Where the Light Fell

by Philip Yancey

  This time Janet has a new suggestion. “Marshall, your left hand works fine. Why don’t you play the bass clef while Philip plays the treble with his right hand?” And so we do. As we work to synchronize two hands controlled by different brains, Janet records it on her iPhone.

  When I watch the video later, something occurs to me. As brothers, we used to compete in everything: chess, debating, tennis, golf. Now Marshall’s disability forces us to work together. Every week or so he calls me about a problem at his apartment he can’t solve or a balky computer program or a financial matter. Once known for his eccentric autonomy, now my brother has become contentedly dependent.

  * * *

  —

  I would love to end our family story with a scene of reconciliation, of two brothers gathered around the matriarch in a hospital room receiving a final blessing. As a son and brother, I find my heart crying out for such a scene of resolution and healing. I have seen thawing in my family, especially from my mother, but nothing so sanguine as that scenario. Life rarely follows a fairy-tale script.

  As I write, our mother has passed her ninety-sixth birthday. A few years ago, when Marshall wrecked his motorized wheelchair, she dipped into her savings and sent me $2,000 to buy him a new one. He rides it almost every day, a visible token that at some level she still cares.

  “You’ve had my prayers and best wishes through your life, even if you can’t think of me as your Mother,” she wrote in their final communication, which I read aloud to Marshall. That last phrase haunts her even now, and perhaps she clings to life in hopes of reversing it.

  “Could you do one thing for me?” she asked me recently. “Please ask Marshall if he still thinks of me as his mother.” Of course I agreed.

  I’ve asked him several times, and each time he tells me he’s still working on the right answer. “I don’t know what to say” is all he can get out.

  Presume not that I am the thing I was,

  For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,

  That I have turn’d away my former self…

  —Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2

  CHAPTER 25

  AFTERMATH

  A painful memory resurrects one day when I receive a letter from Hal, the political zealot whom I crushed in high school with my sham Student Rights Party. Early in my journalism career I wrote about that episode in a magazine article, painting an unflattering picture of both myself and Hal and making the foolish mistake of using his actual first name. Now, years later, I break into a sweat as I finger the unopened letter, fearing what I will find inside: legal action, perhaps, or at least a well-deserved rebuke.

  In the first paragraph Hal reveals that he has indeed come across that old article. He assures me, though, that he takes no offense at what I wrote. My blood pressure returns to normal, and I sit down to continue reading.

  On six pages of lined paper, Hal recounts his life after high school. As expected, he plunged into political activism, truly believing he could change the world. Instead, he became disillusioned with politics. After a stint in the air force during the Vietnam War, he returned to a broken marriage. Fighting depression, he decided to read the Gospels, something he had never done.

  “Jesus came alive for me—it was then I met him personally, for the first time,” the letter says. I stop and let that sentence sink in. The Hal I knew had no interest in religious faith.

  The letter goes on to describe a major turnabout. Abandoning his political ambitions, Hal enrolled in seminary and earned a PhD from the Candler School of Theology. He settled on John Wesley as a model Christian leader who worked for social justice. I can hardly believe it—my high school nemesis is now a Wesley scholar.

  I weep as I read Hal’s letter. In a loving, humble way, he has offered forgiveness for my cruel high school prank. I follow up his invitation to visit in person, and we become fast friends.

  That experience puts to rest a burden of guilt I have carried for decades. Even as I’m savoring his act of grace, however, other conscience-nagging incidents flood into my mind. Some I’ve alluded to in my writings, but never have I directly confronted the individuals from my past whom I may have hurt or offended. I decide it’s time to honestly face the dark side of my past.

  * * *

  —

  I begin by traveling to Georgia and revisiting the high school where Hal and I sparred. The school now bears the name of Ronald McNair, an African American astronaut killed in the Challenger disaster. Before my graduation, no minority student had dared to integrate this school named for a Confederate general. Now, roaming the hallways, I see no white faces. The school’s transformation is complete.

  Next I turn to the churches of my childhood. I find that my mother’s spiritual home, Maranatha Tabernacle in Philadelphia, has closed, selling its buildings to a mixed-race congregation. Surrendering to such a church must have been a bitter pill to swallow for George H. Mundell, now dead, who had taught the racist Curse of Ham theory. In another shocking twist, I learn that Mundell’s son, who carried the torch of his father’s Victorious Christian Life message, was arrested for taking photos of nude boys in the shower of a boys’ home that he operated.

  I reach out to Paul Van Gorder, the former pastor of Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Georgia, who attracted a national following on radio and television. In a sharply worded letter, he once let me know that some of my words had hurt him deeply. I apologize for the pain I’ve caused and reassure him that I have many positive memories of Colonial Hills.

  A transplant from the North, Van Gorder did not have the native racism of Southern churchmen of that era. (“He can’t be a racist,” my mother insisted, “he’s from Pennsylvania!”) Nonetheless, the church under his leadership took a go-slow approach to integration, for a time banning Blacks from attending its church and school. Colonial Hills was also where I first heard the Curse of Ham theory. I discover that the white congregation has moved out to the suburbs, with the old building now occupied by an African American group called The Wings of Faith.

  A natural-born racist myself, I have much to atone for. At a conference I meet with Priscilla Evans Shirer, the daughter of megachurch pastor Tony Evans. He was the Carver Bible Institute student refused membership at Colonial Hills—before Priscilla’s birth. I tell her about a service of repentance held at the church before the building sold, and we swap stories of how much Atlanta has progressed. Priscilla survived with her faith intact and is flourishing as a Christian author and motivational speaker.

  Later, I go on a book tour with her brother Anthony Evans—a scout for the TV show The Voice—providing the music. He smiles as I remind him of those days. “Yeah, I remember, but it’s a distant memory,” he says. “I guess some things have changed for the better.”

  I schedule a lunch meeting with Dr. John McNeal Jr., whose daughter was barred from the kindergarten at Colonial Hills. Over several hours Dr. McNeal, a graying, soft-spoken man, recalls stories of growing up in the South before civil rights. During World War II he volunteered for the air force and left his hometown in rural Georgia to report for duty. At the bus station, a cashier sold him a ticket, looked him over, and said, “Well, it’s against the rules, but since you’re serving my country, I reckon you can use the front door rather than the Colored door in the back.”

  After his military service, McNeal applied to twenty evangelical seminaries. All but one rejected him on account of his race. He became the first African American professor at the historically black Carver Bible Institute—the school where my father taught—and went on to serve as its dean. Even so, when he tried to enroll his four-year-old daughter in the kindergarten at Colonial Hills Baptist, our church rejected her.

  Dr. McNeal reminisces with a gentle spirit. “I harbor no bitterness,” he says. “My mother taught me that God is no respecter of persons, so I didn’t grow up feeling inferior. I knew things were go
ing to change someday, and I just kept plugging away.”

  Listening to him, I feel remorse and shame, remembering the racist jokes I told as a child. I was a respecter of persons—but only white persons. The words get caught in my throat as I try to apologize. Dr. McNeal comforts me, rather than the other way around.

  I leave the restaurant newly aware of my complicity in injustice. After his term at Carver, Dr. McNeal founded a church in Atlanta, which he pastored for more than fifty years. I marvel that any African Americans would adopt the religion of the enslavers who once “owned” them and the white descendants who oppressed them. Yet who ended up showing more of the spirit of Jesus?

  * * *

  —

  As part of my amends tour, I also attend the final service of Faith Baptist, the defiantly fundamentalist church where I spent my high school years living in a trailer on the grounds. When the racial makeup of the neighborhood diversified, the church moved farther out from the city—not far enough, evidently, for Faith found itself once again surrounded by minorities.

  In a sweet irony, I discover that this church, too, is selling its building to an African American congregation.

  I slip into Faith’s concluding service, a reunion open to anyone who ever attended. Of the two hundred or so in the crowd, I recognize only a few. I’ve entered a time warp in which I find my teenage friends now paunchy, balding, and middle-aged.

  The pastor Howard Pyle, who has led the congregation for forty years, reiterates the church motto, “Contending for the Faith.” “I have fought the fight,” he says. “I have finished the course.” His posture stooped from age, he seems smaller than I remember, and his flaming red hair has turned white.

  During the lengthy service, people testify how they met God through this church. As I listen, I envision a procession of those not present, people such as my brother who turned away from God in part because of Faith Baptist. I want to stand and speak on their behalf, but opt against adding more negativity to a church’s closure.

  Later, I schedule a private meeting with Brother Pyle at a Starbucks. He has recently turned seventy-eight and the years have mellowed him. He has buried one wife, married another, and lost a granddaughter in a tragic accident. After we exchange pleasantries I ask, “I’m curious—how have you changed over the years?”

  “My basic beliefs haven’t really changed,” he replies, “but I’m sure I made some mistakes. I know you remember some of the church splits we went through.”

  I have arranged this meeting to apologize for some of my own behavior—especially at summer camp—and to learn whether I’ve wounded him in my writing. Instead, he ends up thanking me for a book I wrote, What’s So Amazing About Grace? “I wish I’d known more about the grace side of God,” he says, wistfully. “My mind goes back to your teen days with your brother and mother across the driveway in that trailer. I was a young preacher with so much need for growing in God’s grace. I’m afraid I showed the Ungrace that you now write about.”

  * * *

  —

  Reflecting on my visits, I begin to view church, like family, as a dysfunctional cluster of needy people. Life is difficult, and we seek ways to cope. I think about the members at Faith Baptist who faithfully showed up each Sunday to hear our pastor threaten them with hellfire, punishment for sins, and an imminent Armageddon. They came in part from fear, but also because, like a family, they needed each other in order to withstand the assaults of life. Working-class people, they didn’t sit at home evenings fretting over the fine points of theology; they worried about how to pay bills and feed the kids. When a family’s house burned down or a drunken husband locked out his wife or a widow couldn’t afford her groceries, where else could they turn but church?

  I think, too, of my own mother. Dozens of times over the years I’ve run into individuals who were deeply affected by her Bible teaching. In addition, several times she provided shelter for young women fleeing troubled families. Her public reputation stayed intact; only Marshall and I witnessed a different side.

  A nephew once sent me a quote that gives me perspective on the church: “An idea cannot be responsible for those who claim to believe in it.” I have spent my adult life sorting through the gospel message that I heard from those who claim to believe in it, searching for the “idea,” the life-giving Essence itself.

  * * *

  —

  On the same trip in which I attend the final service of Faith Baptist Church, I join a reunion of my Bible-college class. The campus is as spotless as ever, thanks to the students who diligently scrub floors and mow the lawn and pick up litter. Saplings from my college days have grown into mature shade trees, a visible token of passing time. I feel disoriented, stepping back on a campus where the dean interrogated me and the faculty debated expelling me. Now, thirty years later, I am treated as an honored guest.

  Before dawn I rise to jog on a familiar dirt trail along the river. The early sky is clear as water, barely tinged with gold, and I shiver in the morning cool. I tune my portable radio to the college radio station and find that, like many things at the school, music has undergone a drastic change. Albums that Bob Larson would have incited us to incinerate now play on the school’s station. I listen to a few samples of contemporary Christian music until a lovely solo voice comes on, singing a cappella an old song written by George Beverly Shea:

  I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold;

  I’d rather be His than have riches untold…

  I’d rather have Jesus than men’s applause;

  I’d rather be faithful to His dear cause;

  I’d rather have Jesus than world-wide fame,

  I’d rather be true to His holy name.

  A sense of calm descends on me as I run the trail. It strikes me that, although I often felt like a misfit on this campus, on this point we agree. I, too, would rather have Jesus. Everything else I experienced at the school pales in significance beside the fact that God met me there.

  At the reunion later that day, my classmates speak in phrases we learned as students: “God is giving me the victory…I can do all things through Christ…All things work together for good…I’m walking in triumph.” Yet they speak a different vocabulary when relating their lives after college. Several are suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, and others from clinical depression. One couple has recently committed their teenage daughter to a mental institution. I wince at the disconnect between these raw personal stories and the spiritual overlay applied to them.

  While on campus, I also visit with some of the professors and administrative staff. “Why do you defame us?” asks the former president. “Why concentrate on the negative? We give you the Alumnus of the Year award, and you turn around and lambaste us in your writing every chance you get.”

  Blindsided, I don’t reply right away. Finally, I say, “I don’t intend to demean anyone. I guess I’m still trying to sort through the mixed messages I got here.”

  He doesn’t back off. “I know all sorts of juicy stories about people in Christian ministry,” he says. “But I would never write about them because of the pain it would cause. I go by the Golden Rule: Do unto others as I would have them do to me.”

  Later, as his comment sinks in, I realize that is the very reason I probe my past, even though it may cause others pain. My brother’s question plagues me still: What is real, and what is fake? I know of no more real or honest book than the Bible, which hides none of its characters’ flaws. If I’ve distorted reality or misrepresented myself, I would hope someone would call me out.

  The Bible-college visit contrasts sharply with another meeting I arrange, with five of my brother’s old hippie friends in Atlanta. As they look back on their commune days, it’s clear that the 1960s remain the high-water mark of their lives. They talk with more enthusiasm about that era of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll than about marriages, children
, career, or anything else.

  “Where’s Jack?” I ask, referring to a friend who followed Marshall around like a puppy.

  “Sad story,” comes the reply. “Jack can’t be here. He sits with his head down on a table, rocking back and forth, virtually brain-dead. He’s worthless without speed. He still works as a phlebotomist, drawing blood at the hospital, and has to drug up before he goes to work. Jack and his wife both mainline through IVs they get at the hospital.”

  They tell me other, similar stories. Linda, the naïve nurse whom Marshall invited into his commune, fought against the downward slide. After becoming addicted to marijuana and Xanax, she sought treatment and has been sober for two decades. As I listen to my brother’s friends, my Bible-college classmates do not seem so unhealthy after all.

  * * *

  —

  After I’ve written these words and closed the cover of my laptop, my aged mother calls. “Thank you for sending the recent picture of your brother,” she says. “I notice his arm is bandaged. Is he hurt?” I explain that he badly scraped his arm in a fall and had to go to a hospital emergency room for treatment. Long pause. Then she asks, “Listen, if I write him a note and send it to you, would you forward it?”

  “Of course,” I say, conscious of the indignity of a mother having to ask one of her two sons if he would forward a message to the other. Then follows her plaintive question, “Do you think he would read it?”

  The amends tour has not yet ended with my family. After her call, I sit awhile in silence. What happened to tear apart our small family?

  I have read accounts on Fundamentalists Anonymous websites that tell of church upbringings much stricter than ours. I’ve read memoirs in which alcoholic fathers chase their children with baseball bats, not mere tennis rackets. Mothers lock them for days in a closet without food. Parents disown or banish their children because they determine to become artists rather than doctors or rabbis.