Angry Conversations with God (6 page)

After that, Dad watched fewer movies and more programs about plummeting stocks and how bad the government was. He even watched
old newsreels from World War II, footage of bombings and Nazis and bodies being bulldozed into mass graves. At night the sound
of it echoed down the hall, under our door. I hated it. I started to hate Dad.

I started having a recurring dream that our house was a cesspool, filled with urine and feces. In the dream, I crawled along
in a clear plastic tunnel, trying to get outside to safety. But when I rounded the corner into the TV room I woke up terrified
and couldn’t go back to sleep. Sometimes I tried to stay in the dream so I could make it outside, but I always filled with
dread when I reached the TV room: the source of the anger and battery acid and excrement.

Everything about Dad that once resembled God the Father—his compassion, his heroism, his delight in me—disappeared. Dad’s
anger consumed everything. I knew God the Father’s anger was different. But what if my anger was like Dad’s—consuming and
evil? After all, I had beat up Kirsten. I didn’t want to be like Dad anymore. I had started to pull away from Dad and even
resent him, the way my brothers did.

As I hit puberty, my peers shifted from family to friends, my heroes became rock stars, and my interests turned from my father’s
to my own. Dad took it personally. He understood the imperative of saving a stuffed animal; he didn’t understand the imperative
of letting a child have her own life.

On the last day of sixth grade, Pastor Ingebretsen sat us down for an important chat. “Next year you’re off to public school,”
he warned, “where they’ll persecute you because you love Jesus.”

“You mean they’ll try to kill us?” I asked.

“No. In China, they kill your body. In California, they kill your soul.”

Stevie Sutherland chimed in. “They’ll throw spit wads and give you cigarette burns and flush your head in the toilet!” Stevie
would know. His sister was in college. She was an art major. And a smoker.

The idea of junior high terrified me. Yes, Kirsten had persecuted me for three years, but after I spun her out on the blacktop
she got nicer. Sort of. Kirsten wasn’t even going to my new school. Junior high presented a set of totally unknown terrors.

But something happened when I got there: no one threw spit wads at me or shoved my head down the toilet. And with no Kirsten
to bully me into hiding in mediocrity, I stepped out. I got good grades; I took art and drama; I made people laugh. Students
didn’t persecute me for being smart or funny or even for loving Jesus; they actually wanted to be my friends.

Now
my parents
were terrified. Who were my new friends? Did they go to church? Were there any boys around? For three years they had ignored
Kirsten who bullied me, and now they were suspicious of people who liked me? It made me suspicious of
them.
I even got suspicious of Pastor Ingebretsen. He was wrong about the world—it didn’t hate me. Maybe he was lying. Maybe they
all were.

I still loved the God in my white leather Bible: The majestic Almighty of the Psalms; the Jesus who died for me. And I had
the Holy Spirit because I felt God’s presence within me. I witnessed to girls at slumber parties. I went to summer camp and
made a new promise to Jesus.

Now, if my relationship with God were like a marriage, this moment wasn’t the wedding. I was only twelve years old. Ew. But
I’d grown up loving Jesus, “the Boy next door.” Now I was in junior high. Jesus and I were going steady.

Rudy: Your father was messed up, man. That must have complicated your image of God the Father.

Susan: You’ve got the gift, Freud.

Rudy: Come on. Don’t make me do all the work.

Susan: Okay. Obviously Dad confused my ideas about God the Father. But God was confusing too. Remember in the Old Testament
when the Ark of the Covenant tipped over? Some guy rushed to grab it so it wouldn’t touch the ground and be defiled. God smote
him dead. The guy was trying to help! Do the right thing in the wrong moment, you’re dead!

Rudy: Okay, Father: I’d love to know your thoughts on this.

Now I had to imagine God the Father in the room, and he didn’t have a body. Except for a nose that flared. First I imagined
God simmering with exasperation. Like my earthly father did. Okay, so I thought about it again, and a different God showed
up.

God: I’m glad you remembered those psalms about me.

Susan: I loved that part of you.

God: That
is
who I am.

Susan: That’s
part
of who you are.

God: Thanks for the mention. (Laughing) I didn’t expect any praise from you.

Susan: Really? I thought you were omniscient. You’re supposed to know everything.

God: For now, let’s say I can be both omniscient and surprised or even delighted by what you do. I can’t
wait
to see what you say next.

Rudy: God, do you understand why Susan is conflicted about you?

God: Susan’s father never even tried to like me, and I got saddled with his baggage.

Susan: You’re both called “Father.” You should reconsider your branding strategy.

God: I’m taking “Father” back. Watch me.

Rudy: Okay, let’s cut the sarcasm for a moment.

God: I wasn’t being sarcastic. Well, not right then.

Rudy: Then please give me your opinion.

God: Thank you, Rudy, for bothering to ask my opinion instead of putting words in my mouth like some people in the room.

Susan: That was
so
passive-aggressive.

Rudy: Susan, don’t interrupt. And God, that was passive-aggressive.

God: Okay, the Ark of the Covenant…You don’t know what was going on in that guy’s head. Maybe he’d been itching to touch the
ark for months. Maybe he didn’t really believe it was holy. Maybe he tripped a guy on the pole so he could “rescue” the ark
and look like a hero and go around bragging about it. I warned everyone not to touch it! “Don’t mess with holy!”

Susan: Well,
maybe
you should have put that part in the Bible so we’d understand why you did what you did. Because
maybe
the way it reads now, you look really harsh.

God: Can I ask a question? Are you just going to call me in every week, taking me away from life-and-death crises as well
as people who actually want to be around me because they love me, so I can explain myself to your liking? If that’s all we’re
going to do here, I’m not
available
for that.

Rudy: But Susan has a lot of questions. And I’m curious why her version of you is so sarcastic.

God: Just because Susan’s version of me is sarcastic doesn’t mean I’m not sarcastic. Sarcasm is a viable form of communication.
What about when Elijah taunted the prophets of Baal? “Where’s your god? Is he asleep? Is he off taking a dump?”

Susan: He did not say that. He said something about going on a journey.

Rudy: “Going on a long journey” was a Hebrew euphemism for taking a dump.

Susan: Great. Can I use it in counseling?

Rudy: No, you can’t. Lord, are you
available
to listen to what Susan has to say?

God: Sure. You’ve got an hour; I’ve got eternity.

Rudy: Susan, what other ways have you associated God the Father with your earthly father?

Susan: They were both jealous! As long as I thought what Dad thought and loved what he loved, I was loved back. But the moment
I got my own interests, I was Enemy Number One. That’s how God is.

God: How am I like that?

Susan: “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.”

God: That’s about worshipping another deity.

Susan: “Your life is not your own; you were bought with a price.”

God: If you want your crappy, directionless life back, go right ahead.

Susan: What happened to God the Father Almighty I knew in the Psalms, the one who forgave all my sins, who crowned me with
love and compassion, who satisfied my desires with good things?

God: You warped him into a caricature of meanness and contempt.

Rudy: Well, regardless of how you got this way, I used to be a pastor, and you’re not a God I’d want to know. So you’d better
change, because Susan cannot stay married to you like this.

God: I’m all for it. But remember, I’m just an apparition of Susan’s warped ideas. So who’s really responsible for changing
me?

And God pointed at me. You know, if he had a finger to point.

IN HIGH SCHOOL, I CHEATED ON JESUS. NOT WITH OTHER RE
ligions like Buddhism, Hinduism, or Eckankar, but with ideas like intellectual curiosity, writing, and the Beatles. I didn’t
think I was cheating. I still loved Jesus. I just found other things to love too. And high school is a time to discover the
world and your place in it. It’s about figuring out who you are and what you love. I discovered I loved movies, comedy, and
John Lennon. So what?

God could have been excited, proud even, that I was smart, funny, and interested in the world. But he was threatened. At least,
the people who represented him were—the church, my mom, and my sister. They acted like Woody Allen, Monty Python, and John
Lennon led to sex, drugs, and atheism.

Besides, God could have provided some healthy, fun counterprogramming, like a youth group that was fun and intelligent and
liked
Saturday Night Live.
Instead, our church offered Luther League, run by Kirsten Shanahan. No thanks. God also could have provided me a macho Christian
authority figure to admire and a cool Christian boy to date. Just one boy who was smart, was funny, loved Jesus, and wasn’t
a wimp.

(Sound of crickets chirping in the void.)

I never stopped loving Jesus. But Jesus was invisible, church was boring, and my parents ignored me. Every day at school I
met teachers or friends who were excited about where life was taking them, regardless of what Jesus thought about it. Wouldn’t
you go along?

When I reached high school, my parents stopped monitoring me and my friends. Not because they trusted me, but because they
had found something else to worry about: getting my oldest brother into medical school. If my father couldn’t afford a house
on the golf course, he was going to make sure one of us did. Rob was first in line; he bore the brunt of my father’s thwarted
ambitions. So while Dad obsessed over Rob’s future, the rest of us slipped by. Jim retreated into classical music; Nancy disappeared
into her books and her hippie IXOYE club, and I found comedy. Or maybe it found me.

My best friend, Julianne, was an impossibly beautiful Catholic who loved to bake cookies, listen to music, and talk about
God. She also introduced me to Monty Python. Once I saw “The Cheese Shop” sketch I was hooked. Their mix of highbrow intellectualism
and the absurd caught me just as I was discovering the world: culture, history, philosophy, and
words!
I loved the way some words made me think or feel. In the same way the Psalms evoked worship and awe, other words surprised
me and made me laugh. I wanted to write like that! Julianne and I sat in biology writing down names of insects, trying to
match the brilliance of “Venezuelan Beaver Cheese.” The best we came up with was “Outer Mongolian inverted spinal tsetse fly.”
It didn’t matter; Python had ignited our imaginations and we ran with it.

My parents may not have been paying attention, but my teachers were. My freshman history teacher seemed to think I could become
valedictorian. My drama teacher, Mrs. Van Holt, laughed at whatever I did onstage. She told me I could succeed at anything
I wanted. Well, I wanted to be in the advanced Production Drama Group. Monty Python was huge;
Saturday Night Live
had just premiered. Production Drama kids were rock stars, and Mrs. Van Holt was the coolest teacher in school. My friend
Doug and I auditioned with the “French Taunter” sketch from
Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Mrs. Van Holt didn’t know what hit her. Neither did I—I was just in the moment. Mrs. Van Holt said being in the moment was
like playing music. You hear the notes and you just know when to play. And with Python, getting to say lines like, “You empty
headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction!“—that was better than music; that was rock ’n’ roll.