Generation Bubelah: What IS it about religion?

"I go to bible study," a new friend of mine said to me the other day while sitting at my kitchen table. "I love Jesus Christ." He said, slouching back, taking a sip of a beer.

I looked over to him.

"Why? Why do you love Jesus Christ?"

"Because he's my man. I mean he's helped me out so much in my life. I just love him."

I'm watching my friend, who has only been my friend for about a week, and I hide whatever weird reaction I am having to all of this by saying, "oh."

"What?"

"Nothing," I say, spreading another piece of cheese on a cracker.

"I know I don't follow the bible in a strict sense. I drink, smoke, and I like the ladies, but I love Jesus Christ. I just love him."

These words, "I love Jesus Christ," gave me flashbacks to the JesusCamp documentary that gave me nightmares for days.

Sometimes, religion scares me. All fanatics in all religions scare me. I wanted to pull out the bumper sticker: God, please protect me from your followers and hold it in front of him to create a line of defense.

"What? Does that bother you?" He asked me. "Do you hate me because I'm not Jewish?" He had found out I was Jewish only an hour before we began this conversation.

"No, I don't hate anyone because they're not Jewish."

"You know now, because I know you're Jewish, the more I talk with you, the more you look it."
And I'm supposed to respond how?

"So were your parents religious?"

"Yes," he says, "we read the bible every night. And every Friday when I would have plans to go out after dinner, my mother would always read the bible a little bit longer than the other nights. She told me it wasn't true, but it was. You're like the third Jew I've ever met." He says.

To which I could have responded by saying, "you're the first Jesus Christ superfan I've met outside of America. But instead I said, "It's because there aren't many Jews around here, anymore."

"Yeah, there aren't many Jews where I'm from in Scotland, I guess Europe in general."

So we talk for a while and as much as his passion and wanting to preach the gospel puts my tummy funny, we find the idea of religion being more of an individual choice rather than an obligation in common.

"Just because I drink and go home with girls doesn't mean I shouldn't be considered a Protestant."

"Right," I say, "and just because I don't study the Torah doesn't mean I'm not a good Jew."

"You don't study the Torah?"

"No."

"Have you ever?"

"I went to Hebrew and Sunday school when I was younger."

"And that counts?"

Realizing what I thought we had in common would be enough to let the Jesus Camp images go, it wasn't.

It wasn't that he wasn't Jewish, it was the look in his eye when he spoke about Jesus Christ. The way he said his name made me want to run for the hills. The repetition of the phrase, "I love Jesus Christ" reminded me of poetry class when I was a freshman in college. We were studying the Griots, and we talked about the use of repetition in their storytelling. What made the pieces so powerful was this sort of monotonous tone of repetition. This repetition of the phrase, I love Jesus Christ, seemed to cloud my friends eyes as he spoke; he looked in a trance.

Call me crazy, but for the first time I no longer felt like talking about religion, or discussing the idea of religious identity. Most people I talk with about religion are not religious, but this was a different story. It was the first time I felt someone's religion push up against mine. And it honestly felt like he thought his religion was better. What was strange for me was that I've never thought my religion better than anyone else's just, different. And though I was trying to find what was common between our views, he focused on the differences, and overlooked his contradictions to the gospel.

"So you're going to marry a Protestant?" I ask.

"Yes. I want a nice, sweet girl. I know Jews marry outside of their religion but I don't want that."

Was that supposed to be a stab?

"Not all Jews marry outside of the religion, actually the majority don't. It's still not a widely accepted thing to do in the religious world."

He took a sip of his beer.

"I just don't think I could be with someone who didn't love Jesus Christ like I do."

Why did he keep saying it? It was like by praising him, all his daily doings, that don't coincide with the gospel, would be overlooked.

Maybe other people would have felt threatened so they would argue, and try to push his values, etc down; however, I was in shock. Shocked because of the change in his demeanor once we began talking about religion.

"I want to preach the gospel," he said, "or I know that's what I should be doing."

And all I wanted to do was drop the topic completely. So when he asked, "do you want to come outside with me while I smoke? And talk more about religion?" I declined.