Part 8
I can remember the night I got “saved” like it was yesterday. I was wearing a blue jumper and sitting close to the back of the sanctuary. Boys were starting to notice me and a couple of boys sitting behind me kept trying to pass me notes. I had to be very careful because my mother did not tolerate playing around in church. I took one note and read it listening to the boys giggling behind me, the note read, “You’re a fox.” Now I had no idea what that meant but I knew those boys were always grinning at me and trying to get a seat as close as possible. Little did I know how many times those two boys would throw me a lifeline of friendship. Both of them became very close friends of mine and understood me better than most. When I asked my mom later what the note meant she was not pleased. After that, she gave those boys the side-eye for a long time. It was 1980 and I was 10 years old.
Things turned dark when the pastor lumbered up to the podium. I was afraid of my pastor. He was a big man and kind of loud. It was not uncommon in our church for a preacher to yell, stomp, and pace while preaching. This was one of those nights. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move and it seemed as if his eyes were drilling into me. His words rang out through the auditorium sending a sick feeling into the center of my chest, “Your name is written on the gates of hell until Jesus takes it off!” Pastor Grant painted a picture complete with flames, demons, and gates waiting to open for me. At the end of his terrible tale came an altar call. Just like in The Shining when Danny is staring down the long carpeted hallway, I was staring down the long carpeted aisle that led to the altar. My body felt like lead and I couldn’t stop shaking. I was too scared to stay in my seat and too scared to start the long lonely journey to the front of the sanctuary. Self-preservation won out and I willed myself to move forward. I was more afraid of hell than I was of making that long lonely walk. My knees hit the carpet and I started to ask Jesus to forgive me for all of my sins, whatever sins a ten-year-old could have, immediately I was surrounded by women, they appeared like vampires seeming to come out of nowhere. A cacophony of voices speaking in tongues and loud music was all around me. In my memory, this plays like a 1970s horror movie. The women’s faces appear like images in a funhouse mirror, all distorted and clownlike. My body was being pushed back and forth and words of encouragement were being urgently whispered in my ear. The fact that I was sobbing uncontrollably was not a reason for alarm, it was a sign that I was broken and that was exactly the desired outcome. They say I spoke in tongues but I have to wonder how much of that was just me sobbing and no longer being able to form coherent words. Their encouragement got louder and louder, “Yes Yes Yes! Talk to Jesus!” Once I calmed down, probably just due to exhaustion they told me that I should get baptized. I had been taught that this was required for salvation and so I was not taken off guard. The women were all smiles, like alligators grinning from ear to ear, they told me I could choose which minister would baptize me. I think this was supposed to make me feel less afraid but it did not. My father would often take me into the water at lake Mendota not far from our house. He was unafraid and would put me on his back and carry me out into the waves. My mother, on the other hand, was terrified of the water and would sit way up on the beach near the bathrooms. So yeah, tending to feel my mother was slightly more trustworthy than my father, her fear won out and so I was a little afraid of being dunked by a stranger.
Before I knew it I was being shuffled off to a room to change into a baptismal robe. The robe was heavy and way too big for me. Everything after this point is kind of a blur. I was very scared but determined. My heart was pounding in my chest and I now recognize that feeling. It is the same feeling I get when I’m in the midst of a panic attack. Our church had its own baptismal tank. It was situated behind the choir loft so it was easy for folks to gather all around it. It was loud, people were singing, clapping, and speaking in tongues. I was helped down the stairs into the deep water. Women were motioning me to squat a little so my robe would get wet and not float up and expose my legs. Brother O’Neal extended his hand to me and before I knew it he was saying the words and my body was headed back down into the water. My body felt the shock of the cold water as it hit my chest. Once I came up out of the water the watching crowd exploded into singing and clapping. The music and the sound of many voices speaking in tongues and clapping was so loud. I just prayed for it to be over. Soon I was out of the tank and dry, back in my own clothing.
My feelings about speaking in tongues are complicated. For much of my adult life, I felt pretty unsure about what I had experienced. The human brain is hard to understand. I can only speak from my personal experience. I see it like this, I was a child and so I looked to the adults around me for guidance about behavior and community norms. Children mimic adults all the time and so I feel that some of what I was doing was the result of mimicking. Then you add to that the hyped-up environment that puts your brain into a very suggestive state. It feels hypnotic, all of the pacing being done by the worship leader and the repetitive choruses. I feel when you blend all of that together you create an experience for people and then the UPC just slaps a label on it. They call it speaking in tongues, I call it manipulation.
After being baptized, I felt relief for a little while, for about two weeks. Jesus loved me and saved me from hell and now everything is going to be ok. Then the fear started to creep back in. Did you know that you can backslide and lose your salvation? Just because you are saved today doesn’t mean you are saved tomorrow. God doesn’t send you official warnings that you are about to go too far or that he is coming today, so you never know for sure, not really. Believing this started a near-constant cycle of repenting and chasing salvation, never feeling clean enough and always worried about slipping up. I had to be vigilant. The rapture could happen at any time and almost any infraction could cause you to be left behind to suffer the tribulation.
“For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.” 1 Thessalonians 5:2.
The fear of this event and going to hell stalked me like a hungry lion. My childhood was marinated in this fear. My mother passed her terror onto me like a virus. The church injected me with weekly and then daily doses. I would not find the antidote until well into adulthood. The idea of a wrathful god slithered through my veins winding its way into every nook and cranny. Of all the awful things that happened to me during childhood, being exposed to this idea had the most devastating effect. Starting when I was a toddler my parents exposed me to the Mark IV film series starting with “A Thief In The Night.” It made such a huge impact laying the groundwork for years of fear. I cannot remember a time in my childhood when I did not worry about my mother disappearing into thin air and me being left to face the guillotine alone. To make matters worse I was about to experience something that I thought might be an unforgivable sin.
I think of getting saved as being like your wedding day. Your wedding day is usually filled with wonderful memories of people wishing you well. You are the center of attention and love fills the air. There is music and dancing and hope for the future. You are wearing a dress you will probably never wear again and life feels fresh and new. You might even gain a new name. Marriage is long and often hard and it is unreasonable to expect that every day will feel like your wedding day. Now imagine if all the people in your life were constantly reminding you that you might lose your husband or wife. You better cook the right meals and earn enough money. Make sure even your thoughts are always in line with your partner’s thoughts or they might know and leave you. This is how salvation can be expressed within the UPC. You will probably never feel as good as the day when you get baptized. So you chase that feeling of freshness. You can get close if there is a rip-roaring service or a hellfire sermon that breaks you down into tears, but you will never duplicate that first high.
I was an early bloomer and people often assumed I was older. This is kind of funny because now people often assume I am younger. I found out recently that my pastor is telling people that I was “always was a loose child.” I do not believe that children are capable of consent or being “loose.” It shows the lengths they will go to protect themselves from accountability. Starting at an early age most of my friends were adults. At church, I hung out with kids close to my age but I also spent a lot of time with twenty-somethings. Once baptized I threw myself into service for God. I was a very devoted child, devoted to God and devoted to my church. I never experienced the love of God. I only saw him as a scorekeeper and a wrathful judge. I feared God, my pastor, the government and the devil all in the same way. Salvation did not lessen these fears because I had been taught that I could lose it.
I was a weird kid. I took the Bible very seriously and I also took my responsibility to share the gospel very seriously. I wanted to please and know God. My grandma would always say that when you stand before Jesus on judgement day you will be held accountable for all of the people you encountered on earth. Jesus would ask if you shared the gospel with them. Things would not go well for you if your answer was no. After going through my salvation experience I decided that I needed to get to work. I asked my pastor if there were any ministries I could get involved with. He recommended I start working on the Sunday school bus route. On both Saturday and Sunday, my day would start early. Rain, shine, snow, or freezing cold would not keep me from doing God’s work. On Saturday we would visit kids in impoverished neighborhoods and invite them to Sunday school, on Sunday we would start early and pick them up on the Sunday school bus. Almost always without fail I was around men. Men were the bus captains and so that’s who I worked with. The same would go for all of the ministries I became involved in. Men lead the nursing home ministry, campus ministry, and the Bible quiz team I would become captain of. They would give me rides to church and to other activities. It was normal for me and no one around me seemed to bat an eye. I don’t think they saw me as a child. I don’t believe they saw any of us as children. When I look back on it now it seems so inappropriate. I am a mother of four and I would have not wanted my children to spend so much time alone with adult men who were not members of their family. It isn’t like I was alone with them at church either, I was alone with them in cars and buses. Anything could have happened and eventually something did.
Being responsible for staying on God’s good side was a monumental task for a 10-year-old child. I had to be sure I stayed within the dress code at all times. I had to be sure to never cut my hair, listen to the radio or watch television. I could really only read the Bible because I was too young to discern other content. I had to be watchful of every thought, action, and emotion. A minor slip up in any of these areas could give the devil an open door. We were taught that there was a war going on.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12
While engaged in this war we also had to be seeking souls we could win for Christ. I was taught that when I stood before Jesus at the end of my life I would have to account for every soul I ever came in contact with. Did I share the gospel with them? This is a heavy load for a child. It is hard enough to be ten and have to deal with school and growing up. Add on my parent’s divorce, our poverty, and my mother’s depression and you can start to see how overwhelmed I was. I was a bright child, very thoughtful and sensitive. This made me fertile ground for all of the church’s teachings. I took my responsibilities very seriously. I took everything very seriously. This led to depression, insomnia, and pretty severe stomach issues for much of my childhood.
I wanted to serve God because I wanted to follow his word and I wanted to win his love. I was unsure if winning his love was possible. Another big part of my motivation towards service had to do with just loving to be of service and help to those in need. I would wash the hands and faces of the kids riding the Sunday school bus because I cared deeply about them. I understood being poor and not properly tended to. My heart broke for some of those children.
One message that came through loud in clear is that every part of me was sinful. I have always felt wrong in the world. I have never felt a sense of belonging or of fitting in. Unconsciously as a child, I believed that every part of me was infected and broken. The devil was always lurking and trying to trip me up and deceive me. This led me to believe that I could not trust my own mind.
“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5.
I became rather neurotic and filled with worry about whether my good works were even good. What if I was an awful evil person but so deceived that I was not aware of it? In my child’s mind, I had so much evidence to back this fear up. If not a sparrow falls without God knowing and caring then why did he seem to not care at all about me?
My heart was no better. A line from “A Distant Thunder” , one of the Mark IV films comes to mind. “Well just because you have an understanding of the Bible in your head, doesn’t mean you have Jesus in your heart.” Maybe this was my problem? Within a childhood filled with hunger, poverty, mental illness, and trauma I looked to myself to create change. When I could not move mountains or pray solutions into existence I began to question whether Jesus was in my heart and whether he accepted me. Does faith grow from the mind or the heart? Where do good works and compassion grow from? Again it was Pastor Grant who gave me insight into my unworthy condition. Often when he spoke during a sermon it felt like time stopped.
Almost like an in-between space, everything slipped away and all that existed was his voice and the pounding of my heart. His voice boomed out, “Your righteousness is as filthy rags!” In my mind’s eye, he is like a dog foaming at the mouth, snarling out a message meant to shame and remind me of how unworthy I am. All at once it hit home that no matter what I did, good works coming from my heart, it was all filth, none of it was worthy of goodness or God. My heart was garbage unless Jesus shined it up, and Jesus seemed to be absent. I never felt like I was created in his image. I always questioned how it could be so because I am a female and God is male. Eve brought sin into the world and I felt more in touch with her than with Christ.
Debbie McNulty 