As a child, I sat upon a fence post looking out over a grassy field in the warmth of a spring sun and pondered: “What is time? It runs on like a stream; it must come from somewhere and it must go somewhere. Where did it begin, and where will it end?” The thought never occurred to me that time was infinite. Its finiteness was intuitive as its moments were separately future, then present, then past. The future was not here yet; the present was always moving, its moments slipping into the past. There was something that gave a frame to my questions, a boundary so to speak, conditional borders I would not think of going beyond. Instructed in the Bible, I considered it a final settlement on any mater; the creator of all who is personal, eternal, all powerful, and speaks to man has the obvious last word; He himself being truth made the truth. A thought that would run cross purpose to, or contradict, revealed truth needed serious re-evaluation.
I knew that God was not time, but that he had made time. I knew that God was in time, around time and beyond time at the same time as far as I was aware. I knew that he had said, “I am that I am.” Creatures can not speak like that. I knew that, “what I was” he had made so, and he holds together as such; I was finite like time. But he is different; he is infinite; he is simply God. It did seem simple; it was not complicated. I was not straining any gaskets on this; it was just an interesting train of thought.
My thoughts went from finite time to the maker of time who is eternal. I knew Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1. I know more about those passages today than I did then, but still I knew enough: I knew that in the beginning God created heaven and earth, and that the Word, who is God, created all things and then came into this world to save sinners. I knew that Christ was God, the eternal word, before he became man and that in his person he was God manifest in the flesh. I also knew that he knew all things about time, all its moments, its ends and all things between.
I didn’t know much, but I knew that he did, and that was good enough for me. I think I was 4 years old at the time, because, my sister was away at school and I had time to muse on such things; she was a year older than me. I only had another year to go before I would have to go to school too. Then a year was forever, and I was at a loss for something to do. What would become of me? What was death like? Because all things begin, all things end. How come people die? What is life like after death? Will grandma die? How long does school last? How come people have to go to school? What is life like after school? Who will make boats with me to float in the ditches when the rains come? I sensed that my creator had a reasonable plan that would unfold as he saw fit. My world was not disordered, maybe uncertain and unpleasant at times, but not out of control.
Those were the easy years. That would change. I didn’t know this at that time. There was much I had to learn about the world, myself, and my creator who became my savior. But I must say in passing, that my Sunday school teachers by opening up the Bible, not just the stories, but the great themes and truths of the Trinity, the person and work of Christ, who was both God and man, and the authority of God’s inspired and inerrant word laid a solid foundation in my soul that would under gird future construction work.
To this day my soul still sings, “On the B-I-B-L-E. Yes, that’s the book for me. I stand alone on the word of God, on the B-I-B-L-E.” What I received as a child, I now hold fast as a man. It has proved itself over the years in good times and in bad, in controversy and in mockery, in intellectual trials and in moral defections to be the fixed reference point for man made in the image of God.
Kindergarten was a turning point. My Grandmother, who had come to live with us, had walked me to the school showing me the way to go and come home, but the thought of having to do it on my own was daunting. The trepidation, as if that was not enough, was soon outclassed by the horrors of an institutional incarceration. First there was the nap time; lay your head on the table: close your eyes, be still, and be quiet. Saliva made that impossible for me, but individuality was not acceptable. At least there was the milk and cookies. But there was also the band time: go to the box and pick out an instrument and return to your seat. The first day that was done I was gracious and let the others go before me; I was left with sanding blocks, but I did notice there was a ringing triangle like in the western movies call to supper. The second day I made sure I got to the box first and got the triangle. Again not acceptable, the teacher made me give it to the girl who was only able to get sanding blocks. This was injustice. I over came the fear of the walk, but the injustice grew in oppression daily. The nail in the coffin was the first rainy day and when the teacher needed a volunteer to run a note to the office. She asked for a fast runner as if that would be the driest solution: one such could run between the rain drops. Of course I raised my hand, no one ran faster than me; she just kept looking over the class; what is wrong with her vision? I shook my raised hand to make it visible; no response. After a painful amount of time, some porky kid raised his hand, and she immediately called his name to come forward and take the note. I remember thinking she had to be really stupid, or a liar about running fast enough to not get wet in the first place. This was only the beginning of sorrows.
The only good news came with spring, summer was coming and there would be no school. Thank God summers lasted forever back then. It lifted the heart, gave hope and expectancy new vigor. The only pallor was polio vaccinations and dentist visits, mere bumps in the road. Family vacations were like Christmas; they began weeks before in the building excitement until the very last night before departure, one could not sleep for sheer excitement. The travel was painful, but you were going some where, new places, new people, adventure, and possibilities. There was freedom out there; routine does not apply, sleeping, eating, playing, even going to the bathroom, all are creatively solved as the needs arise. You could bring a favorite model airplane and hold it in the slip stream and with its propellers spinning win the air war over Europe. You could pick out a bug splatter on the window making that your gun site and rake the road with fatal fire. I found that the open window and a free hand was a ready laboratory for air foil experimentation, shape and angle of attack. There was no end to what you could do, unless you fell asleep. You can shoot a cherry pit if you pressed it in your fingers until it pops free; that gets boring in stationary settings, but in a car with an open window you are in a target rich environment. Like my parents I love cherries.
1st through 3rd grade was in the new school they built down the street a couple of blocks. There was a bully; I don’t know his name; he generally left my sister and me alone so I paid him no mind. Until the day my grandmother finished the special shirt she had made for me; being an able seamstress, she hand made it for me. It was extremely well done, like you find in the stores. The draw back was the cloth. Cotton flannel is good, but the red, orange, blue, brown, and green pattern of bird hunters with their dogs shooting pheasants against a cloudy sky was the same as the liner in my sleeping bag, or very much like it. I was as valiant as I could be in refusing to wear it to school. Grandma was not one to be trifled with, nor was she easily persuaded, and she did labor in love. I could not win. Classes were lined up waiting for teachers to unlock doors as I walked by the 4th grade wing. “Hey, the Blaine kid forgot to take off his night shirt,” rang out over all the heads and down the hall. Something snapped, my vision was tunneled and that laughing bully was the focal point. I ran to him with such force: I knocked him to the ground by a walkway pole. Grabbing a load of ear and hair in each fist I rang the pole with his head like the triangle in band. He was stunned but I could not stop. A teacher grabbed me around the waist with her right hand and hoisted me onto her hips and with her left she held up the bully by his right arm. That put his head in kicking range, and I pummeled it all the way to the principal’s office. I don’t remember how I got settled down after that, or if I got paddled or not. I wore the shirt that day; no one said any thing more, and that bully was a changed kid on the play ground for the next 2 years. The event scared me, however, as I thought about it. I literally wanted to destroy that kid; I might have killed him; I was very literally out of control. That was a first hard look at an evil in me that I was not fully aware of. I feared God’s word, “Thou shalt not kill.” The remembrance of this event made me afraid of myself. There was that in me which could not keep God’s law. I had to watch out for it, avoid it, and not let it happen again.
I knew Christ was the savior, but I did not know how lost I was. Therein lies the catch 22; I thought I could by trying harder not be bad. In time, I came to think, “Well, when I am 40, then I will give it a go.” I hadn’t failed enough yet to give up on trying harder at being good. Of course I wasn’t trying to be good very much of the time anyway; it wasn’t too much on my mind.
In 1958 the family moved out of Del Paso Heights and into the Country Club center area. It was a change of school. It was a suburban culture, less rural. Cars had 4 headlights that year. No one wore sleeveless T-shirts there. When the weather got hot I found that out. Clothes were important to these kids, T-shirts, button down collars, keds, even the make of their pants. I had never experienced that before. I was trying hard to fit in. Got into some fights, but trying so hard to fit in, I had no heart. Cowardliness is as bad as out of control, it keeps you up at night, hard to swallow. In my imagination I was quick and witty tongued, able to thrash my foes, but in daily life I was miserable. By 6th grade I had a fair standing with my peers. It all ended that fall.
They redrew the district lines and we were one street too far north for me to go to the junior high that my hard won friends went to. I wound up attending Del Paso Manor, dumb peoples mansion we called it. A tougher working class mix attended there. At the time, there was the “frat/s” and there was the “hard/s”, my friends went to the frat school, and I went off to the hard. If the one school was the seed bed for the Ivy League, the other cultivated Hell’s Angels, drug dealers, and thugs. I determined a kind of blitzkrieg strategy to be left alone: at the first inkling of adversity I would controllably lash out as if uncontrolled and by fearful measures get the message out, “Don’t tread on me.” Unfortunately it worked and I began to hang with a far more ruthless and amoral pack. The parental controls in my life keep me from fully bonding with these guys; I was not as free to run amuck as they were. I would get found out, and there were dire consequences; I feared my Dad. Never-the–less, though the nature of the in crowd changed, I was close to the centers of gravity and not mockingly off in the outer orbits. No one wants to think that they are obsequiously playing to their peers, but the shameful truth is that it is far easier to fool yourself with their pandered acceptance, than to face a Holy God. This had not come together for me yet, and I exchanged the nurturing love of my parents and family for the company of thieves whenever I could get away with it. I was exceedingly careful, though, getting caught was unacceptable. Fear is not a bad thing; frolicking on the edge of a slippery pit, it alone kept me from the destructions that ultimately claimed the bulk of my peers. I was the only one of that group to graduate from high school. They are almost all dead or in jail now. Some depart quickly; others abide a while; a few even excel in appearances and accidents, but with hallow hearts dragging their ball and chain under the reapers dark glare. Ignorance is not bliss; it is dangerous, and if not sense, then fear can protect the fool. I thank God for my dad and police, though not at that foolish time.
My parents continued to require my attendance at church, Sunday school and all. I listened, and I even learned, but I wasn’t one of them any more and did not pretend to be. The older people, I was taught to respect; my parent’s generation, the schools and the media made it easy to criticize; and my peers were never at churches. The Bible, though, was the word of God and, like my grandmother because it filled her sharp mind and tongue, was pretty much final wherever it spoke. I did not criticize it; it too much criticized me. I was good at argument, and when I wasn’t trying to suck up to peers, I found out I could dismantle more effectively with chopping words than with swinging fists. Eventually I would give up on my bad-*** pugilism and retreat into a more loquacious bohemianism. The cultural shift from the 50’s to the tune-in, turn-on, and drop-out late 60’s made that easy for me.
Damned rebellious peers on the one hand and mocked demoralized authority on the other made it treacherous to think for yourself, or for you to express your thoughts freely. Obsequious misplaced respect on the left or cowardly intimidation on the right tied my tongue. My only times of freedom were at baseball games and at the slot car tracks. All other living seemed wedged in the vice. I took to these two activities like a child sitting on a fence thinking freely, no entanglements. Baseball challenged a prowess and savvy, where slot cars challenged both those as well as a creative engineering. I had not learned yet that my real foe was myself; it was too easy to blame others.
Why it is a catch 22, not knowing how bad you really are, is because you think you can by will power, or some other attribute of your person, turn over that new leaf, walk away from those sins you love, and do what you know is right before God. And the catch is that you fail to see why it is that you can’t. I had heard the phrase, “dead in trespasses and sins,” but it did not sink in with all its hopeless, helpless connotations until April 2nd 1969. That was a ways away yet.
I went forward in a little Baptist church after an impassioned presentation of Christ going to the cross for the love of sinners. My oldest sister had gone forward a few weeks before, and she was the attention of the family in a way I had never seen. They baptized me, and I was in that spotlight for a while myself. I was instructed that if you asked Jesus into your life and wanted to be saved he would come in as he promised. I was 9 or 10, and that held, I suppose, till I was 12 or 13, the beginning of my wayward and fighting years. I did some pretty bad things, some dangerous, some just plain mean, but enough that I cried one night, “Lord, I asked you into my life, and you are not here, so I am asking you again.” I remember feeling very foolish. The catch 22 was barbed, and like a harpoon began to toss about in the disturbance ripping the wound larger. If I asked in faith, then He must be in my life: If I’m asking now as I asked then and he was not in my life, then I not only asked failingly then but now as well. How do you ask in faith? How can you know that you have? I came into one of these low points in my bohemian years as well, maybe 16 or so. This time I was in a particular jam; I won’t go into it, but to say that it was 3:00 in the morning, dark and fearful and alone in the middle of a back street trying poorly to escape total implosion. I called out to him again, same way. I felt really stupid, as before. He got me out of the jam, I suppose; because it happened. But I was the same inside. Oh, I tried for a while, but that soon lapsed. The harpoon was tearing out chunks of bloody conscience, ripping its way deeper into my bliss.
By the end of high school I was in the grove, or so I thought. I wasn’t seeking to please everyone. Those, my peers, were the upper level reprobate bohemians and my pleasant friends. That 68 graduation summer wrote stupid folly all over that pleasant picture. The lesson I learned was that there is no honor among thieves. Mutually exploiting parties with nothing but their own pleasures as their law are not honorable friends, but like wolves will turn on their pack mates should weakness, advantage, or their own appetites call for it. I watched the pack betray one more in the grove than I was and I got the lesson. Coming home that fall, I sought out an old girl friend and started going to church. I had figured after 40 maybe I’d settle down and try to walk the line. But I’d have to really be stupid to continue seeking out this sad false company. Lovers are as false as thieves; I actually was aware of this, but if we both agreed to try, perhaps that would do the trick, one special friend. Again it wasn’t too long before I found the good I would do I didn’t, and the evil that I would not, that I did. Going to church, memorizing whole passages of scripture, singing gospel songs on the road, and reading through the New Testament should count as an A1 effort. Yet right there, my inclination for wrong stood up in my face. Thank God that His good law slew me: I would have never known how worthy of death and just wrath I really was, had it not.
It was strange, but not unreal, how God brought me to turn from all my efforts to save myself and agree with his just sentence on my very self. Strange it was, for demons were involved in it. Not unreal was it, for a week prior I had attended a retreat where a missionary from South America had been the guest speaker. And the scriptures he used and the events he related were not unlike those in the gospels and acts that I had read. The first evening about 19 young men went to their barrack stacked bunks and, in great mirth, mockingly overhauled that missionary. A cork popped, and I lit them up with words. I reminded them of Christ’s experiences in the gospels and their groundless mocking. You could hear a pin drop, no more talk, and not one thing was said further on that matter. I figured the pore man was in just need of an R and R. But to mock him was to mock truth. I told them I was checking out how Christians lived and was not impressed with what I was seeing. Several people on that retreat became my dear friends, one even a pastor. At the time however, the one that became a pastor, I marked him out and predetermined to fatten his smart-alecky lip should he even address me in the glib tones he paraded around in. Never happened, and in college we were best friends. The Marine Corps changed him and something was about to change me Forever.
Two weeks later, April 1, my special friend and I read Philemon going through the NT. Looking at all the chapters in Hebrews, we decided we’d read James the next time. Spending some time in the car before I left, around 1:00 am, my friend came under a strange influence, not at all herself. She did not want to pray; her no was bizarre in the extreme. The hair on my neck stood up, but there was no thing I could do. Reduced to utter weakness, something evil and filthy was insinuating its offal into my mind. I knew I was of the same vileness as it, and that all my good works and thoughts were so much of the same stuff as it. There was a gulf that justly separated me from God, like a solid brick wall. It was the same stuff that in my adversary was so obviously filthy: that was my nature naked before God that made up that wall; I understood His holiness at that point. I figured my fate was the same as this demon, and justly so. I saw my asking Christ into my life as utter folly: He was God and I a sinner, holy and I vile. Then God sent a word into my mind “He who seeks to save his life shall loose it,” and all my effort (both good and bad) I saw was as offensive to Him, as the vilest dung. Not knowing that He would rescue me, I cried out to Him, forgive me for my asking You into this vile life, Oh Lord I can not save myself, I justly deserve this, but if You will save me, I beg You take me into Your life. The words, “but he who looses his life for my sake shall find life” were ringing in my mind. This man must die. He saved me, and I was surprised that He did it; all I could think of was: He loved me, and I understood His death particularly in my place clearly. Remembering the events witnessed in the gospels and acts, that missionary’s stories, and being overwhelmed with how Christ was not an idea but a present personal living savior, I with great urgency and simplicity commanded that demon to depart in the name of Christ; it had nothing in me any more. It left. The girl was in her right mind as well.
That was April 2nd, I had missed fools day by one hour. My fools’ day was over. I did not cleanse myself, I could not, but I was washed in the blood of the lamb. Actually, I was a sovereign grace, five point Baptist, right there at the starting gate, but wouldn’t know all that for a few years. Now I was hungry and thirsty for His word. Went home and read James; that book was alive, and I could not stop thanking God. Wow, being a Christian is not something you do; it is a thing He does to and with you, so it is sure. The catch 22 was gone; God gave me my faith, so no one could take it away; not even me. Only the Creator could recreate a sinner into a saint, a new man, and only an eternal person could satisfy an eternal wrath in a moment of time on an old rugged cross. Darkness could not do light; it can't. Death could not do life; it too can't. 2 Cor. 4:6
I knew that God was not time, but that he had made time. I knew that God was in time, around time and beyond time at the same time as far as I was aware. I knew that he had said, “I am that I am.” Creatures can not speak like that. I knew that, “what I was” he had made so, and he holds together as such; I was finite like time. But he is different; he is infinite; he is simply God. It did seem simple; it was not complicated. I was not straining any gaskets on this; it was just an interesting train of thought.
My thoughts went from finite time to the maker of time who is eternal. I knew Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1. I know more about those passages today than I did then, but still I knew enough: I knew that in the beginning God created heaven and earth, and that the Word, who is God, created all things and then came into this world to save sinners. I knew that Christ was God, the eternal word, before he became man and that in his person he was God manifest in the flesh. I also knew that he knew all things about time, all its moments, its ends and all things between.
I didn’t know much, but I knew that he did, and that was good enough for me. I think I was 4 years old at the time, because, my sister was away at school and I had time to muse on such things; she was a year older than me. I only had another year to go before I would have to go to school too. Then a year was forever, and I was at a loss for something to do. What would become of me? What was death like? Because all things begin, all things end. How come people die? What is life like after death? Will grandma die? How long does school last? How come people have to go to school? What is life like after school? Who will make boats with me to float in the ditches when the rains come? I sensed that my creator had a reasonable plan that would unfold as he saw fit. My world was not disordered, maybe uncertain and unpleasant at times, but not out of control.
Those were the easy years. That would change. I didn’t know this at that time. There was much I had to learn about the world, myself, and my creator who became my savior. But I must say in passing, that my Sunday school teachers by opening up the Bible, not just the stories, but the great themes and truths of the Trinity, the person and work of Christ, who was both God and man, and the authority of God’s inspired and inerrant word laid a solid foundation in my soul that would under gird future construction work.
To this day my soul still sings, “On the B-I-B-L-E. Yes, that’s the book for me. I stand alone on the word of God, on the B-I-B-L-E.” What I received as a child, I now hold fast as a man. It has proved itself over the years in good times and in bad, in controversy and in mockery, in intellectual trials and in moral defections to be the fixed reference point for man made in the image of God.
Kindergarten was a turning point. My Grandmother, who had come to live with us, had walked me to the school showing me the way to go and come home, but the thought of having to do it on my own was daunting. The trepidation, as if that was not enough, was soon outclassed by the horrors of an institutional incarceration. First there was the nap time; lay your head on the table: close your eyes, be still, and be quiet. Saliva made that impossible for me, but individuality was not acceptable. At least there was the milk and cookies. But there was also the band time: go to the box and pick out an instrument and return to your seat. The first day that was done I was gracious and let the others go before me; I was left with sanding blocks, but I did notice there was a ringing triangle like in the western movies call to supper. The second day I made sure I got to the box first and got the triangle. Again not acceptable, the teacher made me give it to the girl who was only able to get sanding blocks. This was injustice. I over came the fear of the walk, but the injustice grew in oppression daily. The nail in the coffin was the first rainy day and when the teacher needed a volunteer to run a note to the office. She asked for a fast runner as if that would be the driest solution: one such could run between the rain drops. Of course I raised my hand, no one ran faster than me; she just kept looking over the class; what is wrong with her vision? I shook my raised hand to make it visible; no response. After a painful amount of time, some porky kid raised his hand, and she immediately called his name to come forward and take the note. I remember thinking she had to be really stupid, or a liar about running fast enough to not get wet in the first place. This was only the beginning of sorrows.
The only good news came with spring, summer was coming and there would be no school. Thank God summers lasted forever back then. It lifted the heart, gave hope and expectancy new vigor. The only pallor was polio vaccinations and dentist visits, mere bumps in the road. Family vacations were like Christmas; they began weeks before in the building excitement until the very last night before departure, one could not sleep for sheer excitement. The travel was painful, but you were going some where, new places, new people, adventure, and possibilities. There was freedom out there; routine does not apply, sleeping, eating, playing, even going to the bathroom, all are creatively solved as the needs arise. You could bring a favorite model airplane and hold it in the slip stream and with its propellers spinning win the air war over Europe. You could pick out a bug splatter on the window making that your gun site and rake the road with fatal fire. I found that the open window and a free hand was a ready laboratory for air foil experimentation, shape and angle of attack. There was no end to what you could do, unless you fell asleep. You can shoot a cherry pit if you pressed it in your fingers until it pops free; that gets boring in stationary settings, but in a car with an open window you are in a target rich environment. Like my parents I love cherries.
1st through 3rd grade was in the new school they built down the street a couple of blocks. There was a bully; I don’t know his name; he generally left my sister and me alone so I paid him no mind. Until the day my grandmother finished the special shirt she had made for me; being an able seamstress, she hand made it for me. It was extremely well done, like you find in the stores. The draw back was the cloth. Cotton flannel is good, but the red, orange, blue, brown, and green pattern of bird hunters with their dogs shooting pheasants against a cloudy sky was the same as the liner in my sleeping bag, or very much like it. I was as valiant as I could be in refusing to wear it to school. Grandma was not one to be trifled with, nor was she easily persuaded, and she did labor in love. I could not win. Classes were lined up waiting for teachers to unlock doors as I walked by the 4th grade wing. “Hey, the Blaine kid forgot to take off his night shirt,” rang out over all the heads and down the hall. Something snapped, my vision was tunneled and that laughing bully was the focal point. I ran to him with such force: I knocked him to the ground by a walkway pole. Grabbing a load of ear and hair in each fist I rang the pole with his head like the triangle in band. He was stunned but I could not stop. A teacher grabbed me around the waist with her right hand and hoisted me onto her hips and with her left she held up the bully by his right arm. That put his head in kicking range, and I pummeled it all the way to the principal’s office. I don’t remember how I got settled down after that, or if I got paddled or not. I wore the shirt that day; no one said any thing more, and that bully was a changed kid on the play ground for the next 2 years. The event scared me, however, as I thought about it. I literally wanted to destroy that kid; I might have killed him; I was very literally out of control. That was a first hard look at an evil in me that I was not fully aware of. I feared God’s word, “Thou shalt not kill.” The remembrance of this event made me afraid of myself. There was that in me which could not keep God’s law. I had to watch out for it, avoid it, and not let it happen again.
I knew Christ was the savior, but I did not know how lost I was. Therein lies the catch 22; I thought I could by trying harder not be bad. In time, I came to think, “Well, when I am 40, then I will give it a go.” I hadn’t failed enough yet to give up on trying harder at being good. Of course I wasn’t trying to be good very much of the time anyway; it wasn’t too much on my mind.
In 1958 the family moved out of Del Paso Heights and into the Country Club center area. It was a change of school. It was a suburban culture, less rural. Cars had 4 headlights that year. No one wore sleeveless T-shirts there. When the weather got hot I found that out. Clothes were important to these kids, T-shirts, button down collars, keds, even the make of their pants. I had never experienced that before. I was trying hard to fit in. Got into some fights, but trying so hard to fit in, I had no heart. Cowardliness is as bad as out of control, it keeps you up at night, hard to swallow. In my imagination I was quick and witty tongued, able to thrash my foes, but in daily life I was miserable. By 6th grade I had a fair standing with my peers. It all ended that fall.
They redrew the district lines and we were one street too far north for me to go to the junior high that my hard won friends went to. I wound up attending Del Paso Manor, dumb peoples mansion we called it. A tougher working class mix attended there. At the time, there was the “frat/s” and there was the “hard/s”, my friends went to the frat school, and I went off to the hard. If the one school was the seed bed for the Ivy League, the other cultivated Hell’s Angels, drug dealers, and thugs. I determined a kind of blitzkrieg strategy to be left alone: at the first inkling of adversity I would controllably lash out as if uncontrolled and by fearful measures get the message out, “Don’t tread on me.” Unfortunately it worked and I began to hang with a far more ruthless and amoral pack. The parental controls in my life keep me from fully bonding with these guys; I was not as free to run amuck as they were. I would get found out, and there were dire consequences; I feared my Dad. Never-the–less, though the nature of the in crowd changed, I was close to the centers of gravity and not mockingly off in the outer orbits. No one wants to think that they are obsequiously playing to their peers, but the shameful truth is that it is far easier to fool yourself with their pandered acceptance, than to face a Holy God. This had not come together for me yet, and I exchanged the nurturing love of my parents and family for the company of thieves whenever I could get away with it. I was exceedingly careful, though, getting caught was unacceptable. Fear is not a bad thing; frolicking on the edge of a slippery pit, it alone kept me from the destructions that ultimately claimed the bulk of my peers. I was the only one of that group to graduate from high school. They are almost all dead or in jail now. Some depart quickly; others abide a while; a few even excel in appearances and accidents, but with hallow hearts dragging their ball and chain under the reapers dark glare. Ignorance is not bliss; it is dangerous, and if not sense, then fear can protect the fool. I thank God for my dad and police, though not at that foolish time.
My parents continued to require my attendance at church, Sunday school and all. I listened, and I even learned, but I wasn’t one of them any more and did not pretend to be. The older people, I was taught to respect; my parent’s generation, the schools and the media made it easy to criticize; and my peers were never at churches. The Bible, though, was the word of God and, like my grandmother because it filled her sharp mind and tongue, was pretty much final wherever it spoke. I did not criticize it; it too much criticized me. I was good at argument, and when I wasn’t trying to suck up to peers, I found out I could dismantle more effectively with chopping words than with swinging fists. Eventually I would give up on my bad-*** pugilism and retreat into a more loquacious bohemianism. The cultural shift from the 50’s to the tune-in, turn-on, and drop-out late 60’s made that easy for me.
Damned rebellious peers on the one hand and mocked demoralized authority on the other made it treacherous to think for yourself, or for you to express your thoughts freely. Obsequious misplaced respect on the left or cowardly intimidation on the right tied my tongue. My only times of freedom were at baseball games and at the slot car tracks. All other living seemed wedged in the vice. I took to these two activities like a child sitting on a fence thinking freely, no entanglements. Baseball challenged a prowess and savvy, where slot cars challenged both those as well as a creative engineering. I had not learned yet that my real foe was myself; it was too easy to blame others.
Why it is a catch 22, not knowing how bad you really are, is because you think you can by will power, or some other attribute of your person, turn over that new leaf, walk away from those sins you love, and do what you know is right before God. And the catch is that you fail to see why it is that you can’t. I had heard the phrase, “dead in trespasses and sins,” but it did not sink in with all its hopeless, helpless connotations until April 2nd 1969. That was a ways away yet.
I went forward in a little Baptist church after an impassioned presentation of Christ going to the cross for the love of sinners. My oldest sister had gone forward a few weeks before, and she was the attention of the family in a way I had never seen. They baptized me, and I was in that spotlight for a while myself. I was instructed that if you asked Jesus into your life and wanted to be saved he would come in as he promised. I was 9 or 10, and that held, I suppose, till I was 12 or 13, the beginning of my wayward and fighting years. I did some pretty bad things, some dangerous, some just plain mean, but enough that I cried one night, “Lord, I asked you into my life, and you are not here, so I am asking you again.” I remember feeling very foolish. The catch 22 was barbed, and like a harpoon began to toss about in the disturbance ripping the wound larger. If I asked in faith, then He must be in my life: If I’m asking now as I asked then and he was not in my life, then I not only asked failingly then but now as well. How do you ask in faith? How can you know that you have? I came into one of these low points in my bohemian years as well, maybe 16 or so. This time I was in a particular jam; I won’t go into it, but to say that it was 3:00 in the morning, dark and fearful and alone in the middle of a back street trying poorly to escape total implosion. I called out to him again, same way. I felt really stupid, as before. He got me out of the jam, I suppose; because it happened. But I was the same inside. Oh, I tried for a while, but that soon lapsed. The harpoon was tearing out chunks of bloody conscience, ripping its way deeper into my bliss.
By the end of high school I was in the grove, or so I thought. I wasn’t seeking to please everyone. Those, my peers, were the upper level reprobate bohemians and my pleasant friends. That 68 graduation summer wrote stupid folly all over that pleasant picture. The lesson I learned was that there is no honor among thieves. Mutually exploiting parties with nothing but their own pleasures as their law are not honorable friends, but like wolves will turn on their pack mates should weakness, advantage, or their own appetites call for it. I watched the pack betray one more in the grove than I was and I got the lesson. Coming home that fall, I sought out an old girl friend and started going to church. I had figured after 40 maybe I’d settle down and try to walk the line. But I’d have to really be stupid to continue seeking out this sad false company. Lovers are as false as thieves; I actually was aware of this, but if we both agreed to try, perhaps that would do the trick, one special friend. Again it wasn’t too long before I found the good I would do I didn’t, and the evil that I would not, that I did. Going to church, memorizing whole passages of scripture, singing gospel songs on the road, and reading through the New Testament should count as an A1 effort. Yet right there, my inclination for wrong stood up in my face. Thank God that His good law slew me: I would have never known how worthy of death and just wrath I really was, had it not.
It was strange, but not unreal, how God brought me to turn from all my efforts to save myself and agree with his just sentence on my very self. Strange it was, for demons were involved in it. Not unreal was it, for a week prior I had attended a retreat where a missionary from South America had been the guest speaker. And the scriptures he used and the events he related were not unlike those in the gospels and acts that I had read. The first evening about 19 young men went to their barrack stacked bunks and, in great mirth, mockingly overhauled that missionary. A cork popped, and I lit them up with words. I reminded them of Christ’s experiences in the gospels and their groundless mocking. You could hear a pin drop, no more talk, and not one thing was said further on that matter. I figured the pore man was in just need of an R and R. But to mock him was to mock truth. I told them I was checking out how Christians lived and was not impressed with what I was seeing. Several people on that retreat became my dear friends, one even a pastor. At the time however, the one that became a pastor, I marked him out and predetermined to fatten his smart-alecky lip should he even address me in the glib tones he paraded around in. Never happened, and in college we were best friends. The Marine Corps changed him and something was about to change me Forever.
Two weeks later, April 1, my special friend and I read Philemon going through the NT. Looking at all the chapters in Hebrews, we decided we’d read James the next time. Spending some time in the car before I left, around 1:00 am, my friend came under a strange influence, not at all herself. She did not want to pray; her no was bizarre in the extreme. The hair on my neck stood up, but there was no thing I could do. Reduced to utter weakness, something evil and filthy was insinuating its offal into my mind. I knew I was of the same vileness as it, and that all my good works and thoughts were so much of the same stuff as it. There was a gulf that justly separated me from God, like a solid brick wall. It was the same stuff that in my adversary was so obviously filthy: that was my nature naked before God that made up that wall; I understood His holiness at that point. I figured my fate was the same as this demon, and justly so. I saw my asking Christ into my life as utter folly: He was God and I a sinner, holy and I vile. Then God sent a word into my mind “He who seeks to save his life shall loose it,” and all my effort (both good and bad) I saw was as offensive to Him, as the vilest dung. Not knowing that He would rescue me, I cried out to Him, forgive me for my asking You into this vile life, Oh Lord I can not save myself, I justly deserve this, but if You will save me, I beg You take me into Your life. The words, “but he who looses his life for my sake shall find life” were ringing in my mind. This man must die. He saved me, and I was surprised that He did it; all I could think of was: He loved me, and I understood His death particularly in my place clearly. Remembering the events witnessed in the gospels and acts, that missionary’s stories, and being overwhelmed with how Christ was not an idea but a present personal living savior, I with great urgency and simplicity commanded that demon to depart in the name of Christ; it had nothing in me any more. It left. The girl was in her right mind as well.
That was April 2nd, I had missed fools day by one hour. My fools’ day was over. I did not cleanse myself, I could not, but I was washed in the blood of the lamb. Actually, I was a sovereign grace, five point Baptist, right there at the starting gate, but wouldn’t know all that for a few years. Now I was hungry and thirsty for His word. Went home and read James; that book was alive, and I could not stop thanking God. Wow, being a Christian is not something you do; it is a thing He does to and with you, so it is sure. The catch 22 was gone; God gave me my faith, so no one could take it away; not even me. Only the Creator could recreate a sinner into a saint, a new man, and only an eternal person could satisfy an eternal wrath in a moment of time on an old rugged cross. Darkness could not do light; it can't. Death could not do life; it too can't. 2 Cor. 4:6
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