Comfort to Spare (ii)

One of them was a "jack Mormon," a rebel who paid no heed to anything Brigham Young ever said or wrote, laughed it off, even though he'd been born into the fold, his royal LDS kinship rooted in the ruts the Great Trek of the 1840s left across the Plains when all the saints left Nauvoo. Jones was not a religious man. He was a good teacher, but he didn't regard the old ways with any diligence or great respect. He was out of all of that.

The other guy had once been old-line Protestant. Grew up in or around Detroit, as I remember, and talked about what he perceived as the emptiness of the Presbyterian church his parents attended on religious holidays. Jones and Miller were friends of mine, good guys. They liked to drink and smoke a few reefers now and then--it was the mid-70s. I liked them both and they liked me. We were all teaching at a new high school on the northern edge of Phoenix.

I don't remember that we were juiced the night they asked me what they did. The question certainly wasn't one of those that amble out of loosened up minds and shouldn't have been said at all. Don't be mistaken--it wasn't meant to be all that serious. Still, they weren't interested in what I'd answer.

"Schaap," they said, "are you in a cult or something?"

I giggled. As I remember, we were at Miller's apartment. The question was shocking, not offensive, just startling.  They were not asking out of some besotted blitz. They just wanted to know. Neither of them was married. I was. 

"No," I told them. "Of course not."

"You go to church like all the time, man," they said, giggling too.

I've never forgotten that question because its origins seem so clear. By their calculations, the sheer frequency of my church attendance, the commitments my wife and I made to the little church we attended seemed even somewhat dark and mysterious. They'd never heard of "Christian Reformed." I had made no effort to recruit either of them, and, most significant, my attachment seemed slavish, something akin to the ways Wally's old LDS ties might have had, as powerful as it was private.

But I wasn't in a cult--of that I was sure. I'd spent two years completely outside any church doors in fact. I believed I was both capable and free to quit, to change commitments. I could walk away from the church into which I was born.

But I didn't, and I haven't. All of that was 1977, almost a half-century ago, and I stayed with the church and the faith.

Why?

Because God wouldn't let me go? That's the textbook, the catechism answer: a sovereign God holds me in his hands on the basis of an updated Old Testament covenant. I know that one, but I'd just as soon hold that card right now, not play it right away because sometimes it's just too blasted easy to play the God-card. 

Besides, the question is not, "why am I Christian Reformed?" The question is what are the roots of this deep faith that's in me?--because it is deep, and, probably a great deal more cultic than I could or would have cared to admit that night at Miller's apartment. 

A kid named Jeff Krebs--a junior with an able mind--once told me what he'd really like to know about his English teacher: "what makes you tick anyway?"

I'd like to know that answer myself. 

All these years later, I can't help but wonder if there isn't something of an answer to be found in a freakish car accident one misty lakeshore night more than seventy years ago, when I was not yet two years old. 

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more to come. . .