Graduation

On a cool December evening, my seminary education concluded with a simple graduation ceremony held at the Golden Gate chapel. During the commencement speech, I gazed through the chapel’s floor-to-ceiling windows to the lights of San Francisco glimmering across the Bay, and I remembered arriving on campus as a callow 23 year-old, unsure if I really belonged at the seminary or among the ranks of professional Baptist ministers. But, despite ill-advised encounters with felons, a small arms arsenal, two stoned construction workers, and a licentious retiree, I was about to walk out as a newly minted Master of Divinity.

Of course, the chapel afforded me no views of the future, so it was impossible to perceive how the course of my life would be shaped by a handful of years spent immersed in two very different worlds. The terms were not in vogue then, but studying Red State religion in a Blue State world had changed me. I had brought a host of questions to Golden Gate expecting ready answers, but my professors had, for the most part, shown a vexing reluctance to provide them. If anything, my seminary education had ended up raising still more questions that I couldn’t answer.

These doubts and struggles were more or less set aside for a long time, but eventually they came to bother me very much, as you may have gathered by reading various posts in this blog. In recent years, some of my faith issues have gotten resolved, others haven’t, and I have come to the overall conclusion that questions aren’t so bad, and answers aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. No, that’s probably not what my old seminary professors were trying to teach me, exactly. And, as such, they should be held blameless for my present spiritual and mental state.

Of course, it must be admitted that during my seminary years, I was also influenced by the various denizens of Marin County who crossed my path. If the seminary gave me a broader view of my faith, then Marin and the Bay Area gave me a broader view of humanity in general. It struck me as a place where you got to be more or less whatever you were, and no one would make too much of a fuss about it. Even if what you were was a rather goofy Southern Baptist seminarian.

I kind of liked that open stance, and over the years I began to wonder if there was something almost Jesus-like about this easy, come-as-you are acceptance. It doesn’t take much reading of the New Testament to see that the main gripe people had with Jesus was that he was too inclusive—too ready to hang out with women, children, cripples, and assorted riff-raff. Maybe you can read too much into that tendency, but then again, maybe you can’t.

Perhaps that’s why I’m still in the Bay area almost 17 years after that graduation ceremony. My, how time does fly.

The New Age Rage

Several weeks before I moved to California to attend seminary, I was advised by a well-meaning friend to read a book called The Seduction of Christianity and its sequel, Beyond Seduction. As I recall, these books represented a response to the New Age/Eastern thought that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960’s and emphasized meditation, religious tolerance, and world peace. Fearing that unsuspecting Christians would be unduly influenced by such pernicious ideas, the author of the “Seduction” books penned his grim, two-part warning.

I was directed to these works because they contained some rather disturbing information about Golden Gate Seminary. According to Beyond Seduction, nefarious agents of the New Age movement had infiltrated this once-proud institution and begun teaching a form of “shamanism” to its impressionable students. But after arriving on campus, I could find no evidence of New Age inroads into the curriculum, though surrounding Marin County had no shortage of gurus, psychics, and meditation centers. I soon became accustomed to references to crystals, karma, and role of “The Universe” in supplying all our needs.

(Note to evangelical readers: When dealing with New Age folk, refrain from smart-ass comments about “The Universe” stepping up its efforts in sub-Saharan Africa, or you might be told that the same could be said of the Christian God. Some of these New Age-types are cagier than they look.)

To help us understand this local phenomenon, one professor finally brought the New Age to Golden Gate during my last year of seminary. Dr. S, my favorite theology professor, offered a new class called “Responding to the New Age Movement,” which I eagerly signed up for. And not content to erect straw men, Dr. S soon had us reading popular New Age texts like The Aquarian Conspiracy and writing papers that identified the positive attributes of the movement as well as the negative ones.

And I had to admit that it wasn’t difficult to spot a few parallels between the New Age movement and Christianity. The Aquarian Conspiracy defined the movement as a loose network of activists who transformed the world without resorting to traditional structures like political parties—a description that could easily have applied to Christians in the days before Focus on the Family got its congressional scorecard down to a science.

Of course, there were clear differences as well. New Agers were less interested in getting to know Jesus than in getting to know oneself. Transformation was achieved through becoming mindful of your own mind, leading to a paradigm shift that, when experienced by enough people, would redefine every social structure from politics to medicine. Crystals and the channeling of spiritually evolved beings were also deemed helpful to the process.

In the end, it all struck me as a harmless blend of pop psychology and junk science. It’s not like New Agers were starting wars, grabbing for political power, or imposing their values on everyone else. Now that would really be scary.

Bombs Over Baghdad

After the wedding, Mimi and I went on a brief honeymoon—enjoying California’s diverse landscape by staying at bed-and-breakfasts on the coast and in the mountains. Upon returning to Golden Gate, I went back to work at the environmental company and prepared for another semester of seminary, while Mimi began working full-time for a greeting card company across the Bay in Richmond.

One January afternoon, a co-worker poked his head into my office and made a chilling announcement: “We’re bombing Baghdad.” This news raced through the building, as everyone tried to absorb the fact that our country was at war. In the coming weeks, traffic around the Bay area was snarled by sporadic gatherings of protestors with “No blood for oil” signs and conversations around the company break room were dominated by the latest word from Iraq. Among my work colleagues, the general attitude toward American justifications for the conflict was questioning, if not outright hostile.

It would not be entirely accurate to say that I witnessed a different reaction to the war among my Christian friends, since there really wasn’t much of a reaction to witness. Around church and the seminary, the war was discussed to a point, but it did not seem to be a central concern. As far as I could tell, everyone more or less accepted that our government was basically trustworthy, and its attack on Baghdad was viewed as a regrettable necessity. At the end of the day, no temporary crisis was going to detract us from the ongoing business of spreading the Gospel to a world that would always be racked by violence in one place or another.

In my journal from those days, the cultural divide I shuttled across daily was plain to see from one entry to the next. On one page, I recorded brief musings on local responses to the Iraq war—which included a protest designed to shut down the Bay Bridge—while the very next page contains notes from one of Pastor John’s sermons that addressed an entirely different war. Drawing on the Old Testament story of David and Goliath while speaking to the church’s leadership team, John compared us to a plucky, outmanned, young David who was battling not Goliath, but the twin giants of spiritual apathy and New Age deception in Marin.

Looking back, I’m not sure how well a military analogy works in reference to an apathetic foe, and, too, we Christians had New Agers outnumbered exponentially if you counted the whole world and not just Marin. So, really, it made more sense to cast us as Goliath when you stopped to think about it. But the bottom line is that this supposed spiritual war got top billing, even as a real, physical war was raging in Iraq. I would like to believe that this disconnect between the Christian circle I inhabited and the world outside it led to a growing dissatisfaction with my own insular thinking. But for the moment, these were still seeds that had yet to sprout.

Meeting the Folks - Part 2

When summer arrived after my second year at seminary, Mimi and I decided to head South so she could meet my family. I knew they would accept Mimi instantly, partly because she was intelligent, creative, and beautiful, but mostly because they were always thrilled whenever I could even manage to get a date. I also felt confident that Mimi would find the South charming and delightful, perhaps even insisting that we move to Tennessee after seminary and raise our children in “God’s Country.”

Careful readers of this blog will note that we still reside in California, which subsequent events on this trip may or may not explain. Our plan was to drive from the Memphis airport to my hometown, spend a few days with my mother, then drive down to Alabama to visit my father. Mom had moved into town from my rural childhood home a few years earlier, so the first order of business was to show Mimi the house I grew up in. Driving along the familiar country road, I delighted in pointing out places of special interest—like Mutt Williams’ garage, or the oak tree where I used to chew tobacco with my friend Ricky. Lost in this pleasant reverie, I didn’t notice the quizzical expression creeping across Mimi’s face.

“What’s the deal with the appliances?” she finally said, nipping my nostalgia in the bud.

“What appliances?”

“Well, rusted-out cars are bad enough, but why do people have old refrigerators and dishwashers in their yards?”

Though dumbfounded by this question, I tried to keep from adopting a condescending tone. “Well, they don’t work any more,” I pointed out gently.

“I gathered as much from the missing doors,” Mimi returned. “So why not haul them away?”

“Because there’s no sense going to all that trouble when there’s plenty of room in the yard. Besides, you never know when you might need to scavenge a part or two.”

“But what about property values? Don’t the neighbors complain?”

Clearly, Mimi had a lot to learn. Which neighbor was going to raise a fuss—the one with the two Kenmore freezers out front, or the owner of the 1964 Impala with grass growing out of the hood?

Things didn’t improve much during the rest of our tour, as it became apparent that an insurmountable communication barrier existed between Mimi and the citizens of my fair town. After two days of awkward attempts at conversation, Mimi’s frustration boiled over.

“I can only understand 80% of what these people are saying!” she fumed.

I wasn’t sure how she had arrived at that exact figure, but it struck me as a bit on the high side. So I took the opportunity to point out that my own accent—often the object of Mimi’s jests—was really rather mild, comparatively speaking.

“Maybe so,” she said, “but the longer we stay here, the worse your accent is getting.”

And we hadn’t even hit Alabama yet.

I Got Something You Need

Marin County is one of the most prosperous and beautiful parts of the U.S., if not the world. Most folks have plenty of disposal income and easy access to beaches, hiking trails, and redwood forests, so attending church on Sunday mornings is not a high priority. As a result, area churches like to steal a line from an old Van Halen song:

You may have all you want, baby,
But I got something you need.

According to the song title, David Lee Roth “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love,” and (I feel safe in saying) he ain’t talking about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ either. But at Mt. Tam Christian Community, we were.

The church was small and composed largely of seminary students, but there was a deep hunger to reach locals—convincing them that even with their BMWs and bay-front homes, we had something they needed. So it was big news when an actual Marin native wandered into the Mt. Tam’s cafeteria-turned-sanctuary on a Sunday morning. And shortly after I joined the church, an event of this nature occurred that sent electric waves of excitement through the congregation.

In keeping with our pastor’s directive to get out there and rub shoulders with non-believers, a seminarian named Mary signed up for a guitar class at the community college, where she met Alan. Alan had grown up in Marin and recently moved back home after finishing college. And like most Marinites, he possessed only the foggiest idea of what evangelical Christianity was all about. In short, Alan was the poster child for Mt. Tam’s outreach efforts, a perfect specimen of the type of godless individual we hoped to reach for Christ. So the faithful rejoiced when he accepted Mary’s invitation to church.

I was happy, too, but also a wee bit skeptical. Mary was quick to attribute Alan’s interest in Christianity to the inexorable work of God’s Spirit in the human soul, but I had a hunch that less mysterious forces were involved. The fact that Mary was a cute, guitar-playing blonde, I felt, may have played a significant role in Alan’s openness to church. Indeed, Mary could probably have lured young Alan to a basket-weaving convention—and needed no divine intervention to do it. So I figured that after 1 or 2 token visits, we would never see him again.

But I was wrong. Though it took several months and a boatload of prayers, Alan eventually became one of us. A bona fide believer. At his baptism, the excitement was palpable as Alan slipped beneath the waters of a backyard swimming pool. We were happy for him, of course, but we were probably a little happy for ourselves, too. Because if one smart, unbelieving Marinite had joined us, then others might follow.

Maybe, like Diamond Dave, we had something they needed after all.

Cheech & Chong - Part 2

After several months of working as Cheech and Chong’s lackey on a construction project, I was wondering how much more I could take. Then fate stepped in. The contractor informed my friend Mike and me that work was drying up, and he could only afford to keep one of us on board. Turning to me, he said, “Today’s your last day, Steve.”

Ever loyal, Mike said afterward, “That wasn’t cool. Maybe I should leave, too.”

“No, don’t do that,” I said, just to be nice at first, then with real conviction. Within seconds, the realization had taken hold that Cheech and Chong would never again require me to bear back-breaking loads or dig a trench in a filthy crawl space. Their drug-addled minds were finished conjuring up humiliating situations to place me in for their amusement. I was free.

“You stay on if you want, Mike,” I continued with a dreamy look. “I know exactly what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna get me an office job.”

And I set out to do just that. Surely an undergrad engineering degree earned me the right to do more than make sandwiches and haul lumber. So I began scouring the want ads for a part-time job with a high-tech company. Within two weeks, I had managed to land an interview with a small environmental firm in San Rafael. Upon arriving there, I found a beautiful redwood office building nestled at the foot of a tree-studded hillside. Inside, bright offices were filled with respectable-looking scientists working away in front of glowing computer terminals. What they were doing, exactly, was unclear, but none of them was serving as a human pack animal. That much was certain.

During my interview with a woman named Rhonda, I fought to keep my Southern accent at bay and sprinkled in a few ill-defined references to the “viscous flow theory” and “orbital mechanics” I had studied in college. Unfortunately, this worked too well. Rhonda finally shook her head and said, “You’re really overqualified for the position. It’s mostly copying and filing technical reports, and I think you’ll be bored stiff within two days.”

This couldn’t be happening. Given my recent employment history, thoughts of being overqualified for a position had never occurred to me. Fighting panic, I decided that complete candor was my only shot.

“Ma’am,” I began, ratcheting the accent up a notch, “I have spent the last several months hauling debris up and down a stone staircase in the heat of the day while being taunted by two middle-aged hippies. I am eager to be bored.”

It was a joke that changed my life. I got the job, and by the time I graduated from Golden Gate, I was worked my way up to a full-time engineering position—an unexpected career that I eventually returned to after 8 years as a pastor. And to think that none of it would have happened if it weren’t for Cheech and Chong.

Thanks, guys.

Cheech & Chong - Part 1

After briefly working in a local deli, my friend Mike and I found what seemed like the perfect way to put ourselves through seminary. We met a contractor at church who needed some help, and he hired us for double what we had been paid to make sandwiches. More money, a Christian boss, and the chance to learn some new skills—what could be better?

Unfortunately, our enthusiasm was quickly dampened by a hard dose of reality. Our contractor friend was renovating a house on a steep hillside that was inaccessible to trucks. Getting building materials to the work sites was difficult, and Mike and I were envisioned as the “human mule” solution. Our jobs consisted almost entirely of carrying lumber up the hill, then carrying down buckets of debris from demolition work.

To make matters worse, our only coworkers were a pair of ex-hippies who worked slowly and enjoyed smoking marijuana on their frequent rest breaks. Each day, “Cheech and Chong” (as we dubbed them) delighted in assigning us all gruesome tasks they had been carefully avoiding.

“Hmm . . . let’s have Mike and Steve break up that back patio with a jackhammer, then carry the broken concrete down a steep incline to the dumpster, shall we?”

Mike and I didn’t trouble ourselves too much over Cheech and Chong’s salvation, as it was pretty obvious that they were going straight to hell no matter what we did. Case in point: one day Mike and I noticed that the dumpster we were (as usual) filling with dirt and concrete was labeled “Organic Waste Only.” Mike suggested to Cheech and Chong that this container was meant for branches and leaves, not heavy materials.

“Nonsense,” Cheech murmured dismissively, “they couldn’t care less what you throw in there.”

But when it came time for the disposal company to pick up the dumpster, Cheech and Chong jumped into their pickup, shouted, “I’d throw a little brush on top of all that dirt if I were you,” and drove off laughing.

We took their advice, but our frantic attempt at concealment didn’t help any. When the flatbed truck from the disposal company arrived and began winching the dumpster up onto its bed, the massive weight caused the vehicle’s front wheels to pop up into the air alarmingly. Its red-faced driver leaned out the window and screamed, “What did you assholes put in that thing?!”

For the next 20 minutes, we took cold comfort in Cheech and Chong’s increasingly grim eternal fate, as the driver struggled to load the dumpster and continued to fill the air with curses. “Don’t bother calling us for another one,” was the nicest thing he shouted, as the truck inched away with its sagging load.

Elisha and the Bears - Part 2

Some time after completing Old Testament class at seminary, I volunteered with a Marin County literacy program. While attending a training session at a large Catholic Church in San Rafael, I struck up a conversation with an older woman at my table. She was surprisingly pleased to learn that I was an aspiring minister.

"I’ve never been a church-goer," she said. "But I just became a grandmother and am starting to think that my grandson needs some kind of spiritual training."

Of course, I was quick to agree, and we went on to have a pleasant discussion. Later, this woman returned from a break clutching a large, colorful book. Taking matters into her own hands, she had purchased a children’s Bible for her grandson from the church bookstore, which she began to flip through excitedly. After a moment, though, her eyes grew wide with shock.

"This is horrible!" she gasped. "It shows God sending snakes to bite people after they disobeyed Him. But God never did that, did He?"

Here she held the book up to my face, where—sure enough—I saw a picture of cartoonish snakes attacking a mob of terrified Israelites. I was all-too familiar with this story from the book of Numbers, so pleading ignorance was out. But what could I say to this confused and upset woman? In hindsight, perhaps I should have launched into a lengthy explanation of the JEDP theory I had learned in seminary—in hopes of inducing a catatonic state that would last until the training resumed. But at the time I froze up like one of the kids who got eaten by Elisha’s bears in the box canyon, only managing to stammer, "Well, that story wouldn’t have been my first choice for a children’s Bible, that’s for sure."

"So you’re saying these snakes really are in the Bible. That settles it!" And with that, my companion stormed off to get her money back, and I was left alone with my thoughts. Though, really, there was only one thought:

"Lady, you don’t know the half of it."

Purple State of Mind

When I started this blog, I was determined to stick to my main theme (stories from my seminary days) and resist the urge to describe my trip to the dentist, analyze the 49ers' draft picks, etc. But I must mention the movie Purple State of Mind, which I saw in San Francisco last night. This film is essentially a collection of conversations between two friends who met in college as evangelical Christians, then took very different paths over the next 30 years. One is still a Christian, while the other is now an atheist--and I was struck by the way they disagree sharply while still maintaining a strong friendship and acceptance of each other.

The only quibble I have with the film is that I expected their points of view to be farther apart (a true Red State/Blue State discussion), but both of them are fairly "Blue" in their thinking. The Christian (Craig) espouses some opinions that place him outside the evangelical mainstream--at least the one I left behind. That said, they still find plenty to hash over, and the result is sure to stir discussions among viewers.

Lastly, thanks to the Progression of Faith blog for making me aware of this film.

Baptist in Berkeley

One advantage of Golden Gate Seminary’s exotic location is that it gives Southern Baptist students hands-on experience with reaching a bizarre culture for Christ. Any lessons learned in Marin can then be applied to other alien locales like Papua New Guinea or France.

The school’s Evangelism 101 class sought to impart such practical knowledge by sending us out into the community to share our faith. Course requirements included write-ups of two "evangelistic encounters" in which we had to document our efforts to win lost Marinites to the Lord. A daunting task, to be sure, but the class provided plenty of preparation. We spent weeks analyzing the characteristics of rival belief systems such as atheism, Mormonism, and the New Age movement.

To be honest, this was my favorite part of the course. I enjoyed poking holes in other people’s beliefs and making snide comments like, "Why is no one channeling an ascended master named ‘Ted’?" But when the fun ended and we set off in search of evangelistic encounters, I found that hole-poking cuts both ways.

Somehow I hooked up with a group that was doing street evangelism in Berkeley, which is not exactly going after the low-hanging fruit, I realize. But folks in Berkeley did prove more than willing to talk about spiritual issues, even if their views were a little, well, "out there." Take Ronald, a middle-aged man who was sipping coffee at a sidewalk table. After I offered him a booklet with a 4-point outline of the New Testament, Ronald stated that he had already taken a class on the Bible in college. In his opinion, the gospels presented an entertaining but illogical account of Jesus’ life.

"Take the story of Jesus healing the man with a crippled hand," Ronald offered by way of example. "We are told that after seeing a withered limb become whole, the Pharisees immediately hatched an assassination plot. Does that seem like a reasonable response to an astounding miracle?"

Here I mumbled something about religious leaders protecting their own turf, but Ronald had plenty more ammo. It was tough to squeeze it all into one "evangelistic encounter" report, in fact.

I guess that’s the problem with poking holes. It’s only fun when you’re letting the air out of the other guy’s balloon.

The Skeleton

During my first few months at seminary, my friend Mike and I worked in a deli that was run by a spiky-haired woman named Mary. Upon hiring us, she remarked, "You’re Baptists, I'm a lesbian. Let’s not have any shit about it." Little did she know that it was our moral fiber that would soon become an issue, not hers.

At first, everything went smoothly. Mary proved to be almost motherly to me, Mike and a local teen named Simon who worked our shift. She often fretted, "You boys are too damn skinny," despite the 6-lb sandwiches we inhaled on a regular basis.

But the good feelings evaporated around Halloween. Mary decorated the place with gusto—hanging fake cobwebs and taping up large cardboard figures of pumpkins and skeletons. Unfortunately, her festive mood faded when she had to fire Simon for cursing at a customer. And when Mike and I showed up for work the next day, Mary had gone from sad to angry.

"Turns out that Simon was one sick kid," she said. "Come see what he did." With hesitant steps, Mike and I followed Mary into the back room, scarcely able to imagine what affront to common decency we were about to behold. Turning the corner, we saw one of the cardboard skeletons fixed to the door of Mary's office. One bony hand had been raised aloft, and all the fingers were neatly trimmed away--save one.

We tried not to laugh; we really did. But it was all too much—the skeleton’s glowing eyes and sly grin, the one arm dangling loosely with the other raised in casual defiance. We just couldn’t help ourselves. And as Mike and I fought to regain our composure, Mary’s wounded cries rose above the hysteria. "Simon gives me the finger, and you think it's funny? You’ll never make it as ministers!"

Maybe it would have all blown over if Mary hadn’t caught Mike and me imitating the skeleton later that day. It’s hard to say, really. As it was, her disappointment with us lingered in the air until Mike and I moved on to other jobs. Simon’s behavior was more or less expected, but Mary had hoped for more from her seminarians.

Sometimes, I still feel bad about the whole thing. But, dammit, that skeleton was funny.