I got stuck behind a pair of bumper stickers the other day while waiting for a red light. One car said, “Honk, if you Love Jesus.” The other read, “Honk, If You’re Horny.”
Against my better judgment, I leaned on my horn. The guy into horniness turned around with a grin, while the fella with the Jesus sticker looked annoyingly in his mirror, and gave me the freeway salute!
I haven’t always been into Christianity. At 16, I announced that I was going to play baseball on Sundays in Golden Gate Park. My decision was short-lived. “You’ll be playing baseball, after you go to Sunday school,” corrected my Dad.
My old man wasn’t much for what executives call “participative management.” To his credit, he didn’t make a pretense of the democratic process. He was in short, an honest dictator.
Sunday school that spring turned up a surprise. Her name was Mavis. She was 16. She was beautiful. But she wasn’t mine. She “belonged” to a guy named Bernal, who was 17. Somehow that made her all the more desirable. My competitiveness, unfulfilled in athletics, turned to romance.
Mavis had a deeply religious side, even though she wore her sweaters pretty tight. Her daddy was a deacon in the church, and I figured I better try to impress him too. So during the next six months, I memorized more than 100 Bible verses and easily won the Sunday school contest. Mavis’ dad was impressed! Mavis hardly noticed.
Next, I got elected as president of the youth group, and became a standout on the church volleyball team. Still, Mavis and Bernal continued to hold hands beneath the hymnbook.
Then suddenly Bernal announced his intent to join the Army and was soon given orders for Korea. Mavis was heartsick. They continued to write during boot camp, but by fall I was on first base with her, hoping to steal second.
I had big plans for her. The guys from school used to go to the Coliseum Theatre and sit in the back row and chomp corn nuts in unison. If you had a date, however, you sat in the balcony. My plan: show Mavis off to the guys; take her to the balcony; return the following night to see the movie.
Alas, my plans were aborted. Mavis’ daddy said that there was an evangelistic crusade at the church that she’d be attending. The church didn’t have a balcony, but I decided to accompany her anyway.
The first night, the evangelist, Rev. Hoffman, preached a hell-fire and damnation sermon that would have made Billy Graham wince. He closed with a gripping story of a young man who couldn’t sleep at night because he had put off “getting saved.” The guy got out of bed and wrote, “In one month I will get saved,” placed it on his dresser, and got back into bed. Still he couldn’t sleep. He got up again and crossed out “one month” and wrote, “two weeks.”
Brother Hoffman dragged the story out until the harried sleeper had written, “tomorrow morning,” and exhausted, fell asleep. Sure enough, the next morning they found him under the covers… DEAD… his lost soul condemned to an eternal HELL.
That night I decided to “get saved” as quickly as possible. The experience put a dent in my plans to introduce Mavis to the Theatre scene. I found out when you “get saved” you’re not supposed to take girls up to darkened movie balconies. A short version of my new ethic was dubbed “Three Bad Kings:” no smo-king; no drin-king; no nec-king!
As I reflect on that episode a half century later, I’m appalled at a Fundamentalist technique that majors in the manipulation of emotions, but I appreciate the crude beginnings of a call to commitment.
A cheapened gospel, which portrays Jesus as “personified fire-insurance” doesn’t make it. Christianity is more of an ongoing relationship with a loving God who is revealed progressively in Holy Writ, rather than a fear-motivated membership in the Religion Industry.
The poster over my desk shivers me with a wintry sunrise scene from Antarctica (like in the best flick of this year, “Eight Below”). The caption asserts, “We did not break into God’s Light; God crashed into our darkness.”
Easter is the season that reminds us, not of the birth of a cult, by a bunch of frightened fishermen, but of Jesus, the Risen Christ, who as God Incarnate, took the rap for our sin and lives to assure our joyous discipleship now, and for all eternity.
Bill Paterson is a longtime South County resident and a former school board trustee.
