The Book of Floyd/God Transforms a Racist

THE BOOK OF FLOYD

GOD TRANSFORMS A RACIST

By

ALLEN C. LILES

Copyright © 2016 Allen C. Liles

All rights reserved.

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INTRODUCTION

Floyd was a 25-year old white man living at home with his mother in a large Southwestern city when God decided to transform him. Floyd was raised in a tightly structured and deeply fundamentalist family of seven. His late father Doyle and mother Rowena were the parents of five children. They included sons Roy, Billy Bob and Floyd and daughters Sally and Pearlie Mae. Floyd was the youngest child and the only one still living in the family home. The family belief system exerted a powerful influence on Floyd during his formative years. Although prayer was a daily family ritual, so were ongoing expressions of open disdain for minorities and people from diverse backgrounds and religions. Racial slurs and denigrating comments were common, especially directed against African Americans, Hispanics, Middle Easterners, Native Americans, Asians and people of the Jewish and Muslim faiths. His father Doyle, before he passed, regularly told offensive jokes and stories that exhibited his special prejudice and dislike towards people of color. His mother Rowena directed most of her negative comments to those individuals of a different religion. She expressed special animosity for anyone who practiced the Jewish or Islamic faith. As Floyd grew older, his beliefs and prejudices mirrored those of his parents. He continued the family practice of offering degrading comments and off-color jokes about minorities of all kinds. As a result, he was often suspended and expelled from school from the first grade through high school. Floyd seemed to actively seek out ways to persecute those individuals he considered different from himself. Besides the usual minorities, he also targeted those people with sexual orientations other than his own. Because of his blatantly aggressive behavior, Floyd became well known to law enforcement. He soon accumulated a police record of several racially motivated offenses. He was eventually indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced to six years in state prison for physically assaulting and severely injuring a middle-aged African American neighbor. Early in his incarceration, Floyd was cornered and attacked by a group of young black inmates. He was in danger of being severely injured or even killed. However, a messenger angel from God appeared and sent away Floyd’s tormentors. The Black Angel Michael introduced himself to Floyd as a special representative sent by God. The angel explained that God had selected Floyd as a candidate for a special program of Transformation. The angel told the young man that God wanted to transform a confirmed white racist into a beacon of racial harmony. That transformed individual would then act as an instrument of God’s Grace to bring peace and healing among people of different races. God had surveyed the possible candidates and decided that Floyd possessed all of the necessary characteristics. The young white prisoner was incredulous at the outlandish possibility. He could not imagine himself acting as an instrument of racial healing, especially given his upbringing and family orientation. That feeling was confirmed by a tense encounter between Floyd and Satan. The Devil was adamantly opposed to the young racist’s consideration of God’s offer. Although challenged and almost convinced to reject God’s offer, Floyd finally agreed to try the spiritual program. The Transformation process included three individual days: Crucifixion, Transformation and Resurrection, respectively. The Book of Floyd traces what occurred during those three sacred days of trials and testing. The book ends with several dramatic events including a spiritual test that God administers to Floyd. The purpose of the test was to help God determine whether or not Floyd had been successfully transformed.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 — Floyd’s Family of Origin (Verses 1-12)

CHAPTER 2 — Prison (Verses 1-12)

CHAPTER 3 — The Black Angel (Verses 1-12)

CHAPTER 4 — Satan Responds (Verses 1-12)

CHAPTER 5 — The Bargain (Verses 1-12)

CHAPTER 6 — Crucifixion (Verses 1-12)

CHAPTER 7 — Transformation (Verses 1-12)

CHAPTER 8 — Resurrection (Verses 1-12)

CHAPTER 9 — The Test (Verses 1-8)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

FLOYD’S FAMILY OF ORIGIN

1 As a child, Floyd was raised to believe that anyone of a different race, religion, ethnic background or sexual orientation was inherently inferior to him and his immediate family. All seven members of Floyd’s family seemed to compete in telling the most racially insensitive joke or making the most bigoted comment. The family focused mainly on people of African American origin. Until he was well into his teens, Floyd thought the term F——— N——was actually listed in the dictionary. At school, Floyd was usually suspended from school at least once a year for either fighting or targeting some minority youngster for verbal abuse. On a couple of occasions, older siblings of tormented classmates had accosted Floyd and beaten him senseless. Once he had been hospitalized several weeks with numerous bone fractures. Still, Floyd continued to engage in racial bigotry whenever possible. His negative behavior was encouraged by his late father, who died from a massive heart attack when Floyd was 21. Floyd’s dad Doyle had himself been raised by prejudiced and racially insensitive parents. Floyd’s paternal grandfather had served four and a half years in the state prison for deliberately driving his car into a black bicyclist, causing multiple injuries. While he was alive, Doyle drove a delivery truck for a local laundry. The family was regularly treated to their father’s stories about cutting off or tailgating some African American driver. He was given a number of traffic citations and often drove with a suspended license. Although a hard worker and dedicated employee, Doyle had received numerous warnings from company management about his quarrelsome attitude. His supervisor was finally forced to terminate Doyle after he ran onto a sidewalk with his delivery truck and injured a black female pedestrian. The older lady had crossed against a red light, causing Doyle to literally chase her down with his vehicle. After his firing, Floyd’s father descended into an emotional and physical tailspin. Besides his unemployment, he felt radically betrayed by some unexpected life choices made by four of his five children. According to Doyle’s wife Rowena, her husband died of a broken heart at the young age of 57. Floyd had just celebrated his 21st birthday when his dad passed. Floyd quickly blamed unnamed African Americans for his father’s untimely passing and vowed to take unspecified revenge. His mother had nodded her head in complete agreement.

2 Rowena was Floyd’s 55-year old mother. Most of her prejudices centered on those people who dared practice the Jewish and Islamic faiths. Whenever she watched television in the family home, Rowena was quick to castigate a person on the small screen with comments such as She must be a damn Jew! or He looks like a filthy Arab to me! In private conversation, Rowena reserved her most outrageous condemnations towards anyone she thought might be practicing any religion other than her own fundamentalist faith. When a young couple moved into their neighborhood, Rowena organized a coffee meeting with friends to openly plot shunning the new couple. They look like Jews to me, she had told her friends. However, it turned out that the young husband was a mathematics teacher at the local high school and the mother was a pediatric nurse at a nearby hospital. Rowena also discovered that both the husband and wife were actually Bible-quoting fundamentalist Christians like herself. The revelations about the couple roundly embarrassed Rowena and several of her closest friends soon disappeared. Besides feeling shamed, Rowena was furious. She soon began castigating her former friends as Judas Iscariots, one and all.

3 All of Floyd’s siblings had been racially indoctrinated by their parents. His older brothers Roy and Billy Bob held special animosity toward Hispanics and people of Asian descent. They were also well known to school authorities as purveyors of racial hatred. Roy once told his family, If I ever have a daughter and she brought home some low life Mexican, I would kill them both. Therefore, the family was flabbergasted beyond belief when Roy called them from his naval base in San Diego to announce that he had gotten married over the weekend. Roy had never once mentioned that he was serious about anyone. What’s her name? asked Doyle. There was a pause and then Roy answered Maria Elena Gonzales. It was three years before Roy was bold enough to introduce his lovely dark-haired bride to his family. By that time, Doyle’s health had declined markedly and he was simply too sick to protest. Anyway, Maria was warm and adorable. Rowena noticed that her oldest son now spoke fluent and beautiful Spanish.

4 As if by some mysterious coincidence, Floyd’s next oldest brother Billy Bob fell madly in love with an attractive young Chinese girl that he had met in one of his community college