In other "exciting" news

[general_radix]

The doorbell rang this morning and I answered the door thinking it was UPS or something. Nope; it was two nice old ladies from church (which one, I'unno; there's like a dozen around here). Usually when we get visits from church folk, they open right away with an offer to join, but these two just wanted to share a Bible passage they'd hoped we'd find inspiring.

I figure, "if that's all they want to do, it would be polite to let them share it", so I did; it was mostly about keeping faith/high spirits in hard times, I think. The lady reading this offered to come back again to further discuss things (the problem of evil came up and neither my sister nor I could articulate a decent answer), to which I awkwardly replied "if you want to"--my sister had to step in and tell 'em that Mom wouldn't want them to do that.

To be clear, I'm not a person of faith and have no interest in attending church; it's just not my nature to be blunt towards folks who aren't acting rudely to me. :U

Anyone else here get visits like that? (Which we might get another of in the near future, whoops...)

Comments

[juzo_kun]

Not a thing that happens here -- the only (debatable) advantage of being a country under Vatican's shadow is that every other denomination has quite a difficult time to proselitize. Caused by inertia, mostly, rather than active contrast.

[Me, I accept faith as a personal thing without problems. Problems start when someone want to cast their faith/religion tenets upon me.]

Every once in a while I get the occasional JW couple asking me when I cross them while strolling downtown but they invariably are petite old ladies, while I'm a big woman that also use heels and whom ten years of clinical depression gave quite a spectacular... *ahem*, resting b****face. Usually a "no" with a thousand yard stare suffices.

But whoah do I have a screed ready just in case someone gets insistent... beware the Pope of Discordians!

[general_radix]

I had a feeling that it might've been less of a problem in Italy (didn't know you had JWs over there too, though). XD;

[Same, I think; I try to assume good faith unless they bust out the "atheists/people of other faiths are chodes" spiel]

[bladespark]

As somebody who used to be the one out knocking on doors, I will say that I never minded an honest (and civil) refusal. People who are going door to door with religion, even if they lead with some kind of "just sharing" are still doing it primarily to gain new membership for whatever church they belong to, and it's okay to recognize that and turn down the real offer they're actually making if it doesn't suit you.

If you need specific scripts, a plain "No, thank you" or "We're happy with our faith the way it is" or "We're not looking for a church" is fine. A "We're too busy" will get them coming back next time, so it's not a good excuse, and refusing to answer the door also tends to result in repeated knocking to try to catch you home.

(Admittedly there was the day we just sang a song for everyone and didn't even try to get inside doors. It gets super boring doing the same thing over and over and over like that, and we really were just amusing ourselves. But still, we didn't mind the ones who didn't have time for a song from church ladies either.)

[general_radix]

Alright; I'll keep these in mind for if they come back (and hopefully I don't bungle it. XD;).

[vulthuryol_majicue]

I'm in a pretty isolated area so I rarely get visitors of any kind. The consequences of living fourteen miles away from civilization I suppose...

I have faith although I rarely go to church. Waste of fuel unfortunately and if the weather is bad then forget it.

Sadly the Native Americans have had a lot of unfortunate experiences with outside religions in the past. So I don't blame people for being uncomfortable when a stranger starts to force things on them.

Hopefully you wont get any more awkward visits in the future. ^_^

[general_radix]

We didn't get any doorbells today, so--hopefully they marked us off the list for now? XD;