How I Lost My Faith . XI - My Conscience Awakens

Not too long after meeting Richard, I was injured at one of my assignments by a huge building-truss-cutting machine.  The operator had stopped the machine for a few minutes, so, of course, I started wiping away sawdust from the conveyor track, when suddenly the operator turned it back on going in the opposite direction from what I was used to; the machine caught the tip of my left glove's middle finger, pulling me with it.  Luckily, I pulled back in time to save my finger, though I did lose the tip, just shy of the bone.  The foreman drove me to a clinic where the doctor sewed the skin to my fingernail, said it would grow back normal (which it never did), gave me a prescription for pain medication and let me go.  Workman's Comp paid me $300, which at the time was a whole lot of money for someone living on the streets and in shelters (I could have gotten a whole lot more if I'd known better!).  

The pain medication required it be taken with food or milk, which, ironically, turned out to be easier to get on the street than at a so-called "Christian" shelter, the Denver "Jesus Saves" Rescue Mission.  My one-night stay there was hands-down the worst shelter experience I have ever had.  A day or two after the accident, I decided to shoot for a bed there.  Instead of just one night like most others, if your number was drawn, you'd get a bed for a week.  I needed a stable resting-place in order to recoup from my injury, so I drew a ticket...and won!  I had a bed for a whole week!  

My immediate need, however, was for food or milk, as it was past time for my pain medication.  Thinking, "these people seem nice and claim to be Christian, surely they will give me something to tide me over until dinner...," I approached the man at the desk and asked if I could get something to take with my pill; I was in pain and it was growing.  

"You'll have to wait for dinner," was the annoyed response.  

"When is dinner?" 

"In an hour, after the sermon."

Sermon? What sermon??

"I can't wait an hour!  I have to take this medication and I need something to take it with.  Isn't there anything?  Can you ask the cook?"

After doing so, he said, "The cook said you'll have to wait for dinner."

"Look, all I need is some milk.  Can't you give me a little milk, please, so I can take my medication??"

Finally, they acquiesced and I was given a glass of milk, but not after nearly raising hell in what should have been a no-brainer, "We're Christian and we'd love to help" moment at which I was quite taken aback.  I knew from years of studying the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses what proper Christian conduct was supposed to look like, and this was not it!

But worse was yet to come!  Before any of us freezing, homeless, starving souls could have a meal and some sleep, we had to attend the afore-mentioned sermon presented by some preacher I'd never heard of (and wouldn't have cared if I had).  At one point, a middle-aged black man stood up and gave his testimonial about how God had saved him, "Praise the Lord!" and so on.  Several months later, I saw him enter an bar attached to the Kitty's Adult Book Store & Theator on East Colfax; "so much for his 'praise to the Lord,'" I thought.

Some things about that night are a littel blurry—as I was in a lot of pain and taking narcotic pain medication, which my body at the time was not used—there is a portion of this...fiasco...that I remember clear as a bell to this day: 

The preacher said something about Hell and some guy behind me shouted, "I think hell is right here on Earth!" to which the preacher responded: 

"If you think this is Hell, then wait 'til you see the Hell God has prepared for you if you do not repent!"

I came within a hairsbreadth of throwing the song book sitting next to me at the stage!  I was livid and would have walked out then and there if I wasn't so hungry and so looking forward to finally having a hot meal and a bed.  It was bad enough we all had to wait an hour before we could eat (after waiting for an hour or more just to get in the door), but we had to sit through a sermon by a man who, as I saw it at that time (and, frankly, still do), knew absolutely nothing about what the Bible really said and used literal fear of God to coerce these poor, ignorant souls to despair.

You see, I was convinced from my study of the Bible that Hell is not a fiery place of torment, but simply the common grave of all mankind.  Not only did this man lie about that, he blamed God for it, making it seem as if God enjoyed such torment!  Blasphemy!!  Even though I hadn't read the Bible in four years—with the exception of parts of Genesis and a few others, which I used as text for my calligraphy projects—what I'd learned during my teen years had become very deeply ingrained in my mind and heart, and I was deeply offended by this complete distortion of truth.

Thankfully, the sermon ended shortly thereafter and we were finally ushered downstairs to the dining room.  I knew I had a guaranteed bed for a whole week, but during dinner I decided that I would not be returning, not if I had to sit through that bullshit for an hour every night; I'd rather sleep in my car or under a bridge.

After dinner, all the men are ushered single-file into a locker room, while the women were directed elsewhere.  All of our belongings were placed in boxes and the room was locked until 5:00 the next morning—which was an issue if you had to be at the day-labor office at 5:00 for a pre-arranged assignment.  We were then directed into a large shower, where we were sprayed for lice, given robes and assigned to a "bed," which was little more than a cot in a large room of cots.  It was, quite frankly, demeaning and dehumanizing, and I never went back.

That was the second in a brief series of events that forced me to face the reality of my situation, both materially and, most significantly, spiritually.  I began to realize that my knowledge of the Bible was both a blessing and a curse—a blessing in that I knew more about the Bible and the teachings of the Watchtower Society than did most of the Witnesses with whom I associated (this was confirmed once by an elder who studied with me off and on for years after this), and could reason circles around most lay people, including preachers and ministers—a curse because once those things started coming to mind, my conscience began to flail me everytime I did or thought about doing something I knew was wrong and immoral, like getting drunk and having sex with guys.

My conscience was starting to really nag me after this experience and I began questioning what I was doing with my life, and where I was: homeless, in constant pain, and living in shelters run by religious hypocrites...what was I to do??

A day or so after I left the "Jesus Saves" shelter, I managed to get a (very) little help from the Welfare Department; they gave me some emergency foodstamps and a hotel room for one week.  What they didn't tell me is that the hotel was probably the scariest place I'd ever stayed at.  It was in lower-downtown Denver and seemed barely liveable when I got there, but I quickly adapted and settled in for a week's sleep in a room all to myself.

(To be continued)