Spiritual Detours

You’d be surprised, but I spend an awful lot of time thinking about religion, about church, about spirituality, and about how each of these concepts can exist independently of one another. People often ask me why I don’t go to church, but the answer isn’t a simple one, even though the act of not going is simple. And I know what they’re thinking, that I must be a lost soul, that I’m one of those backsliders who grew up in the church but has now turned his back on it. They would be wrong on both accounts.

I’m not lost. In fact, for the first time in my life I think I finally have solid footing where it comes to God and my connection with him. It has been a long time coming, though, and I have gone through many wrong turns on the journey.

FIRST TURN:

In college I worked at the Temple University library circulation desk, and I had a wide variety of students and non-students come in and ask me questions or tell me things they thought I needed to know. They were looking for the religion section (BS – no joke), or they were trying to find their computer password to log in (they really needed the reference desk), or they wanted to let someone know that a guy had built a book fort in the stacks. One time that stands out, however, was when two guys in gray suits with print ties came up to the desk to ask about my eternal soul. They gave me a pamphlet and invited me to go to their church on the following Sunday. At the time I had so many questions about my eternal soul that I think I became an easy target, and they could see it.

Come to find out, they went to a moveable church that didn’t meet in a church building. They met in school gymnasiums, and they were interdenominational. The two guys I met in the campus library were elders in the church in charge of recruiting, I found out later. They also led Bible study groups at various members’ houses several times a week. I was also invited to those, and I went. In fact, it became a whirlwind of weeks that blended together quickly until two months later when my two elders who had converted me brought up the conversation of baptism. I panicked. It was one thing to go through the motions, to visit the various school gymnasiums on Sunday mornings, to go to the study groups, but it was quite another to be a full-fledged member. I needed more time, but when I told my elders this, they were visibly upset and gave me an ultimatum. I found out later that they had a quota and a time limit in which to convert people and get them baptized. I was very glad I didn’t give in. I never saw them again.

SECOND TURN:

When I lived in Tennessee, my first wife had a father who fancied himself a minister, and coming from my background, having a real minister for a father, I had a lot to say about her father’s brand of religion. He would often bless random people with olive oil, put his blessings on furniture and walls, and speak in tongues. It was this last thing that weirded me out the most, knowing as I do that real speaking in tongues means having others hear you in their language even if you’re not speaking in their language. It doesn’t mean spouting what amounts to gibberish while your eyes flutter back and forth, and absolutely no one knows what you’re saying, not even you. I put up with all of that, however, because I didn’t have to see him all that much, but he also had an agenda for us that he brought up every time we saw him. He wanted us to find a church and go regularly.

After we had put him off several different times with vague responses, he did something unexpected. He sent someone to our apartment to personally invite us to a local church. We finally agreed after meeting the suit-clad stranger on that cold Friday morning. Two days later we were at the pentecostal church. It was in a real church building, so it seemed a step up from the interdenominational one I had gone to a couple of years earlier. The in-laws came with us, too, something I hadn’t expected. It wasn’t their regular church, but they said they were coming along for support. What they were really doing was making sure they guilted us into becoming members of a congregation. You know, for our own good.

The only way I can describe the service was manic. The pastor and the deacons (they didn’t call them elders) were all speaking in tongues, the congregation was screaming, and some of them were also speaking in tongues. It was all a blended cacophony that just grated on my ears. But that was just the beginning. Apparently, during the service there was always a point where the pastor asked for people who wanted to give their hearts to god to come on down to the front. Several people went up, and the crowd (I mean congregation) would yell for them like they had just been brought on down to contestant’s row on The Price is Right. Once they arrived at the front, the deacons would converge around the lucky man or woman and chant. The crowd would also be chanting. Then one of the deacons would touch the person on the head and he or she would fall to the floor, apparently hit by the power of the lord.

I basically got pushed out into the aisle during one of those pleas for people to come down front, and the only thing I was thinking on my way to the front, and to the waiting deacons, was that there was no way I was going to faint like all those people before me. I arrived amidst the cheers of the crowd, and I was immediately surrounded by deacons speaking in tongues and pressing in on me. It was suffocating, but I didn’t feel faint. Then one of them pressed his hand on my forehead like he had on the others before me, but I didn’t go down. I thought it was over, but they weren’t to be deterred. They mumbled some more and pressed closer still. I felt a pressure on the back of my knees, and I suddenly realized what they were doing. They were determined to have a show, so they were going to make me fall down by pushing on my knees. I knew then that there was no winning in that church, and I also knew that it was all a sham. I dropped to the floor with no further pressure and the crowd erupted.

That wasn’t the way either, I knew from the start. That was when I knew unequivocally that it wasn’t in a building or even in a group of people that I would find my relationship with God. It was inside of me the whole time, despite all the external searching and getting lost. I was finally found, where I needed to be the entire time. It’s about one-on-one for me, so no, I don’t go to church, and that’s okay. God knows my soul.

Sam