Rapture Practice (5 page)

“That’s right!” Dad says.

“So, God knows what choice everyone is going to eventually make before they make it?” I ask.

“Yes, honey. Our God is omniscient,” Mom says with a smile. “He knows every time a sparrow falls from the sky. He can hear your every thought.”

“But that means God already knows who is getting into heaven and who isn’t.”

Dad nodded. “Yes, son, he does.”

“So, why even give us a choice in the first place?” I ask. “Why the big test?”

“God wants us to make a
decision
to love him,” Dad says. “It’s why he gave Adam and Eve free will in the Garden of Eden. Sin entered the world when Adam and Eve believed the serpent’s lie and disobeyed God. That’s why we are all born sinners. We have to make the choice to repent and believe in Jesus.”

Mom nods her head in agreement. “Sugar, God doesn’t want to be worshipped by robots.”

I am quiet for a minute as we pass a big movie theater. Families are walking out of the building toward their cars, and I wonder which movie they saw. If I had a choice, I’d go to the movies on Sunday night instead of church. I’ll bet no one cares whether you wear socks at the theater.

A pang of guilt shoots through my stomach for even thinking that, but I can’t help it. The whole thing about God knowing exactly what will happen but giving humans a choice to believe in Him—even though he knows many won’t, or worse,
can’t
because no one has told them about Jesus—it seems like a bad plan. Like socks with boat shoes.

Dad’s question about whether I want to be a missionary feels so silly now. If God already knows which people will get into heaven and which people he’ll send to hell, then being a missionary seems like a waste of time. The people who are
going to be saved are going to get into heaven whether I am the person who tells them about Jesus or not, right?

Has God created a bunch of people
knowing
He’ll have to send them to hell to burn in torment for all of eternity? That would just make God a jerk. Surely, that can’t be right.
Can it?

My head feels foggy. I take a deep breath and say a silent prayer.
God, help me understand.

“Tell me again,” I say. “How do we know
for sure
that the Bible is true?”

Without hesitation, Mom and Dad reply instantly as one voice: “Because it says it is.”

Their answer feels like sand slipping through my fingers. My stomach leaps the way it does on the first drop of the Orient Express at Worlds of Fun.

“Are you okay, Aaron?”

Dad is looking at me in the rearview mirror. I realize I am frowning, and quickly relax my face as I did when I was a little boy playing dead.

Don’t move a muscle.

“Yes, sir,” I say, and turn away from his gaze to look out the window.

But I am not fine. I simply don’t know what else to say. As our car navigates a busy intersection, I have the sudden urge to double-check to make sure my father is still in the front seat, driving. When I see him there, it does not quiet the racing of my heart, or soothe the panic in my stomach, or calm this fear I cannot shake—that no one is at the wheel; that at any moment we might spin wildly out of control.

“Boys and girls, let’s get things started off with a song!”

It’s Thursday afternoon following sock Sunday. Once more Mom greets each kid who comes for Good News Club with a hug and a smile. Once more we sing “Countdown!” Once more I show the other kids how to jump up in the air.

I can’t jump as high as I did when I was younger, because I’m taller now and I can touch the ceiling of the family room, but today it’s not my height stopping me. Something else is different, too. I try to figure out what it is as we finish the song, and Mom directs us all in reading aloud the Bible verse printed in the back of the rocket ship songbook: “John 14:3: And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

I glance over at Randy, who smiles at me as we sit back down.

A few weeks before, Dad talked about Randy from the pulpit during one of the seminars he teaches for parents and Christian schoolteachers about how to raise godly children.
He explained to the congregation that Mom is a missionary right here in our family room, spreading the Good News around the neighborhood. Dad said how sad it was that when Randy first came to our house, he had never heard the name of Jesus.

“That poor boy owns every satanic toy you can buy, but he doesn’t have a Bible,” Dad said with a sad shake of his head. “Randy is one of our American heathens.”

When Dad said the word
heathens
, I got this image of Randy with a bone through his nose, wearing a grass skirt while dancing around a fire in the jungle, and a thought went through my head:

What if Randy isn’t preordained?

What if he isn’t one of the people God knows will get into heaven? What if he doesn’t understand about the Good News
because he can’t
?

Mom begins today’s Bible story from the New Testament about Jesus calming the storm with the words “Peace! Be still!” The picture of Jesus she holds up is beautifully drawn. His eyes are kind, his hair whipped back by the storm, his arms outstretched, his handsome face set firm into the wind and rain.

“Boys and girls,” Mom says, “Jesus can bring peace to each one of our hearts like he calmed the angry sea two thousand years ago.” She quotes Philippians: “ ‘And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.’ ”

I search for a peaceful place in my heart as she teaches, but all I can think about is Randy, dressed like a native from a tribe in the jungle, and my fear that he might be one of the people God knows won’t accept Jesus. For that matter, what if
I’m
one of those people? What if I’m not
really
saved?

This idea sends a chill down my spine.

I remember sitting on the couch between Mom and Dad when I was almost three years old and asking Jesus to come into my heart. Mom wrote down the words I prayed that day in the front of my little New Testament.

How do I know that I meant it? How do I know that it worked?

Dad says the way you know someone is truly born again is if his or her actions are Christ-like. If a person displays the fruit of the Spirit in his life: love, joy, peace, patience. There’s a whole list in Ephesians.

I take a quick inventory as Mom wraps up the Bible story:

I love my parents and my brothers and sister. I am kind to my friends. I help Mom teach Good News Club. On Sunday, I wore socks to church and submitted to my dad. But there are other things, too. Things Mom and Dad don’t know about, like the music I listen to late at night under the covers with my clock radio. I must be saved, because this is the Holy Spirit of God convicting me about listening to music my parents wouldn’t want me to. And the Holy Spirit only lives inside true believers. At least that’s what Dad says.

I just wish I could know
for sure
.

For the first time, as I look around Good News Club
at all the kids watching Mom teach, I am not thrilled and excited about the Rapture. Instead, I feel a desperate sense of urgency about Jesus coming back.

And something else:

Dread.

That night, no matter how hard I pray, I can still feel the fear in my stomach.

Once I hear my brother’s breathing level out on the other side of the room, I slide my clock radio off the nightstand and into bed with me. I turn the volume knob all the way down, spread part of the sheet over the radio, and switch it on. The sheet protects my face from the warm, hard plastic as I press my ear directly over the speaker. I can barely hear the sounds of 88.5, KLJC, Kansas City’s home for “beautiful, sacred music.”

This is the radio station operated by the Bible college where Dad teaches. The call letters KLJC stand for Knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. I turn the dial away from 88.5 until I hear the faint sounds of 98.1 KUDL.

Dad teaches that the moral decline of society today started with rock music and something he calls the “counterculture of the fifties and sixties.”

“Elvis ‘the Pelvis’ Presley and the Beatles came armed with the music of rebellion,” Dad says. “The emphasis of the
rock drumbeat on the two and four count of every measure imitates sexual relations between a man and a woman. It’s the same noise that Moses heard when he came down Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments.”

Dad considers any song with prominent drumbeats to be rock music, and frequently refers to this passage in Exodus when Moses finds the Israelites having a big celebration and worshipping a golden calf. Moses heard the music from this party and said, “The sound of war is in the camp.”

Anytime we pass the music department at Walmart and Guns N’ Roses is blasting, Dad says, “The sound of war is in the camp.” This is why I keep the volume down and cover my radio with my ear to muffle the sound.

When the dial reaches KUDL’s nightly “Kuddle Countdown,” Whitney Houston is singing about how children are the future. As I listen, my eyes fill with tears. I know what I’m doing is wrong, but something about her voice sounds like relief. It soothes the fear in my chest and the doubt in my stomach.

Sometimes the singers on KUDL mention heaven, too, only it’s not far away in outer space. It’s a place you can visit right here on earth when you hold someone special in your arms. Bette Midler, Linda Ronstadt, Taylor Dane, Chaka Khan, Richard Marx, and the guys from Chicago and REO Speedwagon all sing about love and longing with a choked sob in their throats. These are epic ballads with guitars and saxophones, a blazing key change in the middle, and a soaring
high note at the end, songs that make me think of figure skaters spinning across the ice. I press my ear even closer to the speaker and imagine where the triple axels should go.

As I listen, all my worries about the Rapture and whether Randy will get into heaven fall away. The someday Whitney sings about isn’t after we die—it’s when I grow up. These songs aren’t worried about eternity at all. They are focused on the here and now. I know this is one of the reasons Mom and Dad don’t want me to listen to this music.

But I can’t help it. I’ve already heard this music, and I love it.

After Whitney, Phil Collins sings a duet called “Separate Lives.” The man and woman in this song love each other but for some reason can’t be together. As I listen, hot tears of frustration fill my eyes and spill onto the sheet that covers the radio. I love my parents, but the things we want seem so different sometimes. I feel guilty, almost like I am betraying them, but instantly feel relieved that I feel guilty, because this must mean I’m saved. The Holy Spirit is doing his job to convict my heart of my sin, but I don’t turn the radio off.

Instead, I decide to turn off my mind. I try to focus on the music, to let these melodies about love drown out the fear in my brain. Even this reminds me of a Bible verse: “Perfect love casts out fear.” Maybe perfect love songs cast out fear, too. I smile to myself as this thought crosses my mind. Here in the songs I’m not supposed to like is one more reminder of all the things Mom and Dad have taught me.

I listen to the radio for a long time that night, until the
plastic of the radio grows hot against my ear, and the music of KUDL sears a melody on my heart.

Chad Paddle occupies the seat in front of me on the school bus, and when he sees the lights of the squad car out the back window, he calls to his mother at the wheel.

“Mom! A cop is pulling you over!”

We don’t call policemen “cops” at our house. Mom says it’s disrespectful.

“They are officers of the Lord, who have the responsibility of keeping us safe,” she says. “They deserve our gratitude and respect.”

Mrs. Paddle calls for all of us to be quiet, and a hush falls over the bus. She wasn’t driving too fast, that’s for sure. Sometimes it feels like it takes an hour to drive the two miles from the Christian school we attend to our street corner. I lean forward to hear what the policeman will say, and catch a flash of his hat and mirrored sunglasses as he peers in Mrs. Paddle’s front window.