To members of religious organisations who decide to ignore my ‘No Cold Callers’ signs: Try thinking ouside your box for once.

You ‘think’ that the signs are there to protect *me*, and therefore you ignored them today.

But they’re not; they’re there to protect *you*. Ignore them at your peril, and you will get the full 16-inch broadside again, like you got today.

You really have no idea what you’re messing with!

That was a post I put on Facebook, the day after a couple of ‘evangelists’ from my local Evangelical Church came around to my house uninvited and proceeded to knock on my door, despite there being clear signage asking people not to do so.

I’m going to talk today about why this action of theirs was not only wrong, but also that there are a number of learning points that those two men could maybe consider thinking about.

After our conversation, I gave them the business card for my blog, so who knows; maybe they’re reading this right now. Hello again, gentlemen!

Well then, in Matthew 16:3, Jesus suggests to the Pharisees that maybe they should try reading the signs of the times. And that’s fair enough.

These days, however, it seems that some Christians can’t even read signs that are written down, and displayed clearly and prominently.

Allow me to explain. There are disabled people living in my house. I have people that can’t answer the door due to mobility issues, and people that can’t help but take their time getting to the door because of age-related mobility issues (it takes them longer to get down the stairs, for example) and also people who have neurodivergent issues which means that it is stressful for them to answer the door to complete strangers who will of course be pushing an agenda.

And so we have a couple of defences. We have a Ring doorbell, which enables occupants in the house to screen callers, and to talk to them remotely. I’ve even done it from the local library once, ‘Sorry, I’m not in, please can you leave the package behind the wheelie bin?’ and so on.

But we also have signs on the door telling people that cold callers should not knock/ring. These signs are legally binding, because they state clearly that unsolicited callers are not welcome and that to ring/knock constitutes an offence under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations, 2008. And to be fair, sometimes it works. We hear the proximity alert (someone is approaching your door) but they don’t ring the bell, and instead walk away. So far, so good. And we always report the unrepentant to the police; those callers who ignore the signs when they are tradespeople or sales people and then claim that they always ignore such signs. Their punishment is deserved.

However, it has been my experience that the worst offenders for ringing the doorbell when they shouldn’t are people from religious groups. While I have actually seen Jehovah’s Witnesses see the signs, turn around, and walk back up my driveway, to their credit, unfortunately the last time some of them came, they actually rang the bell! And I gave them a theological run for their money and they left wishing they’d never called – not that I was nasty to them, of course, but I told them lots of things they didn’t like me saying. And to be even more fair, religious groups are actually exempt from the door knocking regulations – although I always tell them that ignoring the sign is not a ‘good witness’ for their religion. What does it say about the kind of people they have in their group when they ignore a perfectly reasonable request to not knock? There’s simply no excuse.

So anyway, these two guys turned up a couple of days ago, and I knew they were from my local Evangelical church because they tried to present me with a leaflet and I turned it down, but not before I’d seen the pictures on the leaflet, so I knew their colours.

The following Facebook post sums up the interaction succinctly:

They had opened with a response to my immediate query about how their church copes with LGBTQ people – my Litmus Test. Of course, although they immediately responded by talking about the love of Jesus, they very quickly went into the bait-and-switch of quoting the Bible. Standard operating procedure for evangelists; they hold up the bait of the idea of the loving Jesus, which is a really attractive concept, and then they switch to the Bible and its rules – in this case, they were of course quoting some of the ‘clobber passages'^[1]. So Jesus is ok as long as the Bible can be brought in somewhere. It is my new hypothesis that the Bible leads people to Jesus (John 5:39-40), but then the purpose of Christian evangelists is to lead people back to the Bible. I mean, you can’t have Jesus talking to people unsupervised, now can you? Remember, everything Jesus says to a believer has to be held up against the Bible, by other believers, to see if it is valid. This is because the Bible is the third person of the Trinity, of course^[2]. </sarcasm off>  😉

The other bait-and-switch, of course, is the Grace-to-legalism switch. I could go on about this, but the idea is basically ‘Come as you are, God will love you anyway’ and then switch to ‘Ok, now we’ve got you, here are the list of rules you have to obey in order to ‘stay saved’. They lay over the top of the pure Jesus experience layers and layers of requirements until the new believer is buried in the mire of religion, and the poor neophyte loses that initial joy because of it. This is what churches do; it’s very, very rare to find a church where the individual’s relationship with Jesus is held as the primary source of their faith; no, it has to be the Bible. Again. Because, again, they don’t trust God to be capable of speaking to a believer Himself^[3].

Anyway, here is a list of, shall we say, ‘suggestions’ that I have come up with for people doing door-to-door visitation. Not that I would encourage such presumption in others’ behaviour, of course (I would not encourage door-to-door ministry for many reasons), but since I am Autistic (something else they never knew about; just treat everyone the same, why don’t you, guys) I have of course obsessively analysed the interaction in depth and found many of the flaws in their method. And for those who may unwittingly fall victim to these intruders on your property, I hope that my actually writing out these ‘Top Tips’ will give you things to look out for, and that you can pull them up for. Don’t get me wrong, I know they’re doing it from a sincere heart and with a genuine desire to ‘save’ people, and their courage in doing so is admirable. But as usual their cloistered, out of touch situation of being in a tight church community blinds them to how their ‘ministry’ looks from the outside. Which is not a good thing.

And at the risk of confusing Christians (it has been my constant experience that most Christians can only cope with one talking point at a time), I will list the points below.

Ok, here we go:

• Don’t be pre-judgmental and assume that everyone you meet will be someone who knows nothing about God and His ways. You don’t know who you might be talking to. In my case, you were talking to an acknowledged genius with an acutely sharp mind, and with in-depth Bible college qualifications, and who has been walking with Jesus for the best part of 45 years.  Hardly someone who is unfamiliar at least with Jesus, and even the Bible too.
• Related to the above, don’t presume that others are ignorant about the things of God. Even if they’re not someone like me, they too will likely have some sort of spiritual walk, even if it is ‘merely’ being good to other people.
• Very importantly, don’t ignore signs like mine on the door. It displays your unconcern for others’ feelings and needs if you do ignore the signs, and, furthermore, you may be surprised to learn that others will likely not consider your message as important as you think it is – and certainly not after you have ignored their notices. No, just don’t do it. Period^[4].
• If you have a religious spirit, you’d best stay at home, mate. Such a spirit is more obvious to your audience than you realise; in fact you probably don’t even realise it yourself since your slide into that spirit was so gradual. And it is by far the most off-putting thing in all of Christianity for people to experience someone with a religious spirit. How can you tell if that’s you? To be honest you yourself likely can’t, but a big clue is found in the fact that you are doing this activity in the first place. At the end of the day, you are going out to tell others how wrong they are, and how you have the answers. Don’t try to pretend otherwise, or to try to mask it by feigning concern about your neighbours’ welfare, like it says on your church website. That behaviour is presumptuous, arrogant and artificial, and this too will be detected by your victims. Certainly, talking a lot about ‘sin’ is a dead giveaway for the religious spirit, especially when you start to list your pet peeve ‘sins’. And see below, too, about how this reveals your heart. Also, being prepared to adopt underhand tactics such as those discussed below, are a sign of the religious spirit. You may also find that you have lost your joy somewhere along the line, and your faith now consists of a grey, lifeless adherence to what you see as God’s Law. This is why Paul says that “the written Law brings death” (2Cor 3:6) – but be encouraged! because he immediately follows that assertion in typical Hebrew fashion by saying “but the Spirit gives life”. Linked with that loss of joy, you will likely also have lost your sense of humour, partially because you have to be selective about what you allow yourself to find as funny, and also because laughter needs some sort of joy to fuel it – and your joy tanks are dry. Finally, the religious spirit always has to have the last word. He glories in (what he thinks is) a magnificent parting shot, whereas in actuality it is a damp squib in the face of vastly superior firepower. If what he had to say was that good, he’d have used it during the general discussion, rather than as a shot at someone’s back when there is little chance of a rejoinder. This is the religious spirit; that’s what it looks like.
• Listen more than you talk. Your audience needs to feel valued and listened to, and you need to tailor your replies to their words. This is what’s called ‘basic conversational skills’ and, having been walled up in a closed community of like-minded people, you’ve probably never had the chance to learn it properly.
• Remember: you started it^[5]. You turned up at their house unannounced, uninvited and unexpected. If people say things you don’t like, remember you put yourself in the situation voluntarily and in fact you didn’t ask the householder if it was voluntary on their part. None of this ‘is this a convenient time?’ or anything, because you assume again that what you have to say is so much more important than anything they would possibly rather be doing in their own house. Remember you weren’t asked to come and visit and you’re there on the homeowner’s sufferance. Respect that and don’t assume any sort of entitlement.
• In my case, you failed to recognise my Autism. Granted, I mask it very well. But the take-home message here is that you should always be aware that everyone is different and, therefore, their responses will stem from vastly different thought processes, backgrounds and motivations, none of which you can assume you are right about. Something they never teach at churches is that one size definitely does not fit all. But of course you will not believe that, since as far as you people believe, there is only one way to ‘get saved’, and that’s by your way. You assume that when Jesus spoke of a ‘narrow way’, a) you understand what He meant, and b) you have found that ‘narrow way’. Of course you have; how lucky that was for you.^[6]
• Please stop doing the old ‘Bait and switch’ – switching Grace for Law and Jesus for Bible. You bait with Jesus, and you end up giving them the Bible. You claim to preach Grace, but as with most churches that claim they are ‘into’ Grace, in reality it’s nothing of the sort. You just impose a set of rules for people to follow (Matthew 23:4), and that’s called ‘Law’ in anyone’s book. What you are doing by using this method is no different from the tricks used by pushy and disreputable salespeople. You claim to be ‘in the world, but not of it’. Why not prove it. then, by not adopting ‘worldly’ tricks like this one.
• Related to the point above, even though you begin by saying you preach Jesus, in actual fact you really preach the Bible. Your rulebook says in John 5:39-40 that the Bible leads people to Jesus. And yet it seems to the victim that your task is actually to lead them all the way back to the Bible again. You’re not on your own, of course; most Evangelical churches do this exact same thing; this is to me a sure sign of the, yes, apostasy in today’s Evangelical church. Stick to Jesus. Relate your testimony of all the good He’s done in your life. Describe how your relationship with Him works, and how much it blesses you. If you can’t do that, then I would suggest that you don’t really have a relationship with Jesus Himself, but instead you have one with the Bible. If that’s the case, then you should not be going out lying to people by claiming that you do indeed have that Relationship with Jesus Himself. As Don Francisco once said, “If all you know of God is from books, you are walking in deep darkness”.
• Remember that you will meet all kinds of people, including fellow Christians who are further on in the faith than you are. Accept that, and be prepared to listen and learn. If you remain teachable, then you will find that you will learn something from most if not all of your conversations, even with ‘unbelievers’. Do not disregard the wisdom of the world; it too can come out with some real gems, as you’d see if you looked at some of the posts in my ‘quotations’ series^[7]. And you likely have forgotten this Scripture, but again your own Rulebook says in 1 Corinthians 2:15 that ‘The spiritual man judges all things [note, not people – Ed] but he himself is not subject to human judgment. And therefore you shall not judge any fellow believer that you meet on the doorsteps. If you do this, then that believer may well give you nuggets from God that you were not expecting, you will not want to hear, and which may well change your life for the better. Of course, your hardened heart will protect you from this to some extent, but, well, you have been warned! For one of the visitors the other day (and yes, it was the guy with the religious spirit!), his parting shot was “You need to spend more time in the Word!” Spend more time in the word, you say! How on earth do you think that I managed to quote all that Scripture, from memory complete with chapter and verse, to you if I wasn’t completely steeped in the Scriptures? Look, your own Rulebook says in Colossians 3:16, ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly…’ and, for the last nearly 45 years, that is exactly what I have done. The fruit of that is shown by my extensive knowledge of the Scriptures and by my extensive scholarship in the Bible and its concepts^[8]. You were simply closed to what the Spirit was saying to you, as well as being so focused on your own thoughts that you were unable even to discern what was going on around you. I was fully conscious of the huge anointing on me as I spoke to you, and you were seemingly impervious to it. I am sad to say that it seems you have a long way to go before you get a hold of the freedom that Jesus actually offers you – but who knows? He may just reveal it all to you in a flash, just like He did for me all those years ago. He may well surprise you, and I sincerely hope He does. Your life will never be the same again.
• Looking at the above bullet point from a slightly different angle, remember that when Christians meet, they are supposed to bless each other. And that was what I tried to do, by explaining the wonder of Grace to you.
  But all you did was to try to argue your way out of God’s Grace, to almost try to explain why it didn’t apply to you, and also try to drag me down with you.
  Why would you want to do that; to deny yourselves such blessing, and also try to destroy mine as well? I mean, why? Now, I fully understand that you will meet with hostility on your ‘rounds’. But you don’t need to assume that fellow Christians will be equally hostile. Even once I had declared myself as a Christian, you remained hostile; in fact you actually got worse. As if you were annoyed that someone calling himself a Christian could possibly believe something different from you. So rather than share blessings, you simply turned nasty. All you’re doing with this attitude is to miss out on so much more blessing, and on learning more about Jesus from someone who has a different point of view, but which nonetheless will likely complement yours nicely. And so, you didn’t share blessing; you shared disquiet and discord. When you go out, it’s supposed to be ‘peace on this house’. But you didn’t share any peace at all.
• Related to the above, I noticed that once I ‘came out’ as a Christian, you immediately switched attitude. In short, you assumed that because I am a fellow believer, you were suddenly entitled to make unwanted input into my life. What gives you the right or permission to do that? Do you think that because we have the same Father, you can suddenly tell me what to do or think, or judge my attitudes more harshly than just the general ‘oh he’s an unbeliever’ judgments you would reserve for those who do not profess belief? Why should I suddenly be subjected to a new set of standards, coupled with your belief that I should abide by them? I saw your anger when I declared my support for same-sex relationships, after you knew that I am a Christian. I mean what?? And then your parting shot of saying ‘You should get into the Word more’. How dare you! Would you have used that on a non-believer? No, because you wanted to present a ‘nice’ front to people who might want to make the mistake of coming to your church^[9]. But of course once you know I’m a believer, that all changes; you know that I know what churches are like, so there’s no need to pretend any more. If I’d never owned up, you’d have kept your ‘speaking to an unbeliever attitude’! Honestly, you guys make me sick. God knew all along about my attitudes, but He didn’t see fit to inform you of them, and therefore they’re not all that important to Him in the context. Why should anything be any different because all of a sudden you know things that God has known all along? It’s because you have an exaggerated sense of self-importance; you think that God can’t manage dealing with His children in His own way; you have to do it on his behalf. And that’s a pathetic attitude.
• Don’t use proof-texting. It is disrespectful both to your victim and to the Bible itself, for so many reasons. Check out my blog post here, including the comments section where I give bonus content, for more details on this.
• I presume that your church is one of those who believe that the Bible is not only inspired, but also infallible and inerrant, as partially evidenced by the line on your website that declares that declining belief in the Bible is largely due to the teaching of evolution in schools and other establishments. Well, in regards to inerrancy, and also related to the bullet point above, a point which is which is universally missed by Biblical inerrantists is this. If you insist on providing ‘proof texts’ which contradict any text quoted by your victim, this is actually declaring that you do not believe in inerrancy. Inerrancy means that the Bible is never wrong. Inerrancy also infers (and this is backed up by inerrantists who claim, when challenged) that the Bible does not contradict itself, despite you using those verses to do so. Well, any honest reading will immediately show this assertion to be incorrect (in Proverbs 26:4,5 for just one example of many). But my point is this: simply by quoting a Scripture verse that contradicts another Scripture verse just given by your victim, you are showing that the Bible does indeed contradict itself. And, while you may be blind to this, your victims will not be, especially those who are well-versed in the Scriptures. The problem is actually not so much with the Bible, but more with what you are expecting it to do. If you expect it to give you unified cast-iron rules, methods, opinions and doctrines, then you will be sorely disappointed. This is because, while the Bible is undoubtedly inspired, it was still written by many people in different cultures and time periods, and who had each had their own encounter with God in their own, unique way. While their lessons and experiences are priceless even to us today, you should not expect the Bible to present a unified front, at least not on the surface level of the words written. It was never intended for that, and if you simply throw out the concept of inerrancy, then that will solve the problem. It is simply not the case that the Bible loses its authority just because it is seen for what it is, and what it is not. Yes, there are contradictions, but these can still be used to edify and build up those who read them. To come back to the Proverbs 26:4,5 example above, if it is read as Hebrew parallelism rather than just as a plain pair of inerrant but yet still contradictory statements, then it is far more useful. Applying a similar idea to the rest of the Bible, inerrancy becomes redundant and the Bible is far more understandable because of it – even to the layman.
• Stop focusing on ‘sin’. Your Rulebook says in Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things”. That’s good advice, and will take your eyes off ‘sin’, at least until you realise how much you miss thinking about ‘sin’, that is. And then, sadly and in all likelihood, you’ll likely return to it like a dog to its vomit (Prov 26:11) 😉
• Finally, be aware that if you start suggesting things as examples of things that you consider ‘sinful’, you will likely inadvertently be exposing your own heart, its predilections and its hidden ‘sin wishes’. People are more perceptive about dead giveaways like this than you give them credit for. So if your idea of a ‘temptation’ is, as one of you suggested yesterday, ‘a blonde in a miniskirt wearing a low-cut top'^[10], then you need to know that you are betraying your fantasy to the world at large. I wonder if your wife knows about this particular leaning….^[11]

So, there we go. If you’re going to come around and visit me again, you’ll need more than just your Bibles, boys. Unless you want to hear about Grace, in which case I’m all yours. 😀

Grace and Peace to all my readers.