Sympathy for Devils

I am not a Christian, but I was raised in the church as they say. I didn't have much interest in or use for religion. I didn't have any interest in an afterlife or getting into any kingdom in the clouds. I could not see how religion improved people's lives--everyone seemed broke, depressed and ground down by the failures of American life, but maybe they would have been worse off with the promises it made. 

People were generally solemn during the hours long services. The sermons reiterated the eternally sinful nature of man to a room full of tired women and fidgety girls. After a verbal smackdown they would pass the collection plate around for guilt money. You know for the Lord's house...to keep the lights on and tip out the preacher. No one tithed and like many of my friends we just pretended to put money in. The amount given was usually just enough to get a burger or some candy after church or during if we could sneak out and make our way down the road a piece. Even the joyful parts of church were suspect; the promised land that they were always crowing about was just death. The songs were about dying (soon and very soon!) or trying to get out of captivity. The prayers seemed like the sort that had not been and were unlikely to ever be answered. So and so's husband was not coming back. This one's man was not going to give up the bottle. That one's kid was neither going to see the error of her wicked ways let alone change them. Political leaders were not going to let themselves be led by the hand of any god who gave a shit about the downtrodden and the afflicted. The youth would continue to both juke and jive to the devil's latest album. The meek were not going to inherit dick. On top of all that I didn't like most of the people in our church and they didn't seem to like each other. I rarely observed positive interactions. I never overheard an engrossing conversation, just a lot of judgement and complaining about planning some event or another. It seemed as if everything church-related was a chore almost as if it were a workplace. Who knew worship had a paperwork phase? Anyone who joined the church for solace was put on a committee. Those who came for community didn't stay long since inside were the very same people from the community there were escaping. A lot of people hopped from church to church looking for a church that "actually did something". I think they were looking to join a church like the one in the 80s sitcom "Amen" in which Sherman Helmsley, one of the filthiest comic geniuses of his era, played a lawyer cum deacon. But our local churches lacked the intellectual and economic capacity. 

I don't know if a lawyer ever set foot in our church. The loftiest family in the congregation were two brothers who ran a masonry business that ripped off black people who wanted their shitty homes to look expensive. One of them was married to a woman who was highly unstable, but very light-skinned so in her day she would have been seen by that family as a trophy. She also worked as a librarian in the middle school during a time when that position required zero certifications. I'll say this--she did know how to wear a wig and how to put together an outfit. The word in the pews was that her husband cheated on her. But everyone's husband did, but for some reason it was more shameful for her because she had a good life by comparison. The other women treated her poorly, but she had more money than them, a cushy and respectable job and she was happy-go-lucky. More than a few women tried to tell us church girls that she was touched in the head. Looking back I think maybe she was just happy and no one knew what that looked like so they assumed she must be simple. Maybe she was on happy pills. Good for her. She was always nice to me and I did not judge her like I did the others. Also, her accessories! Let's talk about a scarf and brooch combo. 

I think when I was very young I went to church more than my mom did. She might have used church as free childcare- no shame there, a sister has to get something out of that institution. I might have done the same if I were a single parent with no childcare options on a Sunday morning. I don't think I ever truly believed in Christ and if I did, that belief was in the same category with believing in the Easter Bunny, Leprechauns, my white friends' Mayflower faeries, and a 6 foot plus menacing Smurf that lived in the backyard during the day and hid in the hallway between my room and our one bathroom at night. I didn't believe in ghosts or aliens. I had no interest in the supernatural, which I considered to be the result of weak minds or active imaginations. I was lukewarm on most fantasy unless kaiju were involved, but I did enjoy murder mysteries and detective stories because I felt that they were real. I knew people committed crimes and they left evidence and that evidence could be found. A mystery could happen. A dragon, a phantom, the rapture and so on could not. 

I officially renounced religion in fourth grade when I realized that I could no longer be a Brownie Scout because we had to say the pledge of allegiance and mean it. I did not want to be a hypocrite and I did not believe in either the nation state or the deity it was supposed to be under. I quit right after the meeting and it was heartbreaking because I really wanted to learn wilderness skills and I could sell cookies like nobody's business. I had been reading Bullfinch's Mythology, Just-So Stories, and had taken a summer school class in Egyptology and was beginning to make connections about myth and religion. When I went back to reading the Christian bible, the Old Testament seemed like just another fiction. The New Testament seemed like some randoms scraps sewn together. The more I learned about religion the more relieved I was that I got out. As far as I was concerned any old tome could be the basis of a world view if someone tells you it is and then one thousand nine-hundred and eighty-four years later you are stuck living in someone else's nightmare shadows. 

All that to say, the rift began when we learned about the tale of the prodigal son- a made-up tale to illustrate a made-up point. And oh how they harped on it. For me it was a non-starter. It was the first time I had read a morality tale and flat out refused the moral. I believed in consequences and I felt that the moral advocated that some people could escape consequences. Some people could fuck around and not find out. I felt that the family was being immoral by taking him back. What about those who had been doing the right thing the whole time? What was the point for them? Where is the Prodigal Daughter or any woman who gets away with anything in this book? I am sure I exhausted my Sunday School teacher with "childish" questions when I should have just accepted the indoctrination. Poor cousin Geraldine, she tried.

I had not thought about The Prodigal Son in a long time, but recently it has been floating about the internet in reference to those who voted for team red and are now experiencing regret because they are personally experiencing the consequences of the policies they supported. Jobs have been lost, healthcare options are drying up, the welfare that they didn't know they were receiving is being cut off and the people who they despised and who they thought deserved harm are reveling in schadenfreude. Waffle House is having an egg surcharge. Have the day you voted for. FAFO. Leopard eating face. All of it. 

Cue the status quo supporting saps on the middle left who are saying that we should show compassion for them because if we don't we won't be able to convert them or welcome them back into team blue. It has to be white people saying this. They alway want to kiki with their racist ass friends and family and they really hold out hope that same day they will be able to. To be clear, this is what they are peddling- everyone is getting their faces eaten by leopards but those who didn't vote for the Leopard Eating Faces Party should find common ground with those who voted for them and form some kind of Face Eaten by Leopards coalition. As if. Hmmmm. Also, we should not openly delight  (ok, they just mean online because I don't know if anyone still socializes in mixed company) when bad things happen to awful people who cannot recognize other's humanity. Someone even said to me- to me! - that we need to be ready to receive these people when they "come to their senses" or more likely when they realize that they were fooled again. Hard pass unless there is an alternative meaning for receive. I'm Old Testament; a face for a face up in here. 

The Prodigal Son is a fantasy. After squandering his inheritance, which his fool of a father gives him, he returns and asks to be a slave in the household. As if. He knows that the same fool who gave him money the first time will make him whole again. He is the apple of his father's eye. He does wrong and escapes the consequences. The son who never left is understandably upset. His louche brother has caused the family great pain and anguish by leaving plus he blew their money and now he comes waltzing back in with a sob story and regains his place. The story ends with the father trying to explain to the good son that he is just so happy to have his POS brother back simply because he left, whereas he has always been there and so...let's just eat this fatted calf that you probably raised and might have a better use later than being the main dish at a feast for your bro's walkback. And somehow the brother who stayed is the bad guy. He is self righteous and contemptuous. He probably just wanted to be something other than a farmer and now he realized he could have FA and no FO. He probably thought his dad was playing this return all wrong. He probably doubt's his brother's sincerity. 

Unlike in the parable, we are not and have never been a family. We are real people, not made up story characters. These self-interested bigots have not left the liberal fold. They do not have liberal values and that is fine. They are only upset because they did not realize that they might be affected by the pain of their politics. They don't want things to change for the better, they want the mistake that resulted in personal hardship to be corrected. That is all. Only Black people were supposed to lose their jobs. Only transpeople were supposed to lose access to healthcare. Only immigrants. Only women. Only those other people. They are not asking humbly to come back or asking for forgiveness, which is another thing you won't find over here along with sympathy. And to ask people who have been running from leopards and protecting their faces and the faces of those in their communities to have any sympathy for those who delighted in supporting a regime that ran on a broad platform of doing them harm is offensive. We shouldn't even be wasting our time considering it. So yes, laugh it up because seeing someone piss on themselves while trying to piss on someone else is humor. Talk about it if you want. Make them feel bad about it if you want. Have a field day. But do not think for a minute that there is common ground. It's the same common ground that was on the Titanic, which is not a fantasy. They were literally on the same boat and yet...