A Woman Said To The Universe
Interesting meditation in First Things about what to do when someone else brings up a taboo subject like religion. The author, editor of a Christian magazine, put out a Craigslist notice that he had some bookshelves for sale. The woman who showed up to buy them expressed her gratitude to "the Universe":
"I just put it out to the universe,” she exclaimed with all the joy of finding the bike she really really wanted under the tree on Christmas morning, “and here they are!”The author held his tongue, which was the wisest thing to do, and committed his spleen and snark to paper and pixel where it belongs. Had the tables been turned, had an atheist selling his bookcases encountered a voluble Christian who exclaimed that "Jesus led me to these bookcases!!!", I would hope he would show a bit of forbearance and civility and refrain from unloading on the guy.
A larger point: whatever your creed, trivializing it by the solipsistic assertion that the Universe brings you nice bookshelves or Jesus grants you sweet parking places is not the way to win converts or be taken seriously.*
Especially if you're an anthropomorphized "Universe" type. You really can't dismiss the world's traditional and organized religions on one hand, and then turn around and pretend that the Wood Elves will bring you a stylish, reconditioned dinette set just because of your extra-intuitive grasp of magical thinking directed toward the impersonal forces of nature. Well, you can, but then you invite justifiable mockery within the pages of First Things. After all, the brutality and waste implicit in Darwinistic materialism--the blind extinction of entire species, the rampant prosperity of evil men-- would make me very leery of trusting myself to this Universe's dispassionate embrace. I am reminded of Stephen Crane:
A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
JYB Tailwag: Worldmagblog.
*Exception to this rule: Claiming that Allah offers you 72 virgins for an eternal perpetual orgy if you'll just blow yourself up among people who don't believe the same thing. That seems to catch on, for some reason.