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By way of introduction this is a set of notes I recently wrote that tell of my life’s voyage. I expect to be posting on the forum with more speculative topics such as the devil and time. This is just my second post here.
Baptism. The first thing I remember about God acting in me was when I was about 7 years old. We were Baptists and each Sunday the minister would invite people to come down to the front to accept Christ and be baptized. It was typical to wait to about age 10 or so for this but I didn’t really know that. All I knew was that I wanted to accept Christ as my Savior, and that is what I was being invited to do. I began to walk to the front of the church and my mother noticed me and immediately chased me to get me to return to the pew. The minister saw this, and told her to let me come on down. Then he asked me a long and involved question about my faith in Christ so I was obviously expected to answer “Yes”. However, I thought Christ was more important than pleasing the minister so I said “I don’t understand”. He then apologized for being too complicated and asked me a series of short, clear questions that were easy to answer “Yes”. As a result my older brother and I were baptized at the same time a few weeks later.
My Ghost Story. I had a paper route when I was in high school and one dark night I was out collecting. Coming toward me at about eye level was a white saucer-shaped object that was moving slightly from side to side as it approached. Occasionally there was a bright glow just under the object and it then moved down and away as it grew dimmer, as though something had been launched from a space ship. I started to panic and go across the street or into a nearby apartment building foyer, but I decided that God controlled even extraterrestrials so I should put my hope in Him. As the object drew closes I realized it was a sailor in his blue uniform, smoking a cigarette. I consider this to have been a test of my faith.
Conversion. When I went to college I got away from regular church attendance and came to accept the logical conclusion of some selected Baptist teachings. “One religion is as good as another”, “God sees the sacrifice of Christ instead of our sins so our sins are forgiven”, “Once we accept Christ as our Savior we are saved”. Well, if God didn’t really care what I did, then I should just do as I please. This worked out fine through school and for a while at work, but I noticed that some Catholics would not go on weekend trips with the group because they could not get to Church. I wondered why they were depriving themselves of the fun so I decided that my religion had a congregation of one and was dedicated to not increasing the membership. This met the requirements I was taught about in my youth, but the Holy Spirit made me unsettled with this conclusion so I set about a study to justify my conclusion.
Decision Making. I would read the Bible a lot because I accepted that, at least in my own way. Since Protestantism is based on private interpretation, I took that literally. Then I read in Acts about replacement for Judas, and I found it was done by casting lots. I thought that was a great way to learn the truth, so I started asking yes/no questions and flipping a coin to get my answer. This was a lot easier than all that study. Well, being a scientist I decided to test my newfound method. I said, “This is a legitimate way to discern God’s will” and the answer was NO. Best 2 out of 3, NO. Best 3 out of 5, NO. Best 4 out of 7, NO. Best 5 out of 9, NO. Then I remembered “Thou shalt not test the Lord thy God”. End of test and answer accepted.
Methodology. First I wanted to show that Protestantism was an acceptable religion so I first looked at the Catholic Church to show its many errors. Surprise, I didn’t really know what Catholics taught so I could find no fault. That’s OK so I will just have to show that any other religion is also OK. I couldn’t find a Baptist theology book so I started with a Methodist theology book. I found a number of things that I could not reconcile with some parts of the Bible even though they were based on other parts of the Bible. Well, I thought it must just be a poorly written book so I finally found a Baptist theology book. (This was over 60 years ago so I don’t remember the exact books and I threw them away.) Well, the Baptist theology book had the same things I could not reconcile with the King James Version of the Bible. This was taking a nasty turn for me so I backed up and wondered why I should trust the Bible. I wondered does God actually exist and does He care what we believe. Now here comes God talking clearly to me through actions. I flipped open the Bible and read the first passage I saw: “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of the kingdom of heaven.” Whoops! Message heard and questions clearly answered. I was dragging my feet because of what I knew my mother would think, and I wanted to be worthy of the kingdom of heaven. I then took instructions, was baptized, and became a daily communicant.
Charismatic Movement. I became active in Catholic groups and was on the Parish Council when Vatican II was concluded. Our parish became polarized between charismatics and traditional Catholics. God made me realize that both sides were right, but no side was right for any single individual. The charismatics were right that we should follow the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but wrong in demanding how the Holy Spirit would show this inspiration. The traditionalists were right in following past practices, but wrong in condemning the charismatics in a blanket way for their actions. I wasn’t able to do anything with this realization, and from time to time I still try to interest one side to accept the other side. With time the divisions have not been so troublesome.
Current Dilemma. For many years now I still feel inspired to do something for the Church but I have essentially dropped out of organizations. I am pretty much a loner because of my self-diagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome (a form of social but not intellectual autism). Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking about God and writing a few paragraphs about God and the Devil, life after death, and some other things. I don’t know why God inspires me to write these things, but I’m such a loner I don’t share them with anyone for fear of intruding on them and making them uncomfortable. I stopped being a daily communicant except in lent, and dropped out of parish organizations because my being active made my wife uncomfortable. Maybe I need another wake-up call like I described under Methodology. I’m uncomfortable but I don’t really know what to do about it.
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Convert from Baptist church in 1950, recently revived interest in knowing and applying Vatican II.
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And thank you for your introduction post. It was very interesting! 
