Nicia and her Evangelizing Ways!

    There are certain people that one meets that are quickly forgotten. Others seem to be remembered for a lifetime. I will always remember Nicia, this short, pale Latina woman in her late thirties who belonged to a charismatic, fundamentalist, Christian denomination, who felt it her Christian duty to save us from destruction.

     Well, in order to do so, every Saturday, on schedule, rain or shine, she would appear at our apartment as if it were just a regular neighborly visit. After making small-talk, she’d always divert the conversation to religion. Finally she would ask why we were not attending church again yet. You see, my parents had once been regular churchgoers of her denomination, but had stopped attending. In fact, it had been approx. ten years since the last time they had been at church. So Nicia felt it her Christian duty to bring the lost sheep back into the fold, just as Jesus had told his followers to do. That in itself, of course, was admirable. However, what wasn’t admirable was the way that she went about it.

     “So when are you going to attend church?” she’d say gazing intently into my father’s face and he’d immediately gaze away into the imagined distance tiredly. You see, my father was extremely averse to word-and-idea-repetitions. If you said it once, to him that was enough, and any repetition was perceived as pestiferous. If the same phrase was used too often in a commercial on TV, he’d jump up from his seat and change the channel.

    So Nicia’s constant repetitions were definitely grating on his nerves.

     “One of these days I will attend.” he’d utter looking as if he was being slowly being led away to be guillotined or being subjected to the infamous Chinese dripping-water torture.

    “Don’t you know that your immortal soul is in danger?”

     “Yes, I know!” he’d respond tiredly.

     “Then why aren’t you attending church?”

    “Well, you know, the job has me getting home tired. I work eight hours a day and sometimes overtime to make ends meet. You know?”

    “There are others who are tired from working the whole day and they still attend church.”

   “True, but maybe they don’t feel as tired as I do?” he'd say with a tired look on his face.

    “Really? Look! My husband comes home exhausted, and the very first thing he does is grab his Bible, get the kids ready, and go to church! He even encourages me to attend if he notices that I am tired.”

“Well that’s him and this is me.”

     “Maybe you do it because you don’t really appreciate what is involved? Eh?”

     “Oh I know what is involved. I heard all the sermons before-you know?”

   “But you obviously never appreciated them. If you had, then you would not be so calm about your          situation!”

     “What situation is that?” he gazed at her and then flinched as if fearing that his question might trigger a prolonged response with no end in sight.

     “The situation that your behavior is taking you, straight toward the bowels of hell where you will roast forever along with your family.” She meant me and my mom.

    “Roast?” my father would ask calmly, as if the concept just didn't seem right to him.

     “Yes roast! You see that oil on the skillet over there?” she pointed to where my mother had set the skillet and intended to fry some pork chops and the overheated oil was sending up a bit of smoke .

     “Ever burn your finger with that oil? Eh? Hurts doesn’t it? Well, that’s just a finger. Now imagine your entire body immersed in boiling oil while you are screaming in agony but unable to get out, asking for mercy, but getting none-not just for a few moments-but for eternity.”

     “Yes, I have heard that preached at Church before. You know, at the Rose of Sharon Church that we attended for for two years back in New York about ten years ago,” my father responded calmly.

     “Ahhhhha! So you do know, ehh? Then you really have no excuse. If you were ignorant, then you would have an excuse. But because you are not ignorant, and you know what you are doing, you will suffer the consequences of eternal damnation.”

     By this time, the large, purple vein on Nicia’s pale neck would be throbbing something fierce. and her face would look beet-red while my father seemed calmer than before her sermon had started. In fact, he looked sleepy. His eyelids would begin drooping, and a slight swaying of his body would indicate that he was having trouble staying awake.

     Actually, it had absolutely nothing to do with Nicia nor her particular way of preaching. For some strange reason, any mention of religion would seem to trigger sleepiness in my dad. He’d be watching TV programs, such as The Twilight Zone or Combat, and would remain 100% alert. Suddenly. if the film the King of Kings or Jesus of Nazareth or the The Ten Commandments would come on, he’d fall asleep. So if he was staying awake with Nicia, it must have been an enormous effort on his part. In any case, she seemed completely oblivious to his growing drowsiness, and would continue even more fervently:

     “And you know what? And you know what? Before he sends you to hell to burn forever, he will send monstrous animals to sting you, and your tongue, that tongue that refused to acknowledge him, that tongue that refused to offer him praise, it will rot in your mouth and those eyes, those eyes that that refused to see his holy truth, those eyes will waste away in their sockets! So are you going to go to church now?” she’d say after finishing her sermon.

    “I will have to give it some thought,” was the calm response she always got from my father.

     As a kid, I always listened to all this and just couldn’t accept that a just God would fry people alive in the way Nicia described. I suspected that the reason my father was rejecting her warnings was, that deep down inside he didn’t believe it either. Strangely, he never explained why he wasn’t moved by Nicia’s gory warnings. He would just sit on the living room sofa, ask when dinner would be served, and begin calmly reading his newspapers after she had left.