I don't think about religion on a daily basis. If anything, I would describe my self as agnostic leaning towards atheistic. But more than anything else, I think religion is an extremely personal matter, and I'm all for the cultural aspects of religious celebrations (for the most part anyway). As far as religion is concerned, I'd describe myself as "don't care", which made a recent encounter that I had all the more odd.
I was walking home, when I saw a couple on the sidewalk. I had a fair inkling of what they were doing when I noticed that the person walking in front of me had to weave his way through the couple, vigorously shaking his head as he walked by. The man (one half of the couple) would almost block your path thereby forcing you to listen to him. He had a book in his hand and a extremely-wide-and-therefore-creepy smile plastered on his face. Predictably he stood right in front of me. I noticed that both the man and the woman looked fairly young, probably in their mid-thirties and spoke with thick Asian accents. The conversation went something like this,
Man : Hello! Are you christian?
Me : No
Man : Are you Jewish?
Me : No
Man : What religion are you?
(I was tempted at this point to just walk away, but I didn't I'm not really sure why)
Me : Hindu
(I was a little surprised by my own answer. I think that the bottom-line is that I didn't really want to discuss my beliefs with a random stranger on the street. What happened next is the bit that I found really odd.)
Man : "Oh ... Have a nice day!"
This exchange left me a little baffled. I wonder what he was trying to do.
Hypothesis 1: He was actively trying to convert people away from Christianity/Judaism
Hypothesis 2: He was actively trying to convert people to Hinduism
Hypothesis 3: Either way, he didn't want to spend anymore time on the conversation
I'm not quite sure what to make of it all.
Monday, March 8, 2010
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