The Dollar Store Clerk and the Brainwashed Believer

I was in the Dollar Store grabbing a few things. A new cashier was on duty, a young white guy, probably in his early thirties. Friendly enough on the surface... greeting each customer warmly as they walked through the door. The store was busy, and by the time I reached the checkout line, it had grown considerably. A few people stood ahead of me, including an elderly Black couple at the register, struggling with their payment.

It was during this wait that I noticed something strange: the cashier had been asking every customer the same question... “Did you talk to Jesus this morning?” Or something along those lines. For most people, it was just a moment of awkwardness. They'd smile or mumble something to get through it. But if you know anything about me - TASKE - you know that’s not the kind of question you want to spring on me unsolicited.

By the time I stepped up to the counter, I was already mean-mugging him, silently warning him not to go there. He did. And right away, I told him flatly: that’s not a question you should be asking people... especially in a place of business. Unfazed, he doubled down: “I ask because I love you!” Love? Spare me. We might be spiritual siblings in the grand scheme, interconnected on some universal level, but from an ego perspective... from the reality of human interaction, you don’t know me. Don’t patronize me with hollow sentiment. I repeated, firmer:

“Do not ask me that again.”

He persisted, preaching his viewpoint as if I’d requested a sermon.

Again, I repeated, "don’t ask me that again."

But he kept pushing his point, so I decided to educate him.

I dismantled his premise. I told him Black Christians in America donate roughly $8 billion monthly to organized religion through tithes and offerings... a conservative estimate. That money doesn’t circle back. It doesn’t uplift struggling Black communities. Instead, a significant portion funds institutions indifferent - if not hostile - to Black liberation. Worse, it props up a theological farce. The cashier’s “Jesus” is apocryphal at best... a Westernized fabrication. The name itself, Jesus Christ, is a linguistic distortion of Yeshua, and the blond-haired, blue-eyed savior plastered across churches is pure myth. Even now, as some congregations swap white Jesus for a darker-skinned Mary or a generically “ethnic” messiah, the deception remains. It’s all theater.

And yet, like most religious fundamentalists, none of what I said registered. My words slid in one ear and out the other. Not a single comment about the $8 billion I mentioned. Not a flicker of recognition about the way organized religion (particularly Western Christianity) has commodified Black faith and exploited it for centuries. And certainly no acknowledgment of the Vatican, the Roman Catholic Church, or the long historical arc of spiritual imperialism that’s left millions of people mentally colonized and financially strapped.

But that’s typical. That kind of blind zealotry... where belief replaces thought and dogma overrides curiosity - is exactly why I push back. I left the store knowing two things: first, the cashier probably won’t last long in that job. And second, if he does, he’ll definitely think twice before asking me that question again.