The Miraculous Vericose Veins...
Malo...oka, im so, so sorry for not posting in a while...yeah, yeah, i broke my promise of posting every other day...go ahead and make me feel guilty...its just that this week has been CRAY-ZAY...ive been busy with soccer, school, history day (i was chosen to be a judge for the students' history projects), friends, etc., etc...you all know how it is...just plain craziness...but, like ive said, its probably a good thing...i need to keep myself busy on this island...or else ill go nutty...the above picture and all the pictures on this post are actually more pics from our famous hiking trip...you know, the one where i almost died!...the picture is obviously of a bell tower at a church...perfect for this post...this post is gonna be about my wonderful adventure at church last saturday...and how im back to my atheist self...this post'll have nothing to do with the culture of american samoa (for the most part), but like much of my experiences here, ive learned more about myself than the island...the culture of me...kinda like the show Lost...get stranded on an island, even a wildly mysterious and fascinating one, and youre forced to look deep into your self...though youd think the eerie island would be the thing being observed...but yeah, here we go...so, lisa and i decided to go to church last saturday because we heard a great speaker was going to be giving an inspirational speech/sermon...now, lisa, a much more religious person than i, hasnt been going to my church because she doesnt really like it...i wont go into why, but she did, as did i, want to see this speaker...ive liked this church up untill this night...i mean, i mostly was going because i loved the people...but i also like singing and dancing, and thats what kinda church this is...anyways, about a minute into his speech i could tell that it wasnt going to be good...everything i despise about religion and, specifically, christianity was festering in every word he said...it was, in my opinion, the opposite of holy or righteous and godly...it was the anti-christ, i tell ya...i dont know if this encounter with extreme christianity was scarier than my other scariest encounter with fanatical christianity, but it came pretty darn close...ill explain that experience first...
a few years ago, my sister and i went to shawn's old church for a play that was getting rave reviews...the entire "morality" play presented humans and their fate in either heaven or hell...for example, theyd have the teenager who commited suicide...of course, she went to HELL!!!...with SATAN and his HORNS and FLAMES and EVIL LAUGH!...and then theyd have the mother who didnt believe in christ...and though she lived a good life, when she died in a car accident with her daughter, the daughter went to heaven while the mother went to HELL!!!...and this wasnt the worst of it...at the end of the play, they told the audience that if they wanted to go to heaven they should go through the doors at the front of the stage...those were the pearly gates to heaven...but if we wanted to go to HELL we would walk out the back doors...i, absolutely, wanted to go to HELL...so i strolled out the back doors...my sister was taken away and made to go into the doors to heaven...and then they "saved" her by lecturing her on the power of christ...that night still makes me sick to my stomach...though i understand they only wanted to help and inspire people who were in need of inspiration (and im sure they have helped many people), i still believe that this is the opposite of what i want out of religion and god and inspiration...im just not the person to be inspired by fear...or anti-love...and i do think that saying a teenager who commits suicide is going to HELL is anti-love...its hateful, shameful, and callous...
okay, so on to the speaker and his very "inspirational" words...ill just write about some of the horridly despicable things he said...remember, i do understand that some people need this type of representation of religion to get by in life...i truly think the reason why this night, and that other charming night, was so frightening and sickening was how other people reacted to this...my church, the people ive grown close to and respected, adored his speech...and eat it up like french fries and mayo...thats why i got so upset about it...im not trying to be judgemental of others...im just saying that its not my cup of tea...and its disheartening to me to think that it is my church's cup of tea...anyways, here's why i found this speaker to be upsetting and disappointing...
-the man kept on reiterating the connection between money and the lord...he not only said that to not have god in your life is like being poor (which i understand the metaphor he's using, but i still dislike the mention of money while talking about god...and what does this mean, that being poor means you dont have god in your life?...huh?), but he also said, literally, that when you have a nice car you have god in your life...he kept on discussing the relationship between monetary things and the lord...that the lord will bless you with a car and money and a house and a successful business if you have the lord in your heart and soul...i completely disagree with this...but the people in my church didnt...they egged the speaker on by having all the business owners go up and be blessed by the man...or the lord...i kept thinking, and what if their business failed that year?...what if they had to sell their family car to get by?...does this mean the lord wasnt truly in their hearts?...or was he too busy blessing the family next door with a brand new S.U.V.?...and what if youre "poor" (whether you have a lack of money or just have a lack of love/life), does that mean you dont have god in your life?...because, essentially, what this man was saying was that the only reason to have the lord in your life was to become happier...to become richer...to become more powerful...to not be "poor"...barf on my face!...
-the speaker talked and talked about how he has "saved" and "cured" people during his sermons...another big pet peeve of mine about religion...he said he'd see angels over peoples heads and ask them to come up and be blessed by the lord...he said he had a woman come up who had been having troubles getting pregnant...he touched her belly (or the lord did) and she wrote him a letter the next week saying how she finally got pregnant...and he even bragged about how he helped a blind man see and a crippled person walk...its a miracle!...what lisa and i thought was the most hilarious miracle he performed was this one time where he was giving a sermon and a woman told him that when she got to the church she had been suffering from vericose veins and that by the end of his sermon her disgusting vericose veins had disappeared...miraculous!...lisa and i were laughing our heads off during that story...first of all, do people really believe that miracles like these ones really did happen?...and, second of all, do people think these are even "miracles"?...in my opinion, i find these to be tragedies...i believe that jesus wouldve wanted this woman to love her vericose veins...to embrace the veins!...and love herself...this isnt a miracle that she magically was cured...its actually kinda sad...i mean, she hated herself for having the visible veins, and what did she learn?...that jesus hated them too!...so he got rid of the popping-out veins...jesus said, "you have me in your life, and i completely agree with you...your vericose veins are ghastly and repulsive...lets make them go away!"...but what if her veins wouldnt have gone away after his sermon?...what if that woman still couldnt have a baby?...what if the blind man was still blind for the rest of his life?...is jesus not in their lives?...did he fail THEM?...or did they fail HIM?...once again, may this notion of religion barf on my face...ravioli barf, please...
-lastly, the speech began to become a wild roller coaster of insanity...he began to talk about how people, when honestly touched by the lord, will lose control of themselves...yes, ala speaking tongues and rolling around on the floor...he said that when he gets touched by the lord he will often become stiff and fall to the ground and become paralyzed by his touch...he said much of his audience begin speaking in tongues and begin to laugh or cry hysterically and uncontrollably...this terrified me as is, but suddenly the people around us began to speak in tongues...and then they began to laugh...slowly, the whole church began to laugh...feverishly and frenziedly...he began to pronounce that they were being authentically touched by the lord...that they were in true happiness and joyfulness and that god was in their bodies...this is when it became more than scary or sickening...it became down right unnerving and enraging...lisa and i actually got up and left at this point...we were so freaked out and dismayed...what really makes me angry though is not only how these people, my fellow church friends, followed and commended this man's beliefs and practices (because i do feel like those people really did believe that the lord was touching them...and, i suppose, thats a good thing), but i also became infuriated by how this man made me feel about my relationship to god...and lisa's, too...we felt like and were made to believe that the lord wasnt "touching" us...that he wasnt in our lives...or that we werent in his...the man, and my church, made me feel like i have no connection to the lord...afterall, i dont have a car...which apparently means i dont have jesus in my heart...i, as well, still have a cyst in my cheek that id love to be ridden of..."dear, god, its me, joe, could you make this lump evaporate?...or are you not in my soul?...and, also, god, what are these red spots in my underwear?"...i also didnt speak in tongues or roll around on the floor or become stiff or laugh hysterically...did that mean something was wrong with me?...with my relationship with the lord?...the man made me feel inadaquete...i even began to feel like those people were right and i was wrong...that my friendship with god was a crock of poop...now, technically, i dont really believe in a god (especially after this night!), but still...this idea of religion and god and inspiration is manipulative and mean-spirited and, actually, uninspiring...anyways, lisa and i were having none of that...hell's no!...that man couldve barfed on our faces and we wouldve been more inspired by that than what he had to say...cruel?...yes...but he made me a atheist again...how cruel is that? ;-)
alright, ill get off my high soapbox...but thats the beauty of blogs, right?...having the ability to speak your mind to the world...and now you guys can tell me, and the world, what you think...oh, and remember that this post was pretty much a free-write...dont forget, this is a diary of mine...so, in other words, dont expect sophisticated dissertation-like writing...i havent organized ideas or done research or anything for that matter...by the way, thanks for the awesome advice from the last post...especially to the person who suggested having a team set of shoes...and tiff, im so excited to talk to you about your milwaukee teaching adventures...isnt it fun?!...
k, before i leave, i just wanted to give y'all some links...here's some links to articles about all the chaos goin on down here in the south pacific...there's coups (i love that word!) going on in fiji and tonga...soon itll be american samoa...and ill be in the middle of a war zone...or maybe i can be the leader of the coup...and i can say "coup" all day...coup...coup...coup...and here's the official tafuna high website...its hardly ever updated...but yeah...
posted by Samoa Joe at 3:37 AM
3 Comments:
my boss is very intrigued by the fiji stuff and updates me daily. He said this is like the 5th time that fiji has had this problem in 15 years and that's just way to many times for a happy little island. Not to mention they apparently have 'quarentined' fiji and we think that is funny because it's an island.... is that really necessary?
I think it's fair to be scared of religion and overly religious people but God is a personal relationship thing...God gives grace and as humans we need grace.
dad said god be with you all.joe whats up not long and you will be back can you bring back a newspaper and stuff on fiji and new zeland things like land prices @ home okay this took me 30 min to right see you soon
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