Reverse Mission
After a devout religious person comes home from a mission in Bolivia, his girlfriend leaves him and he witnesses a heinous murder. Clearly there’s no God, he decides, and loses his faith in religion, since religion involves believing in God.
Then he remembers everyone he converted to religion and feels horrible for pulling a veil over their eyes. Now that he knows the real truth, it’s his duty, he decides, to go back to Bolivia and unconvert everyone he converted. Otherwise, they’ll likely waste their whole lives worshiping a make-believe benevolent deity, when really the world is merely a horrible meaningless accident with no all-seeing guardian.
But unconverting turns out to be much harder than converting; nobody wants to go back to being the hopeless unbelievers they were before he found them. They don’t care that there is poverty and murder, they’d still rather believe that there is a God and that their puny lives are leading up to something bigger. His logic and arguments are completely useless against their irrational joy.
Eventually he gives in and becomes religious again too.
4 years ago