Pokémon and the Pakistani Proselytizer
You don’t have to know anything about Pokémon Go for this story other than this: in order to “catch” every character in the game, you have to go to diverse locations. daMrs has caught the Pokémon fever as has, to a lesser extent, your humble correspondent. So last night we found ourselves sitting on a bench in Goodale Park in Columbus, amongst a flock of millennials, when two older gentlemen walked by, “speaking foreign,” as some might say. I nodded hello.
One of the gentlemen took this as an invitation to chat. It turns out that he is a Christian bishop from Pakistan, seeking asylum in the United States from religious persecution. His friend is a Muslim.
When I asked what church he was a bishop of, I was surprised to learn that Christians in Pakistan from numerous sects have banded together to share resources and fellowship, and his position as bishop was an exercise in ecumenical federalism, rather than climbing the sacerdotal ladder of any particular religion. The bishop – let’s call him “Ed” – professed a form of faith deeply in line with some of the more fundamental sects of Christianity, with total immersion for non-infant baptism, the inerrancy of the Bible, and salvation through faith alone (as opposed to also doing good works) all forming part of his beliefs. He is also, he said, given to glossolalia – speaking in tongues – but doesn’t always do so unless the congregation he is with also believes in it.
Ed and I fell into a discussion of the Christian schisms, the challenges of ecumenism, and the commonality across the faiths, beginning with the Nicene and Apostle’s creeds. I spoke of my long study of the Catholic religion by dint of 14 years of Catholic education. I was too polite to express my deep loathing for organized religion, which I regard as a tool of power that the elites and sometimes the state use to control the masses and/or to fleece the flocks.
But it would have been wrong of me for another reason. Ed’s deep faith, his openness to various forms of expression of that faith, his willingness to subjugate his own need to be correct in order to lift up others who hold his same basic beliefs in the salvific power of the Word made Flesh, and his mission to proclaim that message of unity rather than differences, reminds us all that we are all much more alike in our humanity, and that our differences are like the clothes we wear: expressions of our individuality, layered over the common body of being human.
His friend, let’s call him “Sal,” is a Muslim. He was less interested in our discussion, but he was very curious as to what all these young people were doing there. Was there some kind of event? Ed was also curious, because the problem vexing him these days is not his personal safety, but rather reaching out to young people.
I had to explain Pokémon Go to two Pakistanis. Ed wanted to know how to make it work for him – how a “fisher of men” can catch characters at diverse locations – and we ended up discussing a bus trip to various Pokémon sites, during which he could proselytize his message of inclusiveness to a captive audience.
St. Venonat of Goodale
The idea delighted Sal, while the aspects of the game fascinated him, and I ended up showing two sixty-something men – men whom Donald Trump considers too dangerous to be let into the country – how to download the Pokémon app.
Because, let’s be honest: Trump’s ban on “terror” countries means a ban on odd-looking, strange-talking, dark-skinned foreigners.
Yet here is a man, from a “terror” country, a devout believer in the Gospel – much more so than Trump and his minions – who was so oppressed, and in such danger in his homeland, that the beacon of freedom he turned to was America. And he took his new freedom of religion to the center of a park where weed-smoking, same-sex PDAs and naked boobs are much more common than a Bible, to build bridges across oceans, across cultures, across generations, across races and across faiths, in love for his fellow human beings.
America, Bishop Ed chose, for to save and to be saved, looking for a more perfect communion and a more perfect Union.
Let’s not let him down.
