Summer 2013
People say my religious views are “liberal” and that I need to read my bible. Today in the streets of Washington DC there were people preaching hell and basically mocking the drunk people in the street, even going so far as to use the thumb and pinky thing to signify the act of drinking. One yelling man’s son stopped me and handed me this tract that I didn’t need at all and that would probably become litter in the hands of a majority of passers-by. He asked me right off if I believed in heaven and hell, and I said I didn’t know, and that maybe there wasn’t a hell or maybe we were in hell, or maybe the earth without us in it is Heaven, and everything we do is Hell, or maybe none of that even matters at all because learning about Hell distract you from be nearer to the divine in truth and spirit. The boy got silent, furrowed his brow and set his chin in his in his fingers that way people do, and made sure I kept the tract with me before I went and talked to his dad was yelling at people like he was a bully or the people passing by were walking into a gas chamber, when it’s really more like we were all in one already from all the car and truck exhaust rolling by.
This guy was shaved head, little cap kind of hat thing, kind of cut like he liked to lifts weight and or something, and he had this pissy look on his face always. I suggested that he turn over his microphone to the homeless and give them a voice. He was not shouting for wisdom, but proclaiming to have some greater standing with God than others, which is foolishness. I get really emotional when i see people giving God a bad name, and preaching in a way that doesn’t translate to the people that might benefit from the love and compassion contained. This guy was probably drawing up the image of the crusaders in the mind of every “non-believers” as he called them. He tried to speak over me with his amp to make an example out of me, and I belted out in my most thundering, operatic, voice one of my favorite verses about how the pharisees trying to make converts
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are”
I asked him if he thought the threads of his clothing and all the things he done in life were just. Should we repent and return our wife’s wedding ring if it is one of those blood diamonds, or what if child labor were involved, or displacement of native or indigenous people. He staggered a little, and my heart was racing and he said he was trying to get to one of these parts of the bible that tells about needing to preach in the street. There was a guy who had been preaching earlier in the day that was recording and kind of pressing the guy to meet my points. Afterall, early Christians ate no meat for fear that it was sacrificed to false idols, and there was something else they done, like burning half of it. BEcause most of the meat at markets was prepared in this way they just avoided it altogther (by the way, I am eating meat these days…) Can we not say that much of the meat we consume is killed in the name of some golden idol that is greed and excess?
Up went his voice again, yelling through his wrap around head microphone and amp, talking about the weakness of the drunkard. This time I touched him on the shoulder instead of hollering real loud, he drew away and found this the perfect opportunity to not have to talk about Jesus anymore.
“Don’t touch me” he said and shook his head “don’t touch me.”
I laughed a little and asked “why?”
“you’re supposed to be my brother, and you are persecuting me in front of non-believers”
I replied “Judas had Jesus hung on the cross for all its worth, and he got a kiss from the son of god.”
He pursed his lips and leaned in real close to so I went closer to the curb and the busy street, and asked ” what is with you, did Satan send you or something?”
I reminded him that they said the same thing about Jesus, and he really wanted me gone. This is a point I get to with a lot of people. They don’t like the fact that Jesus was a prophet that we would imprison or institutionalize today… He wouldn’t even be able to die for any sins or wrong in the world, he’d just rot in a cell by our standards of torture today. I told him that maybe these people were drinking because they can’t stand the expectation to conform to the ways of this world. I have been with these people that he was degrading, I have lived with them, and a lot of them are better in their heart than the pressed suits that drift by to be cogs in the big machine that will probably slowly bring down the apocalypse.
Somehow we came down to the fact that Jesus defied or altered the teachings of the prophets before him, and even criticized some of them, saying he was way better at miracles and stuff. He walked away and came back and asked a second time why I “persecuted” him, I reminded him that he didn’t know what persecution was and for all he knew I was a prophet that someone like him would condemn and claim was the devil. That was the end, he walked away… Maybe he thought I was a prophet, either way he was nowhere to be found on the streets the rest of the day. There was a homeless man with a really droopy face that was just staring at me in a blue sweater.
What is worse than atheists wanting to tell me how dumb I am for having faith, are people who give the faith a bad name. If it weren’t for my beliefs I would have no imagination, no where near the creativity, no flow, nothing really. I owe a lot to my ability to give myself over to the feeling of divinity that moves through the air. I believe some of the “bad” people are closer to god, they have turned their back in weeping to the wicked world just the same as the God in Genesis did. “Genesis 6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.”
Gay people, I love them just like straight people, as long as they treat their partner right I don’t see a thing at all off-putting or wrong about it. - Here’s a funny verse this is right after jesus says that when he come back that fire is going to come down just like it did in Sodom…
“Luke 17:33 -I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. -34 Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left.”
I don’t want to argue about it.
I think Jesus was pretty much an Anarchist
After the man disappeared I crossed the street to the Starbucks and noticed a very small sticker in a hidden, ground-level spot, on the window that said “this all used to be Indian land, then everything went to shit.”
Love from the streets awash with blood,
tommyinthesun