Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Dorothea has hit on one of my pet peeves–proselytizers. I don’t care what your cause is–childbearing, vegetarianism, Mormonism, (non-)smoking, or alien abduction. It’s rude–unforgiveably rude–to break into someone else’s conversation for the sole purpose of telling everyone else that they are wrong and you are right. Not to mention the fact that very few people convert to a cause because of a shouting match.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with some co-workers a while ago. We were talking about ways to avoid discussing God with people who knock on your door. I said that I don’t understand why they bother proselytizing in the first place; you can’t force belief on someone. One woman said “Well, every religion proselytizes.” Not true, I contended. “Name one,” she countered. So I did–Judaism. “So how to you make converts,” she asked. The answer is, we don’t. If you want to convert, you have to take the initiative yourself and ask a rabbi. Otherwise, we leave you alone.

Get the point?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 25th, 2003 at 1:19 pm and is filed under This Modern World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.