How to approach an evangelical christian missionary?

I play a kind of tit-for-tat game with them.

Missionary: Have you heard the word of god?

Me: Which god

Missionary: The christian god of course.

Me: Yes, I heard it and deemed it false

Missionary (shocked): But he is the true god!

Me: Says who?

Missionary: The Holy Bible!

Me: O. Interesting. My holy books say something else.

Missionary: But the bible says....

Me (interrupting): Why is the bible right and my holy books wrong?

Missionary: Well, the Bible says [fill in what ever]

Me: My holy books say the same, so why is your book right and mine wrong?

Missionary: Well, the Bible says [fill in something else]

[repeat 20 times] WARNING: Missionary is slowly reaching cooking temperature, do not touch. Replace bible for deity of choice when appropriate.

Missionary: It seems that you are lost for God.

Me: I am sorry that you are lost for Odin!

Missionary: I am sure you will see the light in the future!

Me: I have seen the light already, and I hope you will see the light in the future!

Missionary: I will pray for you!

Me: I will make a small offering to my gods for you later today! Any preference for Odin, Thor or Freyja?

Missionary (on his/her way out): God Bless!

Me: Hail Odin!

Missionary (screaming): The blood of Jesus will protect me......

God Bless! Hail Odin!

I am an Heathen. And that means that I have a whole pantheon full of Gods and Goddesses. I will write more about that at a later stage.

One of my pet peeves is the repeated blessings that I receive from good meaning people in the form of "God Bless". I know they mean well, but sometimes, it irritates the hel(l) out of me. And it irritates me so much not for the fact that they bless me, what bad can that do, but for the fact that they would be hell bend if I would reply back with: "Hail Odin", which would be the appropriate response for me. And believe me, I have done this in discussions with an Evangelical Christians, and they were often very offended.

For me, this has everything to do with tolerance, or intolerance to be more precise. Why is it okay to say "God Bless" to someone and be offended if they reply in kind with their own deity of choice? To me, this is a situation of different standards. One for Christians and one for everybody else. It has to change.

A Fragile Religion

I guess many of you have already heard about the little storm raging through primarily the blogosphere. A student senator from the University of Central Florida (UCF) takes a friend to Catholic mass to show him what it means to be Catholic. So, instead of immediately eating the Eucharist after it is given to him, he take it with him to his seat to show the friend before consuming it. The person handing out the Eucharist get angry, and the senator decides to take it home instead of eating it in the church. He later return it, but by that time, an evangelical atheist, PZ Myers, has jumped into the arena after which the Catholic League, or better, Bill Donohue, comes to the defence of the Catholic Church and starts a campaign to get PZ Myers fired. Death treats are mailed to both the UCF student senator and PZ Myers. Nice job guys, it is obvious to me that for some Catholics, a transubstantiated cracker is apparently worth more than a humans life. O, I forgot, a non-Catholic's human life as he obviously needs to be excommunicated.

Personally, I think it is fine to anybody to do whatever they see fit, as long as they do not force me to believe things the way they see it. That Catholics believe that the wafer has been transubstantiated to the body of Christ is one thing. To use physical violence to get it back, sorry, no go. Some go as far as saying it was a hate crime. My good grief, really.

What interest me more is the fragility of the believe of many Catholics. Apparently, the act of one person can bring down a whole community. Yes, really!

"We have to make acts of reparation," Gonzalez said. "The whole community is going to turn to prayer. We'll ask the Lord for pardon, forgiveness, peace, not only for the whole community affected by it, but also for [Cook], we offer prayers for him as well."

Well, isn't this a wonderful thing to give to your enemies? The perfect weapon to bring down whole communities. You steal a Eucharist, hold it in a zip-lock bag, and you have the fate of the whole community in your hands. Did someone already demand ransom for a Eucharist?

It made me look at my own religion. My religion is something that is in me, not in the objects I use. The objects I use are just ways to represent some things, they are nice, but I could do without them. Once, I complained to a friend that I did not have rune stones. He responded: "Of course you have runes tones, just take some scraps of paper, draw the rune stones on it, and there you go." He was right, and it is one of the central ideas that I like about Heathenism, their practical angle to life, religion and the universe.