There is this little town where in an undistinguished section resides an ordinary family.  What this family is distinguished for, since no family really is just ordinary, is that it gets along fine without help from the old folks, neighbors, the government or do-gooders who recently have been coming to the door with religious tracts to help them find the way to Glory. Most people like to be left alone but some people like to mess in other people’s lives.  So, there is a tension that exists between our ordinary family (Let’s call them the Ordinaries) and the traveling road show that knocks on every door at least one time each year.  These are called the Missionaries.  Other families tell the Missionaries to get lost. Some take the tracts and listen for a while and then say, sorry we are not having any today. A few welcome the Missionaries in and they have a grand time agreeing with each other about philosophy and how this world could be made much better by preparing properly for the next world.

The Ordinaries are different from most.  They believe they have open minds and do not resist the Missionaries who visit them.  In fact, they invite them in and try to convince the Missionaries that they are all wrong and that the Ordinaries are on the right track.  They read the tracts and tell the Missionaries to look around them on the walls of the Ordinaries’ house that are filled with shelves heavy with magazines, books and artifacts from many ancient and far away cultures.  One version of the visit is: “give your tracts here and we’ll think about them”. Another is “O.K., we’ll listen and then you are on your way.”  What the ordinaries do is invite them in to sit down, feed them some cookies and milk and then begin to teach the Missionaries a lot of history and other information that was left out in Missionary school. Missionaries are organized, have a lot of money and have “faith” in the rightness of what they do by going into little towns and knock on ordinary doors.

Now, this story is made up.  I have never invited the Missionaries of whatever brand they were into my house for cookies and milk and certainly not for conversation.  They have a set spiel to get you talking with them. They have an agenda and a specific number of souls to save on their journey down the streets of little towns all across the world.

I would like to believe that I had the time and the inclination to do as the story says.  I think that if the quality of cookies and milk was good enough I could get my Missionary visitors to at least listen to the story of how they are free to believe what they want to believe but so am I and they are not free to impose or try to impose their belief system on me. America has a long way to go to get the religious minority involved in this missionary work out of our lives and let us get on with ours. It is also time for the “Jews for Jesus” to let me alone.