08.04.07

Burpday

Posted in random at 10:51 am by wendy

I forgot to mention this from my birthday. When we were leaving to go off to dog beach in the midafternoon, I found this tucked in the top slats of our gate:

And I have to admit, my first reaction was “Holy s—! Who did I piss off?”

It looks like it was written on the bits of cutup old scrap that libraries keep by the card catalogs with the little golf pencils; is it spur of the moment evangelism? [Did someone driving past look at the state of our front garden and think, ‘Sainted succotash! There’s an immortal soul in need of my help!’] Or was there a whole room full of churchgoers writing these notes over and over with boxes and boxes of old scrap paper, dividing neighborhoods into grids for delivery?

Anyway, I thought it was at least a little amusing because I can’t help but look at it and see this:

It’s like me and Jesus are back in fifth grade together.

(yeah, yeah, Jesus and I, yeah, yeah)

For a while, I used to collect religious pamphlets, and it’s a hard habit to break, I tell you. I mean, talk about a message. How do you convince someone, in such a small space, of something which is so fundamental to the nature of a person?

I just love the different styles of rhetoric, the range from a style of “peace, love, and Jesus” to “accept Jesus or burn in hell,” to Jack Chick’s style which could almost be defined as, “It’s a given you accept Jesus, because if you don’t you’re a tool of the devil and will burn in hell, yadda yadda, that’s just basic, but if you don’t preach the word to everyone you meet, you are a poseur Christian and still gonna go to hell you big faker!” [and if you and I are ever walking along and there’s a Jack Chick tract on the pavement, you better be wearing running shoes, my friend, and be darn quick to beat me to it, the comic book format of these hatefilled little things is appallingly brilliant and totally addictive like movie popcorn, with even that same shamed queasy feeling after you’ve finished the whole thing] to the pamphlet I picked up the other day, with “SMILE JESUS LOVES YOU” with a big yellow Smileyface on the front, but filled inside with passages on sin, hellfire & damnation.

I suppose they ran out of room before they got to the bits about forgiveness.

And don’t worry, I don’t keep them anymore. I just enjoy them and set them free again (usually in the rubbish bin).

I’m not so much into the evangelism aspect, partly because of the hate-filled drivel of the Jack Chick school, and partly because I think something so big is just too personal–I mean, talk about presumption.

But I can also see the point–I mean, we go on and on about our favorite new products, and how they “change our lives” on and on about Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser (love it!) iPod (yay!) Kaboom (another cleaner that rocks!)…so why not try to help other people out if here you’ve got this thing which you feel is just, well, literally in some cases, the End of ends, the all-one, the faith which gives you strength, safety, everything…well, that’s it, isn’t it? It’s not cleaning, it’s not entertainment, it’s not even Knitting. It’s faith. It’s Big. It’s not lifestyle (though so many treat it like it is) it’s Life. Life everlasting.* That’s really BIG, yeah?

But I like reading all the LITTLE pamphlets.

*(the words change between faiths, but I think they all share common threads. So despite all the Christian-oriented jargon tossed around in this post, I bet you’d never guess what religion I’m most closely aligned with and identify as. Big fat awesome prize to the person who guesses it. Hell, if you’ve read through this dreck you deserve a prize. ;))

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