Onward Christian Soldiers

During the summer my mom used Vacation Bible School as a babysitter. She’d enroll my sister and me in the VBS Circuit. Starting at the First Baptist Church, we’d work our way to First Presbyterian, then on to Evangelical Free and finally wrapping up at the home of Lacto-ova Vegetarians, the Seventh Day Adventist. At each stop we’d be taken aside by a VBS counselor, some woman in her 30’s who yearned for children of her own but was barren do to sins, and told to pray for Jesus to come into our hearts. I never understood why Jesus would leave my heart each week. Didn’t he like it in there? Was I eating too much spicy food? Talk about abandonment issues. At the Seventh Day Adventist church we’d get to sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” as we marched into the sanctuary carrying banners and trumpets. Some kids even rode horses in. There’d be a rack set up behind the pulpit for our daily inquisition of a town heathen. It was rad. After the torture I’d make my way to art class where I would freak out at a picture of a green Satan fleeing from a wooden heart shaped door of an English country side cottage, Jesus on the inside peeking out. This was supposed to represent my heart— but I knew Jesus had hightailed it because of the enchiladas I had the night before and that the green devil was going to squat.