Journeys Home (4 page)

Without mandated denominational guidelines to steer me, I did
what all the other pastors were doing: I improvised. Hymns, sermons,
Scripture selections, congregational participation, and the administration
of baptism, marriage, and the Lord's Supper were all fair game
for experimentation. I shudder at the memory of one particular
Sunday when, in an effort to make the youth service more interesting
and "relevant," I spoke the Lord's words of consecration, ''This
is My body, this is My blood, do this in memory of Me," over a
pitcher of soda pop and a bowl of potato chips.

Theological questions vexed me the most. I remember standing beside
the hospital bed of a man who was near death after suffering a
heart attack. His distraught wife asked me, "Is my husband going
to heaven?"

I hesitated for a moment before giving my pat Presbyterian response.
I considered the great diversity of alternative responses I could
give, depending upon whether the inquirer were Methodist, Baptist,
Lutheran, Assemblies of God, Nazarene, Christian Scientist, Foursquare
Gospel, Jehovah's Witness, or whatever. All I could do was mouth
some sort of pious but vague "we must trust in the Lord" reassurance
about her husband's salvation.

She may have been comforted, but her tearful plea tormented me.
After all, as a Reformed pastor I believed Calvinistic doctrines
of predestination and perseverance of the saints. This man had
given his life to Christ; he had been regenerated and was confident
that he was one of God's elect. But was he?

I was deeply unsettled by the knowledge that no matter how earnestly
he may have thought he was predestined for heaven (it's interesting
that nearly all who preach the doctrine of predestination firmly
believe they themselves are one of the elect), and no matter how
sincerely those around him believed he was, he may not have gone
to heaven.

And what if he had secretly "backslidden" into serious sin and
been living in a state of rebellion against God at the moment
his heart attack caught him by surprise? Reformed theology told
me that if that were the case, then the poor fellow had simply
been deluded by a false security,
thinking
he was regenerated
and predestined for heaven, when in fact he had not been regenerated
all along and was on his way to hell. Calvin taught that the Lord's
elect will -- they
must
-- persevere in grace and election. If
a person dies in a state of rebellion against God, he proves he
never was one of the elect.

What kind of absolute assurance is that?
I wondered.

I found it harder to give clear, confident answers to the "will
my husband go to heaven?" kinds of questions my parishioners asked.
Every Protestant pastor I knew had a different set of criteria
that he listed as "necessary" for salvation. As a Calvinist, I
believed that if one publicly accepts Jesus as his Lord and Savior,
he is saved by grace through faith. But even as I consoled others
with these fine-sounding words, I was troubled by the worldly
and sometimes grossly sinful lifestyles these now-deceased members
of my congregation had lived.

After just a few years of ministry, I began to doubt whether I
should continue.

I rose one morning before dawn and, taking a folding chair, my
journal, and a Bible, went out into a quiet field beside my church.
It was the time of day I most love, when the birds are singing
the world awake. I often marvel at the exuberance of birds in
the early morning. What wonderfully short memories they have!
They begin each day of their simple existence with a symphony
of praise to the Lord who created them, utterly unconcerned with
cares or plans. Sometimes, I'd "consider the sparrows" and meditate
on the simplicity of their lives.

Sitting quietly in the middle of the dew-covered field waiting
for the sun to come up, I read Scripture and meditated on these
questions that had been troubling me, placing my worries before
the Lord. The Bible warned me not to "rely on [my] own insight,"
so I was determined to trust in God to guide me.

I was contemplating leaving the pastorate, and I saw three options.
One was to become the leader of youth ministry at a large Presbyterian
church that had offered me the position. Another was to leave
ministry altogether and go back to engineering. The other possibility
was to return to school and round out my scientific education
in an area that would open even more doors to me professionally:
I had been accepted into a graduate program in molecular biology
at Ohio State University.

I mulled over these options, asking God to guide my steps.
An
audible voice would be great,
I thought, smiling, as I closed
my eyes and waited for the Lord's answer. I had no idea what form
The Answer
would take, but it was not long in coming.

My reveries ended abruptly when a merrily chirping sparrow flew
past and pooped on my head!

"What are you saying to me, Lord?" I cried out with the anguish
of Job. The trilling of the birds was the only response. There
was no voice from heaven (not even a snicker), just the sounds
of nature waking from its slumber in an Ohio cornfield.

Was it a divine sign or merely Brother Bird's editorial comment
on my worries? In disgust, I folded my chair, grabbed my Bible,
and went home.

Later that day, when I told my wife, Marilyn, about the three
options I was considering and the messy incident with the bird,
she laughed and exclaimed with her typical wisdom: "The meaning
is clear, Marcus. God is saying, 'None of the above!'"

Although I'd have preferred a less humiliating method of communication,
I knew that nothing occurs by accident, and that neither sparrows
nor their droppings fall to earth without God's knowledge. I took
this as at least a comical hint from God to remain in the ministry.

But I still knew my situation was not right. Maybe what I needed
was a bigger church with a bigger budget and a bigger staff. Surely,
then I'd be happy. So I struck off in the direction of the "bigger
is better" church that I thought would satisfy my restless heart.

Within six months, I found one I liked and whose very large congregation
seemed to like me. They offered me the post of senior pastor,
complete with an office staff and a budget ten times larger than
the one I had at my previous church. Best of all, this was a strong
Evangelical church with many members who were actively interested
in Scripture study and lay ministry.

I enjoyed preaching before this large and largely approving congregation
each Sunday. At first, I thought I had solved the problem. But
after only one month, I realized that bigger was not better. My
frustration merely grew proportionately larger.

Polite smiles beamed up at me during each sermon. But I wasn't
blind to the fact that for many in the congregation my passionate
exhortations to live a virtuous life merely skittered across a
veneer of religiosity like water droplets on a hot skillet.

Many said, "Great sermon! It really blessed me!" However, it seemed
obvious that they really meant: "That's nice for other people,
Pastor -- for
sinners
-- but I've already arrived. My name's already
on the heavenly rolls. I don't need to worry about all this stuff,
but I sure do agree with you, Pastor, that we've got to tell all
the sinners to get right with God."

One day, I found myself standing before the local presbytery as
spokesman for a group of pastors and laymen who were defending
the idea that when we use parental language for God in communal
prayer, we should call him "Father," not "Mother" or "Parent."
I defended this position by appealing to Scripture and Christian
tradition.

To my dismay, I realized that the faction I represented was in
the minority and that we were fighting a losing battle. This issue
would be settled not by a well-reasoned appeal to Scripture or
Church history, but by a vote -- the majority of votes being pro-gender-neutral-language
liberals. It was at this meeting that I first recognized the anarchistic
principle that lies at the center of Protestantism.

These liberals (grievously wrong in their scheme to reduce God
to the mere functions of "creator, redeemer, and sanctifier" instead
of the Persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) were just being
good Protestants. They were simply following the course of protest
mapped out for them by their theological ancestors Martin Luther,
John Calvin, and other Reformers. The Reformation maxim of "I
will not abide by a teaching unless I believe it is correct and
biblical" was being invoked by these liberal Protestants in favor
of their protest against masculine names for God.

All of a sudden, it hit me that I was observing Protestantism
in the full solipsistic glory of its natural habit: protest. "What
kind of church am I in?" I asked myself dejectedly as the vote
was taken and my side lost.

About this time my wife, Marilyn, who had been the director of
a pro-life crisis pregnancy center, began challenging me to grapple
with the inconsistency of our staunch pro-life convictions and
the pro-choice stance of our Presbyterian denomination. "How can
you be a minister in a denomination that sanctions the killing
of unborn babies?" she asked.

The denominational leadership had bowed under the pressure from
radical feminist, homosexual, pro-abortion, and other extremist
pressure groups within the denomination. Though, ostensibly, members
of individual congregations could hold pro-life and other traditional
views, they imposed stringent liberal guidelines on the hiring
process for new pastors.

When Marilyn woke me up to the fact that a portion of my congregation's
dues to the Presbyterian General Assembly were most likely paying
for abortions -- and there was nothing I or my congregation could
do about it -- I was stunned.

Marilyn and I knew we had to leave the denomination, but where
would we go? This question led to another: Where will I find a
job as a minister? I purchased a book that listed the details
of all major Christian denominations and began evaluating several
of the denominations that interested me.

I would read the doctrinal summaries and think,
This one is nice,
but I don't like their view on Baptism. This one is OK, but their
view of the end times is a bit too panic-ridden. This one sounds
exactly like what I'm looking for, but I'm uncomfortable with
their style of worship.

After examining every possibility and not finding one that I liked,
I shut the book in frustration. I knew I was leaving Presbyterianism,
but I had no idea which denomination was the "right" one to join.
There seemed to be something wrong with each of them.
Too bad
I can't customize my "perfect" church,
I thought to myself wistfully.

Around this time, a friend from Illinois called me on the phone.
He, too, was a Presbyterian pastor and had heard through the grapevine
that I was planning to leave the Presbyterian denomination.

"Marc, you can't leave the church!" he scolded. "You must never
leave the church; you're committed to the church. It should not
matter that some theologians and pastors are off the wall. We've
got to stick with the church and work for renewal from within!
We must preserve unity at all costs!"

"If that's true," I replied testily, "why did we Protestants break
away from the Catholic Church in the first place?"

I don't know where those words came from. I had never in my life
given even a passing thought as to whether or not the Reformers
were right to break away from the Catholic Church. It was the
essential nature of Protestantism to attempt to bring renewal
through division and fragmentation. The motto of Presbyterianism
is "reformed and always reforming." (It should add, "and reforming,
and reforming, and reforming, and reforming ...")

I could leave for another denomination, knowing that eventually
I might move to another when I become dissatisfied; or I could
decide to stay where I was and take my lumps. But then how could
I justify staying where I was? Why shouldn't I return to the previous
denominational group we Presbyterians had defiantly broken away
from? None of these options seemed right, so I decided that I
would leave the ministry until I resolved the issue one way or
the other.

Returning to school seemed to be the easiest way to take a breather
from all this, so I enrolled in a graduate program in molecular
biology at Case Western Reserve University. My goal was to combine
my scientific and theological backgrounds into a career in bioethics.
I figured that a Ph.D. in molecular biology would win me a better
hearing among scientists than would a degree in theology or ethics.

The commute to the Cleveland campus took over an hour each way.
So for the next eight months I had plenty of quiet time for introspection
and prayer.

Soon I was deeply immersed in a genetic engineering research project,
which involved the removal and reproduction of human DNA taken
from homogenized kidneys. The program was very challenging, but
I loved it. Even so, compared to the complexities of amino acids
and biochemical cycles, wrestling with Latin conjugations and
German declensions suddenly seemed a lot easier.

The project fascinated and frightened me. I relished the intellectual
stimulation of scientific research. But I also saw how dehumanizing
the research lab can be.

Genetic tissue, harvested from the cadavers of deceased patients
at the Cleveland Clinic, was sent to our lab for DNA research.
I was deeply moved by the fact that this tissue had come from
people -- moms and dads, children, and grandparents who had once
lived and worked and laughed and loved. In the lab, these neatly
numbered vials of tissue were just tubes of "stuff," experimental
"material" that was utterly dissociated from the human person
to whom it once belonged.