I’m an ordained minister. No joke, I got bored and signed up with the ULC. I can referee weddings, throw funerals, and perform exorcisms, and have just as much legal right to do so as the priest at your local church. Mentioned this in passing a few times over the years, and while most people were indifferent or thought it was pretty cool, some of the responses have been hilarious.
There was the guy in South Dakota who demanded I quote bible verses. Even after I told him TWICE I’m not christian and never claimed to be. His idiot response was “I thought you said you were an ordained minister,” with a tone suggesting he considered this a lie because I don’t fondle little boys and wear a dress.
Two others were far more troubling on a rational basis, and for the same idiotic reason. In both cases, they outright accused me of lying based on definitional games.
The first posted the definition from some online dictionary, chose the one that said something to the effect of “someone who is reverent,” while blazing right past the relevant definitions. When I mentioned this, he just kept shrieking that I’m not “reverent,” as though that was even remotely relevant.
This is also completely aside from the fact that it’s baseless and so vague as to be useless. Reverent of what? I have plenty of respect for plenty of things, just not badly-written stories with questionable (at best!) ethical lessons. FAIL.
The other immediately asked “so you’ve been to seminary?” I said I hadn’t, but was legally ordained. This turned into her yammering endlessly that it didn’t count because I didn’t go to seminary, nevermind that the IRS (and by extension the US government) is on my side here. From there, it devolved into her trying to convince me a seminary degree was Important Stuff, and Absolutely Necessary, nevermind that I am not a christian. Her idiot response to that was to explain all the non-religious classes involved. So her reasoning was that I should have taken a bunch of indoctrination for a religion of which I’m not a member so I could get the equivalent of a half-assed psychology and social work degree. Moron.
It bothers me that people will keep citing an irrelevant definition even after being corrected, and attacking you based on their known flawed definition. I’m not sure if it’s just stupidity, or deliberate and painfully transparent dishonesty. It’s troubling either way, because it shows how deficient their thought process is.