I got 99 problems and 'hovah ain't about to be one.

I remember the first time I ever encountered a jehovah’s witness. I was about nine and my dad had picked me up from school.  I got out of the car to unlock the door and two elderly black men stepped out of their car and approached me asking for my father.  These men were wearing dark suits and overcoats and appeared to be fairly intimidating, sinister even.  I was taught what to do if a stranger approaches you and I was ready to do just that; I wasn’t fast but I knew the block, I knew what doors to knock on.  Two blacks against over a dozen Latinos? (I think we were the only black family in that neighborhood), nobody’s that stupid.  But I’ve digressed.  I was told to go inside by my dad but instead I stayed at the bottom of the stair case. I thought these guys were like bill collectors or gangsters, two sets of people I didn’t particularly care for, and wanted to make sure I heard everything in case they turned out to be the latter.  The point I’m trying to make here is that I didn’t like them.  No reason yet, just a feeling.  I didn’t get all the details, I just knew they were from a church and tried to get my dad to join them, and in the nicest way possible he told them to kick rocks.

               

Last weekend I had a jehova's witness drop by, middle-aged/elderly fellow, just a few years behind my dad. It was the same vulture that swooped by when he got sick a while back, and I had half a mind to tell to piss off, but the initial silliness that he vomited nearly crippled me with laughter:

"You know son, even to this day scientist don’t understand why people grow old and die.  Because, you see when god created adam and eve, he created them to live forever….”

And that’s where he turned into the teacher in a Peanuts TV special, (“wah wah waah, wah”).  For the next five minutes it took everything I had not to cut him off and ask, “I know this is the south, I know I’m a black man, and thus born into a culture that is all but incurably religious, but really? REALLY? How stupid do I truly look to you?? What scientists have you been talking to? Did you even go to college?” I’ll bet you’ve only read one book in your life, haven’t you?  And it’s getting you chewed out on a total stranger’s doorstep right now.” Just a few key questions I might have next time.  

This makes the fourth time this joker’s been by.  I don’t make a fuss because I sincerely try to respect my elders and I don’t see the point in a throwing away 20 minutes of my life on an impromptu debate when I can let the monkey chatter for 5 minutes and then watch him scurry away and give someone else a headache.  I know he’ll be back.  He can come back as often as he likes, he can leave a stack watchtower journals as tall as I am,  that just means I’ll save some money on toilet paper.  Just sayin’. 

It's not terribly difficult dealing with jw's.  It only takes three to five minutes to let them sit there and yak and it's an interesting exercise in discipline.  I try to see how long I can go without snickering or just flat out calling 'bullshit'.  Once they leave they don't come back for months.  The main thing is DO NOT LET THEM INTO THE HOUSE, otherwise they'll be more and more comfortable stopping by.  That's the last thing you need.

Context?

Born Unplugged Pt. 4

(Click Here for PART 3)

“It’s Easter Sunday and the majority of my family is likely in church. It’s the final day to celebrate a man being brutally killed and becoming a zombie three days later.”

That was going to be my opener when I started writing this a few weeks ago.  Then I kept getting sidetracked and it turned out to be longer than I expected.  Easter is the big day where most folks pile into the pew to shout and cry and fall to their knees and give what little they have to ‘sew the seed’, all in hopes of receiving forgiveness for the crime of being born as well as for the death of a scrawny half-naked hippie tacked to a pair of 2 x 4’s.  A death that supposedly happened 2,000 years ago. 

When I began this blog its sole purpose was to recount my journey to realizing I was an atheist.  I wrote briefly about what it’s like being dragged into church and having to listen to broken-record sermons and about the near-robotic call and response bible readings.  The order and structure of the service would eventually break  down into an uproar of squeals and spasms and expressions of thanks for ‘blessings’ like paying the light bill on time or finding your keys or landing a job and a bunch of other day to day stuff Jesus tends to get credit for. The congregation would go into these fits, jumping out of their seats, and convulsing, losing near total control of their motor functions.  Some even started dancing, doing little variations on a basic two-step.  I wish I had better words to paint this picture but all I can tell you is that these people were going straight up guano.

What vexes me even to this day, is how whenever anyone (christian) finds themself in a fucked up situation, they are utterly convinced that they are MEANT to be there.  Either that or some external force is trying to ‘steal their joy’.  The best example I can offer for this point is my mother.  You would’ve had to be dead to see that she and my dad were just flat out wrong for each other.   Much of their communication consisted of yelling at each other or yelling at me.  (I was a kid, they were parents, that’s kind of how it went.)  Being a book-smart 90’s kid, I could tell they had serious personal and interpersonal issues and had tossed out the idea of therapy, but that wasn’t happening.  I mean after all who needs a licensed professional when you have church? ‘The lawd gonna work it out’ right? That was usually mom’s solution to a problem.  She wasn’t what you would call a thinking individual (or she didn’t think enough.)  But yeah, that was the shtick for most folks in my family; get on those knees, put them hands together and stay there.  “Pray fuh ya daddy.”  Don’t ask for the respect you deserve, “Pray fuh’im”.  Don’t stand up for yourself, “Pray that devil out of’im.” Don’t educate yourself, don’t try to work on yourself or use better judgment, just “Pray for your enemy”, “Love your enemy”, “love that devil out of him” and it will all work out.  Years, YEARS of wasted time and breath all while he plods around the house in the seemingly effortless act of stamping out the little self-worth you actually do have.  Don’t take your medicine, don’t cut back on the Mickey D’s and eat some fruit, or get the minimum 30 minutes of exercise, “Just pray on it and claim yo’ healin’ in the name of tha lawd!” 

While this is a very specific reflection, I believe it be an adequate microcosm of the overbearing role religion plays in black America; it causes a vast amount of individuals to insist that “prayer changes things”.  Both church and home were filled with phrases like “The Devil is a lie!” and “Look/Turn to your neighbor and say…” and let’s not forget the ever popular “The lawd got a plan for everything.”  Everything, eh?  Like the kid on the schoolyard that gets beat bloody for no reason other than getting the high score on the test?  That’s part of god’s plan right?  Or that stroke that turns you into an invalid because you weren’t eating right or dealing with your stress.  There’s a plan there, sure.  Or what about staying in a relationship/ marriage and raising or being raised in a family with a verbally abusive asshat.  That’s his plan for her? For him? For you or me or whoever he decides to squat over on that particular day??  And that’s just the light stuff in my view.  Child soldiers, sex trafficking, Boston anyone?  Here I am a grade schooler/ teenager/grown motherfucking man hearing all of this and thinking ‘You’re shitting me right??’

                Still as child I felt the adults knew more simply because they were adults (at least this is what I acquiesced to, the alternative being a slap in the mouth.)  Sunday school, where there was nothing even remotely scholastic taking place to give legitimacy to such a title, was a protracted story-time where the few children there did shit else other than parroting the scriptures shoved down their throats and beat into their heads by the time they were old enough to know what their own farts smelled like.  I remember the ‘classes’, the simplicity of the curriculum and how the recitations yielded smiles and applause from parents and elders; I felt like a damn circus monkey.  “Jesus was born when god put a piece of himself in Mary.” …If only I knew then what I know now…Should I quote Goldilocks and the three bears as well, Bishop? Or Deacon or whatever you like to be called while your ego is stroked.  A little blonde girl found in the youngest male bear’s bed, I’m sure there was bit of rape taking place in that book just like in yours.  By age nine, after all of the regular Sunday services and choir rehearsals every other week, I had had enough. It wasn’t the suits and the dresses or the goofy-ass hats or the endless singing and wailing. It wasn’t even the fact that my own mother was ready willing and able to BEAT ME DOWN THE STAIRS AND INTO THE CAR.  No, my reason for putting the juke moves on the jesus-freaks was the distaste for the mindset they embrace.  The mindset that they are innately weak, that they are born fucked up (Yet more fuel for a future blog). 

So there I am my newly won “freedom”, my Sundays now spent watching WWF All-American Wrestling, and whatever I could find on cable as well as the occasional football game with the old man.  Even so, I still held a flimsy belief in god; you could call it a cultural formality.  I didn’t know that you were allowed to not believe.  Black folks not going to church was one thing but black people and god in general were supposed to be tight.  When I was fifteen HBO held a week long tribute to comedian George Carlin to honor his then 40 years in comedy.  George was everything you love in a comedian, not just quick-witted but masterful with his wordplay.  He was irreverent, he cursed like a sailor and thanks to the exceptional teachers in my social studies classes his political humor was never lost on me.  My exposure to his work gave a very profound peek into the world of adults and helped me learn to do what my parents constantly insisted upon even if they themselves could or would not: THINK.  As far as my remaining ties to Christianity, this was pretty much the beginning of the end….

(More to Come...)