As a young child, before the age of eight, I was a preacher’s kid among the more conservative cousins of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Independent Christian Church. My dad had gone through seminary and was the full-time pastor at a small congregation in Chillicothe, Illinois. As I’ve mentioned before, the church itself was located in the basement of the parsonage. So we literally lived on top of the church.

So much of my early childhood is formed by the rhythms of congregational life. Christmas and Easter, obviously. But also the more mundane parts of church life—potlucks, congregational camping trips in the spring, and Vacation Bible School in the summer.

One of the significant events every year in our small congregation was the big revival, complete with a canvas tent, thick, scratchy jute rope, and wooden stakes that looked like they came off the set of Dracula. Somebody—I don’t remember who—would come in and put up this colossal circus tent in the field, on the other side of the gravel parking lot bounded by treated railroad ties, just under my bedroom window.

The week-long revival, which I always found exciting—lots of people and activity. And I was the scion of the local preacher. Heck, I was the only kid in my grade school who hosted their very own Jesus carnival every year.

One of the parts I liked best was that we’d have company. The visiting preacher would stay with us. Usually, these were friends of my father who’d gone to seminary with him. And they all seemed so interesting and fun. I remember my dad laughing a lot, which was noticeable since my dad didn’t laugh very much around us (not, I think, because he was unhappy with his family, but because I suppose he didn’t find us all that funny). But when those guys would show up (because it was always “guys”), my dad became just a regular dude in his late twenties—all the reminiscing and jokes. I loved that time as much because of the life it brought to my dad’s eyes as for the novelty it brought to my rather predictable small-town life.

Which is why I was confused when these same otherwise fun-loving young fellas, who at supper had just told goofy jokes and laughed and carried on, would then go outside to the revival, stand up under the strands of hanging lightbulbs strung between the tent poles, and start howling about how we were going to hell if we didn’t hurry up and get baptized. The whole thing was so strange to my young mind. These guys, whose company I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the time, suddenly sounded like raging lunatics to me, who’d recently been bitten by a rabid bat.

I didn’t get it. The rest of the year, I heard about God’s love for us all, the matchless grace that seeks us out and refuses to let us go, no matter who we were or what we’d done. But then, once a year, I was introduced to a different God, one who—it sounded like—would take a great deal of pleasure in watching me suffer and fail.

Why?

Because then this spiteful God would get to punish me for all eternity.

I was a kid whose parents didn’t scream. Once in a while, we’d do some stupid kid thing and get in trouble—but even when they were angry, it always seemed like my parents were in control. And that’s how my dad preached. I don’t remember him ever raising his voice and pounding the pulpit. Instead, his preaching tended to be much calmer and more persuasive. My dad liked to teach, and his sermons were the vehicle for his most extended lessons.

And it wasn’t that my dad didn’t believe in hell or God’s judgment. On the contrary, I think he didn’t trust the emotional frenzy whipped up by the revival preachers. He was a rational thinker, a good old-fashioned, logic-chopping Campbellite through and through.

So, I asked my dad about it one time after a particularly rousing revivalist homily about our inevitable one-way ticket to perdition: “Dad, why are they so angry?”

My dad said, “Well, they’re concerned. They want everybody to find the love of God.”

“They sure don’t sound like they care about love at all,” I said.

He cocked his head and raised his eyebrows as if to concede the point.

“But you don’t preach like that. How come?”

He said something that’s stuck with me: “You can’t force people to love God. Nobody ever fell in love because they got their arm twisted. If you manipulate people into following Jesus, then it’s not really Jesus they’re following because Jesus cares about healing people, not torturing them.”

“But if that’s true, why do you have these preachers at our church then?”

In retrospect, I realize that was a sharp question that would have been difficult to explain to a six-year-old. He stumbled through some answer, which apparently didn’t satisfy my curiosity. So he said, “Well, some people think something’s wrong with their faith, that God doesn’t love them if they don’t walk around feeling guilty all the time. These preachers just want to make sure as many people love God as possible.”

“They sure have a funny way of showing it.”