I am completely unprepared every time Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormon missionaries decide to stop at my house. After they leave, I make a promise to myself that next time I will be ready with my challenge questions, I will ask them in for a friendly debate, and they will leave with some uneasiness about their own beliefs.
This is not what happened today, and some version of the following happens every time. I was half-way dressed, having been distracted by some catastrophe while I was attempting to clothe myself, and I never got back around to it. Yesterday’s makeup is still on my face, just not in its original location. My hair having been thrown up on the very top of my head so that the baby that is strapped on my back cannot pull and yank me bald (this she usually does with a laugh that sounds like, “mwah haha haha”). Somebody decided to throw “confetti” down the stairs so I was in the middle of vacuuming.
I hear a knock on the front door. My first reaction was irritation since my kids are usually the ones playing “neighbor” and I have to answer the door a trillion times a day and say, “Hello, neighbor.” I grumbled as I turned the vacuum off and swung the door open saying, “Hello, neigh…” To my surprise, it was not my kids…
Here stand two people, a nicely dressed lady and a teenage boy looking awkward and unnatural in a shirt and tie, holding Bibles. Here I stand; half-dressed, looking like a train wreck with a baby strapped on my back. I catch a glance of my kids, wallowing in a mud puddle made from a running hose. They must have wondered why I was vacuuming when I had more pressing matters to attend to.
So, I stood there like a dumb idiot. The lady handed me their little magazines “Awake” and some other pamphlet about prayer. The lady recited a spiel about praying and the Bible and questions about God and the Bible. She tells me that they will come back later to see if I have questions about what I read. My husband would say, “No, don’t bother, we are Catholic and we are staying that way. Why aren’t you Catholic?” I just stood there saying, “Okay, uh huh, okay, uh huh.”
They must have gathered that we are Catholic from the statue of Our Lady outside. Did they wonder why I didn’t argue with them? I felt horribly embarrassed having not even been able to give them a good example of a Catholic. I spend the whole day after an incident like this rehearsing what I will say when they come back; thinking of objections to their religion’s illogical tenets; searching out Bible verses that they might have some trouble explaining.
It occurred to me after my humbling experience today that rehearsing these things and planning to beat them at their own game is really my pride rearing its head. There is some good will involved, no doubt, but my pride wants part of the prize. It wants to say, “I converted those people, I did it.”
So, then I got to thinking that God must send these people my way at precisely the time I need a heaping serving of humble pie. Maybe they are sent here for me as a reminder of my own shortcomings and the zeal I am lacking. Obviously, I am not called to be a St. Francis Xavier or St. Ignatius, so perhaps God is asking me to renew my dedication to my vocation as a mother; to embrace my quiet and oftentimes unnoticed dedication to rearing confetti-throwing, hair-pulling, mud-wallowing people.
And, it might not be such a bad idea to finish getting dressed in the morning.
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This gives me an idea: have pamphlets near door, ready to hand out.
I used to dread *those* knocks on the door. Now they feel like a blessing of sorts. Yet I still dread the kids selling some trip-scheme/coupon book/oddly-packaged candy.
I was recently caught in a similar state! Except I was so unfit to answer the door that I didn’t. I was experiencing the full state of my pregnancy in this Arizona summer and was literally pants-less on the living room couch! I was thankful the kids were napping and the ladies didn’t right the bell because then they would’ve known people were inside ignoring their knock. But really, modesty trumped evangelism in that instance.
The last time JWs came knocking at our door, I did invite them in. We talked for about an hour and then I had to leave as I, ironically, had an appt to donate blood at our church’s blood drive. But my husband and I invited them to come over later in the week for more discussion. We had two such meetings, over the course of two weeks, and when we invited them back a third time, they politely declined and said we would have to agree to disagree. I’m really hoping we planted some seeds, at the very least. We gave them Catholic tracts from Catholic.com but I doubt they read them.
The last time JWs came to the Powlett-Jones house, I was in the middle of writing this old CP post:
http://catholicphoenix.com/2010/08/28/three-aspects-of-augustines-conversion-for-catholics-to-meditate-upon/
The knock on the door early that morning was answered by a bathrobed Denys, clutching his dog-eared copy of the Confessions.
When they asked me if I believed we were in the end times, I replied that, by its definition, the City of Man is always in the “end times” since Our Lord’s act of redemption. “No, no–I mean the END times!” Yes, that’s what all eschatological Christians believe about human history since Christ. “No, THE END END TIMES.” Not following you.
We didn’t agree to disagree as much as realize we couldn’t understand each other well enough to disagree. I didn’t plant seeds as much as I perhaps dragged a hoe over the garden a few rough times.
Most of these folks can be easily dispensed with by asking them about how their faith deals with the apocrypha.
In general, representatives of the Jehovahs Witnesses and other Christian evangelist sects have no knowledge of them. They do not realize that the canonical gospels were established by the Roman Catholic Church.
Biblical literalism tends to get a little jittery when confronted by the idea that a church they hate so much was actually responsible for including and excluding chapters in the bible.
Its an easy launching point for a discussion of who has a more authentic tie to ancient Christianity.
That or douse them with Holy Water and close the door…
Sandmama, do the “Sri Lankan spicy hot dogs” have any catechetical use? I’d gladly knock on your door if those were going to be part of the exchange…
Just because JW’s come to your door doesn’t mean that God is calling you to debate with them: you might not have the right knowledge or the right gifts. A simple “Sorry, I’m not interested” will do.
I keep some Catholic booklets by the door and sometimes I say, “I don’t have time to talk to you now, but I’ll promise to read your Watchtower [or whatever they have] if you’ll promise to read this booklet.” That way you’re giving them some sort of Catholic witness, and it’s not a lie to say you don’t have time, because there is never time to do something God is not calling you to do.