I'd been thinking about the Law of Opposites. What he was saying, I'd said, myself, in some instances. But not all. Some of it made me a little sick. I tried to interrupt but he barged ahead:
"To us, religion is a practical attitude and a source of joie de vivre—or it's mistaken. We've got a gymnasium in my church and we hold weekly dances and weekly bingo games there. When we talk about the Master—we talk about a Man who is our Friend—not an Oriental mystic who left His disciples puzzled by contradictory advice. If you can't see your way clear to visiting with us—at this time—you certainly ought to be able to see the value of catching up with the status of modern Christianity—"
"There are a couple of points that worry me," I said.
"Come and thresh them out with us!"
"I don't imagine Jesus would have been interested in communism, for example."
"Because it's antagonistic to orthodox religion? Wasn't He an antagonist of orthodoxy, Himself?"
"The logic escapes me, there. If I'm not mistaken, Jesus was exclusively concerned with the inner world. He was completely antimaterialist. Social systems were superficial to Him. He was agin the obsessive materialism of Near East capitalists two thousand years ago—and I strongly suspect He would see dialectical materialism as a mere spread of that unilateral pall over the conscious minds of the masses."
"Superb! Come over and tell us that!"
"You're supposed to know it, already," I answered. "And to be teaching it. Besides, I am a firm believer in Original Sin."
"What!"