31 God

My parents were Lutheran, and growing up I do not remember ever hearing of Buddhism, not even in high school, although I suppose the word must have been listed with the names of the other world religions in a paragraph or three of my world history book. Not even in college did it ring a bell. By then I had become a skeptic, an agnostic, and an atheist, in that order, and although the word Buddhism appeared in the introductions and footnotes to the literature I was required to read and to study—the poetry of T. S. Eliot and the prose of Joseph Conrad, Hermann Hesse, and J.D. Salinger, for example—I paid it no serious attention.

My father had been raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormons, until he married my mother. Her family and she were Lutheran, and my dad had become a Lutheran to please his wife. I was baptized Lutheran and until I graduated from high school I was required by my parents every Sunday to attend both Sunday School and Church. Unlike some local Christian churches, the Lutherans in Emerson and Shenandoah, Iowa, where I grew up, did not emphasize the terrible unending tortures and torments of Hell nor the eternal happiness and bliss of Heaven. Common decency and a bland social respectability seemed to be the virtues we were expected to emulate. Lutheran Christianity was also very child-friendly. Both God and Jesus were portrayed as wise men who loved children above all. Every day and especially at Christmas and Easter the Lutheran emphasis was upon making and keeping the children happy. How glad the smallest of them sounded when at Sunday School in the church basement the toddlers with gusto sang just as I once had.

Jesus loves me—this I know

For the bible tells me so

Little ones to him belong

They are weak but he is strong

Yes, Jesus loves me—

Yes, Jesus loves me—

Yes, Jesus loves me—

The bible tells me so

But as I grew older I began to develop a mind of my own. I no longer enjoyed Sunday School and certainly not Church. I hated going to Church. To me it seemed irrelevant and boring beyond belief. Despite my infant Baptism, weekly Sunday School and Church, Bible School, prayers before meals and bed, Luther League, classes in Confirmation, and more, Christianity did not touch me deeply. Though I memorized the Ten Commandments and then all the books of the Bible and every Sunday recited the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed and one Sunday a month participated in Holy Communion, I did not ever truly believe.

I don't know why.