As I was walking to the bus stop a young man approched me and said "Can I ask you a question?" I paused for a second and responded "What kind of question?" Then he asked "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?"
I started to walk away, but after I took a few steps I was so pissed off I turned back around. I lost it. It got worse after some of his friends starting gathering around and one of them started chiming in. And when I say lost it, I mean lost it. I got so angry that I was shaking, swearing, and not making a lot of sense.
Afterwards I thought about why being asked that question pissed me off so much, and the story that seems to make the most sense to me is that it felt very condescending and disrespectful. I was also pissed off about a article on nominated for deletion on wikipedia that the author keeps waring for. Ironically it's the article for a book on Satanism, which doesn't meet the notability requirements for books. Satanists also tend to rub me the wrong way, incidentally much more than Christians. So there was probably also some effects of displacement aggression in the exchange.
Why did I think it was a condescending question? It's kind of implied that he was asking me because he had information relevant to what happens to me in the afterlife that I didn't know about. Why else would he be asking? It's not like lawyers write wills on the side advertise like that on college campuses. The question was also crafted to play on emotions rather than being informative.
Why did I think it it disrespectful? Because it was a fake attempt at genuine human communication and connection. It was the first part of an obvious plan and set of questions that had been had been carefully crafted for a pre-determined goal. When I prodded a little be he got to the last of them and asked if I had accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior, which I have. I told him accepted him as my savior when I was six, but the more I think about it was probably more like four. Moreover I never renounced Jesus Christ as my savior either. None of that stops me from being an atheist now. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, Jesus Christ can continue to be my savior as long as he wants to be. :)
Reflecting on it, what it really brought up for me do is unresolved questions I have about anger. For a long time I've been going back and forth about the usefulness, appropriateness, and transformation of anger.
Donald Rothberg (a Buddhist teacher) gave
a talk about his most recent book,
The Engaged Spiritual Life at the Insight Meditation Center in San Francisco (January 9th). I found his response to the second to last question very interesting, if it's all based on truth (fast forward to about 66:25 if you want to hear the exchange). He was asked a question relating to Martin Luther King Jr., the audience member commented that while King advocated non-violence when speaking to many groups his speech would get very angry and forceful. So she asked if Buddhists might have problems connecting to people because they try to be so gentle and calm that they don't connect to people who are really hurt. Here's what Donald said (roughly transcribed):
( It's long. ) I ordered his book just because I want to read the chapter on anger and you can only read the first few pages of it on Amazon. I should have it in a few days.
I'm curious as to what he recommendations on transforming will be. But I came to one resolution today:
anger can be an appropriate, useful, and productive response if (but not only if) you maintain mindfulness and composure. I don't think I was at all wrong to be angry at the Christian(s). What I fault myself for is my lack of mindfulness and composure during the exchange. That could have changed it from shouting to something more meaningful.
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