I pretended to go to work that day. Ride dropped me at the alley and I ditched the thermos in the bushes and walked back into town, got a bus ticket to Harrisburg PA. I figured I'd lose the ID, get a cheap motel, and open my wrists. OK, so I wasn't very imaginative. I spent the day at a mall, bought some cheap liquor, spent all my money, and got the room.
I planned to be a little drunk when I did the deed, but when it came time I couldn't do it. I stuck the razor in the wall (I still have that same pack of razor blades-every once in a while I come across them and remember what God has done). Finished the bottle and passed out.
Woke up the next day without a nickel to my name. I figured that since I had no money I'd go to the interstate and hitchhike to somewhere. I started walking toward the interstate but ended up in a rough part of HBurg. I wondered around not knowing what I was going to do. I backtracked to the bus station, defeated, and called my friend to come get me.
I waited in that bus station just totally lost. I understood the rudiments of Christianity but just couldn't figure how to fit it into my life. Well, my friend came and got me and he wasn't at all angry or anything. He was the perfect friend, just trying to figure how best to help me. When I got back I called my employer pleading for my job back and he took me back. And the thermos was still in the bushes the next day.
So I settled in to the working world. The christian incubator was fascinating when I look back upon it. It wasn't a fairy world of perfect christians but they worked through their differences in ways I'd not considered.
I still attended the same church. At a wedding I met my friend's cousin Dana. She seemed kind of quirky but nice just the same. When I asked him later that night how old she was he said "How old do you think she is?" and I said "14". Turns out she was 28 (I was 23 at the time).
[**Note: Young men looking for wives-two rules
1. Follow God's lead
2. Go with older women (when they are older than you they are smarter than you and you'll need all the help you can get )]
I started going to a Wed night intensive bible study and she started going too. The students were paired up by gender. Now she and I had a husband/wife combo and about half way through the study they dropped out and we paired up. We were married 18 months later. Now I wouldn't have waited so long myself--long engagements are not good.
So it's theology time. Historically when I become interested in something I will read everything I can find about the subject. Up to this point in my walk with Christ I was at the Christian bookstore all the time, I was the the Christian lending library, I was at the public library. I was reading books, magazines, newspapers, listening to tapes and watching videos. I was just sucking it all in.
My new wife knew I had mennonite leanings. She grew up here, so she (as many non-mennonite folks do) had prejudices against them. Too many "spiritual" mennonites that weren't measuring up to their own standards I guess (like that doesn't happen everywhere else). So it wasn't too long after being married that we began attending and became members of the Mennonite Church (Franklin Conference).
I wasn't going as I thought it should. There was a split in the congregation between the older folks (plainer) and the younger folks. I'd say the middle age was about 40 or so. It was awkward-the younger like singing off the wall and having people stand and clap and the older were a more traditional preferring the hymnals and were uncomfortable with all the goings on.
It also seemed as though the younger were somewhat ashamed of the older, more "backward" ways and were doing what they could to drag the older generation into the "modern" age. I tended to fit with the older though I was in my mid-late 20's. The Mennonite Church as a denom was also in the midst of working on a merger with the more liberal General Conference Mennonite Church (which eventually happened to form the Mennonite Church USA-God help us all). The slippery slope had already begun. The church was all into the modern "growth" fads-long on programs but there didn't seem to be a foundation. During all this my studies continued.
Hello RC Sproul and Michael Horton. Oh gee did they really muck things up. You know, even though I am no longer a calvinist I fear I wouldn't be able to stand against these two in a debate. They can present a withering logical argument like no one else can. Well I began by reading Chosen by God. That is Sproul's little book about predestination and election that virtually convinced me of Reformed Theology. In a whirlwind of shallow teaching I was receiving in the Mennonite Church this seemed so rock solid. When I listed off names (Sproul, Packer, Spurgeon) to my wife she'd casually say "They are stalwarts of the faith" which seemed to me to be an endorsement. So I immersed myself in Reformed teaching. It's all right there in scripture. Romans and Ephesians and what else do you need to know? When I confronted my pastor about it he (admirably in retrospect) presented the other view. He also handed me a book to read If Ye Continue by Guy Duty but I read it with Sproul and "refuted" everything. Michael Horton had a radio show called "The White Horse Inn" and he + another reformed teacher and a lutheran teacher ("Dad Rod" Rosenbladt). I subscribed to his magazine "Modern Reformation" and got lots of his radio show tapes and was completely immersed. It seemed to be the answer to the morass I was experiencing in trying to find a church. Only prob was that I didn't buy into the infant baptism and these reformed types were generally presbyterian.
I planned to be a little drunk when I did the deed, but when it came time I couldn't do it. I stuck the razor in the wall (I still have that same pack of razor blades-every once in a while I come across them and remember what God has done). Finished the bottle and passed out.
Woke up the next day without a nickel to my name. I figured that since I had no money I'd go to the interstate and hitchhike to somewhere. I started walking toward the interstate but ended up in a rough part of HBurg. I wondered around not knowing what I was going to do. I backtracked to the bus station, defeated, and called my friend to come get me.
I waited in that bus station just totally lost. I understood the rudiments of Christianity but just couldn't figure how to fit it into my life. Well, my friend came and got me and he wasn't at all angry or anything. He was the perfect friend, just trying to figure how best to help me. When I got back I called my employer pleading for my job back and he took me back. And the thermos was still in the bushes the next day.
So I settled in to the working world. The christian incubator was fascinating when I look back upon it. It wasn't a fairy world of perfect christians but they worked through their differences in ways I'd not considered.
I still attended the same church. At a wedding I met my friend's cousin Dana. She seemed kind of quirky but nice just the same. When I asked him later that night how old she was he said "How old do you think she is?" and I said "14". Turns out she was 28 (I was 23 at the time).
[**Note: Young men looking for wives-two rules
1. Follow God's lead
2. Go with older women (when they are older than you they are smarter than you and you'll need all the help you can get )]
I started going to a Wed night intensive bible study and she started going too. The students were paired up by gender. Now she and I had a husband/wife combo and about half way through the study they dropped out and we paired up. We were married 18 months later. Now I wouldn't have waited so long myself--long engagements are not good.
So it's theology time. Historically when I become interested in something I will read everything I can find about the subject. Up to this point in my walk with Christ I was at the Christian bookstore all the time, I was the the Christian lending library, I was at the public library. I was reading books, magazines, newspapers, listening to tapes and watching videos. I was just sucking it all in.
My new wife knew I had mennonite leanings. She grew up here, so she (as many non-mennonite folks do) had prejudices against them. Too many "spiritual" mennonites that weren't measuring up to their own standards I guess (like that doesn't happen everywhere else). So it wasn't too long after being married that we began attending and became members of the Mennonite Church (Franklin Conference).
I wasn't going as I thought it should. There was a split in the congregation between the older folks (plainer) and the younger folks. I'd say the middle age was about 40 or so. It was awkward-the younger like singing off the wall and having people stand and clap and the older were a more traditional preferring the hymnals and were uncomfortable with all the goings on.
It also seemed as though the younger were somewhat ashamed of the older, more "backward" ways and were doing what they could to drag the older generation into the "modern" age. I tended to fit with the older though I was in my mid-late 20's. The Mennonite Church as a denom was also in the midst of working on a merger with the more liberal General Conference Mennonite Church (which eventually happened to form the Mennonite Church USA-God help us all). The slippery slope had already begun. The church was all into the modern "growth" fads-long on programs but there didn't seem to be a foundation. During all this my studies continued.
Hello RC Sproul and Michael Horton. Oh gee did they really muck things up. You know, even though I am no longer a calvinist I fear I wouldn't be able to stand against these two in a debate. They can present a withering logical argument like no one else can. Well I began by reading Chosen by God. That is Sproul's little book about predestination and election that virtually convinced me of Reformed Theology. In a whirlwind of shallow teaching I was receiving in the Mennonite Church this seemed so rock solid. When I listed off names (Sproul, Packer, Spurgeon) to my wife she'd casually say "They are stalwarts of the faith" which seemed to me to be an endorsement. So I immersed myself in Reformed teaching. It's all right there in scripture. Romans and Ephesians and what else do you need to know? When I confronted my pastor about it he (admirably in retrospect) presented the other view. He also handed me a book to read If Ye Continue by Guy Duty but I read it with Sproul and "refuted" everything. Michael Horton had a radio show called "The White Horse Inn" and he + another reformed teacher and a lutheran teacher ("Dad Rod" Rosenbladt). I subscribed to his magazine "Modern Reformation" and got lots of his radio show tapes and was completely immersed. It seemed to be the answer to the morass I was experiencing in trying to find a church. Only prob was that I didn't buy into the infant baptism and these reformed types were generally presbyterian.