I've been having this problem lately. People are often curious about my beliefs and ask me to explain them. It's not the hateful ones I'm having trouble with; I know exactly how to deal with them. What's bugging me is having to explain my views to people who have never even heard of Paganism, and who have preconcieved ideas about religion, terminology, and deities. Often, out of innocent ignorance, they'll say something really insulting; other times, they'll need a lot of background explanation. I want to educate them because they
want to learn, but sometimes it's just...frustrating!
![brickwall :brickwall:](https://www.paganjourneys.com/Smileys/funsmileys/banghead.gif)
As an example, one time I was explaining my beliefs to someone, and I mentioned that my patron deity is Set. He started lauging and blurted out, "No one worships
Set anymore!"
I told him that I do, and that I'm not the only one who does, but I couldn't help but feel a bit frustrated.
Another difficulty is explaining my view of deity to people who are perfectly capable of understanding it, but who don't have the background--they haven't heard of anything other than monotheism--and polytheism, but of course, it's "outdated"--so when I have to first explain my view of people and souls and spirit, which requires a bit of explanation of things like ego loss and meditiation, which requires a whole other can of pacmen, it gets tiring. When I talk about
my patron deity, I have to explain about who and what Set is, and about how his bad reputation is not deserved (if they have pre-concieved ideas about him). On top of that, I have to make sure they know that I'm not representative of all Pagans, and that there is huge diversity...and I have to explain about the structure of the various groups (and how not everyone has a church and a priest)...
I mean, I already have to explain my Autism to everyone I'm going to be interacting with for a lengthy period of time, and to be honest, even that's been getting to be a pain, even though the people I explain it to are genuinely open-minded and helpful--just like with my beliefs. I feel like it's my duty to educate people who are open-minded and curious about these things, but I guess it's a drag, and sometimes they unintentionally offend me.
So...does anyone have any advice other than "Just get over it"? (That's my Plan B, by the way...) I was wondering if there's a way to simplify things for the first conversation--I'm usually pretty bad at picking out which parts are important, and which parts I can explain without giving an oral dissertation about a bunch of background topics that each require further background explanation. Also, how do I deal with the offensive but well-intentioned comments? I guess this part is more of a social skills question, but I'm sure many of us have heard of the "overly-sensitive Pagan" who launches into a lecture whenever someone portrays witches as ugly--for example. Should I just shrug those off, or should I point out that it's offensive? It could be particularly important if they meet another Pagan who is more sensitive to offensiveness and says something like that again.
Here's the thing--I'm
very thankful for all these open-minded people, and I should be! I'm very lucky to recieve such acceptance in the middle of the Bible Belt, even if these people can be offensively ignorant sometimes. I love talking about my beliefs to people, especially other Pagans, as long as they don't offend me or insult me, and it doesn't feel right to deny anyone innocent knowledge, especially about something that could really help them. It just occasionally irks me when I remember that for the most part society likes to forget about us.
Thanks!