At the tender age of 15 I was already "over" christianity. My parents subtly pressured me to attend every Sunday with them...and I politely obliged, but I am sure that they could read the writing on the wall. Not too long before, my bedroom walls were covered with images of Adam Ant. Surely they realized at that point that their messiah had a long way to go in order to compete with a pop star who mixed indian and pirate imagery in his stage persona.
Based on the fact that this function was church-related, my parents agreed to allow me to travel half-way across the state with a newly-licensed driver.
Unlike the liberal Disciples of Christ church that I was raised in, Zach's family attended an Assemblies of God church. Let's just say that on the spectrum of christian beliefs, the Assemblies of God inched a little closer to the "snake-handling" edge of christianity than my experiences.
While the Assemblies of God were preaching a fundamentalist philosphy, including a good deal of explicit homophobia, it was not enough to prevent Zach from being one of the biggest queens I have ever met. In order to maintain his position as "the good son", he had to live exclusively in the closet. Apparently he was "cool enough" when away from his church that I could forgive him for being associated with his retarded church.
I don't quite know what I was expecting from a church retreat when he invited me, but understandibly I needed to escape the hustle and bustle of Lincoln, and if I had to stay in a Holiday Inn surrounded by other christians so be it.
Travelling to Grand Island was boring, but thanks to Zach's car cassette player, we were surrounded by the lilting melodies of Depeche Mode and Yaz. Time moved quickly.
After arriving at our room at the Holiday Inn, we went to one of the large conference rooms for the Welcoming Rally. I am sure that the expression on my face was one of complete smugness. Enduring bad Praise Rock was a small price to pay for some time away from home.
Later on that evening there was a second service. To someone accustomed to going to church once per week, twice in a single night seemed just a touch excessive.
Little did I know what I was in for. If the opening ceremony was intended to "welcome" everyone, the second was intended to "welcome" only those-that-accepted-Jesus-Christ-as-their-personal-Lord-and-savior-therefore-renouncing-all-sinful-ways. Needless to say I did not fit into the second category. I guess I shouldn't have been suprised that they were going to push the concept of becoming "born again" but I was.
In a split second the tone went from "Hooray for Everything!" to "If You Are Not 'Saved' You ARE Satan". I tried to maintain the role of social anthropologist, quiet and detached, but after literally 4 hours of hearing people confessing about their Devil-filled lives I knew that this fun-filled evening would not end until every single soul in the crowd of 150 had been saved.
At around two in the morning I was surrounded by a group of fellow teenagers demanding that I accept God into my heart. I relented. Rather than being rebellious I took the easy way out. With my friend Zach suspiciously nowhere in sight, I revealed about 36% of my sins and said I wanted God's forgiveness. Instantly I was welcomed into the community of believers and a burden was lifted from my shoulders.
It was not the burden of my sinful ways as much as the burden of being the only free-thinking hold-out preventing the evening from concluding. After all, everyone needed to head back to their rooms in order to get a good night sleep in anticipation for another full day of praising God's name.
On the way back to our room I had to politely kill Zach's buzz regarding my "saving". While I didn't explicitly state that I was faking my conversion, I did suggest that if our relationship was to continue we had to get the hell away from this scene.
Zach relented and agreed that we would return to Lincoln in the morning. On the way home there was no mention of the events of the previous evening. "Some Great Reward" was in the tape deck and we would be back in Lincoln soon.
In hindsight I believe Zach thought his parents would be less suspicious of me sleeping over at his house if I was a christian...thus explaining his invite to the retreat. And come to think of it he was probably right. They would have rather had a son that was a hypocrite than one that was honest.
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