"just Say No To Jesus" : (A Work Of Fiction)

[DrGuitar]

 

Just Say “No” to Jesus

 

by Adam

I am going to tell you a story about a dark period of my life, before I met my savior. Like most testimonials,
this one begins with my childhood. When I was a child I wasn't particularly
devoted to Jesus, and in fact I never paid much attention to Christians or any
Evangelists. I grew up in a middle-American rural neighborhood, and went to a
typical high school. Now that I think about it, It was sort of a Podunk town,
but I didn't know it them. I was just a kid, growing up in America.

Well, all that changed one day as I passed a certain street corner on my way home from school. I would like to say
that the air was dark and cloudy, but in fact, it wasn’t. It was frightfully
clear and sunny. Anyway, I passed a rather disheveled man standing on a street corner, and I almost walked past him when he spoke to me.

 

 “What’s that?” I asked him, for I hadn’t quite heard what he said. “I said”, he started to say, but then his eyes shot upwards and his mouth uttered a short prayer. I thought nothing of this sign, and it would be years later before I could recognize the signs of serious addiction. “Have you ever heard of Jesus?” I could have run away. I could have said no. But I didn’t. And that choice caused my life to slowly spiral out of control over the next ten years. “No I haven’t”, I spluttered, confused. No-one had talked to me about Jesus before. We talked together for about an hour and before I knew it, I considered myself saved. I skipped down the sidewalk happily, and I just felt so elevated, so high, knowing I was saved.

At first I hid my faith from my friends, praying only in private and before meals and tests. I spent my Sundays
in church when I could, although many times my chores and schoolwork kept me
elsewhere. Some people noticed the change, but I was convinced I could keep
everything under control.  Things started getting more serious over the next few years. I started attending church every Sunday, and I read the bible at odd hours of the day. My longtime girlfriend, Sara, worried about
me, but the rest of the people I knew told her to calm down.

“It’s just a stage”, they said.

 

I graduated high school in ’92 and took up a job as a clerk at the local shoe store. I did my job well, and the
manager was impressed. I was due for a promotion, and I was thinking about
proposing to Sara.  Then everything changed. I ran into my Pastor at the bus stop and he noticed that I hadn’t attended church last Sunday. In fact, I had been attending church less often than before and I
realized I couldn’t even remember the last time I had opened up a bible on my
own. He talked me back into the faith, and I felt caught up in something beyond
my control. I stayed up late that night, praying to Jesus and begging him for
forgiveness. I was tired, and I slept so late that I missed my usual morning
shift by two hours. I read from the book of Psalms on the way to work and
almost wrecked the car not once, but twice that morning.

My manager told me that if that ever happened again, I’d be fired. I was angry and resentful, but now I see
that he was just being reasonable. No-one could tell me that what I was doing
was wrong, and I kept making excuses for my behavior. “I owe my salvation to Jesus. Reading the Bible is my way of repaying”, I said. Sometimes I was diplomatic. “Just one more chapter”, I would say before proceeding to read two.

I was beginning to spend long hours of the day, in on-and-off prayer to Jesus. I was making more mistakes at work,
and my relationship with Sara sagged. People complained when I failed to
deliver their shoes from the store room quickly, and Sara declined my first
proposal for marriage.

 

Things kept getting worse, and I sensed my life was out of control. I was attending church three times a week,
and holding Bible studies with my church friends every Monday and Friday. My
family members were worried that I had lost most of my old friends, but I still
had one link to the outside world: Sara.  Everything took a turn for the worse in ’95. Sara had finally agreed to marry me, and our wedding date wasset: March fifth. She prepared most of the decorations because I was too tired
throughout the day from my early morning quiet times and late-night bible
studies. On the night of our wedding I was nowhere to be seen. My parents found
me in my bedroom, passed out with a bible in my hands. I had tried to pull an
all-niter, but had fallen off around 4:00 or so. I woke up in the hospital,
suffering from severe dehydration and exhaustion. Jesus was taking a toll on my
life, and I knew it.

We set a new date for the marriage, a tentative six months after our first. We were married quietly, since our
parents were loath to spend money on another wedding that might just as easily
go awry, but I kept blaming everyone around me for my behavior. It wasn’t even a month after that I was fired from my position as clerk for reading the Bible during my shift. I patted  myself on the back for holding onto my faith despite “persecution”, but my  friends and family saw an entirely different picture. Eighteen months later, Sara
was pregnant and I was still without a job. And my last unemployment check was
only six months off.

Still, I kept clinging to my religion. I found I could no longer get a rush from my usual activities and I
started changing churches, looking for a more devout congregation that could
supply me with the more intense experience I craved. I finally settled on an
out of the way Pentecostal church nearly fifty miles from my apartment where I
stayed with Sara. I spent much of my time away organizing church activities and
I saw less and less of Sara. My family members felt like strangers to me, and
they felt like they hardly knew me. My “friends” at my church pulled me away
from my family and my relationship with Sara was severely strained.

In six short months, I lost everything. My last employment check had run out, the heating in our apartment
had been cut off, and my landlord was pressing on me for rent, which I paid
reluctantly. Sara got a job herself to help pay the bills, but I gave much of
what little she earned to my church. I couldn’t see that my addiction was
hurting others, and I refused to let go.

Finally, in December of ’81 I was sitting alone in my apartment, wrapped in a blanket trying to stay warm and
focus on the Bible that was in front of me. Theological treatises and other
paraphernalia littered the floor of my apartment. Sara had tearfully left me
the night before, taking our five-month-old son, Samuel, with her. I should
have seen then how I was hurting her, but her words fell on deaf ears. Somewhere
along the line, my habit had gotten so out of control that I valued my
“relationship” with Jesus over my relationship with Sara.

I had been arrested twice for petty larceny over the last few months, and was on my last strike. One more
conviction, and I would serve jail time. I wish I could say that my thefts had
been used to pay rent or food, but I spent most of the money I stole to fuel my
obsession with Jesus.

I flipped open the Bible, hoping for a sign from God. I read the part about the Israelites invading the kingdoms
of the Canaanites and stealing their lands. I took it as a sign that I was
meant to continue robbing from the unsaved, and I broke into the home of a
wealthy family on the other side of town.  I burgled the home and packed almost 2000$ worth of goods into a sack, when I found a Bible laying on the master bedroom floor, kicked beneath the bed. I was so hooked that I
immediately began to read the book. I was so lost in my high that I didn’t
notice when the family returned home from a trip to a restaurant.

I looked up suddenly to see a man standing in the doorway, gun drawn with his frightened wife clinging to his
shoulders behind him. I was so high that I wasn’t thinking clearly. I launched
myself at the man, and before I knew it, I was lying on the floor and smoke was
pouring from the barrel of the gun. I slipped into unconsciousness, wondering
why my God had failed me. 

I was tried for burglary and sentenced to five years in the state penitentiary. Things were rough at first,
since I could only read the Bible and couldn’t receive any of the more intense
spiritual highs to which I had become accustomed. I was slipping out of the
faith, and I suddenly had a ton of questions I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know
what to do, and was, quite frankly, suicidal.

Then something happened that
changed everything. One of my cellmate, seeing my depression, slipped me a
joint his wife had had smuggled to him. I took a few drags, and before I knew
it, my troubles seemed miles away. I threw my bible on the floor and laughed.
Suddenly I could see my religion for what it was: a crutch, and a pile of
flaming self-contradictions, absurdities, and bald-faced lies. As I toked on
weed for the first time in my life, I felt truly free, and I felt so good and
so clean. I converted to Rastafarianism, and began a relationship with the man
I now consider my lord and savior, Haile Selassie.

Well, I’m still in prison now, but
already I feel like I’m getting my life back. Gone are the hours of mindless
devotion and prayer that used to consume my early morning hours. Gone are the
telephone prayer chains and bible studies that used to consume my nights. I can
suddenly question everything without feeling guilty or faithless, and I’m not
ashamed when I fail to please a God who holds impossibly high standards and
stingily doles out conditional love.  Sometimes I get an urge to pick up a Bible again, and flip through the pages like I used to, but I just can’t.  I’ve been down that road before, and I know where it leaves. Ultimately, life
is too precious to waste on religion. It may give you the warm fuzzies, but it
will steal your soul. 

 

And so that is the story of how drugs saved me from Jesus. As I always say, when the drug starts to change you,
it’s time to change the drug. And remember kids: say “No” to Jesus!

 

 

 

 

[◊ crazyguy123 ◊]

Wow... I didn't know being hooked on Jesus could be that dangerous!