I was watching the news as the story broke. Alaska is of course a few hours behind Oklahoma City. I was still in my Rush Limbaugh days and I immediately assumed Islamic terrorists were behind it and that we would be going to war. I was convinced it was all Clinton's fault. He had played a weak hand in Somalia and they'd probably gotten together with the Iraqis and come to get us.
Obviously I
was mistaken on a great many points. My apprehension turned to confusion when
not long after it was revealed that a Right-wing extremist had perpetrated the
bombing. I couldn't understand it. I didn't understand myself.
A few weeks
later my head was shaved as I joined the death-cult also known as the US
military and I found myself in San Antonio Texas until the end of July. I had
gone to church on occasion while still in Alaska. I was looking for answers,
trying to find peace in the midst of my guilt and sin. In Texas I began to read
the Scriptures. I looked forward to being assigned night watch. The hours of
quiet would afford me time to read. Since you're being brainwashed everything
is taken from you except the Air Force manual and the things issued to you.
Thankfully you can gain access to a Bible. I guess they have little to fear
from the Bible as most churches support the nation and the military. Little do they
know that it's actually subversive to their cause!
I began to
read and pray. When released from boot camp, it's like getting out of an
intense stay in prison. On weekends we were allowed to venture out into San
Antonio and I certainly forgot myself more than once. I was still struggling,
caught between two worlds, two paths.
The culture
of the military is a wicked one and it's real easy to tag along and get pulled
into stuff. We haunted the River walk and visited the Alamo.
By the end
of July I found myself in Europe and by October I was baptized. Before 1995 had
ended I was already in a state of despair, repenting of my decision to put on
the uniform of the United States and further disturbed by what I was part of
and what we were doing. We were stooges for the expansion of NATO, the
expansion of the American Empire and I was already beginning to see it.
Reading the
Scriptures over those six months completely changed my life. I abandoned the
Dispensationalism and Arminianism of my upbringing, became a Reformed zealot
but isolated from the American context it did not translate into Dominionism
and Patriotism.
I ordered
books through CBD and Great Christian Books. I eagerly awaited the arrival of
cassette tapes in the mail. I poured through catalogs and sent for free
pamphlets. I read everything I could get my hands on. The barracks were like
Sodom and Gomorrah so I spent hours in coffee shops and traveled whenever I
could. I read in the woods and mountains, on trains and on airplanes. Many a
time I sat in a forklift cab on a rainy flight-line waiting for F-16's or a C-5
to take off while I worked through Romans or Calvin. I also dove into history. It
had always been a passion but being in Europe it came alive. I was forced to
reconsider many of my assumptions. Could it be that my conservative even
Christian narrative that I embraced as a lost person was in fact wrong? I had
to wrestle with these questions. The Christian world was astir, as the
hostility to Clinton was every bit as vicious as what we've seen with Obama.
People seem to have forgotten.
I was forced
to reckon with the Christian arguments for a Constantinian vision. I was new to
these things but benefitted greatly by interacting with the arguments of
Bahnsen and others. I learned of his death via his organization's PenPoint
newsletter in January 1996. It had just arrived in my mail box and I opened it
while sitting with a friend in a parking lot. We were looking at the Dolomites
in the distance and I remember we were startled to learn of his death. We
didn't agree with him but we loved the fact that he challenged us to think and
work through the issues.
At the time I
couldn't quite answer the Theonomists but reading the Scripture I knew they
were wrong. It pushed me and I kept digging. God blessed me with some solid
fellowship. The Internet was newly available and though much more limited in scope I utilized it and accessed theology as well as a great deal of material
regarding US policies during the Cold War and other pieces of the historical
puzzle that had not been taught in school.
It drove me
to the small base library. Here I was, a grunt of the Empire and yet undergoing
an intellectual and spiritual transformation which would lead me to reject
everything I had been when I sinfully took the Constitutional oath in May of
1995.
By April of
1996 I was labouring to get out of the Air Force. I was deep in the daunting bureaucratic
process, labouring away to separate myself from the entity I had come to
despise. It was also around this time that I and my Calvinist friends had all
but been run out of an Independent Fundamentalist Church we had been attending.
The pastor who is still active and equally destructive had grown weary of our
Calvinism and told us to "hit the road".
It was quite
a year. In terms of learning it was something of the fire hose treatment, but
long hours alone hiking in the mountains had provided me time for reflection
and prayer. I was in a state of conflict and opposition but I flourished. It
was good to be removed from all that but I also learned that the hard times can
also be good and profitable times.
I went home
on leave in January 1996 and while in Alaska I picked up a little Gideon New
Testament that I still carry with me. It's pretty battered. It's been with me
all over the place. At this point it's mostly held together by electrical tape.
Inside I had
inscribed the date and place I had acquired it. Ironically I picked it up at
the local gun store. It was run at the time and perhaps still is by a prominent
family within the local Baptist church. It makes me chuckle now to think I
picked up my old tried and true New Testament at a gun store of all places. Life is funny that way.
But I also
remember standing there in January 1996 and looking at the guns and the culture
of guns and beginning to question it all. That would take awhile to bear fruit but
the seeds were planted.
It was an
amazing year of my life.
And it's
been an amazing twenty years. Praise be to God!
