Another angle

I spent the day yesterday with my parents. It was a nice day, and they fed me (twice). In payment, I had to go to church with them.

Well, to tell you the truth, I volunteered to go to church with them before we talked about the feeding me part. It all worked out in the end, though: everybody was a winner.

The church part could've been hairier. My parents go to a sweet little Baptist church on a busy street next to kind of a funky motel and across the street from a car wash and a bitchin' barbecue place. I've gone with them before but never regularly. Honestly, I can't take their church on a regular basis. There's just too much going on: from the good-hearted but terrible music, to the arms outstretched to - heaven? god? Pastor Fred? This time, they didn't do anything different than usual, and while there were definitely a couple of moments when I would've walked out if I thought I could've gotten away with it without shaming my mom and dad, there were also moments where I thought about what it was that pissed me off so much, and decided that they are not obligated to tailor their message to suit me, and I am not obligated to show them they're wrong. Even though they are.

The first moment came in the first 20 minutes. They were singing some terrible song - accompanied by terrible musicians (I don't know what key the guitarist was supposed to be in, but he never found it, not during the first song or the last) and people were clapping and praising God, which I am not mocking at all, because some of those people were my mom, and I'm not making fun of my mother anymore, now that I'm no longer a teenager. And while I stand by my notion that this was the worst music in the world, it's also the best part, for me, about going to church. Any church. Even this one. Anyway, so the song ended, and then the Pastor got up, and started telling a story about being in Palm Springs for the last couple of days.

This is all he said about Palm Springs. "And if there's a city in the world that needs prayer, it's Palm Springs. All the gays walking around that town..."

That's it.

But I started to stew. This is the same bullshit that pisses me off about church and people who claim to love God and claim to believe that sinners deserve love instead of hate, but instead, only love the God (and the sinners) that fit(s) their idea of what "righteousness" is. I hate that word, righteousness. I haven't studied the bible and I don't know if the interpretations about homosexuality are correct, and then you can't really have that argument until you decide if you believe that the bible is some divine - written by God! - document rather than the ramblings of a bunch of deluded old guys in sandals and caftans; all I can say is that in my heart, my heart, and in my opinion, picking on the fucking gays seems like a HUGE mistake. Seriously: I got squirmy and steamy and twitchy, and I thought, jesus, dude, could you have picked a better time - while I'm here, doing my good deed for the year - to spout off about gays? I mean, I can live with the out of tune piano, the anemic Keith Moon drum fills, the pitchy singing, but isn't Jesus' ultimate lesson that we should LOVE EVERYBODY?

So I was pissed off for about 10 minutes, just - silently livid, if there is such a thing. And then, after awhile, sitting next to my sweet dad, who I know has his own opinion, and my mother, who is maybe coming around slowly, or if she's not, at least is faking it really well, and then I started looking at the people sitting around me, and I wondered if those people all had bought what I thought he was saying, and then I started to question it, what I had actually heard. For one thing, he didn't really say much about it - and then, well, how did he know they were gay? Were they having sex on the street? What kinds of cliches did he witness? Maybe that's what he meant, "And God, please help these people to at least not look so gay." Could this possibly be just his screwed up viewpoint? Of course. And then, well, people need prayer in every city, no? Wouldn't it be less of a waste of time to pray for, oh, I don't know, homeless people? What about homeless gay people? And what does the probably pretty well-off and presumably self-satisfied gay community of Palm Springs need prayer for, anyway? To change their sinful ways? To be more successful and own more attractive real estate? To get a more even tan? To cure their hacking coughs? And I started thinking it was kind of funny, and a little sad - for him.

And then those wily fuckers hit me with their secret weapon.

See... I never said I didn't believe in God. And the last song we all sang was one where the words (and I've thankfully forgotten the melody) were something to the effect of, God knows your heart, and what you're thinking, and loves you anyway.

And it seemed a little contradictory to the other message, the one that had me so mad, but then I took it personally, as I am wont to take everything, and I remembered the thoughts I've had - some recently - that were maybe not the greatest thoughts ever to cross my mind - and I didn't wish I hadn't thought them or anything (can I stop saying the word "thought" now) but I started to really feel like me and that maybe I wasn't so fucked up after all. And usually when we get to this point in church, I'm crying a little, so yeah, I was, but not, this time, because I felt like I needed to be forgiven for something or because I felt small, but because, fucked up or not, I felt okay about me.

And then - AND THEN! - they played this fucking film.

The movie - if "movie" is the right word, it was basically a PowerPoint presentation with the occasional moving section (bits stolen from "The Matrix" and news footage) and soundtrack provided by, I don't know, Marilyn Manson or something - contained footage from the war in Iraq and the planes crashing into the Twin Towers and bombs exploding and people with missing limbs and bloodstained everything, and shots of Bush and Bill Gates and guys from the U.N. and - inexplicably - kids at raves - and starving people in Africa, and the message, I think, was supposed to be that the world is fucked up and headed straight to "darkness" (the new word for "hell") and that man's attempts to stop this - "The Economic Solution," "The Political Solution," "The Humanitarian Solution" - were all failures, and that the only way to save the world, the only way to halt this downward spiral is through mega-churches and a new holy war on evil.

Yeah. One big long sentence, because this was 35 minutes of propaganda and nothing was said outright and there was no conclusion. It was puzzling. And then it was over, and church was over, and we hugged everybody (the real reason I think my mom likes church: the free hugs) and got in the car and went to breakfast.

The only good thing I can say about that movie, which was called, I think, "Approaching Darkness" ("Approaching Darkness" is also the name of what looks like a very "Spinal Tap"-esque band), is that it definitely had a bit of an anti-war, anti-Bush undercurrent, and exposing my folks to that seems like an excellent idea. Even my mom found the movie to be a bit depressing, and I think she was disappointed that that's what they chose to do at the service I picked at random to attend. We shook it off, though, and went to Carrows in Santa Monica (my sister refuses to eat at Carrows, saying there are "too many old people," and it's true, there were many, they also served up some pretty darn good pancakes), where we ate too much, laughed too much, and had a good ol' time. I loved hanging with them and beating my mom at Scrabble and playing with the dogs and just being at their house.