"Does that play into being able to read tarot cards.? How sad is it ivw never actually taken interest in your beliefs or even asked about them 😔 how selfish on my part. Educate me 😊, " my sister typed to me, still using that ghetto punctuation from MySpace and not fully utilizing the spellcheck feature on her Android phone.
"Oh, girl. This might take a minute hahaha. Bear w me." I didn't really laugh. I began to explain the journey by revealing I attended a private school for kindergarten. It was six miles outside a small town and had kindergarten through eighth grade all in one building. Don't get me wrong; it was a wonderful institution. When I "graduated", I could read at a fifth-grade level. My mom was always so eager to tell people. With it being a private school, along with core subjects was a Bible study hour. The teach taught from a book that had been circulating the world for damn-near 2,000 years. A song comes to mind: the B-I-B-L-E / yes, that's the word for meeee / I stand alone with the word of God / the B-I-B-L-E!
After some time, God sent down his one and only son to suffer right next to puny humans just to have him killed by Romans. Set up by his own daddy. Word on the street was the mom had never came into contact with sperm. (Don't ask.) If you are a bad person, you go to the fuckin', I don't know, Earth's core and chill with this Benedict-Arnold-ass guy named Lucifer (hood name: Satan) in his crib called Hell. If you are a good person in life and accept Jesus H. Christ as your Lord and Savior, you would spend all eternity with God himself in the bright blue sky. Certain relatives were also in attendance. Apparently, old dude knew who everyone was, what they were thinking, how they behaved, and what their every move would be. What a creeper, amirite? It was a requirement to talk to him before going to sleep at night and before meals. Not a whole conversation, just a quick shout-out. He had these 10 pretty strict rules that was the criteria for living, usually depicted on a double-stone tablet 'cause the homie Moses was His publicist.
- God is your one and only, A1 day-one, ride or die, BFF
- You have no other friends
- My name is not an interjection; it's a noun
- Chill with me every Sunday. Every. Single. Sunday.
- Be cool to ya Ma and Pa
- Don't murk nobody
- Don't be or have a side dude/chick
- Don't jack nothing
- Keep it really real
- Don't be jelly of anyone else
I was six years old and had two rather long Bible verses memorized. Again, my mom was always so eager to tell people.
Psalms 23
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leads down the path of righteousness for His name's sake. Ye though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff: they comfort me. You prepareth a table before me in the presence of thy enemies. You annoint my head with oil. My cup runneth over. Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Psalms 100
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord he is God. It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves. We are His people and sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful unto him and bless his name, for the Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting and his truth endureth to for all generations.
My mom put me in this school for the education, not for the religious aspect. I could probably count how many times she took me and my two elder brothers to church throughout our life. I'd only need two hands. Regardless, I was a Jesus freak fer sher. I had this decoration I kept on my dresser throughout elementary school that read, "I love Jesus". I asked people around me not to use the Lord's name in vain to the point that I was just straight-up annoying. Why did I believe this? My mind was moldable; impressionable. The authoritative people in my life told me this was reality and I believed them. It was all I knew.
I always had this unhealthy paranoia about behaving. I felt guilty for masturbating at age five. I would apologize to God/Jesus/Holy Spirit-split-personality-ass entity in my head, because apparently they read minds or some shit. Baby Jesus, I'm sorry I'm being inappropriate... but it feels so good! Remember how you died so I could do this and be forgiven? Because same.
When I was in eighth grade, I started going to catechism on my own volition. Well, not really. My best friend and paternal family were Catholic. *Nudge, nudge* I attended church most Sundays, sprinkled holy water in the shape of a cross across my forehead, genuflected before entering pews, and participated in weekly leg workouts. I loved the unity. Everyone in that church just wanted our friend to know we needed help, because being a human sure is hard.
One of the first spiritual catalysts I encountered was a spunky, thick, 16-year-old chick named Jenna Ray of Sunshine. She was the first Atheist I encountered. She revealed this information and I gasped in confusion. That's a really a possibility, huh?
"So... " I slowly replied. "What do you think happens when we die??"
"It doesn't matter." Three words that remain etched into the space between my cells. The aftermath of taking her last breath was none of her business. Profound. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I went back to catechism and it just wasn't the same. Homosexuality wasn't allowed. (Why not? How does that affect anyone else's well-being at all? Like... at all?) Abortion was okay in cases of rape and incest, but not if a young woman wasn't fully informed on how biology works, ended up pregnant just to have the sperm donor not participate in the baby's life, received food stamps and welfare checks due to the high cost of raising a child, and stuck at in entry-level positions because the cost of an education in United States is entirely too expensive. My ideology melted to create something entirely new. It was eye and heart opening. Snakes don't talk. They just don't. They don't have the proper anatomy: no language acquisition device in the brain nor lips to form words. It's not a thing. Things were getting sus.
So many of the world's problems could be avoided if people were just honest— honest with others and honest with themselves. Both God and Santa Claus were invented by man to represent a moral referee. Be good and you will be rewarded. Be bad and you will be punished. I have a radical idea: what if we were good because it's just the right fucking thing to do?
Personally, I think one question needs to be addressed in all situations: is someone going to get hurt? If the answer is yes, don't do it. If the answer is no, go gorillas. I usually think on a gray spectrum, but this calls for a black and white framework.
No comments:
Post a Comment