jesus, People!

[TheRedneckProfessor]

I just watched this documentary last night, though it has been on YouTube for a while now.   Two things really struck me close to home as I sat, nonplussed, staring at the screen like a sheep at a freshly painted gate.

 

The first thing that really grabbed me was just how much I can identify with the kids who grew up in this environment.  While my own experience was not quite as restrictive as this, there were a great many overlaps and parallels.  The church I grew up in had a nursery/daycare center, preschool, K-12 grade school, boy- and girl-scout-like programs, youth groups for jr. high, high school, and college, actual college programs in association with the University in the Southeastern region of the country... all the way up to a retirement center for the older folks.  Literally everything to see its members all the way from the cradle to the grave.  I could not escape ever, even for a single day of the week, from the church "family."  By middle school, I gave up trying and just embraced the indoctrination, as a defense mechanism; I knew what was expected of me and I delivered in spades. 

 

It wasn't a cult, per se; and it certainly wasn't a commune.  But the sense of imprisonment was just as palpable as if it had been.  What I was allowed to read, watch, listen to... think... was all decided for me.  Who I was allowed to be friends with... who I was allowed to date...  No wonder it takes me forever to make up my mind even now...  

 

One particular part in the film felt like a literal slap in the face.  The girl mentioned how many of the kids she grew up with ended up addicts, alcoholics, homeless.  My mind suddenly became the backdrop to a parade of faces from my own childhood and youth belonging to poor souls who traveled those same roads, some still lost, wandering. 

 

The second thing that I am, admittedly, still reeling from a bit is this thought of, "What the fuck?!"  Coming of age in the late 80s and early 90s, JPUSA was our Mecca.  They were the most instrumental organization behind the rise of christian rock and metal.  All, or at least most, of the best bands came from there.  Rez Band when I was a kid and later Spike Nard and Crashdog when I entered the skater-dude-punk-rock phase obligatory for Gen-Xers.  Cornerstone music festival was a mandatory stop on the road to maturity as a christian artist of any kind; and, as a budding poet, it was no different for me. 

 

And who could forget the scandal that ensued after Glen Kaiser publicly called Mike Warnke out as a liar?  Entire groups of friends at the University in the Southeastern region were split down the middle in the aftermath; because these guys were modern day saints, apostles, and prophets.  Warnke had spoken at the church several times and nobody was anybody until they had seen Rez Band in concert.  Yet, behind it all were all these dark secrets...

 

So much of my childhood and youth was a lie, a cover-up, a misrepresentation of the truth.  And people now wonder why I am so careful to guard my own personal integrity...