This is Tommie - Tommie finds religion

I’ll have to step back in time a bit for this one a lot of this occurs within the 11th and 12th grade so the part is really not consistent with the timeline that I have presented so far. Between the ages of probably 13 and 16 or so I was a full on atheist. J was one as well and that was our little inside joke. We would make fun of all the holier-than-thou folks at our school. It was fun for a while but the two of us being inquisitive fellows like we were decided to see what all the fuss was about so we decided to read this “Bible” thing to see what was going on. Once we started reading it got even funnier because we would take notes and all that jazz and we saw that people in school had no fucking clue what they were babbling about. So it was nice to have a frame of reference. From there we spent time reading and finding contradictions and weird coincidences in the Bible two of my favorites

1. In the entirety of the Bible a daughter is never produced. Someone may have daughters and even will have sex with his daughters but no child born in the Bible is a female.
2. Plants and Tress are made on the 3rd day, before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes. (Genesis 1:11). The Sun was created on the 4th day



I think we got bored of doing it because if we didn’t. I think we’d be working at it today. What we did come up with was a plan. We figured we turn are Christian in school and trick everyone with random sayings out of the Bible start our own youth ministry and get crazy paid. It seemed like a funny thing and a little cash on the side never hurt anyone. Truth be told we could have gotten away with it. Who would have challenged us? It worked for Jimmy Swaggart and Pat Roberson. Just quote a few random verses out of the Bible and end off with Amen and I’d have about two or three ministries by now.

But something changed and we got bored with the idea really fast. What happened was that the more we read the more we got interested in the Bible. Not from a spiritual standpoint but from a context on human development standpoint. It was amazing when you referenced the Bible to historical issues it really shows how the western world developed. We were both intrigued by that.

We moved to the next level that when we started looking at other religions like Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Santeriaism, Shangoism, Rastafarism and others just for reference. It was partly because looking at other religious tomes was considered SO bad our Christian counterparts. But, the wealth of information was incredible when it was referenced against historical events at that time my viewpoint on God changed. I went from a non-believer to a believer, I wasn’t sold on the “One true vision” of God after reading so many documents it just didn’t make sense but I did start to realize that God is out there in some form or another. I think what I got from that was that I was able to think outside of my comfort zone. On top of that in the early 90’s there was a pro black consciousness revival of sorts.

The anti-gangster rap movement groups like De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, X-Clan, Gangstarr, Ice Cube (post-NWA/pre-Friday), Leaders of the New School, Poor Righteous Teachers and Paris for examples not only did these rappers have something to say I could relate to what they were talking about from a racial point of view I figured if I identified with their racial viewpoints their spiritual view points couldn’t have been that far off the mark. So I started reading what they were referencing. I was a religious junkie. I was reading the Torah, the Bible, Koran, and I was really moved by the Holy Piby.

People don’t realize that Rastafarism is a religion (some say a way of life or a movement it’s all up in the air) it’s relatively new and could be considered an offshoot of Christianity the ideas and concepts of Black Jesus and all that talk really originates from them. The formation of Harlem is in part because of Marcus Garvey’s work (among others) there. But I was really inspired religious between the Rasta movement and sort of my on intellectual interpretation of holy text. If I were to choose to follow one sect of Christianity I think that would be the one but, I know I’d never make it. I can’t dig the Ital the whole no salt thing flies in the face of modern science.


At any rate that is a side discussion for another time. This is just to say that my reading gave me a religious conversion of sorts. On top of that I realized that it is a good thing to know of others religions. I’ve found that you don’t have to care about people’s religions personally but you have to KNOW that they care about their religion. When you realize that you can go a lot further with people.

In the end I became less of an angry atheist type, you know the type that want to point out EVERYTHING that is wrong with organized religion (specifically Christianity) and point to that as a basis as to why their life sucks and more of a freethinker type. I’m the type that realized that great good and great evil has been done in the name of “God” but at the end of the day more good has been done because of people’s faith in God than evil. I realized for me that it is isn’t so important to tie myself to one religious doctrine or another but to know that God’s power works through everything and how people find their way to God should be left up to them. You want to read the Bible everyday and quote scripture? Great. You want to meditate on a block of wood everyday? Great. Do your prays on Friday facing Mecca? Great. It’s all the same to me.