Losing My Religion (2 page)

I worried that if I came out of the evangelical closet, I’d be labeled a religious kook, or worse. I knew I didn’t have the ability, as a young Christian, to defend my faith in an argument. So like the skinny kid who worried about having sand kicked in his face, I strengthened myself as a Christian in secret. I started by devouring books about Christianity. First, I bought a study Bible with maps and detailed notes, and proceeded to read the New Testament nearly all the way through, stopping short of Revelation—I was too intimidated to tackle the Apostle John’s vision of the end of days and its monstrous beasts, plagues, earthquakes and floods, and bloody wars. I also read books written by Christian apologists, intellectuals who defended the faith using science and other academic means. C. S. Lewis was no longer just a children’s author to me, but one of the great Christian minds of the 20th century—I especially loved
Mere Christianity
,
The Great Divorce
and
The Screwtape Letters
. G. K. Chesterton’s brilliant writings moved me (including
Saint Francis of Assisi
and
Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox
), as did the story of Charles Colson, President Nixon’s hatchet man who found Christ just before he went to jail for Watergate-related crimes. Since his release, Colson has selflessly served prisoners and their families around the world through his Prison Ministries. His memoir,
Born Again,
is a classic of evangelical literature. And I eagerly read
The Case for Christ
by Lee Strobel, a former business reporter with the
Chicago Tribune
who set out to find the truth about Christianity and concluded that Christ was both a historical figure and the Son of God who died on the cross for our sins and was resurrected.

As I slowly gained confidence in my faith, I managed to talk my reluctant wife into coming to Mariners. Because of her Catholic upbringing, Greer found my mega-church too foreign and casual, but she attended for me. She liked the changes she was starting to see in her husband. I had devoted myself to our young family and was fulfilling my responsibilities as a spouse and father. We usually went to Saturday-night services, which allowed us—young parents on a tight budget—to have a night out. Mariners had excellent child care, so we’d drop off Taylor and attend services. Afterward, we’d grab a cheap dinner out.

After a year back at church, the whole God thing seemed to be working for me. I found a new circle of friends who were committed Christian men, and we met once a week for Bible study and to talk about the challenges of marriage, family and life. My once-shaky marriage improved enough that Greer started to talk about having a second child. Though we didn’t have much money, we started giving to the church and other Christian charities.

I prayed for a new job, and soon found something beyond my imagination: the editorship of the local newspaper. At age 29, I was the youngest editor in the
Newport Beach–Costa Mesa Daily Pilot
’s 83-year history. My publisher gave me a nice salary (about double what I was making before), a mandate to save the dying newspaper and all the freedom I needed to do it. I couldn’t imagine a better professional challenge.

My health started to improve, too. My acne disappeared, and I found a cutting-edge doctor to treat my intestinal problems. I believed God had done all these things because I had started to listen to Him and follow His Word. Scripture says you’ll be made new through Christ, and I was slowly transforming myself into a different, better person.

I gained a spiritual mentor, Hugh Hewitt, who would soon become my best friend. Our relationship started in the late 1980s, when I was looking for a conservative voice for the business lifestyles magazine I was editing. Hugh, an attorney and talk radio host who worked for Presidents Nixon and Reagan, was perfect. Articulate, intelligent, funny, insightful and never in doubt (even when he was wrong), he made the perfect columnist.

When I told Hugh, an evangelical Christian, that I had found God, he was ecstatic. He introduced me to his Christian friends, patiently answered my seemingly endless series of questions and continually urged me to go deeper in my faith. Our relationship quickly went from professional to personal. On the surface, we were an unlikely pair. Though he once ran a three-hour, 12-minute marathon, Hugh looks like a policy wonk. Prematurely gray, he wears wire-rimmed glasses and fights to control his weight. He is a staunch conservative with a passionate dislike for the mainstream media. By contrast, no one would mistake me for an intellectual. Politically, I’m in the middle of the road. And I am a card-carrying member of the mainstream media—or MSM, as Hugh ominously abbreviates it. People who know us independently are surprised to find out that we are friends.

By 1992, two years into my spiritual walk, I still felt nowhere near to being a fully developed Christian. My faith continued to feel a little foreign and uncomfortable, like wearing a new pair of shoes out of the store. I had all kinds of deficiencies as a Christian. In my Bible study, I felt hopelessly over my head when it came my time to pray. I couldn’t do some of the simplest things demanded of me by Scripture, such as stop gossiping. And I couldn’t imagine embarking on any kind of mission, even to Tijuana two hours to the south. Hugh kept telling me that the Christian life wasn’t meant to be easy. He continually pushed me outside my comfort zone.

Classic evangelical testimony stories always reach a climax with “The Moment,” the experience of being born-again, of falling on your knees and accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior—and feeling Him come into your heart. I had not had such a moment, and I didn’t think it would ever happen. My faith was more in my head than in my heart. One day, Hugh insisted that I attend a men’s weekend retreat at the Thousand Pines Christian Camp & Conference Center in the San Bernardino Mountains, about a two-hour drive from Los Angeles. I didn’t want to go. I told Hugh I’d take a pass. I was just a Christian toddler. I needed time to grow.

“Listen, you’re going to the retreat,” said Hugh, never one for subtleties. “I’ve already paid for you. It’s a done deal. You need this, Billy. You need to get closer to God. You’re going to have to trust me. I’ll pick you up Friday afternoon.”

An introvert by nature, I was horrified by the idea of getting together with nearly 100 strangers from a Presbyterian church I had never attended.

“Hugh, no thanks,” I said. “I’ll go next year. I promise.”

“I’ll be at your house at three,” he said. “There’s no getting out of it.”

In effect, he kidnapped me. After a crawl of a drive through Southern California’s Friday-night rush-hour traffic, we turned off Interstate 215 and began the 20-mile drive into the mountains, following a long line of cars snaking its way uphill on the narrow two-lane road. My anxiety grew as the brown scrub and chaparral gave way to towering pines. Truth was, I had heard that the weekend would involve singing about God, praising Him, talking about Jesus and doing a lot of sharing. It all reminded me too much of the Christianity I had the most exposure to and hated: the Reverend Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and televangelists who talked about “JEEZ-us!” I liked my faith private—and without outward signs of emotion.

Walking into the retreat center’s conference room, I noticed how ordinary the members of my retreat looked. They could have been mistaken for a bunch of guys gathered in Las Vegas to watch the Final Four basketball tournament. They ranged in age from late teens to more than 70. The group included students, doctors, attorneys, contractors, repairmen, engineers and retirees. Besides a love for the Lord, their common trait seemed to be an insatiable hunger for junk food. Our meeting room was filled with tables holding buckets of Red Vine licorice, boxes of Hershey chocolate bars, huge bags of M&Ms, bowls of pretzels and cases of Coke and root beer.

The weekend’s schedule was simple. The group met in a rustic conference room, with chairs lined up in rows to mimic church pews. A makeshift band—which was surprisingly good—played a series of worship songs, whose lyrics were projected on a screen. A few songs into each session, many of the men, carried away by emotion, began to sing at the top of their lungs, their voices cracking; a few started to cry.

Next came the personal testimonies. The first guy who stood up was Bud, a tall and burly contractor with an oversized personality. He was the retreat’s natural leader. Normally the court jester, he got serious quickly as he quietly told the group that his wife of 20 years no longer loved him, that his business was failing and that at age 50, all his life’s dreams had been shattered.

“I wasn’t the man she needed me to be so she checked out,” Bud said, wiping tears from his eyes. “She told me, ‘I don’t respect you, I don’t love you and I don’t see how this marriage can possibly work out.’”

Besides a few sniffles, the room was dead quiet. This kind of honesty among men was rare and breathtaking. Bud went on to say that his wife had given him plenty of warning signs that he needed to change, but, thinking divorce wasn’t an option for a Christian marriage, he didn’t feel the urgency to heed her words. Few people in the room knew of Bud’s marriage problems. His confession came as a shock. Bud, knowing this, said men shouldn’t keep their pain bottled up inside. He had waited until it was too late. They needed to confess their problems to others and reach out for help when they needed it. It’s the way God wants it.

As Bud finished, someone said quietly, “Let’s pray for him.” Several of his friends got up and placed their hands on his wide shoulders as everyone prayed for him, his wife, their marriage and their three boys.

Hearing Bud’s story was both shocking and oddly encouraging. He had made a mess of his life, just as I had. And he believed following God was the way out. But looking at Bud and his gregarious personality, no one would ever have guessed the pain he was experiencing. I felt an instant kinship to him and we remain friends to this day.

The weekend’s guest speaker, a retired pastor, then gave a themed talk about how to live the Christian life. The structure of the weekend, I was beginning to discover, was carefully designed to break down our defense mechanisms. It was exhausting, emotional and active (a lot of singing and talking, not just listening). After more worship songs, we were placed in six-person groups for more intimate talks about our lives. I absolutely loathed this part of the weekend. I didn’t know my fellow group members, and people were sharing the most intimate parts of their lives, sometimes for the first time. I said as little as possible. Finally, another round of prayers concluded the session.

This cycle of singing, testimony, preaching, sharing and praying repeated itself Saturday morning, Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Saturday evening, another man—this time a former business executive in his 60s—said he was inspired by Bud to tell his story and ask us to pray for him. He said he had been laid off the year before from his high-paying engineering job and couldn’t find any other work at his age. He had gone through his savings and was close to broke when he humbled himself enough to take the only job that would have him—selling cars. There were more tears and more prayers for this stoic guy.

During free time, the guys prayed, hiked, napped or went to town to watch college football on a wide-screen TV at a local restaurant. On Saturday afternoon, many of the weekend warriors played basketball on the outdoor courts, a game that resulted in several pulled muscles, tweaked knees and turned ankles. In between, we ate our meals communally at a dining hall that reminded me of my freshman dorm, but not in a good way. There were other things, besides good food, that you couldn’t get at the retreat: television, radios and sleep. The lack of shut-eye came from sharing a Spartan cabin with a half-dozen grown men, whose bodily functions and impressive snoring provided the night’s soundtrack.

By design, the weekend left us emotionally raw. Cut off from our regular lives, our facades broke down under the assault of song, prayers, worship, honest sharing and sleep deprivation. With real emotions exposed, I could see the other guys were as screwed up as I was. Some had even more troubles. There was nothing these guys wouldn’t share: addiction to pornography, affairs, mistreatment of children, failed business ventures, and alcohol and drug abuse. And they all found comfort and direction in Jesus. They weren’t like Falwell or Robertson. They were like me.

It took until Sunday morning, in the retreat’s chapel, for my fortified walls to crumble. It wasn’t the modern worship songs that got to me, but the centuries-old “Amazing Grace.” I felt myself surrendering to God in a way I never had before. I felt those words deep in my soul, especially the third verse:

Through many dangers, toils and snares

I have already come;

’Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far

and Grace will lead me home.

 

After the music, Mike Barris, a pastor-to-be who conducted the climactic Sunday-morning service, asked the men gathered in the chapel a simple question that I should have anticipated, but hadn’t: Have you publicly pronounced Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? I hadn’t. I wasn’t ready to. Panicked, my pulse quickened. My eyes darted. I suddenly felt trapped. I didn’t want to be a born-again Christian—I knew what I thought of them, and I knew what people less tolerant than I thought of them. I couldn’t even say “Jesus” in public, for gosh sakes! The weekend had been such a great spiritual experience, why did Barris have to wreck it by forcing this born-again question on me? My walls quickly came back up. I needed more time to warm up to the idea of being called born-again.

Barris, an athletically built man in his late 20s who looked more like a frat boy than a pastor, went on to say that a public confession of faith was an important part of the Christian journey. He asked us to bow our heads, close our eyes and pray. In a gentle voice, he told those who felt moved to accept Christ into their heart today to raise their hand. My heart beat even faster, but no longer in self-defense. I couldn’t believe it, but I felt an urge to lift my hand. But I sure as heck didn’t want to be the only one. I took a peek around the room and saw several hands shoot up. What was I going to do? My eternal fate might rest on this decision. Ah, maybe not, said another voice inside my head—this whole born-again thing could be just a bunch of crap. I shut my eyes and prayed. That seemed safe and noncommittal. But there was the urge again to raise my hand—was it from God?