Friday, November 21st, 2008

Meeting of the minds

I used to hate my father for becoming a pastor, but now I admire him

By Chris Bell

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

Everyone always says I look exactly like my father. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be glad to have a full head of hair when I hit my 60s, especially because all the other men in the Bell family lost theirs decades ago. Still, I always used to take comparisons to my father as insults, because for a long time I couldn’t stand him.

I was in second grade when my father decided to quit his full-time job and follow a call to the ministry. I would like to say I was supportive of his decision to follow the path that was best for him, but at the time I was anything but. I was a selfish little second grader who had never wanted for anything, and now I was being forced to leave behind the spoiled city-boy lifestyle that I knew to follow my dad into uncharted territory.

During a period of four years, we moved three times, going from Texas to Kentucky to Indiana, and finally to Kansas. Every time we moved, I had to leave behind all the friends I’d made and start over, and even though I’d come to appreciate what my father was doing, that selfish little kid inside me still resented him for it.

Upon reaching Kansas, we finally settled down. We lived in Kinsley, a little town in western Kansas that’s about as far from the rest of the world as you can get. And so that little town became my world from sixth grade all the way through high school. We hadn’t been there long when my mother insisted that we stay until I finished high school, despite the fact that the United Methodists like to move their pastors around every two years or so. Thankfully, the members of the Kinsley United Methodist Church liked my dad enough to keep him around until I graduated high school.

Church became another wedge between my father and me. As a pastor, his entire life was wrapped up in the church, and I remember plenty of family dinners and other plans that were scrapped because of some church committee meeting. Mom tried to be understanding, but many times she couldn’t hide her irritation. Dad was always apologetic, but that never seemed to bring about any changes in scheduling.

It didn’t help that both of my parents complained about these constant committee meetings. I became a cynic about all matters relating to the church. I’d been raised to see the church as a house of God, existing only to praise his name and do his works. Instead, I saw a bureaucratic monster, driven by a few old idiots who were so caught up in “tradition” that they couldn’t be made to understand reason. I wanted nothing to do with the church after that, but my parents still forced me to attend all the way through high school. I hated the church for being everything it wasn’t supposed to be, and I despised the idea that my father was wrapped up in all of it.

Throughout middle school and high school, I spent as little time with my father as I could. We had very different interests, so it wasn’t that difficult. He loved to go out and play golf, while I preferred to sit at home and play Half-Life or Final Fantasy. He enjoyed watching sports, attending almost every high school football or basketball game. I wanted to be out with my friends, cruising around town with the car stereo blaring The Offspring or Linkin Park at dangerous, and most likely illegal, levels.

The only passion that we shared was our love of music, but our tastes in music were completely opposite. Well, my father didn’t like most of the music I listened to, and I wouldn’t admit to liking all the classic rock he did. And even then, our approach to music was completely different. He loved to perform in front of people, often playing guitar and singing at church. I preferred to lock myself up in my room when no one was home and sing along with my stereo, completely avoiding the public eye. I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of singing in front of other people, and I was envious of my father because he could do it without a second thought.

While in high school, I started talking to my father. The church was a block away from the school and was almost always stocked with pop, so I would walk or drive over after school. I didn’t go often, as I typically avoided spending time with my father, but the free pop forced my hand. Usually, we just played foosball and talked about school and work, but eventually I started asking questions about things I would hear on the news or at school. It started with the creationism vs. evolution debate, which I thought was ridiculous. I’d always believed that the two ideas complemented each other, but people on both sides of the issue were too stubborn to accept it. Of course, with his involvement in the church, I expected my dad to take the stereotypical conservative Christian standpoint on the side of creationism. In all honesty, I didn’t care about the issue. I was just looking to prove my dad wrong.

The conversation was awkward for me at first, as my conversations with my father were usually confined to the general afternoon banter of “How was your day?” I remember arguing my point so forcefully that I was almost daring him to contradict me. Instead, my dad just leaned back in his chair and explained calmly to me that he agreed, and that he thought the people making such a huge fuss about the issue were giving Christians a bad image. I almost tried to argue with him, because I’d been so sure he would disagree with me.

I continue to have these little debates with my dad. We don’t see eye to eye on every issue, but he is always willing to listen and discuss my point of view, even when he completely disagrees with it. We may be opposites in many respects, but I discovered that my dad is just like me in more ways than I’d ever realized. We think alike. We have a very logical way of looking at things and we deal with them in a sequential manner, but all of our decisions are tempered by emotion. And today, the one thing that made me resent him for so long is the reason I look up to him the most: He followed the path that was right for him.

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