Here's Why

How I might answer my dad if he came back to live in this world.

When I was a kid, one of my dad's favorite gripes went something like "How could any sensible person believe in Christianity when all the different versions are fighting and saying each other are full of it?"

Both my dad's and mom's families considered themselves Christian Scientists, which was, during my grandparents' youth, quite popular with educated folks who hoped to learn that, as the name implies, Science and the Bible were in perfect accord, at least if you read them correctly; in other words, in the way Mary Baker Eddy read them. Her angle was that "All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all." As a boy, her ideas only made my head spin. Now they make some sense, and they seem pretty harmless except that I imagine my dad's views of Christians were tainted by his mother's temperament. Though she sometimes served as a Christian Science Practitioner, which I took to be a cross between a counselor and a prayer provider, I prefer to call her a sort of witch, and not the Hermione sort. According to my memory she was at best hardly tolerant of anything that conflicted even slightly with her views, which I consider providential in a way. I mean, some scornful remarks of hers about the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson prompted me to read about Sister Aimee and I become such a fan, her exploits inspired my novel The Biggest in Liar in Los Angeles.

I wish I could recall what my mom's mother, my dearly beloved grandma Mary Garfield, thought of my witchy grandma's scorn for Sister Aimee, who was raised in a Salvation Army family. My beloved grandma was a fan of the Salvation Army, as am I.

Anyway, Sister Aimee  became a Pentecostal preacher and also founded a Bible College at her Angelus Temple in Los Angeles' Echo Park. One  student there was Chuck Smith, founder of the Calvary Chapel movement. He figures prominently in the current film The Jesus Revolution.

By the way, Pentecostal refers to an evangelical protestant charismatic Christian movement that emphasizes direct personal experience of God through baptism by the Holy Spirit. The term is derived from Pentecost, an event that commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon followers of Jesus Christ (see Acts 2:1–31). Pentecostals are commonly moved to shout or shake or speak in strange languages, which they refer to as "tongues." More on these folks and their conduct later, I hope.

Although Perelandra College declines to identify with any particular denomination or movement, as a partner of Vision International University,  the world's largest global distance learning network for the independent Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, we consider ourselves in partnership with both of those movements.

As some may wonder what the difference between Pentecostal and Charismatic might be, I'll note that Charismatics, though also liable to act curiously, are sometimes involved in mainstream protestant and Catholic churches; and while Pentecostals are generally asked to believe that speaking in tongues is the only solid evidence that a person has been baptized by the Holy Spirit, Charismatics aren't asked to accept that conviction.

The first church I attended for a long while was Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination. I had attended for several years when, seemingly out of nowhere, the pastor announced that he decided speaking in tongues wasn't the only assurance of what they call "being infilled" by the Holy Spirit. So, he announced, he had given up his AoC ordination. But to my surprise, he continued in his position, which was fine with me and apparently also okay with the AoC ordination givers. At least they didn't send him packing.

About my dad and his gripe: When he argued that Christianity loses its credibility by having so many versions, I think he was missing a crucial fact, which is that most of us don't much give a hoot what our denomination asserts; we're going to believe whatever we choose to believe.

So, though I have castigated fundamentalists, I would hardly suggest to anyone attending a fundamentalist church to move elsewhere. I would only suggest that they shouldn't feel they need to follow the church's doctrines, its leaders, or anyone else in that crowd.

One fine day my golfing buddy David brought along a fellow who asked me how anyone who called himself a Christian could vote for a Democrat. David must have snitched. Now, I could have given plenty reasons but I chose to ignore the implication that I was either a closet heathen or a nitwit, since I prefer hitting golf balls to arguing. Anyway, why bother to argue about worldly stuff?

People I most admire don't think they know the whole story about God or anything, so they aren't very argumentative. Rather, they concern themselves with what matters most.

They are like Tony Tarantino.

Why I became a follower of Christ is a story I told in some detail in Reading Brother Lawrence, which is free in ebook or quite inexpensive in paper, but a part of that story I remember most fondly was about Tony.

I made a profession of faith at a Billy Graham crusade and then tried out a few churches but, for a variety of reasons, didn't find any that persuaded me to stick around. So, while a student at San Diego State U, I got annoyed by lots of would-be evangelists. While I tried to eat lunch or just sit on a lawn and relax or get from one building to another, a rookie evangelist or a pair of them would interrupt me and ask, "Have you given your life to Jesus Christ?" I would generally sigh and say, "Yep." And they would usually want me to prove it by asking where I went to church or some other question that, in my estimation, they had no business asking.

Then I picked up a hitchhiker who happened to live only a few blocks from my home. My home was a sort-of commune where about a dozen of us shared meals and rent and such. Tony was carrying a Bible, and soon he asked, "Have you given your life to Jesus Christ?" And when I said "Yep," he said, "That's good." He said no more. And within a few weeks, after we met up again, he asked if he should stop by and visit. Before long, we all were meeting every few days to study the Bible with Tony.

That's the kind of Christian I attempt to be. A sort of Tony Tarantino Christian.