Cult of Jef

As a child, I was always sus­pi­cious of Jesus. I mean, I know he’s the Son of God and loves all the lit­tle chil­dren of the world, but it’s not like he cre­ated the world in seven days or parted the Red Sea.  In my mind, God was the Big Kahuna, and that’s Whom I was taught to pray to bless Mama and Daddy and, I sup­pose, my big sis­ter who was some­times mean to me, too.

I sup­pose it started with the rolling papers I found in the back of a Volk­swa­gen Bug that my dad bought to fix up for my mom.  “Put those yel­low papers down and go wash your hands,” my dad told me.  Nat­u­rally, I had to ask why.  “Because they’re yel­low papers and they’re bad, that’s why.”  Again, I had to ask why.  “Because hip­pies use them, that’s why.”  So then I had to ask what a hip­pie was.  “Hip­pies are men with long hair and beards who wear san­dals.  They don’t work and talk about love and peace.”  My father leaned down and looked me in the eye.  “You should stay away from them.”  Obvi­ously, being a hip­pie was a bad thing.

Some time later I remem­ber being in Sun­day school.  It must have been shortly before Easter, because we were cut­ting palm fronds from green con­struc­tion paper for when Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.  Our teacher had just fin­ished pass­ing out those lit­tle but­ter ring cook­ies in the shape of a flower.  It was fash­ion­able, at the time, to slip the cookie onto one’s pinkie and nib­ble it until it was all gone.

So, I was cut­ting palm fronds with safety scis­sors with one hand, and nib­bling a cookie on the pinkie of my other hand, when our teacher held up an illus­tra­tion of Jesus enter­ing Jerusalem on a don­key.  In a flash, I noticed that Jesus had long hair and a beard and he wore san­dals.  Fur­ther­more, he didn’t work because he was too busy trav­el­ing around with his dis­ci­ples to preach about love and peace.  My blood ran cold.  I felt my head start to spin, and I reached out to brace myself from falling over.  My but­ter cookie ring shat­tered as my tiny hand hit the table.  Sud­denly, I real­ized the truth:  Jesus was a hippie!

Even though I was only five or six, I can remem­ber feel­ing quite para­noid when my mother picked me up and escorted me to the audi­to­rium for the main church ser­vice.  My father and older sis­ter were there.  Daddy smiled at me and I quickly smiled back.  I couldn’t let on that I knew the truth.  Didn’t my father real­ize that Jesus was bad?  That he was a hip­pie?  And then near the end of the ser­vice, the Lord’s Sup­per was served, and the ush­ers passed around col­lec­tion plates with saltine crack­ers in them, which the preacher said was the body of Christ.  If it wasn’t bad enough that Jesus was a hip­pie, now I was expected to grow up and eat him.  It blew my lit­tle pre-kindergarten mind.

There was a period where we changed churches sev­eral times, and then we didn’t attend reg­u­larly for a num­ber of years.  Dur­ing that time, hip­pies sort of dis­ap­peared from the media.  I remem­ber that I was wrestling with some sort of ado­les­cent trauma, when a pros­e­ly­tiz­ing school­mate sug­gested that I turn my prob­lem over to Jesus.  I remem­ber laugh­ing and say­ing, “Why in the world would I want to do a thing like that?”

“Because Jesus is the Son of God,” she said.

I shook my head and explained to that silly girl that God was the CEO of the Uni­verse and Jesus was just the Manger on Duty.  “If I have a prob­lem, I cer­tainly have no inten­tion of mess­ing around with mid­dle man­age­ment,” I said.  “I’m going straight to the top!”

“You’re going straight to hell,” she said.  “Unless you accept Jesus Christ into your heart as your per­sonal savior.”

I was con­fused.  I thought, Gee whiz, you don’t go to church for a cou­ple of years, and sud­denly, it becomes the Jesus Fan Club!

When I got home, I asked my dad about it.  He tried to explain the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to me.

“I thought you said that there is no such thing as ghosts,” I said.

“They’re not,” my dad replied.

“So how can there be a Holy Ghost?

“Well, he’s not a ghost, really, he’s more of a Holy Spirit.”

“Isn’t that just another word for ghost?” I asked.

“Okay, so there is such a thing as a ghost, but the Holy Spirit is a good ghost.”

“Like Cas­par?”

“Yeah, like Caspar.”

“Why did you lie to lie to me, then, Daddy?”

“I didn’t like to you,” he said.

“You told me there was no such thing as ghosts!”

“I meant like in haunted houses,” he said.

“You also told me there was a Santa Claus, and that turned out to be a lie, too,” I said, cross­ing my arms in front of me.  “For all I know, you’re lying about this Holy Ghost busi­ness, too!”

And the next thing I knew, I was grounded because my father had lied to me about ghosts–and Santa Claus.  Maybe I still blame Jesus for that.  I should have never trusted that hippie …