A few years ago, I had a little chat with the painter hired by my condo association. I have known her for 40 years. She was divorced and raised two kids mostly by herself — and both kids have grown to be well-functioning adults. We should acknowledge that achievement.
She is also a member of an evangelical church in my town.
She inquired: “Dave, are you still a practising Catholic?
I said, “I left that religion many years ago. I am no longer a Christian.”
“But why?” she asked.
“Because too much of the theology does not make sense!” I answered.
At this point, I started wondering if she was interested in hearing about the rationale from someone she has known for 40 years. My mind was quietly arranging my arguments for this discussion.
“Explain to me more,” she said.
“Well there’s quite a few things that bother me about Christianity. It might take a while.”
“That’s OK,” I have the time.”
So I started into Argument #1. I got about three sentences in. Then she interrupted.
“Don’t you know that Jesus died on the cross for our sins?”
“I’ve heard that hundreds of times. It does not make sense to me.” I moved into Argument #2 that God, being the omnipotent entity he really is, probably does not care whether his son is on earth or heaven. I maybe got two sentences into #2.
She interrupted, “Why do you refuse a free gift?”
At that point, I realized she was not interested in anything I had in my mind. Time to end the religious discussion. We started talking about the paint she was using.
Having known a few evangelicals, I know they take great pride when they bring “someone to the Lord.” Kind of like a scorecard. They are looking to better their chance of a spot in heaven. Casting a fishing line many times increases their chance of an actual conversion. And with each failed cast, they can still tell their co-religionists: “I tried to tell Dave, but he is too arrogant to see the truth.”
But I couldn’t help but wonder: “Who is she really trying to convert?”
I grew up with a lot of alcohol. My parents, parents’ friends, and adult family members were happy drunks who could not do anything socially without a few belts in them. This was the culture I found natural. So when I left the nest, I found my community with heavy drinkers: happy drunks, most of the time.
At that time in my life, I divided people into two groups: those who drank a lot of alcohol and those who wanted to drink a lot of alcohol. I just could not imagine people willingly foregoing this simple pleasure.
I believed this mantra so much that I thought it was my duty to sell the alcohol lifestyle to the rest of the world. I had the slogans: “Let’s Party!”, “Get drunk and be someone!”, and “Friends coming together!” I was living in a beer commercial.
In effect, my lifestyle around alcohol was my religion. Instead of going to church on Sunday morning, I was in the pub Friday and Saturday night. Instead of shouting “Glory Hallelujah,” I was shouting “Buy another round.”
So I kept trying convert people to my higher level of the alcohol lifestyle. I’m not sure if I converted anyone, but it seemed important for me to try.
My last drink was 31 years ago. I now see my rants promoting alcohol as my means to validate a poor lifestyle choice. My zealousness was a mask for a life decision I was not comfortable with. There were just too many cons to suggest alcohol was ever a good choice: money lost, time lost from empty recreation and hangovers, more dangerous life situations coming into my life, risk of a serious addiction. It is possible to have a good life without this vice. Why did I buy into this lifestyle? Why was I such an outspoken advocate for it?
I don’t see a lot of difference between my alcohol persuasiveness and my friend’s religious persuasiveness. Both of us are trying to bring someone from the outside into our inside. Why is it so important that we do this?
My hypothesis is that when we are, deep down inside, uncomfortable with our life choices, we seek to bring others into these same choices. When we try to convert — and sometimes are successful in that conversion, the bad feelings surrounding our choices disappear. After all, it can’t be that bad of a choice if other people are also adopting the same choice. Right? So we keep trying to convert — just to ease our subconscious.
I have read a fair bit of first-year psychology textbooks. I find this science interesting in how it explains so many human interactions. I can see confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and Dunning Kruger effect in people around me; I can see how these psychological forces have worked inside of me.
I suspect the psychologists have already known about a force similar to my hypothesis about conversion-validation. I just haven’t encountered anything like that yet.
The older I got, the more I adopted a “live and let live” approach. I have little need to convert others. As long as your lifestyle does not directly affect me, I will stay out of your business. While I might give my opinion from time to time and I hope my better choices are an example to you, I have no expectations that you will alter your choices.
My painter friend has a great community behind her. She has a stronger friend and support network than I have. To get that community, she had to buy into a religious line that does not make sense to many of us on the outside. I suspect that, deep down inside, it does not make much sense to the people on the inside either. But they cannot let go for fear of losing their community. In essence, she has sacrificed some of her principles to gain a strong community.
Or maybe some known or unknown psychological forces are still playing with my head. Maybe I have rationalized silly reasons why I cannot join her vibrant group. They have a great formula for community building — and we all want a strong community around us.
Published on Medium 2025
