I asked you if you had had a previous entanglement with Jesus and you said yes, but it was many years ago. Some 31 years, in fact. Where was it? I asked. You said it was outside of town, out in the desert, away from folks in their fancy homes and Cadillacs and BMWs. It wasn’t too far from where we were standing now.
What was it like? Did you feel his hand coming down upon you? I quivered, hoping that he had felt the same passion I had once hoped for.
No, he said, with a bleak look upon his face. It was subtle and quiet. Just a whisper. I thought it would last forever but it went as quiet and easy as it came.
And then what? I asked. What happened next?
I ran. He said. I ran for the next 31 years.
But why 31? Why not 29 or 18 or 33? Why 31? What was so special about that number?
I don’t know, Nick. It just happened that way. God’s gonna do what God’s gonna do and who am I to try and change Him? I just do my best now to live the life that I know He would want me to live.
But what is that life? How do you live it? I was growing more desperate in my search for the truth. Any insights would be greatly appreciated, I said. I had quit going to church some years before but still felt God pulling the strings to my heart. I didn’t even know they existed: my heartstrings AND my heart. They had all been so darkened up until now. Ruined, I even thought.
I glanced out on the horizon. I saw, in the field, a coyote with something hanging from its mouth. At first I thought it was a dead rabbit but then knew it was something else, as the package yet had life in it. It was a pup. One of the coyote’s children, I imagined, and the mother was taking the child back to the den for safekeeping. Often times they’ll run away and it’s the mother’s job to keep an eye on her brood.
With this child, my legacy shall be secure, I imagined the mother coyote said to herself.
I said, I wonder what she is thinking. Does she understand her legacy? I said this last sentence out loud to my friend, the farmer. He looked me in the eye and sighed.
Ain’t a lot of good for these coyotes to be out here. They’re just going to get shot one of these days.
By who? I asked. I feared for the mother’s safety. I wanted to be a mother one day. Or a father. Couldn’t I be both?
By me, the farmer said. Or by some other guy who sees the coyote tresspassin’. They’ll eat up your smaller livestock if they get the chance. Pigs, chickens – might even take down your dog. Or heck, the dog may go and join them! He said with a chuckle. Ain’t too many dogs out there that can avoid their true nature.
What about God, though? I asked.
What about him? the farmer replied.
Where does he fit into your life now? I said with a genuine sense of curiosity.
He fits quite nicely, if I do say so myself. Although the final judge of that will have to be God Himself, I suppose. He looked at me with a plain but bright look. Things were just what they were in his world.
I suppose that’s true, I said.
Nick you have to understand, he said, focused. He looked me right in the eye. God’s gonna do what God’s gonna do. You can’t change that. He is who He’s always been and that ain’t ever going to change. No matter how much we may want it to, it just ain’t gonna happen.
You think so? I asked
I know so, he replied. I seen it in my life. As much as this world goes from bad to worse, it seems as though God is the same He’s ever been. Yesterday, today and forever. For-ever. He said this last word in two distinct syllables, wanting to emphasize the elongated time period that forever really was.
Well, for your sake I hope you’re right. I told him. If that’s what helps then that’s what is best for you, I suppose.
Oh, I KNOW it is best for me. It might be good for you, too, Nick. You never know. But I suspect it is.
Perhaps I said, stroking my chin and then wiping the sweat off my forehead with the back of my right hand. It was hot down here in Texas this summer. Even more than normal.
Kind of gives you an idea of what hell may be like on days like today, huh? He said, laughing his deep, full laugh. From the stomach. It was a jovial comment, not with any threatening notion intended.
So, you believe in hell? I asked. I suddenly felt combative. I didn’t want this conversation to become a fundamentalist rant on his part, but I felt compelled to see where he really stood.
Aww, Nick. I dunno. I believe in God. That’s all I really know. And that’s good enough for me. I ran from Him for too long. It feels good to be back in His fold – to know that I’m loved and accepted as His. That’s what’s most important to me. I figure all the other stuff will sort itself out. Ain’t up to me to decide who goes where after we’re put in the ground. I’ll leave that to God.
Yeah, I said, impressed at his humbleness. That’s probably best.
Nick, he said, placing his hand on my shoulder, you worry too much. Just live your life and take some time to listen to what God has to say to you. And enjoy what you have – your family and friends, your work, and your play – while you have it.
The dusk was starting to settle in. Hues of pink and purple beyond the ridge of the mountains. The moon – almost full – stood in the sky. And in the distance the howl of the coyotes.
Tim Showalter is one of the few people I know who can fit in both the “friends and acquaintances” category and “musicians” category on this blog. We grew up in the same neighborhood together and I interviewed him a number of years ago before he became a full-time musician under the moniker Strand of Oaks. But for this interview we both agreed to focus more on the non-music stuff and see where it took us.
Do you ever miss teaching?
I miss the routine of it. There was a lot of gratification in seeing results in kids doing well. As a whole I don’t miss it that much. I think I was pretty good at it but not great at it. I don’t know if I’d go back to it. I’d like to work with kids but not in the form of a classroom teacher. Maybe something different. I always had a lot of big ideas with the kids but it was hard with the details. I think teachers are really good with detailed plans and day-to-day stuff and I like the larger arcs of where to take things.
I liked my specific job. I liked the school I was at. I think why I enjoyed teaching so much was because my school was so cool. It was a loose setting. I only had eight students every year and so I had a lot more freedom than a public school teacher.
What kind of school was it?
It was a preschool through eighth grade Orthodox Jewish School in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
What do you think you’d like to do with kids, then?
I’ve always been fascinated with working at a summer camp. Or working with curriculum. I really have no idea. I always knew I was good at it, but I got into music so I kind of lost trying to define what I should do with it. I stopped thinking about it as much. If I would have stayed at it a little longer I probably would’ve discovered it. Maybe writing kids’ books. Something along those lines.
Your undergraduate degree was in what?
Psychology and elementary education.
How has the psychology undergrad affected your daily life? How do you use it?
I don’t think I use it at all. It was a requirement for the school I went to. They required you to do both. You couldn’t just get a degree in elementary education. Psychology just fell in line. I just started taking a lot of classes. It was really interesting but I don’t think I could do it. It was too much science when you got down to it. I took a class on pharmacology or something and I had no idea what was going on from beginning to end.
You went to Wilkes University, right?
Yeah. I actually picked it because it was close to my apartment in Wilkes-Barre. It wasn’t some dream I had when I was fourteen. It was more about the proximity to where I lived. It was a great school but it didn’t have a lot of identity. It seemed like a school where a lot of people were business majors. It seemed like just a normal school.
Just a second ago you mentioned a dream you had when you were fourteen – what was a dream you had when you were fourteen?
When I was fourteen it was just Indiana University. That’s where everybody went. I knew for one thing that I never wanted to go to Goshen College (Goshen is where Tim and I grew up). From my earliest memories that was something I knew I didn’t want to do. College was such a utilitarian thing for me. I just wanted to get out of school and get a job. I probably wasn’t the best student. As opposed to somebody like you who just loves going to school, I was just ready to not be in school anymore.
But did you have any other dreams when you were fourteen? Not even things related to school, but what did you think you wanted to do then?
I don’t know. Probably be in Joy Electric. Be the touring keyboardist in Joy Electric. [laughs]
That actually leads into something I was wanting to talk about with you. (Note: Joy Electric was a Christian band.) What specifically happened with you to go from growing up and affiliating yourself with a lot of Christians – I guess I’ll say that because I’m hesitant to speak for you in regards to your religious beliefs – to not practicing that anymore?
I think I was a very emotional teenager. I was either lonely or sad and it was a pretty immediate gratification to be part of a community. I think back – and not to discredit people who think that way – and traveling around I think that I could’ve been part of the local hardcore community or the local skateboard kids in California. Something along those lines. What happened is that at that age the friends I had went to church and instead of drinking beer and skateboarding it was youth group. Even shows; there was no non-religious oriented things that happened in Goshen. They all had something to do with a church. I think it all had to do with where you grow up.
I got into it pretty genuinely and I also don’t know why. If you can get into it that much and easily get out of it, I don’t know how important it was to begin with. It was more like wearing a certain kind of clothing for me.
I’m not an atheist. I just don’t know. I don’t put a lot of thought into it anymore. I think a lot of people put so much thought into why they’re not thinking a certain way anymore that it seems just as strange as someone who wants to believe in something so badly.
There’s still times going on hikes and thinking of Lord of the Rings that I get those feelings.
Did you just say Lord of the Rings?
Yeah. Going out on hikes and thinking of Gandalf. I think that’s spiritual. I got really into Battlestar Galactica and I think I was about into that as much as I was into youth group.
And again, I have this tendency to make humorous situations out of serious things but I genuinely think those ways. It’s not just me trying to make a joke. It’s not me trying to avoid real emotions through humor. That’s how I genuinely think about it.
But was there some point where you thought, “I don’t feel like I identify with Christianity anymore?”
I think it was just moving away from it. When you live in places like Goshen or other parts of the country it’s what you do because it’s what your friends do. Just like a lot of friends may drink and so you drink. It’s not peer pressure; it just feels like location. It seems kind of natural.
I think if it would have been a deep desire and need I would have stuck with it. I don’t know if I ever understood it or culturally understood it. When I was at the Jewish school I related to Jewish practices. It was around me every day. I loved being around it. Maybe it’s community that I loved being around.
Well, I know for me it was moving away. It’s complicated though.
Yeah. I think it’s complicated for people who even believe in it [Christianity]. Another thing for me is that I have friends and family who really like it and I want to respect them for doing that. I feel people respect me for pursuing something weird like playing music for a living and I should just as much respect them for wanting to have stuff like that as part of their lives. I don’t understand it but I can see why they want to believe in that.
Have you run into anyone from high school that thought you were a certain way spiritually and you’re not that way anymore and has there been conflict over that?
I don’t think so. Most of the people I hung out with who were in those scenes and churches were all really cool people. I don’t see many people from that time but they were all pretty genuinely nice folks. The only time it gets weird is with the people that weren’t. Then, over the ten or twelve years it’s been since I’ve seen then they’ve got a lot more serious about church and that’s almost harder for me to relate to. It’s like, “Whoa! I guess you’re really into this now. That’s different.”
J [a mutual friend of Tim and I] and I were talking about this once and I was noticing this same thing and I said to him, “What’s up with all those people we went to high school with that were fuck-ups?” And he said, “Oh, they’re still fuck-ups, but they’re fuck-ups for Jesus now.”
Yeah, it feels like that. It’s like all the hippies who dropped acid started all those rock and roll churches. They wanted to keep that experience going but they had kids and were losing their hair and getting older. And let’s just try and find that same release and community.
Now, am I imagining this, or at some point did you want to be a youth pastor?
I think I probably did. It seemed like something similar to being a teacher. But I don’t think it was some inner calling as much as it was circumstance and what my proximity to people was and what you know. I wanted to do a lot of things. Ask my parents. My mind was changing constantly.
Do you worry about people who might hear this and think you sound flaky or insincere?
I think I’m kind of full of shit. I honestly think I am. Ninety-nine percent of the things I say are bullshit. I probably disappoint a lot of people and I look up to the people who don’t change their opinions but for some reason I always am changing and moving around. I’m always thinking about different stuff whether its music or books or other stuff I enjoy. I might be flaky. I might be flaky with friendships. I think I get really excited about things and then that excitement changes to other stuff and for my personal perspective it seems normal. “I’m just shifting into something else I’m really into.” There’s the people who never shift and are into some things their whole lives and I think some of that has to do with me probably being really good at being mediocre at a lot of things and not mastering anything. I think those people who can really focus on one thing can become great at it. It’s just not a quality I have.
I don’t know. Don’t you think you’d say that about music?
Maybe that is the thing I’ve found that I pursued to no end. Even in the past year I’ve realized I’m really good at this. This is the one thing that I’ve realized I got the equivalent of my doctorate in. Performing and making records and writing songs. It’s grown. It grew from a hobby and not being very good at it and especially in the last year or so it’s solidified as something I do well.
Two words for you, Tim: Birthday Boy. (This was one of Tim’s first recording projects.)
Yeah. I’m really glad I wasn’t good at recording because I had no idea how to make music. I don’t think I knew how to make music until about six months ago. It’s exciting now. Songwriting has changed for me. It used to be this thing that kind of happened. “I have no idea how I wrote that song.” To where now I know how I want to write a song and put it together. It’s exciting to me, creatively. It opens a lot more doors because it’s not so random anymore.
I’d like to go back to this flakiness thing. How does your wife handle that?
That’s another area of my life where it’s pretty stable. The focus on being married is consistent. She knew what she was getting into when she married me. It finally has settled since I’ve known her, especially. As I get older. There was a time in my from fifteen to twenty-two where I was changing every second, which I think is important for people to do that.
Socially I have really good friends that I keep as good friends and then I have this constant shift in social circles. Sometimes I just don’t hang out with anybody and sometimes I hang out with a lot of people.
Do you worry that the music business exasperates that?
It does. Sometimes when I’m done with a tour I don’t want to talk to anybody at all. I love connecting with people and talking with people but it does require you to say a lot of the same things over and over again. It’s not the fault of the people who are asking the questions and it’s not my fault for answering them, it’s just the nature of it. It comes to such an automated place that it’s just as automated as playing a song every night.
I definitely think that touring for an entire year changes you. You’re talking to so many different people and meeting so many different people where you get to the point where it’s like, “Man, I don’t know if I could meet a new person.” My wife wanted me to go out to dinner this weekend with some other people and I said, “I just don’t want to meet anyone new just now.” I’m kind of flushed right now with people.
Does it bother you to hear yourself say you’re full of shit?
I don’t know. Maybe it’s kind of healing. Hopefully it will help me change. It can also be seen as an excuse and it might be seen as me making an excuse to cover flaws I might have. I don’t try and make it that way. Maybe I’m not full of shit because I do mean what I say, I just change meanings a lot. When I am saying it I am very sincere but a year from now I might change again and it might be something different I really care about.
Somewhat related to that – what’s one of the biggest regrets you have in your life?
*sigh* Regrets. Going back to the flakiness thing – the thing that’s the least flaky in my life is my family. Moving around so much and pursuing music, the people who are the most stable and make me feel the most comfortable somehow get neglected the most. That’s a regret. Not being at nephews’ birthdays or having phone calls with my parents when they’re at their nice family functions and I’m not there again. I’m in San Diego playing a show or something. That’s definitely a regret.
How often do you get back to Goshen each year?
Not enough. Maybe one or two times. I need to do it more. The more I go back it’s great. But going to Goshen now doesn’t mean going to Indiana, it means going to see my parents. I don’t think Indiana holds much to it; it’s just good to be back with my family.
Are you still much of a drinker?
I’ve actually kind of cut that out recently. I’ve replaced it with seltzer for the time being. It got to the point where I was drinking a beer and whiskey and I just said, “I don’t need to do this so much anymore.” It wasn’t benefitting me whatsoever. It was just like everything else in my life; it was just a phase that I’ll probably go into again. For this day, this time you’re talking to me, I’m not into it much right now.
I didn’t know if you had been like, “The beer gut has gotten big enough!”
Yeah, I don’t really have the greatest skinny jeans body. Maybe I do need to work on it. I’m starting to look more like a bouncer than I am the guy who plays the songs. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad thing.
Whose hair is longer: yours or your wife’s?
Oh, my hair. It just keeps growing. The last haircut I got was in 2006. I cut it once for Locks of Love about three years ago. It just comes back. It’s always there. There’s so much of it. I was joking that in the summertime in that place underneath my beard around my neck if I put a thermometer down there it’d be about 350 degrees. It’s so warm. It’s like the same kind of climate as Laos in the summertime.
Spirituality is harsh, but life after God is fierce and lonely. I will not romanticize life with God, however. Life with God is fiery and built upon fears and self-righteousness. My life is built upon ferocity of a different kind. The type that enlightens and objectifies something else: my existence.
Life after God is heart breaking. It is full of attempts to fill that God-shaped hole in your figurative heart with relationships, art, people, literature, film, sex, and the like. It seeks to find community, alternate spirituality, and endurance to run the race. There are no answers in a life after God. Stumbling? Yes. Exhilaration? Occasionally. Happiness? No.
Life after God is prolific. There is a need to write about nothing else but life after God. In all its ways, shapes and forms, the literature increases. But writing existed with God. The answers then were God, God, and God. It sufficed and made sense.
I never gave any thought to life after God. It happened gradually. It emerged with an appreciation for, but in no way influenced by, Slayer. On the other hand, it was also influenced by intellect and an unquenchable drive for answers and a way to disprove all that I knew. One day, on the walk home from the bus stop after work, it clicked. There was no Truth because truth is subjective. I had thought it over and I had lost. But a part of me knew I had won.
For the first few months, life after God was invigorating. There was so little guilt. I felt free to do what I wanted, so I did nothing at all. I had no reason to do anything different. There was no freedom that changed who I was. I still wanted to do good, to be gentle, to find some truth after God. I kept reading, kept watching films, went to work, talked with my friends, listened to Slayer, and got frustrated with life. I was no different than I had been before.
Life after God offered no explanations – it erased them. All truth was now my own to create. Suddenly, I knew very few things. I wanted to treat others well. I didn’t want to change my moral foundation. I just wanted to stop being sure of a heaven and a hell. I wanted to stop feeling like I had to apologize for the actions of other Christians. I wanted to not be sure of anything. I am still sure of very little. I cannot commit to causes. I’m okay with that. It is the only honest way to live.
Life after God is introspective, even more so than before. I search out answers and find more questions. Often times they are the same ones I have been asking for years: What am I doing here? Who will I become? Is this all there is?
People have yet to criticize me for living a life after God. Most of the people I knew who had a life with God no longer do. And the ones I do know who have a life with God seem to avoid the subject of divinity with me. They do not ask me what I believe and I can’t decide if it’s because they already know or because they’ve figured it out without me having to say a word. Or perhaps they are closer to a life after God than I realized. Perhaps they know if they asked me, they would realize that I was right. There are no answers. Existence is strange. I wish they would go from belief to un-belief and help me to figure things out.
Life after God is honest. It says, “I have no answers.” It claims no superiority except the ability to question indefinitely. It doesn’t have to deal with contradictions or intellectual gymnastics. The only honesty is in truth and the truth is that we don’t know anything. It may be hard to accept that, but it makes me happy in however small of a way to know I’ve found truth. I’d rather be lost than lying to myself about something I don’t believe. Fully accepting a belief system requires a disconnect I don’t know that I am capable of.
Life after God lacks community. I went to church events constantly when I was involved with God. I was president of my youth group at church. I went to church Wednesday night, Sunday morning and Sunday night. I went to youth group parties, retreats, church conferences, Christian music festivals and Bible studies. I sang praise songs to God. I raised my hands to worship Him. I spoke in tongues once or twice. I danced in praise of God. I primarily spent time with other Christians, enjoying their presence. There were debates over Biblical passages; the political implications were clear. It was Yahweh or the highway.
There is no more freedom from depression and anxiety in a life after God. It existed before and I tried my best to keep it in check, but to little avail. In the midst of singing praises to God, I exuded misery. I relied on my emotions to help tell me what God thought of me. If I was a loved child of God, then why the depression? Why the down, down, down? What did God want from me? I read and studied the Bible (read it through five times in five years), took advice from those more knowledgeable in spiritual matters and did my best to keep my head high. We didn’t know anything about depression or mental illness. That wasn’t covered in the Bible except to say that God could heal me of my mental illness and anxiety. He didn’t and I haven’t found an answer in my life after God except to know that I can only rely on medicine and therapy rather than someone to answer prayers. Even with a combination of both, I figure why bother? I’ll go with what has proven itself to me: science and medicine. It can often be dubious but it’s something that has shown some promise. God doesn’t keep his promises.
Life after God requires me to start from myself. All I know is me. I am a human being, first and foremost. I extend from there. I extend very little because there is not much else I can know. I feel comfortable in my room. I know that much. I want to help others receive information and learn. Learning brings about freedom, even if it’s not the freedom one would hope for.
In a life after God, I’m reminded that this life is the only life I will get. I try and make the best of it but most of the time I’m content with letting this life go.
Other thoughts: sometimes I wonder if it is too late to feel the same things that other people seem to be feeling. Sometimes I want to go up to people and say to them, “What is it you are feeling that I am not?
Please – that’s all I want to know.”
Perhaps you think I simply need to fall in love and that maybe I’ve just never met the right person. Or perhaps I’ve just never figured out exactly what it was I wanted to do with life while the clock ticked away.
Whatever.
Like most people, I’ve bottomed out a few times; in motel rooms, say – alongside naked bodies close by in cities I can’t recall – looking at phones with nobody to dial. And I’ve been hooked on a few things, too, and lost months and years there, but I think I came out of it with my brain cells intact. And how much would this matter, anyway? –Douglas Copeland, Life After God
Earlier this year a man, whom I’ve never met, from my aunt and uncle’s church in the Midwest, sent me a letter informing me that people at their church were praying for me and that Jesus loved me, etc. I never wrote him back, but if I did it would have gone like this.
Dear Sir:
Thank you for your letter. It was very kind of you to think of me and take the time to write. I’m glad that you have had the opportunity to know my aunt and uncle and attend church with them these past few years. They are very kind, caring people with good senses of humor. Although I don’t get to see them very often, I do enjoy when we have the opportunity to spend time together.
However, I must admit that I was unaware that people at your church were praying for me and am not sure why. Perhaps you could share with me what has been said? While I do admit I have faults and while I appreciate you admitting you have them as well, I’m not sure that any of them are things with which you should be too concerned. I feel as though I am doing fairly well in my life, all things considered.
If this is about the depression I have experienced this past year, then I can assure you that hurdle has generally been cleared. I don’t feel as though depression is something from which I will ever be fully freed. And that’s okay, I suppose. I’ve gotten as used to it as I can. But otherwise, while I still deal with the existential problems, I generally feel much better than I did.
However, if this is about me leaving the church, I’m afraid that I can’t do much to help you. Throughout my years, I have read a great number of things that have caused me to question Christianity. Eventually I had no point but to leave the faith in which I was raised, the faith that you and my aunt and uncle share.
I could go in depth about why I no longer care to be a Christian, but I doubt anything that a stranger would write to you would cause you to change your mind or help you understand why I left my faith. The gist of it, however, is that I can no longer intellectually find solace in Christianity, and without some proof to back things up, I have a hard time placing my allegiance with it. Faith is ultimately – and rightly so – an absurd notion, and I have a problem placing my faith in anything too absurd. Too much of my life has been spent on fragile emotions that waver and I need some solid footing that I can rely upon. Faith in Christ is too tempestuous for the level of comfort I need in my life.
Whatever the case may be, I do appreciate the kind thoughts and that you cared enough to write and let me know people are thinking of me. It’s always nice to know that I matter to someone, somewhere. However, I do think your time may be better off spent meditating on your own lives and how to improve them. Perhaps you could use the time you normally spend in prayer to instead help better others or yourself: volunteer at an animal shelter, become a big brother, paint a picture, or read a book.
Beyond the uses that prayer can provide as a form of relaxation and meditation for the self, as well as assisting an individual to focus on others and learning to be thankful for what one has, I have always had trouble understanding the point of intercessory prayer. My beliefs are such that I firmly believe that anything you pray about in regards to my life will only come about when or if I decide it should.
Still, I do appreciate you taking the time to write and appreciate that there are those who are thinking of me. If nothing else, THAT is comforting.
In the darkness there is one truth. One truth I know of and one truth I have seen but one that I cannot find. I don’t know where to go to find it. I just know I want it. There are too many blank spaces and I wish I could go somewhere to hide and protect myself. I wish I could find an answer to the various questions I had. The ones I always have about where to go and who I am. These were not sufficiently answered for me in college. At a Christian college they try and instill in you the values and moral background you will need to make it in a secular world. See what you are made of. I am made of nothing. I rolled and defused the situation as best I could – I held on to many truths in my mind but over the years they dissipated until they ceased to exist.
I took classes on foundations of Christianity according to one university. And I interacted with humanism, various world religions, post-modernism and existentialism. And existentialism won out. There were no other theories that matched my belief structure except to be honest and say that nothing matched by belief structure. It all happened so gradually that in many regards I never noticed when it had solidified itself entirely into my values. The classes, the school taught me the reasons that this won’t work: GOD, God and god. Okay – I can try and live with that. *Fast-forward five years* I cannot live with that.
The point is to help you lead a moral life amongst the degradation that is occurring all around you. Here are your core beliefs. We want you to be prepared to take your faith into the world and offer a defense to the arguments you will be receiving. But what about this and that and the other? What about historical inaccuracies? What about interference with the copying of the text? Or the problem of evil? I’m hearing one side, but when can I hear the other? And the argument – they’re multiplying so fast nowadays. They’re assaulting the faith like never before with their goddamn logic and persuasive tactics.
When does faith acknowledge it can’t be reconciled with intelligence? When can faith admit that it doesn’t hold water to anything? Trying to square one’s beliefs in something that cannot be measured scientifically is what it is: a matter of faith. Something which not all of us have, nor is it something all of us want. Not anymore.
Come back to faith, they would say to me, without answering my questions or even offering viable alternatives. Come back to our community and to live with our collective sense of culture; of the rights and wrongs and approvals and disapprovals.
Giving up faith in God was the hardest thing I have ever done. It left me directionless and alone – cut out of purpose and community the likes of which I never felt I belonged. All the things I had hoped to be a part of were no longer there, nor will they come back. I will likely never go back to being a believer. I cannot check my intellect at the door and jump back into that pond and be baptized in that holy spirit. Despite how people may pray for my soul, I do not know where I would go or how I might go about finding it.
Despite the difficulty in giving up on God, in another sense it was also quite easy. I never felt as though I totally belonged to Christianity. It wasn’t because I questioned – for a great period of time I hardly did much of that. No, my concern was with never feeling a part of their culture. The evangelical culture that existed in the Midwest and all the things it brought along with it. The specifics based on geographic location. I tried to fit in. I tried to accept the role of some things but grew increasingly disillusioned with it all: the culture, the people, and the ideas. The notion that you had to hand in your mind and accept what the pastor said. You had to accept what your parents or peers believed. The underlying insistence in never questioning, never asking “Why?” They didn’t have the answers anyway. They didn’t know any better. They had never asked the questions in the first place – they just wanted to secure their thoughts.
But at least I was honest. At least I am honest. I can imagine there are those who pray for me. Somewhere there are those who pray for me, pray for my soul, and pray that I might accept the loving kindness of Jesus back into my life. He’s waiting there for me, you know? But I am aware of his cultural context. I am aware of the anthropology, of the sociology, of the historicity. I am aware of the translation problems. I have seen the ways in which he isn’t consistent and the predictions that never came true. I have too many questions that have never been sufficiently answered.
I wonder how many other souls I can persuade to question and let go and find a form of damning humanity? Not humanism, not secularism, but a sense of horrible, horrible freedom. A sense of loss the likes of which one may never come close to filling. At least my happiness is genuine. At least my happiness is honest and direct. At least my happiness – the little there is of it – is ready for possibilities. It’s ready to blaspheme or curse or cry out for an escape from the blackness that all too often ensnares it. But it doesn’t seem to find that peace. It doesn’t seem to find a release from the black-gloved hand that ensnares it. My heart doesn’t expand, it doesn’t deflate, but it beats. It’s still beating.
The teenage version of me would never have imagined I’d be living in a big city; couldn’t have envisioned my existence in such a dense environment. When I first visited cities like Chicago or Indianapolis, it all seemed so strange and gigantic and confusing. How could I ever hope to make it in such a place? Would I be swallowed up? Would it be possible to survive, let alone thrive?
There were so many anxieties then – fears I had about both the absurd and possible. I was afraid of muggers and gangs; cops and politicians; drugs and alcohol; gays and prostitutes; and the lack of morals and spirituality. How could people in the metropolis not go to church? Or if they did, how come they didn’t seem like the churches I knew? I just figured the whole place was going to hell in a hand basket and I couldn’t do much about it. It was all part of the de-evolution of our culture – the moral decay about which I had been taught.
And yet, I was drawn to the city. I believed it was there that I might find answers and hopes to some of my problems. I wanted to locate people like me – people who were doing things and not just talking about them. People who understood culture and could converse about it. I wanted to be part of a community of punk rockers and creative, artistic types. At one point I thought it important to have those people be Christians but over time I grew apart from that mindset. I spent so much time in my own Christian ghetto – it made it hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t real. What was part of the “real world” and what was just my bubble of evangelical thought?
So much of that culture is based on a fear of the “other.” In this case, the other is a secular society perceived as heathen and foreign. While there was a desire to save these individuals, what we really wanted to do was kidnap them from their place and smuggle them into ours. We could show them that our world would suffice as a legitimate counterfeit for the one they left behind.
“Wow, your music is kind of lame – it doesn’t quite have the same punch as the music I was listening to.”
“Oh, no, we have some good stuff. Some alternatives, if you will. I think you’ll like it. It’s just like what you’re used to except the songs talk about Jesus but not always in a way that will make you uncomfortable. Doing that is totally not cool. We can’t expect people to come to Jesus if all we do is beat them over the head with a message. Even though we know they’re going to hell if they don’t accept Jesus.”
“Uh, okay. Well, your books don’t all seem to be as good as what I am used to reading.”
“Oh, not true. Not true. We have some good options I think you’ll enjoy. Whatever your favorite genre, we have a Christian alternative for it. We even have our own section in the public library: Christian Fiction.”
“How about movies, then?”
“Hey, nothing is perfect.”
But who wants to live in a world like that? Where everything is a thin, poorly made (but still costly) offering to those who must step away from the place that used to be toxic.
It comes down to reality and how you perceive it to be. In growing up with that veil, it’s implied that it being imposed upon you is correct. There may even be reasons for it to exist that seem entirely plausible. Facts can be produced to show you anything. Your interpretation can become law not just for yourself but those around you. A community can be built up that reinforces those beliefs. Community leaders and politicians will pick up on those beliefs and use them in order to make inroads with their constituents. News will report on those beliefs and examples of such beliefs, further establishing them as legitimate in the eyes of the public. And before you know it, your existence is validated.
But no one ever told me how there were those – including in the big cities – who had pretty persuasive arguments themselves and who could legitimize their point of view, which served in many contrasting but effective ways. I never realized how there were levels that could be questioned and that the arguments I had were extremely one-sided and piled on the prejudices of the author. People were answering questions based on arguments that weren’t even being made anymore.
But folks don’t want a detailed defense of their lives, they want a community in which they can be themselves and not have to be questioned or challenged. So many arguments made about comfort and who am I to question? Isn’t it okay?
Maybe for some people but not for me. I must question and persist in that mentality. I have doubts as to whether I can truly be happy. The big city may make me discontented but that’s all right. I’m just trying to live through these moments. Maybe I’ll find something in the end.
I grew up in the same neighborhood as Tim Showalter.
Our families went to the same church for a number of years and I was in the same grade as his older brother. After I graduated college we got to know each other fairly well while we both lived in our hometown. We’re still friends although now he lives in Philadelphia and I live in Boston.
Tim is also a musician and under the moniker Strand of Oaks he has put out a remarkable album, Pope Killdragon. Having known Tim for a long time, I thought that connection made for a unique opportunity for my own creativity. I decided to take each of the songs on the album and use them as inspiration to write something. Hopefully you like some of what you read. You can listen to each of the songs off Pope Killdragonhere
As I stood in the center of the room, I watched the crowds disappear in front of my eyes. You’d think it would be a more shocking experience but in the back of my mind I figured it was coming one of these days.
It was only natural that the rapture would occur. I guess I just figured my disavowal of God would keep me safe from it happening but another part of me – that part tied in to fear and paranoia, that part I had tried for years to suppress – knew it was true, knew it was happening. It was only a matter of time until Christians everywhere were taken up to heaven in a miraculous fashion – in the twinkling of an eye, as the Bible says.
The rapture may have been a recent notion in the two thousand year history of Christianity but that didn’t keep it from establishing a strong foothold amongst many in the faith, especially in the evangelical fold. I had grown up in church hearing all about it. Some pastors as well as other believers almost seemed excited about it.
“And Jesus is going to come down from the sky – with a great trumpet blast – and he will take his children home with him! Both the living and the dead! All those who ever have believed and placed their trust in Him will be rescued from the horrors of the Tribulation and all it will bring. Won’t that be wonderful?” This last sentence was often finished with a giant smile on the part of the pastor and the congregation was suddenly divided between those who were buying into it, those that obviously didn’t care whatsoever and those who had a look on their face that said, “Man, I need to get my shit together before all this goes down.”
I was once part of that last group. I had felt the pangs of guilt and fear in my stomach and my heart. My unstable mind said, “Uh oh – social conditioning does NOT want you to be left out of what your peers have!” And when the pastor would ramp up the description of the terrors of the tribulation: a portion of the sea turning to blood or the possibility of a meteor striking the earth – the knot in my gut twisted and rose. It climbed up to the top of my stomach and worked its way into the bottom of my throat. I felt as though I might throw up.
Instead, one night, as soon as the pastor gave the invitation – “Won’t you come down to the altar right now? You can avoid this fate and spend eternity with Jesus” – I wanted to climb over pews, shove aside members of the congregation as I leaped over their backs. “Out of my way! I HAVE TO GET SAVED!” I’d yell. My teenage hands planting on the tops of their heads and shoulders as I made my way like a slimy reptile trying to leap and crawl and scrounge my way to a torment-free eternity.
I had chosen to sit in the middle of the row and it was full on both sides so I had no other choice. I had to get there. To the front. To the altar. I didn’t have time for pleasantries. This feeling had to go and this man I spent an hour or two with every Sunday – this learned man, this man who had my respect – he had the answer. Hell yes I’m ready to accept it. Just get this lump, this churning heavy feeling that sits like an uncomfortable dead weight out of my stomach.
But in reality there was none of that excitement and determination on my part. Instead I rose slowly with my head bowed as I quietly said, “excuse me,” and made my way past the half dozen people on my left in order to get to the aisle. They swiveled their legs and I kept my head lowered and felt a giant weight trying to hold me back. It was only later that I realized that was Satan, trying to keep me from being saved. From turning to Jesus. I hesitated but I trusted the pastor. He knew what he was talking about. There were answers to rid myself of this anxiety and fear.
I got to the front and kneeled. There was a box of Kleenex on the altar for those shedding tears over this moment. I had joined an adult man and a girl a few grades below me. Slowly a few others trickled down to the front beside me. My fear of large crowds was riled and I felt the eyes of hundreds in the congregation boring into the back of my head. But like Balki from “Perfect Strangers,” nothing was going to stop me now. I figured things would be cleared up once I got saved. Perhaps these fears would vanish. Like my appointment with hell.
So I made my appointment with Jesus instead. I felt tears stream down my cheeks and the snot in my nose loosen. The weight in my stomach dissolved over the next few minutes and I felt nothing but peace. A stillness and peace. Meanwhile the piano played a hymn and the pastor extolled us for making such a righteous decision.
I looked to my right and left and saw others crying and embracing their friends and family that had come forward. I hadn’t even felt the hand on my shoulder. I glanced up and behind me and saw my mom and dad. My mom’s eyes were red and teary. I could tell she was proud of me. Proud of the commitment I had made to my heavenly father. My earthly father was proud of me too. While my dad didn’t have tears in his eyes, he had a solemn look verging on a slight smile that even at thirteen I had come to learn meant that he was pleased. And despite the wide range of emotion I had just experienced, so was I.
As we left the church that night, I realized the pain in my stomach and heart had completely vanished. I felt healed. I felt like a new creation. I truly was born again. In the back of my brain a minor thought interrupted my otherwise upbeat disposition: what now? Where do I go from here? I paid it little mind and went to bed.
And here we are. It had come true just like the pastor said it would, all those years ago. I suddenly regretted having denounced god and belief in him years after my conversion experience. A product of my social conditioning, I said. God? Bullshit.
In hindsight, that had surely been a mistake. One that I was sure I would regret. Now that the apocalypse would no doubt soon be upon us I let out a sigh and walked to a pile of clothes on the floor. A person had been standing here just a minute ago. That should have been me. That was supposed to have been me.
And now as I stood in this room surrounded by piles of clothes and a few other dumbfounded people, I waited. I waited for the Antichrist and the mark of the Beast. I waited for all those things the likes of which I had been warned. I waited for plagues and war and Armageddon. And I waited for death. And hell.
Come Armageddon. Come. Let your work be swift and my punishment in hell severe. I surely deserve it.
Roy and I met through our mutual music connections (he worked for a record label and I ran an online zine) many years ago and then found ourselves as roommates in Seattle for two years. He is certainly the best roommate I have ever had. He has some of the most interesting stories you’ll (n)ever hear and has led a life full of ridiculousness. He’s also a dear friend who has exposed me to a lot and continued to help me on my path in life. Thanks Roy!
What was elementary school like for you?
I remember getting in trouble in Kindergarten for the first time for using the red crayon on the carpet and not trying to deny it to the teacher. But elementary school was pretty bland and vanilla. It was rural Kentucky. Everybody was white and everybody was for the most part poor. There wasn’t a big class difference as far as the rich kids and poor kids. I always tended to gravitate towards the girls for whatever reason. I think it was because I wasn’t into sports and at that time I was really into animals and wanted to be a veterinarian. I didn’t get into racecars and all the shit boys talked about. Sixth grade was when things started changing: all of us were getting older and people started hitting puberty.
I do remember I had a best friend named Quent and we were together all the time. In retrospect I think he was probably gay because of the things we had in common. When we both hit puberty there was this sort of “guilt by association” thing so that neither of us wanted to hang out with one another. It was strange how that happened but we just quit talking to one another. I still look for him online and hope to one day find him and see where he’s at and how he’s doing.
Have you ever visited anyone in jail or been in jail yourself?
I’ve never been in jail and I really want to one of these days. I’ve had so many crazy experiences but I’ve never been arrested and I’m hoping that one day I can do that. I have visited people in jail. When I used to be a youth leader [at church] there was a kid in my youth group who had been put in jail for stealing something. It was a repeated thing for him. I went to visit him and he seemed to be having a good time. He seemed to like it. And sure enough, as soon as he was let go three days later he robbed another store and got put back in jail. I think jail kind of suited him because he didn’t have to worry about anything and he was taken care of.
There was a guy I worked with and I didn’t get to see him in jail but I did see him right before he got arrested. He was a weird guy and a lot of people didn’t like him. He went to the same high school that I did and he was the Satanist and in rural Kentucky that was a really big fucking deal. And basically his Satanism was equated to the really shitty 666 tattoo he had on his arm. But I worked with him and one day he came to work and he was torn up because his wife had left him. He didn’t come into work one day and we found out he had killed his wife and buried her along the street where he had lived which wasn’t very bright. You’d figure if you were going to go that far you’d think it out a little better than that. And as far as I know he’s still in prison.
You didn’t ever visit him, though?
No, I wanted to but he got moved to a prison in Western Kentucky. It all happened pretty quickly because he admitted to killing his wife. There wasn’t a huge trial as far as I remember, but that was years ago.
You have toured with a bunch of bands – which was your favorite and why?
Definitely mewithoutYou. That was in 2004, when I got laid off from Tooth & Nail [Records]. They’re just sweet, wonderful people and I really like their music. Aaron (vocalist) and Ricky (drummer) are both incredible guys to sit down and have a conversation with.
So, speaking of music, I’d like you to tell me about your experience playing in a metal band in high school.
In high school I was in a band whose name I don’t remember and we didn’t write a lot of material but mainly did cover songs. I remember doing “Creeping Death” by Metallica and “In My Darkest Hour” by Megadeth. We were doing a bunch of songs and I don’t remember all of them but we were trying to branch out and do our own stuff. In rural Kentucky we thought being cutting edge was trying to cover a Faith No More song. I graduated high school in 1989 and in the early 90s after I became a Christian I put together a Christian metal band with the guys who used to be in the band I was in. I got them all to become Christians and we started this Christian metal band called Penitent. We made up t-shirts – World Tour t-shirts actually. I think our final show was a birthday party for a kid in my youth group and we promptly emptied the gymnasium two songs in. I don’t think anybody wanted to hear what we were playing.
Penitent – Roy is on vocals. Please keep in mind this is the early 1990s.
There should be a Penitent reunion tour.
Yes, after all these years. One of the funny things is that I remember we used to practice at the church I went to – this little Southern Baptist church. There was a big scandal that started because we were practicing there and kids would come see us. We had this small following and I don’t know why, because we were terrible. I think kids just wanted to come hang out. But we had these kids show up and the church threw a fit about it because we were playing this kind of music they didn’t understand which was death metal, thrash metal – that sort of stuff. We also had these kids showing up that they didn’t trust and didn’t really know. I had to go meet with the elders at one point and they chastised me and said what I was doing wasn’t right and all this other stuff. That was the beginning of my conflict with Christianity and the church, I suppose. I remember leaving that meeting and thinking, “I’m going to take on the establishment! I’m going to take on the world!” And essentially I just left there and gave up.
Penitent! NO!
*laughing* We could have been so big! I remember we used to play a Tourniquet [Christian metal band] song, too, but I can’t remember which one.
“Ark of Suffering?”
Oh yeah! It was “Ark of Suffering!” I was thinking it was another song but that was it. I remember we used to always play the song right up to the solo and then no one could play the solo so we quit.
If you no longer consider yourself a Christian, why are you involved with GCN (Gay Christian Network)?
That’s a good question and a question I get quite a bit. I really don’t talk about my own personal faith too terribly much with people because it’s subject to change. You’re talking about a belief system when you talk about the hereafter and about God and to even talk about it diminishes it to a degree. I don’t identify as a Christian anymore because I don’t find much within Christianity that I want to be associated with. The reason I’m involved with an organization such as GCN is that I know a lot of people who grew up or are currently a part of evangelical Christianity and they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. I want their experience to be different than what mine was. I had a very tough time dealing with being a gay person while also trying to be a Christian. And Christianity was something that was very serious to me. It was a decision I made a little bit later in life – I was 18. So it wasn’t something I grew up with although it’s impossible in the rural South to escape it.
All that being said, what’s something you used to believe that you don’t believe anymore?
I guess this all goes back to religion, but the idea that man is flawed or “wicked,” as Scripture says, is just wrong. There are very few people that do things strictly to be evil. I think it’s complicated and the more we travel and the more we read and the more we meet people the more we realize that the framework we’ve created of our world is often very fragile and not very accurate. To compensate for that I think we make decisions and do things that are hurtful to ourselves and hurtful to other people but we’re trying to do the best we can with the information we have.
Since we’re talking about a philosophical-related thing, I’m curious who your favorite philosopher is and why.
I would say Nietzsche is definitely there. He attacked everything. There was no sacred cow. He called himself a hammer and I believe that was indicative of what he was doing and what he was about. I’m definitely a big advocate that if something tries to make itself into a monument we try to destroy it. If it can be destroyed it definitely should be. I would say that someone who probably leans a little closer to me is Jacques Ellul. He’s a Christian and was contemporary but he was also an anarchist. He was someone who attacked orthodoxy and who asked, “What are the essential truths of Christianity?” He was one of the first philosophers who was a person of faith that I came across that I felt like was really trying to tackle that story and interpret it differently than I had ever experienced before.
Here is Roy, wielding Nietzsche.
Do you ever think you’ll feel too old to do anything?
I hope not. I went to see The Black Angels last night and I went to see Nick Cave’s band, Grinderman, last Saturday and a few days prior to that I went to this punk show that was mostly younger kids. I hope that as I get older I don’t lose that flavor for life. I love expression and I love people. Whether that’s someone screaming or writing a good book – I hope I never get weary of that. And I’m not just talking about shows. I mean just experiencing life. I hope I never get tired of that and give up.
What’s a good book that you’ve read recently?
There’s a book called Silence by Shusaku Endo. The book was written in the 60s and takes place in Japan in the seventeenth century. It’s an interesting book not only as far as the story but theologically and philosophically. You have these priests who at one time were accepted and admired in Japan and then Japan took on a new leadership that kicked all the priests out. Well, the Catholic Church was still sending priests in and there were still pockets of Christianity throughout Japan at that time. And there’s one priest in particular who was wrestling with the idea that he was there to spread the Gospel and knowing that part of Christianity is the idea that as a Christian, you will be persecuted. But his being there is causing a lot of pain, torture and death to the community. There are people who are being tortured and killed because they support him. He’s really wrestling with wondering whether it’s God’s will that people be tortured like they are.
What do you think is the worst way to die?
I think prolonged agony. Whatever the case might be. I think drowning would be pretty terrifying. I used to fly a lot for work and I still fly a few times a year and I often wondered what it would be like to be on a plane that is going down. Because you’re not just dealing with your own terror but you’re also dealing with the terror of many other people and how they react in those circumstances. I would say that’s up on my list too.
On the total opposite end of things, being that we’re in the “holiday” season what is your favorite holiday and why?
Any holiday that gets me out of work is a pretty good holiday as far as I’m concerned. But I would say Christmas – even though it’s a religious holiday – is a pretty good holiday for me because that seems to be a time when my family is all together. And we all get along fairly well.
What is your favorite season?
Spring because the cold and snow is disappearing. Especially in the Northwest, after we’ve had four to six months of gray the sun is starting to come out. It also represents the possibility of what summer can be.
What kind of clubs or organizations were you involved with in high school?
I joined the pep club one time.
No way!
I did. We went to games, but I don’t even remember what we did. I just know I joined because it got me out of class.
And speaking of high school, what does Ronald Reagan mean to you?
I don’t remember much about Ronald Reagan. More of my understanding of Ronald Reagan and most of history, actually, comes from grindcore and hardcore bands that used to sing about it all the time. I think I learned more about history from a DRI record than I ever did in a history class. I think that’s more a testimony of how horrible the Kentucky education system is. I remember some of the conversation at that time about Ronald Reagan and wondering why it was important. I remember there was a lot of questioning of Ronald Reagan’s religious beliefs and thinking in Junior High, “What does this have to do with anything?” I guess it goes to prove that America has a boner for God.
Me, Roy, and a blow-up doll he got from Chuck Palahniuk. For real.
The approximately two-year process of getting my nephew, Samuel, adopted finally resolved itself in April of 2010 after an extended amount of stress for my sister and her husband, as well as thousands of dollars in lawyer bills. The birth parents had finally decided to relent on a claim to their son who was a few months past two years old at the time and to allow him to live in a dormitory apartment where my sister and her husband reside as resident directors at a university, as opposed to the cardboard box in a tool shed behind a mobile home, which is where Child Protection Services (CPS) found him.
To celebrate this slow-churning and often bungled triumph of the Texas judicial process (everything’s bigger in Texas – even the mistakes of CPS) my sister and her husband decided to throw Sam a party. I made the trek from Boston and met up with my parents in Dallas before we made our way to Longview, where Sam and his parents reside.
The party itself went well. I’d never been to an adoption party but it generally follows along the lines of a birthday party for a two year old. There were many presents and people of all ages including many children for Sam to play with. Everyone was there to see Sam and I just tried to not feel awkward as not only did I not know much of anyone there but I also felt out of place as the big city person amongst a gathering of East Texas folks. Allow me to exemplify this divergence with my recounting the following interaction I had with a co-worker of my sister’s. She had asked me about how I like Boston.
Me: I like it a lot. I love being able to ride my bike around places. It makes the city seem much smaller.
Co-worker: So you don’t have a car?
Me: No.
Co-worker: Wow. I’m so used to just getting in the car and going to Wal-Mart.
Me: We don’t have Wal-Marts in Boston.
Co-worker: Where do you go to buy things then?
Me: *tries to keep from laughing*
I explained to her that there were still plenty of grocery stores and neighborhood stores at which to purchase items as well as Target and CVS and all those sorts of chain stores. There seems to be a disconnect between many folks around the country and much of that seems to stem from misunderstandings of who people really are and what they do. People in the cities aren’t all some kind of freaks. Just because we don’t all drive cars doesn’t make us much different than you. And vice versa.
But I digress.
Part of this trip, too, was about going to see my nephew dedicated at church. Many people are familiar with the concept of infant baptism, but a dedication is different. Allow me to explain the difference between the two. With an infant baptism, a child that is usually less than a year old is baptized during a church service by having water sprinkled on his or her head and the priest/pastor saying a few words. After the Reformation, many of these newly coined Protestants gradually grew to not buy into this idea, as it related to something the Catholic Church had done. Furthermore, it also negated the option of having an individual choose whether they wanted to be a part of the church or not. This process has continued through today in many evangelical churches: people are baptized when they are old enough to make a decision regarding their own commitment to Jesus Christ (some are as young as elementary school age; I wasn’t probably much past 16 when I chose to be baptized – what a mistake that was. “I’m 16, I know everything!”).
However, many of these churches still seem to adhere to this idea of wanting to commit an infant to God and since they’re against baptism, a dedication will have to do. What occurs is that in front of the church the parents, the child and immediate family members stand in front of the congregation and the parents make a commitment to raise their child in a Christ-like way (whatever that means). The pastor (or whomever performs the service) will often ask some questions and then there will be a prayer and everyone smiles and some people cry and that’s that.
On this particular occasion, Sam was a bit past the infant stage and was working his way into the third year of his life when things were finalized and the baby dedication was set to go. I understood it was important for me, as the uncle, to be there, but I hadn’t been to many evangelical churches in the years since I initially declared that I really wasn’t sure if there was a god or not. Being that it was a TEXAS evangelical church (Warning! Warning! Warning! Potential for bigger craziness than normal church) I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.
The baby dedication itself went well. I got up on stage along with my parents, my brother-in-law’s parents, my sister and her husband and Samuel and in front of a few hundred people my sister and her husband dedicated themselves to raise Samuel in the light of Jesus Christ (or something to that degree). The pastor prayed for blessings for my sister and her husband and Samuel (who has now taken my middle name, Andrew, as his middle name). Nothing embarrassing happened to me and it all went off without a hitch. Sam even behaved himself pretty well.
The real fun of the service came when the pastor got up to preach. The sermon was part of a series the church had been doing on science vs. the Bible (guess who’s going to win this one!) This particular sermon was on the origin of things, also known as creationism vs. evolution. While the message was predicated on the belief of wanting to have a fair look at these issues and really explore them and sink our collective teeth into them, the pastor explained that when in doubt, we always had to defer to the Bible, so it was fairly clear where this would be heading.
The pastor’s ability to remain impartial was further strained when, after going extensively through what the Bible had to say about where we came from, he launched into the portion about what science had to say by stating, “Now, I’m not a scientist…” at which point I literally laughed out loud and quickly stifled it before I directed too much attention to myself. Unsurprisingly, by the end of the sermon creationism and Christianity had eked out a win.
Afterwards all the families went out to eat and on the drive to the deli I asked my mom what she thought of the church service. As a regular attendee (along with my father) of their evangelical church back in Indiana, I was curious to hear her thoughts on a different house of worship (although both were similar in many regards). She noted that it was indeed unlike their home church and she seemed to be a little more partial towards their usual house of worship, which was to be expected. However, she enjoyed it, although from my personal experience, their church seems a little too self-help oriented while this church we went to that day (again, based on my singular experience) seemed to be more interested in doing some analysis of the Bible (however faulty it might have been).
Of course, soon the question was flipped around towards me: what did I think of it?
I quickly realized that honesty here was probably not my best move and so in order to keep the peace I simply said, “No comment.” I figured it was the best diplomatic measure.
My mom, seemingly offended by my unwillingness to share or assuming my “no comment” meant “I hated it and hate Jesus and Christianity and all Christians and the church and white people and Samuel and the police and America and meat and apple pie and baseball and babies and you and dad and sandwiches” simply said in a cold tone, “Well I’m sorry you feel that way.” (It should be noted I only hate about half the things on that list.) And that was that. We remained in silence for the rest of the ride to the deli. Later my brother-in-law confided that he, too, thought the sermon was crap and didn’t agree with it. And it’s the church he regularly attends. No comment, indeed.
The Persian Gulf War started in Iraq on Thursday, January 17th, 1991. Here in the States, it started in the early evening on Wednesday night. I was eleven years old at the time and in sixth grade. Seeing that it was Wednesday night, I was at church that evening, taking part in youth group activities. I was a dutiful attendant of the church youth group. I hadn’t reached my disenfranchised teenage state as of yet and while my life consisted of a general nervous and anxious disposition as well as having a girlfriend for one or two weeks (as was the custom of the time), things were pretty good for me. I wrote stories about my two-year-old cat as a superhero/detective for my one-page (ONE PAGE?! ARE YOU SERIOUS? I CAN’T WRITE ONE PAGE! This is seriously what went through my head when we went over the assignment at the beginning of the school year) hand-written weekly writing assignments for my English class. My English teacher’s name was Mrs. Bontrager and she had really long brown hair and I thought she was pretty, which was one of the only times I’ve ever found any of my teachers attractive. It was a simple beauty, which was added to by her friendliness and patience. At that time I didn’t appreciate her personality and how calm she was teaching sixth graders. God, what a pain we must have been. But I digress.
Somewhere along the way I was indoctrinated with the ideas of premillenial dispensationalism (the Biblical notion of Jesus Christ’s immanent returning to earth and ruling for 1000 years – although there’s a lot more to it than just that) and the Rapture (where a trumpet sounds and all the Christians are taken up to Heaven). And someone had put the idea in my head that the Persian Gulf War was going to be the beginning of the end of the world. Thanks to Iraq’s geographic location and that it contained the ancient city of Babylon (which is mentioned frequently in Bible prophecy), multiple sources assured us that there was a good chance that attacking Iraq and its gigantic army might start the end of the world. An attack against Iraq would no doubt lead to an attack against Israel (which it actually did, but the Israelis never retaliated. Praise Jebus!), which would then lead to an all-Arab army moving on to Jerusalem to crush the Jews. It was all in the Bible. I bought in to much of this partially because I respected pastors and thought they knew everything and also there was an anxious part of me that was ready to give in to any fears. I also was probably already watching Jack Van Impe at that point and finding he and his wife ridiculous but also compelling (the guy can cite Bible verses off the top of his head!)
My mom and I listened to the radio on our way to church that night. The news was on and things were gearing up. I think the bombs may have been dropping as we entered the church parking lot. And I sat there in the passenger seat and thought to myself at eleven years old, “Well, this is it. It’s the end of the world.” And I knew that this would be a war that would potentially last for years and engulf the whole world in the process. I would no doubt either be killed somehow (my neurosis wasn’t big on details) or if I survived to eighteen I would be drafted and that was that. I distinctly recall thinking, “I’m never going to get married. This is it for me.” It was a rather gloomy evening and honestly, I blame a lot of it on the media and even more so on my general semi-paranoid state.
Of course in youth group that night it was hard to talk about much else and afterwards on the way home my mom and I listened to the news some more. Over the next few days it became apparent that the Iraqi Army, in spite of being one of the largest armies in the world at that time, wasn’t really much of a fighting force. The one hundred hour war, the media called it. It took less than a week.
As is normally the case, the war was an excuse for Americans to chant “U-S-A! U-S-A!” repeatedly in large gatherings and to listen to Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” ad nausea. Because if there’s something to be proud of, it’s doing the work for rich, oil-producing countries that then don’t even foot the entire bill. (Saudi Arabia and Kuwait only paid for two-thirds of the war.) I have never entirely understood patriotism but I have learned that chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!” always brings life to a party and it’s even more fun when no one knows you’re being ironic. However, I have never appreciated “Proud to be an American” primarily because I didn’t exactly understand how the lyrics to the song relate to many of the wars we’ve fought. Evidently pre-emptive war somehow kept us free. Or building a coalition of forces to take out the Iraqi army that had invaded Kuwait because Iraq was almost bankrupt and owed money to Kuwait from fighting a war against Iran for eight years in the 1980s in which we supported Iraq with weapons and supplies in the hope that Iraq could keep Iran in place because we felt threatened by their Islamic Revolution that occurred because the U.S. had backed the Shah of Iran who was a brutal leader against the Iranians…somehow that kept us free. I wondered if it mattered that at the time, I didn’t have much of an interest in “stand[ing] up next to” Mr. Greenwood to “defend her still today.” Did that make me a bad person? A bad American? I couldn’t really comprehend a situation where Iraq would attack us. I just figured that America would send me over to the Middle East to fight in the pre-Armageddon that Hal Lindsay and his moustache had predicted in the 70s. And that would be that. I’d be dead at eighteen from an artillery shell from some coalition of Arab armies aligned with Russia. What a gyp.
Of course, that day never came and instead I breathed a sigh of relief when we all – the whole coalition – pulled the entire thing off (thanks for doing your part Bangladesh!) And so I relaxed as much as an eleven-year kid working on a heavy case of anxiety could. Until the next year when I turned twelve and the Presidential elections came on in full swing and I began to wonder…could Bill Clinton be the anti-Christ?
