I finally went mini-ballistic on a Jehovah’s Witness last week.
First, a little background information. Walking down the main shopping street in our community on a Saturday is like running the gauntlet. There are two moving nests of Jehovah’s Witnesses that lie in wait to ambush the passerby, shoving The Watchtower in your face and sternly warning you that you’re GOING TO HELL unless you do what THEY tell you to do. Then there is Pentecostal Pastor Dude, who stands on the corner, in front of his little church, waving his Bible, trying to make eye contact, and warning you that you’re GOING TO HELL unless you do what HE tells you to do. Then there is the inevitable pair of Mormon missionaries, warning you that you can’t get to heaven unless you do what THEY tell you to do. Then there are the Nazarenes, who go door-to-door, warning you that you’re GOING TO HELL unless you do what THEY tell you to do. I’ve been told by numerous Baptists that I’m GOING TO HELL unless I do what THEY tell me to do. I’ve been warned by two different Mormons, on this board alone, that I’m GOING TO HELL unless I become a Mormon.
So, last Saturday, lugging a 40 pound bag of dog food on my shoulder, I absent mindedly strolled past one of the JW traps. Woman jumps out in front of me, waving The Watchtower, and starts the pitch. Tried to be nice and tell her “not interested,” but she wouldn’t stop and warned me that I’m GOING TO HELL unless I listened to her. Not being in the mood to be banished off to the eternal lake of fire that day, I plopped down the sack of kibble and asked her, in a not-so-polite tone of voice, “what gives YOU the right to banish ME off to HELL???!!! You don’t know me, you don’t anything about me, so what gives you that right? Like, just who do you think you are? Etc., etc., etc.” In any case, she lowered her Watchtower and high-tailed it back to the nest. I don’t think that one will bother me again anyway.
Don’t these idiots realize how STUPID they sound? It is absolutely beyond my comprehension how anybody with a marginally functional cerebral cortex can subscribe to this kind of nonsense. And it’s not just the connoisseurs of “Elvis painted on velvet” and the like either. I’ve known some very respectable and well educated people who firmly believe that everybody BURNS IN HELL, except those who believe and practice as they do. Like the qualification for heaven is that one strictly follows a specific set of tenets. In addition to totally defying common sense, it’s precisely the sort of thing Jesus warned us AGAINST. What ever happened to “love your neighbor as yourself?” Seems to me like these people have totally missed the point.