The Cabbie For Christ

With all my posts about my family vacation to Puerto Rico, I had to find some way to slip in a religion/atheism angle, being this is a primarily atheist themed blog.

Because our flight for Puerto Rico last Sunday was scheduled to fly out of JFK at 7:30 A.M., it made more sense to take a taxi to the airport rather than ride the LIRR in the cold and darkness to Jamaica Station to catch the Air Train.

My wife called the taxi company and our driver was literally there like 5 minutes later. As my wife used to take the taxi home from the train station before we got a second car, the cab driver was a man that she knew.

He was quite a gregarious fellow, and he was talking with my wife who was seated behind him about the latest developments in his life. It didn't take him long before he dropped this bombshell:

"A couple of months ago I became a born again Christian! All this time, I was looking for God, but it was God who found me!" I could barely suppress a groan.

It turns out the guy was raised Jewish and had been having a crisis of faith or something, so his mom pushed him to go to Israel, which would supposedly reconnect him with his Jewish roots.

"Who would have guessed," he declared, "that a Jewish man would become a Christian by going to Israel."

It was my wife however, who astutely guessed the real reason. She asked him if he had met a girl.

"Yes, I did," he replied. "She was the daughter of a missionary."

It turned out that they had since broken up, but are apparently still on good terms. From there, he proceeded to blab about the Jews and the Catholics getting it all wrong, and then rambling something about a section of Romans being banned in Canada. I had guessed that what he was driving at was some verse or other that condemned homosexuality. As my two young children were sitting in the back seat, I said, "I would prefer that you don't talk about this in front of my kids."

"Sure, no problem!" he cheerfully complied. He also made mention of some Christian radio station he listened to that had all kinds of important things to say about the future, and he mentioned some date in March or May of 2010 or 2011, I can't remember which, in which something really profound would happen.

As much as I was tempted to take the Cabbie for Christ to task for some of the things he said or ask him what he would do if nothing happened on the date he mentioned, as he was zipping along the parkway in the darkness of the predawn hour, my primary concern was that my family and I make it to JFK safely. The last thing I wanted was for the guy to get into a traffic accident because he was distracted by the argumentative atheist in the passenger seat. Afterwards, my wife said to me that she was surprised that I had kept quiet, and I explained to her why.