Born OK the first time

Every now and again, you hear a song that really speaks to you. Its about something you’ve thought about but couldn’t express half as beautifully, or you weren’t sure if anyone else ever felt the same way.

This is one of my favorite things about music. And, this time, the song that has me completely gob-smacked is Ben Folds’ “Jesusland.”

Jesusland an indictment of the M.O. here in the Bible Belt, where the name-dropping of JC and commercialization of Christian ideals undercuts the true meaning of the religion itself. Ben Folds addresses Jesus directly, wondering what he would think if he walked among us today.

The song just has to be about Nashville, where Ben Folds also lives. He articulates exactly what has rubbed me the wrong way about the ubiquity of Christianity here: it’s not just pervasive, it’s invasive.

It’s the kind of place where people talk about and with people who share their own religions and beliefs with such frequency that it never occurs to them that not everyone may feel the same way, or that just because an entire town agrees with them or a book says so doesn’t make it everyone‘s Truth.

It’s the kind of place where people have no qualms about looking someone like me in the eye when they tell you they could never marry a Jew because the Jews killed Jesus.

I can’t possibly be happy about anything that is shoved down my throat like that. Even if it is the saving of my mortal soul.

Here are a few telling lyrics about my very own Jesusland:

“past dollar stores and wig shops“
Nashville is the only city, to my knowledge, where dollar stores and wig shops comprise one-third of the retail sector. It’s freaky.

“Down the tracks,
beautiful McMansions on a hill,
that overlook a highway“
Have you been to my house? Because this is it. And it’s like most houses in Nashville — unnecessarily large, set on a grassy hill, in a neighborhood that is delineated by one of the many interstates and unnamed, numbered state highways. Ours is on Highway 100, and it overlooks train tracks

Did you just get goose bumps too?

“broadcast to each house, they drop your name“
At 10 a.m., The Today Show is interrupted for an hour of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s The 700 Club, hosted of course by Pat Robertson. This is on NBC, people.

“billboards quoting things you’d never say“
Just a sampling of bumper sticker and billboard slogans around town:

- “How would Jesus drive?”
- “Psychiatry kills. Jesus saves.”
- “Abortion: Big People Killing Little People”
- “So you’ll kill an unborn baby, but not a convicted murderer?”
- “I don’t question YOUR existence. — God”
- “Next time you think YOU’RE perfect, try walking on water.”

Seriously, people. What would Jesus say?

“you see it all,
from offices to farms,
crosses flying high above the malls“
I swear that the view as you drive into town, down the hill on Hillsboro Road and past the grazing cattle by out where Ben Folds lives, is of dozens of church steeples standing right there among the Golden Arches and Starbucks signs and blinking electronic billboards and a sign for the Green Hills Mall.

And what strikes me about this is that it just isn’t striking anymore — that religion here feels less sacred simply because it is everywhere, like an irritating commercial that interrupts your regularly scheduled programming.

I know I’m not winning any points here, and that the few friends I do have in Nashville will probably avoid me and pray for my soul if they read this. But I just wish people would keep their spirituality off their bumper stickers and between them and God, where it belongs.

In the meantime, Rob will continue to listen to 94.1 The Fish on the way to work, waving at the people who flick him off after spotting the Obama sticker in his rear window. And I may just try to beat ‘em at their own game and slap a few of these babies on my own car:

Tags: 700 Club, Ben Folds, Bible Belt, billboards, bumper stickers, Christian Broadcasting Network, Christianity, Jesusland, McMansions, Nashville, Pat Robertson, Today Show, wig shops