Marsden, like many other devoted American evangelicals who have grown up within the conservative movements of protestant theologies, was a man of considerable spiritual appetite. Marsden tells his story, as do hundreds of other like-minded Sunday school fed followers, about the world in which he grew up. His story trots a path somewhat like this, though I have filled in the details where it might be necessary. “I grew up in home where the bible was the center of our daily living regiment. My parents, though well meaning and often bullishly honest, were under the strictest conviction that the world was haven of brooding rebels of the fantastic sort, enigmatically labeled as harbingers of destruction. It was not as if they viewed the delinquents, the hoodlums, and violators of societal law as the culprits; no, quite the contrary, it was the good citizens; the democrats especially, the university professors, the bartenders, etc. who were to be feared at utmost precaution. After all, their motives were utterly godless and subversive.
The bible was so prevalently written upon the tables of our lives that I even remember times, such as after having devilishly haggled my sister into lying about the broken centerpiece, where I would unrepentantly receive a good ole woopin by wooden paddle where engraved upon its very face was the proverb, ‘train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart.’ Other, less physically abusive and more mentally painful punishment was instituted soon after the ages where a mother can no longer seriously injure the hind-end of her adolescent boy. The punishment following several bouts of brotherly love usually entailed, not an afflicting of pain, but a more serious and troubling phenomenon, the stealing of precious free-time in the mindless repetitious penning of bible passages so that Ephesians 4:32 soon began to brand itself into the very hardwood of our dinner table. We were instructed to laboriously and copiously and exactly copy the passage word for word, line for line, verse for verse, one hundred times; two hundred times; and at points where we failed to take our mother seriously, one thousand times.
The world was the enemy and the bible was our sword of protection; at any point where our character mimicked the pagan, we were deprived of several immediate comforts, for after all, in the event of our apostasy, our eternal comforts were that which we must eventually forfeit. Life at times seemed languid, the monotony of bible, church, and religious school slowed the development of an already bewildered imagination.”
The world, in Marsdens eyes, was painted and embroidered by apocalyptic dualism. Good and evil, light and darkness, life and death, reward and judgment, establishment and destruction, this was the construct through which life would be interpreted. A perspective of retreat, a mind toward escape; no room was made for dialogue except in those imperialistic moments of proselytizing “care.” Marsden, now a man, a man of true spiritual integrity warns us today, to beware of the mind that places the apocalypse now, that finds the end of the world in the daily events of the newspaper, that monopolizes on hope and manipulates hearts through fear of impending judgment.
The bible was so prevalently written upon the tables of our lives that I even remember times, such as after having devilishly haggled my sister into lying about the broken centerpiece, where I would unrepentantly receive a good ole woopin by wooden paddle where engraved upon its very face was the proverb, ‘train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart.’ Other, less physically abusive and more mentally painful punishment was instituted soon after the ages where a mother can no longer seriously injure the hind-end of her adolescent boy. The punishment following several bouts of brotherly love usually entailed, not an afflicting of pain, but a more serious and troubling phenomenon, the stealing of precious free-time in the mindless repetitious penning of bible passages so that Ephesians 4:32 soon began to brand itself into the very hardwood of our dinner table. We were instructed to laboriously and copiously and exactly copy the passage word for word, line for line, verse for verse, one hundred times; two hundred times; and at points where we failed to take our mother seriously, one thousand times.
The world was the enemy and the bible was our sword of protection; at any point where our character mimicked the pagan, we were deprived of several immediate comforts, for after all, in the event of our apostasy, our eternal comforts were that which we must eventually forfeit. Life at times seemed languid, the monotony of bible, church, and religious school slowed the development of an already bewildered imagination.”
The world, in Marsdens eyes, was painted and embroidered by apocalyptic dualism. Good and evil, light and darkness, life and death, reward and judgment, establishment and destruction, this was the construct through which life would be interpreted. A perspective of retreat, a mind toward escape; no room was made for dialogue except in those imperialistic moments of proselytizing “care.” Marsden, now a man, a man of true spiritual integrity warns us today, to beware of the mind that places the apocalypse now, that finds the end of the world in the daily events of the newspaper, that monopolizes on hope and manipulates hearts through fear of impending judgment.