My plan was to start seminary the fall after graduating from college, but early in the summer the Berkeley Church invited me to serve as interim director of their health education center for a year. So in the fall I headed back to California.
I knew most of the people, of course, from attending church there the previous school year, but now I was immersed in the life of the church. It was a wonderfully eclectic bunch. An ancient Black couple who were revered as honorary grandparents to everyone. A UC Berkeley philosophy student disputed everything everyone said. He had grown up Catholic and sometimes argued for the superior intellectual quality of Catholic theology. He questioned God's existence and the reality of right and wrong. And he showed up every week for worship, utterly defying all my categories. What kind of label was appropriate for an agnostic who was baptized Catholic, attended an Adventist Church and studied philosophy?
There were Adventist grad students who brought a deep spiritual heritage and intense intellectualism. Filipino families. A doctor and his family from Pleasant Valley. New Adventists and people who had recently returned to the church after decades away. People who fondly remembered elements of their lives as hippies. A bum or two who who would have blessed the rest of us by taking a shower before coming to worship.
Karen was another person who created cognitive dissonance. Her face open and welcoming. She had reddish blond hair. She was magnetic. I avoided talking with her for fear of getting tongue-tied. She spoke of prayer and God's involvement in her life with sweet confidence. She brought more visitors to church than anyone else. But she wore earrings and attended church less than seventy-five percent of the time.
Good Adventists attended church every Sabbath and they did not wear jewelry. Wearing jewelry was a form of self-promotion incompatible with radical holiness. We are called to self-denial not the decoration of our bodies. Spending money on jewelry was a diversion of funds that could otherwise be contributed to help take the gospel to the world. A woman who wore jewelry was exhibiting a dangerous self-absorption. She was bringing a compromising, worldly spirit into the church. I believed all this. Without question. And I knew that Karen was sweet to co-workers and patients and neighbors. She prayed with a simple, straightforward faith. And she was more effective in evangelism than all the rest of us combined, if the yardstick was the number of non-members one brought to church. How could it be that a worldly person could be the best evangelist?
The pastor, Roger, continued to intrigue and trouble me with his crazy mix of creativity, energy, and heterodoxy. The congregation put major funding into the health education center where I was now the director. It was a quintessentially Adventist endeavor. Located on a busy center city street. Designed to be a “neutral” venue to which we could invite the public for all kinds of classes that would improve their health and build relationships that would ultimately serve as a basis for inviting them to church. We did vegetarian cooking classes and smoking cessation clinics. We advertised a Bible study. (One person came, an Indian who became my closest friend. He was always available for conversation when I was going out of my mind with frustration and discouragement, happy to introduce me to his world. I endlessly mused over the fact that while I was attempting to carry out my duties as the director of a better living center where Adventism put on its most intellectual, worldly-wise face, my deepest personal support came from an uneducated, unambitious, non-Adventist, quasi-Christian, Native American. David Navarrini, if you read this, I owe you a huge debt of gratitude.)
At the church, Roger led a mid-week study of the Book of Revelation, again, an Adventist specialty. He worked his way through the book verse by verse. He compelled us to pay attention to the actual words of each verse which inevitably on occasion did not appear to support traditional Adventist interpretations. I was troubled by the questions he raised. Even though he did not directly deny the validity of our traditional interpretations, I could feel the dissonance. When I challenged him, he insisted he was not contradicting the traditional Adventist interpretations. Rather he was employing a “different and also valid” interpretative approach. Classic Adventist interpretation of Revelation is “historicist.” That means we interpret all the imagery of Revelation—the churches, angels, monsters, disasters and plagues—as cryptic predictions of specific historical events. Revelation is the history of the world written in advance. Roger said he was employing a spiritual approach. He was looking for spiritual lessons that applied to our personal lives right now.
Because he worked so closely with the text it was hard to argue with him on without invoking tradition or the opinions of our prophet, but Adventists pride ourselves on our Bible and Bible Only method of Bible interpretation. Of course, we have traditions of interpretation and we revere our prophet and her voluminous writing, but when push comes to shove we are supposed to go back to the Bible itself as the final authority in all matters religious. And Roger's interpretations were as plausible as our classic historicist interpretations, given what the actual words of the text.
I remained suspicious. I figured there had to a worm in his approach somewhere even if I couldn't spot it. I was suspicious in part because of the vibe Roger gave off. He was brash and playfully impudent, an avid football fan, a natty dresser. He wasn't pious. Once when I asked about his devotional life he said he spent many hours a week studying the Bible in preparation for sermons and the midweek Bible study. He was fully engaged with the Bible using his mind and commentaries. What was the point of having a separate time for “devotional reading”? What would it accomplish? I did not have an answer, but his cavalier dismissal of the importance of daily devotions astonished me. I had heard multiple preachers emphatically assert the vital necessity for pastors to engage with the Bible deeply and personally quite apart from their professional study. I, myself, spent time every morning reading the Bible and praying. How could this man who was a pastor not see the vital necessity of personal, devotional reading?
Still, Roger was doing the very kind of ministry—maybe the only kind of ministry—I could imagine doing. The Berkeley Church under his leadership came closer to my dream of urban ministry than any other Adventist congregation I knew of. I admired his independence from tradition and church structure, his commitment to people and ministry in the heart of the city.
Late in January, Roger invited me to his office to talk about how things were going in my work as the director of the health education center. I tried to put a good face on it for Roger, but the truth was I was deeply discouraged. I put together a few programs, but I was not creating enough activity to justify the rent the church was paying for the center or my small salary. I didn't want to quit, didn't want to admit this was a job I couldn't do, didn't want to let the church down. But my sense of incompetence was killing me. In our conversation, I voiced a bit of my frustration and discouragement. Roger said I shouldn't feel obligated to stay for the whole year. The church would manage.
It was clear he was inviting me to move on. He did it so graciously, the pain of being “fired” was minimal. Mostly, it was a wonderful relief to be out from under the burden of a job I couldn't perform.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Chapter 31 The Mirror
Flying west was a dream. California had always been a magical place in my mind. Grandma Whitney's tiny house sat on the edge of an orange grove in Loma Linda. Hundred-foot-tall royal palms lined the next street over. On vacations our family had toured Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks and spent a week at Uncle Romayne's hobby ranch in the foothills near Mt. Lassen.
As I walked into the crowd at Oakland Airport, I heard my name. “Johnny?” It was Uncle Ellsworth, Mom's favorite brother. Tall. Snow-white hair. A gentle voice. Warm, open face. Not that I would have recognized him. I had seen him only once before. He shook my hand and we headed to baggage claim. After retrieving my two suitcases, we found Aunt Bernice waiting in the car at the curb.
“I would have come in to meet you,” she said. “But I thought you probably had enough to worry with without having to carry me, too.” She laughed as she waved her crutches at me. I stayed the night with them in Napa, then in the morning they drove me up the hill to the college.
I signed up for physics, a couple of religion classes and cat lab—a course that consisted of dissecting a cat. One of the religion classes, Systematic Theology from Gordon Hyde was fascinating. I delighted in the exploration of the language and ideas of ancient thinkers. It was fascinating to see how far back in antiquity you could trace all the major arguments not just of theology but of humanity. The nature of existence, questions of freedom and constraint for both God and humanity, the meaning of personhood and the nature of the soul. Nothing was new. Everything was connected. The teacher himself was fascinating, both for his appreciation for the ancient thinkers and for his own attempts to resolve thorny conundrums. It probably helped that I was no longer planning on going into the ministry. I could engage the subject with intellectual abandon because I did not have to worry about how all these ideas interacted with church dogma and Adventist spiritual culture.
New Testament exegesis was radically different. The professor was Erwin Gane, a well-known principal in theological battles then raging in the Adventist Church. Within days of the beginning of the term a group of us students was engaged in constant debate with him over his soteriology (theories of how a person is saved). We saw his views as unduly influenced by Roman Catholic theology. (We were aware he had studied at a Catholic university.) We students saw ourselves as more in line with the Reformed or Lutheran views.
At the end of the second week of the class we turned in our first exegesis paper. After he graded our papers, Dr. Gane gave us his own paper on the assigned passage. I was amazed. Despite our theological differences and intense debates in class over soteriology, my paper so closely paralleled his that you could have reasonably suspected plagiarism. The arguments in class continued unabated, but when we did our next paper, my work again was strikingly similar to Dr. Gane's.
A few days later he asked me to come see him. When I arrived for my appointment, Dr. Gane had me close the door behind me. He invited me to sit down and we exchanged pleasantries for a couple of minutes. Then he dropped the bomb. “Would you consider becoming my reader? I am buried with work trying to get my dissertation finished and I need some help grading papers and tests.”
I was astonished! How could he even think of such a thing, given the intensity of our debates in class.
Dr. Gane went on, “You are a good writer. You handle the New Testament text well. With all the commitments I have right now outside of teaching, I really need some help grading papers. Would you consider working as my reader?”
I accepted. Eventually, I was grading not only short exegesis papers, but final exams and term papers. I wasn't sure it was right for a student to be playing such a major role in the grades that other students received. It would have been one thing if the tests and papers had been multiple choice or called for short answers. Instead I was passing judgment on pages-long essays. How much of the grade should be based on concrete information included in the essay? How much weight should be assigned to style, to clarity of thought, to correct grammar and spelling? I had never heard anyone discuss these questions. Obviously, I had never taken any education methods classes. I was on my own. Which meant my classmates' grades were in my hands. Over the course of the year, I could feel my objectivity diminishing. Some students always wrote good papers. After awhile I knew just from reading the name at the top of the page what grade I was going to give. Other students struggled to make sense of anything, writing clumsy, awkward prose, misusing and misspelling words. I dreaded reading their papers and hated myself for all the red marks I scribbled on their essays. But I had been hired to grade papers, and college was supposed to be a meritocracy where grades were earned not granted. I did my job, less and less confident that I was competent to do what I was doing and more and more conflicted about the appropriateness of a student filling the role I was in.
Physics turned out to be a review of high school physics. Second day of second quarter I was sitting in class bored when I suddenly asked myself, “Why are you wasting your time sitting here?” After that, I only went to class to take exams. I remembered Mr. DeVasher's retorts when students complained about the rigor of his classes: “I'm getting you ready for college. Someday, you're going to thank me.” Well, I was thanking him. Of course, as always, lab was a challenge. No matter how well I understood theory and processes, effective manipulation of apparatus was beyond me. Fortunately grades were heavily weighted toward exams.
Cat lab was a one quarter long, two hour class that explored the anatomy of a cat through dissection. The body systems were fascinating. I loved the class. Unfortunately, it proved again that lab was not my forte. The best students in the class finished each class period with their dissection laid out like it was a picture in a textbook. My cat generally looked like the remains of a terrible fight. And my cat lost.
Embryology was amazing. Biochemisty was intriguing. In both classes evolution was prominent in the textbooks. And unconvincing. I used to scold my girlfriend for her mocking references to the preposterousness of evolution. I insisted that if we had grown up in homes that assumed evolution was true, we would believe it just as fervently as we now disbelieved it. However, the further we went in biochemistry, the more improbable the arguments appeared to be. Each chapter began with several pages on the putative evolutionary history of the biochemical system covered in that chapter. And each scenario seemed more implausible than the one before. I knew creationists faced intractable problems when it came to radiometric dating and other forms of geochronology, but I was sure that in biology, the great arguments were on our side.
In spite of my enjoyment of the science classes, the old question about a “call to the ministry” refused to go away. Nearly every night, my prayers featured one-sided arguments with God about how ludicrous it would be for me to go into the ministry. I couldn't get the idea out of my head that God was calling. Still, I couldn't see it. I enjoyed my science classes, embryology, cat lab and biochemistry. And in the scientific quest for truth, there was convergence. Over time, fierce debates were usually illuminated and often resolved by additional data. But in theology there had been no new data for 2000 years and none was expected. The insoluble contradictions remained eternally insoluble. I was fully convinced Adventist theology was the most coherent, biblically-congruent theology available. I was a confident Adventist. We had “the truth.” But I saw no way of demonstrating that to people who were not inclined to see it. This was highlighted by the endless debates in the church. It was vividly illustrated by the arguments my class had with Dr. Gane, and I had personally with Dennis Priebe.
Drs. Gane and Priebe were Adventist. They were obviously smart men. They had access not only to the Bible but to the writings of Ellen White, our prophet, and the theological heritage of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Still, they were stuck in the anxiety-based mindset of historical Adventism. In their theology, people were never good enough. They lived always under the frown of God. As a pastor, I would do everything I could to move the church away from the fear and anxiety characteristic of their theology. But, I wondered, would the church ultimately find their vision of Adventism more compelling, more persuasive? If so, where did that leave me if I became a pastor? On the other hand, how could I cede the formation of the church to people who used our theological heritage to enslave people with fear and anxiety?
Then there was Dr. Roger Coon's class on eschatology (the doctrine of the end of the world). He “proved” on the basis of Bible prophecy and hundreds of citations from all kinds of news sources that we were living right at the very end of time. He resisted ever suggesting a specific number of years, but if you did not dismiss the entire project of connecting Bible prophecy with current events, the inescapable conclusion of his lectures was that within three to five years at the very outside, the end would be upon us. Jesus would return.
I alternated between excitement about the “shortness of time” and a deep cynicism rooted in my awareness of how often over the last 150 years, Adventists had been equally certain the end was near. In the late 1800s our prophet had told an audience that before all of them died Jesus would return. Unless you counted babies that might have been present, it appeared even her certainty had been misplaced. How could I become a clergyman in an organization devoted to such breathless (and historically clueless) end time fervor?
Still, the call would not go away.
I did have close at hand a couple of models of pastoral ministry who were powerfully attractive, men who contradicted my stereotype of ministers as men whose intelligence and integrity was somewhere below the seventy-fifth percentile.
Most weekends I went to the Berkeley Adventist Church. The pastor there, Roger Patzer, was a creative, slightly heterodox pastor who had cultivated a church full of diverse, interesting people. I admired his pastoral leadership and the urban spiritual community he had cultivated. I frequently was troubled by his nontraditional theology. His interpretations of the Book of Revelation were suspect. He evinced a woefully inadequate level of deference to the words of our prophet. When I argued with him, I did not find him persuasive. But he was a dramatic model of the possibility of a high degree of individuality and personal freedom within the Adventist ministry.
The preacher at the College Church was Morris Venden, the same preacher who had so strongly affected me my freshman year in college. Because of my involvement with the Berkeley Church I heard Elder Venden only occasionally. But whenever I did, I was impressed again with his astonishing ability to command attention and connect with people's actual spiritual experience. If I could preach like him, maybe being a preacher was imaginable.
In March, Elder Venden gave a presentation at a theology department colloquium. He spoke of the satisfaction and fulfillment he experienced in ministry. It sounded so rich, so significant. He was making a difference in people's lives. I made an appointment to visit with him. When I sat down in his office, he lived up to his reputation of being as awkward and clumsy in person as he was eloquent and masterful in the pulpit. He did not put me at ease. Still, he managed to offer his standard counsel for young men considering the ministry: “Don't do it if you can happily do anything else. If God is calling you, he will make it irresistibly clear. You will know.”
But that was the problem, I didn't know. Certainly, I had been thinking about being a minister for a long time. Some people had encouraged me in that direction. On the other hand, I knew Dr. Priebe definitely had reservations about my fitness. And I still struggled with being able to see myself in the role. Could I live within the structure, the social expectations, the organizational requirements of an Adventist clergyman? Did I want to?
I was challenged by my Aunt Bernice's religion. (Nowadays, I would probably use the word “spirituality,” but it was not in common usage in the seventies. And in those days, “religion” was generally an appropriate term for designating the totality of a person's spiritual life because of people's much stronger identification with particular religious communities and traditions.) Uncle Ellsworth was quite deaf, so I could not carry on an effective conversation with him, but Aunt Bernice was warm and talkative. She was a physician which gave her credibility. Her religion was easy-going. Drinking coffee or going to a movie was not a mortal sin. She did not about the end of the world or prophetic charts. She felt no compulsion to be busy doing “the work of God” on Sabbath. She and Uncle Ellsworth came home from church and took a nap.
The emotional tone of her religion contrasted starkly with the hard-edged spirituality of classic Adventism. She was Adventist AND happy. Sabbath-keeping at her house was fun. There was none of the tense race to beat sundown that had characterized our house on Friday afternoons. She did what she needed to do, and when she was ready, we sat down to enjoy Friday night supper. There was no anxious watching of the clock to make sure everything was done before sundown. Aunt Bernice blithely dismissed the Adventist obsession with character perfection. She did what was right and was easy on herself when she didn't. And figured that God was easy on us, too.
Her gracious, laid-back approach to spiritual life would have been less seductive if I had observed it from a distance. But I was in her home often. Her husband had spent some time in jail. He had been a dreamer and schemer who had never effectively contributed to the family income. All he contributed was warmth and affection. (In our family, warmth and affection were negligible values.) My cousin, Janene, who was a lot of fun, had experienced some reverses in life—difficulties that in our family would have earned her unalterable scorn. But Aunt Bernice (a doctor, a smart person, a wage-earner) appeared to adore her husband. She adored her son who was in medical school. And she adored Janene whose life was more complicated. She showered affection on everyone in her orbit. In nine months I never heard Aunt Bernice utter the slightest hint of condemnation or rejection toward anyone. I still valued my theology. I thought Aunt Bernice ought to be more zealous in her religion. She should be more concerned with Adventist rules and particularities. For all of my questions, I was still deeply convicted not only of the correctness but the importance of Adventist theology. I enjoyed working with ideas. I believed Adventist theology did a better job than any other system of integrating the entire universe of ideas and history. The world needed to know what we believed. I remained zealous for the rigors of Adventist behavioral norms. But I knew Aunt Bernice's religion offered something that mine didn't—happiness.
I was supposed to take the MCAT that spring. I deliberately missed the deadline for registering to take the test, feeling that taking it would somehow be too bold an action in the face of the nagging sense of divine disapproval of my plans for medical school. I could always take it later and complete my application process for Loma Linda University next year
Spring break, I drove with friends down to Loma Linda, home of the Adventist medical school. I visited with my cousin Frank, son of Uncle Ellsworth and Aunt Bernice, who was in his fourth year of medical school. He was taking a clinical rotation he did not particularly enjoy, but because it was medicine, it was okay. He loved medicine. He couldn't imagine doing anything else. I visited another friend, Carlos. He had finished college a couple of years earlier but had not been accepted into medical school. He was living in Loma Linda, working, and taking one class a quarter in the graduate school. He told me was going to stay there until he died or they admitted him. Medicine was his life.
As we drove back north late Sunday, I replayed over and over my conversations with Frank and Carlos. My interest in medicine was tangential. I was not in love with medicine but with the benefits I thought it might provide. I imagined medicine as a way to be financially independent. As a physician I could be active in the theological life of the church without being dependent on the church for my income. My mind would be freer. Even when I imagined working as a medical support person in oceanographic expeditions, I realized I was more interested in the oceanography than in the medicine. There was nothing in me that corresponded to Frank's and Carlos' passionate love of medicine. Well, maybe there was—theology. The only things I enjoyed as much as they did medicine were the ideas and the engagement with people in their spiritual life that were the province of ministry. Pastors were paid to study theology and talk with people.
The “call” from God that I had been struggling with for five years was in reality a mirror of my own most intense interests. God was not calling me away from my greatest interests but to them. The next week I wrote Loma Linda University and withdrew my name from their applicant list. I wrote the seminary at Andrews University and requested an application packet.
As I walked into the crowd at Oakland Airport, I heard my name. “Johnny?” It was Uncle Ellsworth, Mom's favorite brother. Tall. Snow-white hair. A gentle voice. Warm, open face. Not that I would have recognized him. I had seen him only once before. He shook my hand and we headed to baggage claim. After retrieving my two suitcases, we found Aunt Bernice waiting in the car at the curb.
“I would have come in to meet you,” she said. “But I thought you probably had enough to worry with without having to carry me, too.” She laughed as she waved her crutches at me. I stayed the night with them in Napa, then in the morning they drove me up the hill to the college.
I signed up for physics, a couple of religion classes and cat lab—a course that consisted of dissecting a cat. One of the religion classes, Systematic Theology from Gordon Hyde was fascinating. I delighted in the exploration of the language and ideas of ancient thinkers. It was fascinating to see how far back in antiquity you could trace all the major arguments not just of theology but of humanity. The nature of existence, questions of freedom and constraint for both God and humanity, the meaning of personhood and the nature of the soul. Nothing was new. Everything was connected. The teacher himself was fascinating, both for his appreciation for the ancient thinkers and for his own attempts to resolve thorny conundrums. It probably helped that I was no longer planning on going into the ministry. I could engage the subject with intellectual abandon because I did not have to worry about how all these ideas interacted with church dogma and Adventist spiritual culture.
New Testament exegesis was radically different. The professor was Erwin Gane, a well-known principal in theological battles then raging in the Adventist Church. Within days of the beginning of the term a group of us students was engaged in constant debate with him over his soteriology (theories of how a person is saved). We saw his views as unduly influenced by Roman Catholic theology. (We were aware he had studied at a Catholic university.) We students saw ourselves as more in line with the Reformed or Lutheran views.
At the end of the second week of the class we turned in our first exegesis paper. After he graded our papers, Dr. Gane gave us his own paper on the assigned passage. I was amazed. Despite our theological differences and intense debates in class over soteriology, my paper so closely paralleled his that you could have reasonably suspected plagiarism. The arguments in class continued unabated, but when we did our next paper, my work again was strikingly similar to Dr. Gane's.
A few days later he asked me to come see him. When I arrived for my appointment, Dr. Gane had me close the door behind me. He invited me to sit down and we exchanged pleasantries for a couple of minutes. Then he dropped the bomb. “Would you consider becoming my reader? I am buried with work trying to get my dissertation finished and I need some help grading papers and tests.”
I was astonished! How could he even think of such a thing, given the intensity of our debates in class.
Dr. Gane went on, “You are a good writer. You handle the New Testament text well. With all the commitments I have right now outside of teaching, I really need some help grading papers. Would you consider working as my reader?”
I accepted. Eventually, I was grading not only short exegesis papers, but final exams and term papers. I wasn't sure it was right for a student to be playing such a major role in the grades that other students received. It would have been one thing if the tests and papers had been multiple choice or called for short answers. Instead I was passing judgment on pages-long essays. How much of the grade should be based on concrete information included in the essay? How much weight should be assigned to style, to clarity of thought, to correct grammar and spelling? I had never heard anyone discuss these questions. Obviously, I had never taken any education methods classes. I was on my own. Which meant my classmates' grades were in my hands. Over the course of the year, I could feel my objectivity diminishing. Some students always wrote good papers. After awhile I knew just from reading the name at the top of the page what grade I was going to give. Other students struggled to make sense of anything, writing clumsy, awkward prose, misusing and misspelling words. I dreaded reading their papers and hated myself for all the red marks I scribbled on their essays. But I had been hired to grade papers, and college was supposed to be a meritocracy where grades were earned not granted. I did my job, less and less confident that I was competent to do what I was doing and more and more conflicted about the appropriateness of a student filling the role I was in.
Physics turned out to be a review of high school physics. Second day of second quarter I was sitting in class bored when I suddenly asked myself, “Why are you wasting your time sitting here?” After that, I only went to class to take exams. I remembered Mr. DeVasher's retorts when students complained about the rigor of his classes: “I'm getting you ready for college. Someday, you're going to thank me.” Well, I was thanking him. Of course, as always, lab was a challenge. No matter how well I understood theory and processes, effective manipulation of apparatus was beyond me. Fortunately grades were heavily weighted toward exams.
Cat lab was a one quarter long, two hour class that explored the anatomy of a cat through dissection. The body systems were fascinating. I loved the class. Unfortunately, it proved again that lab was not my forte. The best students in the class finished each class period with their dissection laid out like it was a picture in a textbook. My cat generally looked like the remains of a terrible fight. And my cat lost.
Embryology was amazing. Biochemisty was intriguing. In both classes evolution was prominent in the textbooks. And unconvincing. I used to scold my girlfriend for her mocking references to the preposterousness of evolution. I insisted that if we had grown up in homes that assumed evolution was true, we would believe it just as fervently as we now disbelieved it. However, the further we went in biochemistry, the more improbable the arguments appeared to be. Each chapter began with several pages on the putative evolutionary history of the biochemical system covered in that chapter. And each scenario seemed more implausible than the one before. I knew creationists faced intractable problems when it came to radiometric dating and other forms of geochronology, but I was sure that in biology, the great arguments were on our side.
In spite of my enjoyment of the science classes, the old question about a “call to the ministry” refused to go away. Nearly every night, my prayers featured one-sided arguments with God about how ludicrous it would be for me to go into the ministry. I couldn't get the idea out of my head that God was calling. Still, I couldn't see it. I enjoyed my science classes, embryology, cat lab and biochemistry. And in the scientific quest for truth, there was convergence. Over time, fierce debates were usually illuminated and often resolved by additional data. But in theology there had been no new data for 2000 years and none was expected. The insoluble contradictions remained eternally insoluble. I was fully convinced Adventist theology was the most coherent, biblically-congruent theology available. I was a confident Adventist. We had “the truth.” But I saw no way of demonstrating that to people who were not inclined to see it. This was highlighted by the endless debates in the church. It was vividly illustrated by the arguments my class had with Dr. Gane, and I had personally with Dennis Priebe.
Drs. Gane and Priebe were Adventist. They were obviously smart men. They had access not only to the Bible but to the writings of Ellen White, our prophet, and the theological heritage of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Still, they were stuck in the anxiety-based mindset of historical Adventism. In their theology, people were never good enough. They lived always under the frown of God. As a pastor, I would do everything I could to move the church away from the fear and anxiety characteristic of their theology. But, I wondered, would the church ultimately find their vision of Adventism more compelling, more persuasive? If so, where did that leave me if I became a pastor? On the other hand, how could I cede the formation of the church to people who used our theological heritage to enslave people with fear and anxiety?
Then there was Dr. Roger Coon's class on eschatology (the doctrine of the end of the world). He “proved” on the basis of Bible prophecy and hundreds of citations from all kinds of news sources that we were living right at the very end of time. He resisted ever suggesting a specific number of years, but if you did not dismiss the entire project of connecting Bible prophecy with current events, the inescapable conclusion of his lectures was that within three to five years at the very outside, the end would be upon us. Jesus would return.
I alternated between excitement about the “shortness of time” and a deep cynicism rooted in my awareness of how often over the last 150 years, Adventists had been equally certain the end was near. In the late 1800s our prophet had told an audience that before all of them died Jesus would return. Unless you counted babies that might have been present, it appeared even her certainty had been misplaced. How could I become a clergyman in an organization devoted to such breathless (and historically clueless) end time fervor?
Still, the call would not go away.
I did have close at hand a couple of models of pastoral ministry who were powerfully attractive, men who contradicted my stereotype of ministers as men whose intelligence and integrity was somewhere below the seventy-fifth percentile.
Most weekends I went to the Berkeley Adventist Church. The pastor there, Roger Patzer, was a creative, slightly heterodox pastor who had cultivated a church full of diverse, interesting people. I admired his pastoral leadership and the urban spiritual community he had cultivated. I frequently was troubled by his nontraditional theology. His interpretations of the Book of Revelation were suspect. He evinced a woefully inadequate level of deference to the words of our prophet. When I argued with him, I did not find him persuasive. But he was a dramatic model of the possibility of a high degree of individuality and personal freedom within the Adventist ministry.
The preacher at the College Church was Morris Venden, the same preacher who had so strongly affected me my freshman year in college. Because of my involvement with the Berkeley Church I heard Elder Venden only occasionally. But whenever I did, I was impressed again with his astonishing ability to command attention and connect with people's actual spiritual experience. If I could preach like him, maybe being a preacher was imaginable.
In March, Elder Venden gave a presentation at a theology department colloquium. He spoke of the satisfaction and fulfillment he experienced in ministry. It sounded so rich, so significant. He was making a difference in people's lives. I made an appointment to visit with him. When I sat down in his office, he lived up to his reputation of being as awkward and clumsy in person as he was eloquent and masterful in the pulpit. He did not put me at ease. Still, he managed to offer his standard counsel for young men considering the ministry: “Don't do it if you can happily do anything else. If God is calling you, he will make it irresistibly clear. You will know.”
But that was the problem, I didn't know. Certainly, I had been thinking about being a minister for a long time. Some people had encouraged me in that direction. On the other hand, I knew Dr. Priebe definitely had reservations about my fitness. And I still struggled with being able to see myself in the role. Could I live within the structure, the social expectations, the organizational requirements of an Adventist clergyman? Did I want to?
I was challenged by my Aunt Bernice's religion. (Nowadays, I would probably use the word “spirituality,” but it was not in common usage in the seventies. And in those days, “religion” was generally an appropriate term for designating the totality of a person's spiritual life because of people's much stronger identification with particular religious communities and traditions.) Uncle Ellsworth was quite deaf, so I could not carry on an effective conversation with him, but Aunt Bernice was warm and talkative. She was a physician which gave her credibility. Her religion was easy-going. Drinking coffee or going to a movie was not a mortal sin. She did not about the end of the world or prophetic charts. She felt no compulsion to be busy doing “the work of God” on Sabbath. She and Uncle Ellsworth came home from church and took a nap.
The emotional tone of her religion contrasted starkly with the hard-edged spirituality of classic Adventism. She was Adventist AND happy. Sabbath-keeping at her house was fun. There was none of the tense race to beat sundown that had characterized our house on Friday afternoons. She did what she needed to do, and when she was ready, we sat down to enjoy Friday night supper. There was no anxious watching of the clock to make sure everything was done before sundown. Aunt Bernice blithely dismissed the Adventist obsession with character perfection. She did what was right and was easy on herself when she didn't. And figured that God was easy on us, too.
Her gracious, laid-back approach to spiritual life would have been less seductive if I had observed it from a distance. But I was in her home often. Her husband had spent some time in jail. He had been a dreamer and schemer who had never effectively contributed to the family income. All he contributed was warmth and affection. (In our family, warmth and affection were negligible values.) My cousin, Janene, who was a lot of fun, had experienced some reverses in life—difficulties that in our family would have earned her unalterable scorn. But Aunt Bernice (a doctor, a smart person, a wage-earner) appeared to adore her husband. She adored her son who was in medical school. And she adored Janene whose life was more complicated. She showered affection on everyone in her orbit. In nine months I never heard Aunt Bernice utter the slightest hint of condemnation or rejection toward anyone. I still valued my theology. I thought Aunt Bernice ought to be more zealous in her religion. She should be more concerned with Adventist rules and particularities. For all of my questions, I was still deeply convicted not only of the correctness but the importance of Adventist theology. I enjoyed working with ideas. I believed Adventist theology did a better job than any other system of integrating the entire universe of ideas and history. The world needed to know what we believed. I remained zealous for the rigors of Adventist behavioral norms. But I knew Aunt Bernice's religion offered something that mine didn't—happiness.
I was supposed to take the MCAT that spring. I deliberately missed the deadline for registering to take the test, feeling that taking it would somehow be too bold an action in the face of the nagging sense of divine disapproval of my plans for medical school. I could always take it later and complete my application process for Loma Linda University next year
Spring break, I drove with friends down to Loma Linda, home of the Adventist medical school. I visited with my cousin Frank, son of Uncle Ellsworth and Aunt Bernice, who was in his fourth year of medical school. He was taking a clinical rotation he did not particularly enjoy, but because it was medicine, it was okay. He loved medicine. He couldn't imagine doing anything else. I visited another friend, Carlos. He had finished college a couple of years earlier but had not been accepted into medical school. He was living in Loma Linda, working, and taking one class a quarter in the graduate school. He told me was going to stay there until he died or they admitted him. Medicine was his life.
As we drove back north late Sunday, I replayed over and over my conversations with Frank and Carlos. My interest in medicine was tangential. I was not in love with medicine but with the benefits I thought it might provide. I imagined medicine as a way to be financially independent. As a physician I could be active in the theological life of the church without being dependent on the church for my income. My mind would be freer. Even when I imagined working as a medical support person in oceanographic expeditions, I realized I was more interested in the oceanography than in the medicine. There was nothing in me that corresponded to Frank's and Carlos' passionate love of medicine. Well, maybe there was—theology. The only things I enjoyed as much as they did medicine were the ideas and the engagement with people in their spiritual life that were the province of ministry. Pastors were paid to study theology and talk with people.
The “call” from God that I had been struggling with for five years was in reality a mirror of my own most intense interests. God was not calling me away from my greatest interests but to them. The next week I wrote Loma Linda University and withdrew my name from their applicant list. I wrote the seminary at Andrews University and requested an application packet.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Chapter 30 The Positive Way
Back at Southern, I enrolled in the usual classes for a religion major: Greek, more church history, Spanish II, Life and Teachings of Jesus, accounting. Accounting was the hardest class I ever took in school. Period. The concepts were not difficult, but copying or transferring numbers accurately between columns and adding or subtracting accurately was utterly beyond me. This difficulty with precision had always been a challenge but in science labs I could compensate for my clumsiness in manipulating devices, numbers, and materials by demonstrating comprehension of the underlying concepts. In accounting, the only way to demonstrate comprehension was to accurately copy and add numbers. Not possible. (I never balanced my check book until I had the services of Excel.)
Church history was exhilarating. The prof was a newly minted Ph. D. determined to stuff us with information. His tests were ridiculously broad. If I remember right, one of the questions on the final was something like: Write the history of the Christian Church from 500 to 1200 A.D. His lectures, the assigned reading and the class discussions brought the story of the church alive. The people, the theological disputes, the cycles of institutional formation, decline and reform all were surprisingly familiar. They offered a revealing mirror in which to inspect our world, the Adventist world, which I had always understood to be a unique endtime movement with unique problems and unique duties.
One of the “new things” on campus was a thirteen-week course in prayer called “The Positive Way.” It wasn't part of the formal curriculum, but it was spearheaded by a popular religion professor, Ed Zackrison and endorsed by most of the student spiritual leaders. By the time I got back from my adventures in New York and the Middle East, it had become the most visible expression of corporate zeal and piety.
My friend, Bill Shelly, urged me to enroll. Still, I was reluctant. It sounded too formulaic, a little too magical. But how could I sit out a program that promised to bring people to a whole new level of engagement with God? So I enrolled.
The class sessions included both teaching about the theory of prayer and testimonies from participants about their experiences in prayer during the previous week. We were assigned readings on prayer and specific prayer practices. Each participant was partnered with a sponsor, someone who had previously completed the class. You met with your sponsor once a week in addition to attending the group meeting.
The class content offered repeated, strong affirmations of God's affectionate regard for all us. Salvation was not difficult. God was not hard to please. As evidence of this God gave us many promises which we could claim in prayer with full expectation that he would give us what we asked.
In group sessions, students told stories of facing daunting examinations, certain they would fail. In prayer, they claimed the promise in James, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth liberally and upbraideth not.” Sure enough, they aced the test.
Relationship troubles, money troubles, sickness—all responded to the mighty power of prayer. Every group session featured accounts of amazing divine intervention in the lives of the class participants. I didn't have any stories to share. I wondered what made the difference.
My sponsor was someone I had gone to school with for a couple years back in grade school. He was a nice guy who didn't know much about the Bible. A serious interest in religion and spiritual life was fairly new to him. For each of our weekly sessions, he had a list of questions he was supposed to ask me. He asked them. I answered. It felt awkward. I had all sorts of questions about prayer I would have liked to explore, but I had no interest in dampening his enthusiasm. So we kept our appointments, while the whole thing felt increasingly unreal.
My own piety was no less intense for all this failure to experience tangible answers to prayer. I still prayed and read my Bible every morning, chasing a sense of intimacy with God, hoping for a sense of divine approval. I was outspoken in classroom and after-class debates. I vigorously advocated the primacy of grace. I seconded Venden's arguments that we are saved by relationship not by behavior. I read the mystics Johann Tauler, Meister Eckhart, Nicolas of Cusa and was both enthralled and tormented by their writing. I desperately wanted to experience for myself the kind of intimacy with God they described.
But peace and tranquility never came. At least not for more than a few minutes at a time.
I remember one Friday night coming back to the room from the evening meeting. I knelt by my bed and prayed silently. (Bill was asleep in the top bunk.) My praying was an inarticulate, desperate longing for God's affirmation. After a long time of futile praying I lay on the floor, still wearing my tie and tweed jacket, exhausted but too agitated with unfulfilled spiritual longing to go to bed. Going to bed would have been an admission that I was okay, that life could go on. But I was not okay. Life in the condition I was in was not acceptable. I was frustrated with God. But that was not allowed, so I was frustrated with myself. Eventually I fell asleep on the floor where I remained for the night.
That night was not particularly dramatic. The room was reasonably warm. I felt asleep on a carpet not on a bed of nails. But it epitomized the experiential vacuum hiding behind my voluble theologizing. I had opinions, strong opinions. I loved to preach. I led small groups. I found keen satisfaction in talking with others who struggled with spiritual alienation and confusion. Occasionally, I could see people relax as we talked. Somehow my words were helpful to them. But I was a pipe unwet by the water I carried,
I began again to question my call to the ministry. I was doing well in my classes. I enjoyed theology and philosophy. Greek was interesting. I took an American Lit class that focused especially on Emmerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne. All of them evinced a strong ethical vision. Thoreau's and Emmerson's vague pantheism was alluring. It was a view of God that invited wonder and contemplation and made theological disputation appear petty and maybe even irrelevant.
I was increasingly put off by the culture of the theological student community. We argued about everything. The meaning of this or that particular passage. The proper emphasis to be given to a particular point of doctrine in the overall life of the church. We debated the best methods of leading churches, about the proper role of paid clergy versus empowering the laity, the proper interpretive role of Ellen White in biblical studies.
There was no method for ending the arguments. If I appealed to Luther, my sparring partner could appeal to Carlstadt. If I cited Calvin, he could reference Armenius. Councils contradicted each other, and Adventists denied their authority, anyway, even if they had agreed. Every position could be defended by at least one quotation from Ellen White. Selected Messages would be pitted against The Great Controversy. What the prophet had written in Early Writings would be quoted against something she had written in a newly-discovered letter. And since everything she wrote was inspired, it was all authoritative even when contradictory. Church history could never resolve the debates. It merely proved that both positions in all arguments had been voiced by someone before.
When I hung out with my friends who were science students, which wasn't often, it seemed they were comfortable with each other and the world. They were part of an optimistic common quest for information and mastery. In contrast to the theology students who were training for an uphill battle against all-pervasive evil, science students were training for participation in a successful humanitarian enterprise. Science was making progress and expected to continue to do so. Theology was rooted in a profound pessimism. Things were bad and getting worse. The job of pastors and evangelists was to save a few people out of the doomed world. In retrospect, no wonder the scientists were more at ease.
In theology classes, it was common for students to complain bitterly—out loud, in front of the entire class—about how hard the material was, about how excessive the reading requirements were. Frequently, before a test, someone would raise his hand and ask what was going to be on the test. They would ask which of the assigned readings they would be tested on. They were whiners. Not all of them, of course. But enough, that it made me embarrassed to be part of the group. For too many of them, academic mastery was seen as utterly irrelevant to the real work of God. They saw the work of the ministry as entirely spiritual—meaning subjective and intuitive, guided by their solipsistic reading of the Bible. The details of academic theology, Greek grammar, exegesis, and philosophy were regarded by these “spiritualists” as merely artificial hurdles erected by the professors.
By the end of March, I decided I couldn’t stand another year in the same social environment and with the same professors. I knew the teachers in a different school were likely to be no better than those at Southern, but they would be different. I wouldn’t begin classes with negative expectations or the sense that I already knew their views.
I decided to finish a religion major. It was the shortest path to graduation. And I would complete the requirements for pre-med. I signed up for organic chemistry that summer at Memphis State University and wrote to three Adventist colleges inquiring how long it would take to graduate if I transferred. Andrews University in southwestern Michigan responded it would take two full years to finish my degree. Walla Walla College in Washington wrote back saying they could not offer a good estimate of how long it would take. But they would be happy to consider me if I were to apply. After I was accepted they would figure out what was needed for graduation. Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley said I could likely finish in a year and a summer.
So I wrote PUC saying I would like to come. My mother was thrilled. She had attended there for two years and had fond memories of the campus nestled among the pines. But weeks passed and I heard nothing. Finally in mid August, I told my mother, “If I don’t hear something by the end of this week, I’m going to have to do something else.”
On Friday, in the mail was an envelope from PUC. No postage, no postmark, unsealed. My registration packet. It was the sign I wanted. I bought a ticket to Oakland.
Church history was exhilarating. The prof was a newly minted Ph. D. determined to stuff us with information. His tests were ridiculously broad. If I remember right, one of the questions on the final was something like: Write the history of the Christian Church from 500 to 1200 A.D. His lectures, the assigned reading and the class discussions brought the story of the church alive. The people, the theological disputes, the cycles of institutional formation, decline and reform all were surprisingly familiar. They offered a revealing mirror in which to inspect our world, the Adventist world, which I had always understood to be a unique endtime movement with unique problems and unique duties.
One of the “new things” on campus was a thirteen-week course in prayer called “The Positive Way.” It wasn't part of the formal curriculum, but it was spearheaded by a popular religion professor, Ed Zackrison and endorsed by most of the student spiritual leaders. By the time I got back from my adventures in New York and the Middle East, it had become the most visible expression of corporate zeal and piety.
My friend, Bill Shelly, urged me to enroll. Still, I was reluctant. It sounded too formulaic, a little too magical. But how could I sit out a program that promised to bring people to a whole new level of engagement with God? So I enrolled.
The class sessions included both teaching about the theory of prayer and testimonies from participants about their experiences in prayer during the previous week. We were assigned readings on prayer and specific prayer practices. Each participant was partnered with a sponsor, someone who had previously completed the class. You met with your sponsor once a week in addition to attending the group meeting.
The class content offered repeated, strong affirmations of God's affectionate regard for all us. Salvation was not difficult. God was not hard to please. As evidence of this God gave us many promises which we could claim in prayer with full expectation that he would give us what we asked.
In group sessions, students told stories of facing daunting examinations, certain they would fail. In prayer, they claimed the promise in James, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth liberally and upbraideth not.” Sure enough, they aced the test.
Relationship troubles, money troubles, sickness—all responded to the mighty power of prayer. Every group session featured accounts of amazing divine intervention in the lives of the class participants. I didn't have any stories to share. I wondered what made the difference.
My sponsor was someone I had gone to school with for a couple years back in grade school. He was a nice guy who didn't know much about the Bible. A serious interest in religion and spiritual life was fairly new to him. For each of our weekly sessions, he had a list of questions he was supposed to ask me. He asked them. I answered. It felt awkward. I had all sorts of questions about prayer I would have liked to explore, but I had no interest in dampening his enthusiasm. So we kept our appointments, while the whole thing felt increasingly unreal.
My own piety was no less intense for all this failure to experience tangible answers to prayer. I still prayed and read my Bible every morning, chasing a sense of intimacy with God, hoping for a sense of divine approval. I was outspoken in classroom and after-class debates. I vigorously advocated the primacy of grace. I seconded Venden's arguments that we are saved by relationship not by behavior. I read the mystics Johann Tauler, Meister Eckhart, Nicolas of Cusa and was both enthralled and tormented by their writing. I desperately wanted to experience for myself the kind of intimacy with God they described.
But peace and tranquility never came. At least not for more than a few minutes at a time.
I remember one Friday night coming back to the room from the evening meeting. I knelt by my bed and prayed silently. (Bill was asleep in the top bunk.) My praying was an inarticulate, desperate longing for God's affirmation. After a long time of futile praying I lay on the floor, still wearing my tie and tweed jacket, exhausted but too agitated with unfulfilled spiritual longing to go to bed. Going to bed would have been an admission that I was okay, that life could go on. But I was not okay. Life in the condition I was in was not acceptable. I was frustrated with God. But that was not allowed, so I was frustrated with myself. Eventually I fell asleep on the floor where I remained for the night.
That night was not particularly dramatic. The room was reasonably warm. I felt asleep on a carpet not on a bed of nails. But it epitomized the experiential vacuum hiding behind my voluble theologizing. I had opinions, strong opinions. I loved to preach. I led small groups. I found keen satisfaction in talking with others who struggled with spiritual alienation and confusion. Occasionally, I could see people relax as we talked. Somehow my words were helpful to them. But I was a pipe unwet by the water I carried,
I began again to question my call to the ministry. I was doing well in my classes. I enjoyed theology and philosophy. Greek was interesting. I took an American Lit class that focused especially on Emmerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne. All of them evinced a strong ethical vision. Thoreau's and Emmerson's vague pantheism was alluring. It was a view of God that invited wonder and contemplation and made theological disputation appear petty and maybe even irrelevant.
I was increasingly put off by the culture of the theological student community. We argued about everything. The meaning of this or that particular passage. The proper emphasis to be given to a particular point of doctrine in the overall life of the church. We debated the best methods of leading churches, about the proper role of paid clergy versus empowering the laity, the proper interpretive role of Ellen White in biblical studies.
There was no method for ending the arguments. If I appealed to Luther, my sparring partner could appeal to Carlstadt. If I cited Calvin, he could reference Armenius. Councils contradicted each other, and Adventists denied their authority, anyway, even if they had agreed. Every position could be defended by at least one quotation from Ellen White. Selected Messages would be pitted against The Great Controversy. What the prophet had written in Early Writings would be quoted against something she had written in a newly-discovered letter. And since everything she wrote was inspired, it was all authoritative even when contradictory. Church history could never resolve the debates. It merely proved that both positions in all arguments had been voiced by someone before.
When I hung out with my friends who were science students, which wasn't often, it seemed they were comfortable with each other and the world. They were part of an optimistic common quest for information and mastery. In contrast to the theology students who were training for an uphill battle against all-pervasive evil, science students were training for participation in a successful humanitarian enterprise. Science was making progress and expected to continue to do so. Theology was rooted in a profound pessimism. Things were bad and getting worse. The job of pastors and evangelists was to save a few people out of the doomed world. In retrospect, no wonder the scientists were more at ease.
In theology classes, it was common for students to complain bitterly—out loud, in front of the entire class—about how hard the material was, about how excessive the reading requirements were. Frequently, before a test, someone would raise his hand and ask what was going to be on the test. They would ask which of the assigned readings they would be tested on. They were whiners. Not all of them, of course. But enough, that it made me embarrassed to be part of the group. For too many of them, academic mastery was seen as utterly irrelevant to the real work of God. They saw the work of the ministry as entirely spiritual—meaning subjective and intuitive, guided by their solipsistic reading of the Bible. The details of academic theology, Greek grammar, exegesis, and philosophy were regarded by these “spiritualists” as merely artificial hurdles erected by the professors.
By the end of March, I decided I couldn’t stand another year in the same social environment and with the same professors. I knew the teachers in a different school were likely to be no better than those at Southern, but they would be different. I wouldn’t begin classes with negative expectations or the sense that I already knew their views.
I decided to finish a religion major. It was the shortest path to graduation. And I would complete the requirements for pre-med. I signed up for organic chemistry that summer at Memphis State University and wrote to three Adventist colleges inquiring how long it would take to graduate if I transferred. Andrews University in southwestern Michigan responded it would take two full years to finish my degree. Walla Walla College in Washington wrote back saying they could not offer a good estimate of how long it would take. But they would be happy to consider me if I were to apply. After I was accepted they would figure out what was needed for graduation. Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley said I could likely finish in a year and a summer.
So I wrote PUC saying I would like to come. My mother was thrilled. She had attended there for two years and had fond memories of the campus nestled among the pines. But weeks passed and I heard nothing. Finally in mid August, I told my mother, “If I don’t hear something by the end of this week, I’m going to have to do something else.”
On Friday, in the mail was an envelope from PUC. No postage, no postmark, unsealed. My registration packet. It was the sign I wanted. I bought a ticket to Oakland.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Chapter 18b The Gospel of Running
Chronologically, this chapter fits between chapters 18 and 19 that are already published on this blog.
The Gospel of Running
At the start of my sophomore year at Southern Missionary College (now Southern Adventist University), I was comfortably established as a theology major, so I signed up for Greek with Ronald Springett and other classes appropriate to my major.
I met Bill Shelly. I have no idea how we got acquainted. In my earliest memories, he was a striking personality. Devout, certainly, but dashing, debonair, popular, in a completely different league from me. Our becoming friends was entirely his doing. I still can't quite figure out how it happened.
Some time that fall, Bill decided we should run together. Which would be unremarkable except for the fact that I didn't run. Running was systematic misery. In high school when we were required to run a few laps around the football field, all I remembered was my ineffective flailing at the air. My body did not like running. My mind did not like running. I could not imagine running would ever be fun. Maybe for other people, for the guys I heard talking in the cafeteria about running ten miles!!! on Sunday mornings. But never for me.
Bill insisted. He dragged me out to the track and we did a couple of slow laps. Then I sat on the bleachers while he ran another four. We repeated this routine several times a week. Always at his insistence. I progressed to three laps. Then finally four. A whole mile! I was amazed at myself. I could run a whole mile! Wow! Of course, however far I ran, Bill ran another mile. But then, he was an athlete.
Late in the fall, he announced it was time to run the hills. Southern sits up against a ridge, White Oak Mountain. The first time out, I jogged maybe a third of the way up before pooping out. But running down was a blast. Bill kept me at it until I was jogging all the way to the top. Then we would leave the trail and tear down the mountain cross country. In this wild, off-trail running I could sometimes beat Bill. He was worried about spraining his ankles. I was made of rubber and didn't care.
Running became fun. No other single thing anyone has done to me or for me compares with the gift of running. I was attending a ministers' meeting when I was in my mid-fifties. During a break a young pastor asked if I wanted to go jogging with him. I protested I hadn't done any running in months and I didn't want to slow him down. He insisted, so I agreed. We ran down a hill and around a lake. His breathing sounded more labored than I expected. As we began to head back up hill, I upped the pace just a bit. He began gasping. I pushed a little harder, still feeling comfortable, taking immense pleasure in his discomfort. After a few more yards he gasped, “I'm done. You go ahead.” I did.
Having just bared my soul in the meeting about how inadequate I felt in my work, it was sweet to waste a young buck half my age running up hill after months of doing nothing.
I never figured out how to integrate the reality of the blessing of running with a theology of “justification by faith” which became the center of my thinking over the next couple of decades. In fact, I never thought the disconnect between my theology and the greatest physical blessing in my life. There is no vicarious way to receive the gifts running gives. The only way to enjoy the benefits is to embrace the discipline. Because of Bill, I endured the discipline and enjoy the benefits. In recent years as I have become a neo-legalist, running and my theology have come together. But that's getting way ahead of the story.
The Gospel of Running
At the start of my sophomore year at Southern Missionary College (now Southern Adventist University), I was comfortably established as a theology major, so I signed up for Greek with Ronald Springett and other classes appropriate to my major.
I met Bill Shelly. I have no idea how we got acquainted. In my earliest memories, he was a striking personality. Devout, certainly, but dashing, debonair, popular, in a completely different league from me. Our becoming friends was entirely his doing. I still can't quite figure out how it happened.
Some time that fall, Bill decided we should run together. Which would be unremarkable except for the fact that I didn't run. Running was systematic misery. In high school when we were required to run a few laps around the football field, all I remembered was my ineffective flailing at the air. My body did not like running. My mind did not like running. I could not imagine running would ever be fun. Maybe for other people, for the guys I heard talking in the cafeteria about running ten miles!!! on Sunday mornings. But never for me.
Bill insisted. He dragged me out to the track and we did a couple of slow laps. Then I sat on the bleachers while he ran another four. We repeated this routine several times a week. Always at his insistence. I progressed to three laps. Then finally four. A whole mile! I was amazed at myself. I could run a whole mile! Wow! Of course, however far I ran, Bill ran another mile. But then, he was an athlete.
Late in the fall, he announced it was time to run the hills. Southern sits up against a ridge, White Oak Mountain. The first time out, I jogged maybe a third of the way up before pooping out. But running down was a blast. Bill kept me at it until I was jogging all the way to the top. Then we would leave the trail and tear down the mountain cross country. In this wild, off-trail running I could sometimes beat Bill. He was worried about spraining his ankles. I was made of rubber and didn't care.
Running became fun. No other single thing anyone has done to me or for me compares with the gift of running. I was attending a ministers' meeting when I was in my mid-fifties. During a break a young pastor asked if I wanted to go jogging with him. I protested I hadn't done any running in months and I didn't want to slow him down. He insisted, so I agreed. We ran down a hill and around a lake. His breathing sounded more labored than I expected. As we began to head back up hill, I upped the pace just a bit. He began gasping. I pushed a little harder, still feeling comfortable, taking immense pleasure in his discomfort. After a few more yards he gasped, “I'm done. You go ahead.” I did.
Having just bared my soul in the meeting about how inadequate I felt in my work, it was sweet to waste a young buck half my age running up hill after months of doing nothing.
I never figured out how to integrate the reality of the blessing of running with a theology of “justification by faith” which became the center of my thinking over the next couple of decades. In fact, I never thought the disconnect between my theology and the greatest physical blessing in my life. There is no vicarious way to receive the gifts running gives. The only way to enjoy the benefits is to embrace the discipline. Because of Bill, I endured the discipline and enjoy the benefits. In recent years as I have become a neo-legalist, running and my theology have come together. But that's getting way ahead of the story.
Chapter 29 Middle East College
It was after dark when the plane landed in Beirut. By the time I cleared customs, it was 9:00 p.m. I called the number I had been given.
“Maharbah.” I presume that's what the person said. Whatever it was, it wasn't English. They sounded sleepy. They made some more foreign sounds then went silent. I hoped they were going to find someone I could understand. After a few minutes someone who spoke a bit of English came on.
“Hello.”
“Hi, I'm John McLarty from the United States. Is this Middle East College? I was told to call this number when I arrived.”
“Okay. Yes, yes. . . . the mix of Arabic and thickly accented English was beyond me. I thought I understood the words, “Somebody come.”
I hung up and sat on my suitcase. Eventually Bjorn Storfjell, one of the religion teachers showed up. We drove to the college. He woke the men’s dean who showed me to a room on the second floor. There were four beds. One was empty.
“Get some sleep,” the dean whispered. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
The view from the college out over the city was breathtaking. In January, 1973, Beirut was still outwardly the Paris of the Middle East, cosmopolitan, wealthy, inviting. My roommates were a Nigerian, a Finn and a Ugandan.
The Nigerian was married. An educator, he had left his wife and son to come to MEC to get his degree so he could return to his country to improve Adventist education there. He did not have enough money to go back and forth during breaks. He would see his wife in five years after he completed his masters. His devotion to education astonished me. He'd sit on his bed in the evening, reading over letters from home, his homesickness and longing almost palpable. What kind of world fueled that kind of devotion to education? What kind of person made those kinds of choices?
The Finn was a tall, quiet guy. He hung out with a couple of Norwegians, all of them comfortably supported by government scholarships. We did field trips together and traveled together on holidays.
My Ugandan roommate was ethnically Indian. The previous August, his family, along with other Asians, had been expelled from Uganda by Edi Amin. He was literally a man without a country. He dreamed of immigrating to the U.S., but the odds of getting a visa were remote. He asked if my dad would consider sponsoring him. I didn't know what to say.
Another friend at MEC was a theology student from Egypt. He, too, dreamed of getting to the U.S. In fact, it seemed like it was all he talked about. I was offended by his crude materialism. How could he be a theology student and remain so fixated on migrating to a place whose only appeals were greater ease, comfort and wealth? After we got better acquainted, I challenged him. “Why are you so determined to leave your own country and go to the United States? You know the Egyptian language and culture. You can be far more effective representing Jesus to your people than any Westerner could ever be. Why don't you focus on taking the gospel to the people of Egypt?”
He responded with a single question: “Where are you going when school is over?”
He said it with a smile apparently forgiving my crass insensitivity. Still I was stung to silence. What could I say? My sermon to him about the nobility and value of sacrificial service cost me nothing. Living it would cost him dearly.
The meager resources and narrowed choices available to my friends from developing countries haunted me then (and now, when I stop to think about it). The gulf between their world and my privilege state is inconceivable. How can one ever measure up to the enormous responsibilities implied by such privilege?
I took Old Testament from Jack Bohannon, archeology and Greek from Storfjell, Western civilization and church history from Baldour Pfeiffer, and Islam from Jack Darnell. Darnell was legendary. He was so immersed in the culture of the Middle East, he walked like an Arab. He had an astonishing memory. Not long before I arrived on campus, so other students told me, he had spent three weeks on an itinerary through eight countries. At the mission committee meeting when he returned, he gave a ninety-minute, day-by-day, interview-by-interview report without any notes. Darnell evinced deep appreciation for Mohammed and Islam. He saw both the prophet and the religion as essentially good, though flawed. As I remember it, his theory was that Mohammed had actually received visions from God. He was called by God to deliver a prophetic message, however, like Balaam he was unfaithful to his calling, perhaps through the seductive influence of power that his prophetic gift brought into his life.
Taking archeology was an obvious choice. Our frequent field trips took us to sites all over Lebanon.
In history, Dr. Pfeiffer pushed us hard. He knew his material. He expected us to know ours, to be fully conversant with everything in the textbook and outside reading. He taught dialogically, quizzing us, debating with us, pitting our ideas against each other. His exams, in typical German fashion, were essays. When I got my first test back, I was disappointed. A B-. From class discussions, I knew I was one of the top students in the class. Another American in the class who was not academically inclined got the same grade I did. How could that be? I went and protested my grade to Dr. Pfeiffer—without mentioning the other student, of course. What did I have to do to get an A on his test? Dr. Pfeiffer ripped my essays, giving very specific criticisms. My problem was not an incorrect facts but sloppy, ineffective writing. His negative evaluations stung, but I couldn't argue with his observations. They were right on.
The next test I got a B. I went back to Dr. Pfeiffer. Again, he gave me pointed, detailed criticism. It was the same on all of the tests. Once, he gave me an A-, the rest of the time, he gave me B's. I studied and studied. I tried to remember his criticisms as I wrote my essays. To no avail. On the final test, he gave me an A, and gave me a solid A for the term. He later explained that if he had given me an A earlier I would have quit pushing for greater competence. He knew I could better.
Dr. Pfeiffer's academic competence was intimidating. His spiritual life was intriguing. I remember his mentioning off hand that he was reading The Imitation of Christ with his family for worship. [The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis is a classic of medieval spirituality written by a monk.] Wow, that impressed me and perplexed me. I was impressed he would share with his family a classic of Western Christian spirituality. I was already moving beyond the notion that anything Catholic was evil. I growing in my appreciation for the long history of Christian spiritual life. Still, I was a little perplexed by his choice of a Catholic writer instead of an Adventist for “worship.” If I were going to read a Kempis, I would do it at some other time than during morning worship. It would be “extra-curricular reading” not the heart of my devotions.
Dr. Pfeiffer further unsettled my faith by his answer to a question I had about the interpretation of a phrase in Ellen White. I wanted to know what she meant when she wrote, “the pardoned soul goes on from grace to grace.” Did this mean the person experienced more and more grace? A different kind of grace? Did it mean the person entered grace and then was accompanied by it through all stages of growth? Just what exactly was Mrs. White trying to say?
Dr. Pfeiffer said, “I don't know. Ellen White was not a systematic theologian. She was using this phrase the way a poet uses language. She was evoking a meaning. So I can't tell you 'exactly' what she meant. I don't think anyone can. Her words here do not have an 'exact' meaning.”
His words made immediate sense cognitively. But they were deeply disturbing. If Ellen White was God's messenger to the remnant, how could it be that her words did not all have an explicit, unmistakable, denotative meaning. This idea that some of her writing was “poetic,” that it evoked rather than denoted meaning . . . this hinted at far more subjectivity in the interpretation of our prophet's writings than I was prepared to accept. But how could I argue? “From grace to grace” certainly made more sense as poetry than as a formal theological statement.
In the spring, after the rain, when the flowers were out and the weather warmed, war broke out. The Lebanese army against the Palestinians. One of the major Palestinian refugee camps was at the bottom of the hill below the school. We watched as Lebanese air force jets screamed over the city and swooped to bomb and strafe the camp.
Public sympathy on campus among the larger groups—Iranians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Americans, Europeans—was solidly with the Lebanese military. As the planes whirled and dived on the camp a large group of students watched from the front lawn and cheered the explosions. Sigve Tonstad, a Norwegian, and I finally ran among them protesting, “Don’t you realize there are people in those buildings? Mothers and children are being killed by those bombs.”
We didn't change anyone's political sympathies, but the cheering stopped.
After a couple of weeks the fighting died down enough for classes to resume. I finished the year and headed home.
“Maharbah.” I presume that's what the person said. Whatever it was, it wasn't English. They sounded sleepy. They made some more foreign sounds then went silent. I hoped they were going to find someone I could understand. After a few minutes someone who spoke a bit of English came on.
“Hello.”
“Hi, I'm John McLarty from the United States. Is this Middle East College? I was told to call this number when I arrived.”
“Okay. Yes, yes. . . . the mix of Arabic and thickly accented English was beyond me. I thought I understood the words, “Somebody come.”
I hung up and sat on my suitcase. Eventually Bjorn Storfjell, one of the religion teachers showed up. We drove to the college. He woke the men’s dean who showed me to a room on the second floor. There were four beds. One was empty.
“Get some sleep,” the dean whispered. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
The view from the college out over the city was breathtaking. In January, 1973, Beirut was still outwardly the Paris of the Middle East, cosmopolitan, wealthy, inviting. My roommates were a Nigerian, a Finn and a Ugandan.
The Nigerian was married. An educator, he had left his wife and son to come to MEC to get his degree so he could return to his country to improve Adventist education there. He did not have enough money to go back and forth during breaks. He would see his wife in five years after he completed his masters. His devotion to education astonished me. He'd sit on his bed in the evening, reading over letters from home, his homesickness and longing almost palpable. What kind of world fueled that kind of devotion to education? What kind of person made those kinds of choices?
The Finn was a tall, quiet guy. He hung out with a couple of Norwegians, all of them comfortably supported by government scholarships. We did field trips together and traveled together on holidays.
My Ugandan roommate was ethnically Indian. The previous August, his family, along with other Asians, had been expelled from Uganda by Edi Amin. He was literally a man without a country. He dreamed of immigrating to the U.S., but the odds of getting a visa were remote. He asked if my dad would consider sponsoring him. I didn't know what to say.
Another friend at MEC was a theology student from Egypt. He, too, dreamed of getting to the U.S. In fact, it seemed like it was all he talked about. I was offended by his crude materialism. How could he be a theology student and remain so fixated on migrating to a place whose only appeals were greater ease, comfort and wealth? After we got better acquainted, I challenged him. “Why are you so determined to leave your own country and go to the United States? You know the Egyptian language and culture. You can be far more effective representing Jesus to your people than any Westerner could ever be. Why don't you focus on taking the gospel to the people of Egypt?”
He responded with a single question: “Where are you going when school is over?”
He said it with a smile apparently forgiving my crass insensitivity. Still I was stung to silence. What could I say? My sermon to him about the nobility and value of sacrificial service cost me nothing. Living it would cost him dearly.
The meager resources and narrowed choices available to my friends from developing countries haunted me then (and now, when I stop to think about it). The gulf between their world and my privilege state is inconceivable. How can one ever measure up to the enormous responsibilities implied by such privilege?
I took Old Testament from Jack Bohannon, archeology and Greek from Storfjell, Western civilization and church history from Baldour Pfeiffer, and Islam from Jack Darnell. Darnell was legendary. He was so immersed in the culture of the Middle East, he walked like an Arab. He had an astonishing memory. Not long before I arrived on campus, so other students told me, he had spent three weeks on an itinerary through eight countries. At the mission committee meeting when he returned, he gave a ninety-minute, day-by-day, interview-by-interview report without any notes. Darnell evinced deep appreciation for Mohammed and Islam. He saw both the prophet and the religion as essentially good, though flawed. As I remember it, his theory was that Mohammed had actually received visions from God. He was called by God to deliver a prophetic message, however, like Balaam he was unfaithful to his calling, perhaps through the seductive influence of power that his prophetic gift brought into his life.
Taking archeology was an obvious choice. Our frequent field trips took us to sites all over Lebanon.
In history, Dr. Pfeiffer pushed us hard. He knew his material. He expected us to know ours, to be fully conversant with everything in the textbook and outside reading. He taught dialogically, quizzing us, debating with us, pitting our ideas against each other. His exams, in typical German fashion, were essays. When I got my first test back, I was disappointed. A B-. From class discussions, I knew I was one of the top students in the class. Another American in the class who was not academically inclined got the same grade I did. How could that be? I went and protested my grade to Dr. Pfeiffer—without mentioning the other student, of course. What did I have to do to get an A on his test? Dr. Pfeiffer ripped my essays, giving very specific criticisms. My problem was not an incorrect facts but sloppy, ineffective writing. His negative evaluations stung, but I couldn't argue with his observations. They were right on.
The next test I got a B. I went back to Dr. Pfeiffer. Again, he gave me pointed, detailed criticism. It was the same on all of the tests. Once, he gave me an A-, the rest of the time, he gave me B's. I studied and studied. I tried to remember his criticisms as I wrote my essays. To no avail. On the final test, he gave me an A, and gave me a solid A for the term. He later explained that if he had given me an A earlier I would have quit pushing for greater competence. He knew I could better.
Dr. Pfeiffer's academic competence was intimidating. His spiritual life was intriguing. I remember his mentioning off hand that he was reading The Imitation of Christ with his family for worship. [The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis is a classic of medieval spirituality written by a monk.] Wow, that impressed me and perplexed me. I was impressed he would share with his family a classic of Western Christian spirituality. I was already moving beyond the notion that anything Catholic was evil. I growing in my appreciation for the long history of Christian spiritual life. Still, I was a little perplexed by his choice of a Catholic writer instead of an Adventist for “worship.” If I were going to read a Kempis, I would do it at some other time than during morning worship. It would be “extra-curricular reading” not the heart of my devotions.
Dr. Pfeiffer further unsettled my faith by his answer to a question I had about the interpretation of a phrase in Ellen White. I wanted to know what she meant when she wrote, “the pardoned soul goes on from grace to grace.” Did this mean the person experienced more and more grace? A different kind of grace? Did it mean the person entered grace and then was accompanied by it through all stages of growth? Just what exactly was Mrs. White trying to say?
Dr. Pfeiffer said, “I don't know. Ellen White was not a systematic theologian. She was using this phrase the way a poet uses language. She was evoking a meaning. So I can't tell you 'exactly' what she meant. I don't think anyone can. Her words here do not have an 'exact' meaning.”
His words made immediate sense cognitively. But they were deeply disturbing. If Ellen White was God's messenger to the remnant, how could it be that her words did not all have an explicit, unmistakable, denotative meaning. This idea that some of her writing was “poetic,” that it evoked rather than denoted meaning . . . this hinted at far more subjectivity in the interpretation of our prophet's writings than I was prepared to accept. But how could I argue? “From grace to grace” certainly made more sense as poetry than as a formal theological statement.
In the spring, after the rain, when the flowers were out and the weather warmed, war broke out. The Lebanese army against the Palestinians. One of the major Palestinian refugee camps was at the bottom of the hill below the school. We watched as Lebanese air force jets screamed over the city and swooped to bomb and strafe the camp.
Public sympathy on campus among the larger groups—Iranians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Americans, Europeans—was solidly with the Lebanese military. As the planes whirled and dived on the camp a large group of students watched from the front lawn and cheered the explosions. Sigve Tonstad, a Norwegian, and I finally ran among them protesting, “Don’t you realize there are people in those buildings? Mothers and children are being killed by those bombs.”
We didn't change anyone's political sympathies, but the cheering stopped.
After a couple of weeks the fighting died down enough for classes to resume. I finished the year and headed home.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Chapter 28 In the Closet
Through the summer Ruth spent more time at the Center. She and I teased Colin about Anna, a single woman who worked for the Nurse’s Registry. We had tried to get him interested in other women occasionally, but Anna lived in the building. She worked there. She was available. She was nice. Why didn’t he take her out? Sometimes he acted a little sore at our teasing. But we didn’t stop.
By late September, I have given in to Ruth’s allure. She was my girlfriend. In October, I returned to the apartment on a Sunday evening after spending the day with Ruth. Colin, as usual, wanted to hear about my day. He was always cheering us on.
I asked him about Anna again. Why didn’t he date her . . . or someone? “You’re always talking about how nice it would be to have a woman in your life, why don’t you do something about it? It’s not like there aren’t any available women. If you’re not interested in Anna, what about Pauline or Linda?”
He didn’t answer immediately. When he did, he spoke with uncharacteristic hesitancy. “Listen, Johnny, I think it’s time to tell you why I’m single. Why I don’t date Anna or Emily or Pauline. I don’t want to hurt them. It just wouldn’t work out.
“When I was growing up in England, my mother was very strong. She ran my dad around like he was a child. And, of course, polio strongly affected my sense of who I was. I couldn’t compete with the other kids physically, so I became a voracious reader. I got into the occult.
“Then I saw an advertisement for some a lecture on flying saucers. I went and was shocked to discover that it was a religious meeting. But I got hooked and I attended every meeting. My parents didn’t have any particular religion so they didn’t mind when I decided to get baptized.
“I loved the prophecies and learning about God. But even as I was getting more and more involved in church, I was troubled by the growing realization that I did not like women the way other boys did.
“The preacher at our church encouraged me to go to Newbold College. He said that was the place to meet nice Adventist girls. So I went. And I went out with girls there, very nice girls. I even kissed a few of them. But there was nothing in my heart that responded.
“I talked with one of the religion professors. He told me to just find a nice girl who played the piano and marry her and everything would work out in time. I tried. I dated one girl for over a year, but as much as I enjoyed her as a friend, I just could not see being married to her.
“After I graduated from Newbold, I worked as a pastor for a few years, then came to Andrews to get my masters. There, I really faced this thing. I fasted and prayed. I had friends who fasted and prayed with me. One time I felt this utter confidence that God was going to heal me. I asked to be a anointed. In preparation, I spent a week fasting and praying. The anointing was held on Friday night. I had a girlfriend. She was there. Three seminary professors and several of my classmates participated. We spent an hour praying before they finally anointed me and claimed God’s promises of transformation and new life.
“I went to bed utterly euphoric.
“I picked up Wanda the next morning and we went to church together. The whole world was bright. I was healed. I was normal. I was a heterosexual. At the end of the day I kissed her. It was wonderful.
“But a couple of weeks later the old feelings were back. Wanda begged me not to worry about it. We could work on it together, she insisted. But it just wasn’t right to marry someone you didn’t have feelings for. I mean sexual desire. She was sweet. I liked her. But it just wasn’t there.
“Later at Andrews a group performed an exorcism on me. They believed homosexual impulses were a form of demon possession. Again, for a couple of weeks, I felt different. But it didn’t last.
“So I’m committed to a life of celibacy–unless God heals me. I still pray every day to be changed. But there you have it old boy. That’s why I don’t date Anna. That’s why I get upset when you and Ruth tease me.”
I was stunned. What would it be like to be trapped in a prison like that? I was mad at God for all the conflict I felt over Ruth, but that was just because she was the wrong race and this was the wrong time in my life for a serious relationship. What would it be like to know you could never have a wife? Never have someone to sleep with, have sex with, raise a family with, grow old with?
I had prayed for a bicycle, and money miraculously showed up. Colin prayed for healing from homosexuality. He fasted and prayed. He was anointed. He had an exorcism. He had tried everything imaginable to obtain God’s power to change so he could live the life God wanted him to live. And it didn’t work. Why would God condemn people for something there was no healing for?
I had picked up from church culture the assumption that homosexuals were people who made bad choices. Just like alcoholics or smokers. They might have a hard time altering their behavior, but if they would simply choose to do the right thing, they could. Of course, like all temptations, homosexual temptation could be resisted only with the help of God. But certainly that help was available. Now, I couldn’t be so sure. God didn’t show up to help Colin.
I didn’t know where this left the Bible’s bold claims. It talked glibly about God’s power. “No temptation has befallen you, except what is common to all men. And God will, with the temptation, make available a way of escape.” “God is at work in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
I knew my moral failures were my own fault. I had no excuse. I simply made bad choices–choices that were not inevitable, choices that could have been different if I had taken more time to pray and read my Bible. Listening to Colin, I could not imagine what more he could have done. If that was true, how could I as a preacher stand up and tell people about the power of God, when apparently it did not work in the lives of homosexuals?
I flew home for Christmas, then returned to New York for a weekend before leaving for Middle East College in Beirut, Lebanon.
Going to MEC was a lark. In September, someone had stayed at the Center for a couple of days to visit a girl who worked there. He was an American, returning for a second year at MEC. He loved it. Said it was easy to get accepted and easy to transfer credits back to Adventist colleges in the U.S. Why didn't I come when my year at the Center was up in December. Sure. Why not?
On Sunday of that last weekend back in New York, as Ruth and I were walking east on 46th Street away from The Center toward Avenue of the Americas to catch the “Train to the Plane,” the subway/bus system connecting Manhattan and JFK Airport, we met Benny coming toward us. He was drunk and wanted to talk. I explained I had a plane to catch. I couldn’t talk now. He shifted back and forth across the sidewalk determined to keep us from passing. I called to a policeman who happened to be standing not far away.
“Officer, can you help us?”
“What’s the trouble?”
“This guy won’t let us walk down the sidewalk. I’ve got a plane to catch.”
“You want me to arrest you?” The policeman challenged Benny sharply. “Get over against that wall.”
“But officer . . .”
“Shut up and get over against that wall.” Benny complied.
I thanked the policeman and we continued east. A minute later I looked back. Benny was staggering toward Times Square.
I first met Benny when he was newly arrived from Alabama, the son of a southern Pentecostal preacher. No job, but determined to find one and make a new life for himself far away from the stifling world of his childhood. He had attended Bible studies in the Ark occasionally. Then he started coming in drunk. After that I’d meet him on the street occasionally, obviously drunk, apparently homeless. Nothing I could say had the slightest affect on his addiction.
Other people could tell their stories of God’s miraculous intervention. They could talk about times when God clearly broke through and demonstrated his power through them. I remembered someone telling me about an Adventist preacher who took seriously our prophet's counsel about personal involvement with the unfortunate. This preacher took a homeless alcoholic into his home. Had the man accompany him everywhere he went–to conference committee meetings, to preaching appointments. Eventually, the man got his life straightened out, got a job, returned to his estranged wife.
The best I could do was witness a tragic slide into oblivion.
At JFK, I checked in, then Ruth and I walked out to the gate. We sat, holding hands, waiting for my flight to start boarding, already feeling the ache of separation.
By late September, I have given in to Ruth’s allure. She was my girlfriend. In October, I returned to the apartment on a Sunday evening after spending the day with Ruth. Colin, as usual, wanted to hear about my day. He was always cheering us on.
I asked him about Anna again. Why didn’t he date her . . . or someone? “You’re always talking about how nice it would be to have a woman in your life, why don’t you do something about it? It’s not like there aren’t any available women. If you’re not interested in Anna, what about Pauline or Linda?”
He didn’t answer immediately. When he did, he spoke with uncharacteristic hesitancy. “Listen, Johnny, I think it’s time to tell you why I’m single. Why I don’t date Anna or Emily or Pauline. I don’t want to hurt them. It just wouldn’t work out.
“When I was growing up in England, my mother was very strong. She ran my dad around like he was a child. And, of course, polio strongly affected my sense of who I was. I couldn’t compete with the other kids physically, so I became a voracious reader. I got into the occult.
“Then I saw an advertisement for some a lecture on flying saucers. I went and was shocked to discover that it was a religious meeting. But I got hooked and I attended every meeting. My parents didn’t have any particular religion so they didn’t mind when I decided to get baptized.
“I loved the prophecies and learning about God. But even as I was getting more and more involved in church, I was troubled by the growing realization that I did not like women the way other boys did.
“The preacher at our church encouraged me to go to Newbold College. He said that was the place to meet nice Adventist girls. So I went. And I went out with girls there, very nice girls. I even kissed a few of them. But there was nothing in my heart that responded.
“I talked with one of the religion professors. He told me to just find a nice girl who played the piano and marry her and everything would work out in time. I tried. I dated one girl for over a year, but as much as I enjoyed her as a friend, I just could not see being married to her.
“After I graduated from Newbold, I worked as a pastor for a few years, then came to Andrews to get my masters. There, I really faced this thing. I fasted and prayed. I had friends who fasted and prayed with me. One time I felt this utter confidence that God was going to heal me. I asked to be a anointed. In preparation, I spent a week fasting and praying. The anointing was held on Friday night. I had a girlfriend. She was there. Three seminary professors and several of my classmates participated. We spent an hour praying before they finally anointed me and claimed God’s promises of transformation and new life.
“I went to bed utterly euphoric.
“I picked up Wanda the next morning and we went to church together. The whole world was bright. I was healed. I was normal. I was a heterosexual. At the end of the day I kissed her. It was wonderful.
“But a couple of weeks later the old feelings were back. Wanda begged me not to worry about it. We could work on it together, she insisted. But it just wasn’t right to marry someone you didn’t have feelings for. I mean sexual desire. She was sweet. I liked her. But it just wasn’t there.
“Later at Andrews a group performed an exorcism on me. They believed homosexual impulses were a form of demon possession. Again, for a couple of weeks, I felt different. But it didn’t last.
“So I’m committed to a life of celibacy–unless God heals me. I still pray every day to be changed. But there you have it old boy. That’s why I don’t date Anna. That’s why I get upset when you and Ruth tease me.”
I was stunned. What would it be like to be trapped in a prison like that? I was mad at God for all the conflict I felt over Ruth, but that was just because she was the wrong race and this was the wrong time in my life for a serious relationship. What would it be like to know you could never have a wife? Never have someone to sleep with, have sex with, raise a family with, grow old with?
I had prayed for a bicycle, and money miraculously showed up. Colin prayed for healing from homosexuality. He fasted and prayed. He was anointed. He had an exorcism. He had tried everything imaginable to obtain God’s power to change so he could live the life God wanted him to live. And it didn’t work. Why would God condemn people for something there was no healing for?
I had picked up from church culture the assumption that homosexuals were people who made bad choices. Just like alcoholics or smokers. They might have a hard time altering their behavior, but if they would simply choose to do the right thing, they could. Of course, like all temptations, homosexual temptation could be resisted only with the help of God. But certainly that help was available. Now, I couldn’t be so sure. God didn’t show up to help Colin.
I didn’t know where this left the Bible’s bold claims. It talked glibly about God’s power. “No temptation has befallen you, except what is common to all men. And God will, with the temptation, make available a way of escape.” “God is at work in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
I knew my moral failures were my own fault. I had no excuse. I simply made bad choices–choices that were not inevitable, choices that could have been different if I had taken more time to pray and read my Bible. Listening to Colin, I could not imagine what more he could have done. If that was true, how could I as a preacher stand up and tell people about the power of God, when apparently it did not work in the lives of homosexuals?
I flew home for Christmas, then returned to New York for a weekend before leaving for Middle East College in Beirut, Lebanon.
Going to MEC was a lark. In September, someone had stayed at the Center for a couple of days to visit a girl who worked there. He was an American, returning for a second year at MEC. He loved it. Said it was easy to get accepted and easy to transfer credits back to Adventist colleges in the U.S. Why didn't I come when my year at the Center was up in December. Sure. Why not?
On Sunday of that last weekend back in New York, as Ruth and I were walking east on 46th Street away from The Center toward Avenue of the Americas to catch the “Train to the Plane,” the subway/bus system connecting Manhattan and JFK Airport, we met Benny coming toward us. He was drunk and wanted to talk. I explained I had a plane to catch. I couldn’t talk now. He shifted back and forth across the sidewalk determined to keep us from passing. I called to a policeman who happened to be standing not far away.
“Officer, can you help us?”
“What’s the trouble?”
“This guy won’t let us walk down the sidewalk. I’ve got a plane to catch.”
“You want me to arrest you?” The policeman challenged Benny sharply. “Get over against that wall.”
“But officer . . .”
“Shut up and get over against that wall.” Benny complied.
I thanked the policeman and we continued east. A minute later I looked back. Benny was staggering toward Times Square.
I first met Benny when he was newly arrived from Alabama, the son of a southern Pentecostal preacher. No job, but determined to find one and make a new life for himself far away from the stifling world of his childhood. He had attended Bible studies in the Ark occasionally. Then he started coming in drunk. After that I’d meet him on the street occasionally, obviously drunk, apparently homeless. Nothing I could say had the slightest affect on his addiction.
Other people could tell their stories of God’s miraculous intervention. They could talk about times when God clearly broke through and demonstrated his power through them. I remembered someone telling me about an Adventist preacher who took seriously our prophet's counsel about personal involvement with the unfortunate. This preacher took a homeless alcoholic into his home. Had the man accompany him everywhere he went–to conference committee meetings, to preaching appointments. Eventually, the man got his life straightened out, got a job, returned to his estranged wife.
The best I could do was witness a tragic slide into oblivion.
At JFK, I checked in, then Ruth and I walked out to the gate. We sat, holding hands, waiting for my flight to start boarding, already feeling the ache of separation.
Chapter 27 Times Square
I admired Colin–his fiery preaching, his bold, almost reckless forwardness in presenting himself and his ideas. But he got on my nerves in a way I could not make sense of. I couldn’t stand to have him near me, especially in the apartment. We bickered constantly. I felt guilty. It was his apartment. He was the minister. I was supposed to be helping him. I suspected I instead made his work harder. Ruth liked him. Everyone around me liked him. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me.
The immediate environment of the Center didn’t help. It was several blocks to any of the four subway stations in the area. If I wore a suit, while walking between the Center and the subway in the evening, women in tiny skirts and tight tops called out, “Want a date?” If I wore casual clothes it was not uncommon for middle aged men to walk along side me and ask if they could buy me coffee. The first time a man used this line, I was handing out fliers on the street. I was thrilled thinking he had read the flier and was interested. Here was a divine appointment, an opportunity to share my faith. We walked to a small shop in the next block. I ordered hot chocolate, which he paid for, and we sat at a table on the street talking for more than ten minutes before I realized he, too, was “looking for a date.” I was deeply embarrassed, annoyed and a little smarter.
I learned to walk with a fierce directness. It violated both my instincts and my culture. I am addicted to people. I need them to smile at me. I want to connect with them. Besides, my Southern heritage placed an enormous value on courtesy. One was always pleasant in face-to-face encounters, even if privately you despised the person you were interacting with. But in Times Square courtesy toward strangers would be misinterpreted. Eye-contact was a violation of the social contract, unless one was prepared to do business. So every time I walked from the subway to the apartment, especially in the evening, I put on an artificial brusqueness. My body language had to say, don’t touch me, don’t talk to me, don’t notice me. I hated it. At the Center, I would ride the elevator to the sixth floor and walk to the apartment hoping Colin wasn’t there. Inside, Colin would look up from his reading with his enormous eyes. “How was it old boy? Welcome home!” I would tense. He wanted conversation. I knew of no courteous way to avoid it.
There was nowhere to be at ease. No where to rest. Except with Ruth. She asked nothing. Demanded nothing. Just seemed to enjoy hanging around.
God didn’t want me to date Ruth. I was sure of that. I knew my parents would not approve of my marrying someone who wasn’t White. Besides that, I wasn’t planning to marry until after grad school and that was a long time from now. There was no way I could date someone that long. So why date someone when breaking up was inevitable? Why should I bruise someone’s heart on purpose?
So I resisted–not her. She never pushed. I was resisting my own desperate craving for connection and sweetness and warmth and beauty. I complained bitterly to God in prayer: Why dangle her in front of me and forbid me to touch her?
My pay was 175 dollars a month plus free rent. I gave twenty percent to the church and paid for my travel and food and incidentals out of what was left. Not long after I arrived, I realized I did not have a coat adequate for the New York winter. Mrs. Toby gave me one she had received from somewhere. It seemed miraculous.
In the spring, I began to think of getting a bicycle for getting around Manhattan. This would save subway fare and give me some exercise. But how was I going to afford it? I could always call home and ask for money, but that seemed like a violation of the missionary venture. So I prayed.
A couple of weeks later, I received a check for a hundred twenty dollars for work I had done more than a year earlier. I bought a used bike. It was wonderful. It opened the city for me. On the bicycle I could traverse midtown faster than a taxi. The exercise eased the stress of living with Colin and pining for Ruth.
I lived in constant depression. My daily prayer time consisted of mournful, desperate pleas to heaven for help. I wasn’t sure exactly what kind of help I needed. I prayed for evidence that I was actually in God’s service. I wanted to see people changed. I prayed for a better attitude toward Colin. I prayed about Ruth.
Late in the summer I happened to weigh myself. I had lost thirty pounds. I could afford to lose it. But the loss startled me. I must be worse off than I thought.
One afternoon in August, a friend stopped by the Center. He was depressed and discouraged. We sat and talked for a couple of hours. I see the light coming back into his eyes. He left buoyant. I dragged myself upstairs and collapsed on my bed. I could heal others but could not help myself. Where was God? I was supposed to be an evangelist. My job was to persuade others to come join us, to believe what we believed, to live the way we lived. But why would I want anyone else to join a religion that was making me miserable? Our prophet had written that the greatest form of evangelism was to tell others what Jesus had done for me. But Jesus was making me miserable.
My evangelistic duties did bring enjoyment, at times. Just a couple of blocks west of the Center were the brownstone houses of Hell’s Kitchen. Three to six story walk ups. Cracked side walks. Stoops a couple of steps up from the street. I was responsible for knocking on doors there, to invite them to The Ark, to share with them gospel literature.
People opened their doors, welcomed my visits. I reveled in the rawness of their lives, the openness of their conversation. But there were no conversions.
The immediate environment of the Center didn’t help. It was several blocks to any of the four subway stations in the area. If I wore a suit, while walking between the Center and the subway in the evening, women in tiny skirts and tight tops called out, “Want a date?” If I wore casual clothes it was not uncommon for middle aged men to walk along side me and ask if they could buy me coffee. The first time a man used this line, I was handing out fliers on the street. I was thrilled thinking he had read the flier and was interested. Here was a divine appointment, an opportunity to share my faith. We walked to a small shop in the next block. I ordered hot chocolate, which he paid for, and we sat at a table on the street talking for more than ten minutes before I realized he, too, was “looking for a date.” I was deeply embarrassed, annoyed and a little smarter.
I learned to walk with a fierce directness. It violated both my instincts and my culture. I am addicted to people. I need them to smile at me. I want to connect with them. Besides, my Southern heritage placed an enormous value on courtesy. One was always pleasant in face-to-face encounters, even if privately you despised the person you were interacting with. But in Times Square courtesy toward strangers would be misinterpreted. Eye-contact was a violation of the social contract, unless one was prepared to do business. So every time I walked from the subway to the apartment, especially in the evening, I put on an artificial brusqueness. My body language had to say, don’t touch me, don’t talk to me, don’t notice me. I hated it. At the Center, I would ride the elevator to the sixth floor and walk to the apartment hoping Colin wasn’t there. Inside, Colin would look up from his reading with his enormous eyes. “How was it old boy? Welcome home!” I would tense. He wanted conversation. I knew of no courteous way to avoid it.
There was nowhere to be at ease. No where to rest. Except with Ruth. She asked nothing. Demanded nothing. Just seemed to enjoy hanging around.
God didn’t want me to date Ruth. I was sure of that. I knew my parents would not approve of my marrying someone who wasn’t White. Besides that, I wasn’t planning to marry until after grad school and that was a long time from now. There was no way I could date someone that long. So why date someone when breaking up was inevitable? Why should I bruise someone’s heart on purpose?
So I resisted–not her. She never pushed. I was resisting my own desperate craving for connection and sweetness and warmth and beauty. I complained bitterly to God in prayer: Why dangle her in front of me and forbid me to touch her?
My pay was 175 dollars a month plus free rent. I gave twenty percent to the church and paid for my travel and food and incidentals out of what was left. Not long after I arrived, I realized I did not have a coat adequate for the New York winter. Mrs. Toby gave me one she had received from somewhere. It seemed miraculous.
In the spring, I began to think of getting a bicycle for getting around Manhattan. This would save subway fare and give me some exercise. But how was I going to afford it? I could always call home and ask for money, but that seemed like a violation of the missionary venture. So I prayed.
A couple of weeks later, I received a check for a hundred twenty dollars for work I had done more than a year earlier. I bought a used bike. It was wonderful. It opened the city for me. On the bicycle I could traverse midtown faster than a taxi. The exercise eased the stress of living with Colin and pining for Ruth.
I lived in constant depression. My daily prayer time consisted of mournful, desperate pleas to heaven for help. I wasn’t sure exactly what kind of help I needed. I prayed for evidence that I was actually in God’s service. I wanted to see people changed. I prayed for a better attitude toward Colin. I prayed about Ruth.
Late in the summer I happened to weigh myself. I had lost thirty pounds. I could afford to lose it. But the loss startled me. I must be worse off than I thought.
One afternoon in August, a friend stopped by the Center. He was depressed and discouraged. We sat and talked for a couple of hours. I see the light coming back into his eyes. He left buoyant. I dragged myself upstairs and collapsed on my bed. I could heal others but could not help myself. Where was God? I was supposed to be an evangelist. My job was to persuade others to come join us, to believe what we believed, to live the way we lived. But why would I want anyone else to join a religion that was making me miserable? Our prophet had written that the greatest form of evangelism was to tell others what Jesus had done for me. But Jesus was making me miserable.
My evangelistic duties did bring enjoyment, at times. Just a couple of blocks west of the Center were the brownstone houses of Hell’s Kitchen. Three to six story walk ups. Cracked side walks. Stoops a couple of steps up from the street. I was responsible for knocking on doors there, to invite them to The Ark, to share with them gospel literature.
People opened their doors, welcomed my visits. I reveled in the rawness of their lives, the openness of their conversation. But there were no conversions.
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