There is a lot of crap on TV these days. I suppose that there has always been an audience for crappy television shows, but like most kids that grow up in the south
however, I spent a lot of time in church which severely limited my crappy television
viewing time.
I would even go so far as
to say, that I spent too much time in church.
There was of course, Sunday
school, where, as a child you learn to cut, paste and craft your way through
biblical stories like Adam and Eve or Noah and his ark chocked full of
animals. Learning morals and gleaming
wisdom with every pinto bean you glued to a paper plate.
Then through your teens, you graduate from the
fun scissor work to more serious scriptural studies, which included the sins of
premarital sex and the dangers of spilling your seed…I still don’t quite understand how spilling seeds equates to masturbation and how
that path leads to an eternity in
hell, but at 14, I just didn’t question the logic. Eventually, you graduate to sitting in the big sanctuary with
the grown-ups enduring an entire Sunday morning moralism without the benefits
of paste and a few handfuls of beans to stave off boredom.
After the last prayer had been prayed and the congregation dismissed,
later that same Sunday at six, I would again be sitting in front of my parents,
just in arm’s length of my mother so she could ensure that I did not nod off at
any point during the evening sermon. However bored I became, I always
enjoyed the very beginning of the service because of the music and singing. Sometimes it was fast and lively enough to
get folks out of their seats and clapping.
Other times it was mournful and bluesy.
Because I always enjoyed belting out a song, it didn’t matter to me if
the song was pop or praise, I was alert and ready to hit the high notes. You can imagine that after a few
spirited performances of me and my back up choir, that I would, of course, be
tired and in need of a quick cat nap during the pastoral portion of the
event. More often than not, I would
receive a quick rap to the back of the head because my mother caught me swaying
or nodding off before the last “amen” of the evening.
Now on Monday night, while most of America watched football,
my family had part one of bible study with part two concluding on Wednesday,
which coincidentally, always made me miss the first part of my favorite television
show. I could care less about not
watching football, but I despised missing my TV program and honestly,
contribute this as the beginning of a deeply rooted disdain for religion in
general.
Periodically, though out the year, there were also week-long
revivals, where we’d spend seven nights of prime-time in the confines of a
church building listening to a sermon instead of watching sit-coms. I am sure you are getting the point, which is
that I spent a lot of time in church sitting in a pew, when I’d really have preferred
to have been watching television on my bed.
For me, after spending years of memorizing biblical
scripture and then in college studying philosophy and world religion, I would argue
that my youth would have been better served in front of a television screen
instead of a pastor…unless that pastor was Pat Robertson and the program was
The 700 Club. ...I suppose there still is a
lot of crap on television.
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