Jesus in the Freaks

To belong or not to belong?

During my junior year in High School, Jesus Christ Superstar, the musical, hit the stages of high schools and youth groups around the country. El Paso TX (where my family had recently moved) being no exception. My friend Marianne took me to see one of the church productions, which is how I found out she was in love with Jesus. After that, she invited me to attend an evening church service downtown, off the San Jacinto Plaza. “You might like it,” she said, with a knowing look. 

I was leery, but Marianne had the skills of a good salesperson, understated, never pushy, dangling an invitation lightly enough to make me feel special, while creating a vacuum of information that compelled curiosity. There was also a glow in Marianne’s moon shaped face, a light. I can’t say I immediately surrendered to her light, as the disciples did to Jesus’s, but neither did I say no, as the rich man did, being reluctant to lose his material possessions.

Maybe I said yes to Marianne’s invitation because I was not rich, but poor, if only in spirit. A large, God-shaped hole sat at the core of my being. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Maybe feeling empty is the same as being poor in spirit.

I was a Freak (essentially a hippie), in high school. The San Jacinto Plaza swarmed with long-haired, mostly anglo, male freaks in the early 1970’s. And not just any freaks, but “Jesus Freaks.” All of these guys emulated the look of Jesus in Warner Sallman’s 1940’s ubiquitous painting. You know, the serene hippie, gazing into the light of his own halo.

JC Superstar ca 1970’s. Perpetuating the anglo Jesus look.

When Marianne and I had left the production of Jesus Christ Superstar the week before, a bevy of girls had surrounded the lucky lead, swooning over him as if he were George Harrison, my favorite Beatle, himself a Jesus look-alike. Getting the lead apparently got you not just a girl, but a whole harem.

Out in the Plaza, the boys who hadn’t landed the lead on any official stage, practiced on us girls. Affecting a quiet tone of voice, and a kindly somatic affect, slightly bent at the shoulders, as if carrying the weight of our sins upon them, these sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year old boys approached their potential Mary Magdalenes, offering up salvation. In a kind fatherly voice, they might ask: “Have you found Jesus?” Or, “do you know Jesus?” Or “do you have Jesus in your heart?” Or “do you have a personal relationship to Jesus?” 

Clearly they’d gotten the message that Jesus was gentle and kind; but also, reassuringly in charge, very much the center of attention. As one having authority. 

Jesus’ M.O. had to be a stretch for any teenage boy. Especially the fatherly aspect. Some of the boys, the introverts I suppose, chose to handle the pressure by walking around the perimeter of the Plaza alone, as if weary of the multitudes and looking for a place to escape and pray. Or weep, as Jesus so famously did. Though in his case, not because he feared being rejected by teenage girls, I shouldn’t think.

Those of you who are Gen Z, and perhaps even Millennials, may not know that the Christian culture, once upon a time, across the board, from liberal to conservative, pretty much assumed Jesus’ personality to be kind and gentle. Which meant they were to be kind and gentle as well. At least on the surface, in public.

Back in my Dad’s church, in the Bronx, there was a large Tiffany window that featured this kind and gentle Jesus, holding a sweet, wooly white lamb. The Good Shepherd.

I’d stare up at that window, at the light illuminating Jesus’ honey colored hair, flowing over his shoulders, long white robes resting in soft folds over the loving arms which held the little lamb, and soak up all that beautiful gentleness. So unusual in a man, so the opposite of the violent world beyond that window. A world where men bombed churches and killed little black girls (Birmingham, 1963); where police officers killed black men, in Harlem (James Powell, July 18, 1964); where real estate companies denied black people rentals (pretty much anywhere, including our neighborhood). And where, far away in Europe, one man had recently inspired the mass murder of many millions. In our mostly Jewish neighborhood, reminders of that Holocaust were freshly visible in the blue numbers tattooed on an arm here and there, with the lift of a newspaper on a park bench - a sleeve dropping down to reveal a forearm, or reaching for change in a local deli - an arm extending beyond a shirt sleeve.

For me, the large-as-life Jesus up there in that window, was the living Presence of gentle but fierce opposition to evil. That he was inaccurately pictured as white did not yet occur to me. Even as I had come to think of Martin Luther King as an embodiment of Jesus message. Jesus’s Holy Spirit meant truth and love winning out, over time, time and time again. It was mostly Black ministers I saw doing that, and a few white ones.

Nowadays it’s not unusual to see a billboard, like the one that appeared in 2016, on I-40, near my Mom’s house in Tennessee, announcing, in huge letters, four feet high: “Trump, Guns, Jesus.”

The new trinity of the Christian Right?

But back in the seventies, Jesus was still a gentle man and a good father. One hundred percent steady and reliable, unlike my own. Jesus might go off by himself, but in his case it was to meditate and pray. Sure he raged, but only once in recorded history, and for a very good reason. He damn sure didn’t carry a machine gun.

Whether Jesus’ teachings actually rubbed off on his followers or not, whether Christians sugar coated the jagged seams of their lives with sweet tones, and Bible verses, from the left to the right, Jesus was still the agreed upon benchmark for how Christians ought to act.

In my church, as most others, while we kids were taught that we ought to act like Jesus, there were unspoken differences in what that meant for boys and girls. I instinctively knew, and these Jesus Freaks down on the Plaza bore it out, that Jesus belonged to the boys, as a role model. He belonged to us girls only as a savior. We were to play the role of admiring audience, as we were to men in general. The world gave girls no authority, qua girls. Still doesn’t.

It was the fatherly posture, assumed by the white Jesus Freak dudes, down on the San Jacinto Plaza, that set this child’s teeth on edge, years before I had words for any of this. I could never be a father, I could never be like Jesus. I could only play the role of Mary Magdalene, who was thought (wrongly) to be a prostitute.

All of this unconscious awareness meant my inner bullshit detector was set at high frequency. And it pinged wildly whenever one of the Jesus Freaks approached. They’d ask one of the aforementioned questions, in the same way, with the same words, every damn time, which smacked of mind control. Someone had to be behind this group-think, I’d think. Some cult leader had to be building up an Onward Christian Soldiers army. These guys might as well be robots, or Hare Krishnas. I took great delight in trying to smash their false calm. Eyes wide and innocent: “Oh, is he lost?” Or bitingly sarcastic: “Nope, never met him. Now buzz off,” And when asked: “Do you know Jesus,” I’d say, affecting a sugary Texas accent, “Not personally, you?” I loved the feeling of power this gave me.

The night of the church service, after a whole parade of male proselytizers has been spurned, a guy walks up to our bench, and says to me: “Do you have a personal relationship to Jesus?”

“Nice to meet you too.” I say back. “Tell me, how can you know someone personally who’s been dead almost two thousand years?” 

This one is not fazed by my brilliant sarcasm. He has the requisite long hair, is tall, maybe a little older than most. He locks eyes with me. Really looks at me, doesn’t hide behind a spacey mask of unacknowledged insecurity. His hair is very dark, and his eyes are greenish-brown, like mine. “It happens in your heart,” he says, smiling right into me, very much an individual in his own right, clearly no one’s dupe. “Grace doesn’t happen up in your head.”

I live in my head. This guy has nailed me, so to speak. I’ve long since forgotten my experience of the Presence in my family’s living room in the Bronx, the Presence of the holy spirit I’d felt that day, and for some time after, in every pore of my body. Intellect is what I’ve come to value most highly. I’ve lost my ability to kinesthetically process daily life, as well. At sixteen I am weighed down by years of emotionally unprocessed life. And at the same time, am empty.

“Come on,” Marianne says, and pulls me to my feet. She’s been infinitely patient with me. The smart Jesus Freak grins at me. I scowl at him, a defense against both his dogma and his charm. He grins even wider, warmer. Marianne groans, grabs me by the arm and drags me across the Plaza, up some steps, and through double wooden doors, into a brightly lit, very large sanctuary.

The room is far bigger than any church, and far more modern of architecture, than any my minister father has ever led. Marianne tears down the aisle, and what can I do but follow, though I turn and scan to see if I can find him, the guy with the greenish eyes. Marianne chooses seats in the middle of the auditorium. Sweet incense floats down the aisles from the stage up front. I breathe it in.

Being in the middle of a crowd makes me uncomfortable, unless I’m stoned. It’s noisy, I’m hyper alert, and I don’t know what to do with myself. “Let’s go to the back,” I say to Marianne. She ignores me, begins to move to the strains of music coming from the speakers up front. Everyone in here seems absurdly happy. This can’t be real, I think. I’ve long equated being happy with being superficial. To be real, to be smart, you have to be at least a little bit dark, preferably deeply melancholy, or even depressed.

Marianne has both hands in the air now, and is swaying, long honey-bee gold hair swinging behind her back. She is, I realize, inviting me to get, not just intellectually interested in the idea of Jesus, but to have an emotional relationship to him. To “find” him in a more personal way to, as the cute Jesus Freak put it, let him into my heart.

My unacknowledged, much denied, longing for belonging wells up, threatening to swamp me with feelings. Immediately my trusty defense forces position themselves, fully armed, ready to defend the ramparts. Marianne’s eyes are closed. She is serene, glowing. She is trusting Jesus. He is the source of her joy. Her invisible savior. This is where her shininess comes from! Who wouldn’t want to be like her? Who wouldn’t want to belong to this? But I can’t be like her. And these other people, clearly they are faking it. Cynicism, my faithful companion, reassures me: The other ones, they’re just trying to fit in. She might be real, but she’s the only real one in the room.

I sit down, not knowing what to do with my body. The only time I ever relax, like Marianne is doing, is when I smoke dope with my friend H., down at the levee on the Rio Grande. Then there have been the two or three times I’ve gotten drunk, over in Juarez, and discovered a release from self-consciousness, a freedom from inhibition. And then there’s the cynicism, one of the reasons I love to come downtown and razz the Jesus Freaks. Anger and mockery are a way to cut loose, to feel powerful.

And now here is another, wholly different way, to let body and spirit cut loose.

This group Jesus thing has to be a kind of mass hypnosis, a fake high, my suspicious mind says. This has to be a cult.

I have not yet come to understand that I am already loyal to a cult, the family. And to its leader, my Dad. I signed a loyalty oath long ago, and continue to, day after day, night after night, inside the family bubble my father designs and runs, and my mother maintains and tidies up. So in this auditorium, while I feel deeply sad, I am just as deeply certain I cannot join these happy people. I cannot be disloyal. We are rational, intellectual people, in our family. There are people up there at the altar weeping. I long to join them. I will not, can not. We don’t do that.

Only my mind is my strength. Having my own strong mind means everything to me. I can’t afford to lose my mind to something that could take away even a modicum of a sense of self, which is about all I have, a modicum. My mind is the place where, when I can find a safe place to rest, alone, like in my bed late at night, ideas pop and dance, and grow. There can be no wild abandonment, no dancing, unless I am alone in a safe place. It is one thing to drink and act like an idiot over in Juarez, or down at the levee. That is cool and is about being a teenager, it is what you do when you are young. But to get high on God? Now that’s insane.

And yet, I so wish to believe there are trustworthy adults behind all this joy and ecstasy, so I can try it out. Had I believed there were, I’d have been up there in a shot.

When Marianne and I leave the church service I feel even more apart from the rest of the world than I did before I arrived. I’ve had a glimpse of what my heart really longs for, to open to Something Greater, to Spirit. And with other people! As one body. Not just alone with the Presence, in a room, or in nature.

One of my oldest friends from back East has a sister who ran off with some Jesus Freaks, and hasn’t been heard from since. “The Way,” that movement is called. From what I’ve read, it is a cult. I think about my friend’s sister as we walk out of the church. I am sad, but believe I’ve done the right thing to refuse this mindless joy.

***

And perhaps I did do the right thing. Maybe my shit detectors were in perfect working order that night. Maybe that was a cult. Maybe, had I joined it, I would have been damaged, as so many people have been by religion. But hadn’t I been already?

And maybe, if I had gone forward that night, I would have had a safe place to crack open my heart, express joy, allow love in, better yet, let love out. Maybe I could have safely experimented with being just one of a joyous crowd, without having to be drunk or high. Maybe I’d have found a way to a felt relationship with God, and Jesus, the kind I have now, one that is built on terms of both freedom and community.

Or not. Who knows? All in God’s time, they say. Maybe God was telling this freak it wasn’t her time.