: Why are you here? Why Quebec? Do you like the city? Do you want to stay? Good luck with learning French!
It was all good harmless talk until I said what I do. I told him "I work for a church that creates English programs for people to practice their English." "A church?!" he asks me, cringing a little at the word "church." He goes on to explain how he doesn't believe in God and continues into his own monologue filled with hate about why he doesn't believe in God.
This is a paraphrase of our conversation:
"I don't believe in God. I tried all that religious stuff once, being good and going to church all the time. But it doesn't work. What the church teaches you is crap and doesn't work. How can a god who is all good and perfect let all the bad things that happen in world happen? I think he just likes to watch us sit here and be tormented and punished by all the bad things that happen to us. He doesn't want to listen to us. I used to pray to God, but now I pray to Mickey Mouse."
"Really?" I ask in disbelief
"Yeah! Because I have the same chance of getting my prayers answered when praying to Mickey Mouse as I do when praying to God. Its a 50-50 chance. I have a 50% chance of getting my prayers answered or not no matter who I pray to. The church is wrong. The church will tell you that God loves you and that he will answer your prayers. No, that is wrong! God only loves you if you obey everything he tells you. You need to follow all of his ten laws and keep them perfect. But if you slip and mess just one - BAM! You are in trouble. He will beat you and torment you and send you to that fire they call Hell. So he really doesn't love you. He doesn't love us and the church is wrong."
My stop was coming up and I was about to get off, but I had to say one more thing before leaving him. So I said to him, "I believe God does love you because he sent his Son to die for us and to take that punishment for us."
"B.S.! Religion is full of crap and wrong!"
And that was the end of our conversation because I had to get off the bus at that moment. The only thing I could do was pray for him on that short walk to my tutor's house.
I have been told that this is the common response to religion here in Quebec: blind hatred. My tutor told me that some people have their reasons or rational thinking behind it, but most often people don't. They don't have a good reason other than they just hate it, the church, Christianity, religion, all of it. This man had obviously been through something to make him hate God that much. These people have been through a lot to get them where they are now. The best thing we can do for them now is to pray.
Please pray for that man. Please pray for the people of Quebec, that God will change their hearts and turn them toward Him. Pray and be thankful knowing that we do have a God that listens to our prayers.
Psalm 86:7 "In the day of trouble I will call upon you, for you answer me."
Matthew 21:22 "And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith."
1 John 5:14-15 "And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him."
No comments:
Post a Comment