Chapter 4, Fell in Love With Christ, but...
In the fall of 1980, after learning that no amount of wine, women and song, or possessions, would bring me any genuine happiness into my life, I turned to Christ. A buddy of mine, that I'd known from years earlier when he and I were in marriages that didn't work, had also been trying my failed road to happiness. He had pretty much reached many of the same conclusions that I had, only in different ways, and had come to accept Christ at a local fundamentalist church. Shortly after he did this, he immediately started to sell me on the concept of how accepting Christ had brought him tremendous peace of mind.
Within about a month I followed suit. I had wholeheartedly joined and immediately immersed myself in the church and congregation, and began to experience a feeling of peace of mind and great comfort. I remember getting up in front of the congregation and spelling out to them, in a testimony, my past experiences that were not admirable. I also got baptized in a large dunking tank that was built into the front of the church.
About six months after I became a member, the pastor and board of directors of this 300-member church decided to have a capital funds campaign to raise money to buy additional land alongside of the church, because the congregation was growing. The pastor asked me to be in charge of the promotion committee, with the main goal of putting out a brochure to the congregation. I ended up putting out a brochure on a shoestring budget that really got the job done. In fact I even received a letter from the church's home office thanking me and recognizing my efforts. The reason I mention this is because I want you to understand that for approximately a little over a year's time, I was really immersed into this church and being a fundamentalist Christian, until...
I started having doubts about many things. The fundamentalist viewpoint about reincarnation was one of the things that always bothered me. They believe that each soul lives only once and that at the end of that soul's time on earth the soul goes to a heaven or a hell. I had a very hard time with this viewpoint, because each time I heard this rigid philosophy, there was a part of me that said, "No way!" It just never felt right, and my "knowingness" told me it wasn't the truth.
I have come to use this word, knowingness, when my senses are overwhelmed with inputs at times. Sometimes I receive a word, a sentence, a thought or train of thoughts, combined with feelings and even visions, all taking place simultaneously, while I’m totally conscious, and I have tremendous difficulty in sorting them all out. So, when I know I know something, but have difficulty explaining to myself, and others, exactly how I know something, I’ve come to use this word, knowingness, in this capacity.
This really surfaced when after being a member of this church for about a year's time, I was expected to get involved with what the church called EE — Evangelism Explosion is what they called it. It was a practice at this church where two women and a man, or two men and a woman, would go out into people's homes in the community to "witness for Christ". This group of three people, once inside someone's home, would always start things off by asking their main question: "If you died this very minute, do you know that your soul would go to heaven for sure?" I quickly surmised that this practice really was a scare tactic, pure and simple. Was the intent to really witness for Christ, or simply build up the membership of the congregation, or both? I never tried to answer that question because the scare tactic question bothered me to no end all by itself.
It wasn't just EE that got to me. It was also hearing people in that church debating whether people in other fundamentalist churches were really "saved" because "that" church only sprinkles when they baptize, they don't immerse like we do. There simply was too much smugness and elitism going on around me. Often, I witnessed the same people doing a lot of judging on Sundays, then going out into the business community during the week and doing things that I didn't feel were particularly Christian, or even close to being in the fairest interest of others.
I ended up ultimately knowing I had to break away from that church, and did. It was kind of like my beach house days, in the sense that my senses, and what I've learned to call my "knowingness," told me to leave and not look back. Leaving that church, and its people, was a very difficult thing to do. I truly loved the Christ that I had found, but even that couldn't hold me there. I also knew that the members of that church didn't associate with people who weren't members, and that I would lose a lot of friends, and I did. The buddy who had talked me into joining the church had remarried, and he and his new wife were among those who didn't know me after I left their church.