Life-changing line between skepticism and rudeness

I’m a skeptic who is willing to entertain any idea without accepting it. I was even in a group investigating the unexplained to see if there’s more to our world than mere matter. In 2011, I had a great chat with a local guide in Hawaii about shape-shifting reptilians. The guide claimed the locals had to call the fire department and ”all these guys” because the little people were running around a school. Cool story, bro, and I don’t mean it sarcastically. During the ghost tour, I took several photos of orbs. Some say the orbs are spirits but there are many simpler explanations: rain, dust, and so on. Let’s not get carried away into the land of Oz, please.

I’ve just come across a great quote.

Material to spiritual — God present in it all, but signaling this difference in dimensions.

I like that about Judaism – marrying the material and the spiritual. Both of G_d. Have you noticed how we call spirits scary names sometimes? Spirits are disembodied humans, correct? Then why do we suddenly become so afraid of them?

The problem with so many people is that they don’t seem to understand that talking about an idea without buying it doesn’t need to be rude. So many people can’t talk about an idea without casting doubt not on the idea itself, but resorting to personal attacks that have nothing to do with the idea being discussed. Sometimes, we think it’s alright to be rude to someone because it’s part of their job description, so to speak.

I have a Jewish female acquaintance from NYC. She’s a banker and we met in Poland some time ago. She wants me to visit her in NYC because she wants me to see more of the mysterious Jewish world. When I ask why, she brings up the Chinese psychic’s curse allegedly placed upon me and finds the whole thing amusing. I called the psychic’s powers fake while thinking nothing of it, not realizing how painful it was for the psychic to hear my caustic comments. Indeed, I didn’t think much of my comments and assumed the psychic got called fake a lot in her line of work, so, if anything, she’d just laugh it off, say something like challenge accepted, or get the money and that’s that. I’d forget she’d ever existed the next day, just another charlatan, right? But, much to my surprise and a bit of chagrin, she took her job really seriously and I didn’t forget her name the next day. All because my skepticism had turned to rudeness and I was fine with that.

My Jewish acquaintance doesn’t even side with me, but with the psychic, and says G_d plucking me out of this life and thrusting me into some life in a different dimension would be more shock-and-awe than a forced reincarnation. Yes, she clearly believes I deserve to feel the psychic’s wrath upon me. I call it disproportionate retribution.

At any rate, given that my last visit to Israel was when I was ten (I still remember the Wailing Wall and I’d better visit again before visiting the Wailing Wall proves to be much more problematic for me), I told her that we might meet in Israel, since she speaks Hebrew, and so on, though I’m not sure if I’m going to meet her in NYC. Given her gleeful disposition, I doubt it.

Now, the movie ”Drag me to hell” is a poignant example of how offending someone at the wrong place and at the wrong time can cascade into a destiny of eternal consequences. When a young loan officer Christine Brown refuses an old lady an extension on her loan, the lady places a curse of the Lamia upon Christine. Soon, Christine’s life is turned into a nightmare as she keeps getting closer to being dragged to hell. The loan officer doesn’t believe such nonsense, of course, until the last moment when she’s literally dragged to hell to face her dreadful and demeaning destiny.

We could argue that, since G_d hasn’t stopped the old woman from placing the curse upon Christine, the curse was what the loan officer deserved in G_d’s eyes. Just goes to show how being at the wrong place, and at the wrong time, and doing or saying the wrong thing can have eternal consequences for a particular individual that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.

Learning how to express skepticism without sounding rude is an art that is greatly beneficial in life, particularly when dealing with people who take their pride really seriously and will do almost anything to teach you a lesson if you cross the line between skepticism and rudeness.