Okay, so after almost ten years of living in these United States and I have just encountered my first serious case of prejudice.

In St Louis.

In this allegedly Christian heartland of America. Go figure…

This afternoon, Alexis picked me up at the training facility and we were walking from the building to the car. When we got to the car, I fiddled with my laptop case as I hoisted it into the trunk while Alexis walked on ahead to the passenger side door.

A gray van pulled up slowly next to the car, and a woman leaned out of the driver side window to ask Alexis a question. I wasn’t paying much attention, but I perked up when I heard Alexis saying, “Yes, we are married.”

I turned around to listen to the conversation.

The woman was white, middle-aged, and looked non-descript. The van she was driving was a large conversion van, and it had a handicap placard hanging from the rear-view mirror. She asked Alexis again if we were married, and when Alexis said we were, the woman said to Alexis, “oh my God… you are in for a world of trouble.”

We were smiling, not knowing what to make of the situation. Alexis asked, “well… why?”

The woman said, to Alexis, ignoring me standing beside Alexis, “Well, isn’t he from, like, Pakistan?”

And so Alexis said, “Well, India actually.”

The woman said, “Oh, well, if he takes you back to his country, you know you might never come back, right?”

Alexis laughed, and said pleasantly, “Well, actually, that would be okay with us, we are planning on leaving the country at some point any way and living overseas.”

The woman looked stunned, and still looking at Alexis and ignoring me completely, said, “oh my God… oh my God…”

So, I chimed in and said, “Well… that’s what we say too!” :-)

The woman glanced at me with this look of incredulousness, and then said again, “oh my God… you are in for a world of trouble…”

So I asked, “yes, we know, but we kinda feel like the world is wide open to us… right?”

The woman ignored me, turned back to Alexis and said, “Yes, but, in his country they oppress women. You will be oppressed there as an American woman, you know?”

At this point I noticed that the woman had this colorful cross hanging around her neck, so I asked her : “Excuse me ma’am, I notice you have a cross hanging around your neck, are you a Christian?”

The woman said, “Yes…?”

So I said, “I suggest you read the Bible and find out what God says about that.”

The woman goes, “About what?”

I said, “I suggest you read the Bible about living in oppression and living in a world of trouble.”

And the woman said, “you don’t know what you are talking about!”, and then to Alexis, “they oppress women in that culture.”

So I said, “Ma’am, you don’t know my culture, and you don’t know what you are talking about, in my opinion your culture oppresses women far worse than my culture.”

“What do you mean??!”, exclaimed the woman.

I said, “Your culture forces women to be treated as sex objects.”

The woman laughed and said, “I can assure you, I have never been forced to be a sex object.”

At which point I so badly wanted to retort, “I can see why.”

But I am glad I didn’t.

Instead I said, “Ma’am, I suggest you reconnect with your community.”

The woman said, haughtily, “Oh I am VERY connected with my community.”

And I said, “Ma’am, I suggest you mind your own business.”

She said to Alexis, “Well, you take care, you are in for a world of trouble…”

and drove away.

She drove around the driveway to pick up two visually-impaired old people that walked hesitantly across the lawn to the van, and then drove off… just your average Christian woman doing good works and giving free advise to good American women that she thinks are in danger of being oppressed by chauvinistic Pakistani men.

Leaving us somewhat shaken and perturbed…

There are SO many things I wish I had said better, in hindsight. I wish I hadn’t let myself be drawn into that silly argument about culture.

I wish we had said something like, “well, yes, it’s a world of trouble, but we trust God in this reckless adventure he has us on.”

Or simply something like, “thanks for your concern, have a nice day now.”

Or maybe something like, “well actually we are both gay and are planning on getting sex change operations.”

Or even something like, “what are you talking about, I’m not from Pakistan, I’m an American from California!”

It maddens me to think how judgmental and moronic that woman’s perspective was, that she actually felt like she could drive up to two strangers and completely slam my culture like that, without knowing the first thing about my perspective on marriage and the role of women in marriage. It maddens me to think of the many conservative Christian marriages HERE where the woman is so incredibly oppressed.

But the real lesson, I feel, was to trust in God instead of feeling attacked by a prejudiced midwestern Christian bigot.

I know the path God has me on - and it is a reckless path, one where I will be misunderstood by many cultures. My home culture thinks I’m too liberal, and people around here think I am too conservative. My friends think I am religious, other Christians think I am sacrilegious. Friends that I talk with on a deeper level find me easy to talk to about deep things that are troubling them, while Christian friends think I am a reckless rebellious heretic.

It doesn’t matter - I am called to love recklessly, and today I didn’t really love that bigoted allegedly Christian woman.

We are just stunned and shaken by that encounter.

This must be what wisdom feels like - learning from experience and being a little better prepared for the next bigot we run into.

It’s just that I have always assumed that bigotry would come from the conservative nationalistic side of my Indian family back home, not from Americans here. I have just learned how arrogantly judgmental that mindset of mine has been.

I suddenly feel very much aware of just how different I am from everyone around me, how I will ALWAYS be so different from everyone around me, and once again I am deeply homesick for God’s heaven.