rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

 Gods and Monsters:  Saint Paul Takes the Damascus Off Ramp

    I know this is supposed to be a music blog so I want to first go down on record as saying I think the Flaming Lips are groovy. Having said that I’m now gonna go off tangentially amok about what’s been coursing through my increasingly non-fevered mind lately. God, mostly. A little background: I was raised Roman Catholic, 7 ½ years in Catholic Grammar School back in the 1960’s, just after corporal punishment was banned. The nuns couldn’t hit you anymore but you could tell they really WANTED to and that type of psychology works on a kid’s psyche longer and harder and more insidiously than any smack on the seat of the pants could ever hope to. 6 yrs old, 1st day of school and I can still, 44 years later, hear  Sister Mary Aloysius telling us how we had “broken God’s heart”.  Again, a pretty heavy trip to put on a child who’s in no position to argue, or even CONSIDER, an alternative viewpoint.
    A large part of those fundamental years, where a child’s personality gets formed was spent being indoctrinated into the Catholic religion. Who made the world? God made the world! How are we born? We are born in a state of sin! Who died for our sins? Jesus died for our sins! Where do bad people go when they die? Hell! Etc. etc. etc. I remember in 6th grade I got a 100 on our Religion final. I caught all sorts of hell in the schoolyard for ‘blowing the curve’. Even then I was astounded that anyone could get LESS than 100 on a religion final. Hadn’t we basically been doing a book report on the same book for SIX FEAKIN’ YEARS???!! In any event, religion at that point was both a point of memorization and conditioned response. I had been conditioned to believe everything I had been taught those 6 years. Then the real trouble hit.
    I woke up one morning in April, 1967 later than usual. Voices downstairs told me that my father was home - this was unthinkable for a weekday as my father had a work ethic that would make the sternest Calvinist say “Ease up, old sport, yr gonna kill yrself working like that” (which he ultimately did). I also heard the voices of my Aunt and a few neighbors. My mother had been hospitalized w/a stroke for almost a year at that point, but I still hadn’t put 2 and 2 together. My father came into my room hurting in a way I still cannot imagine and, sitting on my bed said the words that changed my life on oh, so many levels.

    “God took yr mommy last night.”

    And, just like that, my mother was dead and so was my belief in God. No, that’s not exactly true; I still believed in Him but now I hated Him and everything He stood for and it’s just a testimony to the strength and depth of their damned indoctrination that I still capitalize His, Him and He. Just writing about this is getting me angry and, no, I’m not sure what that says about me, you, rock and roll or the lamp post although I’m sure that there are multitudes of the saved who’d be only more than glad to tell me. Which leads me to my next tangent. I’ve been posting on a Christian Message Board at a CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) Band’s website, recommended to me by an old friend. Maybe it’s the isolation I’ve been feeling here being new in town and maybe it was the fever, but little by little I opened myself up to the possibility of a reconciliation of spirit, a possibility of my getting right with God.
    The grandeur of the Polyphonic Spree TV concert, along with it’s timing, and the e-conversations I’d been having both privately w/my friend and publicly on the board, led me to think that MAYBE, just maybe I was ready for the whole ‘born again’ trip. I met really good people on the Board, people who seem firmly grounded in their faith and genuinely interested in sharing it with me. I felt the 1st flush of revelation, I felt ‘saved’ (whatever that means). I felt loved and alive with the light of something I chose to call the Lord. For about a week.
    E-mailing back and forth with my friend  came across the 1st big sticking point when I asked what his church’s stance was regarding homosexuality. Now I’m not gay (NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT!) but I feel that gay rights are human rights and if I have to denounce homosexuality than, well, I’m NOT a Christian. So I go to the Board and respectfully bow out and I start getting all these well meaning responses saying things that basically boil down to ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ (and that’s an oversimplification, I know, it’s just for the sake of brevity and hey, this is MY blog and I’m just riffing anyway so calm down) which I find to be as lame a position as ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’. So now we’re going back and forth with our respective takes on what God meant and how one defines ‘being a Christian’ and I’m starting to feel like that 11 year old kid who’s mom just died and the only target I got left worth shooting at is this empty suit, this icon of self loathing man invented ‘cause he’s an animal who knows he’s going to die (concept courtesy of Randy Newman’s “Faust”- see I remembered that this is supposed to be a music blog, after all).
    I admire the devout. I envy the surety of the commited Christian, or the devout of any faith, really. I wish that I could be so sure of what’s gonna happen to me when I die, but I’m not. Deep in my heart I feel it to be the Ultimate Heresy to even imagine that one can know the nature of God, His intention, His will. For all we know on the 8th day, God left town. For all we know God is an alien and the Universe is something He coughed up after a rough night on the town. What town?  I don’t know and the point I’m trying to make is neither do you, or you, or you, or you and you, too. Like the written words once spoken by Carrol O’Connor in the guise of Archie Bunker, I believe that “Faith is when you believe things nobody in their right mind would believe.”
    But, man, you gotta love dem Flaming Lips.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 19:16 | link | comments (2)

Comments:

#1  16 March 2005 - 19:51

 

I'll worship with you at the alter of rock n' roll and canine devotion, anytime. glad your fever broke. woof, woof.

Leigh

#2  16 March 2005 - 21:06

 

hallelujah hallelujah (leonard cohen style)

howard

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