Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
THERE'S A SPECIAL PLACE IN HELL FOR EVANGELICALS WHO CLAIM TO PRAISE THE LORD WHILE WOMEN AND CHILDREN ARE BEING GASSED
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Going to church allows people to live in a fantasy rather than face reality, and “The Scriptures” that preachers are so big on spewing are merely the superstitious ranting of 3000-year-old dead men. God communicates with us through common sense, not scriptures. That's why he gave us common sense in the first place, so we’d have sense enough not to go around believing in talking snakes and walking dead men.
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You can't pray away your sins or enhance your life in any way by enriching some preacher who doesn’t know any more about God than you do. God already did his part when he gave us a brain, so the rest is up to us.
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When you sin it's on the record, period - and all the praying in the world is not going to take it off, because the damage is done. And neither is it going to help to pay some preacher to do a spoken- word concert every Sunday morning, because there’s nothing the least bit Godly about being whipped up into a mindless frenzy. So you might as well come out of your fantasy world and face the fact that you can't abuse people Monday through Saturday and then think you can wipe the slate clean by being humble and
repentant on Sunday. The bottom line is, if you were really a Christian or a man or woman of God, you'd be up in arms over women and children being gassed at the border, Black kids being shot down in the street like animals, babies being taken from their mothers and put into cages, and the people who commit these crimes. If you're not, regardless to what your preacher says, you and Jesus are definitely not on the same page.
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| "AND, DADDY, I ALSO WANT A . . ." |
I saw these simple truths as a kid, that's why when my son and daughter were children I didn’t take them to church one time in their entire young lives. Instead, I bonded with them by taking them to the beach, shopping, and to the show on Sunday mornings. Instead of giving my money to some preacher, I spent it on my kids, and instead of teaching them about talkin' snakes, I taught them about character, morality, and ethics. We have a responsibility to teach our children to THINK, not to just believe what soothsayer tells them. As a result, today my son and daughter are more moral and have more character than any Bible-thumper I know, and they believe in logical thought, not Mother Goose. So they don’t go around quoting the Bible, instead, they simply treat people the way they want to be treated. If everyone did that, there would be no wars and no hatred and bigotry.
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Some of the most hateful and judgmental people I know are always going around talking about Jesus - I know, because I was raised in the church, and even as a kid I used to debate these issues with E.V. Hill, the man who baptized me. He confronted my grandparents one Sunday and asked, “Where is this kid getting this stuff!!?” If he had asked me instead, I could have told him - I got it from the common sense bestowed upon me by God. Snakes don’t talk, and just because a person doesn't look, think, and act like me doesn't make him a heathen, or hated by God. That's stupidity, but that's exactly the kind of narrow-minded nonsense that's being spewed from pulpits all across this country.
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My grandparents were devout Christians, and much of what I said scared them to death, but they couldn’t help but see the logic in much of what I was saying. At first, they convinced that I was going to Hell for the things I was saying, but I told them not to worry about that, because I place my faith in what I hear from God, not man, and they accepted that. In fact, even they began to embrace my philosophy.
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| NONSENSE |
I told them at the time that God has absolutely nothing to do with man's religions. God is whatever force, entity, or process that’s responsible for what we refer to as existence. So if we exist, God exists, regardless of whether God is a he, she, it, or the universe itself. That’s all we know, and that’s all we have to know. So at 14 years old, if I didn't get that from God, where did it come from? And I'm no one special. God speaks to us all, we just have to listen, and not allow man to convince us that common sense is the work of the Devil.
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My grandfather, who was something of a comedian had this running joke. He said, Rev. Hill sent the assistant pastor to talk to me and they haven’t seen him since. I don’t know how true that was, but ever since I was a 14-year-old child and left the church never to look back, it has been my position that going to church is nothing but a way to live in a fantasy and feel good about being lazy-minded, hypocritical, and stupid - and that wasn’t taught to me by any man, God whispered it to me as a child.
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You don’t have to believe in Mother Goose to praise the wonders of God and live a Godly life. After all, God knows you don’t really believe that nonsense for a minute, because he’s the one who gave you the common sense not to. So if you truly love God, stop trying to lie to him.
ELDER HAMPTON
As a very young child I was fortunate enough to observe the life of a real man of God. I met him when I was about 9 years old and he popped up out of nowhere to visit my grandmother when she was in a body cast after a very serious surgery. My grandmother had never met him, but somehow he’d gotten information about her condition and showed up at our door. He didn’t want a thing. He simply wanted see if there was anything he could do to bring my grandmother comfort. He came by 3 or 4 times a week and would sit at her bedside for hours, so my grandmother took to him immediately and she started sending me to his little storefront church until she could get back on her feet and take me to the “big church” that she and my grandfather attended.
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I'll never forget that little storefront church on 108th and Juniper in Watts. It stood down the street and in the shadow of a huge and elaborately appointed Catholic church, seemingly, as almost an afterthought. It was so small and had so few members that the thought of attracting a true "ordained man of God" was out of the question, so we had to settle for the little, unassuming man that we used to refer to as Elder Hampton. That little church was the closest thing to worshiping in someone's living room as you could get, but to this day, whenever I begin to lose faith in the basic goodness of my fellow man, or even remotely begin to contemplate God, I think of that little storefront church, and that little man.
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If I'd remained at that church, I don't know what I would have been doing today. My young instincts led me to become so close to Elder Hampton that I might have even become a preacher. He used to take me with him to visit the old, the poor, and the sickly in the neighbor. Black, Mexican, young, old, Baptist or Catholic, he didn't care what a person was - if they were sick or in need, they were all a part of his flock.
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Looking back on it, I don't know where he found the resources to carry out his mission. He certainly didn't get it from our little collection plate - we were so poor and so few in number he couldn't have gotten more than ten dollars a Sunday out of us, max. But in spite of that, he was no Sunday preacher. He was a full-time man of God. If you were sick or in need, you could count on him seven days a week. But after my grandmother finally got over her illness, they took me to the "big church" Elder Hampton's work was done, so he gradually disappeared from our lives, but all these many years later, his essence remains with me.
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The first time I went to the big church I was completely overwhelmed with the opulence of it all. Shortly before I arrived, the church had just imported in a new fireball of an ordained minister direct from Dallas, Texas. He was nothing like the quiet and humble Elder Hampton. He had a big booming voice, wore shinny Florsheim shoes, expensive suits, and a sense of importance just oozed from every pore of his body. When this man walked into a room it sucked all the oxygen out of the place - you just knew you were in the presence of someone significant - or at least, thought he was.
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And God must have loved this magnificent church the minister headed - the choir alone in this ornate house of God was larger by a factor of three than the entire membership of the little church I'd grown accustomed to, and the choir pit was twice as large as the room where we held Sunday school. The parking lot of the church was filled with big, expensive cars, and a limousine was often parked next to the front entrance. City Councilmen and other politicians were counted among its membership, and a well known entertainer, Billy Preston
was the church organist. In a church like this you didn't have to wait to get to heaven - every Sunday you were right there. The only problem was, after services you had to return to reality, which was more often than not, a life of pure hell.
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I've often wondered what Elder Hampton would have done with all of those resources. But I couldn't imagine Elder Hampton heading a magnificent place like this - but since he wasn't "ordained," it wasn't even an issue. He never would have even been considered to head a place like this in the first place. I don't care how Godly you were, stature took precedence there - if Moses wanted to head the church, they'd want to inspect his credentials. But even if Elder Hampton would have been ordained, he was much too humble a man to be embraced by the high-powered people in this membership. With his quiet, unassuming demeanor, even as a member, he would have been a back-bencher - politely tolerated, but scarcely noticed.
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And further, Elder Hampton wouldn't begin to know how to manage the resources of a huge church like this. While he was definitely a man of God, he wasn't a practical man. He probably would have squander all the church's resources on the "no-account sinners" in the surrounding community.
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He was just too impractical. He probably would have setup a soup kitchen and built a dormitory to house the homeless at night, and hired unemployed mothers to start a low-cost daycare center on the church grounds during the day. Then it wouldn't be no time at all before he'd dig up the church's beautiful grounds, trying to put up basketball courts and a recreation building to draw young people off the streets after school. And of course, between the kids during the day, the teenagers in the early evening, and the homeless at night, it would cost the church a fortune just to keep up the grounds and repair damages to the building.
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Much of the congregation would have been in an uproar over the chaos he'd create. And it would go far beyond simply chaos. He would have long since lost most of the influential politicians. Every Sunday he'd be hounding them at church, and calling them at home during the week trying to get them to create Empowerment Zones, and Special Need Zones to establish low-cost loans to help the surrounding neighbors to purchase and fix-up the houses they were living in. It's no wonder he'd drive the politicians out of the church. How could he expect these busy men and women to worship God in peace with him buzzing around like a gadfly trying to get them to help the poor?
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No, Elder Hampton's heart was in the right place, but he'd have been much too impractical to run a big church like this. He was a God loving man, but he lacked common sense. He thought when God said Love thy neighbor, he meant it. What a fool!
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Yeah, Elder Hampton would have been a back-bencher at that church. He would have been the fool sitting way in the back - next to Jesus.
So no, Elder Hampton is no longer a part of our lives, but his influence has remained constant in my life to this day - in fact, though I must admit that I'm never found in church these days, it is his lingering influence that's led me to write this article, and everything else that I write. He didn’t preach, or jump up and down trying to whip us into a mindless frenzy, he simply spoke to us about the importance of living our faith. He'd say, “You can’t talk your way into Heaven, you must live your way in.” That's not what I'm seeing among Christians today, so I pay them very little attention.
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MATTHEW
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. When you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward . . ." - Matthew 6:1-34
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Elder Hampton, God knew of the good works that you did in secret . . . And unbeknownst to you, he sent a child to record your deeds and to absorb your Godly essence.
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