My God Situation
During the year spent substituting in Chicago Dave finally convinced me that God is not real. I had known that intellectually for years but was emotionally not strong enough to actually disbelieve. One day on a street in downtown Chicago the force finally let go. My legs went numb briefly before continuing on as a nonbeliever.
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 all were. We just did not attend church until the day a missionary came to our door when I was almost twelve.
The man who mysteriously came to our house was a preacher sent up from the Church of Christ in Lubbock, Texas. He had come to bring the true word to northern Nebraska in accordance to the great commission given in Mark 15:16 which states,
“ Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.”
Andrew and I were sent upstairs but through the slats I could she the man set up a tripod and placed a chart on it. 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 would be drove sixty miles south to Scottsbluff to attend Sunday morning services where the man was the preacher for a small congregation in a box of a church next to a dry cleaners..
The service was standard fair, prayer, songs, communion, passing the plate and sermon, except that after the sermon and the preacher invited anyone who wanted to confess their sins and accept Jesus as their savior to stand up and come forward. I was shocked when my father stood up and walked toward the front. Suddenly, our previous life was not good enough and some kind of transformation seemed to be required in order to be more pleasing to God. The preacher stepped down from the podium, reached out and held my father's hand between his 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 as he mounted the steps, struggling to haul the heavy soaked fabric out of the baptismal pool. I saw the dark purple of his private area exposed through the clinging fabric as he climbed out. His near nakedness in front of strangers the cost of salvation. It seemed as if our lives had been thrown overboard into the watery depths to be rescued, dried, clothed and stood back in the same place but somewhere else.
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 all were. We just did not attend church until the day a missionary came to our door when I was almost twelve.
The man who mysteriously came to our house was a preacher sent up from the Church of Christ in Lubbock, Texas. He had come to bring the true word to northern Nebraska in accordance to the great commission given in Mark 15:16 which states,
“ Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.”
Andrew and I were sent upstairs but through the slats I could she the man set up a tripod and placed a chart on it. 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 would be drove sixty miles south to Scottsbluff to attend Sunday morning services where the man was the preacher for a small congregation in a box of a church next to a dry cleaners..
The service was standard fair, prayer, songs, communion, passing the plate and sermon, except that after the sermon and the preacher invited anyone who wanted to confess their sins and accept Jesus as their savior to stand up and come forward. I was shocked when my father stood up and walked toward the front. Suddenly, our previous life was not good enough and some kind of transformation seemed to be required in order to be more pleasing to God. The preacher stepped down from the podium, reached out and held my father's hand between his 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 as he mounted the steps, struggling to haul the heavy soaked fabric out of the baptismal pool. I saw the dark purple of his private area exposed through the clinging fabric as he climbed out. His near nakedness in front of strangers the cost of salvation. It seemed as if our lives had been thrown overboard into the 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 and soon afterwords, were praying for my father's recovery. Minus one member, the church grew and rented an old abandoned church right on Main Street with a gray stucco exterior, large stain glass windows, a steeple and an old pipe organ, all of which gave it the gloomy of a gothic horror movie. Made out of gray stucco, it had an old world look of foggy English country side down the road from Stonehenge with a hound howling in the background was rented along with a house for the preacher. The inside was equally mysterious with beautifully aged wooden pews and a large wooden pipe organ standing proud in the front with a keyboard suitable for the Phantom of the Opera. The congregation was so small that I was by necessity given responsibilities even though I was barely old enough to drive. I led public prayer with such passion all the older women claimed to be swept away by my sincerity. More than likely they were trying to bolster up a frail boy with a tragic history and even more likely, their history was not any more stable than mine and reassurance was welcomed from any source. I studied the Bible studiously because the members prided themselves on their knowledge of the scripture and quoting it was their shield and sword against the oppression of earthly authorities. I studied the frenetic weavings of Paul’s teachings in the dozen books of the New Testament he wrote. He was a passionate and poetic writer full of seductive reasonings about the true path to salvation through Jesus; who to died to save us from the sin God created in us just to prove that we are, by nature unworthy. Trying to understanding Paul’s theological rantings and Devine revelations energized my mind. Reading Romans is like being cornered at a party by a methhead who had just been struck blind on the road to Damascus and then dropped acid.
Three times a week we met to study the Bible and expound on our understanding of the holy scriptures like members of a book club. I slowly began to pocket several verses to memory and combine them into my heartfelt prayers. The older ladies in the church fawned over my devotion and the preacher had me deliver an occasional sermon. Any teenage boy showing religious fervor was thrilling to the sparse congregation teetering on extinction, so praise was heaped on me after each performanceThe Lubbock church also sent us our own preacher, a reformed alcoholic musician with a daughter I immediately fell in love with but was too mentally deranged to prevent it to from being a unsuccessful and torturous affair. I was baptized soon after they arrived in the same blue baptismal tub my father was baptized in. Shorty after that I was giving passionate closing prayers and eventually the occasional evening sermon, the older ladies of the congregation heaping praise on me, an adorable fourteen year old pouring out passionate pleas for forgiveness and blessings.
After my conversion in Chicago and I returned to Dubuque and told my mother that I no longer believed in God. She was crushed and, even more painfully for me, afraid of the hell she believed was awaiting me. Her sadness was too much for me to suffer through so after a brief time I lied and told her I had found god again. Once again I was accompanying her and Andrew to the small Church of Christ in Dubuque. I began studying the New Testament intensely to give worth to the time I had to spend with the congregation and was soon delivering the evening sermon and, once again, 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.
Three times a week we met to study the Bible and expound on our understanding of the holy scriptures like members of a book club. I slowly began to pocket several verses to memory and combine them into my heartfelt prayers. The older ladies in the church fawned over my devotion and the preacher had me deliver an occasional sermon. Any teenage boy showing religious fervor was thrilling to the sparse congregation teetering on extinction, so praise was heaped on me after each performanceThe Lubbock church also sent us our own preacher, a reformed alcoholic musician with a daughter I immediately fell in love with but was too mentally deranged to prevent it to from being a unsuccessful and torturous affair. I was baptized soon after they arrived in the same blue baptismal tub my father was baptized in. Shorty after that I was giving passionate closing prayers and eventually the occasional evening sermon, the older ladies of the congregation heaping praise on me, an adorable fourteen year old pouring out passionate pleas for forgiveness and blessings.
After my conversion in Chicago and I returned to Dubuque and told my mother that I no longer believed in God. She was crushed and, even more painfully for me, afraid of the hell she believed was awaiting me. Her sadness was too much for me to suffer through so after a brief time I lied and told her I had found god again. Once again I was accompanying her and Andrew to the small Church of Christ in Dubuque. I began studying the New Testament intensely to give worth to the time I had to spend with the congregation and was soon delivering the evening sermon and, once again, 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.
The year I returned the church hired a new preacher. He was young with premature balding whitish blond hair with a young pregnant wife. He was eager to "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."
The young preacher and I had many long discussions on all kinds of subjects including his dislike of modern art, which he voiced with the same passion as his desire to increase the size of our church's flock. He convinced me to go with him on one of his missionary visits. Suddenly I was the minister at the door coming to preach salvation to another couple unsure of their spiritual journey. They sat hand in hand on the couch as we preached salvation to them. In the end the young husband said that try as he might he just could not believe in god. I told him I understand I do not believe in god either, a slip of the tongue cutting the young preacher like whip who cried out, "Impossible!". He drove me straight back to the church and compelled me to come inside where he got on his knees to pray and pleaded for me to join him. 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 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.
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 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.
An old unused church building right on Alliance’s main street was rented to house the hopeful growth of the faithful. Made out of gray stucco, it had an old world look of foggy English country side down the road from Stonehenge with a hound howling in the background was rented along with a house for the preacher. The inside was equally mysterious with beautifully aged wooden pews and a large wooden pipe organ standing proud in the front with a keyboard suitable for the Phantom of the Opera. The congregation was so small that I was by necessity given responsibilities even though I was barely old enough to drive. I led public prayer with such passion all the older women claimed to be swept away by my sincerity. More than likely they were trying to bolster up a frail boy with a tragic history and even more likely, their history was not any more stable than mine and reassurance was welcomed from any source. I studied the Bible studiously because the members prided themselves on their knowledge of the scripture and quoting it was their shield and sword against the oppression of earthly authorities. I studied the frenetic weavings of Paul’s teachings in the dozen books of the New Testament he wrote. He was a passionate and poetic writer full of seductive reasonings about the true path to salvation through Jesus; who to died to save us from the sin God created in us just to prove that we are, by nature unworthy. Trying to understanding Paul’s theological rantings and Devine revelations energized my mind. Reading Romans is like being cornered at a party by a methhead who had just been struck blind on the road to Damascus and then dropped acid.
Three times a week we met to study the Bible and expound on our understanding of the holy scriptures like members of a book club. I slowly began to pocket several verses to memory and combine them into my heartfelt prayers. The older ladies in the church fawned over my devotion and the preacher had me deliver an occasional sermon. Any teenage boy showing religious fervor was thrilling to the sparse congregation teetering on extinction, so praise was heaped on me after each performance
Three times a week we met to study the Bible and expound on our understanding of the holy scriptures like members of a book club. I slowly began to pocket several verses to memory and combine them into my heartfelt prayers. The older ladies in the church fawned over my devotion and the preacher had me deliver an occasional sermon. Any teenage boy showing religious fervor was thrilling to the sparse congregation teetering on extinction, so praise was heaped on me after each performance