Jesus and the Marijuana Cookies

The Lion's Roar

A weekly column by Lion Coore

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JESUS AND THE MARIJUANA COOKIES

A few months ago I attended a reggae party in Colorado, it felt like I had stepped into a time machine and was teleported to a festival in the 1960's.  The venue was a quaint, two storied abandoned warehouse. The top floor was transformed into a makeshift art gallery displaying paintings of the black race’s struggles and triumphs, while the bottom floor was the dimly lit, smoke filled dance-hall.

The crowd consisted of nearly all white hippies. They were spreading peace and love while singing along to vintage reggae and skanking happily - though desperately out of rhythm to the slow, mellow bass line. The organizers were giving away natural juice, food, and weed cookies. I was more than willing to pay for these offerings, but unlike our culture, in the hippy’s world, money isn’t everything and the act of giving seemed to be equally important.

It made me wonder what the world would be like if the hippies were in charge. The US represents only about 5% of the world’s population but consumes close to 30% of the world’s resources. If hippies were at the helm, I believe this mindless materialism might be a thing of the past - a small price to pay for bringing back bell foot pants and tie-die shirts.

Anyway, my cousin who I was staying by that night, gave me a cookie and passed on the warning that the smiling hippy lady gave to him, “These are incredibly strong, only have one then be patient, they’ll take some time to kick in.” This was my first time trying a marijuana cookie, but those who know me best, will know that patience isn’t one of my strongest virtues, and neither is sticking to the stricture of someone’s advice. I live my life similar to the way I cook – I do it with reckless abandonment, experimenting whenever possible, choosing to go with my instinct rather than a prescribed recipe. What I’m trying to say in a roundabout way is, after having that first cookie and feeling nothing, I had two more...Huuuge mistake.

We left the party and later that night while my cousin and I were watching TV, it became abundantly clear that I was in for a strange night when Bruce Willis somehow came out of the movie and sat next to me. Too proud to verbalize to my cousin how f*#ked up I was, I tried to act normal as I kindly excused myself from the living room, leaving him and Bruce to get acquainted.

Unfortunately, the hallucinations didn’t stop there. I went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror and instead of seeing my reflection, I saw another me, trapped in a small room with white walls. My consciousness was somehow connected to the two images and I became unable to discern which ‘ME’ was actually rooted in reality. Understand that I don’t scare easily. I grew up in August Town, a tough neighborhood, and it wasn’t unusual for me to fearlessly walk down vicious streets without knowing if I’d make it to the end of the road.  That said, I was never more afraid in my entire life than I was on this night. There apparently is a thin line between sanity and insanity and I had to summon every bit of my will power not to step across it.

Normally in situations like these, I would call unto God for help, vowing that I’d never again do whatever the bad thing of the moment was. If any of you have been foolish enough to find yourself tucked over a toilet with the room spinning out of control, you may already know what I mean. However, this time I depended solely on logic. I relied on my rational mind to explain to ‘self,' that what was happening was simply the effects of a drug. I then began to coax myself into accepting the conclusion that everything would be better with a good night’s rest.

After the pep talk, I did everything that I could to fall asleep.  Nothing worked. I tried pacing around the apartment like a soldier. The reasoned that doing so would get me tired, but all I got was laughed at by my cousin.  Later, as a last resort, I tried choking the snake, but even that didn’t help. My enhanced imagination brought the woman I was fantasizing about closer to my fingertips, but it couldn’t bring sleep into my grasp.

Then, as if the night wasn’t strange enough, it got worse. To this day I’m still not sure if I was awake or asleep when I heard a regal voice speaking to me. I remember laughing to myself, thinking that there was no way I was going to be able to explain this night to anyone. Anyway, the regal voice asked me a very simple, yet profound question; it said, “Do you believe in God?”

I took my time to respond. I was thinking deeply about the question and also trying to rationalize how silly it was to entertain a conversation with a strange voice in my own head. I began to think back to some years ago when a friend asked me ‘why’ I believed in God. From the outset, it had seemed like a simple question, but once I took it through the rigors of the mind, through the scrutiny of logic, even I was surprised at my answer.

Firstly, no matter how much research I put in, science and atheism still leave a gaping hole that only the mysterious ‘God’ can fill.  The atheists’ claim that our brilliantly organized existence is nothing more than a random ‘Big Bang’ accident is absurd.  It is like saying Hurricane Gilbert passed by a piece of land with only raw materials and tools scattered across it, then when it left, we discovered that the wind had accidentally put all the materials together to make a big beautiful house with cable TV and a car in the garage. My mind rejects these so called scientific explanations as irrational. Our world has too much order for it to be an accident. There simply must be an architect.

The Bible too isn't without its shortcomings. If the historians are right, then the Bible was created over 500 years after the death of Christ by the council of Nicaea.  This group was headed by Constantine - a Roman emperor who represented a lifestyle that Jesus spent his ministry preaching against. Oh, the irony!

There was also the fact that many gospels written, but only four of them (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) made the cut. Jesus’s life between his birth and age 30 was also completely omitted.  This made me wonder why, and what else could’ve been omitted or changed. It only took a quick minute for my ex-girlfriend to revise the true history of our relationship from irreconcilable differences to everything being my fault, so I suppose rewriting the history of incidents that had happened 500 years prior would’ve been child’s play.

There is also an unavoidable correlation between culture and religion. If I was born in China the probability is highest for me to follow Buddhism, if I were born in Pakistan, I’d likely to be a Muslim. Lucky for me, I was born in Jamaica, a place though flamboyantly violent, it surprisingly holds the title in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most churches per square mile.  As a reasonable man, it is logical to accept that Christianity may just be a part of my socialized programming.

History has also shown us that religion was used as a form of control.  For example, the white colonial masters used it to enslave my ancestors and more recently, it was used by President Bush as a tool to get his fundamental Christian base’s support for the ongoing war with Islam over oil. This religion thing could be a set of lies; however, I have never read anything that Jesus preached that I was against, so I have accepted the faith.

Furthermore, it comforts me to pray and ask God for guidance whenever I’m at my lowest, so as a principled man I refused to denounce God when things are hunky dory. So in the final analysis, even though I accept that Christianity might be nothing more than a bag of cow dung. The reason why I believe in the Christian faith is simply because I refuse to be a hypocrite. In any event, what do I have to lose? The philosopher Pascal argued that even though faith cannot be proven, it is a wise wager because if you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.

With that said, what I detest most about the faith is its takeover by the egos of the know-it-alls. The religious leaders who have become so uncomfortable with their ignorance that they have decided to wipe out the phrase “I don’t know” out of their vocabulary. Everybody is now an expert on how God thinks.  And that's funny to me, because even when Jesus was nailed to the cross, he asked, “Lord why have you forsaken me?” Proving that he too wasn't sure about what was going on upstairs.  Suh basically, if Jesus, the son of God, nuh really understand how God operate, then how can mere mortals like your preacher or the Pope claim to comprehend the mind of God?

Anyway, back to question from the regal voice, “Yes, I do believe in God” I said in response to the voice. He then said “Come with me,” after which he took me on a journey. A tour of HELL!

…..to be continued.