The Christian thing would be to leave us alone

I don’t get mad at the 10 commandment magnets and fliers and sundry other stuff you leave in the letter box.

My husband was born crooked. No, not bent in any criminal way, just a little bit physically crooked. His left hip bone is misshapen and the Achilles tendon in the same leg is too short, all of which has left him with a very distinct gait, a bit like a rolling limp. It’s made life tougher for him — he can’t run, walking up hills is hard, and he stands out in a crowd.

That latter feature has been useful for me on occasion. And, it’s apparently also useful for Christian proselytisers. No, they don’t know him, they don’t know why he limps, what his story is, what he thinks or feels or believes. They do, however, seem to feel his infirmity gives them a green light to bowl up and offer him the Lord, to tell him that they have the answer for what they see as his suffering. They might call it Christian. I call it harassment.

My husband likes to walk on the beach at Mt. Maunganui and up Mauao, which is where this prowling proselytising goes on. I shrugged it off the first time he told me about it. Yeah, I thought, those people who think they know what’s best for you are everywhere. No big deal.

The second and third times, I thought it was all getting a bit creepy: this doesn’t happen to me and I’m out on the beach and up Mauao at least as often as he is. Why are they picking on him? Because he limps? Because he’s crooked?

A few days ago, it happened for a fourth time, and I got mad.

“This young guy came right up to me,” my husband explained. “He waved his hands in front of my face, and made me stop and take my earbuds out. He said he’d noticed I was limping.”

What happens next seems to follow a script. “They ask you what’s wrong, they seem sympathetic and interested, then they ask if they can pray for you, or tell you Jesus can help.”

Naturally, the conversation doesn’t get much further than that. My husband is ethnically Jewish, but has been an atheist since he was 13, when he realised the universe didn’t need a “first cause” — that there could simply be an endless chain of causes that went on forever. (And, yes, he grew up to be a philosopher.)

“I just made clear I wasn’t interested. I just wanted him to leave me alone, but he said he’d pray for me anyway. I started thinking about Darwin to clear my head.”

I spluttered and foamed about how I would’ve given him what for, and all the rest. Except I probably wouldn’t have. Like my husband, I probably would have been so surprised that a complete stranger thought they could take advantage of what they perceived as a weakness to push their religious belief system on me that I doubt I could’ve come up with anything remotely coherent.

Which is why I wanted to write about it. To try to explain — just in case any of you “Christians” who engage in this kind of behaviour are reading — why you should stop doing this. I’m an atheist, too, and I feel like we non-believers cut you proselytisers more than enough slack.

We stay out of your space, and ask only that you stay out of ours.

I try to be polite when you come to the door with your crafty questions designed to trap me into conversation. I don’t get mad at the 10 commandment magnets and fliers and sundry other stuff you leave in the letter box.

I bite my tongue at your tax breaks and the free pass for religious instruction in school. I pass by your magazine stands on the boardwalk near Mauao, and at malls, airports, street corners without “accidentally” knocking them over — so far, anyway.

And what do you do in return? You target someone who hasn’t asked for and doesn’t want your help just because they look different. Because they look vulnerable. Perhaps tell yourself you’re just trying to help.

You’re being “Christian”. But you should know you’re being the opposite of all that. You are being cruel, selfish and unthinking, serving your own need to “save” people who just want to be left alone.