You and I were in a play together a year and something ago. We chatted a bit at the time, went out in groups, discovered a shared love of beer, and that was pretty much it. We lost touch, as actors do. Recently I asked you to join me for a drink, realizing I had neglected our acquaintance.
We had a couple of drinks and talked for nearly four hours. We went to ice cream, since we were both still a little drunk. And talked more, until we had pretty much exhausted our topics. And then I asked you about your conversion experience, since I like to hear people talk about their spiritual lives.
You shared your religious history, and your conversion, and the joy you get from your religion. Then you shared a couple of experiences where prayer yielded some immediate, real time results. "Oh," I said. "I know about that! I've experienced similar things."
That troubled you. I unknowingly put you in doubt. If I, who doesn't share your faith, could experience something similar, could you then have misidentified your experience? But you recovered, and told me that I had been in error. That my experience could not be an experience of the divine, since the only experience of the divine is through your faith.
You weren't unkind, but very firm. If an experience is not through your faith, it is not an experience of divinity, but rather one of deception.
This is what comes back to me now.
We've communicated since and you've told me that, while you enjoy my company, we are too different to be close. And I agree, though not for the same reasons.
It is the arrogance of your faith that burns me. The jealousy of your god, who will brook no equals, only slaves. The god who is love on paper, but in practice is the god of fear, of denial of the other, the one who would consign me and those I love to the pit for the sin of believing in something different.
You will never hear any of this. It would serve no one for you to hear it. It would cause you distress. I will treat you with all the love, kindness, and charity I possess. I have a deep regard for you as a person, and I will not judge nor mock your faith, though you do not respect or even acknowledge mine.
My god has taught me better.