Hello, we're here to talk to you about Jesus...

... turns out, he's not real and we've got to get round to everyone by Christmas before we all embarrass ourselves for another year.


Alas. If only that is what happened. What actually happened is that at precisely 5 minutes after I should have left the house for work, two people of the Jehovah's Witness persuasion knocked on my door. At first, I ignored the little timid knock in the hope that whoever it was would leave me alone. But then, of course, I had to leave. So, to the door went I to find two rather timid individuals retreating down my front steps. Boo, if only I'd waited another minute. They looked like rabbits caught in the headlights, kind of disappointed to see me - as if they too were secretly hoping we could avoid this whole awkward interchange. But no, of course, I went and opened the door didn't I?

Important contextual information:

I am an atheist - in the sense that I do not believe in a god of any kind
I am culturally insensitive, and have Tibetan prayer flags over my door (cut me some slack, I live in New Farm)
I was raised to be overly polite to Jehovah's Witnesses (I don't know why - dad always invites them in for coffee and everything)

So there I am, framed in my shitty New Farm doorway, wreathed in Tibetan prayer flags.

Me: "Hello"
JW: "Hi, I'm here to talk to you about Jesus"

Ok. That's not true. I think she said she was doing community work, and had a pamphlet for me about contentment, or happiness or something.

Me: "Thanks, but I already have my own belief system and I'd rather not read about yours"
JW: "No problem, thanks for your honesty"

AH. LIKE A DAGGER IN MY FACE. She totally knew I was lying! She stared into my heathen eyes and knew I was a  big fat liar.

And then of course I had to awkwardly leave the house, and awkwardly follow them up the street as they tried the next few houses. I wasn't stalking them or anything, I walk to work. Promise.


But now that I sit here, in blogging repose, it occurs to me that I wasn't lying. I do have a belief system. It is that religions are fine until you're on someone else's doorstep handing out pamphlets. I mean surely, if you can fit even just the key beliefs of your religion into a pamphlet then your religion needs to take a good hard look at itself? Maybe it's because I was raised a Catholic, but if I became religious I'd want a faith that covered all bases - with a friggen library of information on really specific issues: "what our religion thinks about having sex before marriage if it's with someone that you really like and is protected and you thought about it pretty hard before hand and you're not even drunk or anything - well you were when you hooked up but not now - and you really want to and your friends think they're nice.

I'm too arrogant to be religious: when things go my way I like to think it's because I'm AWESOME not because they were preordained, or because I'm blessed, or lucky, or full of good karma. In my opinion (and I'm being serious), religions take away from how awesome people are sometimes. And they certainly don't explain how shit people are some other times.


In conclusion, unless you've got a pamphlet on the ways I am awesome, I'm not interested. K. Thx. Bai,