Ryan, School, Hoover, and Depression

Early on, it was clear to me that Ryan was not an average little boy.  My pride might be ignored as the ravings of a proud daddy, and perhaps there is some of that, but really, we started to realize Ryan was smart.  Ryan was crazy smart.  I wish I could say he got that from me and his mother, but Ryan was adopted.  It is possible Ryan’s smartness is genetic.  The debate about nature and nurture is not going to be settled by me.

I wanted Ryan to be smart.  As soon as we needed a babysitter we used the wife of one of the school’s custodians.  Jim Grant, and his wife and home daycare owner, Barbara Grant.  The house was painted green and as soon as Ryan started talking he called the house Green Barbara’s.

One of our peers, Mr. Sanders, had a little girl, Shasta, who was very close in age to Ryan.  I remember once when Shasta spilled her drink.  Shasta said, “I spilled this all over my dress!”

I was shocked.  Ryan wasn’t talking beyond saying a word or two.  Here was his female contemporary speaking in complete sentences.

So yes, I was interested in Ryan being outstanding.  He seemed outstanding to me, but I knew I was seeing him through the eyes of love.

The summer arrived and my wife, Kathie started going to OU with Ms. Butner to take a class.  I was home alone all day with Ryan.  I would put him on my lap when I was reading something.  I started pointing to a word and I would say, “Ryan, this is the word ‘the.’  Find all the ‘the’s’ on the page.”

Ryan was just a tiny little guy, but he would find all the ‘the’s’ easily.  I would move on to other words and repeat the game.

Kathie would also give Ryan little challenges.  

Kathie would teach Ryan to say some big words like, zygomaticus, or orbicularis oris and pointing out where those muscles were in the face.

Once we were at a football game at Butner and we were sitting near Mrs. Factor.  Kathie prompted Ryan to say his big anatomy words and point to where the muscles were in his face.

Mrs. Factor said, “Oh, I could never say such big words.”

“Yes you can,” said Ryan.  “Just say it real slow: zi-go-matacus.”  Everyone thought that was cute and hilarious, but it just seemed to go way beyond what I would expect from a very young little boy.

By the time Ryan was five years old he was starting to correct my spelling, and he was reading age appropriate books.

I remember another time when we were driving from Wewoka to the gynecologist in Shawnee.  Kathie had developed endometriosis and was preparing to have a hysterectomy.  The trip took us past the drive-in movie theater that had a big marquee outside the gate.  One day as we were driving past Ryan looked up and said, “They’re showing POLTERGEIST.  Ryan was not recognizing the logo for the movie.  The sign was in all caps and it was just standard sign block printing.  How could a preschooler read the word POLTERGEIST?

MORE CHURCH OF CHRIST TROUBLE

One day Mr. Hoover, the Superintendent of Butner Public Schools, called me into his office.  He got pretty parental, or bossy with me.  

“Tex,” he said, “you and Kathie have been coming to church here [meaning Cromwell Church of Christ] but your attendance is not good.”

What was I supposed to say?

“And you have never placed membership.”

I was still waiting for a question or something.

“I think it is time for you to place your membership, and start being apart of the church.”

I told him I would talk to Kathie about that.

I talked to Kathie.  I was not wild about placing membership, but Kathie thought it was a good idea.  

We decided to go to church the following Sunday and place membership.

We did that.  We came forward to the sound of Just As I Am, filled out the little card, and we had done what we were asked to do.

After church we drove home, and we were changing out of our church clothes when the phone rang.  It was Mr. Hoover.  He and his wife were in town and he wanted to come to my home immediately.

Within a few minutes Mr. Hoover and his wife were sitting in my livingroom.  [This was before our move to the log house.]  

The conversation went something like this:

“There is a problem with your placing membership at Cromwell,” he said.  “I guess as soon as church was over someone called one of the Wewoka Church Elders and told them you’d placed membership.  The Wewoka Church is not going to let you place membership in Cromwell unless you repent at the Wewoka church for your part in the withdrawal of fellowship that happened back in 1972.”

“Then let’s just not be members of the Cromwell Church,” I told him.  “You asked us to place membership.  I didn’t want to place membership.  I placed membership because you asked me to.”

“But all will be OK if you just repent with the Wewoka Church.”

“No,” I said. “How can they tell the Cromwell Church what to do?” I asked.  “We were never withdrawn from,” I added.

“I’ve talked to the Elders,” Mr. Hoover said, “and all you have to do is write a statement and they will read it in the Sunday night service.”

“I won’t say that I was wrong about objecting to what they did to Stormy Winters.”

“You don’t have to say you were wrong,” Mr. Hoover, my boss, told me.  “All you have to say is if anyone was offended by my refusal to comply with the Elder’s action, that you are sorry for that.”

Kathie thought I should be able to say at least that.  I was feeling pressured to do what Mr. Hoover wanted because he was an elder and my boss.  

I caved.  I agreed to say that if anyone was offended by my actions during that withdrawal of fellowship that I am sorry.  It sounded to me like I was sorry I’d not agreed with the Elder’s action when the actual wording was that I was sorry if other people were offended.

I did this.  I did not go forward, but Mr. Hoover and his wife picked me and Kathie and Ryan up and drove us to the Wewoka Church of Christ building.  I sat through their Sunday night worship service.  Charlie Butler stood up and read my statement aloud and then lead a prayer thanking God for my willingness to comply with the leadership of the Elders and the healing of our relationship with the Body of Christ.

I was pretty steamed about this whole thing.  

I was not sorry I didn’t comply with the Elders.  I did not give a flying fuck if my actions offended anyone.  I was mostly mad at myself for not having enough spin to stand up to Mr. Hoover and telling him to leave my house and not to talk to me about church matters ever again.

I was, and still am, ashamed of myself when I cave in to intimidation and fear.  

I did what I was pressured into doing, but I again fell into a long period where I was not going to church.

THE HOOVER PROBLEMS

In my view, Mr. Hoover was an arrogant, dictator, who ruled the teachers like a teacher of a coach might try to cow down and control students.  But the teachers were adults.  Mr. Hoover was often sarcastic.  He had a way of dropping his head and giving you a death stare that he would hold until the target of this treatment would drop their head, look away, and, almost always, they would cave to whatever it was he was wanting.

Over time the majority of the teachers had a list of grievances against Mr. Hoover.  I remember driving down the road Harold Rowe would flash his headlights and I would pull over to the side of the road.  He would get out of his car and tell me about some complain or mistreatment he had against Mr. Hoover.

Eventually the teachers started to meet as a large group, and they met in my room.  I was asked to contact the Oklahoma Education Association and to see if they could send someone out to talk with us about our complaints.

Mr. Hoover saw us meeting in the room and he started picking off teachers and grilling them about why were were meeting.  OEA sent a Uniserv Director out to talk with us.  We were told we could form an association by filling out cards.  Once we had the majority of the teachers who had joined, we could actually bargain a contract with the School Board.

When Mr. Hoover had word of what was going on he called a faculty meeting and he yelled at us for over an hour about the problems we were causing for the school and how it was unprofessional for us to air our dirty laundry in public.

I started gathering information and letters from the Superintendent and I would slip them to a reporter at the Wewoka Daily Times.

This resulted in another faculty meeting.  Now we were not just airing our dirty laundry in public, but we were putting that stuff in the newspaper.  Mr. Hoover wanted to know who had given information to the newspaper.

Eventually the faculty signed membership cards and we had 100% signed up.  I was elected as the first president.

Now I had no idea what I was doing.

There was a heated school board meeting and a number of parents showed up.  Negative things were said.  It seemed that this parochial attitude Mr. Hoover had towards the teachers he had with at least some of the parents, and the lid boiled off that school board meeting.  

I was asked if we, the teachers had concerns we wanted to turn over to the School Board.  We had such a list.  I said we would like to go over our list with the school board, but we did not want Mr. Hoover in the meeting.

Again my lack of courage showed up.  The president of the school board said they needed someone to take notes, and he wanted Mrs. Hoover to sit in on these quzi negotiations and to take notes.  I offered to have Mrs. Scott to take the notes, but the president of the school board said they wanted someone impartial to take the notes.  I caved.

But clearly Mrs. Hoover was not impartial.  Mrs. Hoover was going home that same night and telling Mr. Hoover every single complaint we voiced to the school board.  The other teachers were really taking huge risks.  Teachers like Mrs. Scott and Mr. Rowe lived in houses that belonged to the school board.  If they needed repairs they had to go to Mr. Hoover to get those repairs.  They were risking their homes to stand up to Mr. Hoover.

I honestly do not remember everything that happened then, but my memory is that there were lots of hard feelings then.  I can remember the look on the faces of Mr. Hoovers two daughters and I felt like a turd on a stick.  

Mr. Coker moved up to be the new Superintendent.  Slowly feelings calmed down.  As Association President I had no clue what I was supposed to do.  One of the things I thought was a good idea was to write letters to our elected readers on topics that might advantage or disadvantage teachers and students.  When I say letter writing, I don’t mean just me.  I would call all the teachers together and have them all write letters to the elected leaders.  I thought a lot of letters would get more attention that just a few letters.

I remember several years after I left Butner Schools I ran into Enoch Kelly Haney.   He remembered me.  Mr. Haney said that he never got the volume of letters he got when I was at Butner Schools.

Did those efforts make any difference?  I don’t think so.

DEPRESSION

In 1980 it was clear I was seriously depressed.  I sometimes would be at home and just start crying.  I felt trapped.  I felt homeless.

I started seeing a psychiatrist in Oklahoma City and took my first antidepressant medication that year.  Here it is 2015, as of this writing, and I am still taking antidepressants.

Early on I figured we would retire from Butner Schools.  I thought Ryan would go through Butner School and end up at OU or OSU.  But I was not making enough money.  Ryan was about to start school and I wasn’t sure I wanted  him to go through Butner Schools.

I don’t mean to imply there was anything wrong with Butner Schools, but I do mean to imply that all schools are NOT equal.  The electives were limited.  I thought Ryan was above average in intelligence and he needed as many advantages as I could prove him.

To me it felt like we would never have enough money if we stayed at Butner Schools.  

We applied for teaching jobs at Putnam City Schools, the school system Kathie had graduated from, and that would put us closer to her parents.  Moving your wife closer to her parents is rarely bad for the wife.

One day Kathie was called and she was hired to teach Junior High Science at Putnam City.  I didn’t have a job but we followed the old saying, “Leap, and a net will appear.”

Butner Schools, Log Houses, and Ryan

Don Hoover, Superintendent

My wife was hired at Butner Schools in Cromwell, Oklahoma and started there the 1976-77 school year.  I was filling in holidays at Stormy’s convenience stores and I even helped him and Jack F. put in his second store.  But money was tight.  

I was shocked when I got a call from Don Hoover, the Superintendent at Butner Public Schools.  He had an English Teacher, Robert Sikes, who was leaving to take a job at the Post Office.  I interviewed and was hired to start teaching English there in February of 1977.

I needed the job, and I knew so little that I thought I could do it.  I guess I did do it, because I finished the school year and was rehired for the following year.

I felt the classes were unhappy with me the first few days.  They liked their previous teacher, and if they accepted me, I imagine they felt they were being disloyal to Mr. Sikes.  Over time I felt I was more and more accepted.

I remember that Mickey Long and Frankie Moore were not sure they were going to give me a chance.  But they did.  I remember so many of those kids I had in Senior English.  Tim Russell, Terry Northrip, and Mike Davis.  Kathy Moorelock was a special kid to my wife and I think she went into some science/medical field.

Mr. Hoover, the Superintendent was a scary guy to me.  He was a member, maybe an elder at the Cromwell Church of Christ.  I think we felt some obligation to go to church.  We were not going to the Wewoka Church of Christ so we became off an on again attendees at the Cromwell Church of Christ.

Mr. Coker, the high school principal, was pretty cool.

What I didn’t get that first experience at Butner was that those underclass students we taught were kids we would keep teaching.  If you taught at the school long enough you had the same kids over and over again until they graduated.

If you went to football games you sat with the parents and got to know them.  Year after year you grew closer and closer to the kids.  No experience in teaching ever reflected that Butner experience.

I had students later in my life that were important to me, but the Butner kids were almost like family to me.  

Almost every year, or summer, one or more students died, and those losses were profound.  When a kid you knew, that you joked around with, that you watched fall in and out of love, who had stresses at home, money problems at home, and kids with so much potential were killed it was very much like someone in your family had died.

There were so many kids and I hesitate to mention names because unless I get a yearbook and go through it name by name, making comments I feel I will fail to honor kids who deserve to be honored.  One of the great gifts of Facebook, perhaps the greatest gift, is it reconnects you with people from your past.  I don’t consult Facebook daily, and I miss a lot, fail to reply back, and it could give the impression that I do not honor these adults who once were my students, but that would not be true.  

Sometimes when I am happy I will break into one of those Pep Club chants

Everywhere we go-O

People want to Know-O

Who we are

So we tell them

We are the Eagles

Mighty, mighty Eagles

Yes we are-R

Yes we are-R

The Log House

Kathie and I were often Pep Club Sponsors and often one of us would be the Senior Class Sponsor.  I remember one year we chaperoned a class to the Tulsa State Fair.  

While at the state fair I was wandering around by myself and I came upon a booth for this company that made log houses.  The logs were milled and a slot was carved so that each log fit on to the log below it.  I was inspired.  I wanted a house and a log house seemed perfect for us.

I came home talking up the log house idea.  The kids were expensive, so I could not figure out how we would ever afford it.  Then I found out we had a family connected to Butner Schools, the Dixons, that had bought some property North of Cromwell in the River Bend area.

I went out to talk with Mr. Dixon. Sadly they had a son who had been attending Butner School before I started teaching there, and he was killed in a car accident.

The Dixon’s had a large two story log house and it was not a manufactured log house, it was closer to what the log house used to be, only better.  I learned that they got their house as a kit from an Oklahoma company, McCulloch Log Homes in Red Oak, Oklahoma.

Kathie and drove down there one weekend and met with the owner.  We got some primitive plans for the kits he made and sold, and some prices.

I went home and showed the plans to my friend Stormy.  Stormy had a couple of lots out at Wewoka Lake and he was wanting to put a cabin out there so he was interested.

One day Stormy called me and asked if I might consider us making our own log houses and not buying kits.  That seemed impossible to me.  I was a weak kid with a mostly city living background.  I had no carpentry skills, I’d never run a chainsaw, and it just seemed impossible to me.  Stormy explained that his father-in-law had a peanut farm outside of Lamar, Oklahoma and he had this area of woods that had burned about 20 years ago.  After the fire burned out the woods a thicket of Red Oak grew up in that place so that all the trees were about the same size, and all of them grew up mostly straight.  The father-in-law wanted to clear those trees to expand his farmable land, and we needed logs to build log houses.

We agreed to help each other build a log house.  

I bought 2.5 acres near Wewoka Lake and I got a Craftsman Chainsaw with a 20 inch bar out of the Sears catalogue.  One summer after school was out Stormy and I started cutting trees.  It was the hardest physical labor I had ever experienced.

One thing I learned from Stormy that I followed the rest of my life, was this:  The way to get stuff done is to keep working.  Never give up.  When you feel you are defeated and success is impossible, sit in the shade, drink something cold, and after about 10 minutes, you get off your fat ass and start again.

We cut dozens and dozens of trees, and trimmed the branches.  The logs were too heavy for two guys to lift, especially if one of those guys was me.  Stormy bought an old Farmall Tractor and hauled it to Lamar on a trailer.

I would wrap a chain around a log and Stormy would drag it out of the woods.  After a few hours we had what resembled dirt roads throughout the woods.

One of my jobs was to figure out how many logs we would need.  I spent hours reading books about how to build a log house.  I needed to know the height of the walls.  I followed the design of one of the log house kits I’d picked up from that McCulloch Log Homes guy.  I modified the plans, but I kept the way he did the corners.  All the corners were spans of logs at a 45 degree angle which allowed you to create more floor space using shorter logs.

We hired a flatbed 18 wheeler from Romy Lively, and Romy actually came with us to get the logs.  We had a winch truck and we used a log to allow the winch to jack up the logs high.  The flatbed was backed under a dangling load of logs and lowered on to the flatbed.  It took us 4 trips to get enough logs back to Wewoka.  We piled half the logs on Stormy’s lake lot, and half the logs on my property.

I spent the winter trying to figure out how we would deBark the logs.

It turned out not to be that hard.  After a winter laying out in the open air the bark came loose.  I bought two draw knives and we were able to debark the logs fairly easily.

Stormy ran into some guy who’d been doing concrete work and he was in need of fast cash so he bought all the guys concrete finishing equipment.  We had concrete ordered after we’d built the forms and dug a footing.

I used some Indians who were taking a course in plumbing.  The teacher and the Indians came out and did all the under the concrete plumbing for me.

David Phillips, someone I knew from the church of Christ and a friend of Stormy’s had a backhoe and he put in my septic system.

The Summer of 1978 we started laying the logs.

Ryan Norman

While we were teaching and I was building two log houses with my “kicked out of the church of Christ” friend Stormy, I was also talking with Kathie about maybe adopting.

Kathie’s diabetes was a serious chronic condition, and her doctor did not want her to have a baby.

I’d tried to have a vasectomy before we were married.  I was able to have one soon after we were married.  One of the doctors in Wewoka did not have the misgivings about giving me the “ole snip snip.”  I remember going through the operation OK, but one thing I found off putting was that the doctor smoked a cigar while performing surgery.  He would cut on me a little while and then step away and take a puff or two on his cigar.

A couple of days later I was oozing pus through the incision.  

I was resolved after this vasectomy to being a childless couple, but we ran into some people we’d known in college who had adopted through Colorado Christian Services and that was not only a church of Christ affiliated service, but they took donations rather than charging a fee.  I think that policy did not last, but that was the way it was then.  

Kathie was reluctant to adopt but I was pushy and she agreed for us to “look into it.”

We were attending the church of Christ, enough, I guess, to call ourselves church of Christ people.  I was doing what I have done throughout my life, I was compartmentalizing my beliefs.  I could put my doubts in a room in my mind castle and I could shut the door.  That allowed me to pretend to be a good church of Christ person.

Now, of course, I find that both spinless and abhorrent, but at the time it served me well.  Remember, I am not the hero of my own story, I am a flawed person who did the wrong thing about as often as I did the right thing.

I was able to apply to adopt.  I could write out the background stuff and stress my time in Preacher School and Oklahoma Christian, and I left out the Withdrawal of Fellowship stuff that happened in Wewoka.

We were approved to go to the next level that included a weekend “training session” in Oklahoma City.  It turned out we were not only being given information, but we were being evaluated ourselves.  It was January 1979 that we went to the training session.  At the end of that session we were told that in about 30 days we would get a letter telling us if we were approved to adopt a child.  We were told that after we got that approval letter we could expect to wait about 3 years before we were given a child.

We were excited.

Kathie kept wanting us to go out and  buy a baby bed, or a changing table.

I was against it.  We hadn’t even gotten our approval letter yet.  I figured if we got the approval letter that we could start buying stuff gradually.  We had plenty of time to finish our log house, and buy the stuff you need when you adopt a baby.

I was wrong.

I remember it was about two weeks after we’d attended that training session and a heavy February snow had blanketed Seminole County.we were off from school for a snow day.  We were just puttering around the house, drinking coffee and watching it snow when the phone rang.

It was Mr. Hoover, a guy who was not a common caller to my house.  

“Have you heard anything?” he asked.

“Anything about what?” I asked.

“Well, that man from Colorado Christian Services called and wanted to know if you would be available to miss school tomorrow, so you could go pick up your baby.”

No one had called.  I was stunned.  We hadn’t even gotten our letter of approval.

We were sick the rest of the day.  We kept wondering why no one had called, or if something had happened and we were not going to be called.

About 5 pm that day we got the call.  When I was told on the phone that we were adopting I said I was thrilled, but he thought I didn’t seem thrilled enough.  I told him Mr. Hoover had called us earlier in the day, so we knew we were approved but we’d just been waiting for the official phone call.  I assume the big payoff for people in the adoption business is the reaction of the people when they learn they are going to have a baby.  

“I can’t believe that guy spoiled my surprise.”

We were to pay for a plane ticket when they handed off the baby.  We were asked to drive up to the Wichita Kansas Airport by 11 am the following day.  I had to drive into the IGA to cash a check so I could give them cash when the baby was delivered.  We had nothing for a baby.  We drove over to our friends Mary and Mugs Hage, and they gave us a baby blanket.

I don’t think either of us slept that night.  We were getting up at 3 am to drive to Wichita, but this was all so sudden, all such a shock that we just couldn’t adjust to it.

The weather was horrible.  We drove a Datsun B-210, and the snow was constant.  The Interstate was mostly clear so we made good time and arrived early at the Wichita Airport.  I was excited and terrified.  

We’d learned the night before that we were adopting a boy.  We’d been told that two out of three children they adopted out were girls so we had settled on a girl’s name, Tiffany, but we had not firm name for a boy.  The urge would naturally be to name the child after me, so that he would be Richard Lee Norman the IIIed, but I wasn’t that crazy about my legal name.  I had not gone by my legal name since age 4, so why would I saddle him with that name.  I was never crazy about a name that has as its accepted nickname, the nickname of Dick.  I’d taught school long enough to know that kids tease mean, and they don’t need any ammunition like the name Dick.

On the drive to the Wichita we settled on the name Ryan.  I liked it having an Irish sound to it.  The soap opera popular then was a show entitled Ryan’s Hope.  Still when I say my son’s name, Ryan, a voice in my mind adds the word HOPE.  I had so much hope for Ryan.

Standing in the airport my terror was that the plane he was on would have a crash landing.  Doubter that I was I was praying that the plane would arrive carefully.  I started sending out my own personal rays of care as I guided each plan to a safe landing.  I felt my telepathic powers shoot out from my heart and mind and to cradle the incoming plane and carefully I guided each plane to a safe landing.  It was grueling work, but, for me, necessary work.

Finally, the right plane landed.  When people came out the first few people were Flight Attendants and people I didn’t know, and all of them were carrying babies.  There may have been 6 or 8 babies in all.  

There in the airport the staff from Colorado Christian Services started handing out babies.  When Ryan was brought to us it was a surreal experience.  I could not believe it.  Ryan was three weeks old when he was placed in Kathie’s arms.

We learned that Ryan’s biological mother was a Japanese American, who had been working as a Juvenile Probation Officer.  She’d had a serious relationship with someone who was of mixed heritage [Eastern  European and hispanic].  We were told that the mother found out her significant other was not being faithful to her and they broke up.  As her due date neared she was allowed to go through the file of people approved to be adoptive parents, and she picked up out of that file.  That is why we only waited two weeks when we expected the wait to be three years.  The birth mother wanted her child to be raised by parents who both had college degrees.

That is yet another reason I am grateful we both did what we did to get our degrees.

The drive home was treacherous. The snow and ice had continued to fall, and we crept home so very slowly.  We’d planned to stop in Oklahoma City to show off Ryan to Kathie’s folks, the new grandparents, but road conditions urged us to keep going toward Wewoka.

We got home about 10:30 pm.  We were exhausted.  The adoption folk had given us enough diapers and formula to get us home, but we were out of both by 10:30 pm.

As soon as we got in the house I told Kathie I was going to make a quick trip to Stormy’s store to buy formula and diapers.

“Oh, wait and do that tomorrow,” Kathie said.

“I can’t,” I said.  “They told us Ryan eats every four hours.”

“But not at night,” she said.

I’d been the oldest of six children and I had been fully involved in the baby care of my youngest twin brothers.  I was involved in that baby stuff back when diapers were cloth, with a plastic snap-on covers were used.  Back then you had to hand dunk the diapers in the toilet and wring out the toilet water.  This was also before latex gloves were commonly available to the public.  I had some idea about babies, and Kathie had none.

We had no baby bed that first night.  I took a blanket and put it in a drawer that I removed from our chest of drawers.  I put socks around the sides and placed Ryan in the drawer.  That was his first baby bed.

The students of Butner seemed like family to me.  The kids seemed thrilled for us.  

Because Ryan came into our lives so quickly, we were just not ready for him.  We were still in our gray rent house.  The summer after Ryan came into our lives I worked very hard to get the log walls up in my house.  We’d finished the log walls on Stormy’s lake house.  Stormy and I hired the same guy to help us finish off the houses.  We used one of the parents of one of my Butner students:  Bud Davis and his son Mike Davis, who later married another of my students, Cindy Cheatwood.  Mike married up.  Cindy Cheatwood was a short, and cute young lady.  I’ve seen her photos on Facebook and she continues to be a very beautiful lady.

Bud and Mike Davis made it possible for use to finish the log house by the end of 1979 and we moved into the log house on Ryan’s birthday.  We had his cake in the Gray House as Stormy and I moved stuff out to the log house.  

At the time I imagined that Kathie and I would teach in Cromwell, and live in that log house the rest of our career, and that Ryan would go through Butner Schools much like Nolan Coker’s son, Lee did.

Soon after Ryan came to live with us, my view of Ryan changed dramatically, and that lead us, eventually, to major changes in our future as a family.

The First Loss of Faith

Growing up church of Christ meant I was raised in the one True Church.  The church I was raised in believed that the Bible is the word of God, that it was the perfect, inerrant word of God, that God caused the writers of the Bible to write what they wrote, and every single word of the Bible was from God.  What follows is a sort of ‘well of course, duh’ conclusion:  if you want to please God and be saved by God you better damn sure do what he tells you to do.

What happened at the Wewoka Church of Christ, and the withdrawal of fellowship, stunk.  It seemed clear to me that the anger of the Elders was aimed at Stormy Winters, first because he dared to take some precious parking away from the church goers.  The beer sold in the store was the perfect justification to get back at Stormy.

There was a rumor that we had a member who owned half interest in a liquor store, but he was never considered as a Disfellowship candidate.  

After I resigned from my job with the church of Christ and started selling ads for the Wewoka Daily Times, I had time to think about stuff.  The church had used scripture to justify what they did, and if I believed in the scriptures how should I behave?

There was the question, IS SELLING BEER IN YOUR STORE A SIN? I wasn’t totally convinced that it was.  The Bible has that story where Jesus goes to a wedding where the host runs out of wine, and Jesus performs his First Miracle, of turning water into wine.

We know it was alcoholic wine, and not just plain ole grape juice because of this passage:

John 2: 9 & 10

“. . . and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10 and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

The logic is clear.  If you have expensive wine, and cheap wine, you let people get their buzz on and once they are a little drunk, you bring out the cheap stuff and the people will be too drunk to notice the switch.  This passage makes no sense if Jesus turned water into Welches.  

I began to wonder if the Bible was actually perfect and inerrant.

The story of a talking snake has always bothered me.  If the Bible was to be taken literally then there was a time when snakes walked and talked.  After the sin in the Garden of Eden God curses the snake to crawl on his belly and, I assume, God also took away the snake’s ability to talk since they no longer seem to talk.

Science classes and the theory of evolution did not seem to fit with a 6 day creation story.  What else is there about the Bible that I needed to question?

If you read the Old Testament carefully, you will come across passages where the Hebrew conquerors used captive women for sexual sport. How does that jive with Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery?

Before the Hebrews left Egypt Moses told the people to steal all the gold and jewelry from their Egyptian Masters.  How does that jive with Thou Shalt Not Steal?

In Exodus 15 God rejoices over the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea.  Yeah, these drowned Egyptians had been chasing the fleeing Hebrew, but still, wasn’t the God of the Hebrews the God of all humans?  

Later in the Old Testament God tells his people that the children of the Edomites should have their heads dashed against stones.

The Bible justified slavery:  In Exodus 21:20 & 21 it states,

20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.

If the Bible is inspired by God, and it is inerrant [or perfect] then the passage quoted above is exactly what God meant:  slavery is OK, beating a slave is OK as long as the slave doesn’t die because a slave is property.

There is the worst test of marital faithfulness ever made part of the law:  In Numbers 5:11-31 it states that if a man gets this feeling that his wife has been unfaithful, he can take her to a priest and the woman would be ordered to drink poison.  If the woman died from the poison she was assumed to be guilty.  If the woman survived drinking the poison she was presumed to be innocent.

Did this sound like something God would support?  If God supported this, would I be out of line to not support God?

This Unfaithful Wife Test was part of God’s law, inspired by God, part of the Bible and the Bible was perfect.  I was starting to have serious doubts.  

I could not understand how I had read all this stuff year after year throughout my life and I had never really questioned the Godliness [or lack thereof] inside the Bible.

Read Numbers chapter 31.  God ordered Moses to kill the Midianites and Moses does kill all the male Midianites but the Hebrew soldiers spared the women and children and took their cattle, flocks, and goods [Numb. 31:9].  Moses was angry when he found out the soldiers only killed the male Midianites so he ordered that all the male children also be killed.  Then Moses ordered that all the females who were not virgins were to be killed.  Oh yeah, Moses also told the Hebrew men that they could keep the Midianite virgins for themselves.  

In Deuteronomy 14:21 there is a very interesting passage about road kill and sick animal meat.  The scripture says:

Do not eat anything you find already dead. You may give it to the foreigner residing in any of your towns, and they may eat it, or you may sell it to any other foreigner.

Are you kidding?  We can take animals that just die from old age or sickness and we can give that contaminated meat to foreigners but to be safe God’s chosen people are not to eat that stuff.

Does any of this sound like stuff that would come from a God you could admire?  I was actually disgusted by what I was noticing.  It was like scales had fallen from my eyes and I was able to see the ugly parts of the Bible.  I no longer read the Bible using Rose Colored Spectacles, and without the filter, a lot of this stuff sounded evil not Godly.

Now when you are raised to believe that your church is the ONLY true church, and your church claims that the Bible is word-for-word dictated by God, and that the Bible exists without errors, that it is the perfect word of God, and if you then stop believing that the Bible is perfect, well, the walls of faith fall faster than the walls of Jericho.

I had heard all of my life that the Bible was perfect and that if any part of the Bible was found to be imperfect then all of it was imperfect.  My father told me dozens of times that the Bible was perfect.  He said if some of the Bible was from God and some of the Bible was from the opinions of men, then we should shut the doors of the church and go do something else.  How could we know what God’s will was unless all of the Bible, 100% of the Bible was from God and perfectly preserved for us?

There is a danger in believing that you and your members are God’s specially chosen people.  Even if you don’t realize it, if you believe your members are perfect that implies that those who do not agree with you are the enemies of God.  The next thought is that we must hate, or fear, or guard against anyone who does not agree with the truth as your group understands it to be.    If we are chosen, then everyone else is UNchosen.  

Of course all this was from the Old Testament.  Were there contradictions in the New Testament that would call scriptural perfection into question?

The search was on, and I was a skeptical searcher.

Right off the bat I found contradictions.

In Matthew 1:6 Jesus’ lineage was traced through David’s son Solomon, but in Luke 3:31 the lineage of Jesus is traced through David’s son Nathan.

According to my father, one contradiction calls the whole Bible into question.  But I kept looking.

In Luke 1:26-31 the announcement of the special birth of Jesus came BEFORE conception.

In Matthew 1:18-21 the announcement of the special birth of Jesus came AFTER conception.

In Matthew 2:13-16 Joseph, Mary, and Jesus flee to Egypt while King Herod orders the slaughter of all males age 2 and under in an effort to kill the King of the Jews as reported by the Wise Men.

Luke 2:21-39 also covers the period of the birth of Jesus and the time just after his birth, and in this part of the New Testament Jesus and his parents do not go to Egypt, and the slaughter of babies is not mentioned.

The more you look the more you see and what I was seeing was conflict upon conflict.

Scribner errors, or errors that crept in by accidents made by the people hand copying the scriptures could not explain away these conflicts because the church of Christ taught that even with all the potential for scribner errors, God ensured that mankind would get the exact Bible He wanted us to have.

I remembered back in OCC and in Preacher School there had been a course called How We Got The Bible.  In that class I learned that in AD 325 the Emperor Constantine called the First Council of Nicaea.  The Emperor, who is sometimes reported to have been the first Christian Emperor, gathered 300 religious leaders.  The Emperor ordered that he receive four copies of the Bible.  Some of the theological controversies that threatened to destroy Christianity were arbitrated by Constantine, and in some cases the Emperor just picked a position and made it the position of the Church.

To create four copies of the Bible for the Emperor was a problem.  There was no printing press.  You go pick up a copy of the Bible and imagine you have to hand copy the whole Bible and you have to do that not once, but four times.

Well, before the copying began the leaders of the Church decided they had to decide what books belong in the Bible and what books could be excluded from the Bible.

They created a criteria for the New Testament, one of which stated that the Book had to have been written by an Apostle, or by someone Christ had appeared to after his resurrection and ascension.  

Since the Apostle Paul came AFTER the ascension of Jesus, church leaders agreed to accept his writings because Jesus had appeared to him on the Road to Damascus.

When the group was debating the Book of Hebrews it was accepted because the leaders of the church, at that time, believed Paul was the author of Hebrews.  Today biblical scholars are mostly in agreement that Paul did not write the Book of Hebrews.  

I also learned that there were some very popular writings used in the early church that were excluded from the Bible because the author was not a witness to Jesus.  One book that I remember was called the Shepherd of Hermis.  

I remember saying, “Then shouldn’t we either toss out the Book of Hebrews? And if non-witness writers could be included in the Bible then shouldn’t we reconsider those books that Almost Got In?

I was told that despite the errors the people made at the First Council of Nicaea, God made sure that the right books got in, and the wrong books were kept out.

My faith in the church of Christ collapsed.  

Was at least part of my loss of faith linked to my anger at the Wewoka Church of Christ elders?  Sure that was probably a big part of my loss of faith, but I did lose faith in the Bible.

Kathie and I were not going to any church, and we were working at the Wewoka Daily Times.  Life was treading waters.

The Wewoka Daily Times was owned by a company called DonRay.  They owned the Holdenville paper, among other newspapers across the state of Oklahoma.  They had a division called DonRay Outdoors that owned Billboard signs across Oklahoma.

One day the central vice president of DonRay came to visit the Wewoka Daily Times and he met with me.  He explained that DonRay tried to hire and promote from within, and that advertising was the path you needed to follow to become a General Manager of a newspaper.  The Central Vice President told me if I would stay another year at the Wewoka Daily Times that he would promote me to be a general manager of one of the DonRay papers.

“How much money can a General Manager of a paper earn in a month?” I asked.

“As much as $600 a month.”

A week later I resigned.  A $600 a month job did not sound like a secure future to me. Kathie and I decided we would go back to school.  This time we would go to East Central in Ada, and we would get teaching degrees.  We enrolled for the Fall Semester of 1974.