It was a Saturday morning and I was fast asleep. Having gone to bed at roughly 3 a.m., I wasn’t planning on waking up much before the mid-afternoon – that is, until there was a quick, businesslike, “shave and a haircut – six bits”-style knock on my door. Jerked out of the darkest depths of my REM cycle, I stumbled out of bed wearing only my boxer shorts and groggily flung the door open, evidently expecting whomever had dared wake me up so early on a Saturday to be comfortable with what they were about to see.
Standing on my doorstep were two of the cutest, most innocent-looking young women I had ever seen, wearing matching black wool coats. Their smiles abated slightly when they realized they were looking at a man who was 80-percent naked. I promptly came to my senses, swore loudly, shut the door, threw on some clothes and opened it again. In spite of their better judgment, the girls were still there, and one of them began to speak when she saw I had covered as much of my shame as was possible.
“Hi there!” she said with a quaint Minnesota accent. “We’re from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints …”
Once she’d come to the end of her introduction, I politely told them both that I wasn’t going to be buying what they were selling and bade them adieu. They seemed eager enough to leave. I have to say, I felt sorry for them – being plucked out of one’s home to do a mission trip in Oregon in the winter is bad enough, but I had perhaps made their experience even worse.
I am an atheist. This means that I don’t believe in any god, instead placing my faith in science to explain the world’s mysteries (interestingly enough, I barely scraped through high school chemistry with a B-, so maybe I’ve been having a crisis of non-faith). My parents and grandparents are also atheists, so we have a combined total of nearly 250 years of being told we’re going to hell. To world religion’s credit, there have also been many attempts to save us – from Jehovah’s Witnesses to Mormons to Christians to Catholics and even some Orthodox Jews once in New York. And throughout my life, my parents have instilled in me the importance of always being polite to the people who attempt to convert me.
At first, I couldn’t understand why. I found it supremely offensive – and, to some extent, still do – that complete strangers would have the audacity to think their way of life is so much better than mine that they’re doing me a favor to try and impress it upon me. Now, however, I am an opinion writer, and my job is more or less to impress my opinions on everyone unlucky enough to read them, so that’s given me a fair amount of perspective. More importantly, I see the futility of this misdirected anger.
Many other people in my apartment complex were not as polite to the Mormons as I was. I wasn’t aware of anyone else inadvertently giving them a free show at the door, and I saw many other tenants slamming doors in their faces or angrily arguing with them about the existence of God or the veracity of their beliefs. This sort of thing is just damn impolite, if I do say so myself.
As a career atheist, I’m lucky to live in Oregon and to attend a school like the University, where a significant portion of the student body is open-minded about my lack of faith. However, I’ve also seen closed-mindedness toward people who do have faith, based on the sometimes- (or often-) detrimental effects of religion, both in the past and the present. What I find perhaps most offensive is when I see people yelling at Doug (aka Jesus Guy), who stands by the EMU with his “Trust Jesus Now” sign.
Doug has never done anything to hurt anyone – he just stands there, rain or shine, holding a sign that preaches a message of love. Even though I don’t think Jesus was the son of God, I agree with a lot of what he said, and I really respect Doug for focusing on the more peaceful aspects of Christianity, and for his dedication to his message.
It certainly would appear that religion is to blame for the majority of the world’s ills – terrorism, the Gaza situation, imperialism, the “Left Behind” movies – but in fact, it is not. The real culprit is fundamentalism. If all members of every religion in the world were able to swallow their pride and accept that other people live differently, religion would be no problem at all – it would all be love, harmony and charity, tenets I believe most major religions were founded on.
This is why, as an atheist, I do my best not to take umbrage when theists show up at my door trying to preach their own way of life. Religious tolerance is a two-way street; if you want it, you’ve got to show it (in fact, I think there’s something in the Bible about that). We can’t blame individual members of a religion for past or current prejudices and violence on the part of that religion, either here or abroad; that sort of thinking is where prejudice begins.
If there’s one opinion I can impress, though, it’s that you should always put on your clothes before you answer the door.
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