Is it possible to go through a day and regard everything that happens to you, everything anyone says to you, and everything you yourself say or do as an expression of love?“
Higher Thought Game question
South Florida Beach Culture, Circa ’71, ‘72
I remember when Jesus freaks were super nice.
My family moved from a New Jersey suburb to Hollywood, Florida (just south of Fort Lauderdale, about 20 miles north of Miami) when I was 13 and I spent a lot of time on the beach there. The Florida Bible College was on the beach too, right at the foot of Hollywood Boulevard.
The boardwalk scene was a gritty, alcoholic, stoned-out nonstop party with open-air restaurants, bars, a giant arcade, and a band shell where free shows and concerts happened. The Jesus freaks from the bible college blended in a kind of surreal harmony with the other denizens of that milieu: the veteran beach bums; the hardcore tripsters; the sexy, aloof teenage girls; the tough looking athletic young guys; the mellow motorcycle stoners; the dazed, smiley tourists; and others. Of them all, I recall the Jesus kids as being among the most friendly.
They’d always talk to you, for one thing. After handing you one of their cute little comic books about the imperative to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior (giving out those comics was their mission), they’d chat with you about just about anything. They were warm kids, older than me by a handful of years, being of college age. And they looked like hippies.
You have to understand, this was 1971. No one really believed that Ronald Reagan would ever be president. The Moral Majority was not a thing yet; no one had heard of Jerry Falwell, nor was “the evangelical vote” a meme. These kids had no agenda to deny anyone access to an abortion, much less elect a right-wing government. They just wanted to save your soul if they could, or, failing that, maybe just enjoy a little easy conversation.
The salient cultural divide in our country at that time was between “hippies” or “freaks” on the one hand, and “straights” (a term which, at the time, carried a wide set of meanings other than “heterosexual”) on the other. Hippie freaks were sloppy dressers; long-haired dudes; young women in “peasant blouses”; pot smokers; people who questioned “the system”; nonconformists; rock and roll musicians; and so on. Straights were “upright citizens” who frowned fiercely upon any sort of recreational drug use (save for alcohol); materialistically oriented; righteously dedicated to capitalist culture and the “American Way” with uncompromising moral certainty. (And they too could be Christians, though not Jesus freaks.)
Those were the prevailing stereotypes. And through that framing, it certainly felt to me like the Jesus freaks on the beach were, well, freaks.
I couldn’t quite buy the message in their comic books and pamphlets. I was Jewish for one thing (though they cheerfully assured me that was no problem! I could accept Jesus and remain Jewish!), and this business of eternal damnation for non-believers struck me as overly strict on God’s part. (Even though the comic books took a friendly, even jocular tone at times, and some of the drawings bordered on adorable, the unambiguous message was to turn your sins over to Jesus or go to Hell when you die.)
But I liked the Jesus freaks and I think they liked me. At least they acted like they did. I was a shy, awkward kid, and they were very sweet to me. The guys were big brotherly, the girls angelic. And they never demanded a commitment or anything; they just gave me the little comics to read at my leisure. We didn’t even have to discuss religion if I didn’t want to; they were so laid back. And though I never actually got high with any of them, it almost felt like I could have.
Am I painting an overly sentimental portrait in my memory? Possibly. But one thing I know for sure is that, as a teenager, whenever I heard the song “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John, the line “Jesus freaks/out in the street/handing tickets out for God” would make my heart smile. (It still does, actually.)
The New Jesus Freak
Five years later – an eternity in kid years – in the fall of 1976, I was a freshman at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and had enrolled in a Behavioral Studies course on Human Sexuality. One of my classmates was a young man with short blonde hair very neatly combed (perhaps a strand or three grazing the tops of his ears), usually sporting a blue jean shirt so impeccably tidy it might have been starched, and wire-framed glasses. He was altogether very clean looking in a peculiar “I’m hip too” kind of way. My mom would have deemed him “nicely groomed.”
From speaking with him a bit, I learned he was a devout Christian who put his faith at the center of his life. But he was far more cool and reserved with me than the Jesus freaks I’d met years earlier on Hollywood Beach.
In the class’s final weeks, everyone had to give a presentation based on something they’d learned or researched pertaining to the course topic. It was a very open-ended assignment, and my pronouncedly Christian classmate chose to talk about the insidious corrupting influence of sexually suggestive pop lyrics. He focused specifically on the song “Afternoon Delight” by the Starlight Vocal Band, which was about having sex in the afternoon.
Reading from a piece of paper, he spat out the song’s lyrics to us in a dry, clipped tone, laden with disgust. He sorta reminded me of a TV homicide detective, surveying a mangled corpse. “Sky rockets in flight.” (snort of revulsion) “Afternoon delight.” (tragic shake of the head). “Sure – anything goes as long as your parents aren’t home!” (nailing his point home, looking up severely from his notes)
Now, to be fair, I was never a fan of that song either. It truly is an awful song. The word “cloying” may have been invented for it. And if you were to google “most irritating pop songs of all time” or “most annoying songs of the 70s” or anything like that, it appears on pretty much every list you’ll find. Worst of all, when you hear it, it sticks in your mind for a really long time, like some obnoxious jingle from an old commercial. In fact, just the thought of it is like a diabolical invocation that can make it start to play in my head, so maybe it really is satanic in a way. (I have to wonder what it must be like to be a now-elderly alumni of the Starlight Vocal Band, having bequeathed to the world just one single hit record that will live in infamy forever, like a soul that refused Jesus. What a legacy.) (Then again, maybe they just laugh all the way to the bank, and don’t care that they won’t be inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame.)
But the point of course is that I was 18 years old at the time, hopelessly obsessed with sex (like the rest of my peers), and while watching this kid get all worked up about those lyrics, I thought I was looking at an uncommonly strange guy, a perverse aberration of something. I had no idea that he was actually a herald of the new Jesus freak, a prototype that would prove to wield formidable cultural staying power in these United States.
The Jesus Freaks’ Love Offering
The Jesus freaks of my adolescence hadn’t spoken much of Satan or sin. They were not out to terrify me. They just wanted to share an amazing gift that they themselves had received, which included freedom from existential fear.
Just think. It’s obvious we are all imperfect and require forgiveness. What if we could just “pass along” all our sins onto the broad shoulders of the divine Son of God, who would happily absorb and absolve them for us and make us clean and pure and worthy of heaven for all eternity? And all we would have to do – literally ALL we have to do – is accept Jesus Christ as our savior. What could be easier or simpler? Just say yes!
The word “gospel” literally means “good news.” And what good news! Nothing to really worry about, forever! An assured destiny of eternal bliss! The beach-based Jesus freaks tried to convey the joy of this wondrous gift that had freed their hearts. They were forgiven! I could be forgiven too! Everything was okay!
There is no question in my mind, as I feel back into my overall sense of those interactions, that they were offering love, the best way they knew how. Love comes offered in so many forms in our lives. It’s easy to overlook some of them.
Reflecting on it now with the benefit of what I deem to be “maturity,” I view self-forgiveness as a truly soul-saving force in my life, and potentially the most important soul-saving thing in anyone and everyone’s life. Guilt, after all, is Hell. Maybe, on a fundamental emotional level, the Jesus freaks were experiencing self-forgiveness, which they believed was sourced from Jesus Christ. And who the hell knows? Maybe they were even right about that.
But it doesn’t matter. Right or wrong, that freedom is what they wanted to share with me. And I hope those Jesus kids are well, wherever they are today.
I believe that sometimes we can be grateful for a gift even when we cannot accept it, at least not in the form in which it’s being offered, or seems to be being offered. And I’m grateful that, though I declined the specific form of their gift, I was innocent and unguarded enough at age 13 to marinate a little bit in the love of those South Florida Jesus freaks.
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