Flint’s Eastside (The Bestside 🤣)

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post (Click Here to check it out), I was born and raised in Flint Michigan. According to online resources, the population in Flint back in the late ’60s and early 70’s was just shy of 200,000 people. There wasn’t any info on how many of those were Jews.

I’m guessing a pretty low number…less than 10K. There weren’t that many Jews in Flint. The Eastside neighborhood that I lived in had a few. It seemed that the majority of the Jews in Flint lived on the Westside of town.

In my neighborhood, there were me and two other Jewish guys. The rest were Gentiles. My bestie came from a family of 13 kids. They were Catholics. We all got along and growing up in those days brings a warm feeling in my heart when I journey back in time. All in there were about eight of us kids that hung out.

We played baseball on the field across the street. We played hide and go seek. We rode bikes. You know…fun stuff that kids did back then. Religion never was an issue, although it did come up from time to time.

My First Religious Debate

I’m thinking this is around April 1966. I don’t remember the conversation verbatim but I do remember the context. My Bestie was Catholic and about a year older than me. I was Jewish. They celebrated Easter. We celebrated Passover. Now, back then I had no idea that the two celebrations were linked. I don’t remember when I figured out the two events were connected, but it was long after those days. Here’s a play-by-play of the debate:

Me: So, what is Easter all about?

RW: It’s about Jesus coming back to life.

Me: What? You don’t really believe that do you? 

RW: Yes! I do! And he did. 

Me: But that’s impossible. People don’t die and come back to life. How do you know for sure? I mean, what kind of proof do you have?

RW: Jesus is God’s son. You can’t kill God. He doesn’t die. Jesus died on the cross and three days later came back to life. That’s what Easter is all about. 

Me: But that’s a bunch of fairy tales. Nobody is around that saw it. It happened thousands of years ago. It’s like that game we played in school. Someone starts off with a story and each kid whispers into the next kid’s ear the story. By the time it gets around the whole room, the store is completely different. Sorry, but I don’t believe any of that. 

RW: Well, it’s too bad. 

Me: Why?

RW: Because if you don’t believe in Jesus then you’ll go to Hell.

Me: What? That doesn’t make sense. 

RW: Jesus died for our sins. By placing your faith in Jesus, God has forgiven your sins. That’s how you get into Heaven. If you don’t do that then you’ll go to Hell.

Me: That’s ridiculous. That’s not true. 

Seems to me we had more than one debate over the years, but this is the one that I remember the most. I felt hostile after we were done. I never once said to myself, “Maybe they (The Gentiles) are right. Maybe Jesus did come back to life. Maybe he is the Son of God.” The more the topic came up the more averse I became to religion. 

Conclusion

The religious debates I had as a kid did nothing but push me further apart from not only Christianity, but it would eventually have a deleterious effect on my heritage as a Jew. When I got older the debates would pop up from time to time. They never ended well. They were probably the one thing that dove me to being an Athestic, Agnostic man. I would eventually buy into the fact that there was no such thing as God, and all this (the world) was created by natural events that percolated over miillions of years. 

Epiloge: I had to stick this in here cuz when I finished the original post for this article I looked down at the word count and it was 666. Yikes!!! 😅