My Story - Part 2 - How It Happened

Last time, I described the climate of my early years – having essentially no religious background, being the smartest kid in my class, and growing up in an emotionally abusive family.

The loneliness of my high school years was partially reversed during my college years when I spent three summers as a counselor at a wonderful 4-H camp in Riverhead, NY. For the first time, I felt truly embraced by my peers, and their love of the natural world immediately rubbed off on me. This newly found fascination with nature converged with another aspect of my early years I didn’t mention last time – a strong interest in the paranormal.

All my Hungarian-born grandparents exhibited an Eastern European darkness that included an interest in psychic phenomena. I regularly perused a book on dream interpretation at my grandmother’s house. In high school, several friends and I got dramatic results using Ouija boards. During my freshman year of college, I took an Honors Program seminar on how to draw up astrological charts for ourselves and our friends.

At the end of my first 4-H summer, my enthusiastic embrace of the natural sciences converged with my fascination with the paranormal, and I started down the road of investigating White Magic. As opposed to Black Magic, which admittedly taps into satanic forces, White Magic appeals to goodness and the “light forces” of the universe. Despite its alleged positive focus, it too is ultimately satanic. Paul describes Satan as “an angel of light” in 2 Corinthians 11:14, and I was being sucked in.

This dabbling with the illegitimate supernatural is the context from which I wrote the October 15, 1970 letter to my brother referenced in my previous post. That’s where I said I had found God through nature.

A few weeks later, I started noticing posters going up all over the Syracuse University campus showing a slender, pensive-looking man with a shadowy, ghostly figure standing behind him. The poster was advertising a program called “Do the Dead Return?” This was right up my alley, and I was immediately hooked.

On the evening of November 10, 1970, I arrived at the venue early to make sure I got a good seat. The speaker’s talk leaned heavily on the experiences of the famous escape artist and magician Harry Houdini who promised his wife Bess he would try to reach back from the dead to contact her after his death. Despite ten years of Halloween seances after Houdini died, no contact was ever made. The speaker concluded that if the world’s most famous escape artist couldn’t cross the chasm of death, no one could. So, to my surprise, the punchline of evening was, “No, the dead do not return.”

He then indicated that, despite Houdini’s failure to return from the dead, there was one man who had done just that. And that was Jesus. The reason Jesus died, he explained, was to address the sin problem that afflicts every person. When Jesus physically rose from the grave, he decimated sin’s hold on us, and if we commit our lives to him, we can experience his love and forgiveness. Furthermore, over time Jesus will begin changing our lives and showing us how to live in ways we never thought possible.

I was absolutely riveted by this presentation. There were two things happening in my heart:

• I knew what the speaker was saying was absolutely true

• I knew this was absolutely for me

When he offered an opportunity to commit our lives to Jesus, I eagerly did. And that was the beginning of my new life. Praise God! This coming Tuesday, November 10 marks exactly 50 years since that wonderful night. If you happen to think of it, you might say a special prayer of thanksgiving on Tuesday, not for me, but for God’s grace in my life.

Next time, I’ll conclude the three-part recap of my story by recounting what I call my first “Jesus moment” that happened a few after that first November 10.

My Story - Part 1

In high school, I was not voted “Most Likely to Become a Jesus Follower.” In fact, I was a pretty unlikely candidate. Religion played almost no part in my extended family’s life. The closest we got was when we started attending a Unitarian fellowship – pretty much a fringe group. Instead of worship services, we participated in philosophical discussions and comparative religion exploration.

Although I learned a lot through this group, it was a net negative. I was always “the smart kid” who flaunted my intelligence, a tactic that did not endear me to me peers. And the Unitarian experience adding to my sense of superiority over my classmates who I felt were “trapped” by more conventional religious ideas. I thought anyone who really believed the Bible had to be academically deficient, and no one I respected intellectually took the Bible seriously.

I achieved my goal of graduating first in my high school class and entering the prestigious Syracuse University Honors Program. But I knew deep down that something was wrong. Unfortunately, my family was filled with dysfunctional and emotionally abusive people. Both my grandfather and my brother committed suicide. Beyond being a total non-conformist who distrusted virtually every societal convention, my dad also had a sadistic streak. One of his nicknames for me was “Idiot Child.” I can’t even put the other one in print. He abandoned our family financially and emotionally and almost never gave my brother and me presents, even for Christmas and birthdays.

This emotional abuse contributed to a deep-seated sense of inferiority. Despite being somewhat of a BMOC with numerous acquaintances in my many groups and activities, I had few real friends and spent most Saturday nights alone.

However, I experienced a refreshing breakthrough the summer after my college freshman year. As a counselor at a 4-H summer camp on the eastern end of Long Island, I felt, for the first time, embraced by a wonderful group of sharp, committed people. I was taken by their love of the natural sciences and immediately embraced nature as an ultimate value – perhaps the ultimate value – in life.

Because I had a college-related trip, I left midway through the summer. My last night there, I was unexpectedly inducted into a special honor society for outstanding counselors. Two things made this especially meaningful. First, I was totally unaware that this group even existed, so wasn’t “auditioning” for a spot. And, second, for one of the first times, I was being affirmed by my peers.

Then, the next morning, my fellow-counselors surprised me again by giving me a small gift for my trip. This unexpected gesture was especially significant since it was totally optional and stood in stark contrast to my dad’s lack of gift-giving.

For years afterwards, I thought that if I could relive any 24-hour period of my life it would be that evening and next morning when my friends embraced me for who I was, not necessarily for my accomplishments.

Recently, I came across a letter I wrote to my brother just a few months later. Here’s an excerpt:

You talk of having found Christ. Well I think I’ve found God through Nature. I can’t believe that I was able to stumble through 19 years without even beginning to appreciate Nature. Of course, my job this summer had a great deal to do with my new attitude.

Notice that I capitalized the word “Nature” as if nature is somehow divine. And in my mind, it was.

This letter was dated October 15, 1970 – just 26 days before my momentous experience of November 10, 1970. Tune in next time to find out just what happened to change my life.