I Fired God

by Jocelyn Zichterman

  No one could compete with a life-altering accident on the scale of Jeremy’s, though. As a result, our family’s name was dropped in IFB sermons all across the country. Suddenly, my father found himself catapulted to the level of a mature spiritual leader, and he was smug enough to burst. This was his moment of glory. Finally, after having two sons kicked out of school for theft and a daughter who had disgraced him with her lewd behavior, he had become exalted as an icon of godly fortitude. He used it for all it was worth, preaching about my brother’s accident for the next decade in IFB churches around the country. He manipulated people by playing on their sympathies, spinning a tale of biblical proportions and likening himself to Abraham, a hero and patriarch who had laid his son on the altar before God. As Abraham laid up Isaac, so, Bart Janz claimed, he had laid up his son Jeremy and God gave him back—just as God had given Isaac back to Abraham. The only part that didn’t quite mesh with the biblical analogy was the fact that Isaac didn’t need a feeding tube, and poor Jeremy did.

  For months we maintained a bedside vigil, but Jeremy improved very little. Eventually he was transferred to a long-term rehabilitation facility specializing in traumatic brain injuries. His fiancée, Bonnie, moved into our home, planning to stay with us for the next year to be nearby and help with his recovery. We knew so little about brain damage that we still believed he might suddenly snap out of his comalike state and life as we once knew it would resume.

  I made arrangements to transfer to Bob Jones University to be near Joseph, who was a graduate student in his seventh year (including undergraduate studies) working toward his master’s degree in counseling. I was looking forward to starting afresh and trading the merciless Wisconsin winters for South Carolina’s gentler weather. As the fall semester approached, Joseph called nearly every night to talk about BJU and how wonderful our time together would be. He described all his friends and talked about nights in town bowling and eating out. It all sounded free and adventurous. Everyone in the cult considered BJU the equivalent of an Ivy League university, only better. “Dr.” Bob Jones Jr. and “Dr.” Bob Jones III furthered the notion, likening their school to Harvard and Yale. I was getting ready to play in the big leagues, one of several thousand elite students rather than one of a few hundred frozen souls up at Northland.

  Blindsided

  August rolled around and I packed my bags. The day before I was supposed to leave for school, my father called the entire family into the dining room. We had no idea what the meeting was about, but from his grim expression, we all assumed he was about to give us an update on Jeremy’s condition. To my astonishment, he launched into a vitriolic tirade directed at me. “Ever since you came home from Northland, you’ve had a holier-than-thou attitude, leaving the room when scenes in movies bother you and acting high and mighty,” he ranted.

  I was flabbergasted. After a year of Bible college, I had fully embraced the strict IFB canon. Northland taught us to quietly and humbly remove ourselves from the situation whenever someone committed a sin in our presence. But my father had misread my actions as arrogance. Perhaps because of Jeremy’s condition, he had recently gone into a sort of IFB rendition of midlife crisis, throwing all the rules out the window and swearing, watching pornographic scenes in movies, even listening to rock music in his pickup truck, though he still forbade us from following suit. I was reacting to his behavior the way Northland had told me to, but as far as my father was concerned, I would never get it right.

  Next, he attacked my dream of doing missionary fieldwork in India. “You’ve got some crazy idea that you’re gonna be a one-man-show on the mission field,” he yelled. “You’re not even grateful for what you have here at home. It’s an idea built on pride and nothing more.”

  His speech sent me reeling. All my life, my parents had berated me for “caring too much for the things of this world.” Now, envisioning a life of solitude and poverty was wrong?

  “If you think you can come into this house as some highbrow, self-righteous prick, you’ve got another thing coming, girl!” he screamed, his face crimson and the veins on his neck bulging. “I’ve seen nothing in you but a bad attitude from the moment you arrived home from Northland! Well, let me tell you something…”

  By this time he was banging his fist on the table and shaking his finger in my face. Spit hit me in each eye, but I didn’t dare flinch or betray emotion. If I sighed, trembled, or glanced away, I knew he would reach for the rod. “For this reason, you will not be leaving tomorrow to go to BJU. You will be staying home and getting a job and giving your paycheck to your mother and me. In all my years, I have never seen you respond correctly—not even once! This is your final test! Do you understand me?”

  I mustered a whisper. “Yes sir.”

  “Now go to your room!”

  I skirted the back side of the table, afraid he would lunge at me. Alone in my room, I waited for him to burst through the door armed for a beating, but he stayed downstairs. Gradually, my breath began to slow down. I felt lucky to have escaped his wrath without shedding blood, but I was very confused. I didn’t understand that nothing would have pleased him when it came to my behavior. It wasn’t about my being holy or holier-than-thou. It was about maintaining power and control over me.

  I called Joseph that night and sobbed into the phone that I wasn’t coming to school.

  “But you have all your boxes packed, don’t you?” he asked in confused exasperation. “Aren’t you supposed to fly out tomorrow?”

  I repeated what my father had said, confiding that I was frustrated too because I’d been trying so hard to do right and be the antithesis of my high school self. After talking to Joseph I resolved to relinquish any will of my own for the semester. I would work even harder at stifling my outgoing personality with a serious demeanor and a contrite spirit. I took a job as a day care worker and gave every penny I earned to my father, just as he had demanded. At night I worked dutifully to make sure every piece of laundry was ironed, folded, and put away.

  Despite my efforts, my father’s bouts of rage worsened. He tried to keep it in check because of Jeremy’s fiancée’s presence, but he was a ticking time bomb, ready to explode at any second.

  The Unhappiest Christmas

  Finally, the holiday season came and my parents let me go to Wisconsin to visit Jason at Northland, then fly home with him for Christmas break in 1994. I welcomed the chance to get away. I visited all my old friends and had a great time. On the flight home, Jason and I were both intrigued by United’s new in-seat phones. He decided to use one for fun to find out what type of reception we would get so high in the air. Jason had a job and his own credit card by this time, so he swiped it through and punched in our home number. Meagan answered, wailing hysterically. She told Jason my father had just hit her across the face and was headed to the hospital to see Jeremy. “He’s losing his mind,” she sobbed. “I’m afraid he’ll do something to hurt him.”

  White-faced and shaking, Jason hung up and called the hospital from the plane. He managed to reach Melissa and Bonnie, who had been keeping a bedside vigil. They said Meagan had called them too. They were hurriedly putting on their coats, anxious to get out before Bart stormed in in a murderous rage. Both girls were panic-stricken and fighting back tears. Jason did his best to calm them down. “We land in an hour,” he said. “We’ll be there for you as soon as we can.” They told him they would drive to a Dairy Queen nearby and hide out there until we came to get them.

  The second the plane touched down, Jason and I bolted out of our seats, grabbed our bags, and sprinted through the concourse. We found my mother working at the airport, unaware of the drama at home. She gave us the keys to her convertible and told us to come back later to pick her up.

  We raced to the Dairy Queen to get Melissa and Bonnie, then headed home so they could throw a few essentials in a bag while Jason called a hotel to book rooms. We were all too afraid to spend the night in the house. My mother got a ride home from a colleague, and when she walked in
she found Jason feverishly pacing the floor while he waited for us. “I think he’s going to come home with a gun and kill us all,” he told her. “Don’t you realize he’s getting more and more irrational? This is a dangerous situation we’re in.” He pleaded with her, but she wouldn’t come to the hotel with us.

  The next day, my father climbed into his pickup truck and drove away, leaving behind a nine-page handwritten letter. In it, he confessed that he had been hearing voices in his head. Some told him to do evil. Others urged him to do good. “I’m in a battle with God and Satan and I’m not sure who is going to win out,” he wrote. “I’m not sure I’ll be coming home.”

  My mother spent the days that followed trying tirelessly to track his location, but with no success. Christmas Eve arrived, and we were in no mood to celebrate.

  “Let’s just get this over with,” Jason finally said with a sigh. We never received many presents, but by this time the IFB leaders permitted Christmas trees so we had one in the living room. My father had placed packages for all the girls under it. We opened them and were astonished to discover that each one contained a Dooney & Bourke purse, day planner, wallet, and key chain.

  He had done something unheard of; he had spent hundreds of dollars on us. But looking around the room in bewilderment, I saw that no one was smiling. Suddenly, Bonnie burst into tears and ran upstairs. I hurried up behind her to console her. I’ll never forget her words.

  “I lived in a house full of abuse, Jocelyn,” she said, snatching clothes out of drawers and haphazardly stuffing them into her bag. “But this is insane. Jeremy told me all about it, but you never believe it until you see it. There’s something very dark here. I don’t think I can stay another day. How have you lived in this for so long?”

  I had no answer for her.

  A short time later, my mother discovered some credit card activity that placed my father at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and she flew out the next day to find him. When she brought him home, he was uncharacteristically docile.

  Still, he was lucid enough to rebuke Bonnie for stepping out of God’s will when she left a few days after his return. She ignored him and left for good, though she wrote me a letter a year later apologizing profusely and lamenting the fact that she had strayed from God’s will by refusing to stay in a terrifying, abusive situation where her life was almost certainly in danger. I keep her letter to this day as a reminder of the incredible brainwashing the IFB ideology was capable of and the power it gave the cult over us.

  To Melissa, who was still living at home, the reformed version of my father was more frightening than the constant seething she was used to. She remembers the air being heavy with a sort of still, silent horror, like the calm before a storm. The ominous atmosphere escaped me, though. I felt only relief because his personality shift, however temporary, meant I would make it to BJU for the start of the second semester.

  Life at BJU

  After a year at tiny Northland Baptist Bible College, I envisioned Bob Jones University as an exciting and dangerous place. I saw myself like Rapunzel, falling out of her tower onto the long green grass of the outside world, overcome with wonder at her newfound freedom.

  When I arrived on campus in early 1995, however, I found myself in a sea of female college students wearing ankle-length khaki skirts and colored polo shirts just like the ones I’d encountered in every other school and camp I had ever attended. It was a world of draconian rules and restrictions, just like the ones I’d left in Colorado and Wisconsin. There were BJU monitors lurking everywhere, eager to hand out demerits for simple infractions like a skirt with a slit a half inch above the knee.

  No sooner did I reach campus than I was introduced to my Assistant Prayer Captain, who doubled as my Room Leader. Then I met my Prayer Captain, who led the hall meetings in my dorm. Next, I shook hands with the Dorm Counselor, who held a one-on-one meeting with every new student. After that, I went to my first hall meeting, where I met my Dorm Supervisor, and she introduced me to the Dean of Women. By the time I was through meeting all the females who would be in charge of me, I felt dizzy.

  I made my first tuition payment, attended my student orientations, and registered for my classes, and then I received my student handbook. I was expected to sign it and return it within days, acknowledging that I had read every rule and agreed to abide by them all. In retrospect, it seems manipulative to distribute the handbook only after students had paid their fees and settled in, when it would be too late to decide you couldn’t live with some aspect of the code.

  The Anointed Handbook

  Then again, at BJU the student handbook was treated as a holy book almost on the level of the Bible. No one questioned commands set by the Jones family itself. In fact, quotes by “Dr.” Bob Jones Sr. were written on plaques in the classrooms to reinforce our reverence for the school’s founder. His classic one (that so bothered Billy Graham it figured into his decision to leave the school) was “No Griping Tolerated.” To my knowledge, it was plastered on the back of every dorm room door. It meant, for all intents and purposes, no dissent, questioning, doubt, or disagreement. It was the same message from our childhood Sunday school classes, repackaged: Obey right away, without asking why, without a sigh—just as if you’re five years old.

  Students raised in lenient IFB homes were often surprised to find themselves living under rules more stringent than they had when they were toddlers. We had mandatory prayer meetings at 10:30 P.M. followed by lights-out at 11 P.M. Talking after lights-out was punishable by demerits and no one could get out of bed (except to use the bathroom) before 5:30 A.M. and everyone had to be up, with their feet on the floor, by 7 A.M. (Monday through Friday), even if you didn’t have a class that morning.

  Female students were banned from wearing skirts above the knee and shirts with necklines lower than four fingers below the collarbone. Even wearing clothing from Hollister and Ambercrombie & Fitch was specifically and strictly banned. Forgetting to take out the trash in your room in the morning, walking on the grass, arriving late for class or chapel, or missing either one resulted in demerits. Our personal items were all inspected to ensure that we weren’t concealing contraband such as unacceptable clothing, DVDs, romance novels, worldly magazines, Christian Contemporary Music, or, worst of all, rock and roll. The Internet wasn’t a factor when I was at BJU, but now every student’s laptop can be checked for inappropriate material, and the administration tells students that faculty and staff have every right to monitor their e-mails, cell phones, Facebook accounts, and any Web site they view. We were all required to report infractions we witnessed by our fellow students, just in case the administration missed one. Every student living in a dorm had to sign out to leave the campus and we always had to get written permission from a dorm leader if we went anywhere that wasn’t a public place (e.g., the mall, restaurants, park), or if we would be out past 7 P.M.

  Dating at BJU

  Though virtually every girl on campus was working toward her “Mrs. Degree,” dating opportunities were limited and fraught with risks for demerits. If a boy was interested in a girl, he could invite her to meet him in the Dating Parlor, a large room filled with sofas where courting couples could sit and talk while a parlor monitor prowled around making sure they didn’t sit too close or touch. The rumor circulated around campus that throw pillows were removed from the couches, because the parlor monitors caught so many male students masturbating, trying to escape detection by using the pillows as their shields.

  I was excited when Joseph asked me to meet him in the Dating Parlor for the first time. I could always look forward to good conversation with him. We selected a couch and settled in. Trying to get more comfortable, I pulled my feet up slightly under my long, full skirt and turned to face him. I was shocked when a parlor monitor swooped in and gave me a stern reprimand and a “write-up” (a precursor to a demerit, given to a newcomer still learning the rules) because my feet weren’t planted firmly on the floor. That was my first and last visit to BJU’s D
ating Parlor. I was determined to keep a squeaky clean record, so after that Joseph and I met at one of the tables in the snack shop instead.

  We weren’t allowed to see movies at theaters in town, but courting couples could attend campus movie nights that showed films chaste enough to pass muster with BJU’s censors. Despite the IFB’s loathing for many Disney productions, Beauty and the Beast was a perpetual favorite, and Joseph and I decided to go when it was the featured film for university movie night. We were surprised when, partway through the movie, the lights and sound shut down. We had seen the movie at home during summer break, and we soon realized they were blocking us from seeing and hearing the animated candlestick and feather duster kissing behind a curtain. An embarrassed chuckle rippled through the room, as the same realization dawned on our fellow moviegoers. After that night, students started a trend of walking up to one another on campus and saying, “Oo la la, monsieur,” the line in the movie that was censored by university personnel. Later Joseph and I joked that BJU was so extreme that it wasn’t just anti-homosexuality, it was also anti-“inanimasexuality”—opposed to sexual relationships between inanimate objects. It was another reminder of the school’s extremism and its tendency to treat students like toddlers.

  Dating couples gave each other a wide berth, knowing they could get anything from five demerits for a small offense up to seventy-five for egregious infractions like holding hands. In fact, a couple seen doing something so scandalous would be “socialed,” meaning they were forbidden from speaking to anyone of the opposite gender for the rest of the semester. Their only form of communication would be through on-campus mail and the phone.