Next!

It looks like my African dating saga is over, at least with regard to one lady.

Yesterday I sent a short, somewhat nonresponsive email to the Kenyan lady I had been talking to, and it ended with language like, “I hope God gives you a pleasant and fulfilling marriage.” It’s pretty obvious what a sentence like that means. I also said I hoped I had not offended her.

She responded and said I had not offended her, although I’m pretty sure I did. Then she threw in another somewhat lengthy Bible lesson. Lengthy considering the context, which was me, saying goodbye. I didn’t pay any attention to it. I have realized that anything I say to this woman will elicit a Bible lesson.

Imagine a marriage like that. “I think I’ll have some pie.” “Leviticus 86:43 says the man who eateth pie shall want in the time of harvest!”

My final offering: “Very good. No hard feelings, then.” That was the entire email. I don’t know what she can do with that. Maybe she’s done, or maybe she’ll send a scripture on resentment and unforgiveness. “Hard feelings are evil, but I am the woman, and I knew it first! And I have scripture!”

She made me think about the old-wineskin metaphor. Jesus said you can’t put new wine in an old wineskin because it will burst. I don’t know how that works, having little experience with wineskins, but the meaning is obvious. He also said that if you give new wine to people who are used to old wine, they’ll reject it at first and say the old wine is better.

My experience with her was remarkable. It was like trying to talk into a fire hose with the valve open. Everything I said was deflected back at me, and I was impacted by a gushing torrent of unhelpful, inapt words.

There is absolutely nothing you can do for a woman like that. You get old, you learn from life’s hard knocks and from your education and other experiences. You spend years communicating with God, and he teaches you a lot. Then you meet someone decades younger, and not one speck of it is helpful to her because she won’t receive it. Instead, she wants you to to eat your own vomit. She wants you to go back to the hateful poison it took you so long to expel from your life.

So what are you there for? What is your purpose? To be her disciple and her son. To sit back and watch her steer the boat up on the rocks every single day. That’s your purpose.

“I want to submit to you, as long as you do what I tell you.”

I’ve had many dreams in which my dad steered his boat onto rocks or dry ground. Actually, I’ve been with him in real life when he did that, maybe 5 times. I never did it once, although I did get into some water that was shallower than it should have been. I kicked up some mud.

I admit, I was at the wheel when he caused our worst grounding. We hit Mama Rhoda, which is a big rock on the way into Chub Cay. I kept telling him it looked like there was a reef in front of us, and he yelled and told me to keep going. That’s not on me.

In dreams, my dad usually represents misguided church leaders. Interesting. This woman is guided by such people.

Jonah’s ship was spared because the crew threw a rebel overboard, and Paul’s crew was saved because he was aboard. The ark was a ship, and the captain and builder was the only good man on earth. Noah was the only reason God protected the ark. Maybe the metaphor goes deep, not just in my dreams, but in the Bible. Jude says people like the prosperity preachers are “reefs” at our feasts. The KJV says “spots,” but it really means “reefs.” A reef is a hidden obstacle you run up onto while you think you’re going the right way. This lady and her friends are reefs to me.

I was not tactful with her. Thank God for that. She kept telling me about Kenneth Copeland, the rattlesnake-faced emperor of all idiots, and instead of saying, “Okay; let me think about that while I curry your approval,” I told her I cursed prosperity minstries regularly and believed God blessed me for doing it. What if I had been tactful? I might be on Skype with her every day, talking about plane fares and immigration, waiting for the day when we had our inevitable confrontation about the filthiness of Copeland and Jerry Savelle and the other liars.

The rattlesnake-faced emperor of all idiots.

She has two kids somewhere. I know nothing about them, because she has told me nothing. Her profile says they don’t live with her. Maybe her ex-boyfriend is a Muslim and got automatic custody. She had them out of wedlock, and she used to be a Muslim. Anyway, imagine the difficulty of bringing teenagers to the US, supporting them, and trying to get along with them.

I thought her near-silence about the kids and the odd custody arrangements were red flags, but I don’t know anything about Kenya. Maybe kids are like luggage there. Maybe they’re in boarding school and they are expected to do whatever she tells them.

Right now I’m back to fielding messages from young, unrealistically gorgeous (and often not) African women, African women who pretend to be American, African men who pretend to be women, unattractive American women, and a couple of attractive American women who just don’t have much to say. It’s almost like talking to a glass of water. I feel bad for them, but what can you do? You can’t tell someone to start having a personality.

It’s kind of funny that I ended up talking to a woman who adores prosperity preachers and thinks anyone who criticizes them is working for Satan. I hate and despise the prosperity gospel. I have distinguished myself by attacking it and exposing its pimps publicly, over and over. I am the last person on earth who could ever go back to it. I feel like this woman was tailor-made for me, to discourage me.

It’s as if I were a runaway slave, living in a nice house in Illinois or Pennsylvania, and a current slave were trying to coax me to join her and let her nice white master whip me and keep me in a too-familiar hovel with a dirt floor. I could also be compared to an escaped convict. “The warden loves us and knows what’s best for us. Come back, and your rebellion will be forgiven.”

Being abused every day of your life is terrible, but there is something much worse: escaping and then being returned to it. This woman has no idea what she was asking.

Here I was, trying to free her from the same misery I endured, and she wanted no part of it and said the abolitionists were working for Satan.

I’m not surprised by any of this. It’s exactly what I expect from prosperity slaves. The prosperity movement is a cult, and cult members are fiercely loyal to the people who destroy them.

It’s exactly what Jesus went through. I don’t mean that I’m being crucified, obviously. Just that I was punished, on Satan’s orders, for trying to help someone in the grip of Satanic doctrine. Jesus was tortured to death by the people he was trying to rescue. The Jews who rejected him beat him and had him murdered. The Romans did their bidding. He wanted to save all of them. Many of them are blazing and shrieking in hell right now, unless it’s true that Jesus was able to deliver damned souls while he was in hell, and his tormentors repented.

It’s wonderful, writing about these things. Romantic opportunities destroy clear thinking. The more you write about someone who seems to have potential, the better you will understand them. It undoes gaslighting and prevents catastrophe.

When I was in my teens, I thought nearly any good-looking girl who was nice to me might be my big chance. That’s pathetic, but then so was I. My parents taught me nothing at all about life, and you can’t figure everything out on your own. Fatherlessness is a huge problem, even for people whose fathers live with them. Now I’m old, God has taught me a lot, and I’m pretty good at identifying and rejecting the wooden nickels.

I was afraid I was making this lady sound like a horror story, and I thought I should list her good qualities again. She’s a serious Christian. She’s successful. She has great intentions. She wants to help people. She’s reasonably attractive. I thought I should list those things. But maybe she really is a horror story, and I don’t want to say so because I like her and sympathize with her.

If landmines weren’t buried, nobody would step on them.

A total inability to listen, and a steely determination to tell a husband what to think and do, added to a delusion that one is submissive and humble, combine to form a hazard comparable to the spike-filled pits of the Viet Cong.

Traps can be very pretty, indeed.

I have no idea what will come next. Maybe someone will appear and turn out to be a gift from God, or maybe I’ll keep rejecting duds, get even older, and die alone. In any case, I didn’t take the free candy or get in the van this time around.