That’s what the Geek Squad guy at Best Buy told me, anyway.
It was a little over a year ago, and I was at the counter with my husband Martin’s laptop, hoping that his difficulty connecting to our wireless network might have an easy (read cheap) fix. I had a fighting chance, I thought, since the woman behind the counter and I go to the same church and I trusted her to give it to me straight. One of her coworkers, a guy in his early 20s, stopped to look over my friend’s shoulder as I described the problem.
Here’s how she introduced us…
“This is Joan,” she said. “She and I go to church together.” I smiled and reached out to shake his hand.
“And this is John (not his real name),” she continued. “He’s an atheist.”
This may have been the first time in my life I had ever been introduced in this way. It was a little strange and totally random but, since I had spent more of my life as an atheist than I have as a churchgoer, her outting John as an atheist didn’t phase me a bit.
“I was an atheist for many years,” I told him, hoping that a little small talk to take the edge off of the otherwise awkward exchange. I expected him to respond with an equally random bit of nothing and be on his way, but instead he said matter-of-factly, “Then you weren’t really an atheist.”
Have you ever found yourself completely surprised by your own response to something? This was one of those moments for me. I wasn’t really an atheist? I thought. What do you mean I wasn’t really an atheist? Before I knew it, I found myself ever so politely (yet ever so firmly) defending my former atheism. “Actually, I was an atheist,” I told Geek Squad guy with pleasant indignance. I even
pulled out a dramatic and somewhat personal example of something I’d done when I was a kid that proved my former atheism, which he promptly pooh-poohed.
pulled out a dramatic and somewhat personal example of something I’d done when I was a kid that proved my former atheism, which he promptly pooh-poohed.
If I go to church now, he told me calmly but emphatically, then I was never a “real atheist.”
He walked away and I got back to Martin’s computer, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this exchange. At first I focused on what I perceived to be his faulty logic. Of course I could be an atheist then and a Christian now, I thought. It wasn’t like I’d turned atheist on the heels of a Christian upbringing. I’d never believed in the first place.
But then I realized that his logic (or lack thereof) was not the most interesting or relevant part of our short conversation. Why did I care whether or not Geek Squad guy believed that I had been an atheist until I came to believe in a ‘power-greater-than-myself’ in my 20s?
As I pondered the question, something became clear to me. No matter how deep my desire to put relationships over being right, or how many times I commit and recommit myself to pursuing
dialog over debate, it is still incredibly easy for me to fall into a tit-for-tat over anything.
dialog over debate, it is still incredibly easy for me to fall into a tit-for-tat over anything.
And I mean anything.
No topic is too small or unimportant for me to fall into the trap of self-importance if I am not intentional about how I respond to people with whom I disagree. This is doubly true here in this space as more people from different backgrounds stop by and comment on these posts.
I appreciated that reminder from the Geek Squad atheist-guy back then and I appreciate it every time someone leaves a comment in this space or on a blog I follow elsewhere that challenges my best notion of my faith and spiritual practice. With each encounter I have an opportunity to react poorly out of my own ego or respond in love, doing my best to genuinely reflect my faith from the heart and not just the pen.
How about you? What is your response when challenged on thoughts and beliefs you hold dear?
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