A Twisted Path
A Twisted Path
fter we married, Emily and I headed for the Forerunner School of Ministry where we hoped to be sent out as missionaries as soon as we graduated at the top of our class. We were ready for some big things to happen. Marriage, however, turned out to be quite difficult at first. The Bible stated plainly that men are the head of the household and that women should follow the direction of their man, care for him, and respect him. This did not, of course, enable the man to mistreat her. The man is held even more accountable for his actions and he is to love and care for his wife as much as Christ loved the church. So long as he did that, she ought to be all the more desirous to fall in line and follow. This did not seem to be happening very well, however.
On numerous occasions, Emily and I would argue about something. The natural solution is that the tie goes to the husband as the leader. She had the right to add her own insight, but not the right to blatant defiance and disrespect—much like a work relationship with one’s boss. When she did not follow this God-given directive, it threw a wrench in the entire philosophy of marriage. She needed to do her part and it made me exceedingly frustrated that she refused. We could not possibly go and be missionaries in the power of God if she would not follow my lead and obey the Bible.
She confessed that she did not want to lose herself by succumbing to me. I explained how this is the very thing that Christianity demanded of both of us. I lost all of my own self in order to serve God and others. I gave up my love of video games and computer science in order to seek God and serve. It is no different than her situation. I followed God and she should follow me following God. In essence, we would both follow God in a single line. We both give up our lives. She should want to be the best wife and Christian she could possibly be and thus give in to my whims as I, too, served God the best I could. To want anything else was selfish and disobedient. Sean no longer existed—only a servant of Christ remained—and Emily should disappear as well.
Most Christians understand the concept of the man leading, but they certainly do not get far in the dying-to-self arena. Humanists certainly cannot subscribe to such a sexist disposition of forced gender roles, but with the understanding that the man truly gives up his life—and for a real God who truly commanded it—it did not appear all that bad to me. Since men are not dying to self, however, this becomes not but a patriarchal culture of domination.
Most Christians go to church, listen to their pastor, and are entirely unchanged in their way of life which makes a submitting wife a rather terrible thing to expect. Since most Christians live as if God is dead apart from their empty words and prayers and instead carry on with normal everyday heathen lives, I found it quite unsurprising that even Christian marriages failed. Women were forced to serve selfish men and that cannot last long. The Christian structure would not fail if followed appropriately, and yet I found even we could not do so.
I intended for our union to lead the very restoration of God’s true word in holy power, and yet my partner refused to follow God’s command. It is a simple enough matter to deny one’s self for the sake of God and humanity yet she now revealed that she did not desire this any longer. What on earth could possess her to desire her false belief that tattoos were sinful, for example, than to simply agree that they were not and thus continue on the path of receiving the awesome power of God? I could not possibly understand her lack of commitment to me and to God and it tore me to pieces.
Despite our occasional feuds, we carried on the best we could and I continued to hope and pray that she would become what God and I both needed as we studied all the more. Yet as we attended our classes, we found they were a bit boring and not very applicable to us. They were geared toward new believers and they focused way more on dogma and theology than on the message of the kingdom of God and of power in the Holy Spirit. In short, the school wasted our time and took our money for it.
Not wanting to waste our time recapitulating all that we already knew, we dropped out fairly early and returned the money to the guy who had given it to us. We were not going to rehashing everything we already knew as if we were not the extremely studied Christians that we already were. Many of our classmates had not even read the New Testament in full and had no idea of such things as the animal sacrifices being a shadow of the ultimate sacrifice that Jesus came to perform. We needed people to recognize our passion and knowledge and going through this school certainly did not fulfill that need.
Without a job and without school, I had the free time to study all the more. I put away all entertainment as vain and useless in the pursuit of God. If I had a minute to spend on a video game, I surely had a minute to pray, to study, or to help someone in need—especially those who needed the grace of God and greater understanding of his desires. Without entertainment I also had the time to send my dear heathen brother a postcard every single day with verses that I believed might help him to recognize that belief in God would not suffice for an eternity in heaven. This converted me, of course, and I certainly did not want my very own brother to be one of the many who missed the boat and found themselves in hell. I selected each verse to indicate that faith alone did not suffice and usually with eternal suffering as a consequence. My brother later informed me that he simply threw them away without even reading them after the first one I sent.
We wrote similar verses to the ones I sent my brother on cardstock sheets and taped them all over our walls as decoration. Anyone coming to our house would be invited to the most overlooked verses in the Bible which indicated true faith and radicalism. We wanted to be beacons of truth for everyone to see and ponder.
As a Christian, I was entirely blind to how these verses came across to others. I viewed the Bible as an authority and thus I figured that sending a verse to someone would somehow cause such a person to understand or to fear. As it turns out, this hardly works even with other Christians—let alone with those who do not view the Bible as an authority. This seems obvious now, but as a Christian I believed so whole-heartedly that the Bible came from God and spoke as authority, that I thought everyone could recognize it and be touched as God opened their hearts to receiving it.
I later came to recognize this fallacy to be very similar to what some Muslims believe. I encountered a Muslim online who merely quoted the Qur’an in conversation rather than speaking any words of his own. When confronting him of with the futility of such efforts, he quoted the text which said he ought to do just that. The verse indicated that the Qur’an spoke words far greater than any man and thus one ought to speak less and quote more. As a Christian, this spoke nothing to me except for indicating the closed-mindedness and silly futility of the person quoting it. The same goes for Christians quoting the Bible. It is as effective to an atheist as it is to quote Mein Kampf as authority.
As an atheist I can now see much more clearly just how disgusting the verses were that I shared with my brother. Most were threats of some sort indicating that we must do as God says or burn in hell for eternity. This is a lot like saying that God loves you, but he will torment you if you do not fall in line. It is demonstrating “love” via hateful messages—as if that makes any sense at all. It further expressed that I thought he was evil and terrible which is not a particularly kind thing to say to someone living a rather decent life overall. Of course, any person not following the will of God most obviously embodied evil and thus the kindness of the statements mattered very little to me.
The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka is extremely good at appearing disgusting and hateful with their pickets of “God hates fags” and “Thank God for September 11.” Lauren Drain wrote the book Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church which goes into extremely great detail regarding how the message of the Bible can be turned into one of hate, arrogance, and pride. Luckily, the average Christian does not go down this path, but the love-hate relationship with God still grips a substantial portion of Christendom in a significant way.
In his book Deconverted: A Journey from Religion to Reason, Seth Andrews equates this love of a hateful God to Stockholm syndrome—a condition where prisoners of war begin relating to and even cherishing their captors and their goals. It is also similar to a wife who thinks her husband beats her because he loves her, that she deserves it, and that he only does it to help her. Christians love and cherish their God as if he is good despite the Bible depicting him as equally bloodthirsty and tyrannical.
As a Christian, I overlooked the anger and foolishness of God because we could not possibly know all the details of the events or what it is like to be God Almighty. Plus, I felt God made it so easy to recognize his existence by the complexity and amazingness of life around us and he made it so easy to accept his gift. He did not ask us to do anything impossible but merely to accept him, a loving God, and choose to live for love. If someone is unwilling to accept the almighty and loving God, then they were bred of a particularly evil branch of humanity. So terrible, in fact, that they deserved eternal torment. Who would not wish to follow an all-powerful being that is entirely made of love? Such a person could only be described as wicked.
This did begin to develop an amount of cognitive dissonance later, however, as I realized my own sense of love and separating it from the hate I saw around me. I had learned to distinguish between hating the sin rather than the sinner, yet for some reason it did not yet click that love would not eternally torment someone no matter their sin. I later recanted my belief in hell all together as I began to see the Kingdom of God as a more immediate kingdom and less of an afterlife which I will get into more soon enough.
It made sense to warn people of the dangers ahead, but as an atheist I can now see it as more of a threat than a warning. An atheist does not take such threats and warnings seriously, of course, since it is akin to proclaiming that Barney the purple dinosaur is going to eat them in their sleep. Perhaps it is even less powerful since Barney is at least a real man in a dinosaur costume who could possibly do some damage if he so desired.
Atheists have absolutely no reason to believe such eternal torment will come to pass and thus the threats fall on deaf ears. As a Christian, however, I actually believed that atheists rejected God rather than truly not believing in him. Thus, I felt that a continual warning would wear on them as they contemplated their own rejection of the real and living God and eventually they might fear enough to listen. As an atheist, I see this as entirely ridiculous since I truly do not believe with any ounce of my mind that there is a God. Threats from God work as well as threatening Christians with the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It simply has no power and is detestably ridiculous.
A Christian often expects to be rejected when they provide their warnings of future destruction, but they also keep hope that the prophecies they pronounce will lead some to Christ as they see some fulfilled. These prophecies are of terrible evils leading to the destruction of mankind including earthquakes, famine, and drought. The world is supposed to devolve into a mass of selfish brutes killing one another and raping each other in drunken orgies and selling each other’s organs on the black market to buy drugs. Thus, pointing out the evil and focusing on every ounce of negativity, they hope to be helpful in convincing an atheist that the end is near and that they ought to confess and be saved.
The Christian mindset is so different from an atheist’s that it is extremely hard for them to understand each other. I remember thinking that atheists were completely blind as to not see all the wars and detriment of our society as purposeful punishing and plaguing ordained by God due to our lack of obedience. They were too lost in their sin to even give it a consideration. They desired and lusted after things of this earth far too much to have concern for one another which could transcend into obedience to God. The increase in Muslim populations plainly indicated the rise of Satan’s army in his false religion bent on the destruction of Christians. Every day I saw more attacks from Muslim extremists and even more mosques being built in our very own US of A. The epic battle between God and Satan had obviously begun mounting up.
As an atheist, I now see this belief as preposterous and I instead see the Christians as being blind in their upbringing and taking on the religion of their culture, ignoring the fact that correlations are not causations, and succumbing to confirmation bias. Atheists certainly are not immoral by definition as I once believed and I might even swing the pendulum farther back the other direction: atheists often tend to be far more moral than Christians. One can always find bad apples in both groups, of course, but while there are a couple things that atheists may see as moral that Christians believe are absolute debauchery, for the most part atheists can be quite moral according even to Christian standards and they often demonstrate such morals better than those proclaiming to be Christians.
The priests of the Catholic Church, many pastors of protestant churches, and other leaders of Christian organizations like the Boy Scouts of America have been caught in numerous accounts of pedophilia. It is easy enough to say that they are not true Christians, which is easy enough to make synonymous with an atheist, but the problem is that many people thought they were Christian. They were indistinguishable from Christians, and those being led by them were convinced that God guided them into all his holy ways. And still, Christians do sin. Only a very small percentage of Christians would dare say otherwise. So it is quite possible that even these pedophiles truly believe in Jesus even if they commit sins that we might consider more atrocious.
There are also many Christians taking advantage of the poor and sick by encouraging them to give tithes as a demonstration of their faith in order to obtain healing or financial freedom. Such pastors run their churches as pure money-making businesses. One might even say that these Christian leaders “devour widows houses” in the same way as the Pharisees whom Jesus condemned in Mark 12:40. The amount of evil and trickery within the Christian populace is abominable and it could only happen within such religious and superstitious confines. The superstitious minds of the religious are thus preyed upon and Christianity offers no help in distinguishing between charlatans, pedophiles, murderers, and lovers of humanity. Professing belief in the Bible or in Jesus does not indicate moral superiority and it is often used for just the opposite. Thus, professed Christians are often far more evil than professed atheists.
Many people may be atheist and not pronounce their positions, but a professed atheist is generally one who has given it consideration and decided it is important from a moral standpoint to so identify. People who take the time to make such considerations are often people who recognize the ills of religion along with the futility of immoral behavior and thus act in rather moral ways. So by profession alone, Christians often do worse atrocities than atheists from my perspective. I do not have actual data on this, of course, so one might take that belief with a few piles of salt.
Along with my false views of atheists, my understanding of God and the devil opened the door to many other false beliefs. I believed in demons and witchcraft as if such things were real and thus I took it quite seriously when something as mundane as a cartoon uplifted vampires, voodoo, or magic. An atheist may have seen such things as pure fantasy with absolutely no demonic nature that could harm anyone, but a Christian often sees such things as dangerous.
An atheist then finds the antics of Christians in protest of He-Man’s arch nemesis Skeletor as being extremely over the top, but for many Christians there is indeed a demonic battle to be won. Satan is wisely and deceptively trying to bring demons into every aspect of our lives so that we slowly numb to their influence. He would corrupt everything about us and attempt to make us okay with eastern religions and ideas like Yoga and to drive us away from the mighty love of God. Demons and witchcraft were not to be taken lightly. Atheists, of course, simply see Christians complaining about hunks of plastic and body positions while fearing the unknown cultures of other people.
One night, Emily and I awoke at around two o’clock with a strange feeling of a demonic presence in our room. We felt an overwhelming dread of something but did not know why. It started with my own strange feeling and my fear soon transferred to Emily as she freaked out that I was freaking out and we both then felt this foreboding presence. I turned the lights on to look around and only felt slightly better once I could see. I worried that a demon had joined us in our apartment and now waited for the perfect moment to do something terrible.
I went and got some oil, anointed it with a prayer, and began to draw crosses with it on the walls within the apartment. I had read a few books about casting out demons and this is how they would eradicate them. I had learned that they inhabit inanimate objects and they often resided in seemingly innocuous things like dressers if they were obtained from someone who dabbled in demonic or evil things and allowed such demons into their homes. Other times they would exist in more obviously evil things like statues of Buddha or pornographic material and such things must be removed immediately since they cannot merely be cast out; they act as gateways for demons to come. If left unhindered, the demons could cause great harm or lead us into debauchery and away from Christ.
We felt a little safer after the anointing of oil, but we still slept with the light on for the rest of the night. While we trusted God to keep us protected, the thought that demons might be lurking about made for extreme unease—especially since we had not yet encountered and defeated any demons to know exactly what to expect. We had little idea what all a demon could or could not do to us and whether or not we were faithful enough to rid ourselves of it without it beating us senseless. After all, we were still not faithful enough to heal people so perhaps we should not trust in our powers over demons just yet. In Acts 19:16 there were reports of demons laughing at the Jews who tried using Jesus’ name to cast them out. The demons gave them such a bad beating that they ran out of the house naked. We did not wish to suffer a similar fate.
IHOP spoke a great deal about demons, and their bookstore had many books about such encounters. I loved reading about the experiences people had with demons since they often gave concrete examples of true events as far as I knew. It helped to strengthen my faith and to give me an idea of how to handle such situations. I could hardly wait to have such amazing encounters myself, but I knew I ought to be careful with what I wished for.
A book entitled 23 Minutes in Hell by Bill Weise showed me what wishes could come true. As the title suggests, Bill purportedly spent 23 minutes in hell. He explained the tortures, the torments, the pain and depression all enveloped in the screams and wails of the inhabitants. He described chasms of fire and the shear agony of the place being trapped in a cage and seeing people whipped. God, of course, had shown him this in hopes for him to share with the world what would await any unbelievers, and apparently to make a quick buck in book and CD sales. It motivated me all the more to be outgoing and persistent in sharing my faith. Having so much revealed about hell, it certainly did not sound like a place I would want anyone to suffer in. I just had to share my faith and prevent as many people as possible from ending up there.
Revelations such as described in 23 Minutes in Hell and many other books describing heaven rather than hell often left me feeling rather disappointed. I did not understand why certain people would get such inside knowledge from God while others would not. Why tell Bill rather than everyone in the world directly. Or, at the very least, why not show me? With as much as I loved and sought after God, why did I not receive any special revelations? I kept strong in belief that my time would soon come so long as I did not become bitter or complain, so I kept trying my best and hoping that one day God would reach out to me in such a personal way—preferably with an image of heaven rather than of hell, of course, but I would have taken anything.
Looking back now, it seems clear to me that only so many people receive such revelation because only so many people are so easily deceived by their dreams. It could also be that only so many people are willing to make money by concocting an unverifiable story that much of our population would be willing to pay money to hear. The latter is more probable in my opinion. Bill could very well have fabricated the entire story. Either way, it puts forward a great argument for the kind of harm that Christianity can cause by either lying for gain or inducing a man to have such nightmares. It scares not only children, but grown men as well.
Having faith in the Bible and a strong belief in a devil truly makes for a scarier world than recognizing the non-existence of supernatural phenomena. I no longer worry about demons, devils, and magic so I rest far easier now at night. When I believed in them, I had much more to fear and it certainly motivated me to save the world—and by save, I mean convert to my faith.
* * *
In order to save the world, we thought perhaps we ought to reach out to youth and start them off on the right path before college. If we got to them early enough, they would have less foul influence and be all the more willing to be radical lovers of God. So we decided to start a ministry to prepare high school students for the real world in real faith. We believed that too many people got into college and yet were still babies in Christ when instead they should be leading great movements. We got out a map and started pinning all the nearby high schools that we would grow to influence slowly but surely. We sent out aid requests to all our friends and family in order for God to use people in supporting us. We applied for our own non-profit called “Love is Loud” and drew some sweet logos. I was especially proud of my heart-shaped speakers pointing toward a stick-person holding his hands over his ears because the love was so loud.
Once we were ready, we visited different schools to explain our desires but it quickly became apparent that this would not be feasible to do. Not only did we face barriers against pushing religion in public schools, but only one person signed up to support us financially—and for only $20 a month. This turned out to be rather unpromising for paying off some $30,000 in student loans on top of survival costs. So instead, we decided to get jobs, pay off our debt, and send ourselves to the field since no one else was going to do it for us. They all had too little faith to support us and we were running low on funds from the gifts given to us at our marriage. It would be unwise to ignore making money for ourselves any longer.
I started working at Sam’s Club as an overnight stocker and at Best Buy in the Geek Squad. I went through the video training at Best Buy and spent one day on the floor of the Geek Squad before I quit. I could not, in good conscious, charge computer illiterate people $80 for spending five minutes on their computer by running software that is available free of charge to the public. I would easily have done these things for free and it seemed like such an immense rip-off that I could not follow through with it. I stuck it out with Sam’s Club, however, for a few months.
Emily had previously started working at Red Lobster as a hostess before I had made the decision to work. At the time, I did not approve of her getting a job since it demonstrated her lack of faith in God to provide for us. Perhaps if she would have had more faith, we would have never needed the jobs we were later forced to take. I had convinced her to quit but apparently not soon enough. The damage had been done and God did not come through for us. When I decided that we both ought to work, she started up at IHOP, the pancake house, as a server.
Emily found that men often treated her poorly as she worked at IHOP, yet at the same time some men provided blessings of greater than usual tips. One man gifted her with $100 being careful to express that this money had nothing to do with her work and thus should not be taxed as part of her tips. Every night held the question if it would be a night to remember either for good or for bad.
While we worked, we of course had a strong desire to tithe since that is what all faithful people do. Proving our faith in this way would ultimately entice God to support us further so we could only benefit by sowing the seeds of our faith. Rather than tithing to a church, however, which often seemed corrupt, we thought it best to tithe in a manner more in tune with the Holy Spirit. We simply gave our 10% wherever we felt led and we would save our tithes until we found a good use for it. We tended to give our money to random people who needed things like tuition, rent, or vehicle repairs. We would pay for the groceries of the person in line at checkout if they were characteristically poor or paying with food stamps. We even gave $500 to Lucy from McDonald’s in order to help her move. We spent a great deal of time working while giving 10% away to God and 20% away to the government and premiums yet hoping to pay off all of our loans in a semi-timely manner. Once paid for, we could give up on money all together and live without it. Until then, we would work and do what we could for the kingdom of God.
We tried going to different churches in order to engage in our community, but nothing suited us. At one point we even decided to try a Spanish-speaking church. We were interested in practicing our Spanish as well as finding a different religious culture in which to imbibe. I had hoped that I could find that same atmosphere I enjoyed in the protestant church I had attended in Mexico. We searched Google and tried to visit our first Spanish church, but we found ourselves in a hallway full of business offices with certainly no Spanish church services in progress.
We asked a lady who walked by about the church we were attempting to find. She had never heard of it, but she told us about her own church, Frontline, in Olathe, Kansas. This, of course, could only have been God’s leading for a few reasons. It was too coincidental that we sought a Spanish church to begin with and then happened to pick one from Google that did not really exist. Then, while there, we just happened to meet someone who just happened to be there walking through at that exact time instead of being at her own church for various reasons.
These kinds of backward “what were the chances” coincidences are not very amazing once someone has a little background in probability and chance, but we did not have such a background at the time. The fact is, there were infinite possibilities that could have occurred and looking back after one has been selected is always very improbable. The chances of everything lining up for me to marry Emily in particular are quite small. I could deal out 52 cards at random and the probability that you would get the exact hand you got is only 1 in 80,000 vigintillion (or 8 with 67 zeros after it). This is only impressive if it were all predicted in advance even if there were some perceived pattern within it.
Being open to the Spirit, however, we decided to give this lady’s church a try since perhaps God had led us to her. We eventually found a Spanish church later which seemed fun for a visit, but it was nothing like when we attended Frontline for the first time. We were immediately taken in. We felt as if the people were engaged and that God moved in that place. It often took over 45 minutes to get there, but we decided it was worth the trip. The pastor also ensured us that others had had the same feeling of awe when walking through their doors. God truly lived in this place and we decided to make it our home church.
One day, Emily got a call from Ingersoll-Rand wishing to interview her regarding a position as a bilingual customer service representative. They explained how they had never gone online to look for candidates in this way but they decided to give it a shot this one time and subsequently found her resume on careerbuilder.com. She ecstatically accepted the interview and was given the job shortly thereafter. The position had great pay, great benefits, and it just so happened to be located in Olathe just a few minutes from our new church. God obviously had his hand in all of this so we decided to move to Olathe. This, of course, meant that my nightly trip to Sam’s Club was going to be a bit longer from then on out.
Perhaps only a month or two after we moved, I decided to quit Sam’s Club. Being an overnight shift, I had difficulty making the drive safely without falling asleep and the horrendous traffic often made the trip unbearable. I eventually found a full-time position with T-Mobile as a customer service representative instead. This all seemed to be a part of God’s plan as well since we both ended up with better jobs nearby to our favorite church. T-Mobile, however, is where I encountered my very first scam artist.
Shelly took extreme advantage of my faith and kindness. I had helped her a lot while we were still in training at T-Mobile and she joined me at Frontline a few times which led me to trust her. A big mistake that turned out to be.
I received a call from Shelly one day and she explained how she needed my help buying a plane ticket over the phone because she needed to purchase it as soon as possible and had no method of paying over the phone. She promised that she had the cash in her bank account and that she would pay me back immediately when I saw her later at work. Being the faithful man that I was, I could not possibly leave her in need without helping her. I would be missing an opportunity to show my faith and trustworthiness with money! Money I did not really have, of course.
Such faithfulness, as I understood, would ultimately lead to my own riches which would put me on a faster track to financial freedom. And so, I used a credit card over the phone and bought her the tickets she so desperately needed for a family crisis of some sort. This support, however, helped her avoid any fears of having to see me ever again and paying me back. We tried to sue to get the money back but we found that we were unable to serve her the papers for lack of having her address. We found her mom in a phone book and we talked with her only to find out that Shelly did this quite often. Her mom, and much of her family, had also been scammed in this way. We never saw the $2000 again except with a negative sign in front of it on our following credit card bills.
Perhaps I should never have prayed to be as lucky as my aunt and uncle for getting a Nigerian scam. When I consider getting duped by Shelly, however, it is not entirely unlike the many tithes I gave to churches which later proved ungodly. I had been scammed and duped for a very long time. So many gifted dollars were entirely wasted on churches I no longer trust.
Emily was understandably displeased with my support for Shelly and being so duped, and I had learned a valuable lesson to never loan money that we could not do without. We brushed it off as we fully understood that some people were terrible, that God would make it right, and that this did not mean we should stop being kind and generous. We would simply give only what we could rather than loan what we could not.
We later donated a car to someone in need at our church. Her boyfriend had just totaled the one she owned and now she had no transportation to get to work. We warned her not to let her boyfriend drive it as we gave her the keys and title. Unfortunately, she did not heed our advice and she let him drive the car anyway which he then promptly wrecked. This began to make us wonder about the worthiness of helping people. Evidently our aid had little positive effect. Should not God be using our seeds of faith to grow great bounties? Instead, all our help appeared futile and wasted. Still we pressed on and tried to remain generous.
We attempted to involve ourselves more with Frontline. We were even allowed to teach Sunday school to the kids once. When the pastor’s wife found out what we taught them, however, they decided to strip us of our role rather quickly. It did not fit in their worldview to tell the kids that true faith in God would lead them to behave, to do good, and to love others. Instead, she wanted us to teach them that Jesus died for their sins as the utmost important thing to grasp and to provide a few fun Bible stories like David and Goliath or Zacchaeus in the tree. Kids could not understand, we were told, what it meant to truly believe as we explained it and thus we should entertain them with Bible stories instead. Some parents also had a problem with our taking the kids outside to play for the last few minutes of service. We had merely used the play time as motivation to behave and to listen for the majority of the time we were teaching thus making it far more effective.
Such strange reactions were actually the second red flag we received from Frontline. We first felt uncomfortable when Pastor Patrick introduced us by saying that God had brought “missionaries” to them after we had told him we were merely hoping to become such. We brushed it off as an accident at first, but the more we listened, the more it became clear that he exaggerated everything as being much more than each thing truly warranted. He often made a big deal of God doing things that never really happened and I began to question his storytelling abilities.
It further became apparent that things were going sour when Patrick began recommending that everyone take leans out against their houses in order to donate the cash to the church building. A part of me thought it made sense that people would be that devoted to the kingdom of God, but another part of me thought we should not purposefully go into debt for God’s kingdom. God would likely provide without needing more debt and I had just learned a rather valuable lesson about going into debt on faith. On the other hand, when had God ever provided buildings and homes without debt? God generally does not hand out homes and it is generally financially wiser to take out a mortgage than to rent.
Despite our growing sourness for the church, we continued to attend for the sake of the people with whom we had started a Bible study group in our apartment. Every week we provided dinner and even had up to fourteen people in our small apartment all at once. We so loved the time as we shared our lives and uplifted each other while discussing how to improve the world. We thought about repurposing Love is Loud to be all about acting love in a practical way within our community rather than focusing on high school students. Many people had ideas of what we could do and we all discussed how involved we really wanted to be.
Everything seemed great up until the time we started discussing the idea that once you are saved you are always saved. Opinions differed and agreement could not be found. I thought for sure that a group such as ours, reading from the same book and having the same goals in life, would be able to come to a consensus. We did not. I had believed at the time that salvation could not be taken away or lost. The question simply came down to whether or not a person had truly been saved to begin with. I knew from the bottom of my heart that I had seen God work in far too many miraculous ways to ever possibly deny his existence. God moved in my life in such obvious ways because indeed God had saved me. I believed that every saved person would experience this same evidence since God is living and active. Fake Christians, of which I found many, might not see these examples of God’s presence and might very well fall away such that it appears they lost their faith, but they never truly had it to begin with. In John 10, Jesus talked about his sheep knowing his voice and he said that no one can take them out of his hand. Therefore, anyone seemingly snatched away must not have been God’s to begin with.
Some people disagreed anecdotally, however, since they claimed to have known a Christian who turned atheist and they did not believe that she had never been saved to begin with. I suppose this would now be my story as well. They wanted to believe that she would still join them in heaven and not burn in hell for eternity, but I ultimately proclaimed doom to their friend in fiery torment. We basically said the same thing that if you are saved you stay saved, but I kept adding that one’s life showed evidence whether or not salvation had taken place. This contest of beliefs yielded more excuses not to make it to the study and it rapidly dwindled in numbers. This frustrated and confused me as I felt incompetent to do anything right for God’s kingdom. I could not find anyone willing to accept God’s word above their own biased desires and it sincerely disheartened and confused me.
Things took an even greater unexpected turn when Emily announced that she was pregnant. I could not imagine that God would so willingly give us a child at such an inopportune time. We were certainly not trying and I simply could not believe it. I even became slightly angry about it. All my hopes and dreams to be a missionary and to travel the world spreading the word of God sat ruined in the belly of my wife. Eventually I came to grips with reality and accepted our fate. I thought perhaps God had something up his sleeve and would make it all work out anyway. Lots of missionaries had kids, after all. I knew it would be difficult with a child but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make. It was not, however, one Emily was willing to make. Protection of the child, to her, came first and foremost and she would not allow him any danger in the 10/40 window or in a disease-infested missions ground.
This caused great strife between us as one could imagine. I had a hard time coping with the idea that her goals in life would so drastically change just because we were having a child. If God is all-powerful and if we were truly doing his work, I saw nothing to fear at all. We were called to give up even on our families for the Kingdom of God, but this suddenly meant nothing to her. I felt doomed to never become a missionary without leaving my wife and child behind, but I remained steadfast in keeping hope, and I awaited God to work something out. I certainly hoped that God would not require me to leave my family for the sake of the kingdom, but I would indeed do whatever seemed necessary.
Soon to be parents, we needed financial stability. We still needed to pay off our debts and that would be much more difficult when caring for a child. My job alone would not be sufficient and the costs of daycare would nearly compromise any benefit of Emily having a job as well. I had to come up with a better paying job—and fast. That’s when I thought about joining the Marine Corps.
I figured Emily would respect me more if I were in the Marines because she respected her dad so much. The more I followed in his footsteps, the more I hoped she would respect me. I hoped as well that her dad would respect me more knowing how tough I must be to survive the Marines. I also looked forward to having some hard authoritarian rule over me to force me into compliance and toughen me up. I felt wimpy and wishy-washy and out of control since nothing had worked-out properly for me. Perhaps the Marines would help me get grounded and be more confident or more valorous in the eyes of others. It also paid extremely well compared to any job I could presently obtain. As I would drive through town pondering my desire to enlist, I would see billboards promoting the Marines, and I once stopped for a train hauling armored military vehicles. I took these things as signs from God leading me into the Corps and finalized my decision to get it started.
The recruiter greeted me enthusiastically. I told him that if I signed up I would want to help people to better know and serve God within the Marine Corps. He did not so much as flinch at the idea which surprised me. I had always pictured military personnel as foul-mouthed atheists but it turns out that Christianity and military quite often go hand in hand. I now know that Christians tend to be the most supportive of military efforts over proclaimed atheists which came as quite the shock to me given Jesus’ promotion of turning the other cheek and throwing no stones.
The recruiter told me there were many such opportunities for me to serve God and that I could even become a chaplain if I wanted. He introduced me to someone supposedly just like me and he explained how much God used him in the Corps. Everything looked good for joining up. I began to sign my life away and I went to take the ASVAB test. I scored 98 points—one point away from the maximum score. The recruiter exclaimed that he had no idea it even went up that high. The average score fell between 44 and 50 and the minimum for officer training sat at only 74 points. The recruiter told me that with a score like this I could do whichever profession I wanted within the Corps. I did not get to choose, of course, but they would not neglect to give me whatever I found most interesting since I would obviously be such a great fit for anything.
Perhaps I had great mental acuity, but the physical aspect of the Marine Corps worried me a bit. I had never been an athlete and the most-worked part of my body was probably my fingers from playing games, typing on computers, and flipping pages. I exercised with the other recruits one day and I demonstrated a workable disposition with pull-ups and push-ups, but I struggled severely at running. I could not finish the prescribed mile without stopping to walk and wheezing out of breath. The recruiter assured me that we could work on this and that I would just have to try extra hard. I began to worry about the likelihood of surviving boot camp if I could not even run a mile, but I gave it up to God and hoped for the best.
The recruiter drove me to someplace far away where I stayed the night in a hotel with other recruits and we went to get checked out and sworn in to the Marine Corps. The decision to go through with this excited me since it gave me a great opportunity to serve God. My intelligence would give me an edge, people would look up to me, and I might very well be deployed to countries where we could be missionaries on the side. This might very well explain what God was up to. He gave me a child to push me into the corps to become a military missionary! And on top of that, I would become a respected and honored chaplain and create a true army of God.
As might be expected, Emily feared the worst with the decision and most everyone told me how terrible this would be for my family. I tried to assure them that with my ASVAB score I would not be deployed to the front lines but this did not seem to comfort anyone. Every time a sheet of paper sat before me with request for a signature, I would ask if I could still back out or if this then required me to commit. I wanted to be able to ease everyone’s pain temporarily by saying I could still change my mind at any time. With each signature, they assured me that I could back out at any time even up until I flew out to boot camp.
The medical checkup left no inch of my body unexamined. We all lined up in our underwear and performed activities in front of those checking us out. We mostly walked and did some lunge steps while they monitored our bodies for abnormalities. During the personal checkup in a private room, the man examining me recognized that I had an issue with pilonidal cysts. He said it would not be a problem so long as the cysts did not become inflamed or infected, but if they did it would hurt like hell and I would likely not make it through boot camp. This particular issue had already proven to make certain exercises more difficult such as sit-ups, and with the added knowledge that it could easily become even more painfully worse, I sadly decided that it might not be what God had in store for me. It made the perfect rationalization as to why God had not healed me, however—he apparently did not want me to join the Marine Corps. So much for my theory as to why a child sat growing in my wife.
Shortly after my defection, I had to have surgery due to the cysts and it proved none too pleasant for Emily and me alike. It seems I had made the right decision not to go, but this caused doubts in my mind about my ability to hear God. I finally began to realize how I had seen signs that led me in all these direction and yet they turned out to be dead ends. I saw signs to join the corps but my condition ultimately proved that it would have been a terrible choice. Or would it somehow have been better had I gone through with it? Perhaps God would have healed me for my faith if I had gone along with it anyway. More likely, of course, I simply fell prey to a string of confirmation biases. And how many times had that happened up until now seeing as nothing worked out the way I expected even despite the many ways I felt God had helped me and led me? Proverbs 3:6 offered that if I submit to God he would make all my paths straight, but I certainly felt as if my path was veering from side to side continually. I tried to seek him and follow him, but I felt as if I kept getting in the way somehow. I could not try any harder and I certainly believed it would be a bad idea to try following God less. I felt as if I were at an impasse—damned if I do and damned if I don’t.
Still wondering what we ought to do, I had a dream one night where I again roamed the halls of my dorm at Michigan Tech. A little more leery of signs, I did not assume it to be one, but I still considered the option and decided to take it. We made plans to go back to school at Michigan Tech that January of 2006 as the solution to our financial woes—even though that would rake in all the more debt in the short-term. Our first son would be born four months before that time. We named him Malachi after the last prophet in the Old Testament. I sat down and wrote a letter to the future 18-year-old Malachi explaining my love for him and my hope that he had become a man of God. I apologized for all the failures I likely made as a parent along the way. I sealed it up in an envelope surrounded by duct tape where it now awaits his 18th birthday. We would raise him as a man of God and he would do all the great things we had hoped to do ourselves. Perhaps we could help him avoid all the mistakes we must have made which caused us to be unworthy of being sent ourselves. He will be receiving a letter from a very different man than the father he now knows.