Questioner

Nine years ago, during the autumn of 1996, I visited Washington, DC to see the AIDS Memorial Quilt displayed on the National Mall. It was an incredible and moving sight: tens of thousands of individual quilts memorialing friends and family-members who had succumbed to the disease. On that Sunday afternoon, I was sitting on a park bench taking a rest near the east end of the Mall, when a young woman carrying a petition asking Congress to appropriate more funds to research and fight HIV approached a young family. The mother’s response to her polite request was, “No thank you. We’re Chreestians.” They then quickly led their little children away from the heathen.

Years before, when I earned a living waiting tables, I found that I had to alter my speech when I approached certain tables. Accustomed to saying, “Good evening, my name is Jeff and I will be taking care of you this evening. May I bring you something to drink before you order?’ I found that often, since this is a city in the Bible Belt, I would often receive the smug and pious reply, “No thank you. We’re Chreestians.” I would proceed then to take their dinner order and when they added, “Oh, and I’ll have a coffee,” I would sometimes reply, “I thought you said you weren’t drinking anything.” My point in being obnoxious and unprofessional, aside from satisfying my need for revenge against the smug and pious, was that they didn’t need to throw some cloak of superiority over themselves. They could just as easily have ordered coffee or iced tea or Coke, just as 95% of the people who responded to that question did. However, they chose to announce to all around that they were “Chreestian” and, therefore, superior in their righteousness.

Over the last few years, when I have sought help with my recovery from the abuse of my youth and the self-destruction of my adulthood, I’ve been told that all I need to do is turn my life over to Christ and I will be just fine. And, then I have the memory of that family in Washington, DC who didn’t believe in helping relieve or end the suffering of people with AIDS because they, the family, were “Chreestians.” Or I am reminded of those many people who announced to the entire restaurant that they didn’t drink because they were “Chreestian.”

It must be the same mentality that leads Pat Robertson to declare that Dover, Pennsylvania will receive the violent wrath of God because they removed the eight school board members who wanted to teach religion in their science classes.

Oh, God, save me from your followers.