My concept of God has evolved from the white- bearded old man in robes. He was in a bedroom-sized observation post up in the sky. There were windows all around so God had a 360-degree view. It was like a gondola and it was red. I didn't know the character or temperament of God. Later I saw God as this mighty and vengeful deity that would throw me into hell of I misbehaved. I feared that death would be my portal to fiery and everlasting hell.
The backdrop of my childhood belief was a town of about 10,000 people. Long trains of ore cars would held up traffic now and then. The iron ore mines were still going strong. The downtown was bustling with traffic on Friday night that you never see nowadays. Two traffic cops at the two main intersections. There were 4 pharmacies, two movie theaters, 3 hotels, 8 franchised auto dealerships, 6 grade schools, 2 high schools, 14 churches, 8 taverns and 2 supermarkets. And it snowed all the time in the winter.
Our family attended St. Paul Lutheran, just around the corner from our house. On any given Sunday the church was full of people in their Sunday best. Dad and I attended services every other week, because of Dad's work schedule. He was a pharmacist at the Walgreen store on Suffolk Street. Mom didn't attend because she thought church had become a fashion show. She would stay home, cooking Sunday dinner, but she listened to the Baptist Hour and the Lutheran Hour on the radio.
The seeds of my faith, however were in television. Just about every roof was adorned with a TV antenna. I had a great desire for TV so that I wouldn't have to go to Billy's house to watch cartoons.
Our entertainment was a Capehart radio and phonograph in an elegant mahogany cabinet with doors on the front. It was okay but didn't have the electric and dynamic appeal of TV. Dad always said, "Be patient. I'm shopping around for one and I want the most for my money."
"Are we going to get a TV soon? " The patience of an 8 year-old boy is brief. I just hung onto the faith that Dad was going to have a TV in our living room, but after a few days my faith waned.
Then one gray October day in 1955 as I was coming home after a hard day at school, I saw the antenna on our roof! I broke into a run. Now I could see Popeye, Mickey Mouse and the Three Stooges at home. It was a General Electric 21-inch black and white.
Mom liked to watch American Bandstand with the teens dancing to the just-evolving rock and roll music on channel 3 while my cartoons were on channel 6. I was frustrated, but I soon found out that Mom was too busy to sit down and watch TV for very long, but still, a 20 minute portion of American Bandstand was her coffee break show.
I became acquainted with such personalities as Jackie Gleason,(The Honeymooners), James Arness (U.S. Marshall Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke), Aaron Burr The lawer who always won in Perry Mason), Walter Cronkite(CBS news) and Captain Q (really Jack McKenna the weather man on channel 6.)
On Saturday nights I'd be watching "Gunsmoke" and I'd hear, "You better get busy with your Sunday school homework," Mom yelled from the kitchen. "You could do it any night you want then your Saturday night would be free." It was more sensibility than I could muster so on Saturday nights I opened my Bible along with the workbook. I read the text then hunted for the answers to the questions in the old or new testaments.The Bible was in the ancient King James version and from that I gathered such misunderstandings asPsalm 23 (the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want) meant that God is my shepherd and I don't want Him. There were other misunderstandings but there was a whopper that robbed me of peace and serenity and the joys that a middle school kid should have.
I had several Sunday school teachers and all of us boys liked Margaret. She was a stunning beauty, but she was teaching the junior high school group, so I was in the middle school age and Mrs. Perlberg was the teacher. She was humorless and strict. She was also ancient with deep creases and wrinkles. I imagined they had dust in them. She also wore a floral hat since women wore hats in church.
Mrs. Perlberg expedited us to come prepared. We were to speak when addressed. I thought she was also a public school teacher with her rules. She also told us to sit up straight. The forty-five minutes of class time seemed like half a day.
I wondered why Mom and Dad sent me off to Sunday school. By the end of the fifth grade I thought my chances of going to heaven were slim. I thought 'who can be good all the time.' 'I thought of spanking Miss Kemp, my fifth grade teacher at Central School when she reprimanded me for tardiness. Miss Kemp and Mrs. Perlberg could have been sisters.I asked God for forgiveness for my sinful thoughts but never felt forgiven. The Bible tells us to love our neighbor as yourself. I didn't love Miss Kemp or our neighbors. I liked them but I didn't feel mushy about them, particularly Claude, who was always crabby and never smiled or said hello. Then there was a bully next door to Claude and he bullied me in front of his friends many times. I couldn't find anything about bullies in the Bible.
Mrs. Perlberg's class took a frightening twist when we got to the topic of the unpardonable sin. I wondered how any sin can be unpardonable. The Bible said in 1John 1 "...He is faithful and just to forgive our sins."
But then there was Mark3:28-29, "Verily I say unto you all sins will be forgiven unto the sons of and blasphemies with which they shall blaspheme; but he that blasphemeth against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation." My innards turned to ice. I was not only going to hell but I would also receive eternal damnation.
My life was ruined! For eternity. When this thing hit me my mind was not there in the classroom. I was imagining what hell was like. I didn't hear the pertinent discussion.
Central School was turning into a disaster. I became inattentive, moody and withdrawn. I forgot to do homework assignments. One morning I wore my bedroom slippers under my overshoes. I ran home and put on my shoes and I got the expected lecture from Miss Kemp. I wasn't sleeping well.
Mom reacted to my hang-dog look:
"What are you worrying about now?"
"I've committed the unpardonable sin."
"Who told you that?"
"The Bible."
"For crying out loud get those cobwebs out of your head. You're enough to drive me nuts!"
I consulted Webster for meaning of what the word : "Showing a lack of reverence for God."
How reverent did I have to be. Maybe there are no degrees of reverance. Maybe it was like the status of a light switch. On or off. Maybe I was irreverent, like when I hung out with guys and we smoked and swore and talked about the birds and the bees. I'd ask God for forgiveness in silent prayer but then I'd do something else.
I crawled into a shell. I had enjoyed playing basketball with the guys at the Memorial Building, or attending Saturday matinees at the Ironwood Theatre. On spaghetti night I barely ate anything.
"What's going on, son?" Dad's vertical lines between his eyes became pronounced with care. "You've been unusually quiet the last couple of weeks."
Mom was just about to say what I had told her, but I headed her off. "I'll be OK."
"If there's something you want to talk about just get it out on the table."
"No, it's ok Dad."
"Sure?"
"Yup."
----------
Next week I was home, ill with a cold so Mom kept me home from Sunday school. Mom said it was okay to watch TV but I had to rest and stay covered up. I surfed our two channels, finding David Brinkley in a boring political discussion. Channel six had something I hadn't ever seen.
It was the Oral Roberts crusade under a huge tent. There must have been thousands in attendance, men, women and children. The hymns they sang seemed childish to me, having sung more dignified and majestic hymns at St. Paul's.
Roberts preached a sermon about salvation and he had me dangling over hell-fire. Then he was putting his hand on people who were in the throes of affliction. Some were in wheelchairs, others had cancer, and then there was this tall teen with his mother, who said her boy was eighteen and his doctor had given him six to eight months to live. He had heart failure and his lips were pale and his fingernails were blue.
Roberts asked the boy,"Do you believe that Jesus has the power to heal you?"
"Yes, I do, sir." Oral Roberts put his hand on the boy's forehead and prayed fervently.
"In the name of Jesus cast out this terminal disease and make this young man strong and hearty. Heal him o Lord! Heal him!"
The boy shouted for joy, claiming he was healed and he felt stronger already.
(I obsessed about the color of my fingernails and lips and for months.)
Then came the altar call and Oral Roberts spoke calmly on behalf of those who came forward. He recited John 3:3,5-7, and 16. "You are here because the Holy Spirit has convicted you of sin. Pray with me all of you, including those with us by television." I closed my eyes and folded my hands as I was sitting on the floor in front of the TV. Maybe this was my escape from eternal damnation.
Oral Roberts prayed a line and the audience repeated it.
"Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. I have done wrong in your sight. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. I deserve the horrors of hell but you give grace and salvation. You blot out all our sins and I now ask you into my heart, oh Jesus! Thank you Jesus! Yes thank you that I am now a child of God. Amen.
As Oral Roberts opened his eyes they were flooded with tears and he yelled,"Praise Jesus!"
Others were crying, some rejoicing, even jumping up and down. Jubilant glowing faces bore testament to their salvation. I had prayed that prayer too but I had no tears, no ecstasy. I didn't feel like jumping around. Crestfallen, I assumed that the Sinner's Prayer didn't work for me. I was still going to hell. The winter sun was brilliant and I was going to hell.
Another week passed and Dad asked if I wanted to go for a ride with him and so we drove to Hurley and the target destination which was Fino's Bar on the second block of Silver Street. We entered the back door through a long, dim corridor. It was dark in Fino's. The shoe repair shop in one corner of the bar-room was darker but the pairs of boots and shoes needing repair were still displayed. Buck Owens, a country singer was singing from the jukebox.
I climbed up a bar stool next to Dad. Dad ordered a beer and I took a bottle of Squirt, sitting there, trying to look grown up, but I wasn't tall enough to comfortably rest my elbows on the bar.
"What's got your boxers in an uproar?" Dad asked. It was noisy with the din of conversation and the Wednesday Night Fights on TV, making our conversation private.
"I'm okay," I replied uneasily.
"I've known you for all your life. I'm your Dad and I can see that something's not right. You've been quiet and withdrawn and you're not hanging out with your buddies. Whatever it is, you can tell me. That's what Dads are for.," He ended his sentence with a kindly smile.
"I think I'm going to hell."
"Why?" Dad took a sip of beer.
"It was in Sunday School a few weeks ago. There was this passage from Mark 3:28-29 about the unpardonable sin."
"What's it say?" Dad was nicely drawing me out of my shell. He also had some familiarity with the Bible.
"The sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven."
"Do you think you're guilty of this?"
I nodded.
"Tell you what. let's finish our drinks and go on home?"
Dad led me out of the long, dim corridor back to the car. It had started snowing and I cleared the snow away from the windows. I liked watching Dad drive the '54 Chevy, the way he effortlessly shifted gears.
"Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit means you have rejected the Holy Spirit. Have you done that?"
"I don't think so."
"Of course you haven't. You prayed the Sinner's Prayer. Mom told me about that. If you rejected the Holy Spirit you wouldn't even watch Oral Roberts or anything that pertains to God. You have nothing to worry about."
"I thought about what it is like to commit blasphemy. I imagined it It seemed like I had really done it.."
"That's all you did, son. Think of Jesus at times like that. He wouldn't want you to be in such pain."
As we walked through the snow in the yard Dad put his arm around my shoulder.
"No more worrying about this?"
"No more worrying," I said with the first smile on my face in a few weeks. I was glad that I had such a great and wise Dad.
"Son, you've just experienced God's grace.
-------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment