THREE WAYS TO SUNDAY

THREE WAYS TO SUNDAY PART I GETTING REAL

Love Conquers All

Love will see us through. All we need is love. We can live on love.

               

Sayings, movies, songs, many things in media tell us we can overcome any obstacle if we are just in love. This is about the love between two people. You got me , babe, and I got you. Love conquers all.

There is a song by that title written by Nanci Griffith and Charley Stelf. The lyrics tell about several couples, a "brown-skin girl" and a white soldier, a "wheel-chair bound" senior citizen marrying a divorced man, people from "far and near", different backgrounds, economic situations and race. The song assures us each time that love conquers all.

So far, no problem really, true and lasting love can overcome many difficulties. Still, it takes work to make a marriage last, as well as love, even where two people are as alike as peas in a pod. I have no doubt that for the couples, so far, in the song love could see them through.

It is the last example that raises the far more important spiritual question, not the physical.

It is of a Muslim girl marrying a Catholic boy. Love will conquer all it tells us again.

Before I began dating the woman who became my wife, I went with several others. The last of these girlfriends and I were very much in love. One day, after we had going steady for several months, she told me we couldn't see each other anymore. Why? She was honoring her mother and father's wish to break it off because they saw we were getting serious. The problem?She was Roman Catholic, I was not.

Harsh? Yes. Unfair? Maybe.            Good idea? Yes. 

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 2 Corinthians 6:14 

Harsh passage? Yes.  Unfair passage? Maybe by worldly standards.               Good idea? Definitely.

The quote from Corinthians was not specific to marriage, but it applies here as well as to other relationships. But why do I say something seemingly harsh and possibly unfair is good?

Relationships, even between individuals deeply in love with each other, are full of conflicts. For example, one may be an early riser and the other a night owl. One might want to be out on the town at midnight, the other wants to be in bed so to get up with the sun. The other might hit you with the alarm clock if you tried to awake them to see a sunrise. Such a difference calls for compromise if conflict is to be avoided. If one or the other is too insistent on their lifestyle prevailing it can lead to real difficulties in the marriage. Yet this is a difference of no real significance.

There are many such conflicts that must be resolved in a successful marriage. Each gives a little here, gives a bit there and they accommodate each other's particulars. If they can't do this, the marriage will fail.

But if the difference is spiritual belief, how can one give a bit or bend a little to accommodate the other and stay true to their faith?

Oh, you may say, we just won't impose our separate belief on the other. That part of our lives we will keep private to our self. And perhaps you can, perhaps you will, but what do you do when children come?

Let's suppose no children come. Does that Muslim girl go to Mosque and the Catholic boy go to Cathedral and at home never speak of God? Do they argue they are not unequally yoked because they are both believers in God, the same God, the God of Abraham? Yet their view of Christ is quite different. Can they ignore that difference if they are devout to their religions?

To the secular and the nominally religious a difference in faith is no more consequential than the early riser versus the night owl. Asking if love conquers all in this situation is a good test of the depth of your faith. Certainly it is for the Christian.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." John 3:16-18

  

To the Christian there is no salvation and no doorway to God except through Christ. Perhaps you could pretend this doesn't matter in your outward approach to the one you love, but how does a Christian endure the agony of knowing the one they love is condemned? How could one as a Christian keep silent and live in peace when so yoked? Your love for your spouse can not conquer this condemnation. Only the love of God and your spouse's love of God in return can conquer all and without that your yoking together with an unbeliever will be a heavy burden upon your heart.

Nominally Christian

We were in a group a few evenings ago having a discussion about marriage. Some one asked if we were Christian when we wed and I answered, "nominally". Why did I say that? After all, we were wed by a Minister in a Methodist Church before a host of witnesses. A beautiful stained-glass window depicting Christ as the Good Shepard shown before us. The vows were the standard Christian ones.

I have told of my early exposure to the church, where I was sprinkled as a baby in the Grove Methodist Church and later attended Sunday School and Methodist Youth Fellowship in Downingtown.

My wife's family were Lutheran and she had a similar background of attendance, although in her case, her parents were regular church goers, in fact her mother played the organ.

In 1956 my parents bought a home in Bucktown and at the end of ninth grade I moved to the new home. I thought I left church behind at that point, but for some reason when my parents settled into their new home, they also settled into a life of church going, to a Methodist Church in Spring City. Immediately the pressure was on me to go to church again. This time I had no out, not being able to point to their lack of church going as a reason why I shouldn't go either.

I was stuck.

But the next year I turned 16. I got my driver's license and I had a car. I soon struck a bargain. I would go to Sunday School, but not church. This was agreed to. What did I see as beneficial in this? Sunday School was shorter for one thing. It began at 9:00 and ended 45 minutes later to allow for preparations for the church service at 10:00. The service itself, although scheduled for an hour, often ran longer, especially on communion Sunday.

The second benefit was it gave me time alone at home while my parents and Grandmother, who was living with us at this time, attended church. I could use this time perusing the magazines hidden under my mattress. Actually, I never hid anything under my mattress. I had a safer cubby hole for hiding that kind of material. (Is there any need to explain further? I think not.)

The first Sunday of this new arrangement, I had just gotten home to the now empty house and changed from my "good" clothes when someone rapped on the door. I knew it was a stranger, because they came to our front door, which no one used who knew us. When I answered, there were two people there, Jehovah Witnesses, and the only way I could get rid of them was to buy a book. I probably should have taken this as an omen, but instead I just made certain I didn't answer any knocks at that door.

This went on for a while, except I found Sunday School deadly dull. This was probably because it was deadly dull. The man teaching it simply was not suited to teaching teenagers. Soon I worked out a new deal with my folks. Instead of Sunday School or church, I would go to the Sunday evening Methodist Youth Fellowship meetings. There were no trips to Dick Thomas's Brick Oven from this church, but the meetings were still more interesting than Sunday School. Sometimes we even had cookouts and hayrides.

The next year, I was elected President of MYF. I decided to shake things up and changed the structure from what it was to one of open discussion of Bible stories. I played Devil's Advocate, asking questions attacking a lot of the passages we read. I was right back to what I was at Downingtown with my "okay, then where'd God come from" challenges. Everybody took it I was just trying to make them think and the discussions were lively, enough so that our membership grew as new teens heard about what we did and came to the meetings. I was praised for my leadership. I was praised as a shining example of Christian youth.

But I was no Christian other than a nominal one. I didn't ask my questions to spark discussion. I meant them. I asked them to challenge the beliefs of those attending, to shake their faith if I could.

When my wife-to-be and I met, we were barely out of high school. When we married, she was 19 and I was 20. I was not that long out of MYF. My parents were still faithful attendees. There was never a doubt we would be wed in that church. Thus we had a proper Christian wedding before a long ordained Methodist minister. Yet, I wasn't a Christian, not really. I had never professed any belief in Christ. I thought I was a good guy, but I wasn't a spiritual one.

If I was only a Christian-in-name at my wedding, I was to go a long way down a different road after the honeymoon. I still thought of myself as a "good" guy, and probably in comparison to some, I was, but after a while I even renounced the nominal tag of being a Christian.

Welcome to the Real World

After getting married, I was free of church. My wife and I didn't attend any church. We were riding high and fine without any help from religion. We both worked for the same big oil company and both made what was considered better than average salaries for our age, our position and our time. We bought a four bedroom Cape Cod house even before the wedding. We had a new car. We had Honeymooned throughout New England and Canada and we went to New York and Virginia the next year. We ate out regularly in fairly expensive restaurants. (Keep in mind that you could buy steak dinners for two with drinks for $12 in those years.) We would rather go off to the shore for the weekend than spend anytime in a church. We started off having it too good, so who needed God.

When things went south, we blamed God.

We were fine with two salaries, but when my wife lost her job it was difficult to meet all the monthly bills so the trips and high end restaurants disappeared from our routine. Then my wife became pregnant.

She was two-thirds through term and home alone. I was at work in Philadelphia, a trip I made every week day by train. We lived halfway between each of our parents, a half hour drive to either one. My wife didn't drive then. She felt she was going into labor and called our doctor.

He told her that was impossible. She asked him to come out, but he refused. He told her he would have the drugstore deliver a prescription to her to ease her pains. It was just as the drug arrived that the baby came. She didn't go to the door and the delivery man left. She delivered a boy, who lived briefly and died.

She placed it in a pan in the bathroom and called me. I left work and caught the next train home. When I got there she was in the bedroom. I asked if she had called the doctor again, but she hadn't. I called him and he came to the house. After he had attended to my wife, I asked what we should do with the baby. "You can toss it in the trashcan for all I care," he answered.

Not exactly great bedside manner.

As my wife recovered from this loss, our financial situation continued to worsen. Her father was giving us about $20 a month to help pay the bills. (Again, $20 was a fair amount back then.) Finally, we decided we need sell the house and engaged a realtor who put the House for Sale sign up by the driveway.

During this period a friend of our's visited with her boyfriend, who was a black man. This visit was observed and it was perceived this couple were house-hunters. Soon we received a warning from the Realtor not to sell to any Negroes, not that she (the Realtor) cared, but some people might make trouble. We told the Realtor we'd sell the house to anyone who wanted to buy it. Next we started getting threats that we better not show it to any niggers if we didn't want all our windows smashed out.

I don't know if anyone would have carried out their threats. The house sold soon after the threats to a white couple. Perhaps the Realtor pushed the sale to get rid of us "nigger-lovers".

We didn't make any money on the sale. It was a down market at the time and we sold for slightly less than we bought. We had no escrow built up. We had no savings. We were naive and didn't think we could rent any where and we moved in with my father-in-law. (My wife's mother died while she was in high school.)

This was not a good arrangement. Things reached a point where we separated. She stayed at her fathers and I moved back with my folks. We both began dating others, although no formal separation was filed or any talk of divorce had happened.

I quit my job at the oil refinery and she got a job at the University of Pennsylvania. I was spending my time writing, although I did take a part time job at a chewing gum maker.

After a few months we went back together, but on the condition we leave her father's. We moved into an apartment in Philadelphia's University City area, a place that had seen better days. It was an interesting place, occupied by college students, drug addicts, prostitutes and radical Black Power groups. The building behind us was a college dorm and all kinds of things were hurled from its windows into the alley behind us. (To the right is a picture of our kitchen there.)

We were living on her wages, which weren't great, and the very few dollars I sometimes got paid for a piece I wrote and sold. Sometimes I would walk along the streets, looking about the trolley stops for dropped change. I usually found a couple dollars each day and that often bought something to eat.

But it was an adventure. We were living the Hippie life. I was actually getting published regularly. In the summer, I got a job with a publisher and we had money now to go to concerts at The Trauma, The Kaleidoscope and the Main Point, even to a Dylan show at Convention Hall. We had the Hippie car, a VW Beetle.

Soon after I got that job my right to vote was challenged and I had to take off from work and go to court. But that is another story.

Our experiences from spoiled newlyweds to Hippie activists was complete. We had "soul", but not The Spirit. One of my campaigns, my cause, was to show up the hypocrisy of ministers and I was back to smugly throwing those challenging questions at pastors again.

Oh, I was so smart when in my twenties. I knew everything then and I knew there was no God.

Here is what I didn't know:

"A man's own folly ruins his life,
yet his heart rages against the LORD." Proverbs 19:3

Become a Christian and be Fat, Happy and Rich.

So when you become a bonified, true blue, born again Christian all your sufferings, problems and troubles will disappear. And if you send some money to those fellows in shiny suits and polyester hair on TV, you'll get rich and prosperous because "you can't out give God" and Jesus came "to give you life more abundantly".

Well, if you think that then you haven't been reading the Bible. 

It's true Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (King James Version). But He wasn't talking about owning bigger homes and cars and nicer clothes.  He wasn't promising we'd have money to iron. He was talking about our spiritual life. Here is more of the passage: 

Therefore Jesus said again, "I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.  John 10:7-10 (New International Version)

(The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. John 10:10 (King James Version)

I cringe at these "prosperity preachers". They do harm to Christians and insult God. They are the thief that comes to steal, kill and destroy. We can certainly see how they steal by distorting the Word of God, but they also kill people's faith and they put up stumbling blocks to people who might be seeking, but seeing these charlatans. Someone who is an outright crook is bad. Someone dressed in faux-righteousness promising false hope is much worse. They steal souls.

Does Jesus's life read like a how to succeed in business biography? What did he say to one man who asked to follow and live like him? "Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." (Matthew 8:20 and also Luke 9:58 KJV) Yes, it certainly sounds as if following Jesus is living the fat, happy and rich life.

There was another time when an already rich man asked how he could follow Jesus.

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

 "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.’"

"Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy."

 Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

 At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!"

The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."  Mark 10:17-24

I came to Christ in September 1975 a few months after we had lost our seventh child. Something changed immediately after I'd prayed. It would be difficult to explain and harder yet for others to understand unless they have also experienced it. It was not a change to my circumstances, it was a change in me, inside.

And then, of course, I became fat, happy and rich.

Well, maybe a bit fatter. Happier, that too, but not in the way people would usually describe happy. Rich, I'm still waiting. In fact, I got poorer.

Next time, I will explain what happened and answer the question whether Christians suffer. 

As a Christian Bees Won't Sting and Colds Won't Catch

I have heard just such nonsense preached. I have heard people told they were suffering because their faith was weak. Who has suffered more than Christ? Was his faith weak?

When you become a Christian the Son shines in you, but the sun shines on you and the rain falls upon you just as it does on the worse terrorists that stalk the earth.  You are just as likely to get your face sunburned and your feet wet as they are. You don't escape earthly suffering by being born again anymore than the criminal who professes sudden Christianity receives a get-out-of-jail-free card. But Christians do receive a get-out-of-Hell card.

If you think Christianity is a hedge against the slings and arrows of this world, then you haven't read your Bible. (You miss a lot of truth if you don't read the Bible.)  Read the stories of all the great names of the Bible, then tell me all those who didn't suffer?

Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.   James 5:10-11

In 1975, when I became a Christian, we had lost 7 children in 14 years of marriage. In late 1977 when my wife became pregnant for the eigthth time it came as a surprise to me. She had claimed her tubes were tied after the last time. She lied. 

This wasn't the biggest shock. It was when her obstetrician refused to take her case and others we consulted would not either. No one wanted this case with her history. They told her it was impossible, she could nevert have a baby. But someone in the church knew a Christian Doctor and he took the case and the church prayed. 

But we'll discuss those details another time. Just let me say our first child to live beyond a brief few moments was born on March 1, 1978. We have two other children  and I'll discuss those circumstances another time as well. All I want to illustrate here is in the face of an impossibility the improbable happened.

And we all lived happily ever after in the enchanted forest of the Spirit where the bees won't sting and you don't catch colds. 

Not exactly.

By mid-1978 the company employing me decided to close shop and move to Chicago. I was asked to go, but did not want to move so far. In November 1978 I was proffered a new job elsewhere, which I took and it was not to be a happy choice. With it we had to move from where we were and the church that had prayed and helped us so much. And then not two years later, this new employer decided to give my job to someone else for reasons having nothing to do with my own success or failure. This was quickly followed by a series of difficult events.

We had our second child, who was not expected to live, but did so after nearly a month in intensive care. My father-in-law had a seizure, died, was brought back to life, but left only a shell on machines, which it fell to us to turn off. Our home flooded and was totally destroyed inside.

Being Christians did not protect us from the type of loss and sufferings that befall all members of mankind. We are talking about faith, a belief in Christ as Savior and a striving to understand and grown in a relationship with God, not in magic. Such tribulations can bring a person to despair, as had been the case a few years earlier. We came to salvation from the depths of depression and hopelessness and our burdens were lightened. So it was when this series of setbacks hit us. If we had not come to this faith, I am not certain we would have survived what we went through between 1975 and 1981.

In an earlier posts I asked if you could reconcile these two verses:

Matt 11:29-30-- Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." 

Matt 16:24-25 -- Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 

Comparing the difficult experiences of my life before and after being a Christian have taught me what these verses mean. 

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Romans 5:1

THREE WAYS TO SUNDAY PART II BORN AGAIN

Why Me?

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Romans 1:18-25

For a time, I thought these verses meant if you resisted the choice of Jesus long enough, God would simply leave you to your own devices and you were lost forever.  I would see this in connection to the unpardonable sin.

"He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. 31And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.  Matthew 12:30-32

Then I would wonder, how did I escape God's wrath? Why me?

I certainly ignored those telling me I had to be born again. I was not moving toward God, but away. Or was I?

I have told how as a child I was forced to go to Sunday School until I reached Junior High and made such a fuss my folks gave up on that. The problem with my going was no one else was, so why me? Sunday School was boring.

In Junior High I was invited to a Methodist Youth Fellowship meeting by a friend. I went because of a promise of hamburgers at a favorite restaurant. I stayed because we played games and stuff besides all that Bible mumbo-jumbo.

My parents moved out of town several miles north as I ended ninth grade. In the new place, they started going to a Methodist Church and I was again forced to attend. I talked them into Sunday School, which allowed me to be home alone when they were in Church Service. I again joined MYF and in my senior year was elected President. I played Devil's Advocate. It was thought I was just facilitating to get conversation going, but I really was challenging the beliefs being held. I thought I was quite brilliant.

After my wife and I married, we didn't go to church at all. She had grown up a Lutheran and also been forced to attend, but her circumstance was a bit different. Whereas, for most my youth my family only went to church at Christmas and Easter, her parents were faithful attendees. In fact, they were heavily involved in their church; her mother was even the organist. They had a list of don'ts they made her pledge, that she would never drink, never smoke, never do other things. 

My wife started smoking at twelve.

We were very happy having nothing to do with church. Who needed it. We were just fine. We bought a house just before we got married. We weren't even eligible to sign the contracts at the time because we were underage. You weren't an adult until 21 in those days. I was just 20 and she was still 19 when we married.

We had a house. We had a new car. We ate out regularly. We had decent jobs. We had a plan.

Then the problems started.

She lost the first child at home alone. She lost her job. We lost the house. We lost another child.  I had a breakdown at work. She had an affair. We almost lost our marriage.

And I got very sick one day. I don't know what I had. I was as sick as I ever had been or been since. I literally believed I was going to die. I lay in the bed, soaked with sweat, my fever sky high, my body in great pain, exhausted and scared. It was dark. The blinds were shut. It was night out. I actually called out for God to save me cause I didn't think I would be alive come morning. Then I noticed some light on the wall. It was a cross. I don't understand where it came from. I looked around for the source, but couldn't figure it out. It stayed as I feel asleep and when I awoke in the morning it was gone, but so was my fever and my pain.

I looked for that cross time and again after that, but no cross ever shown on the bedroom wall again. Very strange, I can't explain it.

But that moment didn't save me. I just got well physically. And we lost the third baby.

I didn't totally forget that strange cross or God yet. We decided to give church a chance. Not the churches where our parents attended, but some other mainstream congregation somewhere. So we began visitations on each Sunday and no where welcomed us. We were just two strangers passing through. Perhaps we appeared alien in dress or with my long hair. One church was even outright hostile to us, as if we were disturbing their finely tuned clique. The sermons seemed empty, the buildings cold, God distant.

We had tried Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians,some others. Nothing worked.

At the time we lived with my wife's father. There was a Roman Catholic Church a couple blocks away. one day I wandered over and went inside during a mass. I became attracted to the ritual, the smell of incense, the candles and the saints. It was involving, always something to do. I got a rosary. I did the stations of the cross. I went to mass everyday. There were some things I couldn't do because I wasn't a confirmed member. So I got a book and studied all the doctrine and my wife and I talked to the priest about converting.

But the night he was suppose to meet with us to schedule everything to begin the process, he stood us up. That ended that. I didn't go back.

We moved on to churches outside the center. We had moved from her father's to an apartment in the city. We hung out in the Hippie centers at night and weekends. Nearby a popular gathering place in a city park was an Unitarian Church, so we started going there. All the talk there was on activism, protest of the war, doing street drama against the government, that type of thing. Well, we had been involved all ready in such demonstrations and acting out. It didn't seem a church for us and we stopped going.

We crossed the park to the other side and a different sort of church, called the Ethical Society. We began attending services. We sat in what was like a pew in what was like a church with what was like an alter at the center. Music played as a processional, but not a hymn; classical music. All the music was this type. A text was read, but it was from Socrates or Plato or some other philosopher. Then the "preacher" gave a "sermon". God was never mentioned. The talk was in praise of man and man's ability to overcome any problem through will and technology.

I told my wife later it seemed silly. If you didn't believe in God, why then completely imitate a Christian Church Service? To what purpose? It just seemed childish.

This ended our experiment with church going. I took a great interest in Buddhism. It was kind of prevalent in the underground culture of the time. I got some Zen and the Buddhist Scriptures and told everyone the Buddhists really understood. My interpretation was you could and should do everything. Go work hard and makes a lot of money. You would then find money didn't satisfy. Go and enjoy sensual pleasures, have as many sexual encounters as you lusted for. You would then find sex didn't satisfy. Eat and drink and do whatever felt good as much as you wished and you would discover none satisfied. Then you would be ready to move up to some spiritual level. Yessir, that made sense. Just think, you could grow spiritual after satiating your every whim.

Later I was to feel Solomon said the same thing in Ecclesiastes, except he didn't tell you to go out and do all that stuff. He told you the opposite. He was saving you the bother by telling you it was all meaningless and empty and only God could satisfy. 

So I forgot the Buddhism. Transcendental Meditation was also popular then, thanks to the Beatles, but Hinduism in any form never had any appeal to me. So I read a couple books on it, but never tried it. I did get into all those fad philosophies that came by and bought a lot of self-help books. I just went from one to another without much to show for the effort in the end. 

But now I was slipping into the occult and I bought the Satanic Bible, books on Voodoo, followed the life of Edgar Cayce, went out chasing UFOs across the night sky, until one day I said it is all bunk and simply stopped believing in anything beyond myself and this world. I declared myself an Atheist and an angry one.

I began a mini-crusade against ministers and organized religion, mainly Christian.

Those verses in Romans seemed to have come true. God had given me over to my own depravity. I was beyond hope. Of course at the time I didn't see it that way.

To be continued. 

Angry Atheist

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. Romans 1:28-32

The photo is me in 1970, looking rather Edgar Allan Poe-ish. It's the same picture as on the last post, only reversed and not doctored. This was me on the outside; that other was me on the inside like the Picture of Dorian Gray reflecting all my sins. I was becoming a monster.

The world I inhabited was changing. I had found the 60's invigorating, inventive; art and music and literature all evolving to a higher plane. We hung with the Hippies, wearing salvation army clothes or Nehru jackets, flowers in the hair, love beads about the neck, Tim Buckley concerts at the Trauma Coffeehouse. 

We lived in an apartment in what was called University City. We shared the building with college students, prostitutes, drug addicts, Black Panthers, who held meetings in the lobby, and roaches in the sink at night. We had a pet iguana. I had quit my job where I had worked since high school and was freelance writing for local papers, the Underground Press and international horror magazines.

But the ugly side of the 'sixties was catching up and taking over. The 1967 Summer of Love in Haight-Ashbury crashed outside the Chicago Republican Convention in 1968 at the Festival of Love. The Beatles had broke-up in January 1969. A period dedicated to "coming together" and "flower power" had really been marked by violence. It had kicked off with the murder of Medgar Evers in June 1963 and the November 1963 assassination of President Kennedy. The period from 1964 through 1967, that portion of the so-called "decade of love" was fraught with civil rights riots in our major cities and National Guard troops and tanks in our streets. And in 1968 reality sunk in to everyone. Martin Luther King, Jr. gunned down in April at age 39; Robert F. Kennedy gunned down in June at age 43. It was now more the age of the Yippies than the Hippies. 

By 1970 there was no more delusion that "all you need is love". In May, National Guard troops at Kent State, there to keep order, opened fire and four students were left dead. The icons of the era were passing away from their habits and self-abuse. Jim Morrison in July. Jimi Hendrix in September. Janis Joplin in October. All dead at age 27.

I turned 29 in June.

I was taking on the world.

In 1968, the Republican Party attempted to take away my right to vote and I had to go to court to stop them. I was angry at all political parties. I was registered Democrat, but I voted for third party candidates like Dick Gregory. I didn't like the business world either. I was writing letters to the CEOs of major companies. They were not polite letters. But what I really went after was the church. 

What set me off?

My wife and I had visited my parents on Easter and went to church with them. Fine. But then I received a letter from the pastor, Reverend R. He told me I had hurt my mother. How?

Apparently some woman in the church had complained to him about our appearance, he had passed this along to my mother and it upset her. He suggested I should come and apologize and ask forgiveness.

Me? Why Me? How dare that women and this preacher judge me. And the church was a bunch of hypocrites anyway, whose only interest was money. I had not attended that church for a decade and yet the only concern they had was money. The only communication they ever sent me was an annual letter asking for donations. In fact, one such letter had come the same week as Reverend R.'s missive.

I set up a meeting to confront this man. I told him I didn't appreciate him sticking up for this woman and they shouldn't have put it on my mother. They should have told me to my face. I told him what I considered that woman to be. He said she was trying to lead me back to the Lord by pointing out my sins. I told him there were plenty of sinners in his church, tell her to point out to the usher who always smelled of booze his sin and then listed some others whose flaws I knew. He told me I needed to forgive those people and threw the story of the Adulterous Woman at me, the whole "casting the first stone" bit and that Jesus forgave the woman and that was the lesson, that I should forgive this woman and these others. I told him Jesus also told the woman to "go and sin no more". Repentance comes with forgiveness, I said, tell that woman to repent and that usher to stop getting drunk on Saturday night and then I'll forgive them. Oh, I thought, score one for me! 

We had other such debates both in person and in letters. Here are some of the milder passages of the letters.

After considerable thought, I have come to a decision about your question of my spiritual comfort and to which church or religious interpretation I entrust my allegiance. I conclude none; that is; if I don’t claim out and out atheism, I certainly admit to a deep-seated agnosticism.

There is another, perhaps tenuous, reason to give you an explanation. Because you are a man of God, it must be your duty to concern yourself when anyone strays from the religious establishment. If you would not ask why, would not care, would not debate such a profession by a fellow human, then you would be guilty of dereliction of your faith and calling. Whereas I reject the legendary and mythological ideal of Judeo-Christianity and am free to show no concern for anyone but myself (taking here the more common opinion of the non-believer), you by tradition and expectation must be immediately involved with your fellow man. If this was not so, then you would do far more damage to your church and faith than any atheist or critic can ever do.

The most interesting fact I ever learned in Sunday school was one of the teachers had a dog that was over twenty years old. Don’t you find that remarkable?

I was on a roll now. I wasn’t stopping with one preacher. Bring them on. Here are excerpts from another debate with another minister, Reverend D

Dear Mister D.,

They have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him…

And here we have the crux perhaps of the problem. No church, none, meets the requirements of the Bible. Where the Catholics stress certain lines, they miss others, and so it is the same with the protestant.

Who has my Lord?

I am afraid I believe each man has his own Lord; and nobody has him. Who has exclusive rights to God?

I have rolled about our conversation in my mind and read further and rummaged in my own conscience and these are the thoughts I have dredged up from doing so.

Yet does not one in a heap if ruins

stretch out his hand,

And in his disaster cry for help?

Did I not weep for him whose day was

Hard?

Was not my soul grieved for the poor?

But when I looked for good, evil came;

and when I waited for light, darkness

came. (Job 30: 24-26)

You are certainly right in saying you find it hard to accept I would lean toward Catholicism. That was a passing island that I clung to as I attempted to claim some finger hold on religion. But like the other shaky grasps I have held in the past, a man of the cloth stepped upon my hand and loosened me.

As the churches rejected me, I am rejecting them you see. It is deeper than that, of course, but that is what most people will adopt as my reasoning, and so be it. I was forgotten by Bethel, ignored by the Lutherans, Episcopalians and Catholics and repulsed by the Ethics. Besides I no longer believe any man knows anything about God. If we did know once, then it was before weak churches or their opposite who subverted God. Anyway, I think, like the scripture indicates, God will give support to he who supports himself.

I don’t think God is dead: I think he is sealed in some church pledge envelope somewhere buried beneath the gold and silver.

I guess I’m incurable. But, oh God, I am not alone in my illness.

If those verses in Romans 1 meant God gave up when you resisted enough and left you go your own way, then I was lost for sure. There was no way back to God from here, not that I was looking for a way. Or was I? Or was God looking for me? 

I could explain away the Bible as legends written by men. I could explain away God because I couldn't see him.  I could explain away ministers as hypocrits.

But I still couldn't quite explain that cross the appeared on my bedroom wall.

To be continued: Peace and Depravity

Peace and Depravity

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator Romans 1:24-25a

During the 'sixties a repeated chant was "never trust anyone over thirty". In the summer of 1971 I crossed that Maginot Line. In a couple more years the so-called Decade of Love would be over, the Vietnam War would end and Nixon would be sinking in the flood from Watergate. An era of my life was ending as well.

The group of artists, actors, poets and writers my wife and I had socialized with for several years was going separate ways. The Hippie culture and psychedelic streets near the river were fading from view. The Beatles had broken up in 1969. By 1973 a different sound was dominating everything, Disco. The new icon was a skinny John Travolta in a tight white suit.

I was still selling some writing, still going to evening college, still not believing in God, but I was losing the anger. Fighting every authority figure was behind me. I had been through a couple of jobs, had moved to New Jersey and in a sense felt at peace. I now had a job that was going to last several years. I was an Assistant Controller (and eventually would be the Systems Manager) for a steel fabricating company in Philadelphia. We were no longer living in the "roach hole", but had a very nice modern apartment at Ski Mountain in South Jersey. (If you know anything about South Jersey, you will chuckle at the idea there could actually have been a ski resort there.) 

In the near past we had lived with a motley crew of neighbors of sometimes questionable repute. Our life had been one of some austerity. There were months when I lived on soft pretzels for lunch and there had been stretches when I would walk along the trolley stops looking for dropped change in order to buy food. Now we lived among people who in a coming decade would be called Yuppies. The times of protest had ended; party time had begun.

Our old crowd had talked about art, literature, politics and philosophy. The new friends we were making had little interest in any of that.  If our 'sixties group was cerebral, our new associates were tactile. Pleasure was at the center of our relationships.

In began with W. and B. and a chance meeting in a lingerie shop. My wife was there to buy a teddy or something. She took a couple items into the dressing rooms and I found myself standing next to another fellow of approximately my same age self-consciously holding his wife's purse, too. A moment later this nice-looking young blond woman came out of the dressing rooms wearing only a fish-net body suit. She twirled about and asked her husband what he thought. He approved and she went back behind the curtain. He glanced at me and we smiled at each other.  What do you say in such a circumstance?

But somehow this turned into a strange contest between his wife and mine for most daring display. Out they would come in another brief wisp of material. The owner of the shop seemed delighted, and why not? When we turned to leave there was a large crowd gathered around the front of her shop watching this impromptu burlesque show.

While waiting, her husband and I had talked and exchanged telephone numbers and addresses and we became friends. We would get together at each other's apartments and play striptease games, take Polaroid pictures and have sex.

Now, I want it to make it clear. We were not wife-swapping. We only had sex with our own spouse.  I did not see any of this as sin at the time. I was still a faithful husband. And really by secular standards I was and am. I was a virgin when I met my wife and I have never had sex with any other person. By the worldly definition I have not committed adultery. By Biblical standards, I have over and over again. Besides this voyeuristic period of sexual games with another couple, I had long been a collector of pornography. But I saw no harm in it. I wasn't neglecting my wife. These were just images on the pages of magazines. Or those women contorting themselves in the nude upon some sleazy stage were just a show. Or those base acts were just shadows on a movie screen.  I didn't "really" break the Seventh Commandment. I didn't believe in the Ten Commandments anyway.

This friendship with W. and B. didn't last long. We began to suspect they wanted to go where we didn't and we broke it off.  We found another couple who we had a much longer relationship with. These were our drinking buddies.

When we met B. and G. we all lived in the same apartment building.  We would get together every weekend and sometimes in between. Sometimes we went out, but often we simply gathered in one of our apartments, played pinochle and drank. For some reason I had a great tolerance of alcohol and didn't get drunk. Not so much with B. Most evenings ended with me picking up his inert body and carrying it back to his bed before my wife and I went home.  There were also times I had to pull him out of a bar before fists began to fly or off the street before the cops came. But, although there were dirty jokes and innuendo aplenty in our conversations, there was no sexual play with B. and G. B. was an extremely jealous husband with a tendency toward violence.

This relationship ended when I got saved. Somehow after that, B. and G. found us different and no longer with shared interests.

We had some other friends during this period. We had a long and close relationship with V. and M. These friends would have been considered perfectly respectable. There was no sexual hanky-panky, no drinking to drunkenness. But there were a lot of parties and everything was pleasure. V and I played tennis almost every lunchtime during the work week and golf every weekend. 

For about four years life couldn't have been better as far as I was concerned. The only fly in the ointment had been losing another baby. It seemed pretty hopeless and I had accepted the idea of never having children. That was just one of those things. We had each other, a nice place to live and friends. We considered ourselves good people. We worked hard and paid our taxes, harmed no one, so what was wrong with having fun when ever we could. This was what life was all about was our motto. Grab the gusto. If it feels good, do it. 

Without kids, there were no encumbrances. We were free to do as we pleased. We could just take off on weekends and enjoy vacation trips each year. It was on one of those vacation trips my wife said something that would change everything. 

"Honey", she said, "I think I'm pregnant again."  This would make number seven.

To be continued: Seven, the number of completeness. 

The photo was me in 1971.

Seven: The Number of Completeness

And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature. Romans 13:11-14

(Left: my wife and I in 1975)

THE 1960s

Our Years of Protest and Anger

My wife on the left, was to be the vocalist in our band, "Ethereal", music by Jim (with bongos), lyrics by me (holding guitar).

Those weren't costumes, we actually dressed that way.

THE EARLY 1970s

Parties, Sex and Booze

B. and W. in rare photo - fully clothed

This is not the case with the Polaroid photos on the sheet W. holds in his hand. 

J. (far left) and L. (far right), friends through both periods, part of the Hippie group, a writer and later Vietnam war hero. They named their first child after me.

My wife and I are in the center. The little chest on the table next to my wife held a canister of Scotch and a canister of Wild Turkey Bourbon.

There was a well-stocked bar somewhere in the room, our idea of high sophistication. 

New Years in the Poconos. We and nine other couples use to rent a lodge each Christmas week. This was actually a good time. Despite the toasting, there was little drinking. Mostly we went sledding, ice boating and popped popcorn in the fireplace. Note there were children present. Several of the other couples were social workers and longtime friends of my wife's back to high school. 

One of several parties with V. and M. V. is playing my guitar. Another gathering where mostly sanity prevailed. Note again the presences of children. V. was from the Caribbean and of African-Indian decent. The couple with the child on the right were Jewish. M.'s foot is on the left, she was a "good" Catholic Jersey Girl. 

New Year's Eve 1974 with G. and B. No children here. There was a lot of booze.

This seemed to be our fate at this point, just drift along in life having parties and not much caring about anything else. 

We did not know with the dawn next day came a year which would change our whole perception of life.

By 1975 I would say we were in a state of resignation. The old associations and activities were left behind. I had been through three different jobs and as many addresses within three years. In 1972 we had moved to New Jersey because the company I worked for was going to build there. Instead it folded.  In 1973 I began work with a steel fabricator in South Philadelphia as an assistant bookkeeper. By the end of that year I was the assistant controller and by 1976 I would also become the systems manager. In 1974 I quit going to night college and stopped sending out manuscripts, seeing my last piece published that year in "Animal Lovers Magazine". We were also now living in a nice modern luxury apartment at Ski Mountain. 

I was also resigned to the fact we would never have children. This didn't seem so bad. We were unencumbered. Outside of work it was all play with friends or going to concerts and taking trips. Life had become something of a continuous party and a little bit of risk taking. As far as the Ten Commandments, if I thought of them at all, it wasn't that we were breaking them.

The first four didn't count anyway, since I didn't believe in God. I certainly didn't have any gods before or behind him. I was my own god, although I didn't think of it that way. I didn't have some complex, it was just that I was the only thing I really believed in and relied on. As far as taking his name in vain, well, I never had been a curser. I just didn't vocally blaspheme, so I figured I was pretty good on that one. And I rested on Sundays. I wasn't any too certain what keeping the Sabbath meant. If it meant going to church, then I didn't keep it. I didn't worry about it either.

Honor our mother and father, certainly, we kept on good terms with our parents, if at arm's length. They certainly felt more comfortable about us now that we had shed that Hippie persona. They didn't know anything about the sex and drinking.

We hadn't murdered anyone. We might have wished a few people drop dead, but hey, everybody does that!

Although we had a sex-oriented relationship with another couple, we weren't having physical sex with either of them. I had never had sex with anyone other than the woman I married. Oh, I had opportunities, but never took advantage. My wife said this was because I was too naive to know when a woman was coming on to me. I like to think I was just too honorable to commit adultery.

I hadn't stole anything since those "girlie magazines" when I was 13. I was honest. If someone gave me the wrong change in my favor, I pointed it out and gave back the difference.

I didn't tell lies about other people and I didn't envy anyone.

In my humble opinion I was a good guy. I certainly wasn't a sinner. Sin was doing things that hurt people, like stealing. The things we did weren't hurting anyone. They weren't any one's business. 

But why was my wife depressed so often and why did I have a constant feeling of dissatisfaction?

What we needed were a few more adventures. (I'd prefer not to go into some things. Let's just say we did things not made for the family channel.)

Then coming out of a coal mine tour in Central Pennsylvania during a vacation trip, my wife said; "Honey, I think I'm pregnant again."

Yes, she was. And baby number seven wasn't going to be anymore lucky than the six brothers and sisters that preceded her. Amy was going to be born in month five and die just like Sean and Michael. The other four miscarried before getting that far.

[Do you know what babies look like when born too soon?

Babies.

Back when we lost our babies, five months was too soon. Today a lot of those lost children would have lived. Human life begins at conception and it ain't above my pay grade to tell you that!]

Oh well, I'd been down this road before. We'd get over it. Except Amy was a fighter. They put my wife in a labor room of the hospital and did what they could to stall off birth. They had a monitor that registered the baby's heart beat. It was a strong beat. It stayed strong the whole week my wife was in that labor room and I was by her side every day after work. My wife was drugged up and often drifted in and out of sleep. I sat sometimes for hours in a silent room except for that beat...beat...beat...beat. 

Once upon a time, a decade before, a strange cross had appeared on the wall of my bedroom when I thought I was dying. I had forgotten that cross. I couldn't forget the beat...beat...beat. It was so determined. And when I was alone at home after the visits, I could not get that heartbeat out of my mind and I realized that God had to exist. I sure wasn't god. There wasn't a thing I could do for that baby or for my wife. I could only listen to the beat of life. And in that beating I knew there was something greater than me, greater than us all.

When the day came they could not stall any longer, labor was induced and Amy died. When the beat stopped it was to be the beginning of the deepest valley I ever saw my wife enter. And although I felt as helpless in rescuing her as I had felt about saving that baby I knew something had survived and was alive in me, a belief in God.

To be continued: An Oasis in the Valley of Death