I didn't grow up in a Christian home - nobody in my family believed in God, including
me - I just didn't see any sense in believing in something or somebody for which there was
no earthly evidence. Such belief seemed inexcusable to me.
By the time I was 13 years old, I'd only had two contacts with churchy things.
One was when I was taken to Sunday School for a couple of Sundays while our family was
staying with my Aunt & Uncle in NJ. I don't remember much about it as I was in
kindergarten at the time. The other contact I had was while browsing around at the
Horseshoe Lake fair. Someone handed me a little pamphlet bearing the title
"Religion is a drag". As I went on to read it, it talked about how
although religion is a drag, a relationship with God is not. Seemed a strange
concept to me, as I thought the two were one in the same. The pamphlet said
something about John 10:10. I asked my mom about this curious little John 10:10
inscription and she explained that it was a "reference" to something in the
Bible. So I dragged my mom's ancient Bible off the shelf to read this John
10:10. Having no idea that "10:10" meant "chapter 10, verse 10",
I never could find the place in the Bible that said what that pamphlet said. My
casual interest was lost and I never thought any more about it. Looking back, it
seems interesting to me that a pamphlet obviously designed for non-church goers presumed
that the reader knew what "John 10:10" meant.
Morning after morning I would trudge down to the bus stop to await the school bus.
About 3 or 4 of us huddled under the overhang of the local tavern, closed at this
early hour, to shield ourselves from the stiff fall breezes that blew around us.
Each Monday morning, my good friend Dean Tuttle would tell me of his weekend
ventures. Seemed he was always going camping, cave exploring, playing football or
doing other things with a group of guys that met every Friday night at a local church for
some sort of meeting. Sounded like a really neat thing to me. Week after week
he told me of the neat things he always did in this group.
I became very much interested in this group. Not knowing anything of church
culture, it never occurred to me I could attend without being invited - that this group
was an 'all welcome' type of deal. Dean, who was quite familiar with the 'all
welcome' thing never thought to invite me - until one day in November of '72 when he finally
asked me if I was interested in coming up some Friday night. I snapped up his
invitation while thinking "I thought you'd never ask!".
Anyway, to make a long story short, I spent the next year with this group. I had
myself a ball. The two dozen guys who met on Friday nights had a lot of fun
together. Yes, it was true that at each meeting we spent about 20 minutes in
"devotions". This strangely named activity consisted of reading some short
passage in the Bible and then answering some written questions about what you had read.
Seemed easy enough to do. I remember thinking it was interesting to read
something in the Bible that actually meant something. Anything I'd ever heard about
the Bible made no sense to me whatsoever. Not only did such things not seem
relevant, but they didn't make any sense. But these "devotions" sessions
were a bit interesting. It was the first time I ever heard anything about God that
didn't sound like a bunch of drivel. That's not to say that I believed any of it,
but for the first time it didn't sound like someone had just tossed a Bible in a blender
and then pasted the sentences back and that they were all mixed up so as not to make any
sense.
The summer of '73 rolled around and about ten of us went on an exciting, week-long
canoe trip on the St. Croix river bordering Maine and Canada. We were accompanied on
that trip by two adults and a deacon from the church at which we met.
(Standing) Rainer Hunninghaus, Tim Blasko (the deacon), Bill Wood,
George Westerman, Drew Moffat, Dave Westerman, Steve Dalrymple, Tim Oliver (seated) Joe
Taraska, J Whiting, John Wojtowicz, Bill Griswold, Bill Erhardt, Bill Wood
During that canoe trip, the deacon lead us in a campfire devotional at which he invited
anyone who had never "received Christ as their savior" to do so. In fact,
he said, anyone interested in so doing should see him after we left the campfire to return
to our tents. I still recall the light from the flames flickering across his face as
he gave us this warm but routine invitation.
On the way back to my tent, he approached me.
"Billy, may I speak with you a minute?" he asked. I knew what was
coming. "Have you ever received Christ as your savior?" he inquired,
sparing him the time and me the agony of beating around the bush.
"No", I responded weakly.
"Would you like to?" came the offer.
Now one thing I'd come to understand during my time with these people was that this
"receiving Christ as savior" was Christiandom's very treasured experience - the ultimate
experience, as the story went.
Well here I was being asked if I'd like to experience this ultimate experience and
receive this great prize. How could I say no? Although I didn't believe in it
one bit, how could I say no? I was a nice enough guy that if you told me that you
really, really liked turtle cream pie and would I like to try some, I just wouldn't be
able to turn you down.
"Yes", was the word that escaped from my lips.
"Well that's great! We can pray right here and do it now.", he chirped.
I don't remember precisely what happened next, but I do remember stumbling through some
brief prayer that I thought would sound right. With a slap on the back and a
congratulations for joining the club, I was off to my tent.
"Hmmmm,..." I thought as I wiggled down into my sleeping bag. "No
big deal. I'll just have to act like a Christian now. The only difference
between someone who's a Christian and someone who's not is that Christians go to church.
I ought to be able to handle that simple act." My intent would not be to
deceive so much as to 'go along'. With that thought I went off to sleep.
Well, a few weeks later I found myself sitting in a Sunday School room with my mother's
ancient Bible on my lap. The Sunday School teacher seemed pretty cool. He had
short cropped hair that shouted out he was definitely not a teenager (remember, teenagers
in the '70s were wearing long hair) and that he was definitely a church goer. But
everything else about him was quite down to earth. In particular, his intellectual
honesty impressed me. It would be interesting to ask him some of my "gotcha
stumped" questions.
After the class was over, I tossed a few of my bombs his way under the guise of genuine
personal perplexity.
"Sir," I said, approaching him, "How come in Genesis chapter 1, verse 3
God creates light but doesn't create the sun until verse 16?" I figured I had
him on this one. Any idiot could see that you have to make a sun before you can
have light. This passage and countless others proved to me that the Bible was
written by idiots who weren't really thinking about what they wrote. Either that or
they figured that whoever read it would be stupid.
An interesting thing is that neither that question nor the next one I asked him were
questions that were really my own. I had picked them up from somewhere, and since
they sounded like pretty cool questions, I hung onto them (I had not yet heard the
"Can God make a rock so big..." question).
"And another thing," I went on. "If Moses supposedly wrote the
first 5 books of the Bible, how come Moses' death is recorded in the end of the 5th book?
I had an interesting view of things. You see, I knew that God didn't really
exist. And I figured that the higher ups in religion had to know that -
that they were covering up for something they had to know wasn't true. And
in my mind, a Sunday School teacher was one of the higher ups. It would be
interesting to see him struggle with these two questions.
"Well," he responded, "about your Genesis question - I don't know the
answer to that." His complete honesty shocked me. I wasn't expecting it.
"It could be that in verse 3 God just created light and that in verse 16 he
created the sun to sustain that light."
Impressed, I listened to his second answer. "...and about Moses' death being
recorded in the 5th book of the Bible, it could be that God told Moses ahead of time that
he was going to die and Moses wrote it down. Another possibility is that Joshua,
Moses' right hand man just finished up the book after Moses died. Personally I kind
of think it was Joshua that finished up the book, but I really don't know."
Well I remember being amazed. Amazed not so much that I'd heard a clever comeback
to my clever question - that didn't matter at all. What struck me was the this guy
really believed what he was saying. Not only that, but he was thinking through what
he believed. Hmmmmm. That was definitely something to think about.
It was sometime during the next week that I sat down to think about everything. I
had always been pretty sure that God didn't exist - I mean, I had done the classic
experiment that most people have done at some point in their lives. I had held up a
pencil about 5 feet above the ground and said, "Alright God, if you really are
there, I know you can keep this pencil from hitting the ground when I let it go."
I wasn't trying to be smart, I was just trying to be open to believing in God if in
fact he really existed.
"Here's you're big chance," I told him. "If, when I let go of
this pencil, it hovers in the air, then I'll know you really exist, and by golly, I'll
believe in you."
Did the pencil hover in the air when I let it go? Of course it didn't.
"That proves you don't exist." I concluded. And that had been the extent
of my foray into this intriguing question.
I think many of us have done our own version of the hovering pencil experiment.
Sometimes it's more like, "God, if you get me out of this jam...", or "God,
if you can bring back this relationship..." that serves as our pencil. The
minute our situation strikes the ground we conclude that God must not exist because he
"had his chance".
But I began to wonder if instead of asking God to jump through my hoops whether a
fairer test would be for me to try jumping through his hoops. This seemed
reasonable enough. "OK, God," I began. "I'll just believe you're
there. Period. No pencil, no nothing. I'll do whatever I think you want
me to do."
To be perfectly honest with you, I can't tell you what happened in the next couple of
weeks. Gosh, I wish I'd kept a diary. All I remember is that I knew I'd made
the right decision. God was there, and it wasn't any pretending or illusion
on my part.
Looking back, I consider this occasion to have been my conversion. I asked God to
forgive through Christ the things I'd done wrong in life. And the neat thing is,
this time in my life was not the end of a journey, but the beginning of one. There's
so much more that has happened since and it's exciting stuff.
Wanna hear more? E-mail me at BGriswold @Griswold.com.
I'd love to tell you some of the truly exciting things that have happened over
the years that cumulatively have more than compensated for the pencil that didn't hover in
the air.
