The second of my deprogrammings is more traditional. I had been a disciple(htpd) for about nine months and was looking forward to Christmas vacation. I had already flunked out of school and I was constantly broke. I never had money and I barely worked as a busboy in a resturant in town. I didn’t live with other disciples, I had to move off-campus after I flunked out and I couldn’t find a spot. (I refused to move into an apartment with seven men living in a two bedroom apartment.) When I went home for Christmas, I ended up staying home for almost a year and facing my parents everyday.
You’re Not Going Back to that Church
Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters–yes, even his own life–he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. “
Day one was pretty eventful. My parents had let me sleep in, I had spent an hour praying and reading my Bible and went downstairs in late morning to talk. We ate breakfast and then starting talking about the pink elephant after we cleared the plates. My father sat across from me and stared at me the entire time. I stared back in hatred. I hated being caged in the house and the neighborhood like a criminal. He had asked what I believe about my church. He asked why I didn’t call home anymore and why I refused to come home on the weekends. I had told him that I needed to be at church. (I didn’t want to say that I had to be at church or else, because I didn’t think my friends were like that. I felt it every once in a while, but no one said that to me.) He expressed his hurt and frustration that I had basically shut him out of my life. He was also upset that about the time I started talking about God, I flunked out of college. He blamed the church for causing me to get off-track in my studies. I denied it – the minister had actually rebuked me for flunking out and not listening to his advice when I studied the Bible. My father, however, wasn’t buying it. The truth to him was simple: the church divided the family, it took my focus off school, and it made me a co-dependent weakling.
I had a defense ready against all these charges. I told him that we didn’t agree about what the Bible says about salvation. It wasn’t the church that was dividing us, but the Holy Spirit. I then read him Matthew 10:35-37. I insisted that the minister had pleaded with me to get back into school, but that I didn’t listen. I was afraid of switching majors and didn’t want to disappoint the family. I knew that my reasons for flunking out didn’t make sense, but I apologized for the lies and deceit about school. I pointed out that the church had helped me come to grips with my sin and stop lying and deceiving. I read him a verse somewhere that I don’t remember. I think it was totally out of context. To the last charge, I showed him all kinds of verses about how disciples(htpd) belong to one another (Romans 12:5) and love each other.
My father quickly set aside these arguments: he wasn’t going to tolerate my hiding behind religion to excuse flunking out of college. He was going to fix me and get my priorites striaight if it killed him. I was a failure, a coward, and a lazy, disgraceful son. He loved me, but I had broken his trust. I felt terrible and realized much later that I should have been asking for his forgiveness instead of defending myself as if I did nothing wrong. I had wronged him and the whole family. He would tell me years later that I really wronged myself the worst of all, but I didn’t understand that at the time. I was dismissed from the table, so I went back upstairs and didn’t leave my room for dinner. I stayed upstairs and wept for myself.
That was the end of the first day at home.
In the ensuing days, some mornings started with a challenge to what I believed about salvation. Some started with an eerie silence. No one really knew what exactly to say. After Dad and I traded verses back and forth, he finally declared that I couldn’t use the Bible anymore to defend my doctrine of salvation. He assured me that he didn’t teach what I believed and that he would never lead me astray. He taught what he knew in his heart to be true and retold his salvation experience many times. I dismissed it as emotional and illogical – the Bible was clear about baptism and I figured he was simply avoiding the issue.
Mom, who was silent about doctrine, was only concerned about the race of my girlfriend at the time. She had wanted me to go to a therapist in Elizabeth City so that I could be fixed. She didn’t understand why I wanted to bring so much pain on myself by having an interracial relationship. She told me over and over about the suffering our kids would endure and that their mixed heritage was unfair to them. The world was cruel and she didn’t want the world to be cruel to me. I responded in anger and told her the real issue was that she didn’t want a black grandchild. For the only time in my life, my mother was so devastated by me, she didn’t speak to me. It hasn’t never happened since.
The salvation issue built up for a few days until at some point my father asked me “Do you think I’m going to Heaven?” I told him that i couldn’t judge, but that the Bible was clear. He accused me of avoiding the issue. After a very heated exchange, he physically backed me into a wall and demanded “YES OR NO: DO YOU BELIEVE THAT I AM SAVED?!” When he cut me off for any answer that didn’t sound like Yes or No, I finally took a deep breath and put my hands on his shoulders.
I said in a low voice, “I love you Dad very much, but you are going to bust the Gates of Hell wide open.”
For several weeks after that, Dad expressed his incredulity that his own son thought he was going to Hell. My mother told me that I shouldn’t talk that way. I was moved into the bottom floor of the house with a bed and a separate area to cook and eat. I had a small fridge and other things. I think my parents needed to be away for me for a while, and I welcomed the break.
My friends in Raleigh wrote me letters and called me when they could. They cheered me on to ‘fight the good fight’. Some of them sent me Bible Studies, others cards. My girlfriend sent me a card everyday. I was totally miserable. The Bible Studies began to have a common theme that basically implied that I wasn’t dealing with the situation correctly because I didn’t get up and leave. For a while, I even plotted a dramatic get away where my friends would drive into town and I would sneak out and go back to Raleigh. Deep inside, I knew that was wrong. I still don’t know where that came from – I’d like to think that deep down I love my parents and hoped for reconciliation.
I eventually started going to the small community college in town. My grades were bad at first, but they steadily improved and I felt like I could get back into college. NC State had said that I could get back in under the condition that I seek mental help and demonstrated an academic ability. With college going well and money from two part time jobs being socked away, the only thing left was the mental health. I prayed quite a bit: I was certain that he, like everyone else, was going to tell me that my church was wrong. Things were on track, but Dad and I still had the occasional dispute. When the appointment was set, I took courage that it would only last a brief time.
He was a nice man, but I was confused at why he never told me anything. He asked me all kinds of questions and he seemed to love the strange answers. One thing that I do remember vividly was the question, “What do you want to do with your life?” When I threw up a block, he rephrased it to mention that it didn’t have to be reasonable or affordable or pracitcal. I said that I wanted to get in a Winnebago and drive around the country by myself. He then shocked me by asking, “Why don’t you do it?” I told him that I had to finish college. He pressed deeper. Finally, I admitted that I was part of a church that wouldn’t let me do it, because the Kingdom of God was somehow defined as a 60 mile radius around the building, and that my family would never speak to me because I had to be a success in life. He then asked me why I let other people dictate my life and I argued with him that I was my own man and that no one told me what to do except God, himself.
During this time, my friends told me I had to break up with my girlfriend. They said that I was hurting her being so far away and that because I never wrote or called, I must not really love her. When I protested, it was said that if I really did love her, then I should set her free. I was crushed, but I did it. They were there in town with her, so I figured that they knew how she was better than I did. So one night, I called her and broke up with her.
Lonely, I turned to food for comfort and I gained over 50 pounds. I had given up on God and my father thought that I was making real progress. I figured that my life was going to be a miserable failure from this point onward despite my father’s encouragement. A new leader that just moved into Raleigh called me to see how I was. When I confessed my bitterness and sorrow, I braced myself for the mother of all rebukes. Instead, he said that I needed strength and that I should read 1 Samuel. I did. This was the first ray of sunshine in a long itme.
After nine months at home, I had a chance to plead my case with NC State and gain readmittance. God worked a miracle and I got back in. (Somehow I got an A in a Spanish class that I never attended. The registrar let it go when I mentioned it to him.) I called Dad to tell him that I was back at NC State. He was overjoyed and asked when I was coming home next weekend. I told him that I had church. He cried that night, and I regret that the only think that I was thinking was that I had outlasted him and that I was never going to be crushed like that again.
I think it only fair to say that my father and I have long since reconciled. We enjoy a healthy trust, now and I think the world of him. He is doing a lot of work for my upcoming wedding and he is very excited for me. We call and talk when we can. He has since helped me out of a lot of jams and I was able to be there for him during some tough times in his life. I was happy to ask him to be a groomsman in my wedding.
Back to the point, though, like other times, deprogramming content focuses on some truth, some truth taken out of context (which makes it untrue) and some outright fabrications. Sometimes I think that I was trying to reprogram him and I regret that.