Veal or Chicken?

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

–Proverbs 22:6

When I was a kid, much of my free time was devoted to church and church activities.  If there was an event that included my age group, I had to attend or be very ill.  My parents really took Proverbs 22:6 to heart.  And had I died by age 35, they would have been extremely successful.  But alas, things change.  Interpretations change.  Who is to say that I am not going, “the way < I > should go.”

I don’t mean to knock my upbringing.  My parents did what they thought was right and I admire them for that.  But looking back, I was force fed a steady stream of religious dogma from about age 3.  I was Assemblies of God Veal until I was 21.

Now as a parent, I am on the other side of the equation.  My son attends church with me.  He participates in the occasional church activity.  He played Christian sports.  He has had exposure to most things Christian, but by no means would his upbringing compare to either my wife’s or my own.  He has had very little exposure to other faith traditions, but he attends a very multicultural school, so I am sure it has come up.  He is more of a religious free range chicken.

Which is right, veal or chicken?  I am somewhat tormented by this question.  I by no means want to replicate my upbringing.  But how much is too much or too little?  It is one thing to risk my “eternal” soul exploring the religious landscape.  It is another thing entirely to risk someone else’s.

Vergence, Part one, the Journey

So what the heck DO I believe in?  Since joining Imagine about a year and a half ago, I have gone from an ice cold stage, through a period of complete disorientation and now at long last, I think I am emerging into a new spring renewal of spirituality.  But what of faith?  My personal definition is: believing in that which cannot be proven (it really annoys me that there is no good antonym for provable).  Do I have faith?  Yes and no.

While there are vestigial parts of my childhood faith, the faith that I now carry would be unrecognizable to my family.  But really, isn’t that the point of evolution, to use something that severed another purpose in a whole new way?

But I digress.

My childhood faith is traditional Christianity.  Specifically:  conservative, Pentecostal, Assemblies of God.  I have written enough about what and why I no longer follow that path, I will not repeat it here.  Suffice to say, I am no longer a part of that particular set persuasions.

But what am I?

What am I?

I have been struggling to say what I am for months now.  I know what resonates with me, but have been tongue tied when trying to explain it.  But this morning I think I may have stumbled onto of conveying what I do believe and why I have been hesitant to expound on it until now.  The language I use is the language of our greatest modern myth, Star Wars.

I believe in “a” force.  The article of speech I choose is specific in this instance.  I do not believe in “the” force as in The Force as laid out in the Star Wars universe.  My reluctance to use this word is that it carries just as much if not more baggage as the word god.

I have faith that I am not a just a singular entity named Ben.  I believe I am connected to a powerful force that is in all, has always been and ever will be (at least in our universe…don’t get me started).

There is a material point of view that people are individual creatures.  And while they gain energy and sustenance from other living beings, there is nothing more, ”to it” than that simple electrochemical exchange.  When you die, you are consumed and that is the end of you.  I don’t subscribe to that point of view.

I feel that I am connected.  And while I fully understand that it may be a figment of my imagination, I choose to believe it anyway.  I believe that all life is plugged in at some level to a spiritual dimension and that whether voluntarily or unconsciously, we are part of a greater whole.  The purpose of that whole is to love and nurture all that lives.

Now to my real purpose of writing today’s entry:  Where do I express this faith?  Well in my readings and explorations of the last couple of years, two things have become clear.  One, I do not want to create my own religion.  At best that makes me a nut and at worst people will be killing each other in my name 1000s of years from now (but a man can dream…shut up Ben).  Two, buying into another religion (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or Flying Spaghetti Monster) is just taking on someone else’s baggage.

So where does that leave me?  Do I “worship” (another loaded word) by myself?  What a better way to recognize the unity and connection of the universe, than to “do it” all by myself.  Nope.  No spiritual masturbation for me.

What I have heard over and over, but could not “fit” into was the idea of finding the mystical elements of my cultural faith; utilize its spiritual practices while rejecting the dogmatic elements of its particular persuasion.

Luckily, I find myself in a pluralistic church where the word “both” is held in special reverence.  I can speak with total frankness and candor with my fellow Imagine peeps and I can participate in a worship service that is not unlike many other modern non-denominational churches (although it is part of one).

End of part one

From IS to IS Like

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shopping at noon on the Saturday before Christmas is not a brilliant plan for those people like me that abhor crowds.  I am done with my own shopping, but I needed to take my son shopping and he wanted to go to Target, the heart of the Christmas beast.  After trolling the parking lot for about 20 minutes looking for an open space, we decided we might be better off trying a midnight run.

While driving around, my son and I were listening to This American Life, or as I like to call it, “The Unintended Consequences” show.  The theme this week was of course Christmas.  One of the stories piqued my interest.  It was the story of a family that went to great lengths to make their children not only believe in Santa, but to have interactions with many magical characters from the Santa myth.

This had gone on for decades and was a source of joy and wonder across the generations, with one notable exception.   One of the sons was a true believer and refused to relinquish the beliefs at the “normal” time in childhood.  He continued to believe the myth and forcefully proclaim it well into his high school years.  As you can imagine, this caused him a great deal of grief.  Then at some point in high school, he overheard some of his aunts talking about the myth and the roles that various family members had played over the years.

The son was crushed.  Predictably, the kid became a cynic and generally untrusting in his relationships for years.  He finally did come to terms with the perceived betrayal, but at age thirty-something said that he would never revisit the myth with his children.

They interviewed the father for the story.  His was a remarkable point of view.  He steadfastly refused to admit he had tricked his children in any way.  He said they had an experience, it was magical and who was he to say whether or not it was real.

Wow!

Encapsulated in this little story is the struggle of my life over the past couple of years and with it was the path forward.  For most of my life, I have been the son in this story.  But in the last year or so, I have been striving to become the father.

Religions are the stories societies tell each other generation after generation to come to grips with not only what is, but what is inexplicable.  As children these stories are magical and bring order to a complex world.   But over time, our observations and experiences run into conflict with the stories we have been taught.  At some point, everyone person of faith must find their own set point of what is truth and what is myth.  Like most things in life, the extreme in either direction can be destructive.

When I was growing up, I had an invisible friend named Jesus.  We spoke whenever we were along.  We sang song.  He watched me play. It was great.  As I grew older, I learned more about my friend and found that far beyond being just a silent companion, he could do amazing magic.  I saw him heal people who visited our church.  One particular Sunday night a visitor in a wheelchair got up and walked and then danced around the church.  Sadly, Sister Walls, a member of the congregation with Polio, did not have enough faith that night to get out of her chair.

As I got older, I learned that the adults in our church had their own magical languages.  When I was of age, I too got my own magical language.  I watched as kids from my Jr and Sr High Schools were possessed and then delivered from demonic possession.

My friends and neighbors of course thought we were kooks, but they just did not know the truth.

I stubbornly held fast to these beliefs until reality smacked me around enough that the magic lost its grip.  Once faith lost its grip on me, I fled to the other extreme.  Bitter cynicism filled the void left by shattered faith.  And I began a 10 year journey into a lonely void.

But over the last year, I have begun to rekindle the magic.  But it is different.  My faith, if you can call it that, has gone from being, “the world IS,” to “the world is LIKE.”  Instead of trying to systematically fit reality into the mold of my faith.  I am trying to explain what my life is like using the language and experience of spirituality.  I choose to use the incantations of prayer and the practices of magic, not because I am trying to change the world or appease an all powerful deity.  But I choose to use these practices because they make me feel more connected to nature and my fellow beings, be they cat or colossus.  Whether real or fantasy, it does not matter.  If it makes me feel more aligned with the rest of life, then that is good enough.

And in a couple of days, I will fully enjoy both Santa’s arrival and the incarnation of God.

95 Feces

I was listening to one of my favorite punk groups, The Violent Femmes.  They have a song called “Kiss Off,” that is presumably about O.D.’ing.  At one point the writer lists his grievances as he pops pills (presumably).

I take one one one cause you left me and
Two two two for my family and
3 3 3 for my heartache and
4 4 4 for my headaches and
5 5 5 for my lonely and
6 6 6 for my sorrow and
7 7 for no tomorrow and
8 8 I forget what 8 was for and
9 9 9 for a lost god and
10 10 10 10 for everything everything everything everything

–Violent Femmes, 1983

At the point in the song, the artist definitely has the WTF attitude.  I am bobbing my head along to each of the lyrics. 1 1 1…2 2 2…blah blah…and then 9 9 9 for a lost god.  And I make an odd mental connection.  The song becomes the background music to Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg.  I take one one one for indulgences…

Welcome to my brain.  It is a disjointed mess of goo.

So I start thinking about what pisses me off about “the church.”  (in the macro general sense…not a specific worshiping body)

I think wow, I wonder if I could come up with 95 beefs with the modern church.  Snort!  Yeah, I am Martin Luther…not!  But I did rather quickly come up with a list of 10 things I hate about the 21^st century church.  For now it is just a list.  If I am ambitious, I may blog on each topic.  But for now it is just a list for the virtual door.

1. Hell…the idea that anyone could deserve eternal punishment.
2. Rapture…F’ off world, I am out of here!
3. Devil…Really?  There is a being that would rival an all powerful God.
4. Politics…Jesus is not a republican
5. Prosperity…I love you Joel Olstein
6. When bad things happen to good people it is a test or because of unconfessed sin…man, I must be a real asshole.
7. The doctrine of the Trinity…OMG could there be a more disjointed theological cluster fuck?  Did anyone proof read this doctrine?  I think they were smoking pot…so he is totally god and totally human…drag…like…like an egg
8. The cannon should be reevaluated…Yeah, um Joshua…not a big fan.  Leviticus really???  I am sooooo going to get stoned.
9. Christianity is the only true religion…God is a trademarked entity of the Jesus corporations.  All violators will be prosecuted and persecuted…void in Wisconsin…damn Lutherans.
10. Mega churches…take 2 cups Jesus…some spotlights…an orchestra…some slick marketing…presto…salvation baby!  See also #5

Interesting…there are dark clouds forming over my head.

Legacy Code

I had my Imagine meeting this morning.  It was our second to the last meeting.  Not sure what comes next, but I’m open to possibilities.

We are reading the book Naked Spirituality by Brian McLaren.  I had procrastinated all week and as of noon yesterday, I had not read the second half of the book that was being covered this morning.  My Kindle mocked me showing that I had only read 48% of the book.

The book compares the spiritual life to the seasons of the year.  The book is broken into four sections starting with spring and ending in winter.  Somehow I had slogged through the first half of the book.  Normally if a book does not catch me in the first couple of chapters, I toss it and move on.  This book was teetering on the edge of oblivion.  It is not that it is a bad book, but the spring and summer chapters did not really resonate.  My faith is not new, like spring.  Nor am I in the active season of summer.  I claim the name of Christian only by heritage and not by practice.  The first half of the book was full of really helpful practices for active Christians.  For what it was, it was good.  But since I had no interest revisiting that part of my life, it was a bit dry.

Last night I had to finish the book for today’s meeting.  I thought about blowing it off, but I wanted to honor the commitment to my group.  So I did the lazy thing.  I turned on the text-to-speech feature on my old Kindle and listed to the last bits of the first half of the book.  I was only halfheartedly listening and was about to drift off into a nap.  But then I hit autumn.  Bang!  To borrow from a tired old sermon illustration, McLaren came into my living room and started moving all the furniture around.  Hell he was tossing it from one side of the room to the other.  This guy had walked in my shoes.  He knew the desolation of faith lost.  I pretty much read the rest of the book in one sitting.

We discussed autumn and winter in our group.  While I was listening to everyone’s very personal stories of faith and loss a metaphor came to me.

For those of you who do not know, I work in software development.  The particular application I work on is old code…like parts of it were written 20 years ago.  That is an eternity in software.  When you are working on someone else’s old code, you call it legacy code.  It is extremely challenging working on legacy code because all of the original requirements are sitting in landfills or have been recycled into Starbucks heat sleeves.

So the business describes a new feature that they want and it is your job to incorporate it into the legacy app.  Problem is: every time you add new code, you end up breaking old code.  It is an endless cycle of changing one thing and breaking two others.  It can drive you nutty.

At a certain point, the code becomes completely unmanageable and you have to completely refactor the old stuff.  Typically, you toss out all of the section and start from scratch…green field development.  If you are lucky, when you enter a green field, you have new requirements and completely ignore the legacy stuff.

That is my life in a nutshell.  I grew up in the church.  Faith was core to my being.  But over the years, my theology became extremely complex.  I desperately tried to cling to the Christian faith of my childhood.  But when the overarching theme of my life became watching the suffering of a child, the “code” stopped working.  I tried ever more elaborate spiritual practices, desperately trying to make sense of what was completely senseless.

After the suicide of one of my mentors, the whole program collapsed.  Faith was dead.  God was dead.  Heck he was never alive.  Religion, faith and God had failed me.  It was an Atheist.  There was not; and never had been a god.

It was autumn in Benland.  I watch as a lifetime of faith died an agonizing death.

Once everything was finally dead, I was in winter.  But by letting it all die, I had cleared the field.  I claimed the name Atheist.  Only when the landscape was completely barren did I realize that there was a void.  I had severed my connection to god.  But I had also lost the connection to me.  I was a void.  I was empty.  I was powerless.

Only when I surveyed the blank snowy landscape of winter did I notice that I needed something.  I still cannot completely explain what I need.  But I need.  I need.  I am needy.

Gone is the faith of my childhood.  The old legacy software is nonfunctional, inert.  But now there is space.  I can begin again.  I can help write the new program.

I am not sure what is next.  I do not know what will pass for faith in the next phase of my life.  But there is desire and there is space.  I am not in a rush.  I am taking my time.  It would be easy to flip the switch on for the old code.  But it would collapse under its own weight in short order.  This time I am not taking the easy answers.  This time I will not blindly accept the platitudes of others.  This time I will imagine.

Imagine, part 7

Thud!

I start this posting with a quote from Pink Floyd’s The Wall.  It is written from the perspective of a husband to his wife.  But I use it here to describe the next phase of my faith journey.

Day after day, love turns grey
Like the skin of a dying man.
Night after night, we pretend it’s all right
But I have grown older and
You have grown colder and
Nothing is very much fun anymore.
And I can feel one of my turns coming on.
I feel cold as a razor blade,
Tight as a tourniquet,
Dry as a funeral drum.

–One of my Turns, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd

Before it began, my ministry career was over.  Try as I might, I could only find two paths.

1.  This was a test of my faith.  God would provide if I would step out in faith.

2.  I was full of shit.  There was no God.  There was no calling.  My relationship with god was just a foolish self-delusion.

I did not have the faith to pursue option #1.  Regardless of whether or not it was true, I did not believe enough.  Over time, I began to embrace option #2.

As if to confirm my choice, my Emmaus sponsor, my spiritual mentor, the man whose faith I modeled my own after, committed suicide.

Dead

I continued to go to church.  At first out of habit, then because my wife got a job at a new church.  I went through the motions.  But it meant nothing.

Dead

I read a lot of books.  I am an atheist.

I am.

No really.

OK, I could be wrong.

I am an agnostic.  Maybe there is a god.

Damn it.  There is something that connects us.  I am not sure what it is.  But there IS something.

All of my old tricks no longer work.  I need to try something new.

Buddhism?

Nah.

Hinduism?

Nah.

What I need, is to rethink everything.

What I need, is to imagine.

Imagine, part 5

TnT, pride before the Called

So after moving to Virginia, we started attending a medium size Methodist Church.  It was such an unlikely pairing; formerly hardcore Pentecostals meet the mainline church.  But as I mentioned in the previous post, we loved it.  I started attending a Bible study.  At the time, I had a skater haircut and a goatee.  The first night of the Bible study, the lady next to me showed me the index in the Bible so that I could find Revelation.  I was polite, but chuckling inside.  A year later, I was running the study.

For the first time that I could remember, I enjoyed going to church.  Jenn and I both became heavily involved, she in the music, me in Bible study and both of us in youth ministry.  Over time, we had our fingers in almost every happening at the church.

Jenn and I were still by far the youngest members of the community.  So the Pastor asked us to start a young adult group.  We tried twice and it failed miserably.  A year after the second failure, the pastor made a big push to have get people to join small groups.  They asked us to give it one more try.  In our previous attempts, we were never able to get more than 3-4 people to show up.  Because the pastor had made such a push from the pulpit, I was hopeful that we could get 8.  I figured with 8 we could make a go of it.  The first night 20 people showed up.  Within a couple of months we had over 40 people on the roster.  We had to split the group in half and sometimes thirds.  Jenn would take a group, I would take one and later we got others to help out.

Though it started out as a bible study, it quickly evolved into a fully fledged ministry.  TnT or Twenties and Thirties was our name.  We had our own outreach projects, social outings and the study.  We had a party at someone’s house most weekends.  We sat together in a section of the church.  And I found myself right smack in the middle of it.

I was elected a lay leader in the church.  On several occasions, I got to preach.  I also lead a couple of retreats.  I had found my niche.

It was in the middle of this faith renaissance that one of my church buddies sponsored me for the Emmaus weekend.  He was a mentor of sorts to me and I really admired his commitment to Christ and our church.  So I thought what the heck; I’ll go.

It was a transformative weekend.  Describing it would be its own post.  Halfway through the retreat (on steroids), I just started crying.  Which was kind of weird.  Most of the guys in my group were just coming back to faith.  I was firmly established at the time (yeah, right).  But I just could not stop crying.  Something powerful was happening to me and I could not figure out what it was.  It was then that I thought I heard the voice of my childhood (figuratively), saying come home.  I thought about it and went for a long walk.  Halfway through the walk, I started crying again.  And I said to myself, “God, do you want me to serve you in the full time ministry?”  It was then that I had the most powerful spiritual experience of my life.  It was as though suddenly my entire life had lead me to this moment.  I felt a very specific calling to serve as a pastor.  As soon as I made that connection, I felt a wave of contentedness that I have never felt since.  I WAS CALLED.

After I got home, I was worried about telling my wife.  She had grown up a PK and I was pretty certain she would not be thrilled about my calling to a new vocation.  But when I told her, she was surprisingly open to the idea.  A short time passed and then I started taking concrete steps towards pursuing my calling.  I started looking for seminaries.  I shared my calling with my close TnT friends and they all enthusiastically confirmed my vocational plans.

I officially approached my local Methodist district and told them of my calling.  They sent me some materials and assigned me a mentor.  Being methodical, the Methodist church had a process for pursuing a calling.  I met with a local pastor weekly and we reviewed a manual on pursuing a calling.

Normally, it takes about 3 months to complete this phase of the calling.  But my mentor and I really hit it off and our 1 hour meetings often went on for 2 hours or more.  It took us nearly 9 months to get through all of the materials.

Meanwhile we had other happy news in our life.  My wife was pregnant with our first child.  We were ecstatic.  My job was going gangbusters and my TnT group was thriving.

Near the end of my candidacy exploration, my mentor and I began putting together a plan.  I applied to and was accepted at two seminaries.  I had a plan and a backup plan.  Plan one was to go to Asbury seminary in Kentucky and work in their financial aid office (I still had skillzzzz).  Asbury was my first choice, but I knew it might be rough on my wife to move to a strange place again.  So I formulated plan 2, which was to go to the local seminary, Wesleyan.  If I went this route, I could only go part time while I kept my day job.  The nice thing about this option was that my work at the time had a benefit that would pay for schooling at any school for any major (that has since been cut back).

My mentor and I completed the exploration process and he strongly endorsed my candidacy.  The next step was to meet with the district superintendant and become a certified candidate through my local church.  These two things were going to be a snap.  I met with the DS and it went well, although he was somewhat suspicious of my Pentecostal background.  It was the spring of 2001.

Life could not be any more perfect.  I was happily married.  I had managed to build some equity in a house.  I led a successful small group ministry.  I was called into the full time ministry.  I had started pursuing my goal with great success.  And I had a baby, a son that was due in June.

It was all coming together.  We would have the baby in June.  I would take some time off over the summer.  I would pick my seminary.  And in early fall I would become a certified candidate at my church’s annual meeting.

Because the baby was breach, we scheduled a C-section on June 12^th.  On the way to the hospital, I commented to my wife on what a blessed existence we lived.  No matter what happened, God had blessed us beyond all of our expectations.

But wait, there’s more…

Imagine, part 4

You may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?” –Talking Heads

So this is the last assignment for my Imagine group.  Describe your faith journey as an adult, age 27+.  I will break this post into at least two segments.

Well the thing that had the biggest impact on my faith at age 27 was getting married.  When I started dating and later married my wife Jenn, I resolved to follow the grin and bear it approach to faith practice.  I had been attending church semi-regularly before we started dating, but when things got serious I knew that faith was going to be a central theme in my married life.  I did not enjoy church in any way, shape or form.  But I did have a somewhat flimsy faith in God.

When we got married, my wife and I started attending a Baptist church near our apartment.  It was another mega church, so the quality of the service was high and I could practice my faith in near anonymity.

Halfway through that first year, I got news that my job was being moved from San Jose, CA to Herndon, VA.  That was a huge deal.  We were moving away from all family and all friends.  It was a blank slate.

The Sunday after our arrival, we started church shopping.  Oh my, it was painful.  When you are in a new environment, you do what you know.  We knew AG, Baptist and non-denominational.  Every week was a new freak show.  Either the people were dancing in the aisles or they were saying things like, “no good church music has been written since the 1950s.”  That last one really won over my wife, the musician.

We were really struggling to find a church that we did not hate, little lone one we liked.  Then there was an interesting twist of fate.  One of my coworkers who knew I was a Christian asked to go to church with Jenn and me.  At first I freaked out because she was very liberal and all of the churches we had visited were right wing bible thumpers.  I had no clue where to take her.

It is important to know, that after moving, I was constantly getting lost.  I found a route to work and I did not stray from my path.  Well, on the way to work every day, I passed a picturesque little Methodist church, Floris UMC.  One day on the way to work, I thought…hmmm, Methodist, that should be mostly harmless.  I’ll take my coworker there.

We checked out the churches website and found that they had a Saturday evening “contemporary service.”  We took my friend.  Contemporary it turns out meant 1970s Maranatha choruses sang to the organ.  The music was truly awful.  But the pastor sermon was passable.  It wasn’t a fantastic service, but it did not hit any of my “red alert” triggers.

My coworker hated it.  She swiftly converted to Buddhism (where she remains happy to this day).

Jenn and I on the other hand did not have a visceral reaction and decided to try out the traditional service.  So the next Sunday, we came back.  We were easily the youngest people in the service by at least a decade.  The music was traditional hymns and the service was semi-liturgical.  We absolutely LOVED IT!

More to come…

Imagine, part 2

On three:  One, Three, Two…

I know, I know, I already published part 3.  I winged part 2 at the meeting, but I want a complete set so here goes

Paradise Lost

So purely from a faith standpoint, I had a pretty great early childhood.  But unfortunately as I got older, the adults around me felt the need to teach me theology and religious polity.

But in addition to my wholesome religious education, they threw in some crazy wing nut theology.  Looking back, some of this was the religious equivalent of pornography.  It was designed to scare the bejeebus out of me, so that I would not stray far from the straight and narrow.  Worked like a charm.

I have dozens of examples of religious abuse, but here are two that forever scarred my psyche.  In 1972 a movie took the evangelical movement by storm.  The name of that movie was “A Thief in the Night.”  This little cinematic gem was shown in my home church shortly after it was released.  I would have been the ripe age of 5-6.  And for reasons that are unclear to me to this day, my parents thought it was a good idea for me to see the film.

Here is the basic premise of the flick:  Jesus has returned to Earth in the “rapture” and taken all the good Christians to heaven.  Those who were left had to endure the “tribulation.”  Worst of all, in order to function in the tribulation economy, everyone had to be ID’d with “The Mark of the Beast” (represented with a barcode tattoo).  Here is the thing, if you took the mark; it was a one way ticket to hell.  There was no chance of redemption once a person took the mark.  At the end of the movie, the main protagonist is forced to jump off a damn in order to avoid damnation (genius!).

Now let’s break this down in the mind of a six year old.  My best friend, who I carried on a constant dialogue with, Jesus, was going to come back to Earth some day and take all the good people away.  But if I sinned, which at age 6 could be as simple as a lie or stealing a cookie before dinner, my friend Jesus would leave me…an orphan…I would face starvation or taking the mark…in either case, I would most likely go to hell where I would burn for all eternity.  I am sure I was not quite as succinct at age 6, but I did ask questions.  The basic answer was yes, if I sinned and had not had the opportunity to tell Jesus that I was sorry, then I would be left behind and possibly burn for all eternity.  Good to know!…thanks!

As if this message was not clear enough, my church did a little drama for my benefit.  The “drama” was a skit/play about judgment day.  I was really excited because my friend Todd was in the production.  Todd and his mother were at the “judgment seat.”  I don’t remember any of the dialogue, again I was 7 or 8 at the time.  The bottom line, Todd got to go to heaven, his mother went to hell.  Nice!

So as it turns out, my friend the son of God was kind of a dick!  A couple of things changed about my faith.  First, I was afraid of God.  On numerous occasions, I came home to an empty house and my first thought was that God had rejected me.  Second, I started having reoccurring nightmares involving Jesus and the Devil.  I will save those little nuggets for a future post.

In spite of all this, I remained a committed Christian.  The relationship had changed from innocent love to Stockholm syndrome, but I still “loved” god.  I also developed two separate lives.  There was the sinful Ben who drank, smoked and shoplifted.  And there was the Ben who was a devout little follower of Jesus.

I think I would have gone crazy were it not for the friendships I developed in church.  To my knowledge, NONE of them are still members of the Assemblies of God (AG).  And only a couple of them would still call themselves Christians.

I wish I could close this posting by saying this kind of abuse no longer occurs.  But sadly, it still goes on.  My parents to this day attend the church of Keenan Roberts who is best known for his “Hell House” and the “Hell House” kits. 

 

http://www.godestiny.org/hell_house/HH_kit.cfm

Imagine, part 3

Four Years in the Desert

Young adulthood kicked off with the end of college.  By some miracle, I graduated from Bethany on time with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.  I wanted to go to grad school to become a therapist, but my student loan dept (modest by today’s standards) freaked me out.  I needed a job.  As luck would have it, my best friend at the time worked in the schools administration and told me about a job in the financial aid office.  I did not realize it at the time, but he had just chosen my career.

Over the next couple of years, I would learn a valuable skill and make some of the best friends of my life.  My faith walk varied wildly during this time.  I no longer felt strong ties to the denomination of my youth, even though it saturated my life.  All of my friends were either connected to the college or the local AG churches.  I lived in a bubble of sorts.  And though I was thoroughly encased, I found a small niche of friends that liked challenging the rules.  I was AG, but one if its biggest critics.

When I turned 25, I decided that I wanted to move home.  Home meant Arvada, Colorado.  I had a plan.  I would quit my job, move in with my parents, bet another job and then reestablish myself.  I drove the 1000 miles from Scotts Valley to Colorado in two days.  I was excited to be going home and living with my family.

I got home and immediately started looking for a job.  One week became two weeks and then a month…then three months.  It was Christmas and I was going into month 4 of no employment.  I started to panic.  Then I got a call from that friend of mine that helped me find my first job.  He was working at another school in Washington State and as fate would have it, they had an opening in financial aid.

This was not the plan.  But I needed work and I was excited to go to a new city.  I found myself working just outside of Seattle in Kirkland, Washington at another AG college.  This time, I did not drink the Kool-Aid.  While I worked at an AG school, I was a perfect heathen.  I did not go to church and I did not mix with the locals at work.  The only friends I had were friends from my school days at Bethany.  It was a very lonely time.  With no church and no social life from work, I was very lonely.  I came home to an empty house most nights, ate fast food and either watched TV or read until I fell asleep.

Seattle was a beautiful place to live.  But ultimately, it was not for me.  Nine months after I got hired, I got my dream job.

I got a job at a software company in San Jose, California, just 35 miles away from my old school.  It paid twice as much as my old job at Bethany.  I had friends.  I had secular employment and I was making more money than I knew what to do with.  This was the beginning of the best year of my life.

I started off in an apartment in San Jose.  I worked just a couple of miles away, near the airport.  My job was to give phone support for software that I knew inside and out.  From very early on in my career there, I was a rock star.  I got to wear jeans and a tee shirt to work.  I got to speak to people from all over the country and I got to help them solve interesting problems.  On top of that, I got to travel and give workshops all over the US with a generous expense account.

Life was good.  I even started attending church again.  Out of habit, I attended the local AG mega-church, 4000 members strong.  I liked going there because they had excellent music but it was so big that I could be completely anonymous.  One of my old professors attended the church and during the sermon, I would play my own version of Where’s Waldo, only I looked for Rich.

Everything was falling into place, with one notable exception.  I was alone.  I had plenty of friends, but I had not found that special someone.

On Memorial Day weekend, I went on a road trip with a group of buddies.  Before we left town, we stopped to eat.  There were four of us.  Two of them wanted to go to Burger King.  One of them wanted to go to Taco Bell.  I am normally a Burger King kind of guy, but I did not want my one friend to be alone.  So I went with her to Taco Bell.  As we were walking in, I was complaining about my lack of a love life.  The words were just coming out of my mouth, “I just can’t meet any nice girls.”  And there she was.  Standing behind the counter at Taco Bell was my wife.  She just did not know it at the time.  I leaned over to my friend and said to her, “I am going to marry her.”  A little over one year later, I did exactly that.