Every time I hear or read someone describing Jamaica as a 'Christian country' or suggesting that Jamaicans are homogeneously a 'God-fearing people', I want to puke.

Where dem get dat from? Christian country mi back foot! Is full time now wi stop lying to the world and fooling ourselves with that declaration. Firstly, Christianity isn't the only religion practised by Jamaicans. And secondly, many who claim Christian beliefs don't give a damn about God most of the time.

Yeah, we know that Jamaica has more churches per square mile than any other place in the world, but so what? For every congregant genuflecting quietly in the pews or screaming loudly in the spirit in those houses of worship [whether genuinely devout or pretending lout], you have two or three dog-hearted people outside who nuh inna nuh God ting, and are, in fact, ready and willing to desecrate that space to 'eat a food'. So dem people deh a wha, Jamaicans too, or aliens?

And for every church cathedral or tabernacle, we probably have two or three rum bars, drinking saloons or beer joints [and don't even mention strip clubs] full of people deeply enraptured, drowning in some different kinds of spirit. But yeah, Jamaica is a Christian country full of God-fearing people, right? And dem people who under dem liquor and probably telling God to go to hell aren't Jamaicans, they're visitors flown in on 'satanic airlines' to test the faith of the children of God.

I witnessed and experienced serious atrocities in the 70s and 80s as a youth raised in an evolving garrison, and nothing about my life felt like one was in a Christian country among God-fearing people. I drive around Kingston nowadays and observe so much anger, hate and irrationality that I have to fight hard to hold on to a positive light. Where are the Christians? Just yesterday, a motorist cut in front of me dangerously, and when I protested [quite pleasantly at that], he proceeded to suggest ungodly things I should do to my mother, and threatened me with such intense anger you'd think I was the reason he clearly got no sex the night before.

I contemplated passing him, stopping in the middle of the road and blocking him and the entire line of traffic just to rush over to give him a nice brotherly hug, [maybe even throw in a reassuring kiss] and loudly remind him, and all the other drivers who would now be tracing me off like a flock of skettels at the standpipe, that Jamaica is Christian country, and we are all blessed, God-fearing people. But then I said to myself, no yah sah, my face allergic to thump and kick, and I'd rather die of old age. So I just laughed at my imagined scenario, and went my merry way.

But is this a Christian country? How so, when I have lived to see nice, matronly looking, rural women on national television passionately defending lotto scammers and framing the robbery inflicted on elderly Americans as a kind of reparation? So, dem lady deh now, dem a children of the Lord or satan's 'jacket'? Maybe dem nuh realise it yet, so unnu better hurry up and tell them and the thieves they're defending, that Jamaica is a Christian country. And while you're at it, link up those twisted beings who are raping and killing our children and violating our women daily, and deport them, because they're clearly not citizens of our God-blessed, God-fearing Christian country.

A fundamental tenet of Christianity is in that command based on words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount that also has parallel in Mosaic law commandment, which says 'do unto other as you would have them do unto you'. But how many Jamaicans really practice that?

Interestingly, the shrill assertion that we are a Christian country full of God-fearing people is usually spouted most stridently by people who are condemning homosexuality, because, apparently, that's the only thing that threatens to rip and rend the sacred fabric of our Godly holy nation. But are we really a Christian nation, or just a nation of hypocrites?

Pray fi mi, and box-mi-back@hotmail.com