Religion overload

On Friday, we didn't have school but we had a Christian rock invasion. A local church sponsored a rock group. The only students hanging around school were the conservative Christian teens who helped the rockers set up.

Theoretically, the church brings in groups like this to convert new members of the church, but in practice the only ones who attend are already members, so they revert to talking about reaffirming one's faith and renewing their response to the call of Jesus.

Christian rock consists of love songs--but only about love songs about God and Jesus; and of covers of classic rock songs, with the lyrics rewritten to talk about the singer's relationship and love for God and Jesus. No one who loves music loves Christian rock.

Yesterday, as I was leaving the house to do a favor for one of my sons' friends, a lady walked onto my property and tried to hand me a pamphlet about an upcoming "worldwide" meeting of some sort. My usual approach to Jehovah's Witnesses is to slam the door in their faces, but I met this single person in my driveway, where there was no door to slam, so I told her to go away, that I'm an atheist, and that's she's crazy to belong to a patriarchal organization which hates women. My son said I was overly harsh. I wonder why proselytizers feel it's okay to approach someone on private property. We have laws in our city against door-to-door salesmen. In what way is this different?

When we returned from running the errand, a strange car was parked in my driveway. We walked inside and saw an empty cooler. My son went into the kitchen to find the mother of one of his friends who was stowing leftover spaghetti and meatballs in my refrigerator. "I just came right in when no one answered," she said. "I didn't want this food to spoil."

Ah, yes, give the vegetarian left-over meat sauce spaghetti. Walk into my house uninvited. Witness my filthy kitchen. Of course, even though she's doing this out of a sense of Christian charity (she's a minister's wife), it's impossible to stay angry at this woman because she is a genuinely good person. "Well, I'm off to choir practice at the church." Have fun. Next time, call ahead. Next time, wait before you walk into my house. Next time, don't bring meat.