I was nine years old and in 3rd grade. At that time public schools in Winterland officially had a preaching objective (fortunately this is no longer so). We had to sing psalms and pray in class everyday. Our teacher was a Christian fundamentalist. She really taught us how to believe in God, properly.
Once in Christianity class, the theme of the day was Jesus calms the storm. After the teacher had told the story, we were set to draw the scene in our workbooks. My friend Foggy and I were sitting together on the back row. Our imagination was running off. We made some creative drawings with Jesus on board a pirate ship, with a pirate flag in the rear, and some angels flying around with propellers on the back. The kind of things little boys do.
The teacher was furious, and God was furious too, she said. We should expect a painful destiny in Hell, unless we prayed. The homework for next day was to color the pages black, to cover the blasphemic drawings. Tearing it out was no alternative. Then the attached page on the other side of the staple would fall out, the page where the Great Commission (Matthew 28: 18-20) was written down. Covering the drawings with black crayons was the only option.
That day, I learnt three things:
o Religion is a stupid thing,
o I'm an atheist,
o Black is my color of choice.
As I have grown older, I have refined my views a little bit:
o Religion can be a stupid thing, but doesn't have to be. Anyway, religion has brought more pain than good to the world. The Catholic Church has killed more people than Hitler (the church also had alot more time to reach the top of the killing list, of course, today it's mainly the Muslims who are running up).
o I'm an atheist, with some sympathies towards satanism (which is not a theistic religion, but more like a philosophy).
o I wear only black clothes, and I listen to black metal.
In Satan we trust >:)
Nicely done. I don't mind black, either, but your text is killing my eyes. Still, worth the read.
ReplyDeleteI like black too, it goes with my hair colour.
ReplyDeleteYou wear nothing but black, huh?
ReplyDeleteI am so glad I did not go to your school. Whew.
Helen
Straight From Hel
Most of the time it wasn't to bad Helen. 3rd grade was special, in the sense that we had a Christian extremist as teacher.
ReplyDeleteThe problem was of course that public school was given the authority to tell the "truth" about gods and demons. Most teachers were reasonable and sensible. A few misused the power they got. To me this was very provocative.
Practically and politically the preaching in schools could not be sustained, fortunately, as the children of immigrants with muslim, hindu, budhist, und zu weiter, backgrounds entered the school system.