• the217
• Blogs
• Triple Entendre
• The Greatest Story Ever Told

• RSS

The Greatest Story Ever Told

posted by mzemait2 at 10:04 am.

• Bookmark & Share
• Comments (12)

In high school, I was a bona fide member of The God Squad. For real — I kept a signed “ATM card” in my purse (”Abstinence Til Marriage” card, for all you heathens out there). I told my friends that they shouldn’t swear, and sang warm, fuzzy songs while lifting my hands up to the Lord.

And I went to Bible Camp.

FOR TWO YEARS IN A ROW.

AND LOVED IT.

I was, my friends, a Jesus Freak.

A brief history of Mary’s experience with religion

I spent 8 years going to religious education at my local church until I was confirmed Catholic in the 8th grade, which to my family meant you never had to go to church again. Sophomore year of high school, I was comfortable in my status as Retired Catholic (which means you still get to go to heaven because you were confirmed, you just don’t do any special work like going to church or reading the bible or praying). One day a few of my friends casually invited me to a talent show at their non-denominational, evangelical youth group. It didn’t take long for this casual visit to become an important part of my lifestyle. Went every Sunday, got saved, and used this new group of people to develop my spiritual relationship with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And now, I’m agnostic.

So yeah, a lot of shit went down in between now and then.

I have a lot of things to say when it comes to religion in general, and my experiences in particular, and they won’t possibly fit into one blog post. In future entries to come, I hope to enlighten you with further details of how I was then, who I am now, and the steps that took place in between. Until then, I’ll entertain you with one of my tried and true youth group stories — a favorite among my friends.

In the fall of my junior year of high school, my youth group went to a purity retreat at Bair Lake Bible Camp (these retreats were in addition to the summer camp I attended). The whole point was to teach us kids to stay physically and mentally pure before God until we were married. And this includes bjs and hjs too. And thinking about bjs and hjs. But when you get married, your relationship with your heterosexual Christian significant other is transformed before God, and you can do whatever the heck ya want. Except anal. There’s stories in the bible about how that’s bad. And I think 69s too. It’s mentioned in Leviticus, I think. During this retreat, there were seriously girls bursting into tears because they had already had sex and the pastors had been telling us we could never be whole before God if we’d porked before marriage.

At one point, the pastor brought up all the siblings that were on the retreat (there were actually quite a few). The brothers went to one side of the room, and the sisters went to the other side.

The pastor pulled one pair of siblings to the middle of the room, and asked the girl, “Do you love your brother?”

“Yes, of course,” she replied.

“Do you love your sister?” he asked the boy.

“Yes of course.”

He turned back to the girl.

“Would you make out with your brother?”

The whole room went ape shit. “EWWWWWWW, THAT’S FUCKING SICK!” (No one actually said it because we were all Christians, but I guarantee you that’s what we were all thinking).

The pastor turned to the rest of the crowd and said:

“If you wouldn’t make out with your brother…then you shouldn’t make out with your Brother-In-Christ.”

Go back and re-read the previous sentence.

Now read it again. Soak it up. The psychological damage, my dear readers, took years to fix.

Even at Bible Camp, I couldn’t stop making love to the camera…

Mary Zemaitis: I enjoy comedy. And entendres. Sometimes, Triple Entendres.