Before telling my dad about my conversion to Christianity, I decided to warm up on my mom. I knew she’d be upset and I knew she’d yell but she never yelled as loud as my dad. Nobody yelled as loud as my dad and nobody was scarier than my dad. Mom was devastated. She did everything she could to talk me out of my decision. I tried to explain that I had encountered God in a mystical way. But any attempts to help Mom understand fell upon deaf ears. For her, it was emotional and for her, it was cultural. She exhibited a very common view of religion: Religion, to most people, is all about faith and all about choice. I was a Jew and supposedly I should choose to remain a Jew. It was just that simple. In my Mom’s own words, “If God wanted you to be a Christian you would have been born one, not Born Again.”
My brother, Paul (two years younger) took it better. He was open and receptive. But not long after my transformation, he embarked upon a six-month trip to Israel. Although Paul had planned to work on a Kibbutz, he ended up (through a comedy of errors) at a rabbinical school. When Paul returned home, he was no longer a liberal Jew, but an Orthodox Jew. His conversion came packaged with a new hostility toward my “traitorous decision.” Still, neither Paul nor my Mom had any desire to disown me. My dad would feel differently and I knew it.
I was now attending Bible Studies taught by Roger, the fellow who shared the gospel with me that first sunny afternoon at San Jose City College. He, in turn, introduced me to an older campus minister named Bob Berger. Bob was in his forties and in those days I thought a man in his forties was really old. Since I’m now in my fifties I realize how mistaken I was about forty. Heck, now I even believe that sixty is young. But at that time, Bob Berger became a kind of father figure to me and I asked his advice on what to do about my real dad. I knew I needed to tell Dad what had happened. I just didn’t know how to go about it. Bob gave me some excellent advice. “There’s a tremendous change that has come over you since the Holy Spirit entered your life. And it’s been a change for the better. Just wait. Your dad will soon approach you and tell you that he’s noticed this change. He will ask you what has happened. That’s when you tell him.”
Well, it didn’t work exactly that way. Whenever I went to church or Bible Studies, Dad simply assumed I was hanging out with my friends. One day somebody from the church called my house and left him a message, “Please tell Bob we’ll be a little late picking him up for church today.” They knew they weren’t supposed to call my house but somebody had goofed.
My dad put down the phone, ending a call I never knew about. It took him some time to admit to himself what must obviously be going on. Finally he knocked on the door of my room and said he wanted to speak with me. “There’s something I need to ask you but I’m afraid you may not want to talk about it. Somebody called from a church to say they’d be late in picking you up. Now I’m only going to question you once and I want an honest answer. Have you been hanging around with the Jesus Freaks?”
Three months ago, I had been calling them “Jesus Freaks” myself. But now, those were fateful words, words which forever ended my relationship with my dad.
“You don’t even have to answer me,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes.” Dad ran into his room sobbing at the top of his lungs and crying out. “You’re dead, Robert! You’re dead!”
I kept knocking on his door, offering to talk, begging him to let me explain. But we would never talk again.
When my mother returned home from work she pretended not to have known what had been going on with me for the past three months. She acted shocked and surprised. She asked me (in front of my dad) questions about why I had done this dreadful thing. She put on an Oscar caliber performance. When she finally had a moment alone with me she said that if I ever told Dad that she had known about all this before him, she’d disown me too. On the other hand, I also saw Mom stand up to my dad for the first time in her life shouting even louder than he. “You are not going to kick our son out of the house! Do you hear me? This was our fault! When he was growing up, he needed God! We never gave him God!”
My dad caved in and agreed to let me stay but it only made matters worse. As far as he was concerned I was no longer his son. He was serious when he said I was dead.
My first few months of being a Christian had been wonderful up to now. I was so happy I would find myself singing in the car while driving. I would even give others the right of way, cheerfully. I worried about nothing. Life was exciting. It had never been so incredible. I had a heavenly Father who created me for His own loving reason, who had watched over me my entire life and recently introduced Himself to me. It was the most fantastic feeling in the world and it was going to last forever.
Then the rug was pulled out from under my feet. The very best time in my life was followed by the very worst time in my life. The next three months of being a Christian were as wretched as one could imagine. My dad and I lived under the same roof but he never spoke a word to me. If I entered the living room he got up and walked out.
Dad sold real estate and in time he had to take an extended trip to Texas. He was going to be gone for (you guessed it) three months. This was evidently meant to be the season of the three-month intervals. When he left, it was sad but peaceful. I wrote him a letter before he headed for the airport and placed it in his luggage, explaining why I became a Christian, trying to make him understand that it was not done out of any disrespect for him or for the way he had raised me. Dad never answered the letter but my mom took me aside the day he left. “I want you to know that even though I disapprove of the choice you made, I, on my own, would never have made you leave home. But I just can’t take this tension between you and your father any more. He’ll be in Texas for three months and then he returns. This means you have three months to find another place to live.”
That same night, I walked out to my backyard and looked up at the stars, “God,” I said. “What do I do? Where do I go?”
Once again, God didn’t even wait a full twenty-four hours to answer my cry. The very next day, at church on a Sunday Morning, I was approached by Charlene, one of the full time church staff. Charlene was the Christian Education Director. Among other duties, she was organizing a summer day camp for Elementary School age kids. For this day camp, they needed twenty sum full time counselors to work the entire summer, teaching classes on Bible, Drama, Crafts etc. The activates would also involve field trips to amusement parks, camping swimming, singing tacky little camp songs, you name it. I had applied for that job because I knew I would need to soon start paying my own way through college and, well what can I say? Working with kids sounded better than flipping hamburgers at McDonalds. So I had applied for this job, quite some time ago. I had never heard back from anyone. I assumed I was turned down. I’d long since given up.
Charlene handed me an envelope with a letter inside. “We sent this out to you a long time ago. For some reason it was returned to us.”
Inside, was my letter of acceptance for the First Baptist Church Day Camp of 1974.
God provided similar jobs throughout my college years. Prior to becoming a Christian I had been rather spoiled. No, our family was not rich but we got by with reasonable comfort and money was something I never really had to worry much about. Suddenly I was out in the world, working my way through school, paying my own bills, doing my own laundry and cooking my own meals. Of course, by cooking, I mean things like: “Hmm. It says, ‘After 25 minutes, pull back foil to expose Tater Tots.’”
God took great care of me during that turbulant and melancholy time of life. At first, I didn’t understand why I was paying such a price for my decision. In time, I found that counting the cost was par for the course.
Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.
I Peter 5:12-13
And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.
1 Peter 5:10
But my conversion not only affected my relationship with my family, it also affected my relationship with other Jews. The adventure had only begun.
All Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE New International Version NIV Copyright 1973, 1979, 1984 by International Bible Society Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.Note: On Dec, 3, 2007, The 700 Club broadcast a dramatic reenactment of this story. It was somewhat fictionalized but true to the spirit of what happened and the essential details of the incident.
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