My church attendance became more sporadic as I got older and I totally stopped going when I was in junior high. Why not? Most of the kids my age there were a bunch of hypocritical, two-faced lying bitches and bastards who came to church for the purpose of posing to the Good Christian Bitchin' Worldly Churchly World that they were Hot Shit and their stink was a-steamin' like a 1910 Stanley Steamer.
I went to a few all night church lock-ins for junior high students. The Big Boys just threw their weight around (weren't Christians supposed to be the ones persecuted against? Weren't you supposed to be kind to people like Jesus or was that just talk & God incarnate was reduced to some idolatrous symbol of all their vanities?) I was in eighth grade. One guy kept telling me about the disgusting things he'd done with his many girlfriends. He didn't get caught in the drug bust at the sock hop the night before, but yeah he smoked, the sly-not-getting-caught devil.
My grandpa Mac died. I started searching for answers. I didn't like the answers. God -- what did he do but send the scum of the earth -- the damned, the forgotten -- to burn forever in some pit down below. Then there was Calvinism with its doctrine of pre-destination which held that God determined before you were born whether you'd go to Heaven or Hell. So basically you could find Jesus but if you weren't of the Elect you were SOL. Where do you fit in? You'll find out when you die.
And it was religion, man. Plastic. Sterile. Self-righteous. Rules over rules. No sex. No drugs. No rock n' roll.
But I had a hang-up on destruction. Self-destruction. Nightmares about Armageddon destroying the world, a holy conflagration. The world turned. High school. College. Work and love and joy and pain. I was nearing 30. I was going to get right with God before the aliens came or gremlin-like demons from Hell invaded before we'd had enough sex to procreate and produce a dynamic race of Christian soldiers. (The doctor, an old man who examined me from head to toe, said I needed to see a psychiatrist. "This stuff about religion -- son, he's real smart.") The loud rap music outside my apartment building at 11 p.m. -- that wouldn't be my life any more.
I was on the county beat with the Clarion newspaper in Hot Fisher, Texas. I'd sit in the library before going to the office, a quaint, country-old two-story building with the slowest elevator in the world. What started as intellectual curiosity and perusals through the library turned into an obsession with World Truth magazine from the Army of Yahweh sect. I sought out their temple, a creamy white building like a kingdom that resembled a White Castle restaurant. There were signs picturing trumpets and a high guard tower in back that reminded me of a radio tower beaming transmissions of Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower."
And there would be no hell in the traditional fiery pit sense, just a lot of explosions where your grandma's arms and legs might catapult from her body into the foul air, just arrests, beatings, torture, an evil world government ruled by a charismatic anti-Christ. It was all in the Bible. But if you were strong enough to take it, paradise awaited -- lions with the lamb and the purest virginal wife this side of Mary.
They had the correct Biblical interpretation. There was only one. The people I worked with, whom I'd previously had pizza and beer and played pool with -- they wouldn't make it. The county road commissioners and townships patching up the roads -- they would be destroyed in the figurative-(possibly) literal fire because they were of Satan's "systemites."
But I would be spared. Love love love love we love you jeff you're a stayer a survivor old life was a bunch of crap New Personality was a crown World was supposed to end in 1992, the same year the computer Hal was to be formed, but this didn't happen and the temple leaders chalked it up to New Revelation.
But I couldn't stop looking back like Lot's wife did when Sodom got destroyed. (She became a salt shaker.) I liked when I was in college. I liked playing beer pong. I liked being a tree-hugging, ACLU loving liberal. I liked reading banned books. I liked socializing with office holders and evaluating the political system. Sure I drank, smoked and fornicated but I was just living my life. I did some good in the world too. But it's okay okay okay Satan pissed off you found the Bible.
"You might want to watch what you read, Jeff," the old man said with a smile. He loved me. "Mortify (deaden) your flesh." Might as well hang there like old man penis. No kissin', no huggin' till a wedding day. Fight it. Fight the devil, Jeff. Devil after me like a roaring lion bringing hot legs so pussy whipped, mini-skirts, cheri hair, curved lips, child-bearin' hips, she's sportin' high-heeled shoes, young man blood risin' rhythm rock the car on fire way down low thrustin' crusin' fast-slow Don't look with lust in your eye DAMMIT, God made me a MAN for fuckin' out loud!!!!!
Fighting angels with swords in your bedroom. Lines forming face and my hands cuts all over my wrists and arms don't get infected infected infected cleanse my body. Smoking cigarettes frantically and with old Hollywood-style freakishness. But --
say it say it bitch
The truth will set you free.
The truth will set you free
The truth will set you free
Awake no sleep 8 wks blackness around eyes
I left the paper and Hot Fisher, Texas, the Army of Yahweh, their specially printed Bibles left lying like a gun in the rain-splattered parking lot. Splitting Texas dirt and spruce. Night-time fleeing. A thief in the night.
I didn't understand the whole damn thing and I was scared to broach it with my thoughts, but I guess I really started believing in God, really for the first time, after I saw my child born. Such a miracle. I felt a calming and I knew the drama, the hocus pocus, legalism, destruction was over. I can't dig it. I go for that line in the Beatles' "Revolution" -- "but when you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out?" I couldn't believe I was holding a baby only a few minutes old.
I decided God was love. He's the paragon of righteousness, right? If I would love my kid even if he was gay, how could God do any less?
Just breath, Jeff. Live this moment. Love humanity. It's okay not to know all the answers.
We know a lot about love.
