HST and me

Hunter Thompson wrote with so many distractions, it’s hard to see how he ever put out the amount of real work that he did.  Could you imagine being regulated on a certain amount of substance and maintaining that along with going off the radar every now and then with the psychedelics and still be able to sell shit like Mescalito and Screwjack?  That’s a tough nut, but he managed better than most.  Despite all the assumed exaggeration, which I’m positive there were, the man still operated under very unusual conditions.  Here I sit and try and let the same kind of feelings overwhelm me.  I look for the esthetic to set the scene and I find it surprising that I put out nothing more than this sophomoric dribble that I call James Beasley at his best.  Not sure what it is, but I like the way this types out.  Thompson prided himself on his spelling and typing, this is one area I will have to argue with him.  Only a veteran secretary could type some of this shit out under the influence the way he or even I am at this moment and it not look like what I just wrote.  Thank god for Microsoft word.  Brilliant invention, corrects all those little flaws we humans find ourselves with.

Conversation with a Christian (Part 3)

                The old adage rings true, “If you want something done right, you must do it yourself.”  We have fired that useless sloth of an assistant.  People, you must do your job yourself.  Trust me; I have learned this first hand.  What should have been no more than three days’ worth of work, turned into a whining, week long bitch session on his end, leaving me to wrap up this thing I can’t seem to get rid of.  After a savage physical and verbal lashing and severe docking of his pay, he was seen scurrying out the back door, bags in hand, before the drinks could be served.

                To his credit, he has managed to edit the recording down considerably and transcribe what was important.  My main job as of now is to write the horrendous intro to what I think is the third and final part and then wrap this whole think up with a nice little bow of afterthought. 
                Don’t be confused about the interruptions.  Those were his thoughts along the way of listening, I guess.  I’m in no shape or mood to redo his work.  I am already here, staring at this beast of a screen; it’s not going to get much better on my end tonight.

 

D: Are you afraid to die?

J: Nah.  Nah, I can’t say I’m afraid to die.  I’m afraid of pain.  I’m scared shitless that I’ll be that motherfucker laying in a ditch for three days, in some cold ass water, you know, asphyxiating on my own vomit and blood.  I don’t think I’m afraid to just not wake up one day and not have any of this.  I will tell you, I keep suicide as an option at all times.  Not now as a young man because I feel healthy, but as I get older and stuff that’s all, I will always keep that back there because I know pain awaits.  I know the loss of everything else that, you know, that you love, awaits you.  I mean it awaits you in those years.  So if I know I can’t handle it, if I can’t handle the world anymore, I keep that as an open option.  I’m a good, I’m a good person.  I don’t harm nobody, unless they deserve it.  I don’t let nobody cross me but I don’t go out causing harm to nobody.  I help my neighbors.  I help my friends.  I’m always helping.  I take care of me and her, make sure our bills are paid.  I’m a good person.  I have my character flaws.

D: We can’t be good enough.  The thing is, if you don’t believe that there’s judgment then I guess it doesn’t really matter.

J: No, exactly.

D: But if you do accept there’s an idea of god and there is a judgment coming, if you, if you take that then the problem is we can’t be good enough because we’ve all sinned.  Accept him as your lord, that means, ok you bought and paid for me, you died for all my sins, you took all my hell, so I owe you my life and I’m willing to give it to ya.  Here’s the keys, however you want me to do life, I’m gonna do it and you tell me to love my neighbor, I’m gonna love my neighbor.  Um, if you tell me to um, worship the lord, I’m a worship the lord and if you tell me to live a moral life, then I’ll live a moral life.  What if I mess up?  If I confess my sins, he’s safe and just and forgives me and cleanses me for all of righteousness.  First John 19 says because he has already paid for it, and that’s something that’s available to people who uh, accept him you know.  If you throw out the bible I don’t have much to go with, but if you, if you take….

J: You don’t have you own heart to tell you, “I shouldn’t slap my wife, I should give my kids food so they don’t starve to death and I shouldn’t fuck teenage boys and I shouldn’t…

D: You can do all that.  You can do all that and you can avoid all these things that you’re talking about and still not be good enough for heaven.  My ultimate goal is to be obedient to god as to what I think he’s let me know, let me know what he expects out of people.  And really he, he offers salvation up front.  It’s a free gift.  Jesus did it, died on the cross, paid for all my sins, all yours.  And he says um, I’ll give you this, now I’m asking you um, because I’ve given you this, I’m asking you to use it well.  Live right, bless people, help ‘em out, forgive ‘em uh, don’t judge ‘em um, you know, be patient, be forgiving.  Um, all these things that we both know are quality virtues.  That’s the way.  Bit its people who, I think what the bible teaches is that people who think that, “Well I’m just gonna be good on my own.”  Um, that’ll get you a few points here and there with people in life but it’s, it’s not taking away the fundamental, alienation between you and god…

 

J: What about all those people that lived before Jesus?  Did they just automatically go to hell because there wasn’t away to be forgiven?

D: Well there was.

J: And what was that?  Sacrificing?  They talk a lot about sacrificing and stuff.  If you felt like you had done wrong, you…

D: Ok, you took a clean animal, a bull or a calf, he’s uh, he’s not got a, he’s not got eight toes on his head.  He’s perfect.

J: Yeah.  Leviticus gives you the whole list.

D: Ok and I uh, I’ve come, I’ve uh, I’ve committed these sins and these things and those things.  I transfer it to him and offer him as a sacrifice.  He’s innocent of them, but he has taken the guilt.  Now what that did was sort of um, held in escrow or something until the time of Jesus, so that Jesus you know, these were, these were kind of a pointer to Jesus.  He’s the, as the bible says…

J: Is that why they refer to him as the lamb a lot of times?

D: That’s it!  The Lamb of God, sacrificed unto the world.

J: Now what about, now all Christianity started in what is now known as the Middle East, right?  Egypt and the Middle East, right?

D: Jerusalem, yeah.

J: What about all those native tribes that lived in southern America or uh, southern Africa uh, and stuff like that, that had never heard the word of god?  For generations there were thousands of people that died and never heard the word of god.

D: They were, well the bible says that you need to make disciples out of them so that they won’t go to hell.

J: But there were people that died before Europeans or anybody with that kind of knowledge ever even came to them.  So what about those people?

D: Well, I think those who just uh, lived the life uh, went to hell.  I think those who want a relationship with god and tried the best that they can…

J: But they had no knowledge of it.  I mean there was, I mean if it was like if I mentioned, “Blah blah blah blah blah”, to you, it means nothing to you.

D: The, the, the message of Jesus is that those people, who don’t have the truth, need the truth, because it’s the truth that saves them.  They need to be saved so they won’t go to hell.  So yeah, I think you’re right.  I think that goes back to the uh, the question of those, how those tribes got to be savage.  They walked away from god.  They walked away.  Paganism is a degeneration from what we created, which was um…

J: So your logic is that everything starts off civilized and Christianity, and then diverted off into the different sects.  The natives weren’t even native until thousands of years later?

D: Yeah I guess.  Uh, there were, I mean there were tribes and there were heathens and pagans in the 1^st century, but I think that we trust for anybody who wanted to know more about god, that god provided a way for them to do that somehow or another.  Like there’s um, there’s these folks in the 1^st century called “god fearers”.  They weren’t Jews.  They hadn’t converted to Judaism, but they, they got as close to Judaism as they could.  They didn’t go through the circumcision and full conversion, but they say that these people who are Jews, they don’t worship a bunch of gods and just sort of wink at it, they take it seriously.  They worship this living god and they have a good moral, believable life and so they couldn’t fully participate.  I think there was always people like that, who were willing to um, consider you know…

J: Well, I’m talking about like in 10,000 B.C., when all this shit is going on in Egypt and stuff like that, there were people that lived in what is today’s California, and they had no knowledge of any of their religious beliefs or any of their anything!  No, no, no way to even get the knowledge, and they’re still destined to burn in hell?  That’s cold-hearted.

D: Well it’s a consequence of um…

J: It’s just a consequence of geography?

D: Well it’s a consequence of you know, their ancestors decisions to pull away from god.  Um, um, that I mean…

J: Ok, so you’re still taking it back to everybody spread, so that the people that loved in today’s California originated from Adam and Eve still?

D: Yeah.

J: Ok. Ok.  Ok.  See I have a hard time grasping the whole, ok, let me ask you this, Adam and Eve had sex, right?  Had kids?  Who did they fuck?

D: Well it had to be sisters!  That was before there was uh, a prohibition.  There’s, there’s no other way for the human race to get…

J: So incest?  So we were all bred through incest?

D: I, it really wasn’t technically incest at that time, and I don’t…

J: Incest is just a word.  They fucked their brothers and sisters, right?

D: Yeah.  Uh…

J: Right!  That’s incest!  That’s the definition of incest!

D: If, if Adam lives nine hundred years and they have children every year, there’s gonna be guys um, seventy-five years old and there’s gonna be sisters twenty.

J: Yeah but they have the exact same bloodline.

D: But they don’t even know each other.  I mean, I mean they know each other, but it’s not like, it’s not…

J: I don’t give a damn.  If I woulda went and met some girl at some club and brought her home and fucked her, then the next day I was flipping through a family album and seen her at you know, a picnic of ours, it would be the same thing.  I didn’t know she was my cousin.

D: There’s just no other explanation.  That’s all I’ve got for you.

J: Oh no, I agree.  There is no other explanation and if, isn’t that kinda weird though?

A large section is edited here due to the ridiculous subject matter that came next.

J: My sister, they were going to that “Six Flags over Jesus”, P.G. Baptist.  See that’s ridiculous to have a church that cost more than a million dollars.  More than a million, I bet that place had to cost more than a million dollars.  To have a church like that is fucking ridiculous.  That’s the epitome, like I said, I’ll never object to the moral values in that thing, but there’s a few good, like the whole, you know, it’s harder for a rich man to get into heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.  I agree with that shit.  And I one hundred percent agree with the meek shall inherit the earth.  You know I, if, if that rings true, I will be a happy son of a bitch, but it doesn’t seem to be heading that way now.  Seems like all those greedy ass pigs-heads, they rule everything.

D: There’s always been that kind of conflict though.

J: It has.  There, there always has, but when will it end dude?  When will it end?

D: (Laughs)  I mean what you’re, what you’re looking and hoping and praying for is the same thing people like me are.  You know that’s what we say and god says, “Well it will when, when time is up.  It’ll, it’ll be up and, and everybody, everything will be just and fair.”

J: In my state of mind, without you know, having that to rely on, I think, you know, it’s probably a whole lot easier just too uh, fit within the system cause I’m comfortable.  I can come home and do what, you know, let’s say we live in a free world, you know, a free country, it’s, it’s semi-free, I’ll say it’s semi-free, within the confines of this, as long as I can get into this house, you know within the confines of this house, I am relatively free.  Either that or live uncomfortably.  You can be completely free if you want to, but you don’t get any of the benefits that the system offers you, you know.  You know like, like right now I don’t have any insurance.  The state of Arkansas is paying for my back surgery.  You know, so I wouldn’t have them kind of benefits or anything like that if I, you know, exited the system.

D: A lot of people who are Christians are also flag flying, you know, America is not Christianity and America is not um, you know, god.  Um, America…

J: America breeds people like Fred Phelps though, so, they, he’s totally unpatriotic.  He’s totally like the juxtaposition of what you just said.  See he hates America but he’s like all Christian.

D: I don’t think, I mean a lot of people think god loves America and America’s got special placement in god’s heart and um, I don’t see that in the bible either.

J: Nationality ain’t got nothing to do with it.

D: No, not really.  God made a covenant with Abraham.  Abraham’s family became Israel.  They got this special thing going.  Um, Jesus came from Israel, so there’s this special place they have because, because god was using that, that whole group of people to make his name known to the world.  And he did and he has and that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing and it’s all still uh, um an outgrowth of all that.  But um, America, the bible doesn’t know a thing in the world about America.

                Normally when I’m with a person who’s gonna have surgery the next day, I’ll say, “Do you want me to pray with you?”  You know, but I wasn’t going to do that.  I’ll, I’ll just throw it at you.  What do you think?

J: To pray with me?

D: Yeah.

J: I’m not praying.  I’ve got no one to pray to.

D: Mmkay, I’ll just, I’ll just pray for you then

J: I enjoy conversation and stuff, but you have a family and stuff like that.  Do you not feel like your time could be spent, you know, better?

D: Um, I’, not, I’m on the clock.  This is, this is time for me to be doing this, but the guy who was with me, he’s gotta, he’s gotta full time job.  He was doing that extra.  He was doing that because he believes in it, cares about people, you know.  Um, people uh, like I say, god wants people to know I’m here, I care about you, I’m for you not against you.  If you’ll give me a chance, I’ll bless your socks off.  And that’s what this is all about and that’s why we are sitting here having this conversation, because I’ve been to your place a couple times to invite you to my church because god wants you there.  Um, give him a chance.

J: I don’t know.  I think it’s because you got this idea that you might win brownie points or something.  I don’t know.  The more souls you convert, they got a counter up there like an abacus or something.

D: No.  Nah, I’m not getting any points.  The only points I’ve gotten are given to me uh, uh Jesus has given me all the points there are to have.  Now that’s just a free gift.  And I do this out of gratitude to him.  I mean that’s, that’s really what motivates uh, a real honest Christian.  Um…

It is apparent here that our author has no intention of keeping his marijuana consumption a secret.  Barely visible in the lowered cam, not to reveal the poor deacon’s face, a bag, pack of papers, and grinder is made visible.  The tense silence seems to last much longer than it should have with anybody confronted with this situation.  From what James has told me, he began to sweat, under what I could only assume was the tight and high collar of a pastel yellow Polo shirt.

D: I doing what I do um, out of gratitude to him.  He’s done everything for me and I’m gonna do what I can to show my gratitude.  Um, and that’s really what it’s about here.

J: So you don’t honestly think, I mean there’s not this fucking contest against or there’s not this contest for how many souls you can convert in a week or…?

D: No, there might be in some.

J: Awe, well that’s an ignorant statement.  I probably shouldn’t…

D: There might be in some circles but um…

J: What about these congregations that, I mean these televangelists and stuff like, see this is another part of why I don’t do, it’s not necessarily the bible or the religion as a whole, its organized religion.  The people that you associate yourself with have, I mean, they are full of rampant pederasts, fucking women beaters, you know.  All kinds of stuff I mean, at the topest, at the top ranks…

D: Well I mean you’re making broad brush strokes there.  There’s bad people all around.  There’s a lot more bad people who are godless than there are bad people who are uh, in Christianity I think.  And televangelists are a joke.  They’re, they’re begging for money.  They’re making stuff up.  Um, not all of them, but the ones that you’re kinda referring to, you know, they are a joke.  I’m not into that.  I don’t want to be a televangelist. 

J: But they’re on, they’re on the same side you are.  You don’t associate yourself with any type, I mean but the label Christian associates you with them.

D: Well the label human does too.

J: Yeah!  You’re right.  You’re right.  I agree with ya.

D: I’ll pray for you.  I’ll check on you tomorrow.

J: Alright man, well I, I enjoyed it.  I really did.

D: Good, I’m glad you did.  I appreciate it.  I enjoyed it too.

J: Yeah, well my door is always open man.  I’m always; I like intelligent conversations on any subject matter.  And religion, I mean we live in a world where religion is abundant.  We live in a world where religion, I mean it forms our laws.  I can’t walk down to the store and get a bottle of wine because…

D: You’ve really got yours too.  I mean you’re kinda like ancient cynicism or something.

J: Oh there’s a lot of cynicism in it.  I don’t know about ancient.

D: I mean, I mean the original cynics who just lived um, by uh, just if it feels good do it, if it don’t, don’t.

J: Yeah exactly!  Exactly!

D: Whatever goes, that’s cynicism.  That’s pretty much what you, you are going by, yeah that’s a religion.

J: Well it’s a lifestyle.  I won’t say religion, it’s a lifestyle.

D: But it’s something that you, if you say, “I believe in this, I believe in that.  I don’t believe in children.  I don’t believe in marriage.”  You got a system there.  You got a philosophy.  And uh, it’s, it’s a religion.  Uh, um you got your own…

J: Yeah if you want to put it in those terms.

D: You gotta talk to people and persuade other people of your beliefs.  You’re doing the same thing I’m doing.

J: You’re right.

 

                This seems like a better ending point than what that shiftless apprentice had.  It also brings me to a closing argument I had not brought up in the conversation, for reasons I’m sure we would all debate.  The recruitment process is a must with these types of people.  To my knowledge, limited as it may be, no other religion or group tries as hard to get their numbers up as Christians seem to do.  It’s almost as if it was a political campaign, but all they claim to want is to save your soul.
                Think about how scary it is that we have a large number of the adult population, even a lot of those in power that believe in vengeful deities from other worlds.  Imagine, for a minute, the broader spectrum of Christian mythology.  All of that Rosemary’s baby, Illuminati, nine circles of hell shit must be real if the Jesus Christ, son of god, shit is.  At least L. Ron Hubbard knew he was full of shit.

 

james l beasley jr

hopeless, AR

 

 

Conversation with a Christian (Part 2)

Back again with the drunken ramblings of a cynical redneck and the deluded deacon who decided that he was a safe enough character to hold such a conversation with.  This section was a fair bit easier to edit than the previous. The conversation seemed to venture towards more personal things in the author’s life, which I found to be of no use.  To me, as an outsider looking in, it was a probing by the deacon to expel certain feelings from the author.  Very rarely was there actually anything worth listening to.  Certain things have been left in to set the scene or to prove a point, but one thing that I have gathered from my own deciphering and minor education in psychology is that both parties where trying there damndest to convince the other.  As calm as everything seemed to be, there were a lot of awkward silences and weird interruptions which I am sure, you as the reader picked up on from the earlier post.  We have tried to keep that to a minimum here but once again I believe it highlights the faults of our author, who, as I can contest to, is a good man with both faults and triumphs.  Here he was not at his best and as a personal friend and a professional I must point these things out for good or ill.

 

J: Ok, let’s take a step back and rely on belief.  Again just a blind…

D: But you do that when you turn the light switch on.

J: No, I know!

D: Can you explain how that would work?

J: Yes, I know exactly how that works.

D: But you don’t know how everything works that you do?

J: Well I don’t know how the power gets to this box out here.

D: Yeah, you don’t have to.

J: I don’t know how that fucking LED T.V. works.

D: And you, you know, you live with it anyway.  You trust it and go with it.  And, and at some point, at some point ok, you, you had this faith in evolution or something.  You can’t explain how those things all come together and really here’s the thing…

J: No.  No, there’s a lot I can’t, that’s why I say I don’t know.

D: Here’s the thing, my experience shows me, where do babies come from?  Living people who make babies.  And where do strawberries come from?  They come from living strawberries that make baby strawberries.  Everything that comes, everything that exists, comes from something else alive, unless it’s a rock or something like that, and so, so my experience, everything in my experience and everything that makes sense, shows me that living things come from other living things, and so if, human beings got life somehow, it makes sense to me, and it makes a lot more sense to me that, that human beings got life from another living thing which the bible says is god.  Um, I don’t see evolution, I don’t, I don’t see forward progress.  I don’t see, I don’t see that happening.  I see things degenerating, deteriorating.

J: There’s a book uh, I read for argument’s sake, that you might actually really, really enjoy called The Science of God.  I can’t remember who wrote it, but uh, check it out seriously.  It’s a hell of a good read.  I mean it totally, it’ll, I mean it’s a religious book; it’s made for people, for the argument of god, that there is a god but it also blends the science.  You know, people that have the tendency to argue the science facts against god.  It blends those in and lets you see how it correlate with creation or correlate with the flood or correlate with Noah living to be 870 years old you know, bones inside the earth, you know stuff like that, that correlates and it was a very, very, I found it very interesting to read and you might wanna check it out.

D: Well I might.  I, I know people, the guy who was with me the other night is very into that kind of thing.  You know creation uh, creation science and that kind of thing that, I honestly have never gotten all that interested in um, but uh, I can see some value in it.

J: You’ve never felt the need to step out of it for a few, I mean as a grown, conscious, I’m sure the teenage rebellion years you said earlier, you know that’s, I wasn’t conscious when I was a teenager.  I wasn’t conscious until just a couple years ago in all honesty.  Uh, but as a conscious adult, you ain’t never just wanted to step out of it and think on a total different plain, just for a little while, to see if maybe there was something else out there?  You ever smoke marijuana?

D: I haven’t.

J: You ever try, or wanted to?

D: No.  Nah I haven’t had any desire to do that.

J: Well that’s, that’s one thing that will open up your mind and make you think and uh, psychedelics are another thing.  Mushrooms, you know, and I recommend organic stuff.  I mean there’s nothing wrong with marijuana or psilocybin mushrooms…(inaudible) I can even back it up with Leviticus and Timothy and your, you know, seed bearing buds you should, you know, treat them as meats and eat all you can.  I mean it says that in the bible.

D: I don’t know.  That’s uh, to me that’s messing with your mind.  Making your mind…

J: How do you know god didn’t put that there so you could experience that and you might be able to become closer?  I’ve heard people of uh, there’s you know, the tribes in Brazil that have Ayahuasca ceremonies and they honestly believe that that’s how they get closer to god.  That they can see god face to face and they can do it once a year and their whole fucking year is trouble free because they know god.  I mean they know for a fact, it ain’t like your faith, I mean these people have seen god.

D: I honestly believe they are going to hell.  I honestly believe they probably, no telling what kind of lives they live but I don’t think they lived civilized lives.  I don’t think they are very educated.  I don’t think they have a good life.

J: But the, they’re native.  I mean they’re pretty much some of the only cultures that hadn’t been touched by eastern or western civilization.  They live the same…

D: They need to be.  They’re savages.  They’re going to hell.

J: But why do “savages” go to hell?  People that lived that way…

D: Ok, why do savages go to hell?

J: We’re not talking about scalping and eating babies and shit.

D: That’s what they do though.

J: Not all of them.

D: But follow me, follow me though.  You got Adam and Eve.  They’re civilized.  Far as we know they’re civilized.  You got Cain and Able, they’re pretty much civilized.  They offer sacrifices as good as you can do.  They, they herd cattle and grow crops.  Couple generations down Cain’s line you got people who pull away and start doing their own thing.  This guy marries two women.  First case of polygamy…

J: Do you not, hold on one minute.  Do you not believe that there was any type of tribes or any type of humanoid type of people before Adam and Eve?

D: There’s no reason to believe that.  Um, I don’t see any real need for them or evidence of them.

J: Cro-Magnon man or Adam and Eve were shaped a lot like Cro-Magnon man or the, the Neanderthal?

D: Yeah, I mean there’s Neanderthals walking around today.  There’s people that look like…

J: Mongoloids and shit?

D: There’s people that look like that now.  There’s no difference.  So what you have is people who start civilized and some pull away and start doing their own thing and they get uncivilized and they become savage.  You, I don’t know if you’ve ever read Lord of the Flies in high school…

J: Loved it.  Loved it and that’s exactly…

D: That’s what happens.  And that’s, and that’s where cavemen come from and that’s where um, savages in South America come from.

J: So you honestly believe that at one point in time everybody lived civilly?  Say even a, even a small community of we’ll say six hundred people, they all lived civilly and then just like one or two of them decided to branch off, they started breeding, well there would have to be more than one or two, say ten or twelve, walked three hundred miles this way and branched off and started doing other shit, we’re gonna live off different plants and we’re gonna eat different animals and we’re gonna do different things?

D: It, it was probably moral stuff more than anything.  Like one guy says, “Ok, you know everybody takes one wife.  I’m gonna take two.  I’m gonna do things my way.”  And he starts, he says this, he says uh, “There’s a guy who tried to steal from me, so I broke his neck.”  You know.  And they just start living uh, that way.

J: The outlaw type lifestyle?

D: Yeah, they started living by the law of the jungle.

J: And that created cavemen because they were eager to live like chaos, I mean live under no rules?

D: Yeah, that’s what I think.

J: Eh, I find that, I don’t know.  So you don’t believe in carbon dating or any kind of, any of that stuff like that?

D: I don’t, I don’t really trust it.  Of course, I’m not gonna say I really understand it.

J: Well I mean I don’t understand it.  I’m not a scientist.  See that’s some of that other shit you have to take; you know, you just have to take other people’s word for it. 

D: It doesn’t really matter to me if the earth was…

J: Ok, what about the whole dinosaur thing?  Did we live with dinosaurs?  I mean, were there fucking eighty foot tall dinosaurs running around with us being six feet tall?

D: There’s not much, the only little hint of them in the bible is the, like in the book of Job, there’s records of this critter called um, Leviathan.

J: You’re, as a person, as a whole, I mean you dress nice, you got a little money…What do you do for a job?  The church doesn’t pay you, does it?

D: Yeah that’s it.  That’s my, that’s my only…

J:  Ahh, see I don’t agree with that.  You think you make more than uh, 90% of your congregation?

D: Um, not 90%.

J: Uh, a majority of your congregation?

D: I don’t know.  I don’t know what they make.  They, they set up a salary package and they call the pastor and I got what they gave me.

J: Do ya’ll force tithings or what?

D: No.

J: No admission fees, nothing like that?

D: No, just like in this other Baptist church you were baptized in.

J: Pass the bowl around and you can put your dollar in or your change in?

D: Yeah, there’s an offering plate that’s passed.  That’s pretty much traditional in most churches, but most people who support the church uh, give, you know, they give and offering with the Sunday School uh, envelope.  And they support it regularly.  Just something they believe in.

J: I don’t know.  It just, I just think religion is one of them old world beliefs that we got hung up in, we took a, you know, we just took it, took too much stock in it.

D: Have you ever been married?

J: Nah.  I don’t believe in marriage.

D: Kids?

J: I don’t believe in having kids either.

D: Huh!?

J: I think the uh, earth is way over populated.  We have a system of absolutely corrupt greedheads that, if they would just allow it to happen, we could feed everybody in this fucking world.  Nobody would be homeless, but they won’t allow it to happen.  And I think it’s easier to kill off the population than it would be to change, get these mother fuckers to change their mind.  So adding kids to it doesn’t help the situation.

D: So you got uh, girlfriend that lives with you?

J: Yes sir.

D: Does she uh, have this same kinda philosophy you do?

J: Uh, she’s uh, I hate to talk about her this way, she’s just one of them, “I don’t think about it or I don’t really care.”  I think it, to me I think it’s important to, I got this agenda that, for one, I’ve got a lot of character flaws and I wanna make myself a better person.  I’m working on that a lot of, through a lot of different ways.  Religion is not one of them because I disagree.  Uh, but I, all I think, I think all it takes is consciousness.  Just being aware of yourself, your actions, your words, your impact on the people around you.  That’s, I think that’s all that matters.  That’s the utmost.  You are responsible.  You are your own god, you are responsible for, I mean for the actions…

D: Would you, so are you willing to spell out some of those character flaws?

J: Oh yeah, like I said earlier, I’m judgmental.  I’m judgmental like a motherfucker.  I will, in the first five, ten, fifteen seconds of meeting somebody, I’ve already picked out three or four flaws that, I think it’s so I can use it in defense later on.

D: But you are agreeing with Jesus.  He said don’t judge.  He said don’t judge so you won’t be judged.  So you’re agreeing with Jesus.

J: Oh yeah!  Yeah.  I’m not saying that there’s nothing in that book that is not morally sound.  I think that there are, now there are, there’s a lot of shit in Leviticus,  I’m for gays, uh, I’m a libertarian, anything you can do for yourself that causes pleasure or that you like that does not harm anybody else, fucking go for it.

D: The bible says it’s a sin, but it also says judge, being judgmental is a sin.  And you don’t think, you don’t think, you agree that being judgmental is a sin, only you probably don’t call it sin, but you don’t agree that homosexuality is?

J: No, no you’re right.  I don’t have to agree with the rules in that book.  I can make up my own.

D: Could you do that on the street with your car?

J: I do.

D: Just make up your own traffic laws?

J: I do.  Now whether I get away with it or not is another question.

D: What if you make up your own traffic laws and you kill somebody?

J: Then that’s my responsibility and that’s on me.

D: What if everybody did that?  What if everybody made up their own traffic laws?

J: Are we still having the same justice system that we have now or is there just no laws at all?

D: Well I don’t know, uh…

J: I believe that there does have to be a hierarchy of some sort.  I mean the mass of the population cannot take care of themselves.

D: The simple answer is, if we all, and, and that’s the way it started out.  They made those traffic laws because people were bumping into each other.  Um, but there’s gotta be, you know, some standard to live by, some standards of right and wrong, morality, and really the best that’s ever been done is Christianity.  Um…

J: Do you need a book to tell you what’s right and wrong?  Yes or no?

D: You need the bible.  You need…

J: You need a book!  See like this is, do you think smoking pot is a sin?

D: Yeah, I think it’s a form of drunkenness.  The bible doesn’t talk about smoking pot.

J: It talks about, I mean, it talks about to treat the buds as meats, to uh, enjoy, you know.

D: It’s not talking about marijuana anywhere in there.

J: Any kind of seed bearing bud and I mean that’s, that’s plain as fucking day.

D: It’s talking about, but that’s talking about food that you eat.  You’re really stretching it to justify using that verse.

J: See, I think that’s what a lot of people do.  I even, I wrote a short story I think you would like called uh, Death of a Christian.  You want me to print you off a copy right quick?

D: Sure.

J: It’s about uh, a guy that’s down on his luck, real you know, I’ll just let you read it, but I’ll get it up here just a minute.  Uh, it’s all up to interpretation.  But marijuana uh, I think if you do something wrong, anxiety, guilt and fear, is your body’s natural reaction to, “Hey, you fucked up!  You did something wrong!”

D: Guilt is a thing that god has, I believe, put in to us.  Guilt is all through the bible.  Guilt is your body, your, your life’s way of saying, “Um, uh, I shouldn’t have done that and I need to do something to rectify that.”

J: But it doesn’t have to necessarily have anything to do with god though.

D: But I think that you know that god’s out there.  I think uh, I think Psalm 19 uh, says, “The… (inaudible over key tapping)…declaring the glory of god.”  And Romans 1 says, “God has made himself known to everybody and everybody knows he’s there.  Some try and deny it but everybody knows it’s there.”  He, he makes himself known through your conscience.  He makes himself know through creation.  Um and he makes himself known, you see what he has created and your conscience tells you some things are right and some things are wrong.  And then some little short guy comes knocking on your door saying god wants you to take him seriously James.  And this is all three; you go this trifecta aiming at you, giving you a chance James.

J: But why?  Why does it have to be this ethereal fucking being that is out there shaking his finger at me from a million years ago?

D: I’m, I’m looking at evidence.  I don’t see as much logic as you seem to think you got.  I’m seeing a lot of leaps and bounds and a lot of things that you…

J: Yeah maybe about the weed shit and stuff like that, but…

D: There’s a lot of, there, you know you’re not giving me uh, a logical, rational, coherent system.  You got a lot of bits and pieces of things that you’re kind of, I think, throwing out there to kind of justify being uh, the kind of rebellious, kind of character that you’re portraying here, but I think you kind of know in your heart um, I’m sure of it and I don’t know, I’m not here to give you any grief, I’m here to try and be your friend and let you know if I can help you in anyway.  That’s what I’m in the neighborhood for.  Um, that’s why I knock on doors and once in a while, very rarely does anybody engage me on this level, most of the time they are just busy with life and they say, “Thanks a lot, maybe I’ll come.”  And that’s it.  Um, but if you, if you claim to be open minded and open to, you say you wanna work on your character flaws, um, I don’t know how you could go wrong just giving that a try.  And you know that I’m not gonna hurt you.  You could just come and listen.  Uh, I do bible study and, I mean that’s what I do on Sunday mornings.  I take a passage and I just walk through it.  Here’s, here’s what it says, here’s what it means, and here’s what I believe god intends for us to do with it so we can have abundant life, you know.  A good life you know.  Um, abundant life is…

 

J: What if I tell you I truly don’t need a god to uh, you know, fix my flaws?  I don’t need a god to, I can work myself through it.  I’ve, I’ve done good up to this point.  Trust me, if you would have seen me three years ago you would have been like, “Look at this fucking idiot!”  You know.

D:  Well I guess that’s, you know that’s just the best I can do.  I think, I think we, we don’t have the capacity to rally fix ourselves.  We don’t have the strength.  It’s like living in a…

J: I think we do.

D: …swimming in a fish bowl.  You’re inside the bowl, you can’t do anything about it.  You need outside help.  You need god’s…

J: I think we can do it.  If we honestly have the willpower and the want to do it, I mean look at what man has done.  Men can do amazing things and they’ve done it without god.

 

                I realized that the last post might have run a little long, maybe turning some people off.  I have kept this one a tad bit shorter although it was much harder to find a solid breaking point.  The next one should be the last as I am sure the few that are reading will be grateful.  I know I definitely will.  It can sometimes be a very demanding situation working for such an addled genius, but who am I to bitch.

Seeing shadows,

Stockton Riggs