Most people live in a bubble. They come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. The walls of the bubbles are the outer boundaries to which they will let their minds wander. These bubbles are created by the societies into which we are born and raised. They become our comfort zones.
My bubble was a 1950s & 60s Midwest bubble. It was the rising Bible Belt, made up of new thinkers of old ideas. They would reshape Christianity for decades to come. My journey began when I was 11 years old. My mother professed Christianity; my father, well, not so much. He ruled his domain with a booming voice and a government issue leather belt. It’s all he knew, having been raised in a West Virginia coal mining town. His mother died when he was a baby. His father didn’t have time for raising kids. He died while Dad was in high school. It was a tough, mean world.
My neighbors had been after me to go with them to church for quite some time, but I wasn’t considered to be old enough to make that trip without the wise counsel of my dad. He wasn’t interested in attending. Not this week, anyway. Maybe next time. Well, then came Vacation Bible School. It was a new program the local Baptist church was having. Dad was concerned about indoctrination but, after talking to the adult neighbors, decided it would be okay. All that week I heard the Bible stories and watched as they unfolded on the marvel of flannel boards. At the end of the week, the pastor preached a fiery sermon telling us how we were all going to burn in hell if we didn’t get to the altar this instant. How could I not oblige?
I kept this a secret, believing Dad would surely have a time sharing his government-issued leather belt with my posterior. A couple of weeks later I was in Sunday School—yes, after VBS Dad relented. This particular Sunday I learned there was a catch to my salvation decision. In order for it to be “official,” it would be necessary for me to be baptized. I had never heard of such a thing! They wanted to submerge me in a tub of water!? That was just the beginning of the horrors. They had made up special invitations for the parents for us to hand-deliver. What was I to do? I tried to reason with them, telling them how severely I would be punished for becoming a Christian without clearing it with Dad. They understood, they said. They wouldn’t say anything, they promised. They lied.
It wasn’t that bad, though. Dad wanted to sit down and talk for a while to see if I knew what I was doing. He finally decided I wasn’t old enough, and I was spared a public spectacle. Ultimately, I left that church because, regardless of the topic, the conclusion was the same. You need to go to the altar to be saved from an eternity in hell.
It was years later in a Methodist church I decided I wanted to be a minister. Not a pastor so much. More an elder. Really, what I saw was an opportunity to counsel troubled people without having to charge them. But when I met with the area bishop about my future, I left having decided Methodism wasn’t for me. For over an hour, all he talked about was me getting a good college education so I could get in the big churches, where I would make more money. That’s not what I had come to believe was the end goal of ministry.
Ultimately I went to college majoring in psychology and minoring in theology. Later, I would rethink that choice. Psychologists in those days did the grunt work while psychiatrists got all the credit and money. Perhaps it is different now, but back then you could barely make a livable wage as a psychologist. In the end, I started pastoring independent churches. No salary, just work. But I found it satisfying for the most part. That meant I had to take another job at the same time to pay the bills, so I went into the new field of personal computing and network management.