In the summer of the year I turned nine, two “unsavory” influences entered my life.  Until that point I had been the dutiful son, well mostly dutiful, of conservative religious parents.  We attended a good church that could have been described as fundamentalist or legalist, although until that summer I was not aware of what those terms might have meant.  All I knew was that I had been taught an extensive list of things I should do and things I shouldn’t do.  I accepted this list essentially without question.

On the “must not” portion of the list were two activities I had not given much thought to, science fiction and rock and roll.  In both, my parents were probably not worried about me in the least.  But that summer, everything changed.  The first pernicious influence, science fiction, came during an innocent summer trip to the public library.  It was a lazy weekday morning and my best friend was on vacation so, like many kids before and since, I sort of whined to my mom that I was bored.  She suggested that I go to the library.

So there I was wandering around the juvenile section when I stumbled across a novel called “Have Space Suit, Will Travel.”  The story was about an American teenager of the future (oddly, now the past) who had won a spacesuit in a TV game show contest and his eventual accidental interstellar adventures as a result.  I sat on the floor of the library that morning and read most of it.  After lunch, I came back and read the rest.  And, alas, I was hooked on science fiction.  I was soon reading everything the library had and scrounging for other stuff to read.  One place I found it was in comic books, which were also on my church’s forbidden list, but as I consider that infection secondary I am not listing it here.

Were this not bad enough, more ruin was ahead that summer.  On a lazy August afternoon I was again bored.  I guess this was pretty close to my normal state in those days.  We had just gotten a TV set.  As it happens, TV was also on the list of pernicious influences we should avoid but, as I was not the one who brought the thing home, I was not ready to take credit for the ruin it brought to my life.  It did, however, open the door to the evils of rock and roll.  I turned the TV on, expecting to see a game show that had played in that afternoon time slot.  But, to my surprise, it was not there.  Instead I saw the initial national broadcast of a new show called “American Bandstand.” 

Once again I was hooked.  To my parent’s dismay I also figured out that I could get rock and roll on the radio so this influence didn’t end when “Bandstand” went off.  And so there I was, steadily consuming not one but two horrible influences.  I know for a fact that prayers were offered for my deliverance from both these evils (and probably from comics and TV too but I can’t be sure about that) within some segments of my church.

In any event, thus far those prayers have not been answered.  The direct result of the opposition of some in my church, and to a lesser degree my parents, actually had an influence that was the opposite of what they desired.  Instead of repenting of my “sins” I became sneaky about them.  I learned to read and listen in ways that they did not figure out. 

The sad thing is that while I will debate to this day that neither science fiction nor rock and roll is inherently evil, I know that deception is.  I take responsibility for my sin, I was the deceiver.  However the whole episode drove home a point to me that has since crystallized into my passion for grace.  It has taught me to agree with Paul that law not only does not work, it kills.  The effort to control my external actions drove me to internal, sinful, rebellion.  And this is how human nature works. 

I have no way to judge how I would have responded if my parents or more particularly my church, had sat down with me, affirmed their love and support, and tried to reason with me on these actions of mine.  But I do know that trying to force behavioral obedience drove me further from it and the church.  It was not till years later when I met someone who expressed strong moral standards with an attitude of grace that I returned to the faith of my youth.

Thanks, Peggy.