Part 2
When I got back on I-96 it didn’t take long to realize that I was going to get rained on if no one picked me up soon. There were building thunderheads to the west that were getting progressively more purple as the morning progressed. When this sort of thing happened before I typically ended up hanging out under a bridge till the storm would pass, providing I was fortunate enough to be near a bridge when the rain started. Otherwise I’d end up trudging onward with a steadily more wet and heavy backpack.
The sun was behind me, and I noticed it was starting to dim as the high cirrus wisps of the storms reached eastward to envelop it. The wind elsewhere was probably calm, but here on the freeway with trucks whipping past there was constant wind.
A passenger van rolled to a stop to give me a ride. I was slightly nervous when I noticed it held four guys, but they looked very clean cut and straight. My nervousness remained, it simply changed course. I got in and one of the guys seated closest to me launched right into a sermon on decadence and how secular humanism and sexual promiscuity was destroying America. Being poor was proof that one wasn’t living as God intended, and all you needed to do to get wealthy was to “get right with God” but ultimately it didn’t matter if your name wasn’t written in the Book Of Life, which was written by God at the dawn of time and contained the names of all those who were preordained to go to heaven. So if your name wasn’t in the book, you were basically screwed. Oh, and earthly authority must be obeyed because it was “set up by God.”
This joyride continued through the storm, all the way to Grand Rapids. Arguing, I quickly found, was futile. These were Calvin College students, on the way back from a retreat or something, and they clearly viewed their decision to pick me up as a way to win a filthy sinner over to the Way of God, never mind that if my name wasn’t in the Book Of Life I was still going to Hell no matter what I did anyway. I found myself fervently hoping lightning would strike the van, blowing us all to bits in some biblical manner. When I tried to tell them I was raised as a 7th Day Adventist and that according to what I was taught they were going to hell for worshipping on the wrong day they seemed offended.
For the rest of the trip I gritted my teeth and grunter negatives when asked questions about salvation, and the Rapture, and did I accept Jesus, etc etc etc. Blissfully, we arrived in Grand Rapids and I looked forward to bailing out of the van, maybe before it even came to a complete stop, but one of the guys grabbed my shirt and held me back.
They insisted on praying over me.
We were on the campus at Calvin College. I considered simply running away, but would they call security? I relented and they formed a circle around me and muttered about 5 minutes worth of drivel designed to call the Holy Spirit into me and make me forsake my evil ways. When they were done it was clear that they’d thought they’d been successful, as they looked at my with shining, hopeful eyes.
“Amen” I said, and this led them to take me to their dorm room for lunch. I finally managed to get away by claiming my mother would be worried about me (not true) and that I would certainly attend a Calvinist church this coming Sunday (also not true) and thanked them for the lunch and muttered a prayer with them, simply to get the hell away.
Leaving the Calvin College grounds it struck me how so much of Grand Rapids reminds me of the Republic of Gilead in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Church anyone?