Let's Kill Something for Jesus Today!

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I'm Serious THIS Time.....

Monday, October 11, 2004
Let's Kill Something for Jesus Today!
My neighbor is a Baptist, and she's been telling me some very strange things lately. Since I like to check things out for myself, I decided I'd go to her church yesterday and find out what was being fed to the faithful myself.

I spent an hour and a half listening to a darkly-foreboding and mildly hysterical minister inspire fear and dread in his flock. He says that it is the End of Days, that God's wrath is going to be poured out upon the Earth - wars, famines, plagues, earthquakes, tsunamis, and a rain of burning hail are right around the corner, and you, sugarlump, had better move fast and make sure your name is written in the Book of Life! because time is short and Hell is forever. He says that America is Babylon, and he knows this, he told us, because of the sin-soaked whoremongers and filthy, sexy women (yes, he said 'filthy, sexy women') who populate the nation and corrupt it with their greed and lust. He went on to describe the hideous tortures to be found in Hell (funny - I missed that part of the Bible...) and what was going to happen to the ones who stubbornly refused to heed the call.

He wrapped everything up by hinting - in a roundabout, thoroughly snarky way - that we could be God's buddies once again if we'd nuke the MidEast and the 'godless animals' there in order to reclaim the world for Decent Christians. I looked around at the well-groomed and enraptured Decent Christians nodding their freshly-shampooed heads in mindless agreement, and I knew without a doubt that any one of them would have willingly, eagerly pushed THE button if it was in their power at that moment.

It was pretty chilling, if you ask me.

I realized that our homegrown, fundamentalist Christians would be as bad as the fanatical Muslims if they could get away with it. They would be cheerfully torturing, hanging, beheading and boiling in oil - whatever - in the name of Christ. I could see those people standing in a heated group. cheering and panting, as one of the aforementioned whoremongers or 'filthy, sexy women' was being burned at the stake. I began to wonder if I'd be able to get my heathen ass out of their - would I be blocked at the door and strapped into an Iron Maiden? I've seen enough horror movies to know that if the organist started playing one of Bach's fugues that I was in deep trouble.....

Of course, nothing like that happened. Most of them were very nice to me, very friendly. I was invited to have dinner with one family (I, politely, refused), and I was asked if I wanted to go play miniature golf with another family (again, I bowed out). The friendliness only served to heighten the surreal aura and creep me out even more. I left, and returned home, and told myself that I, now, KNOW why my sweet neighbor lives in a fairly constant state of fear. Her church is scaring her to death.

Does that strike anyone else as just wrong? SO wrong?

I keep thinking of all the children sitting in the pews absorbing this. I wonder what they're thinking. I wonder what effect it has on them. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.....


posted by Davida | 6:58 PM

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