My God Situation
That year was the closest David and I became. We lived together, drove to school together, marveled at the crowning miracle together, played basketball together and produced a novel together. He wrote, I read and drew illustrations. Like the studio in Dubuque with Lavent, we worked ourselves up into euphoric highs of avant-garde importance. During the year David and I discussed almost all imaginable topics but the one centered on most was my nagging residual belief in God. David was by far my intellectual superior with a brain that could carry around the names and histories of philosophers, world leaders and revolutionaries all of which he used in his assault on my attachment to God. He could not allow me to believe in "opiate of the masses" or adhere to a deity in whose name countless atrocities had committed. Intellectually I knew hew was right but the grip of my belief was emotional and unreachable by his or my desire to accept the obvious flaws in the myths. However, one day while walking on a street in downtown Chicago God left without explanation. My legs went numb and the sidewalk wobbled during the next few steps. It was a brief walk in the vacuum between belief and disbelief. Shortly, I gained control of my body and continued on confidently free from God's brain waves.
During that year, David's wife, Linda became pregnant. She had also grown up in Alliance but had attended the Catholic High School. I only knew of her because her father owned a large grocery store and was well known as the only source of illegal fireworks for young kids. He delivered the goods personally at the back of his store, a storybook criminal. Linda wanted to be back near her family with her new child so David applied for a job with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to teach at the Rosebud Indian Reservation not far from Alliance. He was thrilled to bring his social justice campaign back to his home turf. I moved back to the mobil home in Swiss Valley to confront my devout mother and brother with my new found disbelief. My father never went to church, we never said grace at the table or prayed before bed. Neither did he give God credit for fortunate situations or ask him to prevent bad ones. Both he and Mom were a quiet and temperate people, never exhibiting anger or prone to criticizing anyone. Neither did they drink or curse. They seemed to be the embodiment of a good Christian people and I assumed we were good christian people. We just did not attend church. The situation changed the day a missionary came to our door when I was almost twelve. The man at the door was a preacher sent up from the Church of Christ in Lubbock, Texas to bring the true word north of the Bible Belt. Andrew and I were sent upstairs but through the slats of railing I could see the man set up a tripod and place a chart on it with a picture of Jesus. My father and mother sat in the couch, hand in hand listening. Later the three of them got on their knees and prayed. After several visits family drove sixty miles south to Scottsbluff and attended Sunday morning services at the Church of Christ where the missionary was preaching for a small congregation meeting in a box of a church next to a dry cleaners.. The service was standard fair, prayer, songs, communion, passing the plate and a sermon. After the sermon the preacher invited anyone who wanted to accept Jesus as their savior to come forward. I was shocked when my father stood up and walked toward the front. The preacher stepped down from the podium, reached out and held my father's hand between his own and asked “Do accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior?” My father nodded and the preacher guided him to a side door behind the podium while everyone in the audience stood and sang a hymn. An older gentleman signaled to our family to walk down past the podium and stand in front of a curtain on the back wall. When the curtain opened the preacher was standing in a cement tub that was filled with water up to his waist. My father was standing next him wearing a long white gown. The preacher asked him if he accepted Jesus as his savior and he said yes. The preacher said, “I baptize you in the name of the father, the son and the holy ghost”. Placing a cloth over Dad’s nose and mouth and wrapping his arm around his back, the preacher plunged him backwards under the water, the parted wave crashing back over my fathers clinched eyes. The preacher stood him back up and my Father, flailing to regain his balance, sloshed water over the lip of the tub and on to the carpeted floor. The preacher helped stabilize him and Dad started to climb out. His thin body looked blue under the translucent gown and I saw the dark purple of his private area exposed through the clinging fabric as he climbed out. It seemed as if our lives had been thrown overboard into watery depths to be rescued, dried, clothed and stood back in the same place but somewhere else. |
The preacher found a couple more families in Alliance and we began having Sunday services in each other's homes. Shortly after my father died, the Lubbock church rented old abandoned church and sent a preacher of our own. The Church's gray stucco exterior, large stain glass windows, a steeple gave it the gloomy feel of a gothic horror movie. Inside were old beautifully aged pews facing a stage with a grand pulpit in front of a large pipe organic with pipes almost as large as small tree trunks extending up to the ceiling. It was a magical world to my young eye and sanctuary for our meager collection of rebel devotees refusing the Protestant offerings of Alliance.
The preacher, a convert from his heavy drinking days in a country and western band, immediately began preparing me for my own baptism. The Church of Christ does not baptize children until they are old enough to be considered sinners, usually around eight years old. I was way past that deadline and was living at risk. Soon, dressed in a white robe, a cloth held to my nose and a hand behind shoulders I plunged myself backwards into the water, the splash sounding like a roar as the waves buried me in the same blue baptismal tub my father was dunked in. The preacher vigorously hauled me back up out the water and I gasped for my first breath of salvation's air. The congregation was so small that, by necessity, I was given responsibilities such as leading public prayers. I prayed with such passion all the older women fawned over me. Eventually the preacher, proud of me as his first convert, wanted me to try preaching. With my frail voice, barely able to project past my fingers, I shouted out spiritual creations twisted from my young mind's life threatened interpretations of the Gospels. The older ladies of the congregation heaped praise on me, the adorable fourteen year old pouring out passionate pleas for God's forgiveness and blessings. This pattern I repeated again in Dubuque, attending the small local congregation Andrew and my mother while I was living there. After David had thoroughly washed the Devine presence out of me I returned to Dubuque and told my mother that I no longer believed in God. It was a very unfeeling thing to do. She was crushed and began a flow of prayers to save me from the hell she believed was awaiting me. Her sadness was a heavy weight for my newly pronounced belief to carry so after a brief time I lied and told her I had found God again. Once more I was accompanying her and Andrew to the small Church of Christ in Dubuque where I took up where I left off. With diligent study I was soon delivering the evening sermons and, being congratulated by the older ladies on my passionate closing prayers. I had stepped out of the boat and put my feet on the phony water. If I had to be a phony christian I wanted to be a good phony christian. |
Shortly after my return to Dubuque the church hired a new preacher. He was almost young as me but prematurely balding with whips of pale blond hair circling his bare dome like a bird's nest. He had won the preach off, beating out three other candidates who auditioned from our podium. He was eager to "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." He was also eager to grow the size of the congregation so he could keep his job.
Similar in age, the preacher and I had many long discussions on all kinds of subjects including his dislike of modern art, which he voiced with almost the same passion as his desire to increase the size of our church's flock. He was comfortable enough with me to ask that accompany him on one of his missionary visits so I became a missionary at the door. They were a young couple with a small farm. They sat hand in hand on the couch as we preached salvation to them. In the end the young husband said that as much as he wanted to he just could not believe in god. I told him I understand because I did not believe in god either.
Somewhere between a whisper and a scream the young preacher blurted out "Impossible!" With quick apologies he herded me back to his car and drove me straight back to the church and compelled me to come inside where he got on his knees to pray. "Kneel down and pray with me" he said. Looking down at his balding head, I said I could kneel and pray but I would not believe there was anyone up there to pray to. Furious at my betrayal he threaten to tell the whole congregation about my lies.
The time to beg was now mine. I pleaded with him not to tell anyone for the sake of my mother, brother and everyone else. I asked him to think of my sermons and see if there was anything in them that was not biblically correct. I may have been a lier but I was preaching the truth. With desperate, and finally honest, supplication I asked him to "please" not tell my mother. He agreed but I could no longer preach or pray. The lie continued on in silence.
Similar in age, the preacher and I had many long discussions on all kinds of subjects including his dislike of modern art, which he voiced with almost the same passion as his desire to increase the size of our church's flock. He was comfortable enough with me to ask that accompany him on one of his missionary visits so I became a missionary at the door. They were a young couple with a small farm. They sat hand in hand on the couch as we preached salvation to them. In the end the young husband said that as much as he wanted to he just could not believe in god. I told him I understand because I did not believe in god either.
Somewhere between a whisper and a scream the young preacher blurted out "Impossible!" With quick apologies he herded me back to his car and drove me straight back to the church and compelled me to come inside where he got on his knees to pray. "Kneel down and pray with me" he said. Looking down at his balding head, I said I could kneel and pray but I would not believe there was anyone up there to pray to. Furious at my betrayal he threaten to tell the whole congregation about my lies.
The time to beg was now mine. I pleaded with him not to tell anyone for the sake of my mother, brother and everyone else. I asked him to think of my sermons and see if there was anything in them that was not biblically correct. I may have been a lier but I was preaching the truth. With desperate, and finally honest, supplication I asked him to "please" not tell my mother. He agreed but I could no longer preach or pray. The lie continued on in silence.