Summary

The author reflects on the experiences of dealing with door-to-door missionaries and the lessons learned about human decency and patience, drawing parallels to the challenges faced by writers.

Abstract

The article recounts the author's personal history with door-to-door missionaries, from childhood encounters in a monocultural neighborhood to adult experiences in Denver. It contrasts the negative reactions of some to these visits with the author's own mother's approach of kindness and hospitality. The narrative transitions to the author's struggle as a writer, drawing a parallel between the rejection faced by missionaries and the challenges of getting published. The author emphasizes the importance of persistence, patience, and treating others with humanity, as exemplified by their mother's behavior towards the missionaries.

Opinions

The author acknowledges the discomfort and sense of judgment people may feel when approached by door-to-door missionaries.
Some individuals react rudely or dismissively to missionaries, reflecting a broader intolerance for differing beliefs or lifestyles.
The author empathizes with the emotional toll of rejection, having briefly worked as a telemarketer, and relates this to the experience of writers facing rejection.
The author's mother is held up as a model of how to engage with missionaries respectfully, without converting to their beliefs.
Despite being agnostic or pagan, the author values the Christian virtues of decency, politeness, and warmth as taught by their mother.
The author suggests that success as a writer, particularly for those without celebrity status, requires finding one's core humanity, which includes patience and persistence.

Deal With Door To Door Missionaries

We don’t want others to shove their beliefs down our throats, what do we want?

Should you open the door?

When I was a small child, missionaries would come to our door.

I did not always know if they were with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or possibly Mormon Church. Some may have been other denominations, but I think that all of them were Christian faiths.

This does not mean that only Christians try to win souls door-to-door meeting quotas as if they are selling vacuum cleaners. (that was an actual thing, once.) It just means that in the part of the USA where we lived, there was very little multicultural influence. If I met a “non-Christian” they certainly never revealed themselves as such.

One tactic was to pretend no one was home.

I moved to a new world of possibility

As an adult, I moved to Denver. People I met there had very set ideas about what to do when someone came knocking to sell a nice eternal life.

People feel like they are being judged when someone comes to tell them the good news that they can be saved. They know that the salesman may be racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or narrow-minded about science. Or whatever.

They would make a rude comments. They would close the door in the faces of the soul gatherers. They would scoff at the idea of a “sky daddy, invisible wish granter in the sky.”

My friends and associates did not suffer gladly, those that they felt to be fools.

Writers have to sell ourselves

Although Medium has created some new possibilities, most of us could not make a living on what we earn in our “day job.”

As a struggling writer in Denver, I lived from part-time gig to temporary assignment. Then, as now, it is very hard to make it as a writer.

I took on a job as a tel-marketeer. For a very short time. Here is why:

This telemarketing job is how I learned that if you are a human being, it hurts when someone hangs up on you. It hurts when you face constant rejection. It hurts when you know your product is unwanted. It hurts when people don’t even let you get two words out before they discard you like spoiled milk.

As writers, we also have to learn to deal with a great deal of rejection. We know that terrible, even biased, and lying books sell all the time. We know that a celebrity can get a deal anytime. We don’t always have the connections to sell our versions of any truth, or to tell our stories.

But still, there are lessons to gain. Persistence and patience are two that can go a long, long way.

This takes me back to how it was all those years ago, as a child, before I moved to Denver.

How to be converted to Humanity

This is how my mother dealt with those door-to-door missionaries:

She would smile. She would nod. She would greet them warmly. If she was not really busy, she would invite them in. Ask them to sit down. Offer them tea. She would engage them in very polite conversation. She would ask me, or anyone else there, to sit down, and join in.

At the time I thought it was so boring. So embarrassing. Children don’t want to sit still and listen to evangelical tales!

My mother never converted to any of their churches. Beyond a brief perusal, she never even read the literature that they left behind.

But she showed me how to treat others. To be decent. To be polite. To be warm.

To make it as a writer, if you are not a star or a former felon, you will need to have patience and persistence. And these require that we find our core humanity.

In short, although I am thoroughly agnostic (maybe pagan) today, my mother showed me how to be a Christian.