Fundamentally Yours: Chapter 2
Pivotal moments are part and parcel of the evangelical movement, and the stories are called ‘testimonials’, but instead of being bitten by a spider, or being exposed to Gamma Rays, it’s all about the moment in which someone ‘was saved’. For the uninitiated, salvation is the hallmark of Evangelical Christianity. It’s the moment one acknowledges their own unworthiness, and accepts faith in Jesus and the meaning of his death/resurrection as the only way to achieve worthiness in the eyes of god. This moment is made all the more interesting if the unworthiness is sensational. “I was a drug addict and murderer, but then I got saved and through Jesus, now I’m free of drugs and am helping people.” is a sure-fire way to become an instant hero in any evangelical community. Testimonials and Altar Calls, the moment when the pastor asks the congregation for all unsaved people to come to the front to get saved are the staples of the evangelical Sunday morning.
This moment usually occurs after a sermon that lays out every humans’ unworthiness. For many evangelical pastors looking to ‘save’ as many people as possible, there’s a method used called the ‘Roman Road’. This method can be compared to many other psychological methods of manipulation, which depend on three key steps — Step One is to persuade the person that they need what you have. “You are unworthy”. Step Two is the key message to the road, which is, “Hey, you’re unworthy, but there’s a path to worthiness.” If steps one and two are laid out effectively, and an ‘unsaved’ individual is fully burdened with both guilt for unworthiness, and desperation for the cure, then the final path is the moment of release — “Isn’t it wonderful that god sacrificed himself for you.” It’s both a release, but also a key element in assuring a mindset that is forever crippled from being able to escape the formula — “Yes, you’re saved, but remember that your initial unworthiness was the reason god had to sacrifice himself in the first place.”
Effective evangelical pastors lay out this formula with equal amounts of guilt (you’re unworthy), fear (you’re going to hell without this), and of course, the solution (Jesus did this for you — to not accept him not only will put you in hell, but will reveal your unwillingness to acknowledge the ultimate sacrifice). Growing up, I’d watch in absolute wonder at this moment during a church service. My father would have preached a sermon with equal amounts of rage, tears and absolute conviction. During the Altar Call after the sermon, the perfect soundtrack to the moment of redemption would be sung by the congregation. The song, or hymn, would often times include equal amounts of melancholy and hopeful melody, layered with words reinforcing the Roman Road.
Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!
This hymn has 4 stanzas that quite overtly lay out the ultimate redemption story. As I write this, and review the lyrics to this hymn, I recall singing it Sunday mornings, Sunday nights and Thursday nights for what seems an endless number of times. To escape the monotony, I’d switch out words — Plea became Flea, Blood became gore…the list goes on. Equal amounts of revulsion and amusement wash over me as I remember the countless moments in which my father, sensing that the guilt-inducing magic of this hymn hadn’t fully taken effect, would ask the congregation to sing the last stanza one more time.
In the midst of it, I’d remember looking around, silently begging for someone to get saved already so that the sermon could end. When back in the United States, it would always be amusing to look around and see the deacons get anxious and red-faced at 12:15 pm. My father would contemptuously ignore the tapping feet as he would ask the congregation to sing the last stanza for a fifth time. He took a certain pride in extending the Altar Call, knowing that he was forcing the deacons to miss the first moments of the football games for the sake of wrenching souls from the clutches of hell.
On the mission field, it was always a different story — my father could preach for four hours, and the congregation would watch him, completely enamored with his fire-and-brimstone style. Looking back, I often wonder if people from all over came to watch this amazing Gringo put on to get saved, or for the ultimate emotional circus from out of town. The entertainment factor did not go unnoticed, as congregants would sit, stand, sit, stand and almost beg for more.
Our particular denomination kept records of the numbers missionaries would save, as they seemed to believe that the Bible laid out a formula for the return of Jesus, which included the condition that every person would first have to have a chance to review and consider the roman road offer. This of course seemed to exclude the reality that people die on a regular basis. My father was a record-breaker — congregants would file in line to get saved, or perhaps cue up to get a chance to meet and chat with this unusually charismatic, angry and boisterous Gringo.
My father’s origin story was an epic tale, but no amount of prodding would ever convince him to reveal his life before his own acceptance of the roman road. His story at home was the same story on the pulpit — he was a bad, selfish person on the verge of suicide, when he heard church bells at a nearby church. He went to see what the noise was, and ended up getting saved. He accepted the call to get saved, then committed himself to saving as many other people as possible. My father’s testimonial story would change in small ways from sermon to sermon, depending on how my father sensed the congregation would best be moved. Sometimes he’d have a gun to his head. Sometimes it would be a cocked rifle. Sometimes it was behind his mother’s house, sometimes it was walking down a lonely road. My father’s love for creating a moving moment was never beholden to the inconvenience of the truth, and we rolled along with any version of the story he wished to tell. Strangely, to this day, the details of his life before and during his pivotal moment are still vague — it was one day in my teens, as I asked him a scriptural question — that my father casually revealed a pivotal thought that marked his own approach — “People want simple answers. There’s no point in indulging those kinds of questions.”
My father’s own epic tale always had an amazing amount of flare, and it always carefully followed the formula required by the Roman Road. It was almost a requirement for missionaries to have an epic tale. As a child, I wondered if it was part of the job application. It was the most entertaining of experiences to attend the yearly gathering of missionaries on the field — Mission Meeting it was called. Missionary kids would be subjected to Vacation Bible School, a time in which parents could assure themselves that we were being properly indoctrinated, and Missionaries would plan out the incoming year. But on one occasion, the missionaries decided they would share their own testimonials to everyone else and their families. Looking back, I wonder if they would have done it again had they had the chance, because it quickly became a game of epic oneupmanship. My father added an extra-oomph to the story, blaming himself for the death of his own father — my brothers and I tried to act as though we weren’t surprised. Another missionary, plainly feeling the pressure of a less than spectacular conversion story, flatly described how god had personally come to him to tell him that he needed to be a missionary. The stories became more and more bizarre, and included supernatural events that could have easily made it into the most entertaining of Spiderman comics.
My father’s commitment to missionary work was never questioned. And, as bizarre and inconsistent as his words were to us as we grew up, it was obvious that he believed in what he said, however much it might change from sermon to sermon.
The origin story being told, now begins the tale of my early years living with a super-missionary father.
