Sunday
I had a good conversation with Rick, the tenant on the first floor, this morning. He is a sporadically employed, middle aged, gay man with curious movie tastes, who will manage to describe the plot of at least one film in eighty percent of the conversations he is involved in. While some of them are classics from the 60s or earlier, many of them are horror or obscene. He is always trying to convince Jason to watch something with him, and Jason is always politely declining (though they may do a little switcheroo where Rick listens to some of Jason's music, and Jason watches something with Rick). Rick posts ads on craigslist, and finds jobs other ways too, so he walks dogs, acts as an art model, scrubs toilets, and puts in some time at Fair Foods. This morning we got to talking about religion a little bit, and Rick was telling me why he left the church when he was fourteen. Besides differences in belief about sexuality, he just saw too many hypocrites in the church. People who called themselves Christians and played up the Sunday act, but weren't living differently. He saw them living their lives against church teaching, and got fed up with it. He also said that reading broadened his perspective. He says that he still has a lot of respect for religious people though, and that if it helps them then that is great.
He made what I found to be a very interesting comment, which I will paraphrase as closely as I can remember: "I say this as a self-proclaimed atheist: You're doing God's work here."
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Interestingly enough, this morning I read a passage from C. S. Lewis that talks about loving our neighbor:
ReplyDelete"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting spendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn: We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat - the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden."