It’s funny, though… maybe it’s because I live in an apartment building, but my JW/Mormon frequency has been very low. I see them (oh, do I ever drool) in the metro and such, but I can count on… well, two fingers, the number of times they’ve come to my door. (Oddly enough, though, during both of my trips to the Iberian Peninsula, I met Mormons on their day off.)
As I once again find myself engulfed in a federal election, however, the time is right for me to once again dust off the story of how I proselytized a Jehovah’s Witness.
True. When the Babtists came I politely just said I was Jewish, and they started trying to save my poor heathen soul. I then went into a loud rant about how Christian scum had killed my people or 2,000 years, and scared the crap out of them. They’ve never been back. That was why I decided playing the atheist card would work better for the JWs, and as I said upthread, it did.
About once a month or so, during our Shabbos meal early Saturday afternoon, we’ll get someone ringing our bell.
Now, as many people know, Orthodox Jews do not ring doorbells on Shabbos. As such, when the doorbell rings, we know it’s one of two possibilities:
The mailman has a package that’s too big to fit in the mailbox
The Witnesses are coming around again.
In reality, we usually know which one it is because we usually see them working them working the block adjacent to ours when we come home from synagogue earlier in the morning.
The easiest way to deal with tem, IMHO, is simply tell them “no thank you” in a firm but polite manner.
I don’t really want to get into the discussion, so I’ve never brought it up with them, but I’ve always been curious about they know if they are one of the 144,000 who will make it into heaven. What if all the slots are filled up already? Can you “bump” someone else out? And if so, how would you feel if your great-granddaughter bumped you out in the next century?
The slots aren’t all filled up yet because when they are, that’s when Jesus comes back. Most of them will tell you that they don’t want to be part of the 144k because they would prefer to be hanging out on Earth with the lions and lambs and stuff.
I am a DEVOUT Pastafarian, loving all things spaghetti-related. I especially like Penne pasta and those “veggie-rotini” three-colored curly ones. Mmmmm.
Being polite means they come back. I’ve seen them around my neighborhood, but they steer clear of my house. I don’t think you could play the atheist card too well, though.
When I was in high school, one JW woman used to visit my grandmother, who lived a few blocks away. There was no way that my grandmother was going to do anything that would keep her from being buried next to my grandfather, but she liked the visitor. The most interesting thing I learned from this woman (my knowledge of the Bible is not as great as it is today) was that she quoted a verse that she claimed said space travel was impossible. (The heaven is for God.) I used it as the basis of a short story for my creative writing class, so I can’t say JWs are totally useless.
BTW, I think I’ve seen signs on doorbells saying that they should not be rung on Shabbos. Have you tried that?
Prayed hard enough for who, the priests or the children?
(Sorry, couldn’t help it.)
I found that polite disinterest had the desired effect. They quit coming back because I wouldn’t discuss anything, but they couldn’t use my hostility as a justification to overrule my mistake, because I would never get hostile.
“Sure, here’s 50 cents for your Watchtower. Thanks, goodnight,” seemed to work after a time. Especially at 11:30 in the morning. They quit coming out of their disinterest.
