2020-11-30 - Death in Space-Time

In 1989 I was a washed out Math Teacher about a year into dispatching for the local police department. I was unsure about right and wrong and deadly force, but I was sure I should leave judging policemen to God. I was a lost soul and a stranger to the town and to Southern culture. But they accepted me as a wage slave much as they were wage slaves. I never did discern any hard core racism, and very little soft core. The blue moon articles in the Panama City paper about our town's historical racism seemed to refer to another time and place. My bosom friend who I smoked a lot of pot with and traveled out west with had died about 12 years prior when I was 18 or 19 just a couple years before my sanity disintegrated. By 1989 I was functioning again, and I developed a friendship with one of the policemen about my age. His life had been pretty messed up too, but he was bound to live a morally upright life like I was and on that basis we became deep friends. I used to ride at night on patrols with him which was usually a pretty uneventful affair. We talked armchair philosophy quite a bit. I remember arguing if we could view ourselves from a 5th dimension we could view our lives as a whole and we would never consider ourselves to be dead even though we could see time stretching out to infinity in both directions from the little segment our lives are positioned in. Moments from our childhoods would have as much existence and presence as the here and now. He had been a member of a large christian cult called the "World Wide Church of God" lead by a self assured TV preacher named Herbert Armstrong. My friend's experience there left him with a belief that the purpose of religion was to control people. I remember telling him my religion was that I made a bargain with God that I would try to keep his commandments - Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, defraud not, and honor thy father and mother - in exchange for a decent life. Not necessarily materially decent, but at least spiritually. My friend believed me, and I am forever grateful to him for that. He died in kind of mysterious circumstances about 15 years ago.