How is this for "tone"? ---An unreliable Witness

[cleanhippie]

I don’t often fence with doorknocking evangelists. They always (always) interrupt me in the middle of a much more interesting thought that I’m eager to get back to, and the more I engage, the more my brain is distracted for the rest of the day by all the witty things I should have said.

I also don’t like to embarrass people, even when they’ve come to my door asking me to please do so. In most cases, these are decent, harmless folks trying to do what they think is right, however misguided, and influencing few others. Many former doorknockers confirm that the practice is mostly about making yourself feel good about “carrying out the Great Commission,” and that slammed doors are taken as evidence of your own Christ-like conviction in a fallen world. “Each slammed door helps us come closer to our Savior,” wrote one Mormon missionary.

I don’t want to be part of someone else’s martyr complex, but it’s hard to avoid getting testy when somebody knocks on my door and says something deeply silly, then asks for my thoughts. Still, I usually manage to thank them for their time and suddenly remember that soufflé.

But earlier this month, something quietly snapped as I listened to two Jehovah’s Witnesses at my door. Actually, I only listened to one — there’s always a Talker and what I guess you’d call…a witness. The Talker had started by reading me a weirdly mundane verse from Psalms, then asked for my reaction. What follows is as close to verbatim as I can recall.

“To that? No particular reaction.”

She nodded, handed me a booklet titled WHAT DOES THE BIBLE Really TEACH?, and asked if she could come back to discuss it with me later in the month.

Well sure, I said.

http://parentingbeyondbelief.com/blog/?p=6285

---------------------------------------------

Please follow the link for the rest of this compelling, and highly educating story.

[laconicsax]

1. It's a great story. Those JWs didn't know what hit them. n/t

[rug]

2. This reminds me of GD threads about besting a teabagger on the grocery line.

:bounce:

[cleanhippie]

3. Sorry, it contains no child-raping priests, rug, you have to go to your church for that.

[rug]

4. No I don't. I just have to look for a post with your name on it.

[cleanhippie]

5. Either way, you get what you want.

Only I don't require you to pray at my feet and give me money. Although, some cash would be nice!

[Permanut]

6. I just invite them in..

to see my Amway presentation.

[cleanhippie]

7. !

:rofl:

[chollybocker]

8. Excellent.

And beautifully written. Thanks for the click link. :)

[onager]

9. "Voldemort in the shower..."

:rofl:

Thanks a lot, that was great!

insert Usual Tedious Personal Rant:

I do believe, just a couple of days ago here in R/T, someone was dancing around that bit about whether or not the Old Testament laws apply to Xians.

According to the Infallible Word its very self, Alleged Jesus himself was confused about that point. So confused that he managed to contradict himself in two sequential Bible verses:

Mark 16:16 - The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.

So the Old Testament laws only applied until the time of John The Baptist. Then Jesus appeared and the old incomprehensible rules were superseded by the new incomprehensible rules.

Got that? OK, good. Now let's move on to the very next verse of Mark:

Mark 16:17 - And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.

Now he's not only saying all the old laws are still in effect, but they never fail.

This is reinforced in the next few verses...after a weird, out-of-context, one-verse diversion about adultery. (Jesus, or his secretaries, did that a lot. So did Flavius Josephus, after the Xians got done editing him.)

Those verses are the parable about Lazarus and the rich man (which inspired some beautiful music by the atheist Ralph Vaughn Williams).

At the end of the parable we have this exchange:

Mark 16:29 - Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
16:30 - And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
16:31 - And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

"Moses and the prophets" couldn't be any more clear, IMO - the Old Testament laws still apply and everyone should hear and observe them.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/lk/16.html#16

[gtar100]

10. Great story. In your intro you just stopped short of my favorite line...

"Last week, she bested Jesus by coming back when she said she would."

To be fair, Jesus sort of left it up in the air as to the return date, but I'm chuckling still.

[cleanhippie]

11. Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny as well!

[struggle4progress]

12. What a waste of time and energy. When the Witnesses knock my door, I tell them

that I'm not going to become a Witness but that I'm familiar with their views, agree with their antiwar stance and admire the bravery of the Witnesses in Nazi Germany

Two minutes max, they're off my doorstep, uninsulted and unembarrassed, still smiling, on their way

[laconicsax]

13. Maybe they should be embarrassed.

If, as in this case, they don't know their own holy book as well as the person they're harassing, why shouldn't they end up embarrassed?

[okasha]

14. When Witnesses knock at my door,

I don't answer it. They leave, I go on doing whatever I was doing. No harm, no foul.

[cleanhippie]

15. Thats great, s4p. Now you have found a way to feel superior to everyone.

Congratulations.