Satan Goes to Preacher School

To me it seemed like I was the dumbest dumb ass who was ever given an ass.  I was pretty old before I realized my name was not Stupid Knot-head.  My parents seemed to give more attention to the arts [singing, and painting pictures] and as long as you passed that was good enough.  Education was not valued.  In fact, education was sometimes mocked and distrusted.  

Once I sat down and tried to recall the number of schools I attended in my life.  I counted 33 schools.  If I tried to count the public schools I attended now I doubt if I could come up with that same number.  Either I was right then and have forgotten some of the schools, or while the exact number of schools might be wrong it is a fact that I went to a lot of schools before I graduated from high school.  Because my family forced me to change schools so often it was not unusual for me to attend four different schools in the same school year.  I grew up without friends.  Part of the reason is I never lived any place long enough to develop a deep friendship.  Part of it was me.  Why even try to make new friends when you were going to move away sooner than later.  

Now while I am absolutely sure that I’m a big ole dummy, it is also true, probably, that moving a lot meant that there was no continuity to my education.  The last school was studying something different from the new school.  I was so confused and unmotivated that the only constant in my life was my feelings of being confused and unmotivated.  

As I approached my graduation from high school I assumed I’d probably be going to the army.  There was a draft, and the Vietnam war was raging.  I thought I would be pressured to go into the military and I doubted that I was up to going against my family, so I also thought I might flee to Canada.  There were several problems with going to Canada.  First, it is cold there.  Secondly, how would I support myself there?  I knew no one in Canada.  Thirdly, I had a girlfriend who was sort of gung ho on serving one’s time in the military if called upon to do so.  I imagined if I was ever to have a chance at sexual intercourse I would have to keep that girlfriend happy with me.

My senior year in high school I got my “Report For Your Physical”  letter.  It is understandable.  I was held back  in grade school, so I was a 19 year old senior in high school.  Each time I got a draft notice I went down with a document showing I was still in high school and I was given an I-H draft card [Registrant not currently subject to processing for induction].

On December 1, 1969, the Selective Service System of the United States had a lottery to determine the order of call to military service in the Vietnam War for men born between 1944 and 1950.  I was born in 1950.  My number was 294.  I got a special draft card and the letter said it meant I was not going to be drafted in the year 1970 and every year after this I would be less and less likely to be drafted.

That was both a relief and a dilemma.  I was relieved not to be forced to go to war, or to flee to Canada.  But what was I going to do?  I had not applied anywhere to college.  Why would I?  I was stupid, that was the one thing my father had convinced me was a clear truth.  

My father asked me if I would be interested in going to preacher school.

The church of Christ had developed these unaccredited schools designed for older men, later in their life, who wanted to preach.  The goal was to give men enough of a background in the scriptures to go out and preach, without having a Christian College degree in Bible.

I was only 19, but what else would I do?  I agreed to consider preacher school, filled out the application, and the ball was rolling.  There was a preacher school in Dallas and my grandparents lived in Dallas.  I could go to the Preston Roads School of Preaching, and stay with my grandparents.  After I moved to Dallas, I was asked to consider being the youth minister at Webb Chapel Church of Christ.  I preached a sermon there, it was well received, and I was hired.

I was a terrible youth director.  I had no clue what to do.  I started having devotionals at people’s houses.  Sometimes I would dim the lights, we would all hold hands and do a chain prayer.

The elders called me in and told me that was not appropriate.

One very scary thing happened to me during this period.  I brought one of the other preacher school candidates to church with me, and he attended one of my Sunday night home devotionals.  The other preacher student, let’s call him Dale, asked me if I would consider going home with him and spending the night.  I agreed.

Dale was a huge guy, with a baby-like face.  He had to have been six foot seven or more, and his weight was like 190 lbs.  Dale was a “lambda” the Greek letter we were using to identify our class.  Secondly, Dale said inappropriate things, and had outbursts where he said odd and sometime ridiculous things.

One thing he said often that was very odd to me would happen if anyone mentioned chicken.  

“I love fried chicken.  There is nothing I like better in laying in bed with a leg in each hand and a breast in my mouth.”

At his place he got to acting strange.  He started talking about how he had a sin, that he could not tell anyone about, and that made it hard for him to be fully Christian.  He told me that he had been kicked out of the Navy because of this sin.

That was enough for me to figure out that he was gay, but Dale continued to tell me about a party he was at with other sailors and they had all been naked and when they were caught he got kicked out of the Navy.  I said some generic things about how God is able to forgive anything humans could possibly do.  I made pains not to mention gay behavior as a sin.

It was after 1 am and he suggested we go to bed.  

I’m feeling very ill-at-easy.  He has a double bed and he suggests I take a side and he’ll take his usual side.  I slip into bed wearing my tighty-whities.  I was afraid to move.  I was afraid to sleep.  Dale got up after a few minutes to pee.  He did an Open Door Urination.  The flow of his pee sounded huge.  I was too afraid to stay.  Dale came back to bed and after a little while his breathing changed and he began a very slight snoring.

I got up as quietly as I could and carried my pants and shoes out of the bedroom.  I pulled on my pants in the living room and I’d just pulled a sock from one of my shoes when Dale entered the room wearing nothing but some yellow and red striped briefs.  The underwear was tight and it was obvious he was getting an erection.

This is the approximate conversation as best I can remember it:

Dale:  Where are you going?

Me:  I thought I’d go on home.

Dale:  It is late.  Why not wait until morning?

Me.  Oh.  Well.  I just can’t relax.  I figure I’ll sleep better in my own bed.

Dale:  It’s because I told you about myself.

Me:  No.  [I lied.] It wasn’t that. [It was exactly that.]

Dale sat down on the floor very close to me, his face less than a foot from my face.

Dale:  It was a mistake for me to confess my sins to you.

Me:  It was nothing.

Dale:  It was not nothing.  If you tell anyone, they will kick me out of Preacher School and no church will ever hire me.

Me:  Why would I tell?  You have asked for God’s forgiveness.  

Dale:  You know I could kill you now, and then kill myself.

This was starting to get really scary.  I read about this murder suicide stuff in the newspapers.

Dale:  In just a few minutes, you would be like the beggar named Lazarus in heaven, and I would be like the rich man in hell.

He was referring to the parable in Luke 16 usually referred to as the story of the Rich Man and the beggar Lazarus.

Dale:  I would be in hell looking up at you, just like I’m looking at you now.  I would be begging you to dip your finger in water and put a drop of cool water on my tongue to help ease the burning fires of hell.

Suddenly Dale reached out and took my foot and he put my big toe in his mouth sucking the toe.  

Me:  Don’t!

I tried to jerk my foot away from him but he was sasquatch strong.

Dale:  Don’t act all grossed out.  You wanted me to do that.

Me.  I want to leave.

Dale rose up on his knees and put both his hands around my throat and started to choke me.  I could feel my face get hot, and my head felt like it was swelling.  I was pulling at his hands trying to get them away from my throat, but Dale was stronger than me.  I thought that this was it, this was how I would die.  I almost felt OK with it.  I hadn’t really enjoyed much in my life.  What would I be losing?

It almost seemed, at that moment, that Dale read my thoughts.  He seemed like he was just going to refuse to give me release.  Dale released his hold on my throat and stood up and stepped to one side.  

Dale:  You can go.

I didn’t hesitate. 

 

You may find it hard to understand, but I didn’t report Dale to the police.  I didn’t tell any of the teachers at the Preston Road School of Preaching.  The following morning I went to class, Dale was there, and what happened between us was never mentioned again.

I have no explanation.  I was afraid, yes.  I was partly ashamed, yes.  It was his word against mine, yeah.  Also, other shit came down on me and I just moved on.

The Play

In my work as the youth director I found myself attracted to an 18 year old high school senior, who just happened to be the daughter of one of the elders.  I’ll call this young lady, Mandy.  Mandy was much taller than me and she had appropriately large breasts.  Mandy was a little angry with her parents, especially her dad.

Mandy was not a prude and I found her to be a promising lead in my search for eventual intercourse.  I could imagine myself married to this girl.  I wasn't actually thinking of proposing, but I was at the point where I thought, Wow, she is fine, and if grow even closer, well, it is possible she could be THE ONE.  

Mandy and I spent as much time together as possible and we shared a lot of our interests.  Mandy said she was involved in the drama club at her high school and she had been in several plays.

It just so happened that while I’d never actually been in a play, I had written several one acts.  Mandy wanted to read one of my plays and I wanted Mandy to admire me.  So I gave her one of the plays I’d written when I was a high school senior.  The play did contain the word “fuck” in some of the dialogue.

During the Wednesday night service one of the elders came by and said they were going to have an emergency Elder’s meeting after church, and I was to stay at the church building until that Elder’s meeting was over.

I had no clue what was up, but as I walked out of the building I met Mandy and she looked like she’d just witnessed someone putting her cat into a wood chipper.  Mandy demanded that we go sit in my car and talk.  Mandy started to cry and to tell me how sorry she was. It turned out she’d left my one act play on the front seat of the car when she drove home from school, and later, her mother got into the same car, saw the play on the passenger side seat.  She picked the play up and scanned to the first F word.

I was fired.  I was also ordered to go see a psychiatrist or else I would be exposed at the Preacher School.   I was also ordered to go forward Sunday morning and repent.

I repented.

I went to the psychiatrist.  

 

The shrink was my first mental health visit.  It did not turn out to be my last visit with a shrink.  The psychiatrist told me that anything we said to one another was in confidence.  This surprised me.  Why would the Elders send me to see this church of Christ Psychiatrist if they were not going to get a report back from him.  The shrink told me that I was angrier at the Elders than I seemed willing to admit.  He felt my shame over writing the word fuck on paper, in an unproduced unpublished play was my shame alone.  I was shaming myself. 

 

Later, Mandy's father called me complaining that they had send me to, and paid for me to see this Psychiatrist and he got no report back.

 

Later Mandy’s father met with me.  He was a big guy.  He was a big angry guy.  He, of course, forbad me from ever seeing his daughter again and I was forbidden from telling Mandy that he had ordered me to stay away from her.  His suggestion was that I tell Mandy that I was upset with her for leaving that play out where it could be found and I never wanted to see her again.

That was partly true, so I complied with that order.

It was clear to me soon after all this came down on me, that someone had told the staff at the Preacher School already.  The head of the school called me in and suggested that I leave the school.  I’d been there over a year, but I dropped out.

Just before leaving town I got a letter from the Psychiatrist.  The shrink letter said that while our time together was in confidence, that IF I wanted him to, he would draft a letter to the Elders.  Since I was returning to my parent's home, I just let the matter drop.

I packed my stuff and drove back to Virginia.

Was I angry?  Yes.  I did think that a lot of people were overreacting to the F word, but I was also a preacher candidate that had written the F word on paper and other people had read the word.

I left Preacher School with greater doubts than I had when I arrived there.

The class I’d taken on how we got the Bible talked about how some manuscripts were found.  There are no original manuscripts of the Bible.  Everything was copied by hand.  Some of the verses that we find perplexing the teachers blamed on Scribner errors.

In my Koine Greek class we were given a passage to translate as homework.

I must admit here that I was not a great Koine Greek student.  I had what I called an Underwater Grade:  UNDER C LEVEL.

Nevertheless, I had more trouble than usual trying to translate this passage.  When I got to school the following morning several of the other students shared that they too found the passage impossible to translate.

When the teacher came in the teacher asked if anyone had trouble translating the passage.  Every hand went up.  

The Teacher:  Don’t feel about failing to translate this passage.  The reason it is so hard to translate is that the Greek passage contains a grammatical error.

My immediate thought was, GOD MAKES GRAMMATICAL ERRORS?

The church of Christ doublespeak answer to a grammatical error in the original Greek  is that there are no original manuscripts, that Scribner errors  entered the passage through recopying. The problem I have is that the claim that the originals were perfect, is that there is no way to check that assumption.  If the church of Christ theory is right, that while there are no originals that God’s providence made sure that we were able to piece together the Perfect Word of God, then shouldn’t our piecing together have found a passage that was without the grammatical error?

In Preacher School I learned:

• the scriptural rationale for why women were to keep silent in the churches.
• and why it is a sin to sing with instrumental music
• and how we know we are supposed to worship on Sundays instead of Saturday [the Sabbath day]
• I also learned that you should circumcise your baby boys because the foreskin is extra sensitive and it will cause the uncircumcised to have uncontrollable lust.  Really.  That was taught in the classroom at the Preston Roads School of Preaching.  

What I didn’t learn is:

• How could I be a member of the church of Christ without doubts
• What I could not figure out was how to be OK with the repressive beliefs of the church of Christ
• How was I ever going to stop hating myself?
• How was I going to be saved given my propensity to do, and think bad things?

Back in my father’s home my mother and father looked at me like I was a huge embarrassing disappointment to them.  It was a look in their faces that I have seen throughout my life.

I didn’t know it then, but I fell into a huge depression.  I sat around in the dining room, where the record player was located, and I listened to Cat Stevens songs over and over again.  It was hard for me to breath.  I felt like the weight of a car was resting on my chest and just to draw in another breath seemed very close to impossible.

 

I wanted to die, but, of course, I was afraid to die.  I was obviously in a bad relationship with God.  It was clear to me that if I killed myself I was going to be in pain from the death stuff, and as soon as I was dead, rather than relief from the pains of this life, I would be immediately in the Lake of Fire.  I needed a plan.