Now We See Only A Reflection

“Now We See Only a Reflection”

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

When I was a freshman in college, I had a radical conversion experience, for which I am forever grateful.

What happened after that was a bit more troublesome.

I happened along an extreme Fundamentalist Group on campus that believed the Bible was the literal, inerrant word of God.

They only used the King James Version of the Bible…

…calling the New Revised Version the New Revised Perversion.

They preached a fire and brimstone message which was, thinking back on it, filled with a lot of judgment aimed at anyone and everyone who didn’t think and believe exactly as they did.

To give you an example of just how extreme these folks were: the women wore head coverings in worship and were not allowed to preach or teach.

They didn’t watch television, didn’t celebrate holidays other than Thanksgiving and birthdays—Christmas Trees were the breeding grounds for demon worship and acting silly was looked down upon as a sin.

I believed everything they told me 100 percent—after-all, they backed it all up with the Bible and I didn’t know anything about the Bible—except that I believed it was the Word of God.

When school let out for summer break and I returned home—I couldn’t relate to my friends any longer and they couldn’t relate to me.

Even the church I grew up in and then every other church I visited—no matter how conservative they were--was doing something that the Group I had been in had taught me was wrong, misguided, of the devil and so forth.

And so, I was all alone.

One evening I was reading the Book of Acts.

I decided to read the whole thing in one sitting.

And when you do that, you tend to pick up on things.

When I realized that the Apostle Paul gives three different and somewhat conflicting accounts of his conversion experience in that one book my world was shattered.

I threw my Bible on the ground and turned my back on what I believed.

I found out that the Bible was not inerrant after-all.

I had never known what depression and anxiety were before this.

But, boy, did I have it now.

You see, I had been so brainwashed that I still thought that the group I had been in was correct—they were doing things God’s way like no one else was--but I had decided not to be a part of them and so I was headed for hell.

And was life even worth living if you are headed to hell?

I had already missed out on everything at the ripe young age of 18.

Thus, began my 10 years of wondering in the wilderness.

Over the years I tried to get my faith back several times, but I just couldn’t believe the same way I had anymore.

Eventually, I lost my faith all together, I no longer even believed in God—and boy, was that a relief.

It was at that point that I opened up a Rock and Roll Tee Shirt Shop in a mall, and the mall was right next to the largest high school in the city.

And so, the kids who were skipping school would come and hang out in my shop all day.

On the weekends, the parents who would use the mall as a baby-sitter would drop their kids off at the mall and my store was the hangout.

The skateboard kids loved me and my store.

When they came in, because they weren’t allowed to carry their skateboards in the mall, they would hand them to me to put behind my counter for the day.

And we all got along great.

They were the kids I would have been friends with 10 years earlier, when I was in high school.

We had a lot in common and they came to think of me as one of them.

But I wasn’t.

I was an adult.

And the conversations they had and the things they shared with me bothered me and disturbed me because these poor kids were so very lost and messed up—like I had been at their age--but they seemed to be in even worse shape than I had been.

I sold tee-shirts from all the popular heavy metal and modern rock bands.

But my number 1 best seller at the time was Marlyn Manson.

I sold more Marylyn Manson tee-shirts, hats, watches, stickers, patches—you name it—than all the rest of the bands combined.

One night, I was sitting and watching the MTV Music Video Awards and Marylyn Manson who had recently released his album “Anti-Christ Superstar” and claimed to be a minister in the church of Satan got up onto something that looked like a pulpit, but it had an arrow on front pointing down.