Today is Easter Sunday. Some of you got up and went to a sunrise service. I used to like these. Being outside, in nature, helped connect theology to Earth. Of course, many Christians don’t care about Earth because they’re fixated on heaven.

I’m not a practicing Christian these days, whatever that means. When I was 21, I was naïve. I didn’t know any better. Thirty-five years ago, I simply accepted the false notion that “Christians aren’t perfect,” to excuse the abhorrent behavior I found inside “the fold.”

When you embrace something new, there is always a honeymoon period. Having been raised Catholic, I was attracted to the enthusiasm for scripture I found in many other believers during my initial Protestant foray. I loved the freedom that came from reading the Bible for myself, not having it spoon-fed to me by a priest.

For the Catholics I knew, Jesus wasn’t seen as a revolutionary or renewing figure in their brand of religion. That’s not to say that Catholics don’t believe in Jesus, just that salvation is a different process than “simply believe and be saved,” as I came to understand Christianity back in 1980.

My born-againism “lit a fire” in me, enough so that I left school at UMaine and walked away from my second love (Mary was my first), baseball. But, it doesn’t take long for this initial zeal to cool, or get squashed. Or, in my case, moved to another location. In this instance, it was Crown Point, Indiana, and Hyles-Anderson College.

My experiences at Hyles-Anderson have been documented here and here, as well in one of my essays in the previous book I put out, The Perfect Number: Essays & Stories Vol. 1. Things in the Hoosier State didn’t turn out as expected.

Indiana ended up being where our unit of three began and a special bond developed. As a young father and primary provider, it was hard to realize that the God I’d trucked nearly halfway across the country to follow and serve, wasn’t the same deity that the leaders at Hyles-Anderson College and First Baptist Church in Hammond worshiped. Actually, the true deity in that post-industrial region where I ended up being “shipwrecked” in—the object of worship for the fundamentalists I was now part of—was a man named Jack Hyles.

Like countless “preacher boys” and older men who ended up in Crown Point and Hammond, Hyles managed to dupe and betray them into believing that his sermons and other diatribes emanating from the pulpit at First Baptist in the early 1980s, as well as pulpits across the country, were coming from a man totally “sold-out” to God. Like so many charlatans and con men, he was convincing to a fault.

There are several places where you find a good portion of the real story about who Jack Hyles really was prior to his death in 2001. I remember finding out that he died a year afterwards, while searching for him online, and I cried. Why, I don’t know. He’d caused me a great deal of pain and second-guessing. That’s what happens to those who become members of a cult and manage to get out. Getting out was a good thing, but it took me years to get over the trauma and self-doubt that follows being part of a cult. I’d taken on believing Hyles to be something he wasn’t. His son-in-law followed him as pastor in Hammond. Jack Schaap is now sitting in prison, charged with child molesting, having taken a 17-year-old girl across state lines and engaged in sex with her on several occasions.

We left Indiana and returned to Maine, with our faith in tatters. That was fine. Faith in false prophets and a fairy God plus 25 cents won’t even buy you a cup of coffee these days, and it didn’t in 1987, when we pulled the U-Haul truck into the driveway of Mary’s parents in Durham. It was August and Mark was 3 ½-years-old. He got to grow up with knowing both sets of grandparents and his extended family. I think that was a good thing for him.

There was one last, ill-fated attempt to “believe” in some manner of a traditional sense. This time, an evangelical pastor’s (at a Vineyard church) support for the Iraq War in 2002 was the last straw for me and organized religion. I began calling myself a post-Xian, which is what I consider myself these days.

 

*****

Mark was a fan of Rich Roll. Roll, the accomplished vegan ultra-endurance athlete, had been a high-powered entertainment lawyer. He now admits that prior to his reinvention, he’d been overweight and on a path where he might have ended up having a heart attack from being unhealthy and over-stressed. After what he calls a “moment of clarity” the night prior to his 40^th birthday, he decided it was time for a change. Since then, Roll’s been on a mission, becoming a full-time wellness and plant-based nutrition advocate, a motivational speaker, as well as the father to four children, along with his wife, Julie Piatt.

Mark really liked Roll’s podcasts. He was always after me to listen, as these were part of his day while out walking across the country. I was slower coming to the podcast thing, but during the fall of 2016, while Mark was on his final walk, I sought out and listened to my first Rich Roll Podcast. The guest was Dr. Neil Barnard. I was captivated.

The two of us discussed this via email as he was out walking, and we spoke by phone. Both his parents had become plant-based vegans. We now had a reason to begin appreciating the gift of Roll’s book, The Plantpower Way: Whole Food Plant-based Recipes and Guidance for the Whole Family. We have a signed copy because Mark had taken the train to Boston to hear Rich and Julie speak and he met Roll. This was in 2015, I think. Roll recounted his meeting Mark when he offered a heartfelt tribute to our son at the beginning of Pocast #342.

I have been listening to podcasts during lunch most days, usually while riding my stationary bike, looking out over the cove. It’s a good way to get some exercise, take a break from writing, and in the case of Roll’s podcasts, connect with provocative thought leaders, people like Rob Bell. I mentioned the first podcast where Roll had Bell on as a guest. The podcast I listened to this week, was recorded two weeks ago. This time, Bell, along with filmmaker Andrew Morgan sat down with Roll for a captivating two-hour discussion that ranged across topics related to story, filmmaking, what happens when people oppose your ideas, etc. I wish I could better articulate how deeply Bell’s positive message (along with Morgan’s) resonated with me.

If you don’t know Bell, here is the $3 version.

He was a rock star pastor of a nondenominational megachurch near Grand Rapics, Michigan. He founded Mars Hill at the age of 28 and as the teaching pastor, had a key role in the church’s remarkable growth, where Sunday services routinely drew 5,000 people in the mid-2000s. While there are competing theories, Bell eventually left, mainly due to fallout resulting from his disavowal of many traditional, conservative tenets of evangelical theology. A significant one was Bell coming out and saying that he no longer held the belief that there was a literal place called hell, a place of eternal torment.

An article in The New Yorker is often cited as representative of what happened at Mars Hill. But often, there’s another side to the story. Bell offered a bit more about that period of time in another interview, which offers additional insight into his exit from the church he’d founded 11 years prior, and the congregation he’d grown into one of the largest in America.

Bell admitted that tensions had been building at Mars Hill as his reputation grew outside the church. He said that people were thinking, “how do we interact with him and his voice in the larger world?”

“Then, I release a book that creates a tremendous amount of ambient drain for the church,” Bell said.

While the church was supportive, according to bell, he realized it created a conflict and there was another book coming in 18 months.

In 2011, he spoke with church leaders about the “pull” he was feeling to take his teachings to more people via television. Church leaders were “reluctant,” but recognized this was where Bell was heading with his ministry.

“Lots of people said to us (he and his wife, Kristen), ‘We’re surprised but we’re not surprised. You need to go do this.’”

Bell knew that after 12 years, “his season at Mars Hill had come to an end.”

Weirdly, while outside the “evangelical news cycle” at this point in time, I’d heard about Bell. It was probably Sanneh’s piece that looped me into the Rob Bell orbit.

Before I’d walked away from traditional religious (and mainly, evangelical) constructs, I’d often thought that there had to be a “better way” than bringing outsiders into a strange context where they knew little of the culture and odd ways of church people, and somehow, expect them to be comfortable with that. Even churches like those in the Vineyard denomination (where Mary and I last ended up in 2001), with less formal worship styles and contemporary music, were still stuck in the 19^th century when it came to theology and views on issues like gay marriage, war, and politics.

It’s easy to see from outside this bubble that Bell’s decision was a wise one. He has become a bestselling author, his tours routinely sell-out venues across the country, as well as in Europe. Time profiled him as one of 2011’s hundred most influential people. Perhaps more important for him (and others), he is reaching people with a contemporary and transformational message rooted in Christian tradition, but also very different than what usually comes from a church pulpit.

 

*****

Mark must have wondered about his spiritually-conflicted parents. He was born a Hoosier mainly because his father was following some kind of “call from God,” or so his dad thought. Then, after finding out that the God People that we’d moved 1,000 miles away from home and family to throw our lots in with weren’t who we thought they were, it was back across the country in the U-Haul, back to Maine.

In 2001, when 9/11 made all of us stop and assess who we were and wonder about the deeper things of life, we ended up back in church on Sunday mornings. Mark went to a Christmas service that year. We got him a Bible. He read some of it.

At some point in 2002, a Vineyard pastor stood up in the pulpit and preached that the war in Iraq was “a just war.” I looked at Mary and we both knew it was over for us in that place. Prior to that, I’d had arguments with members of the small group Bible study I was leading about immigration and many of the New Mainers settling in the area. I wanted to reach out to them. I was told by leadership that this wasn’t the plan. Like when racism raised it’s ugly head in Indiana at Jack Hyles’ church, it was “de ja vu all over again” (to quote Yogi Berra).

While Mark was out crossing America’s highways, on his own spiritual journey and quest of sorts, he’d emailed me and asked about Rob Bell. “Hey dad, do you know who Rob Bell is?”

He’d heard the first podcast with Roll where Bell was a guest. I told Mark a bit about Bell from what I knew. He thought the discussion was interesting and he found Bell different than he’d expected him to be. Bell has that effect on people.

I’d listened to the podcast while at work one day. I emailed him about it, two days before Mark was killed.

Listening to podcast with Rich Roll/Rob Bell. Very interesting. Glad you told me about it.

I wonder if Bell got up in most churches, if people would really “hear” him? I doubt it. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons he goes outside the confines of the church to do what he does (funny, kind of like Jesus!). I’ll have to check out one of his books at some point.

-Dad

Roll had Bell back and I listened to the podcast. Along with Bell was Andrew Morgan, a documentary filmmaker. Bell gave Morgan unrestricted access to him and his life for two years and Morgan just came out with The Heretic.

Bell mentioned in the podcast that he wasn’t thrilled with the title, but Morgan chose it because someone he knows used that term about Bell when she found out he was making a film about him, as in Rob Bell, “oh, he’s a heretic.”

Being heretical probably isn’t a bad thing, especially in church circles. I say this because evangelicals—at least the kind who believe that politics, rather than God, is the solution to man’s shortcomings—have unequivocally supported a man in Trump who is the antithesis of everything that Jesus stood for.

When I was going through Mark’s videos last fall into the winter, re-watching all 100 of them, daily, one year out from when they were made, I wrote this while watching his video from Day 91. Each one of my daily writings has a title. This one is titled, “Hey!! I’m Jesus!” Mark is walking from Chattahoohcie, Florida to Sneads. It’s January 11, 2017, 10 days before he dies. I recount some of the geography of his surroundings, and then riff about Mark and Jesus. Like the people who hate on Rob Bell and protest whenever he shows up for one of his speaking engagements, this will probably rankle some people. I don’t care what these people think. I’ve bolded Mark’s dialogue:

Today, he’s passing a point on the map where the Chattahoochie River (a fairly famous American River, see Alan Jackson [you can Google “Chattahoochee” and the country artist’s name and see what I mean]) flows into a giant lake named Lake Seminole (a famous Florida Native American tribe), which then branches into the Apalachicola River (maybe not as famous, but still a cool name), which is all part of the Apalachicola River Basin. Like I said, I dig geography, especially when I can “see” where Mark is at in much greater detail.

Mark is walking west towards his demise, he has fun with a sacred cow, someone who I thought at times he resembled. Did you say, “Johnny Appleseed?” No, Jesus. What?

As Mark is walking west on Route 90, he finally admits to his audience who he really is. He’s Jesus, come back to America to save us all, and take us back to heaven, or something like that.

Actually, this is what he says, just so I can get it right for the record, and for the people pissed off that Mark can be playful, and doesn’t have a stick pushed so far up his ass that he can’t have fun with any topic, taboo, or not.

“I didn’t want to have to bring this up, but I don’t know any other way to reach people. I don’t know how to reach everyone in the world than to admit the fact I’m Jesus. I’m Jesus. I’ve returned to Earth. I’ve returned to Earth to save it. Jesus has arrived. Where are y’all. Where is everyone? I’m here. I’m back on Earth.”

“Doesn’t he know I’m Jesus? Why’s he driving so fast? He should have stopped and said, ‘hey’! Hey, I’m Jesus. Stop and hang out.”

This dialogue that Mark has with himself, one of the many snippets from videos that are pure genius in terms of being a poet, who had the capacity to bring his poetry to life in the form of walking his poems—performance art, for want of a descriptor—developed (I think) from an exchange that he captures just a small part of earlier, when he’s talking to a guy named Dave Money, who is a Christian. He captures part of the conversation (from his blog):

A man stopped and said, “Hey you’re the barefoot man. The world is going to burn. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. Jesus is going to return. All the animals will die.”

Mark had so many of these interactions with people naming the name of Christ (Jesus), and to take these and condense them into 26 seconds tells anyone who is “woke” all they need to know about Johnny Appleseed/Jesus/Mark Baumer.

Crossing into Jackson County, Mark has officially entered the Central Time Zone. This was a milestone of sorts for him, I think. Maybe he was thinking about geography like his father always did. And eventually, he’d die in Central Time.

And just so people don’t forget that Mark wasn’t just some jester, or poet of the absurd, he gets passionate with a rant at the end, about the town of Johnson, Rhode Island, which sold its water to a corporation back in his home state, so they can “build a power plant and ruin the Earth.” Mark is pissed and I love that we get to see my son in his totality in these videos.

Mark closes out yet another video I didn’t appreciate enough the first time, by singing some made up song with the lyrics, “not going home tonight.” Mark wasn’t going home ever again.

One thing that comes across when listening to Rob Bell is his humility. When he talks about something, he’s not doing in from a doctrinaire perspective. When he says he’s willing to change what he believes if data and facts contradict what he currently holds as truth, this is refreshing. It’s different than people hunkering down in positions that they can’t support, refusing to budge.

I believe that Mark found Bell intriguing because he felt an alignment with him. Both of them had tapped into a wellspring that we’re desperately in need of in this nation, if we’re going to be able to get through the next few years and beyond—a place where love, compassion, and empathy, and a whole lot more of the things that emanate from emotionally intelligent people. I agree with Bell when he said that “if you think about the religion that’s risen in Jesus’ name, it is anti-what-Jesus-was-talking-about.”

Today is another anniversary without Mark. This is Easter #2 sans our only son. It’s hard not to feel heartsick today, missing him. We’re his parents, the two people most affected by his death. And like we’ve done now more times than not, we’re alone today with the memories, and our thoughts, wishing we were sitting around with Mark, sharing a vegan feast with him, or listening to him talk about something he was excited about, or get to hear him say to us, “I love you.”

Here is the trailer to Andrew Morgan’s new film about Bell.