For him,
there seemed to be something very physical about his encounters with the Holy
Spirit. It was a tactile experience. Whenever he was graced with the Presence,
it made him feel justified. It made him self-assured. He rested easy in his
conviction and felt that if the Spirit was so alive within him then he must be
doing something right. In terms of social protocol, he was a deliberate man.
God flowed so great within that he took it upon himself to act as a messenger,
not just of scripture from the Bible
but of the very will of God. He was a prophet to some, a bigot to others and
a xenophobe going all the way back. He somehow convinced himself, that how he
was, was okay, because God didn’t stop him from doing so. He was filled with this
sense of power, it flowed through him. He was a child of the One true God and
this feeling was his reward for belief. Faith has a payoff. When he made his pronouncements, a crowd always
seemed to gather round to listen. He spoke of God’s eternal love. He talked
about his experience with the Holy Ghost. He covered almost every base you can
imagine, all the while demanding submission to the only true King. He claimed
that God wanted all his listeners to be obedient, not to him but to the Lord
through him. All the years of his exchanges with the Holy Spirit and he had
never heard a voice or been shown something divine. What he had was organic,
containing a literal ebb and flow. He was righteous by his own thinking. He was
rewarded in his own mind. He stands as a representation of all that religion
has to offer. After all, he is only speaking the truth, which is exactly why I
never gave what he said a moment’s validation. He always made it feel that he
wasn’t serving God, he was serving himself. He may have considered himself a
man of God but to me, he was nothing but a man, his substance so transparent.
It all was “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing.” (Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 25–28).
“When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray
to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in
secret, will reward you.”
(Matthew 6:6, NIV)
Every
morning, she gets up around 5 AM and starts her day off with coffee and a few
spiritual exercises. They always help her fill the loneliness that she has made
for herself. She grabs the traffic and weather just before she walks to the bus
stop just down the street from where she roosts. At least she always has Jesus.
She tripped ever so slightly as she boarded like she always does. She noticed
him almost immediately. Their eyes met, their pulses became rapid, the kismet
was strong and almost floated in the air. She was a simple girl, with simple
looks and she dressed the same. He was more timid than rugged, more boy than
man. He too was plain and simple, both by nature and appearance. They were by
no means ugly, just humble and quiet. They both swooned at each other as he
shifted from the aisle seat to the window seat, leaving her a place beside him.
She had to react quickly, as the bus filled up behind her. She gave providence
a chance, took fate by the hand and she sat down. Every part of her just wanted
to run but she recognized what God was doing. At first, it was very awkward.
They exchanged first names and gently shook each other’s hand. Neither one of
them knew the destination of the other but it didn’t seem to matter. They
started talking and talking turned into communication and communication turned
into hope. Both went by their stop, unaware
and unconcerned. There was a magic somewhere in all the jumble, you
could feel it, you could see it. They talked about their jobs, they talked about their pets. They
discovered much common ground between them. For a moment, she paused and
thanked God for giving her this chance. As if a dense fog had taken hold, she
turned to him and she did it. It came right out of nowhere and gave him great
pause. “Do you know Jesus as your Lord and Saviour?” she asked. Like a rocket, he sprang from the seat and
rushed to the rear entrance. He said nothing and left the bus. Every morning
she gets up around 5 AM and starts her day off with coffee and a few spiritual
exercises. They always help her fill the loneliness that she has made for
herself.
“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and
believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For
it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your
mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.”
(Romans 10:9-10,
NIV)
It was his 16th
birthday that saw it all happen. He had kept the secret for as long as he
could, but he had been discovered. Always erase your browser history, unless
you’re looking for trouble. Trouble was what he got. He had gone out with a few
friends after school and came in slightly late for dinner. The only thing being
served was his head upon a platter. The pornography was not the primary issue.
It was the homosexual content that waged this condemnation. They could not
believe he was doing this in spite of all they had given to him. “What about
Jesus?” they asked over and over again. He had been right to keep the secret, a
fool for leaving evidence behind. He knew this would happen. When the initial
anger had been tossed about, they forced him to sit down at the dining room table.
They didn’t talk to him, they lectured him. They didn’t even bother to tell him
that they loved him in spite of his newly revealed sin. They were elders in the
Church, friends with the Pastor and fervent Pentecostals. It was as if they had
encountered the very devil himself. From the outside looking in, just who the
devil really was stood very strong and clear. He just sat there, silent,
terrified to be free. One judgment met another and eventually he was instructed
that “if this was the time of Jesus, you would be taken out and stoned to
death.” This was the last straw, the straw that broke the camel’s back. He was
not tall for all his 16 years. He wasn’t anything special but he always
considered himself a child of the One true God. His parents demonstrated just
how wrong he had been. He started
screaming and could not help himself. He demanded the love that God ordered he
should be given. It was when he called them both pawns of Satan that the shit
hit the fan. The father walked down the hallway, entered the boy’s room and
grabbed a pile of clothing from the closet. It was a quick trip to the front
door. “Out,” the Christian ordered, “and if you’re going to choose this kind of
lifestyle, then don’t come back.” He left it all sitting there, the front lawn
covered with the only thing in the world that he had left. He didn’t even
bother to pick anything up, he just walked away, tossing his keys into the sea
of fabric that lay before him. The clock struck 7 and they both gathered their
things and headed out for Bible study. Dear old dad checked every window, every
door to make sure the heathen could not get inside. They drove away and left
his destruction in the wake. You want to relate that everything turned out just
fine. You want to confirm that good came from all this misery. I cannot. I will
not go into detail but it did not end well. Sometimes it’s not about the end of
the rope but what comes once you let go of it.
“Let love and
faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your
neck,
write them on the
tablet of your heart.
Then you will win
favour and a good name
in the sight of God
and man”
(Proverbs 3: 3-7, NIV)
He had been
trained to serve Jesus. It seemed the entirety of his life fell squarely on
Christianity and the commitment to it he was required to make. Through all the
sermons, Bible study and social
engagements, he found himself bowing on knee in surrender to the Lord. Over and
over, he dedicated his life to the path. He spent years trying to please God.
Everything he did, every time he prayed, he believed that he was talking to the
One true King. He had a relationship, a kinship with the Trinity. It was the
perfect lifestyle for him, a blessed assurance that always seemed to carry him
through. Life has a funny way of letting you down, no matter who you are or the
reality you have created for yourself. Something always comes along to test the
most fervent of believers. The sanctuary of the Church was full every Wednesday
evening for Bible study and
overflowed for the two services on Sunday morning. He sat like he always does,
tucked into a pew waiting for Jesus. He never, ever took the time to think
outside his box. Jesus is the only thing he would remember. After a few hymns
and the opening praise, he settled down in the pew as scripture after scripture
rang from the front of the room. It got around rather quickly that she had
cheated on her husband. She was cheating on Jesus, just as much. As the
performance proceeded, the Pastor stopped dead in his tracks. It was clear that
the minister had planned this ahead of time. It was drama and tragedy and very
effective. He called her by name right out front of everyone in the space. She
sat there, her mouth wide open and shame written all over her face. He called
her an adulterer, he called her immoral, then urged the congregation to shun
her. They tossed her away. She ran out of Church in tears and they all praised
Jesus with a “Glory Hallelujah.” He was not impressed. What they did to that
poor woman may have been scripture based but so too is not eating lobster or
engaging a whore. His entire Christian life danced before him. He could not
imagine that the Jesus he knew would condone such a thing. It was unfair. It
was just plain mean and the Saviour he knew would have nothing to do with this
kind of justification. He tried to sit through the rest of the service. He
tried to forget what had been done to her, but he could not. As the clergy went
on with the execution, something changed. He realized that just because you say
you follow Jesus doesn’t make you the judge and jury for everyone else. He was
nauseated at the thought of remaining among them. Mid-sermon, he rose and began
to shuffle down the pew, disrupting the process. Heads turned and he tried to
walk away without event. He stopped when the Pastor called him by name. He
turned around, walked up to the platform and asked, “Do you know who she had
the affair with? Well you do now.” It wasn’t really him that had done the deed
but it was effective nonetheless. They shunned him just the same. No matter, he
didn’t need them to know Jesus.
“You must not associate with anyone who claims to be a
brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer,
a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.” (1 Corinthians 5:11, NIV)
I did not
leave Christianity because of Jesus. As a matter of fact, the reason I lasted
so long in the land of the Lord was because of how I interpreted the Christ and
His place in my life. I left my birth religion because of the legacy it has
left and the lasting hypocrisy one has to deal with when interacting with many
of His tribe. Most often, Christians will kill your buzz every time. I do
believe that all religious people, including my onetime sect, are nothing but
fully human, regardless of the deity they have chosen to emulate. To condemn
another, no matter the sin, when we do the very same things is folly. To
imagine that someone, anyone could truly rise above their morality and decay,
is laughable. There is not one person on this planet, including me, that is not
imperfect, flawed, and very much an ongoing, sometimes secret, sinner. I don’t
care if you are the Dalai Lama, Tom Selleck or Ted Bundy, we all sin, we all
fall short. Pretending to be more spiritual, more dogmatic does not erase that
fact that, like for the rest of us, if “their” God came down right now, we
would all be sent off to burn forever and ever. Some men dream of fame and fortune and turn to God when the
world doesn’t want them. Some people put God before anything and end up with
almost nothing. Some people use God as a reason to hate. Jesus becomes the
excuse for behaving badly. Some men get so lost in the whimsy that they forget God
is not necessarily a positive force. I suppose when all is said and done, there
is something to be said for how you handle your truth. Just because you claim
to be on the right path means nothing if you don’t act like it. The Christian ideology is pretty much like any other
religion. It is not so much the mythos that matters but rather the primary
reason for religion is to give hope that all will be better one day. It’s too
bad you have to die to ever experience this.
“But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives
freedom, and continues in it - not forgetting what they have heard, but doing
it - they will be blessed in what they do.
Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep
a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is
worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:
to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from
being polluted by the world.” (James
1:25-27, NIV)
Photo
