Randy Newman – God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)

A while back I posted some happy memories about going to church in the early ’70s. But there’s a reason why I left and will never go back. I didn’t reach that decision lightly.

Being an active, church-going Baptist teen in a small town was by turns wonderful, annoying, and confusing. And for me at least, traumatizing.

I doodled in the church bulletin, but I listened. I thought parts of the Bible must be metaphors, but figured the preachers had it mostly right. I felt ashamed. Everyone seemed so certain, but I never could. What was wrong with me?

At times I was sure I must have committed the “unforgivable sin,” which was never defined, or I was predestined not to be one of “the elect.” Because something was obviously wrong. They were all so certain. Why couldn’t I be?

And I was afraid. Of hell, the Apocalypse, of predestination. Baptists might be “once saved, always saved,” but how could you know for sure that when you “accepted Jesus into your heart” that feeling you had was really the Holy Spirit?

The preacher seemed to be talking about me every time he preached about hell. Sometimes I couldn’t take it and I’d “get saved” again. “This time for real, Lord. This time I really mean it.”

I lost count at four. I’d say the words I knew to say and in a few days I’d get baptized. (Protip: Always check your pockets first.)

One year I got scare-saved at church camp – then got so horny for a girl on the way home I threw away the “I got saved” forms. Another swing, another miss.

Methodists believed you could “fall from grace.” I hoped I was only backslid. I would have to try harder.

Maybe the girl I crushed on was the answer. And she was the only girl my age in our church. It had to be fate, right? She was indeed a good kid, but in my head I gave her every virtue I felt I was missing. We would date, marry, have kids, and those doubts and temptations would go away.

I never once asked her out, whatever that would’ve meant for a guy with no money in a town with nothing to do. The thought was terrifying. As long as I didn’t ask, it could still come true. The fantasy was all I had. What if she said no?