Post-Mortem Anxiety

A week ago, a normal once-in-a-week evening of stress releasing after work, (day off on the following day), me and my girlfriend had dinner on a small Japanese Buffet. We entered famished, escaped satisfied. Gastronomically delighted, we decided to take a little walk to home. December is finally coming. Our place is getting colder as people strapped in with their jackets and scarves. Socially inclined, going out in restaurants, literally. During the summer time, you can't afford to eat outside of the air-conditioned spaces we call a place of retreat. We stopped by to have a nice talk outside this area.

A small carnival style in the middle of the streets

In my case, it is unusually satisfying to watch people walk and socialize or anti-socialize. You name it, seeing them as groups peacefully enjoying the company of each other or someone who drowns at their phone trying to conceal the outburst of their emotion when they see something hilarious in their Facebook feed. Whether it's someone who eats their lunch with a companion up to someone who casually smokes while walking to the cigarette bin. It's all satisfying.

Then in a middle of our conversation, a group of Christian Baptists arrives. From the moment this group of three (one middle-aged man and a middle-aged woman together with a guy in his mid-20's), I knew they are Christians. Raised from a Christian family, you'd differentiate a Christian missionary to a prospector of some kind of Multi-Level Marketing scheme. Almost the same but you'd sense the difference through their smile and handshake. As I look at my girlfriend's eyes, her glare insisted "please talk us out of here". Full of regret, my smile told her otherwise. I wanted to talk to a bunch of strangers and wanted to see them react to the knowledge of my openness as a non-believer of some sort.

So then the fun starts. They begin with the usual - "do you have 5 minutes?", followed by everything similar of first questions on blind dates. Name, work, life status everything that you'd eventually forget from talking to a stranger. I politely broke the clichèd ice-breakers by stating "Are you guys Christians?" and the young guy started opening up how he deliberately converted from Catholic to Muslim to being a Christian. I had asked how he's able to leave Islam. I mean he even told me he was even promoted as Imam.(Imam is an Islamic leadership position. It is most commonly in the context of a worship leader of a mosque and Muslim community by Sunni Muslims.-Wikipedia). He seems focused on the scripts of his statements and as for my perception, he looked like an apprentice of the older man. Trying to see if he's prepared on sharing or "saving souls" alone.

While he is trying to pursue and read me, the lady took the time of having a conversation with my girlfriend; and probably my girlfriend gave one question, one answer routine - I overheard that they ended up with a prayer in a few minutes of conversation.

Then the older man saved the conversation and pointed out the usual. Salvation, God's omnipotence, God's just, kind and loving personality, and God's punishment (the end times).
I don't want to be rude, yet he gave me same objections, same arguments from other Christian speakers as well. So I replied with my perception of God's self-contradictions - pre-destiny and free will; Loving Gift (heaven) and Eternal Torment (hell) and many others. They seemed tedious as the conversation got longer thinking it's pointless to convince. They even repetitively inserting the terms like "we are not trying to convince, persuade or convert in any way" or "we are not talking about religion here" yet they statements prove otherwise. Nonetheless, noticing my girlfriend's sigh - I started to elevate the conversation a little closer on it's ending.

I begin my last statements as the arguments of "Truth being subjective" as the difference in culture, environment, and upbringing affects human nature and the view of what is considered as righteous or abomination in a specific group. I uttered "sir I do understand you and I appreciate your efforts by trying to save my soul. But in the end, I do not believe in Heaven as I do not believe in the concept of afterlife along with its punishments and rewards. I like to live life simply with a golden rule, do good to people. I don't need rewards for that, as the happiness or the help it brings to other people is already rewarding for me.."

Believe me, dear reader, as I could have gone longer but as I suggested in my last words with them is that neither of us would give up on our beliefs, yet I appreciate their efforts to communicate, connect rather, in a random stranger.

As we depart, the young guy told me. "You remind me of my mentor, though he does not absorb all the knowledge. He filters it. He throws away the information he does not need and keeps the necessary one. Like how you filter your Facebook feed of fake news site vs. real news sites",
I would really like to tell him that time that I do. Although, like Facebook feed filters, I need to remember those bad information as well, like those cruel old testament rules in Leviticus.

Still, I don't want the conversation to be longer as it took already 30 mins of our time instead of 5. But I enjoyed speaking with these strangers at that moment. I really wish I have brought my camera that time to take a photo of them and tell their story to the world.

We ended up shaking hands, then I bro-hug both of them. They told me, they will keep on praying for me. If heaven and hell are true, then probably they are worried sick for my soul already in line for hell, and God being omnipotent, he already decided my soul going to hell from the day I was born. So much for his amazing love.

My final words are "hope someday we'll see each other in outreach programs, as I dream of having an organization helping those in need." They smiled and we turned in different directions. My girlfriend sighed in relief and we moved on - Then I suddenly told her, 

"Probably I'm not able to worry when I'm dead already, so why should I waste my whole life worrying about something I'm not even sure of exists for me after I die?"

Who knows. Life is already hard enough to prove your worth. 

Light awaits.. outside our apartment in a sunny day. 

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