i don't understand where you go when you die

i don't understand where you go when you die, i told lil’ biggy, but if God is up there sorting out the believers from the goats on the basis of whether they get all weepy when phillips, craig & dean songs are sung soft and slow, then i don't want to go there anytime soon, this bible-christianity thing isn't as straightforward as i think!

it was like watching a porno, unexpectedly, instead of reacting with desire i saw the actors as real people, not just bodies, not just as objects, where do they live, who are their fathers and mothers, what do they eat for supper, i also saw my child as a person for the first time in my life

i read to my boy about how lot's daughters got him drunk and had sex, the sexual purity laws from leviticus, how noah got drunk and naked and his sons had to cover him up, and judges 19, the tale that tells the story of a levite man and his unfaithful courtesan call girl and what happen next, the kid was amused, but mostly felt like he was getting to skip-out on his homework, the fact that the book of God's word was full of smut made no apparent impression upon him, but, slowly, i believed, my message, whatever that message might be, and how ever absurd it was, was being absorb

there is a whole bunch of other shit going on in the world, people having sex all the time, getting drunk, there is cruelty, there is violence, there's rape and chaos, disorder, confusion, havoc, and that's just in the fucking bible

what had my arrogant ways done but create a youthful beastly philistine?

last night, instead of our customary bible porn lesson,
what i had been trying to explain to him was that “being saved” isn't enough

i told him you aren't totally without merit before you have accepted the Lord into your heart and you clearly aren't a good, upright, virtuous person once you do accept him, you shouldn’t judge others on the basis of whether or not they call themselves Christians

there's an entire messed up, mixed up world out there, nothing, zilch, zero in my bible porn tales or what you learn at church can tell you the first damn thing about how to negotiate or come to terms with it in your life, i don’t understand? so how can i expect you to understand? i don’t

lil’ biggy turned over on his bunk where he had been lying half paying attention and stretched, looking at a star wars book, i was ready to punch him in the arm for not listening at all to my bible story, and then in a lengthy contemplative moment, i saw him for the first time, I saw my kid, I saw him as just a boy, having his own life and his opinions, beliefs, feelings, even if his thoughts were only about how to blow things up, or how to get more toys, or when are we going to eat something, i saw him like me, equal, a protagonist and an antagonist, companions, and yet completely different from me, without ultimate meaning, and it was all too much, too much, so we drove to the taco spot, and had fish tacos, sipping a birch beer soda and played tabletop hockey with the bottle cap