I think you meant well. After all, you are firmly convinced that a sincere conversion to Christ guarantees eternal paradise and that everyone who has not made an overt commitment within your church is damned to eternal torment. You feel compassion and urgency to gather the lambs. I know this, you see, because I've read the Bible too. In fact, my kid and I attend church regularly -- just not your church -- so I can understand the impulse. So I'm sure you acted in good faith when you dressed your four small children up as archangels and handed them all lightsabers to guard the portals of your home on Halloween. And I believe and hope that you didn't mean to inflict any pain on my child as you instructed your kids to pass out scary Christian-themed comic books to her instead of candy.
After all, you had no way of knowing that our family has experienced more than its share of death and suffering this year. Well, you could have known, had you bothered to come over, or even said hello. But you are busy being a good Christian and I know that it takes a lot of time to live out one's witness so I don't really expect you to take that part about loving thy neighbor too seriously. And you had no way of knowing (well, you might have) that my kid is currently struggling with health issues that she doesn't fully understand and that all the lights on in the house at all hours of the night indicates that maybe none of us are doing too well over here. And I really don't hold you responsible for the fact that we just watched La Boheme; that was my thoughtless bad, to watch an opera about a frail tubercular heroine who dies
at the end of the show in the same week that my child is learning all about what it feels like when her lungs quit working well. So you aren't at all to blame for the fact that now every time Kid's hands are cold, she assumes she's about to die and begs for a muff.
However, you might have paused for a moment, just for a tiny unself-righteous moment, before you decided to fob off "The Little Princess" onto my impressionable six-year-old. In which a little girl with an unspecified lung disorder dies, but not before coming to Christ and bringing her whole family to a due understanding of Christ's awesome smiting power. I would call you up for some support when she has screaming terrors in the night, but you haven't exactly been so available except in the judging and condemning department.
We welcome your prayers. But from here on out, you can keep your pamphlets to yourself.
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7 comments:
Sounds like you live next to a Jehovah's Witness? I've had dealing with them- w/out going in to too much detail (I'm positive you're more than capable of researching it yourself) they are in fact, a cult & a dangerous one at that. Their motivation for your potential conversion is NOT out of love or hope but rather fear and control. My suggestion is, be polite to them but make it clear that their religious advances aren't welcome. Just be careful...
Jeff, maybe so. But I think that the use of Chick Publications (the cartoon tracts drawn by Jack Chick that drew their inspiration from the Maoist cartoons used to instruct Chinese workers about the correct attitudes to be adopted by the proletariat) indicates a four-square KJV evangelical Gospel approach. Here's the outfit in question:
http://www.chick.com/default.asp
Our neighborhood is far too rough for anyone but very determined Mormons to canvass, so we don't get much Kingdom Hall action. Even NyPIRG won't come to my door!
Oh, Bridgett, this is just too much! Proselytizing of any sort is just wrong and I'm so sorry you, and especially your daughter, were subjected to it. If they didn't want to participate in a "pagan holiday," they should have just turned off their lights and locked their door.
I've had lots of experience with middle of the night terrors and a child's chronic health issues, if you need/want to vent/talk, feel free to email me.
Good thoughts going out to you and kid....
Sometimes you just have to wonder about people like that. I am reading this and shaking my head in disbelief. I feel sorry for their kids.
Wow. This is the second incident of Chick-or-Treating I've heard of. Friend of mine who is a liberal Presbyterian deacon and recovering Southern Baptist almost blew a gasket when his 4-yo got one of those Devil's Night tracts. So sorry for you and your young'un to have to get that on ya.
Thanks for droppin' by my joint!
-- Erudite Redneck
Wowee. Boy am I glad we just got candy. Those pamphlets sound beyond weird--they sound like some sort of Victorian era publication for the edification of children. How we've managed to avoid this nonsense I don't know--there are plenty of these sort of folks in the South.
Bri, I'm most angry on your daughter's behalf. If someone otherwise unsupportive feels the need to create an religious incursion into your lives that's got to be difficult....( and so sorry that she's got to learn about cranky lungs at such a young age. I feel for her...but glad she's alive in the age of many excellent helps, alternative and otherwise for cranky lungs. I'm sending her a long distance hug. )
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