Losing My Religion (5 page)

“The preacher said if you were to give—and not expect anything in return—you’ll get your investment back tenfold in blessings,” said Crean, a recreational-vehicle tycoon who has since died. “That sounded like a pretty good deal. It was worth giving it a shot, anyway.”

As soon as he started giving, his fortunes turned around, and he told me he couldn’t give away his money fast enough. It just kept coming in. So I started to tithe, too, and I found that I really didn’t miss the 10 percent I gave away.

I frequently worried that my faith would end up costing me a lot more than a portion of my salary. So I wrote often about people who had made much greater sacrifices because of their belief in God. None regretted what they had done. In fact, they always said their lives had never been fuller. In one column, I explored the price of faith by interviewing a former Muslim and Orange County resident who was leaving the United States to go undercover as an evangelist in the West Bank, a calling that put his life at risk. (In fact, it would lead to a series of threats by the terrorist group Hamas.)

“I’ve always felt a call to be a missionary to Muslims,” said Steve, who didn’t want his real name used because, if caught, he faced death under Islamic law. “Muslims are great, wonderful people—more pure than a lot of Christians. Muslims are willing to die for their religion, but Christians won’t sacrifice a TV show to go to church.”

Steve sold all his possessions except for some clothes, a few books and a guitar to finance his new life.

“I’m not going to be afraid,” he said. “I believe that God wants me to do this and He will protect me.”

I also wrote about people who had been beaten down by life but still didn’t blame God. These people were better Christians than I. I reported on the funeral of Ethan Shigeru Sechrest, a premature baby who had once made the evening news when he came home after spending his first three months at the hospital. Ethan weighed 14 ounces at birth.

After his birth, the Sechrests, devout Christians, and their friends rallied people around the world to pray for the infant. One of his doctors, trying to explain Ethan’s miraculous survival, said he had been “prayed into life.”

But then, at eight months old, Ethan caught a respiratory virus. His body hadn’t developed a robust immune system, allowing a series of illnesses to overwhelm him. With Ethan’s death, the Sechrests, their pastors, doctors and friends—everyone the baby touched—had to struggle with a question: Why didn’t God step in to save him again? I went to the funeral because Ethan’s tragic story was gripping. But I also attended because I wanted to hear the answer to that question.

Pastor J. P. Jones told mourners that Ethan’s death “reveals our deepest fears” about God. And the honest answer, he said, is that we don’t know why God allowed Ethan to die. And we won’t fully know until “we pass from this life into heaven when we see things as God sees them.”

It was one thing for the pastor to say that, but what would the parents say? If it were my child, I would rage at God for what He allowed to happen—especially after answering so many prayers for Ethan. It seemed cruel.

The Sechrests, who lost their first child to a stillborn birth, were confident they’d see glimpses of God’s plan in the years to come.

“After the death of our first son, I couldn’t see any blessings in that,” Alan Sechrest said. “But over time, I could. Our marriage got stronger. We became better parents. But we just couldn’t see it right away.

“We’re going to be okay. Not today, not next week. But we’re going to be okay because we trust in God.”

Using the Sechrests as a yardstick, I had a long way to go in my faith. They provided inspiration and a model for me.

I still felt like I was a relatively new believer, and I had lots of questions about my faith. Scripture—the Bible—was a major source of them because, at least to a close reader, the Word of God contains contradictions, bizarre laws and hard-to-believe anecdotes. For me, the Bible was a puzzle I hadn’t figured out yet. I found great wisdom in Scripture when I cherry-picked the passages. Among my favorites: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9) “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6–7) And, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22–23)

But trying to read the whole book through—which I attempted unsuccessfully several times—I bumped up against long recitations of boring genealogies (the opening chapters of First Chronicles), several of God’s laws where the punishment didn’t quite fit the crime (the Book of Leviticus recommends the death penalty for cursing your mother or father, for being a medium or “spiritist,” for committing adultery, incest, bestiality or acts of homosexuality and for blaspheming the name of the Lord) and a wilder and more angry Jesus than I had known (the Gospel of Mark). I certainly didn’t take everything in the Bible literally, but even viewing some passages figuratively didn’t help—what was I to understand, metaphorically, about God and His plan for me when he kills “every firstborn in Egypt, both man and animal” because Pharaoh won’t free the Hebrews? That God was a son of a bitch when messed with? Still, I didn’t doubt the Bible was inspired by God; the trouble, I believed, was my ability to interpret it.

Several of my columns dealt with Christian apologetics—the study of the historical accuracy of the faith. I needed to hear Christians more intelligent than I who had the utmost confidence—and evidence to back it up—in what the Bible said, even those uncomfortable passages that most believers skip or ignore. That was why I loved interviewing people like Bill Creasy.

When he started working on his doctorate in medieval literature, a friend warned Creasy, “Don’t waste your career being the world’s leading expert on a third-rate Victorian poet. Choose a major author or a major work.”

“So I chose God and the Bible,” Creasy told me. “God’s a world-class poet.”

By day, Creasy, then 52, was a popular English professor at UCLA. By night—and on early mornings and weekends—he was a tireless Bible instructor. He strove to teach the Good Book cover to cover, verse by verse, to as many people as possible.

“The curtain goes up in Genesis and goes down in Revelation. It’s a very linear story,” Creasy said. “You can’t possibly understand Revelation without reading the 65 books before it.”

I attended several of Creasy’s classes. He was a rich storyteller who combined encyclopedic knowledge with a sense of humor. His approach, a popular one in the modern era, was to teach the Bible as literature. His goal was to get his students “inside the narrative,” just as they would with any book, instead of “standing outside the text.”

“The people in the Bible are as real to me as you are,” Creasy said. “And I think I make them come alive in class.”

The problem that most people have studying the Bible, he added, was that they read it in bits and pieces. His students read the Bible straight through in two years.

“It’s like listening to a Beethoven symphony a few bars at a time in random order,” Creasy said. “Many people always wanted to read the Bible all the way through, but they bog down around Leviticus. I’m a scout. I’ve been down the trail before.”

Though it has at least 44 authors and was written over 1,500 years, Creasy sees the Bible as a unified literary work that is the Word of God. “The main character is God, the conflict is sin and the theme is redemption,” he says. “His face is on every page of Scripture; His voice is in every word…[The Bible] brings us ever closer, moment by moment, to the living Lord.”

Yet most college professors who teach the Bible as literature aren’t doing so as, or for, believers. Usually, this approach is merely an introduction for students who are biblically illiterate and feel obliged to learn something about what is called history’s most influential book without wanting to commit themselves on the big questions. Indeed, reading the entire Bible means facing
all
the potential contradictions. The Apostle Paul wrote, “God is not the author of confusion,” yet the Bible is perplexing enough to spawn thousands of different interpretations and Christian denominations. Even theologians arrive at different answers to questions large (can we be saved through works or by grace alone?)—and small (did Jesus have brothers?). What is a believer to make of all this? By incorporating historical context and scholarship, Creasy provides nuanced answers for each troublesome verse of the Bible.

For example, to a casual reader, the Book of Genesis turns into a horror story when God tests the faithfulness of Abraham. The Lord tells him to take “your only son, Isaac, whom you love [and is an adult], and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” (Genesis 22:2)

It seems like a sadistic request, especially when God abruptly stops Abraham just as he’s about to plunge a knife into his son. But Creasy, in a 95-minute lecture which he pulls from geography, history and other parts of the Scriptures, explains that Abraham knew Isaac would either be saved or resurrected by God because the Lord had promised Abraham earlier that Isaac would have many descendants. God always keeps His promises, and how could Abraham’s son have children if he were dead?

Others may disagree with Creasy’s analysis, but I found it comforting that someone of his intellect didn’t flinch as he made his way through the Bible.

It didn’t escape me that I had the best part-time job in the world. Whatever interested me, whatever I wanted to know about religion, I could pick up the phone and call some of the country’s greatest experts, and they would talk with me. Or I could visit someone who would testify about God’s miracles. I got up each morning excited about the prospect of reporting and writing another column. I didn’t mind, for instance, spending a Friday night at the hottest high school dance in Orange County, which happened to be put on by the Mormon Church. Or driving to Tijuana on a weekend to watch orphans open Christmas presents sent by churches in the United States. Or taking a Saturday morning to watch a teacher at a synagogue make the story of Noah’s Ark come alive by having her children make a ship out of pita bread and, with a layer of frosting in the hull, place Animal Crackers inside.

The work gave me goose bumps. I framed my first column and hung it in my office at Times Community News. I had found my calling and tried to figure out a plan to move over to
The Times
full-time. My hopes rose when my editors started to wonder how I found much more interesting stories in a few hours a week than their Orange County religion writer did full-time. As the column developed, I’d occasionally get two equally good and timely column ideas and the editors would give me the green light to write one of them as a regular story. This allowed my work to start appearing on the front of the Metro section and get more attention.

Best of all, covering religion was deepening my faith. By 1999, it had been seven years since my mountaintop conversion. I felt a growing muscularity to my Christianity. I was learning more and more about the Bible. I wanted to plunge deeper into belief, history and custom. I didn’t need as much self-help as I had earlier; my life had long ago gotten out of intensive care and had stabilized. I started to feel claustrophobic at Mariners Church. Its seeker-friendly services—which had drawn me so effortlessly back to Christianity—now seemed simplistic. I wanted to strip away the happy songs, the upbeat, black-and-white messages and the cappuccino machine. I wanted something more authentic, more raw, even. I was grateful for my time at Mariners, but I felt I had graduated. We stopped going as a family one day and slipped away. Nobody noticed. That was the blessing and curse of belonging to a mega-church. No one knows you’ve arrived and no one realizes when you’ve gone.

Greer still dreamed about attending the Catholic Church of her youth. Like a lot of cradle Catholics, she never felt entirely comfortable in other denominations. She liked the ritual, the formality and the familiarity. We made a test run at our local parish, but it ended badly when Father Jerome Karcher (son of Carl’s Jr. founder Carl Karcher), with a kind smile on his face, explained to Greer that she was an adulterer because she hadn’t gotten married in the church.

“You don’t really believe that,” Greer said, laughing.

“Oh, absolutely,” Father Jerome assured her. “Jesus said it.”

We didn’t go back.

Yet I felt a growing attraction to the Catholic Church, its complex 2,000-year-old history, its stories of the saints, the breadth and depth of its theology, its beautiful liturgy and its big-tent tradition that allowed for ultra-liberals and ultra-conservatives, the rich and poor, majorities and minorities to worship in the same parish. Not too long ago—within living memory of some—the centuries-long conflict between Protestants and Catholics still had sharp edges in the United States. When Al Smith was the Democratic nominee for president in 1928, vitriolic anti-Catholic literature and speakers flourished. (One perennial bestseller claimed to report on baby burnings from inside a convent.) Republican operatives spread the rumor that Smith was secretly extending the Holland Tunnel 3,500 miles to the Vatican. Today, evangelicals and Catholics still have an uneasy relationship, with many evangelicals viewing Catholics’ devotion to the papacy and their praying to the saints as unbiblical, at best. For their part, many Catholics simply ignore evangelicals because they aren’t part of the One True Church.

Greer and I compromised for the moment, agreeing to attend St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach. Pastor John Huffman, a longtime friend, had run the church for decades. At six-foot-four and 220 pounds, John was a teddy bear partial to sweater vests and neatly pressed slacks. An intellectual with a fondness for politics and golf, John was mentored by Norman Vincent Peale. He had been one of President Richard Nixon’s spiritual advisors when John was pastor of a Presbyterian church in Key Biscayne, Florida, where the president often vacationed. With his booming baritone voice and sharp mind, John gave thought-provoking sermons with academic overtones for churchgoers who wanted to believe with both heart and mind.