Getting Saved, Getting Sane

I started going to church in my mid-teens. A friend invited me to the Bible Baptist Church. The church was a member of the Independent Baptist Fellowship. Baptists who couldn't accept the relative mildness that was characteristic of the Southern Baptist convention back then. In the early 70s the the Bible Baptist Church was featured in a book on the fastest growing churches in America. In the few years it expanded from a couple of crummy couple of buildings with purple windows to a vast complex that included a kindergarten through 12th grade school and a fleet of buses. The logistics of running the bus fleet were complicated enough for them to have a full-time Minister of Transportation (all church executives had complete training as preachers).

Eerily enough I'd never thought much about religion. Any religion. All I associated with it was the saintly grandmother who'd pretty much raised me until I was about six.

I went. My parents decided to go with me. Eventually I got 'saved' and was Baptized. Full immersion. Sermons were preached against the evils of sprinkling.

My father did likewise. It gave him something to turn to when his doctor told him he'd have to stop hitting the bottle or he'd drop dead in short order.

In later years my father would call me up to say things like "Son, I don't want you to go to Hell." I could appreciate his position but by then I didn't believe there was a Hell or Heaven to go to.

Back in my teens I wanted to be a scientist. Specifically a physicist. I was very much interested in cosmology, cosmogony and particle physics. That the intuitions of modern science didn't jive with the Bible did cause me some concern.

Two of my heroes then were Einstein and Gandhi. One day it hit me that they were bound for weeping and gnashing of teeth were the worm dieth not.

I wondered why. Well, because they didn't believe in the resurrection of Jesus. Or anything in the Bible. I asked myself why they should. Couldn't think of a good reason. Asked myself why I did. Still couldn't come up with a reason.