Back to school

(Warning, for those wedded to chronological consistency, though yesterday's post ended with the end of July, 1970, this one skips back to something like April or May, 1970).

I am not sure precisely when I stopped driving taxi and began working for AMFAC - perhaps around the beginning of March, 1970, or possibly sometime in February.

The shop I worked for maintained a wide variety of electronic communications devices, but the primary ones were R-T mobile devices for taxicabs, trucks, and 'buses, and pagers for doctors.  The pagers were all transistor-based, of course, but the former, at that time, mostly used vacuum valves.  We were a busy place and there were, I think, five or six technicians working there.  My boss, Gary Cosendine, was a fair enough man, but a rough and ready sort - and my enthusiastic Christianity and Bible-reading annoyed him a great deal.  At some point I had a T-shirt with the words "Christ is the Answer" emblasoned on the back.  Perhaps I wore that to work at AMFAC.

Still, Gary was willing to put up with me, so long as I did the work.  Initial contracts were always for 90 days - during which period you could be dismissed without any reason given.  After that, they had to give cause and might deal with the union.

I must by now have been involved in at least some University activities.  Perhaps I was still in some technical sense a student, and was going there to try to work on some of the Yapese materials I had started whilst in Yap in 1969.  One Thursday, in May or early June - my 89th on the job - Grace, the secretary, had issued to me my AMFAC uniform clothing.  I took them home, and today, Friday, was wearing one change of clothing.  Gary announced that we would all have to work this week-end.  We were, in fact, being flown to Moloka'i to install R-T equipment in some of the big tractors that are used in the pineapple fields.

"Ah.  OK, Gary, I think that will be ok, but I have to check - I may have University obligations this week-end."

"You have no other obligations that conflict with AMFAC's requirements!"

"Oh, no, I can't accept that."

"Go tell Grace to terminate your contract."

That, then, was that!  I talked to Grace, filled out papers to get my last paycheque - and asked her what to do about the uniform clothing ("Never mind, just keep them.")

Well.  Out of a job.  I don't really remember in any detail what precisely happened then.  At some point - whether before or after this occurrence, I don't know - I had said to staff at the University - possibly to my friend Ken Rehg, a fellow PhD student - that, obviously, there was no way for me to come back.  That, I was told, was not true!  Come back I did.  I must, I suppose, have been paid by the University of Hawai'i in some way, since I did not starve to death!  I had believed, at the end of 1969, that I was finished with linguistics forever.  In ways that I could not have imagined this turned out not to be true.

What above all I did during the months leading up to my baptism in July, and continuing on from then, was to read.  To be sure, I read linguistics.  I returned to classes and began thinking about my PhD.  I began also to resume my weekly visits with Kathleen, my and Edna's daughter, though these were rather stiff and formal - neither she nor I knew quite what to make of each other.  But mostly I read - I read Christianity.

I was trying to understand this thing I had undertaken.  During this time, and, indeed, over the next two and a half years, I both bought books and read books from the library.  Some of the authors (by no means all - and in no particular order) who were of great importance in framing my outlook in this period were:

• C. S. Lewis
• Francis Schaeffer
• R. J. Rushdoony
• Greg Bahnsen
• Helmut Thielicke
• Paul Tournier
• Cornelius Van Til
• John Calvin
• Martin Luther
• Charles Haddon Spurgeon
• G. K. Chesterton

There were many others.  The above list illustrates the randomness of my reading.  Chesterton is the only Catholic author, whose Everlasting Man is the only Catholic author I recall reading.  Perhaps most influential in the above were Lewis - with whose writings I fell in love, a love affair which has never ended; Schaeffer, who taught me the beginnings of Christian philosophy; and the Calvinist writers (Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Van Til, Calvin himself), who taught me an absolute submission to the Word of God.

Of Lutheran authors, I had read some of Luther - his commentary on Galatians, his essay on the bondage of the will - and Thielicke on Christian ethics.  But by the time of my baptism I was already pretty deeply Calvinist - and Baptist.

Born again!

I went to that Campus Crusade meeting in a state of considerable unhappiness.  I was a Christian.  I knew that I was not living as a Christian should.  I wanted to do so - and yet did not do so.  I was living very much in St Paul's Romans 7 experience.  I do not think I knew the passage yet, but I could have echoed:

²²For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: ²³But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
²⁴O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

Dick and Carolyn Edic were the leaders of Campus Crusade in Honolulu.  Dick spoke that evening.  And what he spoke of was revolutionary for me.  He talked about what we came to call "The Bird Book"  The booklet was of the same format as Campus Crusade's famous "Four Spiritual Laws" booklet - a small-format pamphlet to be handed out to persons we talked to.

The Bird Book was about the Holy Spirit.  It was not charismatic in the commonly understood sense.  It simply said that God wanted me to live a holy life - but that I could not do so in my own power - "in the flesh."  The Holy Spirit was given to enable me to live as God intended.

I went home very excited - hence Susan's concern that I was on drugs again.  I began intensely to pray.  It was still enormous challenge, but I was determined to quit the drugs - and smoking cigarettes - and now believed that I could, with God's help.

I will say here, parenthetically, that those with more theology than I had at the time will quickly want to point out - what is quite correct - that as I had not been baptised yet, I could not have received the Holy Spirit.  Indeed, I was not confirmed until I became a Catholic, in 1995.

All this is true.  Yet ... God does not deny His help to any who sincerely ask it.  He works through His ordained Sacraments; He is not limited to them.

I experience two weeks of pretty fair agony in the second half of March, 1970.  By the end of that time, I had stopped smoking, and had stopped taking drugs.  I have neither smoked nor taken drugs since that time.

Susan began attending Campus Crusade meetings with me, and became personal friends with Carolyn Edic.  She and Carolyn went for coffee one day - and Susan told Carolyn that Sue and I were living together, thought not married - and asked Carolyn what she thought.  Sue says that Carolyn offered her a Bible verse - in fact, did what Campus Crusade typically does: opened her Bible and asked her to read it.  Sue does not remember what verse it was, but I suspect it may have been one of CC's favourite verses: I Corinthians 14:40 - "Let all things be done decently and in order."

I don't, after this much passage of time, remember the details, but I do recall talking with Dick, telling him my theory that we were married "in the sight of God" because we were already living with one another and considered ourselves (at least I considered us :-)) married.  He did not argue with me.

Within a week or two, we were no longer living together.  Susan's main job was working at the main office of First Hawaiian Bank.  Her friend Gerry Wyttenbach, who also worked there, told her of a friend, Carrie Street (now dead, from a car accident - may she rest in peace), who had a house and needed a housemate.  The house was at 2971 Koali Road.  She moved there in, I suppose, April of 1970.  When we were married, that was our home until we moved to Auckland, in February, 1973.

Things improved from then.  We quickly became regular Sunday attenders at Prince of Peace.  We were fully a part of the congregation.  We made close friends - Denny Wicks, Lois (forget her last name - in the Army), Reverend Fred Sapp, Assistant Pastor (whose Bible studies introduced me to the Athanasian Creed, and to wonderful evangelical hymns such as Amazing Grace and Just As I Am, Pastor Norm Hammer himself (another car accident victim) - and especially Bob and Vicky Feldhan - Bob who became my best man.

On 26 July, 1970 I was born again.  Pastor Hammer baptised me at the Sunday morning service.  Indirectly, this led to my and Susan's leaving the Lutheran Church.

Changes

1970 and 1994 are two years of drastic changes in my life.  More accurately, the period from late December, 1969 until the end of 1970, and that from September, 1993 through the end of 1994 are two periods of, to me, breathtaking changes.

At the beginning of the first I was a heavy user of drugs, an unreflective agnostic - scarcely even agnostic since the thought of God had scarcely ever crossed my mind; at its end I was a Baptist, no longer using drugs (including tobacco), and beginning to set serious sin aside.

At the beginning of the second I was a pretty sophisticated - but not very happy - Calvinist; by its end I was a Catholic.

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Driving taxis had, from the beginning, been something I did not like.  I did not like driving at all.  It made me tense and anxious.  Customers were not easy to deal with.  The day was long - I left the house at 5 in the morning and got home around 7 at night.  I earned enough money, barely, to live on.

Taxicabs use radio communication to talk to the despatcher - and I had a certain amount of electronics knowledge, from my amateur radio experimenting days.  Taking my 'cab into AMFAC to have the radio repaired one day, I talked about my experience - and was offered a job as an electronics technician.  I accepted it.  I stopped driving taxis in about February, 1970 and began working for AMFAC as an electronics technician.

Sue and I were now going to church.  Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Waikiki had a Youth Service every Sunday evening.  It was a preaching service - no Communion - with rock music and a singing Youth Pastor, Bob Turnbull, the "Chaplain of Waikiki Beach."  If this was Christianity, I was enjoying it.

I was not happy with myself, however.  I knew with increasing certainty that my drug use was bad.  I knew from my experience that my living with Susan was bad.  I had begun to know that I was not free.

Susan did not like my drug-taking, and I said I would quit.  I tried, repeatedly, to stop - tried, and failed.  One day in March, having, again, taken LSD - I found myself weeping.  Since I had become a Christian, I had, when I took LSD, never had a 'good trip.'  My last LSD experience that I could call remotely rewarding had been the one that night at Greg's house, with Candace, which led me to Bill Arnold's father's church and to Jesus Christ.  Since then LSD had been frustrating for me.  The drug had physical effects - and I was using increasing doses; it seemed no longer to have any psychic ones.  Marijuana was no longer doing much as a tranquiliser.  Tobacco was beginning to make me sick.  Drugs had become a major issue between me and Susan.

I was weeping because I longed to be free of these burdens.  I was weeping also because I could see that my relation to Susan - now of five months' duration - was deteriorating.  We were making one another unhappy.  I tried to pray - but scarcely knew what to pray for.  I resolved yet again to stop taking drugs.

One evening at church, an announcement was made.  A campus organisation - but it was not strictly for those involved with the University - was going to have an introductory meeting.  Details were given.  The organisation's name was Campus Crusade for Christ.  Did Susan want to go with me?  No, she didn't feel like it - although she did not say so, I think as much as anything she was very unhappy with our living arrangement and our relationship.

When I came back from that meeting and came into our flat, Susan's first, annoyed, remark was, "You've been taking acid again, haven't you?'

What have I done??

When I was about eight years old, my maternal grandmother gave me a Bible.  She marked for me, in blue chalk (which was what we used in the days before highlighters!), the Lord's Prayer, in Matthew 6, and the 23rd Psalm, telling me to memorise them - which I duly did.

It is a good thing that all Candace had to give me was a New Testament.  When my grandmother gave me a full Bible, I did what, naturally, one does with a book; I began to read it from the beginning.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis are very difficult.  They constitute a prologue to the history of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which are the burden of the book.  I read, perhaps, no more than those eleven chapters of Genesis before going to my mother - who was as innocent of any Christian knowledge as I - and asked about the patriarchs who had lived for seven or eight hundred years.  Oh, she told me, perhaps they really meant months.  Enoch (Genesis 5:21) , for instance, was 65 years old when he begat Methuselah.  Eight years old can do simple arithmetic.  I knew that a man not yet 6 years old was unlikely to do any begetting.  I read no more of the Bible.

I still had my grandmother's Bible, but my conversion, if that is what it was, that Sunday the 28th of December, 1969, was very much connected with Candace, and I had her gift.  That very morning I began to read at the beginning of Matthew's Gospel.

This is more difficult than Genesis 1-11.  I got to Matthew 5:27-28:

²⁷Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: ²⁸But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

And other hard sayings.  I was, to put it mildly, distinctly alarmed by this - in the language of the time and milieu, I freaked out.

I rang Candace later that morning and, rather babbling, said that I didn't know what exactly had happened, didn't want her to think it was something it wasn't, maybe it wasn't what she thought, perhaps...

Candace seemed not even slightly concerned.  She calmly said not to worry, trust God, it would all work out.

Monday I got in my 'cab and went back to work.  By Tuesday, or, at the latest, Wednesday, I found something out: if you give yourself to God, you will have to work at it if you want to take it back.  God doesn't abandon you - and you won't find it easy to ignore Him.  I remember thinking something along the lines of: "Well, it looks like I am a Christian now, whether I want it or not.  I suppose I had better try to find out something about all this."

Susan, although, I expect, reasonably positive about this development, was both sceptical and annoyed.

Sceptical, because John had been through other enthusiastic trips - well, here was yet another.  How long would this last, and where would it go?

Annoyed, because I was raving about what, after all, she had grown up with.  I talked as though I had personally just invented Christianity - as though I deserved credit for - well, for whatever had happened.  Susan had been a Christian all her life - although her attendance at the Episcopal churches in Honolulu had been a bit sporadic.  Who was this johnny-come-lately to be telling her about being saved?

Nevertheless, she was positive about the matter.

Candace and her mother returned to the mainland.  I persuaded Susan to move in with me to Young Street.  Did I begin to wonder, even, about the propriety of this living arrangement?  I may have done, I think.  The beginnings of some slight notions of there being a real moral world may have been dawning at last.  Proof of this is that I recall thinking - or saying to Susan, even - that now we were "married in the sight of God."  You don't justify what you think needs no justification.

When driving my taxi, I listened to the radio.  I heard an ad for something called a "Youth Service" at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Waikiki.  Well, I knew that "going to church" was something that Christians did.  This "Youth Service" sounded great.  They had rock music!  I told Susan that we should attend.

Truth

We have been taught by DesCartes that the only reality we directly experience is the world of our thought - and by Kant that the world of thought really is the only world there is.  In practice, since all of us (except some Scientologists) must live in the outside world, we live on two levels - what Kant called the phaenomenal level - the level of what we see, hear, feel, smell, taste - and the noumenal level - the level of what our mind makes of these things.  And to most of us, that phaenomenal level is the real one.  The rest is the 'trip' we lay on things - a map of things that works for us.

I had been deeply moved, in reading those two Sigrid Undset novels - Kristin Lavransdatter and The Master of Hestviken - by the conception of Christianity I had seen in it.  I had, in particular, been moved to tears by my understanding, in reading the latter, that Jesus had thought Himself to be God dying for the sins of mankind.

I had been deeply moved, as well, by Candace's talk of a relationship with this Jesus, Who was always with her, would guide her, comfort her, strengthen her, at need.

I had been moved by these things as a fascinating and terribly attractive noumenal map to place on experience - a 'trip,' in fact.

When Candace talked about Heaven, about the New Jerusalem, about eternal life as being the rewards of passing some sort of final judgement by God - I was stunned - and I was filled with fear.  For it suddenly came to me that, if these things were true - true in some sort phaenomenal sense - for the concept of any sort of unified truth was still far from me - that if these things were, as I would put it, really true - why, then, it didn't matter whether I believed them or not.  Whatever reality they represented would overtake me, eventually, regardless of my state of faith.  I might be like a man happily falling from the Empire State Building who did not believe in footpaths.

As I listened to Candace and Greg - Greg whose questions were challenges with a sneering quality, Candace whose answers were full of joy and conviction - I began to know - I must use the word 'know' rather than 'believe' or 'imagine' - to know that, in addition to those two, there were two others listening.  I could see nothing of them.  But Jesus Christ was in the darkness behind Greg on one side of him - and Satan was in the darkness behind him on the other side.  I do not claim this knowledge to be of anything that someone else could verify.  It was certainly not phaenomenal knowledge, for there were no phaenomena - nothing that appeared.  But I was certain - and I knew that I must choose.

I spoke.  I said, "I don't know about Greg, but I need to find out more about this."

This was rather a bombshell.  Greg said, in exasperation, something like, "Oh, my God, no!  Don't tell me you are taken in by this stuff, John?!!"  And, when it became clear to him that I did indeed take seriously the idea that all of this might somehow actually be true, he did say, "Oh, well, we'll have to get round to straightening you out once we have this sector of the galaxy clear."  That is really how Scientologists talk, I'm afraid :-)

Candace and I left.  I had an undergraduate friend at the University that I knew was, in some sense, a Christian.  At least, his father was a pastor and he lived in a room in his father's church.  William Joseph Arnold is his name.  I said we should go there.

Not, perhaps, the most thoughtful time to knock on a friend's door - it was, I think, about 4 or 5 in the morning.  But we went.  Bill (as I knew him then; he now goes by the name Joe) received us.  He, Candace, and I talked.  I was, as they could easily see, in a very excited state - though not so excited that I had no questions to ask.  I do remember being quite concerned about the relationship between evolution and the Bible.  It is good that I was.  It showed that I was unwilling to treat this Christianity as just a trip.

Bill's (very sound) advice was to leave these matters for God to sort out with me later.  The great thing was to trust Him.

How?  I didn't know what to do - and, it seemed, neither did they.  Bill found a cardboard carton full of religious tracts.  One of them - I could wish I had kept it - had, at the end, a prayer, that was, I think, perfect.  The matter of the prayer was straightforward.  God had two claims on me.  First, He had made me.  I was, therefore, His workmanship, His to do with as He chose.  But, second, He had sent His Son to die for my sins to redeem me.  He had thus doubly the right to exact my submission, faith, and obedience.  I prayed acknowledging these things - and told God that I would henceforth be His man.  Whatever He saw fit to do with me was what I wanted.

I remember especially Candace's joy at my conversion.  She had never, she said, brought anyone to the point of faith.

She had come to Hawai'i with a sense that it was God's will for her - and she had a looseleaf New Testament for which she had made a leather cover.  She had felt led to bring it with her.  She didn't know why she should, but she had.  She gave it to me.  I have it still.

Cockcrowing

The word 'Christian' had almost no content for me.  I knew the Christianities, rather vaguely, by denomination - somebody was a Baptist, somebody else was a Catholic - and of course the word 'Christian' is part of English - but any reality behind it - well, I knew of none.

I first realised that Candace was a Christian, and that in a shocking sense, when Sue and I, with Candace and their mother, went to dinner at a restaurant.  Candace prayed!  She bowed her head and prayed.  I had seen scenes in movies where a family head said grace before a meal - usually at some special occasion, like Thanksgiving.  But... right here, in front of everybody, all by herself!  I was shocked, and embarrassed.

And provoked to action.

New Year's Eve in 1969 was on a Wednesday, and I couldn't go out then - had to drive taxi, starting at 6AM the next morning.  Greg, one of Airic's Scientology protégés amongst the taxi drivers and a good friend of mine, said he was going to have a New Year's party at his house up in Manoa Valley on the Saturday beforehand, the 27th December.  Greg lived in - perhaps he actually owned it? - a very large old house in the valley.  Would Candace like to go with me?

My request was not innocent.  Perhaps something in Candace's overt Christianity irked me.  Possibly I imagined a pink-and-white world of sweetness and light as her mental world.  Perhaps I thought I would show her what real life was like.  So I asked her - and said that I, and some others, would be on 'acid' - did she mind?

No, she didn't mind, she said.  I took my LSD, we got onto my Yamaha 50 and went to Greg's house.  Arrived there, I introduced Candace to them all, and - maliciously - told Greg that this was Susan's sister - and that she was a Christian.  I then sat down on the couch at the far end of the large living room to watch the fun.

It didn't take long.  Greg - who was not on drugs, since he was doing Scientology auditing - had been brought up a Catholic.  He started in on Candace.

He asked, I suppose, the usual questions about God.  Did she believe that God was a bearded man Who lived somewhere up in the sky?  He went on at some length with this sort of question.  And Candace, instead of responding, in most cases, to what were, after all, not very serious questions, told Greg - and the others, but it was mainly Greg who spoke - about Jesus.  She spoke of Him very personally - and lovingly.  She talked about how wonderful it was never to be alone; always to have Jesus by her side, helping her, comforting her.

So far as I know - perhaps Candace will comment on this post and tell me if I am wrong - so far as I know, she did not know that I was paying any attention.  The house was old and the living room was large, and pretty dark.  I was at the far end of it.  For all she knew I was engaged in meditating the whichness of what, and uninterested in what was going on.

I was, in fact, listening intently.  I remember thinking how very, very moving all this sounded - how wonderful it would be to think - I was still imagining this, you see, as a kind of mental game to play - how wonderful it would be to think that you had an all-powerful, all-loving friend at your side all the time.  That, I thought, would be some trip!  Candace's face began to shine as though it were an icon of a saint, with the highlights picked out in gold leaf.

I imagine some, hearing of this experience, will suppose that, under the influence of LSD, I was unable to tell the difference between reality and hallucination.  I have heard that for some persons, using LSD, this can happen.  I can only say that it never did for me.  I could see the gold-leaf highlights.  I knew they were projections of my mind onto the face of Candace, because of the subject matter and its associations with actual religious pictures I had seen.  I was not deceived; on the other hand, I think that what I saw did, in fact, represent a reality.  Candace was speaking of holy things; I was 'seeing' holy things.

Seeing holy things, but, nevertheless, still thinking of them as a 'trip' - a kind of mind game, one that might be good to play, but a projection of the mind, entirely, including Jesus Himself.

Greg asked Candace if she believed in Hell.  Did she think that he, Greg, was going to be sent to Hell as a punishment for not believing.

Candace responded, not by talking about Hell, but by talking about Heaven.  She talked about it in rather literalistic terms, using language from the Book of the Apocalypse, spoke of crystal seas, of transparent gold, of precious gems.  And she spoke of the Second Coming of Christ - and of the Great White Throne and the Last Judgement.

My life had been one continual sinking into darkness.  It was not always to be night.  The crowing of cocks could be heard.

Genesis 2:18

Many married men appear able to tell you precisely the moment and circumstances of their proposal of marriage to the woman who eventually became their wives.  I cannot.

It is embarrassing to reflect on the shallowness of motivation of many of my decisions in life.  One might have thought that, having failed in one marriage - entered into with almost no deliberation - I would be a bit more circumspect about a second.

We went to the Creedence concert.  Not long afterwards we went to hear Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.  Somewhere between the two concerts - both of which, I think, we attended in November, 1969 - I had told Susan that we would get married.

I suppose one reason I don't remember proposing to Susan is that I never did.  Rather, I think, I precisely told her that we would get married.  This, I imagine, might sound romantically forceful.  It was forceful enough, but I do not think it is likely to qualify as romantic.  I blush, now, to think of the fact - and to reflect on the many times during our relationship that my bull-in-a-china-shop approach to things has been hurtful, sometimes damaging.  It is not surprising that only yesterday, as I began to sketch out this post in my mind, did it occur to me to wonder what Susan's inner feelings and thoughts might have been at the time, in reaction to my brutality.  Perhaps she may be persuaded to comment here:

This is Susan again!  As young people we are confident and we need to be.  All things seem possible.  We see the "future" with a clear eye and it all seems to be attainable.  I remember a Snoopy cartoon/poster  in which Lucy or Snoopy says, "How can we fail, when we are so sincere?"

That about summed it up for me - I would just be able to make my mind up, with good intentions, and things would work out. The problem, though, was that I didn't know much about real sincerity.   I had grown up in a family that loved me but I had also witnessed years of unhappiness that finally ended with my parents divorcing.  This had a major effect on me and how I saw things and so I was very wary of any kind of commitment to a long term relationship.  I was flattered that John was interested in me but I was also wanting to see how things would go after I knew him longer.

I had had to take care of myself for quite awhile.  I was definitely in the business of trying to make sure that I was being careful. 

I do not think that Susan said anything like 'yes' or 'all right' in response to my 'proposal.'  She seems to have received it with incredulity.  Nevertheless, over the course of the next few weeks, I took, I suppose, her failure to say 'no' as acquiescence.

Sue continued to live in her flat around Diamond Head, and I in mine in Young Street, but we became a couple.  I pressed her, at this time, to move in with me, but she would not.  The ostensible reason was that her mother and sister were to come to Honolulu in December, around Christmas time.  I myself thought this an inadequate excuse.  What difference did it make where we lived?  This was, I more or less said, some sort of middle-class prejudice.  Nevertheless, she insisted, and stayed where she was.

Virginia (Sue's mother) and Candace (her sister) arrived - when?  Before Christmas?  After?  I don't know.  But when they came, I discovered something about Susan's sister that I hadn't known - something that was, to me, almost bizarre: Candace was a Christian.