Evangelism

The husband and I were talking about evangelism the other day. The conversation was prompted by the behavior of a friend, who is what I would call a "conspiracy theory evangelist." This person is constantly harping on various conspiracy theories and predicting imminent doom and gloom. I find it tiresome because I do not believe in conspiracy theories. I also like to enjoy my life without a constant fear of impending worldwide disaster.

At any rate, our conversation strayed to another friend, who has become a bit of a "health food evangelist." Personally, I have pretty big walls up when it comes to discussing eating habits. I am an anorexic who has thankfully been in recovery for some 12 years, but food is still a touchy subject with me. Those "anorexic thoughts" never quite go away, no matter how much you grow emotionally and mentally. So when a friend, out of blue, tells me that my current eating habits are the root cause of all my life's problems, that tends to get my hackles up.

My husband, on the other hand, is an evangelist himself. He's an "anti-religion" or "anti-theist" evangelist. He really hates religion. A lot. And he will bend almost any conversation you have into a diatribe against religion, which gets on my nerves. Not every bad thing that's ever happened in the world has been caused by religion. And I'd like to have a conversation without discussing the "evil" that is religion.

Being surrounded by all these evangelists got me to wondering. Is everyone an evangelist? Do we all have something that we just can't shut up about? Or is evangelism something that strikes from time to time? Perhaps only a certain type of person becomes an evangelist and I just tend to attract them.

Am I an evangelist? I've been thinking about that a lot. Perhaps I go on and on about some topic that bores my friends to tears and/or annoys them. I like soccer a lot, but I try not to blab about it too much to people who don't care for it. I also like books a lot. I think if I were ever actively an evangelist for anything, it would be reading.

Mostly, I worry that I'm a "self evangelist." Perhaps I talk about myself too much. I do have a blog, after all, which is kind of the height of self-promotion.

I have no conclusions here. Just thinking out loud. Perhaps I should become an evangelist for anti-evangelism.