I once was a Hara Krishna devotee!
Merry Monday by Parris Bailey
“For we ourselves were sometime foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.” Titus 3:3
It is quite odd to write those words, remembering it is even more painful! Even to this day, the Krishna house is still on Esplanade Ave. in New Orleans. In 1973, I found myself chanting the Krishna prayer, holding some beads, and reading the Bhagavad Gita about Krishna and Arjuna. Some of the teaching of this Hindu sect was that Frank and I were to slowly “evolve”, so to speak, by taking cold showers, eat vegetarian food, and sleep no more than 4 hours a day. I will spare you the long story and just say that it didn’t work. The one thing I remember is the guilty feeling I felt going into the “temple” and the guilty feeling I felt leaving the “temple”. To make the story even worse, Frank and I had devised a plan in which I was to run away with him to spend the rest of our lives living at their farm in Virginia, chanting our life away. We had saved up $700 for the trip and put in our two-week notice. Everything was going as planned. It was a Friday and Frank and I decided to take the drive into New Orleans to see the movie “Jesus Christ Superstar”, after all, he too was a prophet. At the end of the movie, while they were showing scenes of the crucifixion, we both started crying. Frank turned to me and said, “Didn’t Jesus say, I am the way and the truth and the life?”(I was not raised in church had no idea what Jesus said or didn’t say) After the movie, we decided to drive out to the lakefront of New Orleans seeing that’s where a lot of young people always hung out. That night we ran into some young people singing and sharing their faith. A couple of them approached us and said, “JESUS LOVES YOU AND HAS A PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE”.
It’s funny how your life can take on a sudden change. Needless to say, we never made it to Virginia. (Thank you almighty God!) Instead, we gave our lives to Jesus Christ, got married and went to a bible school in California. All the feelings of guilt, shame and lonliness left me. He found me and I was changed, born again, and a new nature was put inside of me.
The verse above described me to a tee. I who was once so very foolish, serving divers lusts. Or another translation puts it bluntly, “serving my glands”! Maybe you can’t remember that lost feeling but I certainly do. I think what best describes me is some wild animal that was led by anything that happened to come along.
“But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared.” I thank God the “after that” came to me, after the heartbreak of sin, after following my divers lusts and after the chasing after the leftover scraps- God came to me.
Yes, I was born again. Yes, I was delivered from the fires of hell. Yes, I received power to become a child of God. He truly is the way, the truth and the life! Are you born-again?