God has been around for a long time, more than 13.73 billion years some would say. For eons, he has controlled the all life in the cosmos, which is just what some would say.
Christianity has been around for a long time. About 2,000 years some would say. For slightly less time than that, it has been the dominant religion on Earth, shaping the course of human history and development for better some would say, and for worse, others would say.
Five Star Bible Camp in Fairbury has been around for 12 years. A long time some would say. Not long enough others would say. The product of a dream that a man named Ivan Zimmerman had, the annual camp is and always has been 100 percent free and open to all pre-K through 12th grade youth.
I've been around for 19 years. Not long some would say. Long enough I would say. I've been involved with Five Star Bible Camp for all 12 of its years, since I was an 8-year-old camper there in its inaugural year. It has been as much a part of my life as a family member, teacher or friend.
At the conclusion of my high school years, I was a devoted camper at Five Star. A good Christian boy, unquestioning and unfaltering in my faith. During the final day of last year's camp, Director Karen Dux came to me and asked if I would be back again next year. "I wouldn't think of being anywhere else," I told her, and at the time, I wouldn't have.
Fast-forward to now. The summer after my freshman year at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln finds me a very different person. I have become a budding journalist. I have learned to question. No longer do I blindly follow the facets of what I previously thought was a fool-proof faith. I seek real answers and have real concerns.
I was offered a job at Homer's Music and Gifts in mid-June. I was ecstatic. I had just quit a job and I needed another one, and I figured that there could be no cooler job to fill the void.
"You'll have to start the week of July 13-19," said Charlie Burton, manager of Lincoln's last remaining Homer's location.
"Ooh, that's going to be a problem," I said. "I'm already signed up to be a counselor at a camp back in my hometown."
"Oh, well I really need someone to come in that week to help with inventory," Burton said. "I'll have to give it to someone else."
OK, God. What gives? Are you testing me? I'm in the midst of doubting whether you actually exist, and you throw this at me? This year's camp is not going to go as well as I remember.
Day one of camp. I throw a sleeping bag, a suitcase and a radio on the floor of the decrepit and very basic cabin. The campers I'm supposed to counsel file in during the next hour and we all head off to the camp's welcoming ceremony, hosted by speaker Keith Kaster.
Keith Kaster is a man who I have long respected. He has been the main speaker/evangelizer/teacher at Five Star for the last 10 years. He's not an ordained minister, though his father was. He's not a fire and brimstone evangelizer. He doesn't ram Christianity down people's throats. He doesn't spew "Bible-based" hate. He just takes passages from the Bible and interprets them in a way that young people can understand.
Or so I thought.
As camp wore on and I listened to Keith preach, I began to question his words and realize things about him that I had never noticed before. He never questioned the Bible's validity and spoke everything like it was absolute truth. He would cross reference passages from the Old and New Testaments and show the campers how they complemented and backed up each other, but as anyone who has a consummate understanding of the Bible knows, the Old and New Testaments vary wildly and contradict themselves in many ways as a whole.
I have a consummate understanding of the Bible. From grades 1-6, I was enrolled in a program called AWANA, a Christian children's organization that makes kids memorize the entire Bible by the time they are finished with it. I memorized the entire Bible.
I always just assumed that the whole book was the true, untarnished word of God, exactly as he spoke it to the men who wrote it.
Then I became a journalist.
I began researching passages from Testaments Old and New. There was fierce contradiction in many of the teachings of Jesus in the New and the teachings of the prophets, kings and judges of the Old. There were even differences in the New Testaments between the latter Letters of the disciples and the Gospels of Jesus.
Many argue otherwise, saying that the Old Testament is only a book of history while the New is the book to be followed. Many say that only the Gospels should be taken as God-breathed. Many more say that the entire Bible is unquestionable truth. Keith preaches the latter, until you talk to him in private.
The campfire sessions at Five Star are emotional events. The air is still, faces are lit only by the primitive light of a wood fire, soft songs fill the air and Keith speaks in tones to complement it all. After every campfire, Keith offers to pray for anyone who needs a prayer, and usually more than three quarters of the campers leave their seats in tears to go cry on his shoulder and hear his prayers.
Emotion works for evangelists. It is enormously difficult for anyone to bring anyone else to Christianity on academic fact alone, due to the fact that there is so little academic fact tied to Christianity. I should know, I used to go door to door. If you can make someone cry, or convince them that they will be cursed to a life of sadness and burn forever in Hell upon death, then they will usually turn to Christianity. Truth be told, it probably doesn't matter which religion came to their door; if you can play with people's emotions, they will convert to whatever religion you are laying on them.
I was not moved by Keith's emotional sermons. As scores of others around me, counselors and directors included, went to Keith in tears to renew their faiths, I sat back. On the final night of the first half of camp, after everyone was finished crying, I went to talk to Keith when he was alone.
"Hey Keith," I said. "Do you mind if I have a more academic conversation with you?"
"Absolutely man," Keith said.
I laid a question on him about something that always ate at me, how Christianity has long been used as a platform to spew hate and intolerance.
"Well, you see," Keith began. "All of that kind of stuff comes from 'religion,' not the true word of God."
"But doesn't the religion come from the 'true word of God?'" I asked.
"Yes," Keith said. "But you have to understand that religion is man's invention. It's controlled by man. The people in charge of religions are only trying to grab power."
"Didn't Christ found his religion, though?" I asked.
"Yes, but it has been misinterpreted by man for so long now that much of it is purely falsified," Keith said.
"How can we be sure that the Bible, in any of its many re-translations or interpretations hasn't been manipulated to fit the will of man then?"
We went back and forth in a similar fashion for about two hours, and all I got out of Keith was that it just boils down to faith. You just have to believe. No factual justification. No academic support. No reality, just faith.
I learned that Keith did in fact harbor a certain amount of Bible-based hate for homosexuals. I learned that he was the kind of person who would always say that he was right and everyone else was wrong. I learned that he would do all of this on a whim of "faith."
I still don't know how I feel about Christianity. I have not yet received any facts about it, not even from a person I was certain would be able to answer my questions and restore my unshakable belief.
Is there or can there ever be a real justification for Christianity? What about the other religions? They're all as certain they're the absolute truth as Christianity is. Is there absolute truth? Does it lie in the Bible? Is there ever a way that we can know for sure, or are we doomed to gamble with our souls?
I should have just taken that job at Homer's.
CASEYWELSCH@DAILYNEBRASKAN.COM
Why do you drink it till you're blind?
And if you swear that there's no truth and who cares
How come you say it like you're right?
Why are you scared to dream of God
When it's salvation that you want?
--Bright Eyes