It’s gospel, guv



I got a leaflet shoved through my door this afternoon. Normally not an unusual occurrence I’m afraid as lots of unwanted fliers are shoved through my doors regularly. But on a Sunday? What is it? A leaflet from the nearby Gorgie Gospel Hall, imploring me to come along and attempting to tempt me with a whole lot of Biblical quotations. Also included was a more professionally produced colour leaflet entitled Intruders! With a dramatic photograph of someone forcing their way into you home. Was this a leaflet with home security advice? No, it was more form the fucking Gospel morons.



Now I am annoyed at the sheer waste of unsolicited mail I receive. Personally I save it up and when I get crap with pre-paid envelopes, such as credit card solicitations, I put my saved junk mail into it and send it to them, thus completing a great circular journey of junk mail and also annoying one set of unwanted advertisers with unwanted advertising - the biter bitten. Phone calls, spam email and junk mail plus the most annoying, the cold-caller who actually comes to your door in the evening (usually just as you’re about to sit down to eat).



I particularly resented this bloody bit of mail. For starters these people - who I am sure in their minds, are trying to do good - have no idea who I am or what. I’m not religious, but what if I were? What if I were a committed Jew, Muslim, Catholic or Sikh? This would be offensive to me and it also smacks of extreme arrogance to assume that you know better than anyone else in matters of faith (or lack thereof). By all means practise what you wish, but going round badgering others in their homes is at best annoying and at worse insulting. Disguising you leaflet to look like something else in order to fool you into opening it and reading it is despicable and underhand.



The supreme irony is that the leaflet goes on to tell me how “everyone seems to be getting at us these days. A knock at the door and it’s a new religion; on the television it’s a new product you can’t afford to be without… There’s hardly anywhere you can be free from people trying to persuade you to join them…” Obviously these arrogant and immensely foolish evangelists have no concept of irony. It then goes on after this huge own-goal to tell me that the voice of God comes into all of this confusion and exhorts me to pray to Him right now. I’m praying all people who put unsolicited mail through people’s doors are visited with a plague of boils.