5/17/16 Mario about 35
He had left the church of his childhood and never
looked back. He was busy riding his
bike, probably on his way home from work, when I had flagged him down while
crossing a residential street. Mario had
stopped out of kindness, probably assuming I needed directions or
something. I apologized for bothering
him and told him what I was doing – asking random people on the street what
they believe happens after we die. He
had lots of ideas but said he was still searching, that he hadn’t reached any
definite conclusions. The one place he
hadn’t really considered though was revisiting Christianity, and we spent
almost an hour there on the quiet street talking through some of his
reservations. Seeds had been planted in
his childhood, but they were planted in soil made stony by church scandals, soil
made shallow by doubts about the Bible, soil exposed to the birds because of atrocities
done by political leaders in the name of Christ, and soil choked with thorns by
a view of religion made irrelevant in the face of the many problems and
distractions of this life. He hadn’t
looked back, and without some sort of intervention he wasn’t about to. He would just continue riding down the street
of life, not knowing where he was going but in a hurry to get there. Was it crazy to flag him down, like it was
some sort of emergency? Foolish to talk
for the better part of an hour there on the street? A waste of time to try to take some of those
seeds that had been poorly planted earlier in life and plant them in good
soil? Mario didn’t think so. He thanked me for taking the time to talk
with him, said he would be reconsidering and revisiting the Bible for the first
time since he had left it back in his early teens. He had never looked back, but it wasn’t too
late to start.
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