08.01.07
Lukewarm
by Mark Hudson
I was first introduced to Christianity by Christian
parents, when I was four years old. My parents brought
my sister and I to church, and I remember playing with my sister in the car, feeling care free. The next
thing I know I went to church, where I was to have a
Sunday school lesson.
There was a play put on by a ventiloquist. In the act,
the ventriloquist dummy died and was put in a coffin.
They had a funeral for the dummy. The message was, ”
Find God or else!”
Find God or else what? Go to Hell? I remember
trembling with fear. Then they said, ” Okay, it’s
cookie time.” And I snapped out of my fear to gobble
down the cookies.
But the cookies seemed to symbolize something…
From then on, my parents had me go to Sunday school. A
friend I met in class and I would weekly steal the
cookies they had put out for the whole class and we
would eat them in the basement by ourselves. We never
got in trouble and they never told our parents. One
day, I said to my friend, ” Want to steal the cookies,
today?” And he said, ” Can’t do it today, it’s
Easter.”
There was another incident where a Sunday school
teacher said, ” The good kids in class will get a
lollipop, and the bad kids in class won’t get a
lollipop.” So I tried hard to be good, to sit still,
and the girl beside me was acting up, so the teacher
said, ” Allright, you two don’t get a lollipop!” So I
said, ” Well, I got suckers at home, so naaahhh.”
And I went home and sucked on a lollipop as if to show
that teacher!
Then one time in Sunday school in grade school the
teacher gave a talk and said, ” Now everybody close
their eyes. Whoever accepts Christ as their saviour,
raise their hand.” I opened my eyes and peeked. One of
my friends was raising his hand, so I did too, but I
think I was a long way away from forming an amends
with my creator.
When I got into high school, the sermons tended to
preach about sex reserved for marriage, avoiding
alcohol and drugs, etc. I had already started drinking
and smoking, and was looking forward to having sexual
experiences with the opposite sex. I didn’t want to
listen to the pastor and wait till I was like thirty
to have sex. At that young age, I noticed sexual urges
almost every day. I made a mental note not to conform
to that preacher’s plan of sexual celibacy. And
another thing that really irritated me about the youth
group and the church, their attack on rock ‘n’ roll.
The year was 1984, dawn of all the great metal bands.
The church was quick to attack this music as the
devil’s music, and encouraged us not to listen to it.
This made me mad. I loved rock and found the music
they played in church really corny. So I went to
church because my parents made me , but left to my
devices, I wouldn’t go.
I was drinking and smoking, and by sophomore year I
developed manic-depression. I was put in Charter
Barkley psychiatric hospital in Chicago, where I
stayed with teenagers from the projects and rough
neighborhoods of
lifestyle then I was accustomed to. Example; in a
group, one man said, ” In the old neighborhood, we
used to steal our parent’s guns and play tag at the
park and shoot at each other with real bullets.”
After being released from the hospital my mania turned
into depression. I began to talk to my mother about
God and tried going to the youth group church. As my
mental illness healed, I began to get bored with
church and crawled back to my old drinking and
drugging friends. I became manic again and went right
back into the hospital. I got out and began to recover
again. I went back to church and youth group, and went
on a mission trip to
Indians build a church, and I sang a Christian rap
that I wrote. There was this kid on the trip, and he
said, ” All this talk about God is okay, but I don’t
think God can forgive me. Because I killed a man. I
was high on PCP, and I pushed a man off a cliff.”
And I said, ” No, God can forgive you for even that.”
Next thing I know, I was on stage with that ” killer”
guy and we were accepting Christ as our saviour before
the whole group of people. He grew up, quit doing
drugs, and got married and created a family.
I was grateful that God could use me that way. But
when I got back, I became depressed. I was talking to
a mentally ill guy in my alternative school, and he
said, ” Don’t you love the other world, rather than
the real world?” And I said, ” Yes.” So I began to
drop acid, a total of twelve times over a period of
two years. Mixed in with drinking and weed. Once
again, I forgot about God!
At this point, I met a girl who became my girlfriend
who tried to get me away from drugs. She liked to
drink, but didn’t like drugs. I fell in love with her
and moved to
and so did I, but we were sleeping together. In order
to find a place to live I went to a strict, religious
school in Indiana where you were supposed to not
drink, drug, or smoke, have sex before marriage, and
sign a sheet saying you wouldn’t do that, and I signed
the paper, knowing I would do all those things. So I
didn’t like the school. Everybody was holier than thou
art, self-righteous, and hypocritical. My illness
began to kick in. I had the worst psychotic episode
ever. I didn’t sleep for a month. The first
hallucination I had was of a friend who had recently
comitted suicide, I saw his ghost walking across
campus.
Then I looked in the mirror and saw horns coming out
of my head like I was the devil. Then I heard these
voices say, ” You’re going to Hell!” And my dormroom
turned into a lake of fire. I left the school to be
hospitalized and never returned. On the last day
there, I was sitting in the cafeteria, and this kid
said, ” Why don’t you just blow your brains out?” And
I said, ” Be still and know that he is God.” and he
stormed off. My girlfriend broke up with me because it
was too much for her to handle.
Later on in life, I went over to a neighbor’s house
and he said, ” Either you become a Christian, or you
go to Hell!” and he started preaching his Bible, and I
had that same reaction, trembling in fear. People were
just pushing their punishing God down my throat, and I
was terrified. I read the Bible and I’d comitted every
sin I could see. Was a relationship with God an
impossible goal?
Today, my God is a loving God, and I can tell with the
amount of provision in my life. I was scared of a God
who punished sinners, even little boys who stole
cookies. Today, I’m not perfect, nor do I know anyone
who’s even close, but I like to think of God as love.
I can’t figure out his plans for billions of people on
planet Earth, but today, he’s given me a new life, and
for each blessing that comes my way, I humbly get on
my knees and thank him. God can’t be limited by our
human imaginations. He is more than willing to be our
God. So let him. Peace…..
MPJ said,
August 1, 2007 at 9:20 pm
This story is remarkable in that it seems to be a textbook case description of a Stage 1 individual - all the way up until the last paragraph where he tells us he has now grown beyond that stage. I have used boldface print to highlight actions showing he was unprincipled, a typical Stage 1 trait. And the italics point out the chaos (another Stage 1 trait) of his life. Everytime he gets involved with religion, he submits for a while to its rules and for a time, his life gets better. Then he falls away and goes back to his chaotic life. But all the while, even when involved in church groups and such, there is a lack of integrity to his purposes. He is not joining for spiritual reasons, more just to save himself.
While at end, he shows us he has now become a genuinely religious person (and his life is obviously the better for it!) what we don’t know is whether he is now Stage 2 religious, or Stage 4 religious. And in fact, this is typical. It is very hard to tell a Stage 2 from a Stage 4. They sound almost exactly the same in their language.
Mark was very generous to let me use this story and again, we are very glad for him that he has found some form of religion that has lifted him out of the chaos. It matters little to him in the end whether he is Stage 2 or Stage 4. The point is, he now has a belief system that brings him peace!