Crazy Christian

I am a crazy Christian. One of those freaky scripture quotin, lookin for signs, reading the tea leaves, God’s watching you and you-better-watch-out cause the Devil is just around the next bend, kind of Christians. I’m the one you would call a fanatic, a holy roller, a Jesus Freak. I’m the one you see in the grocery store and you duck down behind the mound of tomatoes until I pass by.

I looked up the definition for Jesus Freak. “Noun: Someone who displays an unusual or embarrassing amount of enthusiasm for Jesus…or…Someone who persists in talking about the importance of Jesus in their life and the world to the point of being rude.” I’m thinking the person who wrote these definitions was, more than once, cornered behind the tomatoes by their local Jesus Freak.

I even scare off fellow Christians. My friends like to say, “Wow, you’re really living it,” or “Wow, you’re really deep,” which is of course code for, “Psychoooo!”

Before I was a Christian, I delivered pizza for Dominoes. It was a very spiritually charged environment. The manager, we’ll call him Greg, sold dime bags of Mexican pot out the kitchen back door. Greg used to let us get high in the bathroom before our shift. This presented just one or two tiny problems for me as I delivered the pizzas. First, and the most obvious, it is not recommended that a person drive stoned. I often found myself staring endlessly at the map and then just shaking my head saying, “Whoa…whoa…” Secondly, there was the whole munchy/steaming hot pepperoni in the front seat issue. I never ate an entire slice. I just strategically picked the good parts off the top, the pepperoni, the sausage, the mushrooms, leaving the customer to believe that Dominoes was getting chintzy on their toppings.

So there was Greg, the pothead manager, me, the pothead teenager and the Jesus Freak. We’ll call him Hank. Hank was plump, somewhere in his early thirties and had one of those cop-mustaches. He wore his bright red Dominoes shirt tucked into his acid washed jeans, fastened by a nifty leather belt. And Hank was a singer, or at least he thought so, and he’d swoop swiftly through the kitchen hollering out “Jesus loves me…this I know for the bible tells me so!”

I’d rub my red and itchy eyes and glare at him as he pranced by. “Jesus Freak,” I’d mutter.

“What’s that?” he’d say. “Did you just compliment me, Darlin’?”

Now here’s where I could’ve just ignored him, laughed him off, pretended I was more stoned than I was, but something about him just got under my skin. “No, I didn’t.” I’d say. “You just think you’re soooo much better than the rest of us,” I bated, blowing my crimped bangs out of my eyes.

“Just a sinner, like you, Sweetie, saved by grace and walkin’ in the light.”

I stared him down.

“You know, Sweetie,” (Again with the Sweetie?) “you confess your sins and give your life to Jesus and you will know eternal joy and have everlasting life…he’ll save you from the fiery pit of Hell.”

Well, now he was just seriously killing my buzz.

He leaned his face close in towards me, “Sweetie, don’t you know how much Jesus loves you? Gave His very life to prove that love!”

Had I been a boy, this is where I may have hucked a loogy at him. But Instead I just quietly, gracefully and very lady-like, rose my middle finger up to his nose.



Let’s just say since then, Jesus and I have gone a few rounds and He’s won, most of the time. I have come to realize He truly is the King of Kings and the lover of my soul. All glory, honor and worship is rightfully His.

But no matter how many days or years I walk in the light, I can’t shake what it felt like to be that seventeen year old girl on drugs, with my hair all crimped up and not having a clue how much Jesus loves me.

So I’m trapped somewhere in the middle. I don’t want to be rude or freak people out but I can’t seem to keep Jesus in the box and only take him out at bible study and on Sunday mornings. The Faith is very real to me. Jesus is very real to me…and so is Satan. I pray in the Holy name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth that my life be a living sacrifice and testament to His sweet glory and grace…and that the Devil would be bound up and thrown in to the fiery place prepared for him! I pray that every living soul come to repent of their sins and know the everlasting grace and love and mercy that abounds from the throne of God! Haleluiah Jesus! Praise Jesus, praise his Holy Name!

Oh, my god, I’m Hank.

So be it.

I read recently that, “the Devil never forgives those who escape bondage” and “as we move farther on in the Christian life that we may expect to encounter increased hostility from the enemy of our souls” and furthermore, “that the Spirit filled life is not, as many suppose, a life of peace and quiet pleasure. It is likely to be something quite the opposite.” Oh…that Tozer really knew his stuff.

It’s not always pretty. Sometimes, well, most of the time…I don’t much fit in anywhere. But here I am, fighting the good fight the only way I know how, running the race set before me. I see God in just about everything and Satan well, truth be told, he’s a roaring lion seeking whomever he may devour.

So when I see you in the grocery store, I just might have to tell you about it. And if you duck behind the tomatoes, I may come looking for you.