An Evangelical Marathon

I run a lot because I eat a lot. I won’t pretend that this is healthy, especially when I do both at the same time. Once I was running a marathon in LA, and I was particularly ravenous. At the aid stations I was hitting the gummy bears and pretzels hard. Around mile ten I realized I had overloaded on salt, so when I spotted pieces of pears getting passed out at the aid tent, I immediately popped one in my mouth, eager for the juicy fruit. Immediately I realized that something was horribly wrong. It was the worst pear I’d ever had! It was dry and it wasn’t sweet at all! I worried that I was going to throw it up all over the marathon course. But then I realized that it was not a pear but a cold cooked potato piece. It was pretty good, once I knew what it was.

The marathon turned out to be full of surprises. Around mile twelve I heard a man yelling behind me, “you in the red, go left!” Was this man a psycho? There were hundreds of runners on the course and everyone had to find their own way. Who did this guy think he was, the queen of England? “You in the yellow vest, go right!” Was he really yelling at me? That did it.

I yelled behind me, “Look, here” then realized the man had a blind runner tethered to his front. He was shepherding her safely through the race. I locked eyes with a blonde woman next to me.  She had a sheepish face, probably identical to mine.

We burst out laughing. “I thought he was such a jerk!”

“Me too, honey!” She drawled back. “Poor thing, he must have such a hard job, I wonder how many people have cussed him out!”

“How is the marathon treating you?”

“Well to tell you the truth, I thank the Lord I found you! I injured myself by overtraining and I prayed to God I’d find another slow runner I could keep pace with. You don’t mind if I run beside you a spell, do you?”

She seemed a little weird, but I needed the distraction from my aching back and legs. I’d had a bicycle accident two months prior and hadn’t healed properly. “Sure.”

“I hope you don’t mind me asking, do you go to church honey?”

“I used to.”

“What made you stop?” She didn’t give me a chance to answer. “When I was a teenager I turned against the church and my life fell apart.. I was shopliften’ and kissing strangers and dancing in clubs. But then my Auntie prayed over me and I haven’t looked back since.”

“Um, congratulations?” She was using the first tactic of witnessing for Christ: admitting past mistakes as a way to identify with potential converts. In my evangelical days I had used the same tactic. It wasn’t going to work on me.

“Yeah, she really turned my life around.” Her voice was weighty, “I even have a non-profit   now that builds wells in Africa.”

“Where in Africa?”

“Ghana, darling. I went there a year ago and helped put the foundation in myself.”

I thought of all the half-finished wells I’d seen in Ghana on my travels. A villager told me bitterly that missionaries had come but left before finishing the project and that they lacked the money for the supplies to finish the job.  They also couldn’t get government assistance because it was assumed that the non-profit would handle it. “How did you decide on a location? Did you ask a local what they needed?”

“Well, we just went into the poorest village we saw. I’m sure they did.”

Ugh, I thought. But I was suddenly running a lot faster than before, my rage allowing me to pummel my legs faster and faster. “Don’t you think that is a bit condescending?”

“What do you mean? We prayed to God for guidance, I’m sure those people needed our help.”

My legs were really flying now. I thought of my former idealism. I’d gone on missions trips as a kid and used to dream of joining the Peace Corps. I needed to help others in order to be a good person. I sprinted, trying to lose her.

But she kept up, even as we began to descend into West Hollywood, the gay center of LA.  I was grateful for the cheerful crowd support, it suddenly felt like a party with more cheers, boas, and leather on one block then we’d seen in the miles before.

“Gosh, that’s so unnatural!” she said pointing at a drag queen cheering us on in her bright red lipstick. I couldn’t help but notice, she had great legs.

“What do you mean, unnatural?”

“That was not what God intended!”

“People can dress however the fuck they want to dress!” I was spitting now, my legs windmilling down the hill. “And you should never use what is “natural” as a justification for how people should and shouldn’t have sex. Homosexuality is present in all mammal populations, so it’s perfectly natural!” She wrinkled her nose. “You know what else is natural? Frogs are necrophiliacs! Male otters are brutal rapists that often kill their mates! Should nature really be a model for humans?”

She said. “We live in a fallen world and sin is everywhere. The animals you mention are going to hell.”

I pictured frogs with devil horns and otters with pitchforks. “That seems unlikely,” I snorted.

She sighed. I looked over and was surprised that her eyes held not smug superiority, but fear.

“I don’t mean to be condescending.” I said.  “In my evangelical days, when I heard a person wasn’t a Christian, I felt terror as if they were drowning and I needed to save them. But that made me a miserable person.”

“You have an obligation to save others. You need Jesus, same as everyone else. We are running now through the town of the damned.”

“Is the drag queen going to hell? I shouted. I took her pause as confirmation. “What the fuck? She was cheering us on! She’s a good person, for God’s sakes. You’re the jerk.” I think I was flying along at my fastest pace yet, but I didn’t feel my feet hit the ground.

“You’re just intolerant of my intolerance, but that is the truth. There is only one way to heaven.”

“I don’t need your heaven. You’re just making hell on Earth.”

This time my legs carried past her for good. I noticed that I passed the mile 25 marker. Oh my goodness, had I really just argued with her for over half the marathon? The time had flown by.

I finished the race on the last fumes of my rage, a full half hour before my goal time. I’d left the evangelical long behind me.

Two weeks later, I received a call while I was at work. The secretary said “there is a woman who called the school claiming that she met you at a marathon? Did you want to talk to her?”

“No, thank you!” I said.

I pictured her at the other end of the line, desperate to save my soul. But it was time for me to move on. I’d recovered from the marathon, now it was time for me to recover from church.