"We don’t engage with religious a******."
Gary Lamb

"Remember me well, when you go to hell."
Pablo Smog

Cringe Alert:  If you have back problems or are prone to dislocating your funny bone, it is perhaps unwise to read this article.  Inoperable stage 4 embarrassment lies within.  Proceed with caution.

I attended Rise Above Ministries in San Antonio several times in the late 2000s.  It was a punk-rock church led by a guy with a mohawk.  They had a song I will never forget called "The True Believers," or "True Believers" that had an anthemic punk-rock chorus which declared that it was we, the misfits, who were the "true believers," and not the religious Pharisees who judged the soul of another person's album based on its cover art.  The album covers at Rise Above were ratty, but they were true.  Sometimes, you could hear the anger in the raggedy sheep when they sang "True Believers."  It occurred to me that there were issues there that hadn't been addressed, or healed yet.  They were angry people.  But they were trying, and they were true, and maybe (probably) they were working through it.

I know I am.

The fake worship team at Action Church in Canton, Georgia is the exact opposite of the band at Rise Above, even if they're both playing Rock & Roll on the surface.  Word to the unwise:  If the singer in your church is flashing devil horns and simulating cunnilingus like the bass player for a wildly-overrated shtick band from the 70s, while playing rockstar in a small town in lieu of moving to Hollywood and grabbing that stupid bull by the horns for real,

It's not a church.  It's a

Nightclub.  A billy club.  A dayclub.

Another reason to get stoned.

When I wrote "My Church Is In The Trees," it wasn't these trees I was referring to.  The song is about how it is preferable to climb an actual tree than it is to smoke trees with the "pastor" before you go inside the early morning nightclub. 

Holy smokes, indeed.

I used to smoke weed with genuine gratitude in my heart to God.  And indeed, like it or not, I believe the Lord let me use weed recreationally (and medically) as a non-vice for many years.  And then, one day, it was over.  The conviction to quit wouldn't let me go.  I tested it, but it persisted.

So I quit.

Not because it's bad (I'm not anti-weed in any way), but because God told me to.

I believe the trend of the world toward max cringe overload, a natural reaction to a culture that has been retrofitted with an unbelievable abundance of abhorrent nonsense, in which we are forced to lift heavy boxes of reason with a massive cringe hernia, is one of the reasons God called me away from weed in 2020.  The "420 Easter celebration" of the cunnilingus church in Georgia is an undeniable case in point.  Time to put it down.  The weed, the rage, the excuses.  Put it all away.  It's just weed, after all.  So put it down.  You don't need it.  God is calling.  He's calling all of us... Out of the lukewarm church of arrogant excuses.  The phone is ringing.  "Many are called but few are chosen."  But you will have to put down the bong in order to take the call, at some point.  If not today, then yesterday, at the latest.  But even if you decide to wait until tomorrow, if you're going to hotbox in a truck, make sure you're not the "pastor" of a "church."

And even if you are, be careful not to stand on a pedestal of filthy rags, defending yourself from the lofty depths of your own self-righteousness and sanctimony.  Note the "church" the singer attends in the song "When You Go To Hell."  Since I was there, I can attest that the singer did indeed smoke the equivalent of a bottle of good wine (at least), way up past the timberline.  But when the phone started to ring,

I put it down.

The bong, the excuses, the pile of rags,

All of it.  Dropped it.

Like a stone.

And if God is calling,

So should you.

"But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses
are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our
iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away."
Isaiah 64:6

Test yourself, to see whether or not you are truly in the faith.

Ask yourself honestly

If you are a Pharisee, or one of the 

True believers who understands that God can save

Even the dirtiest punk-rock soul,

If it is willing to take the call.

Thanks for listening.