Bataan 2014

I am an avid jogger and runner, but I typically do not enter local running events. One of the main reasons I run is to be alone in the desert. I test my body, I listen to my breathing; I am out there almost as a form of meditation. The crowds of organized road races take away from what I love about running, so I really have little interest in them.

 The Bataan Memorial Death March is the one exception that I make. First and foremost, it is not a race. It is a memorial march in remembrance of the real Bataan Death March, which was a forced march of Philippine and American soldiers in 1942. Thousands were killed in the forced march. The annual march is held in New Mexico, not just as memorial of the wartime event of 1942, but a memorial to any soldier who has fallen in any conflict. That is what I love about it. Most participants were active duty soldiers, or family members of soldiers, who had lost a person they loved in some overseas conflict. I would say that over half of this year’s 6300 participants marched with heavy backpacks. Many of these packs had placards pinned on the rear as memorials of somebody who had died in Bataan, or a more recent conflict. There were plenty of ‘wounded warriors’ who marched in the desert with prosthetic limbs and modified wheelchairs.

 The 25th annual Bataan Memorial Death March was held last Sunday up in White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. I had trained very hard for this event for several months. I am familiar with running in the rocks and sand of desert terrain, but the marathon distance of 26 miles is a bit past my comfort zone. Since the Bataan is not technically a race, I was unconcerned about how fast I ran it. Recently, the event officials have decided to give the fastest finishers of each category some kind of prize. I am not in favor of this at all. In my mind, it ruins the spirit of the march. Almost nobody, including myself, is there to win a race. Before the event, I promised myself not to over-exert myself. I would stop at every break station, eat plenty of bananas and peanut brittle, take the time to change my socks if I needed to, and stop to take photos and chat with people. My only goal was just to be finished before the afternoon winds typically begin around 1PM. I ended up running most of the 26 miles, but took long breaks in between and even walked about 2 miles towards the end. It was challenging, emotional, and terrific. I have finally completed the Bataan Memorial Death March. With that under my belt, I am not sure I want to do it again next year. We will see.

 And with that, here are some photos:

 Rosemary brought her Philippine flag with her to early morning crowds before the event. It attracted every Philippine person who saw it, including one Philippine man we met who decided to march in period costume. All the Philippine people wanted to pose with Rosemary's flag! She must have made a dozen new friends!

This is the beginning of the march. There were 6300 participants this year. I am trying not to get trampled by the soldiers!

This is one of the original survivors of the 1942 Bataan Death March. There are not many of these old timers left. There were thirteen survivors in attendance, and I got to talk to two of them. This is at the starting gate, and the crowds were a bit hectic. Eventually, the survivors were driven out to some of the water stations where things were a little slower paced.

I could not believe the size of some of these backpacks the soldiers chose to march with. Some of them were even running with these huge things. Ack! My knees!

This guy lost his grandfather in the Bataan Death March in 1942. So many of these guys were walking memorials to a person they lost. Sometimes I asked them about the person they had pinned on their backpack or shirt. They were always willing to talk and share stories.

The camouflage kilts are all kinds of awesome!

This nut was playing loud rock music out of his parked car, dancing and banging on a cowbell. I don't get it.

After running 22 miles or so, we hit the infamous 'sand pit'. By this time, everybody is feeling stiff, and the sand can definitely make it worse. When you hit this, you must change your stride. Use it to your advantage, lift your knees a bit more, and use it to stretch out your calves with each step.

This poor lady just twisted her ankle on a steep downhill grade. I remember thinking, you know you are getting older when running downhill is tougher than running uphill!

The support for this event was outstanding. We were out in the desert, and away from any roads, but the route was constantly monitored by people on horses and ATVs. There were also 3 or 4 medic stations along the route. They did not want to leave anybody behind!

Only 3 miles to go! I was hurting by this point. My feet especially, were really starting to ache. They were swelling up for some reason, and running on swollen feet is definitely uncomfortable.

When I finished, I kissed Rosemary, and was near tears. Not pain. Tears of joy. 26 miles of jogging through the desert among all these walking memorials gave me a bit of time to reflect on myself. I am grateful for my wonderful life and all that I have and the people that I love.

 Next year? We will see...

Have you lost your mind?

I awoke this morning before the sunrise.  It was still dark in the house, and mindful not to wake Rosemary, I felt around for the clothes I had left out the night before.  I put on a ragged flannel shirt to protect me from the morning chill, and a wide athletic belt around my waist to carry a water bottle and a baggie full of peanut brittle.  I laced my favorite running shoes on, and left the house.  Still dark, I drove 15 miles north to the border of New Mexico where there is a stretch of road over a pass in the Franklin Mountains called Anthony Gap.  I parked my truck on the side of the road and looked ahead to where I intended to run.  A little less than 8 miles uphill and over the pass, then back down until the road meets with I-10.  The skies behind me in the east were slowly starting to brighten.  I figured the sun would be above the horizon in a half hour or so and warm me on my jog up.  I did not want to run on the shoulder of the road.  There was far too much traffic to make that a comfortable option.  Besides, I have always found jogging on the pavement to be boring and tedious.  There was a maintenance road of rock and dirt that ran parallel to the highway.  It was more of a trail really, since only the sturdiest 4-wheeler would be able to navigate through the numerous arroyos that were bridged by the main highway.  Even though it was rough and uneven, I figured I would run on that trail to avoid traffic and not allow the smooth pavement to make my run monotonous. 

I placed the bottle of water in my belt holster after taking a sip, and bit into a generous chunk of peanut brittle.  I looked at the trail ahead of me.  A few miles uphill before disappearing over the mountain pass.  My hands were freezing, and I could not wait for the sun to rise and warm me up.  I blew my nose, muttered to myself, “Have you lost your mind?” and headed uphill on the uneven, rock-strewn trail.

I started running almost 12 years ago, in July 2001.  Although I have always been an avid mountain and desert hiker, the extent of my athleticism ended there.  On the contrary, I did not feel that I was in very good health.  I had struggled more or less, mostly more, with cigarettes since Air Force Basic Training way back in 1982.  Cigarettes were part of Air Force culture.  Half my Basic Training squadron was composed of fresh-faced, innocent kids, first time out of mom’s house, and had never before touched tobacco.  While conducting drills or policing the grounds, our drill instructor set aside five minutes every hour or so for the smokers’ benefit.  “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em!”  Half the squadron, myself included, started smoking just so we could take a break from the drudgery.

By 2001, a stressful and sedentary study environment in grad school gave me a two pack per day habit.  I was not picky.  I smoked whatever JB’s Smoke Shop had on sale.  That usually meant something called Premium Basic, which I could get for $1.15 per pack.  A lit Premium Basic was the perfect companion during countless all-nighters spent buried in school work, and I puffed constantly while struggling with insanely difficult physics problems.  But my breathing was getting more labored, and my throat burned more and more often.  I knew I had to quit.  I had managed to quit for over four years back in the early 1990s, but had started up again soon after enrolling in University.  Since then, I could never completely stay off the cigarettes.  I managed a day or two numerous times before finally caving in to the lure of nicotine.  The first puff after two days deprived of cigarettes always made my head spin.

In July 2001, I was walking in the marshlands by the Rio Grande with my dog Comet.  For some reason, on this particular day, I felt full of caged energy.  It must have been the coffee.  I walked along a dirt road atop a dammed up arroyo, and for no good reason just started running.  I ran with soaked water shoes as fast as I could, with Comet happily following close behind.  I managed maybe 100 meters before I stopped and keeled over out of breath, wondering what had just come over me!  The next day my legs, especially my inner thighs, were quite sore.  I had awakened muscles I had not used probably since the Air Force.  I ran again though, this time a little further.  Just a little.  I was a runner for only one day, and I was already hooked.  I would trade in one habit for another.  My last cigarette was in October 2001, and I have been running ever since.

I continued to run almost exclusively on dirt trails.  This was easy for me since I lived in a rural area.  Every powerline that crossed the desert was sure to have a rugged maintenance road running with it.  The desert was full of sandy arroyos that made for difficult but satisfying running.  And of course, the Rio Grande had dirt roads running parallel on both banks for as far as anybody could possibly run.  I was soon running over 10 kilometers every day.  Running was the perfect escape after a long day filling my head with theorems and equations.  If the day was too busy, if my emotions were running amok, if personal dramas were overwhelming, I could easily renew myself with a run in the open air.  Running in the desert felt nearly like a primal instinct.  I felt unleashed from the world when running around in the desert with nothing between me and the harsh environment but the thin cloth of shorts and T-shirt.  I loved the rush of adrenalin after a long run along some cattle trail.  Running to the top of the Chupaderra Hills and looking down from when I came was almost like spiritual epiphany.  Every time I hit the trials, I felt young, unencumbered and free!

I still get occasional surges of breathless emotion, even after 12 years of running.  I sometimes run several miles into the desert, maybe on the top of a ridge, far above the desert floor.  I have left the mundane city far behind, and as I climb in elevation, listening to nothing but my own footfalls and labored breathing, I can feel the air cool, I can see the desert flora change, and the horizon widen below me.  When I reach the top, spent from the exertion of miles of uphill running, I can turn back to look at the seemingly endless expanse of desert that I ran through to get to this spot.  I can see the tangled maze of arroyos and notch canyons that carve through the mountain’s alluvial fans.  The wind may pick up, and I see that a monsoon cumulonimbus has suddenly formed over the horizon.  Rain is threatening, and I have a long way to run to get back to my parked truck.  But for this moment, this special place where few people tread, a place deep in the desert and far above civilization, for this moment this place is almost Holy.  To think that I reached this place with nothing but the power of my own two feet, I sometimes feel a need to be grateful.  There may be nobody to be grateful to, but running to places where I am surrounded by the vastness of the desert wilderness leave me feeling joyous, humbled, even awed at my total insignificance in the midst of the whole.  I still cannot help feeling grateful at my ability to run into this momentarily sacred place under my own power, before I run back downhill, out of the desert and back into the more familiar, trivial, mundane world.

Yes, I do occasionally feel these moments of epiphany.  Can you tell that I love to run?  

The only time I stopped running for any length of time was when I had to nurse an injury.  I stopped for three weeks when my left knee hurt.  I stopped even longer when my calf muscle was strained.  I stopped for a couple of months when I was forced to rest my painful hip.  Deprived of running, but compelled to continue exercise of some kind, I decided to ride a bicycle instead.  I could never get used to the bicycle.  I crashed every time I tried off-road riding in the desert.  I found cycling on the highway with the traffic to be nerve wracking when I was not bored stiff with the monotony and tedium.  I was too used to my slow humping over the desert rocks and brush, with eyes glued to the ground lest I step on a camouflaged rattlesnake.  But cycling was better than nothing.  I found that if I did not run, or at least strain my breathing and heart rate once every few days, I would become cranky.  I had too much pent up energy.  I needed to move!

Running is a low maintenance activity.  It requires no special equipment.  It can be done nearly anywhere and at any time.  Along with eating, sleeping and sex, it is as basic, primal and natural an activity as I can imagine.  There is something about the simplicity of it that I find aesthetically attractive.  There is almost an elegance and ease to running.  There are no rules to follow, and the form seems to come naturally.  Unlike most athletic events, the runner is unencumbered with gear.  All that is required is to get up and propel oneself forward.  I have learned to keep the intense desert sun off my bare skin.  My sleeveless, bare-skinned days are long over.  On sunny days I will run with plaid cowboy shirt with long sleeves to cover my arms.  If it is not too windy, I will jog with my wide brimmed cowboy hat to keep the sun off my face.  I am the only person I know who regularly jogs with a cowboy hat and shirt on.  You can’t say I am not fashion forward!

I recently started wearing my stopwatch again after years of going without.  I found that I suffered as a result of going without – I was running much slower than I imagined I was.  As I get older my comfortable pace gets slower and slower, and without my stopwatch I never realized just how slow I was going.  I have not challenged myself in a long time.  I entered a half marathon at a friend’s request two years ago, but I loped along at such a slow pace I never even noticed I had jogged over 13 miles.  Besides that event, I have not been in a competitive race since 2005.  I say competitive, when the truth is I have no chance of ever winning any race I enter.  I can barely even place in my age group.  For me, if I enter a race, I can only truly compete with people who are going at roughly the same slow pace as me.  At the first 10k race I ever entered, I was 1 kilometer from the finish line and I was simply pushing myself to pass the two people just ahead of me.  Just ahead of me to my left was a kid no older than 12.  Just ahead to my right was a man no younger than 70.  C’mon!  Surely I can go faster than an old man and a little boy!  Nope.  They both passed the finish line just ahead of me.  That is about the extent of my ‘competition’.

Since I started wearing my stopwatch again, my times have improved.  I even started keeping a log again, and I found myself running more to meet my weekly goals.  I still do not find most races intriguing enough to enter, but I will be making a single exception next Sunday.  Throwing all reason aside, I signed up to run in the Bataan Memorial Death March, held annually at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.  It is not officially a race, but a commemorative march to remember and honor the veterans who endured a forced march at the hands of the Japanese during WWII.  I considered joining a team and marching the entire route with a heavy pack on my back.  But I decided instead to run the entire route, which runs mostly on sandy desert trails with very little pavement.  That is my kind of race.  I am a little nervous about the distance.  It is marathon distance, just over 26 miles, and well beyond my comfort zone.  I have entered two marathons in the past, and both ended in terrible knee pain.  What makes me think this will be any different?  Who was it that said repeating an action and expecting a different outcome was the definition of insanity?  I cannot remember, so whoever said that must have been wrong.  Of course he was wrong.  Obviously.

So I have been logging extra miles in preparation for the Death March.  That is why I woke up before dawn this morning, to hump over the Anthony Gap.  The first 4 miles was pretty easy, even though they were all uphill.  Anything less than 10 kilometers is a routine distance for me.  Suddenly the trail disappeared in a tangle of creosote and cactus, and I was forced to run downhill to I-10 on the shoulder of the highway.  Monotonous pavement running, and all downhill!  The pounding on my knees began.  Then I could feel my thighs start to chaff.  What?  My thighs have never chaffed before!  My mind raced to think of what I could wear in the Death March to avoid painful chaffing.  Assuming I could survive this one.

After running just shy of 8 miles, I reached the on-ramp of I-10.  I was half way finished, and now I would have to turn and go back the way I came.  I stopped and gave my legs a good stretch.  They still felt fine, even though I knew they would be stiff as rods by the time I reached my parked truck.   I placed the bottle of water in my belt holster after taking a sip, and bit into a generous chunk of peanut brittle.  I looked at the road ahead of me.  A few miles uphill before disappearing over the mountain pass.  My hands were warm but slightly swollen, as they tended to get during a long run.  The sun was well above the horizon, which brought warm weather along with a seasonal stiff wind.  I would be running into the wind for the remaining 8 miles until I reached my truck.  The chaffing on my thighs was beginning to burn.  Great.  I blew my nose, muttered to myself, “Have you lost your mind?” and headed uphill on the smooth shoulder of the highway.

Parting Shot

A little late now that election season is over, but I saw this yesterday while driving south of Las Cruces, New Mexico.  For some reason, I find it pretty amusing.  A good parting shot for the Republican candidate:

You can click on the picture to make it bigger.  Anyway I am hoping to finally, at long last, finish my Conversions and De-conversions series before the end of November.  I have several more chapters in the story to go before it is complete, but I can't believe I have let it drag on for nearly a year now.  Plenty more to come soon!

Conversions and De-Conversions - The Circle of the Earth

The last several entries in my de-conversion story have found themselves stuck between the years 1988-1992. These were the years of my greatest religious Christian fervor. I was on fire for Jesus as a member of Calvary Chapel of Albuquerque, at the time, billed as the fastest growing church in the United States. I find reliving these years to be distasteful, and I admit that I am growing weary of writing about it. It is so easy for me to write bitterly and angrily about my years at Calvary Chapel, and to continue on and on and on, charging the Church with the countless bogus lies they told me in support of their religion. It is easy to do, and I have spent the last couple of weeks writing page after page of anecdotes. It is too easy for me to become angry as I type, and I am trying my best not to let that anger affect my writing. The whole thing is becoming tiresome. The bad apologetics. The doubts I had after reading the Bible. The street preaching I embarrassed myself with over and over again. My singles Bible study group who regularly visited city parks and lured children with boxes of pizza, but not handing it out until they heard our quick sermons. The never-ending sexual frustration and guilt. The constant cycle of sin-repentance-sin-repentance-sin-repentance and sin again. Trying to convince myself that my prayers were being answered when in fact nothing was really happening. More fears of the unpardonable sin. The constant crying and self-loathing. The desire to be a strong Christian and to live my life for the Lord, being overwhelmed with the uncompromising need to believe impossible and ridiculous claims about the nature of reality. Thanking Jesus for the internal and overwhelming peace that I never really had.

Looking back on those years is like remembering hundreds of little, unrelated fragments of memories, and it is hard to tie them together into any theme. This is a story about my conversions and de-conversions. I wrote about what got me into Calvary Chapel and Fundamentalist Christianity. I wrote a bit about what kept me in it. Now I need to write about what finally chased me out of Calvary Chapel. As much as I dislike revisiting those years in this much detail, I must write at least two more articles about those five crucial years. This article will be a summary of all the disjointed notes and anecdotes that I have written thus far. The next article will describe what finally pushed me out of Calvary Chapel forever.

Since Calvary Chapel dogma relied on a Personal Relationship with an invisible and silent deity as the essence of belief, there was no aesthetic appeal to the senses. Instead of Mary, the Saints, statues, icons, incense, rosaries, rituals and creeds, we had The Bible. Calvary Chapel was not interested in aesthetics, rituals, hymns, or any kind of art that would transcend the worshipper into a state of the numinous Holy. It relied instead on a veneer of rationalism; lectures instead of sermons, Bible studies instead of creedal recitations and apologetics instead of faith. Calvary Chapel taught me to worship the Bible. The Bible was a paper idol. Chuck Missler placed so much emphasis on the text of the Bible that he believed, as he put it, “the Bible is an integrated message system. It is not just that the Bible has a unified message. No, it is more than that. This book is supernaturally engineered. Every number, every place name, every detail is there by the design of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus comes, every word, every letter, even the spaces between the letters, will be explained to us. It is our privilege to discover and unravel all its marvelous secrets”. So we would read the Bible with the intent of searching for the hidden clues, puzzles, codes and symbols that were hidden in the text by the Holy Spirit, as validation of its Supernatural origin.

At Calvary Chapel we worshipped the Bible. Of course, they would never put it that way, but I believe that is exactly what it was. The Bible was viewed as the ‘Owner’s Manual’, the only sufficient source of Supernatural knowledge and wisdom that we would ever need in life. Having trouble in your marriage? Malachi 2:14-16 definitely has God’s message for you, but take a look at Matthew 19:3-9 if you are tempted to divorce. Having trouble keeping trust in God? Meditate on Hosea 4:1-11. Wondering why there is so much evil in the world? Remember the Fall in the Garden, Genesis chapter three. The Wisdom of the World is foolishness next to the Wisdom of the Almighty.

Calvary Chapel emphasized the Bible, in its original text, was an inspired and inerrant record of God’s message for humanity, and if we were to understand God, and his desires for us, we had to read and understand the Bible. I had read portions of the Bible before, especially in my childhood, and I had a good idea of what was in it. Since I figured that the only way God was going to speak to me was through his Word, I figured that I had better start reading. I kept my King James Thompson Chain Reference for deep study, but I picked up a NIV Student Bible and read the Bible through in its entirety.

I was not a critical reader. I read it like a novel. I simply started at page 1 and worked my way through to the end. Every day after work, I lay on the couch with my small NIV Student Bible, and read for several hours at a stretch. Pastor Skip told me that the Bible was consistent in all its teachings. Whether we read from the Old Testament or the New, from Numbers, Chronicles, Psalms, Galatians or the Gospel of John, the Bible’s message about sin, salvation, human suffering, Heaven and Hell were all consistent and uniform. The Bible contained perfect uniformity in teaching, albeit in different dispensations. Chuck Missler told me that the Old Testament was a pre-figuring of the New, and that Jesus Christ could be found on every page of the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus fulfilled hundreds of direct prophecies and thousands of indirect pre-figurings and allusions to the expected Messiah. So as I read, I paid close attention to find Jesus in every detail of the construction of the Tabernacle, the Psalms of worship, and the lives of the Patriarchs.

I was taught that there were absolutely no contradictions in Scripture. If some non-believer were to claim to me that there were contradictions in the Bible, all I would have to do would be to whip out my pocket Bible and ask them to point some out. Since there were no contradictions, they would usually walk away in shame. Admittedly there were, to the discerning reader, apparent contradictions, but Christian scholars had always figured out the correct way of interpreting these puzzles so that the seeming contradictions disappeared. For instance, the different genealogies of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, gave the father (as was supposed) of Jesus as Joseph. But The Gospel of Matthew says that Joseph’s father was Jacob, while the Gospel of Luke says it was some guy named Heli. But I knew that the Bible was without error and with no contradictions, because this was what my Church told me was true. So I read inconsistencies like this through that filter. The Gospel of Luke said that Joseph’s father was Heli, but what it really meant to say was that Mary’s father was Heli. Luke the Evangelist wanted to use the name Mary, so I was told by Pastor Skip, but the culture at the time did not allow for female names in genealogies. Never mind that no other ancient genealogies were cited as evidence that women were systematically ignored, never mind that the genealogy in the Gospel of Matthew contained several women in direct contradiction to the proposed harmonization, an explanation was given to smooth over the inconsistency, and any explanation, no matter how contrived, was good enough for me. I knew that Pastor Skip, Chuck Missler and Chuck Smith were men to be trusted. The only reliable interpreter of Scripture, the Holy Spirit, was indwelt within them. I could trust what they said.

To bolster my faith, I bought a two volume set of books written by Josh McDowell called Evidence that Demands a Verdict. The first volume was stuffed to the brim with evidences for the Christian Faith. I had never heard of any of these evidences, or even of the desire to provide evidence, before I attended Calvary Chapel, and the whole apologetic edifice excited and challenged me. I did not have to rely just in emotional preaching to convince my friends that Jesus was the only Way, I had real sound evidence that I could present. Apologetics also made me feel secure that there were real reasons for believing that Jesus was the only way to Salvation, and that I was not relying on mere blind faith. Apologetics also demonstrated that I did have the unquestionable Truth, and if my friends rejected it after being presented with evidences for the Faith, then I could confidently assert that they rejected Christianity, not because there was no evidence, but because their own sinful and rebellious natures would not allow them to accept the Truth. As Pastor Skip often said, it was not a matter of the mind, but of the will. God ultimately gave us the destiny that we chose, be it Damnation or Salvation.

For many apostates and former Christians, it was the discovery of contradictions in the Bible that lead them to doubt their Christian Faith. I knew of them, and I was aware of them, but for some reason they did not shake my Faith at this time. I always figured that God’s ways were just unknowable and too complex for us puny humans to figure out. I figured it was like the intellect of an ant trying to comprehend the vastly more complex mind of a human. I would expect there to be many things in divinely inspired, God-Breathed scriptures that I would find confusing or even contradictory. If I found something mystifying or contradictory, it just meant it was another mystery of wisdom for me to try and discover. So I would dig deeper into the problem to learn the deeper truths of God. I did not know it at the time, but all this was just an unwitting way of looking for any excuse to justify the problem away. God regulates slavery? Slavery really meant ‘a hired hand’. They were treated justly and fairly. God commanded genocide? But the nations whom the Hebrews slaughtered were pagans, heathens and God haters! They sacrificed their children on the glowing hot arms of Moloch! The Bible describes Earth as a round circle? Just declare from the pulpit that the word ‘Circle’ really means ‘Sphere’, and presto-chango, the Bible agrees with modern science.

I read the Bible a second time, this time in the New King James translation. The four Gospels, I was told, were either written by, or based on the reliable witness of the Apostles. Great emphasis was laid on the historical nature of the Gospels, and the witness of the Apostles was frequently called ‘Eyewitness Testimony’, as if they were reporting on the six-oclock news. The Apostles Matthew and John, who were there with Jesus when he walked the earth, wrote the Gospels that bore their names. Luke admitted that he investigated and interviewed everybody he could find to get a reliable account of what happened. I could picture him interviewing Mary the mother of Jesus, so that he could write his beautiful account of the Nativity. Mark was a young disciple of Peter, and he wrote down the account of Jesus as given to him by Peter the Apostle. I had no trouble believing any of this, and I learned seemingly endless apologetic arguments to defend the testimony of the eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life. The Gospels were defended as history because of it. But I also noticed that historicity was also claimed of most of the rest of the Bible. Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. Everybody knew that. But he was not around to witness events that he wrote about, like the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah’s Flood or the Tower of Babel. How could Moses possibly know about these events, some of which occurred thousands of years before he was alive? Moses wrote, just as David wrote his Psalms, Solomon wrote his proverbs, by Divine inspiration. No apologetic arguments were given for Divine inspiration, yet Old Testament was to be taken as just as reliable as the Gospels. If Divine Inspiration was enough for us to believe claims in the Old Testament, why did we need these constant apologetics to believe the new? Wasn’t Divine Inspiration good enough any more?

This was one of my first clues that apologetic arguments for the Christian Faith were meaningless. There were many things I was required to believe that there was no way to verify with apologetic arguments: the existence of Heaven, Hell, Demons and Guardian Angles. At some point I realized that arguing over and defending many of these theological positions was just a matter of semantics and defining terms. I had read enough Fantasy literature in my youth to understand that the ancient pagans had countless gods and goddesses. Pastor Skip used to laugh at Hinduism with their “billions” of gods, which anybody with any sense knew was ridiculous. Christianity was a religion with only One God, One Deity, albeit in three Persons. I was not yet taught how to think critically, so I could not precisely formulate a proper reason why Christianity’s claim to monotheism seemed so dubious. But I do remember thinking that somewhere proper and consistent definitions for these terms needed to be made in order to defend these positions . For instance, if Christianity had One God, but Greek religion was ridiculed for their pantheon of hundreds of gods, and Hinduism their billions, what exactly was meant by ‘god’? Didn’t Christianity have its own pantheon of demons, devils, arch-angels, seraphim, teraphim and nephelim? The deities in pagan religions were not necessarily all-powerful, they all lived in a spiritual nether world, they sometimes visited the world of mortals to interfere with the affairs of humans. These beings were all called gods. Yet the Christian pantheon of angels and demons shared all these same traits, and they were – not gods?

This kind of inconsistency bothered me, but I began to see more inconsistencies wherever I looked . Much was made of the Trinity being composed of three Divine Persons. These three Persons were each God and the three made up the Triune God. It must be that way because we know that there is only one God. That is a contradiction, and to get around this I noticed that the formula is rephrased, but only slightly. The three Divine Persons make up, not a Triune God, but a Triune Godhead. I guess that sounds better. But nobody could define God or Godhead or Person as terms distinct from one another. Again, I understood and expected that I would never be able to discern the mysteries of the Almighty. But that was not my problem. My problem was that these did not seem like mysteries as much as they seemed like mere wordplay. Words were left undefined, and their definitions changed and shifted depending on how they were needed. Hades, Loki and Bacchus? They were gods. Lucifer and Michael? Not gods. And on that mere assertion, monotheism was defended. It grew increasingly obvious to me, that many of these theological defenses were just arguments over semantics. We were making up words, making up definitions for these words, then defending those as dogma.

There were plenty of apologetic arguments that I did find convincing though, and these helped convince me that I dare not stray from the True Faith. For instance, I found C.S. Lewis’ famous Lord, Liar and Lunatic argument to be very powerful, and Pastor Skip also made great use of it. It was originally aimed at liberal Christians, or as I would have said at the time, liberals who merely called themselves Christians, who denied the supernatural aspects of Jesus’ life and ministry. Do not patronize Jesus by saying that he is a wise man, a great leader, or a revolutionary social reformer. Jesus claimed that he was God. Jesus claimed that he was the Way. The Truth. The Life. Jesus said that He and the Father were one. No man claims these things for himself without being called a madman, or just a blatant liar. So call him mad. Call him a liar. Call him a poached egg if you must, but do not call him a mere teacher. He is either any of these things, or he is Lord. Pastor Skip would often add that we are left to face with and deal with his claims.

There was no getting out of the logic behind this argument. This made too much sense. How my friends and family could hear this argument, either as presented by myself, or from Pastor Skip him self on audio cassette, and ignore it or laugh it off simply astounded me! These people, good people in all other respects, people who I knew to be otherwise perfectly rational and reasonable, were so blinded by their sin and pride, so deceived by Satan, that they dared look at Jesus and purposefully reject all that he did for lost humanity. Such unbelievable temerity! The nerve and audacity that pride instilled into the lost human race! I thanked Jesus every day that he allowed me to see his truth, and that he gave me the discernment to recognize and reject the temptations of this lustful world.

I was concerned about Pastor Skip’s constant harangues against the Theory of Evolution. As I have already written about, I was taught the Theory of Evolution as a youngster, and it has always made sense to me. I could see it in action during my frequent hikes in the desert. None of these Calvary Chapel pastors seemed to understand what the Theory of Evolution really was, and they were constantly misrepresenting it. I understood why they did it, because a literal reading of Genesis directly contradicted Darwin’s theory, but I just figured that was a problem with how we understood Scripture, not a matter of denying science. Calvary Chapel taught me otherwise. Pastor Skip told us that there was no scientific evidence to support the Theory of Evolution, but even if there were, it would be outweighed by the evidence of Scripture. The fact that Genesis declared that God made man in His own image out of the dust of the earth, by default, debunked the Theory of Evolution. Evolution taught that mankind descended from apes and monkeys, and ultimately from primordial ooze. The Theory of Evolution taught that the complexity of mankind formed by itself from a chemical soup, which was less likely to occur than a 747 forming itself from a tornado rolling through a junkyard. Hitler and Stalin, I was told, were confirmed and committed Darwinists, who killed millions in order to fulfill Darwinism’s ultimate conclusion, the Survival of the Fittest.

These misconceptions about the theory of Evolution were just as prevalent in 1990 as they are today. Pastor Skip and his fellow Evangelical pastors were relentless in their bogus misrepresentations of the theory. I had learned about the Theory of Evolution via natural selection at a very young age, through books, television programs, and just my own observations of nature during my frequent desert hikes. I understood that it had nothing to do with me descending from a monkey. I understood that likening Evolution to a tornado in a junkyard was a terrible analogy, despite that analogy being extremely popular. Maybe Pastor Skip was just mistaken. Maybe neither he nor my Calvary Chapel friends understood what the Theory really was. Maybe they were misrepresenting out of their own ignorance. Surely they would not purposely misrepresent. No, they would never willfully lie to us. They were filled with the Holy Spirit after all. But I dared not tell or attempt to educate anybody what the Theory of Evolution really was. It was heresy, and I believed it. My secret heresy, all through my Calvary Chapel years, was that I secretly believed the Theory of Evolution to be true, based on the evidence that I had seen and read about. My burden was trying desperately to reconcile Evolution with the Book of Genesis, which I also believed to be unquestionably true. I never told anybody about my secret heresy.

Calvary Chapel prided itself on being non-denominational, that is, it did not rely on formal creeds and traditions like Lutherans, Methodists or Presbyterians. We occasionally had guest pastors speak from various other Calvary Chapel churches from across the country. I noticed long ago, that for a non-denominational church, which did not rely on creeds or formulas, all the guest pastors were surprisingly similar. They were all young, all handsome and charismatic men, all about the same age, and all spoke exactly the same way and about the same things as Pastor Skip. As I wrote about in previous articles in my story, I have always been good at picking up on patterns and regularities in my surroundings. I could tell, even as a fervent believer, that all these Calvary Chapel pastors were in lockstep with each other. It was as if there was no independent thought among them. They all spoke as a collective. Calvary Chapel, the church started by Chuck Smith in Calvary Chapel, the church that spread across the country during the hippie Jesus Movement in the early 1970s, was by 1990 a brand name. Calvary Chapel is a denomination.

Calvary Chapel, after about 5 years of attendance, was becoming too crowded for me. It was growing at an alarming rate. I already felt old attending the singles services, which were filled with beautiful young women in their late teens. I got uncomfortable and left the singles group when it also began to fill up with balding, middle-aged men. I was no mind reader, but I knew why those older men were there. This in turn made me, a 25 year old, question what I was doing there! Calvary Chapel was bursting at the seams. It was becoming a mega-church, before I had ever heard the term. I began to itch for a smaller congregation.

I wanted to attend Sunday Evening service at a small Assembly of God church near my apartment. I asked several friends of mine if they would go with me, just to visit and check the place out. They all refused. They all told me that it was probably not a very good idea to go shopping for another church congregation because there were so many heretical churches out there. Presbyterians and Methodists were too carnal and worldly. Catholics were no better than pagans and were certainly not Christians. My friends told me that they would feel better just sticking with Calvary Chapel. Their closed minds and lack of curiosity dumbfounded me. I just wanted to visit another Christian church for a single evening, and nobody was willing to leave the safety of Calvary Chapel with me. I discovered that my friends had a very cultist mentality. But they were still my friends, and I could not help but let their opinions influence me. So I stayed at Calvary Chapel.

Small home groups, Bible studies and prayer meetings were very important to Calvary Chapel, and Pastor Skip encouraged everybody to join one. My group of about 20 young people met weekly. We prayed for our lost and deceived friends and family who had not received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. We took turns reading Bible verses and discussing them. “What does this verse mean to you?” Free ideas and opinions were ostensibly allowed, but in reality, no deviations from received Calvary Chapel dogma were tolerated. Once somebody suggested that we could loose our Salvation if we backslid far enough, and committed the unpardonable sin. The Unpardonable Sin, the Blasphemy of the Holy Ghost that terrorized me as a child was redefined in Calvary Chapel as simply not receiving Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Although this interpretation of the Blasphemy of the Holy Ghost never made any sense to me, I accepted it, because I knew that meant I never had to worry again about committing it. But one person in our small group questioned that idea. We quickly objected and laughed him off. No deviations from received Calvary Chapel dogma was permitted. Our interpretations of the Bible and Christian Dogma were becoming just as lockstep and uniform as they were with the numerous Calvary Chapel pastors.

I believed that God performed miracles. I believed the Bible when it said that we could perform miracles with just the faith of a mustard seed. I also believed that angels existed, and that they occasionally walked among humans unawares. I always imagined that one of the homeless men that I often witnessed to was actually an angel, present on Earth to test our hospitality and perhaps even protect us from harm. We were told that these creatures existed, both from the Bible and from the pulpit. I had witnessed plenty of healing miracles when visiting traveling tent revival meetings when I was a boy. But I could not honestly say that I saw a true miracle while I was an adult. True, we prayed to God constantly, and expected answers to our prayers. I prayed mostly for the salvation of my friends and family and for the strength and guidance of the Holy Ghost before witnessing to friends. I knew some people in church had real problems with their health, sometimes even cancer, and we often prayed to the Great Physician for them to receive a full recovery. I prayed for divine intervention whenever I occasionally had a terrible head cold. There was another man who attended our small group meetings who suffered from ALS. He was wheelchair bound, needed constant supervision, and always struggled mightily just to speak a simple sentence. I did not notice it at the time, but nobody ever thought to pray for him. Nobody asked the Great Physician to heal the poor sufferer of ALS and petition the Lord for his miraculous recovery.

I doubt I ever truly believed in the miraculous power of prayer, but then again, I am not sure anybody else I knew did either. When we had trouble believing some fabulous tale from the Bible, like the talking ass of Balaam or the floating ax-head of Elisha, Pastor Skip would always remind us that God could do absolutely anything. “That is God you are talking about! GOD!” And of course, I most definitely believed that Jesus Christ had died for my sins. I figured that it took great Faith to perform any miracle, and the further removed one was from Jesus, the less likely that Jesus would honor a request that would require miraculous power. After all, Jesus himself who had infinite Faith could do practically anything he wished. The Apostles, once removed from him, could also perform mighty deeds, like healing via anointed handkerchiefs, their shadows, or even raising the dead. But our modern believers were so far removed from Jesus that empowering Faith was a constant struggle, so miracles were extremely rare. I also figured that most of God’s miraculous power came in the form of changed lives. I was Exhibit A. God had saved me from a life of Sin, misery and hopelessness, to one of purpose, meaning and overflowing joy. Or so I was told.

One evening, in a small prayer meeting that was held after the main service, Pastor Skip lead a group of about 50 of us in prayer. He then asked for testimonies of Faith. He wanted to hear some of the good news of answered prayer that God had blessed us with. A smattering of hands went up. One lady had painful back spasms vanish. Thank you Jesus! One man’s mother had cancer that had suddenly gone into remission. Praise the Lord! One man, whom I will call Mac, told us that he was a veteran of the recent Gulf War. A buddy of Mac’s had his hand blown off by some kind of explosive device. Mac told the Calvary Chapel congregation how he had prayed for his buddy’s hand, out there in the deserts of Iraq, and he saw the hand grow back, right there before his own two eyes! It was a true miracle, an instant regeneration of a severed limb! Mac was emphatic and excited, and he wanted to tell us about some more miracles he had witnessed….

…Pastor Skip interrupted and smiled, “OK, well we are running out of time for the evening…” and immediately stopped taking testimonies from the congregation. There were plenty of hands still up, willing to tell of God’s power in their lives, but after listening to a breathless story about a regenerated limb, Pastor Skip decided to end. I never heard any of my friends speak of that evening, but I never forgot it. I confess, I did not believe Mac’s story, and it was immediately obvious to me that Pastor Skip did not believe him either, and decided to end the proceedings before the testimonies turned into a mockery. That was one of my first realizations that neither I, the congregation, nor Pastor Skip really believed in miracles. I could discern it from my reaction and from Pastor Skip’s. Why was it that we could only believe in the most mundane of miracles, and could not believe in genuine miracles that required a true leap of logic?

Those tiny hairbreadths of doubt were piling on each other. At the time, I did not even consider them doubts. I was just becoming dissatisfied with Calvary Chapel. I longed to serve Jesus, to serve my fellow human. I wanted to be a mighty servant for Jesus, and while I found apologetic arguments fascinating, they also left me cold. I did not want to enroll in Calvary Chapel’s new school of ministry, just learn yet more ways the Tabernacle pre-figured Jesus. I wanted to serve. I wanted the meat of the Word, and I figured if I wanted the Meat, I would have to hit the Street.

The perfect opportunity came in August of 1992. God, in His providence, sent a Category 5 Hurricane to southern Florida. In the wake of that disaster, He had provided my opportunity to serve. I felt that my prayers were finally answered and that my calling had finally come.

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Conversions and De-conversions – Mom

One thing I notice in many stories of leaving religious Faith is the pain of telling family members of newfound faithlessness. The United States has no state religion, so religious traditions are passed down solely through family ties. Even the most religiously apathetic are raised in some kind of religious tradition cemented through deep roots in the family. Leaving Faith often means painful breaking with unquestioned family traditions. Fortunately, I never had this problem. I had no deep family traditions to concern myself with. My mother’s parents were the most religious of my family, but they did not successfully pass that tradition down through their children. My grandfather, Papa as everybody called him, died well before I left the Faith. I callously insulted my grandmother’s Faith soon after Papa’s death. I had not yet learned that when religious tradition is insulted, the person who holds the tradition is also insulted. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Mama is the sole torchbearer of any religious tradition in my family. She is still alive and well at 95, and still lives with the rest of my mother’s family in north-central New Mexico. I never felt the burden to tell her that I left the Christian Faith, and although there are other religious people in my family, they do not carry the tradition that Mama failed to pass down. I have some family members who are Protestant Evangelicals. Mama and Papa were strict Catholics.

Mama was born in Cabezon, New Mexico in 1916. Cabezon is a ghost town now, although I have visited the collapsing mud-brick homes of that town many times. It was abandoned around 1940 when the Rio Puerco, the sole source of the town’s water, dried up. Coincidentally, this was when the War was beginning to consume the planet, and work was to be found in Los Angeles. So Mama and Papa moved to Los Angeles and Papa found work by joining the Navy. The strict, Catholic, isolated, Wild West town in New Mexico was abandoned for a new life in the city.

‘Wild West’ is not hyperbole when describing Cabezon. To this day, there is a single, 20-mile long dirt road connecting the abandoned town of Cabezon to the nearest paved highway, then from there another 30 miles or so to the nearest small town. Mama never spoke much about what life was like living there when she was young, only that it was nothing but pleasure. I think that kind of talk is all romantic nostalgia. I do know that farming in the deserts of New Mexico at any distance from the Rio Grande is immensely difficult, and water is the precious gold of the rural highlands. I do know that the tiny Rio Puerco created a heavily eroded arroyo just outside of town, and navigating down to the water involves a treacherous hike down soft silt and packed desert dirt. Water had to be hauled up daily from the muddy river, first for cooking and drinking, then for farming and the animals, then, if there was any left, for washing.

Back around 1995, some volunteers refurbished the long abandoned Catholic Church in Cabezon. The graveyard in the back was cleared of brush and tumbleweeds, the old Stations of the Cross were fixed, the pews repainted, the old adobe bricks replastered, and Mass was held there for the first time in about 40 years. I was there during that celebration, and some of the older people from the area, people who remembered living there decades before, came to attend the Mass. I was certain I was related, in some distant and remote way, to most everybody there. Everybody, good Catholics that they were, knew the routine once the Mass started. I could only follow along by watching what everybody else was doing. Mama and Papa did not pass their religious traditions down to their grandchildren, and my cousins and I did not understand the religious celebrations and rituals there that had tied the entire community together. We were just thinking of the enchiladas, beans and red chile that waited to be eaten after Mass was finished.

The community planned to hold Mass in the old Cabezon church four times per year for all the old-timers. Unfortunately this plan did not last long. People who had once lived in Cabezon got older and died, and the younger generations did not remember the old ghost town of their grandparents. Today, the entire town is again melting into piles of mud where adobe bricks once stood, desert scrub again clogs the town cemetery, and the dirt road into town is gated and locked. The recently refurbished Catholic church is the only building in town not in danger of completely eroding again into the surrounding red earth.

I have often wondered why Mama and Papa were not able to pass down their Catholic traditions to their three children. I have never seen my mother, my aunt or my uncle all together in a Catholic church except at Papa’s funeral – and none of them participated in the Mass. Most families that I have witnessed, both here in the Catholic Southwest and in Philippines pass their religious traditions down through their children with seemingly no effort. Why was my family so different? This is one mystery that my mother has never given the complete explanation for, but I suspect, and it is only a suspicion, that it was the culture shock after moving from Cabezon to Los Angeles in 1942. My uncle and aunt, their two oldest children, were born in Cabezon and were raised speaking Spanish. My mom was born in Los Angeles and the Spanish language was dropped after the children entered public school there. During the wartime culture in Los Angeles, American citizenry was the top priority. The Spanish language was dropped when English became the only permissible language. I suspect that the Catholic Faith, while not dropped, was just no longer emphasized.

My mother once told me that she never accepted the Catholic Faith. She just never believed it because it never made sense to her. I think there is something more to this story, just because neither her older sister nor brother ever became devout Catholics, and that coincidence just makes me somewhat suspicious. I will have to ask her about this when I see her next week over Christmas. The three children, my mom and her older brother and sister, were baptized, went through confirmation, occasionally attended confession, and performed all the other expected Catholic rituals. But for some reason her oldest brother, the only one of the siblings to enroll in college, rejected the Catholic faith. Because of the pressure from her parents, mom remained a Catholic in name only. I was baptized as a baby in order for mom to keep peace with Mama and Papa, but that was the last of my sacraments. I never attended catechism, received first communion, or went through confirmation. I had no idea what a Catholic really was until decades later.

My young non-believing mother was still influenced by strict Catholic culture in one small but significant way. Mom married her tall, handsome, and non-Catholic high school sweetheart. Somehow, these two young, mismatched and immature people wed in a non-Catholic ceremony. I was born in Los Angeles, California in 1964. Dad was 19 years old when I was born, and was woefully unprepared for the responsibilities of fatherhood. Mom had certainly forsaken her parents’ religious tradition, but I don’t think dad ever had a tradition to forsake. The first few years of my life were completely and totally devoid of God, Jesus, tradition, ritual or religious character of any kind.

Edit 09 April 2012:
My mom read this article, and as I suspected I got a few details in this story wrong. A few factual errors have been fixed.

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It's like Chinese Astrology

We have all heard the stories. We have all told the jokes. We have all written him off as a nutjob. You may have seen the full-page ad in USA Today and other newspapers. Some atheist groups are even planning on partying this weekend to usher in the Eschaton – the end of the world, or, as Harold Camping puts it, not just the clearing of life off the surface of the Earth, but the demolition of the entire planet, inside and out.

I am not partying this weekend. I have too many chores waiting around the house, and my wife RoseMary, who was raised in a conservative Catholic home, does not understand Apocalypic Fever. I think that I do understand the Apocalypic mindset. As a young boy in the early seventies, I was taught to expect the Rapture, the great Catching Away, where we would meet Jesus in the clouds, literally at Any Moment. We were poor, uneducated, and in the grip of a cult-like religious environment in the rural Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. It was a time when wandering Jesus Freaks and Holy Vagabonds would mysteriously wander into town, live in our houses for several days or even weeks, preach the love of Jesus and the soon-coming Rapture, only to just as mysteriously vanish from town, never to be seen again. At the time, Hal Lindsey’s best seller, Late Great Planet Earth was flying off the bookstore shelves. I do not remember seeing anybody in my community actually reading that book, but the book along with the growing Jesus Movement certainly influenced our Apocalyptic culture. It was like bellbottom jeans, embroidered vests, long hair and Mister Tambourine Man – just a product of the times. And while I never read Hal Lindsey, at least not until many years later, I do remember reading religious comic books (with characters and art blatantly stolen from Archie and Jughead comics) which described the Rapture, the Great Tribulation and the Judgment of the vengeful Jesus riding on a white horse. (How I wish I still owned those comic books – what surreal memories that would bring) I remember being kept out of school on at least a few occasions, gathering with fellow believers for a few days of fervent prayer, speaking in tongues, and casting out of demons, all in the expectation of being snatched away into the clouds. During one of our frequent baptism sessions in the barnyard watering tank, I vividly remember a young neighbor girl pointing to a cloud in the sky that she said looked like Jesus with outstretched arms and holes where the hands should be. She stared, pointed, screamed and passed out cold. Others, some soaking wet from a recent baptism, looked at the sky, trying to see what young K---- had seen, and began wildly praying in tongues. Eventually, I am sure, K---- was revived, everybody toweled off, and we went on home, not thinking about what had just (not) happened.

This was years before waiting for Jesus in my teenage years in a private Baptist High School, years before 88 reasons to wait for Jesus in 1988, and many years before Skip Heitzig and Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel told me the Rapture could occur at any mement.

I think I understand the mindset of the Apocalypic Culture. I have lived it.

So I did not plan on commenting on Harold Camping of Family Radio. Our churches paid little attention to him in the early 1990s – and I know that few actually believe or follow Camping now. The only thing that gives these stories such heat is what we did not have in 1992 – multiple 24 Cable News channel and widespread use of the Internet. Now even the smallest blip on the radar can become an international phenomenon. It is not unlikely that if the Internet had existed in 1970, our insignificant little religious cult in Northern New Mexico would have wound up being trashed and ridiculed on some Atheist Blog.

Then last night, I did the unthinkable. I typed “Harold Camping” into the YouTube search engine. I tried to resist. I knew better. I tried to divert my attention. But blast my fingers – I could not keep them from typing on the keypad!

Up popped the most fascinating channel. There is some insider from Family Radio posting daily warning videos. They are high quality, professionally edited, interviews and behind the scenes peeks into Harold Camping’s thoughts, his motivations, his radio program, and most chillingly, his followers. The first upload was the two-week warning, and a video had been posted every day since. Last night, the two-day warning was posted.

Check out this channel – the videos there are absolutely spellbinding: I suggest watching them soon, while they are still up. If the Rapture does not take place on May 21, I predict they will not be there after May 22.

I only watched one video and planned to stop there, but I started with Day-14 and worked my way forward. As I did, the memories, the emotions, the recognition of the old mind-set just flooded back. I have talked about this with Christians at work, not because I have brought it up – they bring it up, and all acknowledge that Camping is a “False Teacher”. But then, as I watched the YouTube videos, I recognized that, while Camping is crazy enough to actually give the date of the Rapture, May 21 6PM EST, and that there is “no possibility of this event not happening”, the Christians that I am familiar with, those Evangelicals from the tradition of Sola Scriptura, Calvary Chapel, etc, do the same sort of thing that Camping does. As Camping speaks in these videos, I recognized the same buzzwords, the same clichés coming from his mouth as I heard constantly from behind the pulpit and continue to hear from radio Evangelists.

In good, mainstream, Evangelical tradition, Camping says:
“I have no authority; the Bible is the authority."
“A very high esteem for the authority of the Bible”
“What is your authority? Is your authority man-centered, or God-centered?”
“This teaching comes straight from the pages of the Bible.”
“We follow the Bible, we do not follow Man”.
"I will never maintain that my analysis is a better one than the analysis of God"
"It is never what I want, it is what God wants. We follow the Will of God"

Camping uses the same language, and apparently the same techniques as every other Bible-based Evangelical church. He came up with a different interpretation, that I do not consider unusually screwy or nuts, when taken in the context of every other Evangelical exegete out there. It is just a mystical interpretation, like the particular interpretation of every other Church who feels free to gauge the Bible. He is doing nothing different from Skip Heitzig or any other Calvary Chapel pastor who feels free to interpret the Bible for his willing flock.

Some of these videos break my heart, as in this one where a lady calls into Harold Camping’s radio program “Open Forum”:



(Seems this video channel blocked permission to embed these videos in a blog. The video is HERE)

Camping: Welcome to Open Forum.

Woman: Hi Mr Camping, I live on the east coast. A few weeks ago the station - local station – it was down for a few days and I was beside myself because I couldn’t get Family Radio and I don’t have a computer. I just want to thank you for getting the station back online. I’m a grandmother. I have two beautiful grandchildren and I have one on the way. And I’m not going to get to meet…*sobbing*… it’s really a shame **sobbing** but **heavy breath** I know I’m not alone.

Camping: Well you know the fact is that the only one who can give you comfort is not me, not any human being. But God is a god of comfort and remember he knows everything about your situation better than you know it. Way better. And you can cry to him and plead with him and beg him and let him know all about it…

This stuff disgusts me. It makes me sad and angry. How I wish that these people were given real hope in life. Instead of celebrating life with her grandchildren, she is reduced to mourning their loss. People deserve better than this – this is a life that is completely wasted. And it makes me angry at those who teach people that they cannot be happy, complete or worthy without help from an invisible, magical man named Jesus. People are taught that it is a virtue to be weak and dependant, as this woman obviously is, and I believe that people deserve better than that. But if we teach a better way of life without Jesus, we are obviously tools of Satan. I remember Calvary Chapel regularly lambasted secular motivational speakers like Tony Robbins, because they teach that you can be happy, strong and independent, but they never mention the Gospel!!

Next, here is the video that really got my blood boiling. Camping explains, in part, one of the calculations he uses as a proof of the May 21 date:



The video is HERE

I resonate with this one the most, because it is the type of mystical Gamatria that many in the modern Evangelical church have fallen for, a trick that the likes of Chuck Missler have made careers out of, and one which I once fell for – hook, line and sinker. I hope to write more about this in the future, but I will briefly explain why this type of Bible interpretation gets me so upset.

Camping (and many, many, many others) teach that the Bible is a code-book, full of riddles and puzzles, to be deciphered by the aid of the Holy Spirit. RoseMary loves movies like National Treasure and Da Vinci Code, because of the peculiar puzzles that adventurous detectives must solve just in order to get to the next puzzle to solve. After a long chain of puzzles, riddles and codes, a treasure is hopefully to be found. Biblical numerology approaches the Bible in the same way, in which, as Camping says, “words are numbers” and each number has a mystical meaning.

In this case, it is claimed, from 1 April 33AD, the day when Jesus was crucified, to 21 May 2011 is exactly 722,500 days. These large numbers can be broken down into smaller factors. 722,500 = (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17). These numbers mean very specific things in the context of Scripture. For instance, 5 signifies the atonement, 10 is completeness, 17 is heaven. So we then have (atonement x completion x heaven). But this is squared - (atonement x completion x heaven) x (atonement x completion x heaven), and we know from Genesis 41 that when something is declared twice, God formally ordains that thing to be so, … well… there you have it. What more proof could you want?

I asked my ever-suffering wife RoseMary to watch that particular video, and because of her conservative Catholic upbringing, did not understand all the Bible interpretation via numerical manipulation. But she commented that it all reminded her of Chinese Astrology – a gem of a comparison that I want to remember!

Of course it is nuts. But how many of us have fallen for the same trick? Yes I know you have heard it. The number 3 is the number of God, since 3 signifies the Trinity and the number of days between the Crucifixion and Resurrection. So every time you read ‘three’ in scripture, you must see what significance it has towards the Triune Essence of the Godhead or how it points to Christ’s Resurrection. Herbert Lockyer’s mind-numbing book All the Messianic Prophecies of the Bible is stuffed to the brim with mystical interpretations where the number three occurs in the Old Testament.

But it goes further. Not only the numbers four, five, six, seven, eight, … etc all have mystical interpretations, but colors, metals, animals, etc, every mention of which can be given some kind of mystical allusion to Jesus, or the Disciples, or Sin or the Eschaton, or anything else the Biblical interpreter may wish. How many of you have heard that Yeast or Leaven always refers to Sin or Pride? So when we read of the Passover Seder in Exodus and of how all Leaven is to removed from the dwelling, we are to interpret that as the removal of Sin before the sacrifice. But what is the difference between that and telling me that forty means testing, meat means truth, iron means military strength, birds mean evil, thorns mean temptation, brass means judgment, eight means new beginnings, silver means blood, seven is completeness, the Sea means the Gentiles, etc, etc, ad infinitum? Seriously - what is the difference?

And once you start down that path of interpretation via numerical and mystical manipulation, the Bible can be made to say absolutely anything. There are no limits because there are no rules. I am ashamed to admit that I was once completely under the spell of this trap – a world of codes and puzzles, where the Bible is an infinite well of mystical truth, and every word, every number, every phrase has multiple levels of meaning that can be divined. And it burns me up, because I know I was not the only one trapped in this way of thinking. I remember when Chuck Missler would guest speak at Calvary Chapel in Albuquerque. He would talk codes and puzzles and numbers and mystical meanings for hours, and his captivated audience would remain seated after the marathon sermon for a question/answer session!! Unbelievable.

I guess I have commented enough on this. Nothing terribly witty or profound or unique here – just my own take on these crazy events in the religious world. Time to stop procrastinating – I am now off to work on building that closet. Until next time, Dear Reader….