Monday, March 10, 2008

idontknow...

So... tonight... walking from class to my car... I had kind of a strange confrontation. I passed two individuals talking in the atrium of my college building. They stopped their conversation as I passed and then hurriedly followed me out the door.
I hastened my pace a bit.
So did they.

"Excuse me... I'm sorry to bother you... can I just ask you a quick question?"

I turned around and slowed my pace slightly. I figured that a.) They were other Psychology students conducting a survey, which is common in that particular hall... or b.) They didn't know where the student center or some other campus building was.
I stopped.

"Have you ever heard of God the Mother and the bible?"

Now, the first time I heard this, I was in the mall several weeks ago. The pair caught me off guard. "God the what?" slipped out of my mouth before I ultimately threw up my hand and said "No thanks. I'm good" as I walked away.

I consider myself an open minded and tolerant person. While I not particularly religious, I come from a fairly religious family and have friends in varying degrees of devoutness to their respective faiths. I respect religion as an institution as well as our individual rights to practice as we please.

I also understand that in some faiths, it is customary for the young adult members to spread the word to their greater community as rite of passage into adulthood.

That being said, I guess I just wanted to voice my concern about the manner in which I was approached twice in several weeks time. Both times I was walking alone. Both times were at night and both times I was approached by a pair of people. Maybe it's my own paranoia and anxiety, but I found it to be a little aggressive and somewhat intimidating.

I'm just curious if anyone else has experienced a similar scenario and what your thoughts were. Also, does anyone know what group these people are a part of? My internet searches didn't give me much info.

Again, I am not knocking the religion or their beliefs, I simply found their recruitment tactics to be a bit uncomfortable.

3 comments:

nikkol said...

i really like the way you wrote paragraph 6&7 starting with "I consider"...that's how i feel too, written really coherently.

yeah, i don't get religious recruiting, especially at night. that's pretty sketchy to me, too.

i haven't had anyone approach me except for children's international in the day recently and they were nice. i almost sponsored a child and STone said "because you have so much money?", yeah, i didn't.

have you seen "anonymous" - http://youtube.com/watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ - it's against scientology, it's weird. at least it wasn't those guys trying to talk to you...

Anonymous said...

WOW. Unbelievable! That's about the point where I would fly off the handle and give them a piece of my min. Seriously? You could get maced!

Anonymous said...

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