I'm working on a book about growing up black in the Bible Belt with a strict single parent and eventually becoming atheist. My personal mantra has always been to "live and let live" so I don't want to give the impression that I am here to bash anybody's religion or beliefs. However, I do have a few funny stories about my Christian experiences as a child and how these experiences led to who I am today.
I will share a few of these stories in my next few posts but let's start with one of my favorites shall we?
Youth Church
Even though I attended thousands of church services, concerts and programs I spent most of my time as a Christian attending youth church. What is it exactly? Well, Youth Church is marketed as an extension of the regular church service targeted towards children and teenagers. But in my experience, youth church is usually a chance to escape the pressure of praying and standing up for extended periods of time while simultaneously being able to talk to girls and play sports with friends. Although most of my time spent in youth church was split between girls and sports I will never forget the lessons and activities I participated in that helped shape my view on religion today. First lesson: Masturbation.
There are a number of topics that churches try to make cool for teenagers to discuss and sex was not one of them. The relationship with church and sex has always been rocky with sexual beings (humans) having to reconcile their views on sex with the church's’ view on sex. Perhaps the most embarrassing topic to discuss with teenage boys is masturbation. The church we were attending at the time, however, wanted to create a program where youth pastors could focus on “tough” topics. I remember my mom making me and my brother attend this Young Men for Christ (or some shit like that) program on a brisk Saturday morning. At the time I was 15 and my masturbation career had been going strong for two years.
Quick Story: My first time getting caught watching porn it was 2003 and the internet was pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter, pre-Youtube. In fact we still had the annoying dial up internet that made these terrible dialing noises every time you tried to connect. Shit, we were still using free NetScape CD’s every 30 days to get the free trial of internet sometimes! I had seen porn in a magazine at 13 but we had internet now! So I got on my mom’s laptop and looked up every porn site I could find. Do you know how hard it is to jack off with dial up internet? Masturbation at that time meant, getting a wash cloth my mom wouldn’t notice, Cocoa Butter out of my mom’s bathroom and sitting with both items in front of a buffering computer screen with your pants at your ankles, while constantly looking over your shoulder. Very stressful. At the time I knew nothing about clearing history, phishing, spam etc. which left a digital trail that my mom ultimately found. Once she found out I watched porn she prayed over me (didn’t work, I masturbated that night) and recommended I strengthen my relationship with God.
Which led my mother to send me to this youth meeting at church. Once we arrived at the church our youth pastor at the time, Brother Eric, greeted us and had us sit in a room with a half dozen other teenage boys we went to youth church with regularly. Brother Eric was a proud, 27 year old virgin who was so dedicated to God he was waiting for marriage to have sex. In my mind I wondered, how is a virgin going to teach us anything about sex, he hasn’t even SMELLED a pussy what could he teach us? But I figured I would give this a shot. He starts off by telling us:
Eric: “Who is wondering what today’s topic is about?”
Us: silence
Eric: “I’ll give you a hint, it starts with the letter M”
Us: “Marriage!” “Money!” (some dumbass) “Michael Jordan!” laughs
Eric: “No, MASTURBATION”
Us: gasp
Eric: “So who’s done it before?”
SO MANY CRICKETS
Eric: “Nobody?”
EVEN MORE CRICKETS
Eric: “I’m not ashamed, I’ve done it before”
Me (to myself): Well duh, you don’t have sex you gotta do something.
Eric: “It’s ok nobody is here to judge”
Although his intentions were good, I don’t think he realized that the hardest thing for teenage boys to admit is that they “beat their meat” as we so eloquently put it back then. It was pure silence for the first 5 minutes because no one wanted to admit they had masturbated before. Finally one brave soul asked, “is masturbation really that bad?” This really broke the ice because I think none of us realized that you could go to hell for jacking off. At the time I didn’t get the big deal, I was just touching myself. I can’t touch myself? Wow “God has a lot of rules,” I thought at the time. Some of the things I found out about sex that the bible states:
Sex is for married people only. Period.
Condoms aren’t holy, sex is for procreation.
Ejaculation must be the result of intercourse and not masturbation.
The first 2 I had heard before and since I started puberty a couple of years ago, my mom was beating me over the head with these topics because as she so eloquently stated, “I ain’t taking care of no damn grand babies, i'm too young.” Once he brought them back up though I had so many questions so I asked him "what happens if you have sex before marriage, can you be forgiven?"
Eric: “Yes, you can be forgiven for anything”
Me: “So I can just have sex as much as I want and just pray for forgiveness afterwards right?”
Eric: “Noooo that’s not how it works”
Me: confused “Ok what about condoms? They tell us in school that that’s the safest way to prevent STDs and kids”
Eric: “No the best way to prevent them is abstinence”
Me: “Well what about wet dreams?”
Aha!
I finally asked a question that I knew he couldn’t answer. Or so I thought. Apparently when you have a wet dream, something every kid in puberty experiences, that is your mind (filled with impure thoughts) telling your dick to ejaculate while you are sleep which is still a sin. Wait. What? I can go to hell for accidental ejaculation?
Eric: “Yes. Even though wet dreams are natural, once you wake up and discover it you should pray for forgiveness.”
I was stunned.
Most of the knowledge I had about sex at the age of 15 came from tv, movies and friends at school. So this bombshell he just dropped on the entire group really got the wheels turning. It was the first time I actually thought to myself, “there is no way to get to heaven, it’s so many rules you are almost always breaking one.”
As the talk about Masturbation began to wrap up and we were doing Q&A, one of the boys mentioned lust as something he heard his parents say is a sin as well. I had been in the church my whole life but this was new. Brother Eric proclaimed:
“YES, LUST IS A SIN, LOOKING AT A WOMAN WITH INTENT TO HAVE SEX IS A SIN.”
I believe this was my first “Now Wait One Goddamn Minute” moment I had in regards to Christian teachings. Although I had doubts before I always suppressed them because I was taught God knows it all, don’t question. Once I found out that even something as basic as lust was a “sin” I knew I was doomed to hell. It opened a pandora's box of questions like, how would you even meet women? How do you approach a woman if you aren’t a little bit lusty? What music do Christians have sex to? So many thoughts.
This was one of the first incidents I replayed over and over in my mind during my exit from the church.
Check daily for new posts!