Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The Look of a Heathen

Let me set the stage:

Bojangles. 1:30PM.
ENTER: Me, the hungry atheist.

I order my favorite 4-piece supreme dinner, mashed potatoes with gravy, delicious honey mustard, and sweet tea. As I sit at the table eating this feast of kings, a suspicious looking middle-aged woman, placing what I assume to be jesus-tracts on cars outside, enters the restaurant, approaches me, and asks, "Do you know if you're going to heaven?"

Wondering at first if I was being recorded from some clandestine location for television, then realizing 'hey, this is north carolina, so probably not' I responded with, "What do you mean by heaven?" She looked confused, started to say something, but I just cut her off and said, "no, I'm not going to heaven." She proceeded to tell me that I could get to heaven through Jesus (if I wanted). I simply replied, "But I do not want to go to heaven."

Not to be de-railed with her witnessing, she sounded very parental and said, "You realize that you're talking about where you will spend eternity." I replied, "I intend to spend eternity where everyone else does - in the ground." With a glazed look in her eye and a forced smile on her face she blurted, "god bless you" and walked away.

I'm so proud to say that after four years of trying, I finally *look* enough like an atheist to get preached at like one by strangers. Thank you, Bojangles. Thank you, Durham.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You clearly were not eating at Chick-fil-A! Everyone there gets saved!

Kiran Batta said...

Hey Matt,


I simply don't understand the obsessive compulsion people have to force their religious ideas in to other's minds. You did a good thing.