God… Are You There… It’s Me… The Evil Traumatized Child?

Just got home from church.  I go every Sunday morning, evening, and Wednesday night.  It’s a denomination that considers itself nondenominational, and calls itself a ‘Church of Christ.’  Though I try to be a regular attender, my heart isn’t always with the services.  Sometimes, it’s because Ihad a bad day, and am only going to church to help take my mind off things.  Other times, it is a result of what is being discussed in the sermon or bible lesson.

Last Sunday, for example, the entire service was centered on a glorified slide show of the pastor’s recent trip to Colombia.  He had gone down there on a mission trip, but the sermon last week had nothing to do with the spread of Christ’s message.  It was a little over an hour of this guy talking about his friends down there, and outlining his itinerary for the four week long visit.  If you have ever had a family get-together where your mind-numbingly boring Aunt Gertrude insisted on torturing everyone in the room with a 3,000 image slide show of her trip to Sheboygin, then you understand.

I didn’t know what to think.  I kept sighing to myself, and straining my disbelieving brain cells to find the iota of spiritual purpose to this travel agent’s speech.  My fiance was with me, and she would put her hand on my arm and gently squeeze, knowing that I was growing more frustrated with every inane word from the man behind the pulpit.  She was channeling her infinite patience into me through that supportive and calming grasp.

A little back-story, if you don’t mind: I am a very bad man.  I have done horrible things in my life to many people young and old.  What’s worse is that I don’t have a single flash of guilt over anything I have ever done.  The only thing I feel remorse for is the fact that I feel no remorse for anything.  I have even done bad things to people in my church, and don’t give a damn about it.  I don’t want to be like this, though.  I don’t want to be the dark thing that swirls inside my head and heart.

For a few years now, I have been struggling valiantly to change my behavior.  I know I can’t grow a conscience, but I also recognize that I have total control over how I act and what I do.  So, even if I don’t care about right and wrong, I can at least do the right things simply because I know they’re right.  This is much more difficult than most everyone cares to think.  It takes incredible acts of internal strength and willpower for me to follow the straight and narrow when all I ever want to do is sprint off the path into the shadowy underbrush and set fire to the whole forest.  I go to church to keep my mind on the task at hand – the eternal battle between good and me.

When I sit down at the start of a service or bible study, I am listening for God’s will.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe for a second that any organized religion has a fucking clue what God really thinks or wants from his little meatpuppets, but I find that by consistently attending these meetings, I have more ability to keep my balance on the moral balance beam of life.  So, I really need to hear what any given preacher has to say about what God has to say about anything.  If all I get is a recounting of how the refried beans were good in this city, but not in that one, I tend to get angry because I am being denied the very thing which is the preacher’s sole responsibility to give.  It’s like a cab driver, instead of driving you to your specified destination, sits there and forces you to play Parcheesi – it’s pointless and a dramatic waste of time that could have dire consequences for all involved.

Today, the sermon was at least on spiritual matters, but again the preacher made me angry.  The topic was hope, which in and of itself is not something that would piss me off.  As the speech continued, he started to talk about how people who do absolutely horrible things to others must have no hope in anything.  He kept reiterating this point and saying that someone who does bad things doesn’t want to go to heaven, or have a life after their physical death.  people who do these awful things must do them because they want to die and rot because there is nothing after death.

I was primarily upset at this because there is no way in heaven or hell that this man has ever spent any honest time getting to know someone who he would consider to be one of these ‘evil people.’  As one, I have all sorts of hope, and don’t think that this is it for existence.  I don’t like the things I do, and don’t want to be the person I am.  I want t live on forever with my loved ones, and experience a perfect body.  I know I’m not the only bad guy who feels that way.  To say that anyone bad doesn’t have any hope, and doesn’t care about their soul is plain wrong and irresponsible.

That wasn’t it, though.  After this ridiculous series of statements, he went on to say that people who have had tremendously hard childhoods always have major trouble having hope as adults.  I wonder if he thinks people with tough childhoods are by default, evil.  This isn’t my point, though, just a side wondering.  My main point of irritation is because, to illustrate how tough times as a kid make hope difficult, this bozo went on to tell us about a really distressing and forever scarring event in his troubled life.

His family is very close, they have alot of money, but have never let it make them shallow or cold toward each other.  They are a rich Beaver Cleaver family.  His awful and traumatizing, hope killing event happened when he was ten.  The family traditionally went to an uncle’s country house twice a winter to ice skate on the frozen river in the backyard.  It was always the greatest thing to do in his young life.  The fun that dreams are made of.  But the fun couldn’t last forever, and was shattered into a million little pieces of bullshit one day.

He had mouthed off to his mom or dad, and in a raging flash of unjustified retribution, his parents grounded him from a visit to the dreamland of ice sating.

This banishment from one day of joyous skating was crushing, and served to strip the poor boy of all hope for years.  In time, he grew to understand the horrible decision his parents had made, and one day forgave them the injury they smote him with.  his hope gradually returned, and he once again saw that life was worth living.  Poor boy.

I fucking want this man dead.  He has no fucking clue what a tough childhood is.  he has no idea what a real emotional scar is.  He has no concept of the effort it takes to cling to hope in the face of black and foreboding young trauma.

I seethed.  I stewed in the juices of bitter disbelief that a human being could be this dillusionally self-absorbed and short sighted.  I was ashamed at myself for expecting any different from this man, and ashamed at my congregation because they were the ones who chose him a few years ago.  I was the only vote against the man.  Since his hiring, there have been countless ridiculous sermon topics, and comments of forehead slapping stupidity.  I just don’t get how no on sees the uselessness of this guy.

In a sense, he’s right.  Us evil people who have had traumatic childhoods have no hope.  In my case, i have no hope that he will ever get his head out of his ass.