Salvation is a funny thing. It is almost impossible to know where to begin some stories. I received a PM requesting that I share my “TESTIMONY” about how God saved me … so here I am. Let me begin with a personal observation about WHY God saved me. It is my personal belief that the members of the Godhead made a “gentlemen’s bet” among themselves that they would locate the human being least deserving and most unlikely as a candidate for salvation, and They would save him just to prove that They could.
My story actually begins at least three generations before I was born. In Peels Green, Manchester, England, a Welsh Master Blacksmith moved with his wife and son into a small house so he could work at the Shipyard building Dreadnoughts (pre-Battleship warships). I know little of the family before that except they were 14 generations of Welsh Master Blacksmiths according to the census records. That man was my great grandfather and he and his wife promptly died. Their son, my grandfather, was raised by the husband of his mother’s cousin. I know only a few facts of the man … his daughter fled to America at the age of 18 and my grandfather ran away and followed her to America before he was 9 years old. I know from the records at Ellis Island that he arrived so malnourished that they refused to allow him into the country and wanted to deport him back to England, except he would not have survived the return trip. I know that my grandfather lived with his adopted sister in Brooklyn and ate breakfast under the kitchen table because malnutrition had left him too hypersensitive to sunlight to eat at the table.
Skipping ahead, my father was a research chemist for Union Carbide (where my grandfather was chief production chemist) when I was born in Middlesex, NJ. To properly understand what comes next, you need to understand that my father is an atheist. He once explained life to me as: “An apple falls from a tree. Within that apple is all the same genetic material as the original apple tree. The apple seeds sprout and a young tree begins to grow. Eventually the old tree dies and rots. The very atoms of carbon and nitrogen and water that formed the old apple tree are absorbed into the new apple tree and become a physical part of it. That is the closest that any human being will ever get to eternity.” … It was a metaphor. A sad, sick, depressing metaphor.
My maternal Grandparents were devout “Holly and Lily” Catholics. Like any good Roman Catholic, they were desperately concerned that their grandson needed to be baptized to keep my infant soul out of hell if I should die. Since my maternal great-grandparents lost 6 children to a plague in Italy around the start of the 20th Century before coming to America and having 4 more children (including my maternal grandfather), it was not an idle concern to them. My maternal grandfather had buried his own son (Junior).
My paternal Grandparents were faithful “twice a year” Methodists (with a pressed suit for the men and a new hat for the ladies) and determined … like any right-thinking Protestant in the 1960’s … that hell would freeze over before their grandson would be baptized Roman Catholic!
So it came to pass that my atheist father, with the wisdom of Solomon, seeking nothing more than peace and quiet in his life, had the infant Arthur baptized LUTHERAN at a church I attended twice in my life (including my infant baptism). This is an event worth noting because it is my opinion that there are no accidents and God was placing His mark of ownership on me. Announcing to the universe that THIS ONE belonged to Him and He would be returning to claim it one day. We were all clueless at the time.
My father had a plan to be wealthy and powerful. When I was about the same age as my grandfather was when he arrived in America to escape his old life, my father decided that the path to riches lay with abandoning his family and stealing the wife of another man. Thus it came to pass that, before I was a TEEN, I was living in a neighborhood where most did not reach adulthood, abandoned by a father who loved money more than family, and running the streets unsupervised as ‘mom’ worked three jobs to survive.
I learned to take a beating. I learned to beat someone with a chain, to carry a knife, and to be part of a gang. I have shot a person. I have smuggled drugs across state lines. I have done many evil things. Growing up, I attended church exactly 22 times … Easter and Christmas until I was 11 years old. At that point, I dropped the pretext. The problem with learning about Santa, the Easter Bunny and Jesus at the exact same time every year is that you outgrow all the fairy tales together when you are confronted with the harsh reality of the REAL WORLD.
I was not merely an “atheist”, I had come to embrace a world-view with the fancy name of “Nihilism”. It means “nothing”. There is no meaning in any action. There is no good or evil. They are all imaginary concepts that people assign to events. If I shoot a man to steal money for food, I am a “monster”. If I shoot 100 enemy soldiers I am a “hero”. Good and evil are an illusion. You live, you die and when you are gone you don’t even leave a hole to show that you were here. From there, it is not that hard to set your enemy on fire or to shoot the person that is trying to hurt you.
The funny thing about that life, it comes with a price. Every action claims a piece of your “humanity”. If you have ever seen a shark, you know that they have “dead” eyes. Cold, emotionless killing machines. I knew a lot of people that you could look in their eyes and see that same “lifeless” character. We, they and I, were cold, dead machines.
A brief side note. Sometime between 17 and 20, everyone seemed to get shot, or overdose, or disappear forever into the prison system. Nobody made it to 21. That is just the way it was. And I was approaching 18.
So I was in the process of one final act of defiance. I would at least choose the time and place of MY exit. I was making preparations for a murder-suicide.
People sometimes talk about “Pascals Wager”. You know, the “what if you are wrong and there is a God?” question. One does not approach absolute certain death and not consider that. The irony is that for all my many sins, hypocrisy was not among them. I HAD considered the “problem of evil” and concluded that Bertrand Russel hit the nail on the head … “The evidence of contemporary Christian life is such that God, if He ever existed, must surely be dead”. The inaction of God in the face of evil suggested two possibilities:
1. God is evil.
2. God does not exist.
So “Pascal’s Wager” … what if I was wrong?
Then I deserved HELL. No whining, no pleading, no arguing. If there really was a God, then I BELONGED in hell with all the other beings that HATED Him for His indifference as much as I would!
I wanted to make absolutely clear just how NOT seeking Jesus I was at that point. I make this point because well-intentioned Christians with a very different story will often claim that EVERYONE SAVED was seeking God. I was not seeking God. I was preparing to die and take enough people with me that my name would be remembered alongside Kazinsky and McVeigh.
In the midst of my preparations, God came “Road to Damascus” style and informed me of two things. First, God had an offer that I could not refuse. An exchange of EVERYTHING that I had for EVERYTHING that He had. My death for His new life. My hate for His love. My despair for His hope. My past for His future. The list went on and on … all for all. Second, He told me that effective immediately, I belonged to Him. Period. End of discussion.
I later learned lots of new words to describe that day. Words like “bondi” … the slave for life that serves his master out of love and pierces his ear on the doorpost to mark it with a ring. I am a BONDI of the MOST HIGH GOD! Everything for everything!
I am the first Christian in at least three and probably four or more generations of TWO cursed family lines. Saved just so God could prove to the universe that He could save ANYONE! There were certainly many more deserving of mercy and many much closer to “righteous” than I was. There was and is no merit in me that deserves His grace.
Thus my only reasonable response is loving-gratitude.
