By Drew
There are many that would read my articles or hear me on the radio and assume I was raised by wolves or worse……jungless. Which is funny because I lost my virginity at 20, had my first drink at 21 and, if I’m being honest, I’m not proud of that FIRST drink….
But before those 2 incidents (that were all too brief) I was a staunch, 4 day a week, church going, Bible verse reciting, 5 choir singing, emotionally insecure, chubby church kid just trying to cop a feel in the back of the church cemetary with a young lady that obviously didn’t know her worth at the time. (God bless that queen)
So I’m not being ignorant or contrarian when I say that we are absolutely NOT a Christian nation and its about time we have this conversation.
It’s funny that I use the word “contrarian”. Contrarian implies that I’m speaking against the general belief of the majority. But is that true? How many times have we seen people imply it online, say it amongst friends or even hint at it only for their voices to be muffled by cowards who don’t wanna deal with the truth….at least not right now? What I am saying is not controversial OR provocative because deep down we ALL know it.
It’s just a truth and some truths are harder than others to accept. Like maybe you can’t pray the gay away…
So lets not pretend like I’m coming out of left field with this.
Now, do not confuse me……we have amazing churches and amazing christians on this island. I hold nothing back and there is no sarcasm in my words when saying this. There are churches that stood up during this pandemic and fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and didn’t ask for a penny. They did it after Dorian, they do it in between crisis’ and chances are they’ll always do it. Churches are like politicians: The minority take the bad rap for the majority when really there are some roses in the bunch. And to be clear doing the right thing is hard. Doing the right CHRISTIAN thing for the glory of God is WAY harder.
The problem comes in when these Bahamian pastors purport to be messengers from white Jesus. Some even claim they are prophets for white Jesus. Which, to be fair, could be your calling. The Bible itself said, ” Many are called but few are chosen”. But there’s a fine line between leading a flock of believers and an actual cult and I need y’all to know which category you’re in cause niggas just be makin shit up and or loosely basing their church regulations on a book written when niggas didn’t bath or wear jockeys.
For years I saw on my own church door a sign that read, “Women, no pants”.
I saw that and thought that was normal. I thought it was normal to single women out and tell them, to their face on a sign that they had to read EVERY Sunday, “You’re not equal because of some shit our some white British dudes taught us”. How do you even explain to women your logic behind that archaic and asinine rule?
Imagine being so warped and so conditioned that casual clothing was a bridhe too far to congregate in the name of Jesus.
CASUAL CLOTHING!!!!!!!!!
And yes, I know y’all NOW have your casual Sundays in churches. I just don’t understand why it took so long for an island saturated with churches and only one actually did what Jesus said to do.
“Judge not, lest ye be judged”
Who judges people more than The Bahaiam Christian Council (which I maintain is the single most stagnant and ancient group of people we have in our culture)?
Blasphemy?
I’m wilding?
When do we hear from the christian council? Tell the truth.
Gay shit, adults consensually dancing to soca, or when they wanna tell grown people what movies they can or can’t watch at Fusion…
Why is it you hear very little if anything at all from them concerning the rampant poverty in this country, the rampant pedophilia, incest, the astronomical number woman women (married or otherwise) that are raped and or the absolute cesspool of corruption that are BOTH political parties? But the minute 11 gay niggas wan march downtown to celebrate their consensual/private love they in the newspaper livid.
To be clear….Homosexuality is a sin. Point blank period.
It just is.
Leviticus 18:22 – “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”
Know what else is a sin?
How y’all mad at people that sin differently than y’all do? if a Sin is a sin is a sin is a sin then being gay is as bad as cheating on your wife and the irony is if we got rid of all the pastors that were cheating on their spouses with someone of the opposite sex then really how many churches would we have left on this island? If every contribution a gay christian made the movement was truncated from the culture what dent would that leave in the foundation of our beliefs?
And thats just the gay pastors cause y’all can’t name more than 5 straight male Bahamian choir directors. I sang in about 6 choirs in my life: Niggas gay, beloved and the point I’m trying to drive home is thats perfectly fine cause thats for God to judge not me OR you. No one judged them more than me when I was younger because I was told that was my job to judge but it objectively was not. What would that look like…
It was unchristian of me to to judge them and unchristian of ALL of us “Christians” at the time.
But it’s not even about the label. We don’t act like Christians. Again, for the one commenter that’s gonna come under this post after reading one curse word and go, “No….his words sully my pure heart”…..ya, you’re the person I’m talking about.
See we forget that Jesus didn’t hang with niggas that DIDN’T sin. There’s not a single story or parable of Jesus doing something amazing that didn’t revolve around someone like me and I’m not even that bad. While I spend my Saturday nights drinking alone and eating my way to chronic hypertension, Jesus was out there with prostitutes and gamblers trying to talk them into a better life. Meanwhile, y’all will look me dead in the eye and say…
Please make no mistake: 70% of pastors are in this game for the money.
Church is a business and these niggas DO NOT care about you. They are in it to get paid.
Remember the pandemic?
They was out here like pimps checking on their hoes as to why that cash slowed up. Lets just be honest: It was 2020…..they could have zoomed those sermons. They could have emailed those scripture readings for the day. Shit they could have welcomed in the less fortunate who didn’t have a place to quarantine and give them housing and to be clear some did. But the loudest among them?
(Pic pimp talking to hoes “Tithing bag been a lil light babygirl. Don’t make me stop praying for you now cause you know me and Jesus tight like that…..have my 10% by Sunday love”)
Inevitably the excuse was “well they have staff and bills”.….i hear ya. Lucky for them I have a solution for that. In fact I have a solution that THEY came up with….
Pray about it.
Thas all.
Pray.
That’s what y’all tell us right?
Niggas driving Benz’s, wearing gucci, red bottoms, ray bans and Yurman Jewellery and lookin y’all DEAD in your eyes and telling y’all pray to ge out of financial debt while they collect y’all 10%.
The only religious leaders that seemed to have figured out the right way to do it seem to be the Catholics/Anglicans who make their priests live more of a humble life with incentives. Not to say they don’t have their own issues….(Picture of young boy “yikes….not touching that (which is what some of those priests should have said but I digress”)The Jehovah’s Witnesses though who, if we’re being fair, carry out their religion to a fault. It was 187 degrees the other weekend and niggas was out on the road with umbrellas, no-grip shoes and Jehovah.
They did NOT come to play.
So I’ll ask this: What exactly makes us a christian nation beyond “most of us believe in the Bible kinda”? Is it the wage gap in this country? Is that Christian like? Y’all tight about marijuana that God provided by the way but say nothing about greed in our politics. We’re a morbidly obese nation……so thats gluttony….y’all quiet on that. We literally came up with our own word to address our culture of adultery: “sweethearting”. No noise there but soca and dancing is the devil right? Is poverty “God’s Plan”? The irony: while the christians were paying tithes the sinners were building generational wealth.
We have a middle class drowning while the rich get rich and the poor literally die. How is the present economic climate “Christian”? I would argue that its Christianity that GOT us in these predicaments.
I’m wrong?
Hear me out.
A known philanderer and cheater that is KNOWN to steal wants to be elected into a party. What’s the first thing he does?
Go to a well known church.
We are at a point where politics is played out in churches as they are outside of them. I once asked a prominent politician WHY they even listen to the Christian COuncil or let them have a voice. Niggas said quite succinctly “we need the votes and they the easiest to manipulate”
Think about that.
Now the patrons minds are swayed.
Then the politician gets elected, does nothing for the church but attend some funeral where he clearly doesn’t give a shit and does the exact same thing he was doing before that very church service. He is NOT held accountable, he has NOT changed but once he stands in front of a television audience and says “God” and a few newly learned Bible verses, ya know what some idiot on Facebook says when he’s being criticized?
Bahamian politicians and Pastors are one in the same. They’re like bad fathers/mothers in a sense: The more distant and absent they are the more excited the people are when they actual come down from their pedestals. Think about it. What happens when a Pastor or Politician comes to the function?
So who are we worshipping? God or our “one good pastor”? Or our “one good MP”?
And that’s where we are as a country. Pimps on the pulpit. Prosperity gospel.
It’s so bad these days niggas don’t even pander any more….they just begging and showing their ass at this point.
Our pastors have sifted through the sins in the bible and decided only 4 or 5 of them matter and leave the rest “to jesus”. They ignore the sins of their OWN brothers of the cloth and expect us to understand that, “Thats THAT church not our flock” while simultaneously telling people not of their flock what to do and how to live.
The people worship their “good pastor” regardless of their blatant hypocrisy. Those same people worship the political parties that are co-signed, by said pastors, and all of this is to the background tune of poverty, rape, a dangerous poverty, unemployment on a level like we have never seen, and a middle class trying to keep their head above water one check at a time…..meanwhile the pastors have been on some….
To which I ask, again…..is this the King’s way? Are our islands a reflection of a country that TRULY practices what we so love to preach?
I believe in the Bible. I pray every day and night and whenever I drive down Carmichael. in traffic. I love God. But I didnt find him in church. He wasn’t in the stainglassed enclosures y’all call sanctuaries. He didnt come out of the mouth of money hungry televangelist selling shots of Aquapure water and telling y’all its holy water for a discounted price. And don’t play dumb….y’all know EXACTLY who I’m referencing….
After 20 years of attending church 4 times a week, I found God on a park bench in Halifax Nova Scotia at my lowest when I needed him the most. I heard his voice through my mothers prayers. I understood his grace and mercy in the eyes of someone I had to learn to forgive.
We are not and we have never been a “Christian Nation”.
We majoritively have christian churches but that certainly is not a reflection of our character and if you think otherwise then you haven’t been paying attention.
Countries that don’t posture and feign religion are doing AMAZING.
Our “Christian Nation”?
We wait for change that won’t come, for a heaven we will NEVER experience on earth but promised a fortune in death by men that worship money, fame and power and use white Jesus as a vehicle to that end.
“Jesus was not sent here to teach the people to build magnificent churches and temples amidst the cold wretched huts and dismal hovels. He came to make the human heart a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest.” -Kahlil Gibran
Be safe tho
