“Without God, you can have no moral compass,” he admonished. “How can you know right from wrong or good from evil if you don’t believe in God. Have you no core beliefs?”
“Of course I know right from wrong and good from evil. And yes, I do have core beliefs,” I said. “But they don’t include believing in a mythical, supernatural, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being.”
“But God created everything, including you. If you don’t believe in God, what’s the point of life? Of all of this?” he said, waving his arm around.
“Look,” I said. “I believe in live and let live. You know, whatever gets you through the day. Why can’t you do the same? Why do you feel compelled to ridicule me, tell me that I have no moral compass or that my core beliefs are meaningless just because they’re different from yours?”
“I’m just trying to save your soul from eternal damnation,” he said. “Don’t you want to be saved?”
“Saved from being condemned to an eternity in a hell I don’t believe in?” I said. “How about saving me from all of your religious proselytizing, please?”
“I just want you to feel the joy knowing that Jesus is with you and that you’re with Him.”
“I know you mean well,” I said, “and I respect your beliefs. You are free to believe whatever you want to believe, and if your beliefs work for you, that’s great. But so am I free to believe — or to not believe — and if that includes believing that God does not exist, you should respect my beliefs because that’s what works for me.”
“But without God there can be no morality,” he said. “That’s one of my core beliefs and it’s my duty to God to share them with you and to guide you so that you can know Him.”
“I’m sorry, but, while I appreciate whatever it is that you choose to believe, I just don’t accept, much less embrace, it,” I said. “Because my core belief is ‘you do you and I’ll do me’ and, by following that core belief, we’ll both do fine.”
Written for this past Sunday’s Sunday Writing Prompt from Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie. The challenge is to examine one of our core beliefs. In response to this prompt, I wrote this short, kind of fictional vignette. Comments, as always, are welcome.
The forecast is looking kind of dim. Meteorologists are calling for heavy, sustained rain on eight of the next ten days. In fact, they’re reporting that “winter’s biggest storm to date” is bearing down on the area. “This is a once-a-winter kind of event,” one overly excited weather reporter said.
“He’s my chick magnet, Dude,” Clyde explained to his friend, Carl, about why he put his puppy in his backpack rather than walking him on a leash. “You wouldn’t believe how many gorgeous babes come up to me and start oohing and ahhing when I walk down the street. They start petting him and saying how adorable he is and the next thing you know, these beautiful women are giving me their numbers and begging me to call them.”
“That adage about ‘write what you know’ is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I’m curious to find out.”
“Mom, I really don’t think you should go,” Abbie said to her mother.
“That’s all that’s left?” Henry said to his brother Ben. “I knew it was a bad storm, but I didn’t think it would take almost the whole footbridge out.”
“I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon, and I think most of the people in this room would have done that, too.”
That will bring you back down to earth really fast.
“Is it just my imagination or are you shrinking?” my wife asked me.
Facts, Fictions & Fantasies 