An encounter of concern

I've made no secret of my spiritual side since I've been blogging. I made a commitment of faith a few short years ago and I'm happy to say that it led me to my job.

Growing up (in typical western culture) I always viewed Christian's as very perfect people of whom I could never begin to emulate and, to a certain extent seemed to be somewhat stayed and boring. I guess thats almost a cliched view really. Lots of happy, smiley faces that never really tell the whole story.

A person I know quite well who is a christian, is someone I bumped into this evening. He helped me quite a lot a while back, but after a while, I came to see we have a bit of a personality clash really. Bumped into was almost literal as we hit a blind corner in the village.

"Hello Martin. How are you? Where are you going?"

Well...... I chose not to lie, despite anticipating the response I knew I would likely get, knowing the guy all too well.

"I'm just going to the off license to get some beers." was my truthful reply.

He stared at my stomach with that sickly smile that winds me up and replied "So you are not going out running any more then".

OK, So I've not run as often as I was, but the response was something I was very offended by. This is someone who, (in my view) seems to have a dubious talent for rudeness and he seems to get away with it by hiding behind a super spiritual attitude that smacks of judgment. Now I know I have many faults. Perfection is something unachievable. My faith has certainly taught me that. Something else I have learned in recent years is that just because a person has a desire to display kindness through their faith, they are still capable of upsetting others. Faith certainly doesn't get in the way of personality clashes.

With the job I do, I can't afford to be judgmental (albeit that, in practice is impossible to keep to) but I do my level best not to display any thoughts I may unfortunately have. Well thats just human nature. Lets face it, if we are honest, we all do it a little bit. If anything, I tend to find that any such opinions are usually a reflection of my own short failings. Hrrumphhh!!!! This blog is a bit of that too. Still..... at least I've got it out of my system by writing it down