Today, I had an intriguing ‘feeling’ to go visit a Christian bookstore. It would be the first time since September, 2004 and three months earlier that I had been inside a Christian bookstore. What christian books and resources I had purchased since then was done either at the nationally recognized bookstores such as Books-A-Million or done with a group purchase where a friend purchased a large quantity online and got a slight discount.

I was almost ready to go make the trek until I saw the postman putting mail in my mailbox. After he left, I went to the mailbox to get my mail and what was one of the items besides the usual junk mail and bills? A seasonal Fall sale catalog from one of the Christian bookstores in town (well some may even classify that as junk mail).

Suddenly, I began to have second thoughts about going and decided to go inside and look through the catalog before going to the Christian bookstore. After scanning the catalog, I began to figure out that maybe this was not the day to end my ‘exile’ of over two years and instead decided to watch the Ryder Cup matches and college football.

As I pondered the thought while watching the Europeans having their way in most of the Ryder Cup matches and Clemson trouncing UNC 52-7 (the ‘fire Bunting’ chants will start on local sports radio anytime), I realized that I really did not want to go through the same stuff I experienced two years ago when I last visited a Christian bookstore. I decided that I did not want to once again see the parking lot full of “home school buses” turned moving billboards for the Religious Right, the ‘faith Lexus’, the eighty year old God fearing grandmother in the twenty year old Deville, or the little N.O.P.I. tuned “Civic For Christ” with the weed eater sounding muffler and the boom system blaring out the Holy “Hip Hope 2007″ CD. Nor did I want to really go inside and see the oversanitized and sterile environment with the magnetic strip detectors at the door, and either the feminized male or the Christianized Stepford wife employee perfectly dressed without a wrinkle in her clothes or a blemish in her skin.

I did not want to see the Testamints, the TBN Televangelist’s version of the Amplified Bible, the Christian fiction books based in Little House on The Prairie times, The Armor of God Playset, T-Shirt Theology, another famous Christian book official coffee mug and pen and pencil gift set, WOW 2007, Jehovah’s Jewerly, bibles for every demographic group created by Christian marketeers, Veggie Tales DVD’s (Christianized for the Christian bookstore and eventually compromised for the future Saturday morning cartoon on NBC) and Christian candleholders. I did not want to see any of the same cheezy rapture movies on DVD, the same home schooling curriculums, the same ultra submissive women’s books, the same feminized men’s help books, the same blab-it-and-grab-it books, the same ‘we need the Republicans to restore this nation back to Christ’ books, and the same Jesus Junk of trinkets, neckties, journals with a cross on the front cover, etc. that I saw the last time I went to the Christian bookstore.

Watching college football, mopping the kitchen floor, and surfing the Internet was a more productive use of my free time after all.

The Exile Continues………