Growing up "Christian"

Continuing...
When I was four, my parents had just moved to a new town, Thoreau, New Mexico. They needed a preschool for me. There were a few possibilities but the one they settled on was run by the local catholic church. They came to regret this decision. My parents are not catholic and wish to have nothing to do with Catholicism, or any religion which is not their own. My parents are evangelicals, although I'm not sure either of them know exactly what religion they are or what it means to be an evangelical. They know they are christian, and consider themselves protestant (only because they are not catholic), but they think that theirs is the one true religion, superposing all others. In fact, what they are most likely to say is that their beliefs are the Truth and not a religion at all.

So basically, I grew up in a christian sect made up of my mother, father, brother and me. Later, I had a second brother but I'll get to him later. It was kind of hard to know for sure what this particular sect believed since it seemed to change from day to day. They claimed to follow the Bible (usually KJV or NASB), but if a particular verse didn't sit well with them they could ignore it or interpret it as being irrelevant. They've attended several different churches, but only now that they've founded their own, "The Jesus Church," who's doctrine they can alter to their heart's content, do they seem really happy about who they're worshiping with.

The funny thing is that even though they didn't really know what they believed, they were able to raise enough funds to head out into the American Southwest and become missionaries, sowing confusion among those indigenous tribes who had thought themselves converted a hundred years ago. Something my parents never really seemed to understand about being missionaries, however: it's hard. Missionaries are basically salesmen, only instead of trying to sell a product, they're selling a belief system. Before any salesmen can sell anything, unfortunately, he has to sell himself, and my parents never were very good at selling themselves. I think the difficulty lies in their inability to conceal their disgust at having to deal with people who's beliefs are different from their own. After living three years in one location and making no progress with the local tribe, my parents were moved to a town with an almost entirely white population of Catholics, Baptists and Mormons. It's like my dad had been made the manager of a brand new McDonald's franchise and he ran it into the ground. So they moved him to a failing older store with a Burger King, Wendy's and Jack-in-the-box all on the same corner to see if he'd make it.

Once in the new town, I don't think my parents were quite sure what they were doing there. Instead of trying to start their own church, which I think is what they were supposed to do, my parents decided to engage in a kind of "guerrilla evangelism," working their way subtly into the town and convincing the locals to accept them before deciding on their next move. That's why I was enrolled at the local catholic school and why my mom went to work there soon after. At the time, the school was small enough that there were only two other boys my age. We were the Three First-Graders (I was considered bright enough to skip kindergarten), for several weeks and learned a lot of Sunday-school songs along with the reading and writing. I don't think my parents knew about the alter boy training they were giving me, though.

A lot of things happened during that period that I didn't quite understand and that my parents were never very straightforward about thereafter. I was a child so, of course, my parents could do no wrong. I never considered that things were happening outside of their control. I thought it was something I had done that got me pulled from my class and placed back in kindergarten where, reasonably, most of my friends were. Because of the instruction I received, however, I think my parents were always just a little worried that I was going to Hell.

I became a Christian at the age of six, under my mother's tutelage. That wasn't good enough so I got saved again in Sunday School at the age of eight (this was shortly after leaving Thoreau to return to my mother's homeland: St. Louis, Mo). We were attending a Bible Church which supported a lot of missionaries but not, unfortunately, my parents, who had left the mission field because, once again, they were unable to sell themselves. I accepted Jesus Christ as my Personal Savior at Youth Camp when I was 13. Every year after that I rededicated my life to Him. I listened to nothing but Christian Rock music and Bible Study programs until I was 19.

All of this failed to convince my parents, however, who continued to worry about my personal stake in Heaven. My parents belonged to a sub-sect of a sect of another sect which had broken from the Catholic Church because it counted as doctrine all kinds of traditions which, though they had been part of the Church's faith for a millennium, were not mentioned in the Bible so they must be Wrong. That sect went off and established a whole new set of traditions which, though not mentioned in the Bible either, sounded to the people in charge more like the kinds of things a good Christian should or shouldn't do. This Grand Tradition allowed my parents to come up with a sizable unwritten list of things I, personally, wasn't allowed to experience, though my brother could because his Faith was stronger and unbroken. TV shows I wasn't allowed to watch: The Simpsons; Married, with Children; Night Court; Cheers; Saturday Night Live. Over time I learned to pick out more shows they wouldn't approve of and turned them off automatically. Strangely, my parents watched Baywatch religiously and didn't mind if I watched it with them. The list of words I wasn't allowed to say (or even hear, though they had little control over that), changed dynamically. At one point I had a youth pastor who used "fart," "screwed," and "crap" so they had to start allowing those. You know I wasn't allowed to play Dungeons & Dragons, and only the most innocuous rock and pop music was allowed in my playlist. I was embarrassed to learn that I was less cool than many of the kids I went to church with. Apparently the catholic taint was so great that I needed the extra purity in my upbringing.

Talk to my parents, now, and they will tell you that it wasn't as simple as all that. It's not enough to go through the motions. You can't just recite the words they tell you to recite and then you'll go to Heaven. You have to know it, believe that you are a sinner ("For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God") and completely unable to redeem yourself no matter what your actions ("Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to His mercy He saved us"). Only through Jesus Christ and his death on the Cross can anyone be saved ("If you confess with your mouth Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved") I'm not going to look up the references. It's the Internet, look them up yourself.

If they read this (I doubt they will) they would probably think I was mocking them. I just want people to understand that for years I sincerely believed all this, with a religious fervor that some cult members would find hard to match. I was under instruction from my youth pastor, my Sunday School teacher, and Christian radio to read my Bible daily. I don't think they expected me to actually learn from it, however.

Most denominations will tell you never to read the Bible yourself without assistance from someone who has had the proper training. You might accidentally read something you shouldn't and assume it means what it actually says. You have to make sure to read the right translation, too, or you might miss the places where words were inserted to aid understanding (and to change the meaning. I'm serious. Those words in italics aren't in the original. Take a look at Genesis where it talks about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and see what's italicized.) One day, I'd like to write my own commentary on the Bible. So many have already been written. I recommend the one by Isaac Asimov.

Where I went wrong, I think, is that through all this I was entirely too trusting. When you're in a situation where you're being taught contradictory things it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to believe as much as you can. When the things that they do contradict the things that they say, it's even worse. I went a little loopy. My head got cracked. It took me a while to sort things out, but I think I'm the better for it.