Mostly harmless

About thirty years ago, there was a knock at the door; I opened it to find a guy I’d known at school standing there.

However, it soon emerged that he wasn’t making a nostalgia call, but had appeared on my doorstep as a representative of the local chapter of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He’d seen me out and about and decided to pay me a kind of semi-official visit. 

He didn't have much gossip about our schooldays though. I didn't have any at all, so we had a rather desultory chat about this and that and after a while off he went. I never saw him again.

Where we live now also seems to have its local Jehovah’s Witnesses chapter because we get regular visits. These days they come in pairs, but maybe that’s been the case for a while - I don’t know.

There was a time when this kind of uninvited proselytising niggled me, although as far as I remember I’ve never been particularly rude to these doorstep Witnesses. I’m still short with them, but somehow I no longer mind their giving it a go on behalf of their faith.

I almost find them reassuring, standing there so politely as they do. Because they are polite and seem quite happy to go away at the slightest hint of disinterest. It isn’t necessary to be rude because they are in the immortal words of Douglas Adams – mostly harmless.

Would I like doorstep proselytising to stop – to be made illegal?

Definitely not.  I don’t see a problem if there is no hint of menace, which with Jehovah’s Witnesses there certainly is not. So I wouldn’t like to see it disappear.

Anyhow I rather like a bit of proselytising. We all do if we are honest, but we prefer words such as debate, argument or blogging, especially if we are pushing some favoured non-religious conviction. That’s okay you see. Is it preaching or proselytising to push one’s point of view if it is assuredly correct or safely secular?

Of course it is – we just use different words.

What are advertising, politics and even expressing a point of view if not a kind of preaching or proselytising? Why make a distinction? Why not admit that we all do it because it is a necessary aspect of free societies?

I understand people being miffed by doorstep Witnesses because it is certainly intrusive. But they just go away quietly if you aren’t interested, so where’s the harm? It seems to me that if we condemn Jehovah’s Witnesses for proselytising, there is some danger of condemning points of view or philosophies in general. 

Even worse, there is a danger that we’ll see our own preaching or proselytising as something else. Yet an enormous part of blogging is mere proselytising. So even making the distinction becomes a form of linguistic or behavioural proselytising.

I’m not proselytising but you are.

Yet this post is proselytising – on behalf of proselytising.