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THE BOGEYMAN
I once believed in the Bogeyman and in fact, I thought I saw him run into my closet one night, just after he pinched my butt. It was shortly after the lights went out and so I frantically called my Mom and she came back and checked my closet but could not find him. She then told me that there was no such thing as a Bogeyman, and so I responded, “Well, if there is no Bogeyman, then who pinched my butt and why are you looking for him?”
“Well… maybe there is,” she answered, after some reconsideration “but if you cover your head with the blanket, he can not see you and then he will go away.” That made sense to me at the time and it seemed to work, because he never pinched my butt again… but for a long while after that, I was afraid of going to sleep without pulling the covers up over my head.
Most parents try to give their children good advice and prepare them for the trials they know will face them one day in the future. Sometimes that advice is very practical and helpful but often, in the case of young children especially, the advice is something parents make up on the spot, hoping to get them through the moment. Later in life I would discover that there are real Bogeymen and that hiding under the covers doesn’t make them go away.
My parents were religious people and brought us to church every week. We attended the Reformed Church at first but then moved up to the Christian Reformed Church, because it was more strict and considered to be the very best church in the whole wide world. My father was not educated beyond High School and even though he would be elected into the Consistory of the Church, he was never really regarded as one of the church leaders because of his lack of Christian education. The pastor once even referred to him as a Spiritual Ignoramus, which really hurt him at the time, but he continued with the duties he had been assigned… those that no one else wanted to do, like bringing the tapes of Sunday services around to the old folks who couldn’t attend church or teaching Catechism to Junior High boys on Wednesday nights. At the time he never shared with us his disappointments with the church and its leaders, but always encouraged us to be faithful members.
Every family has a black sheep and I am it for my family. Like the Bogeyman story, I found as I grew older that my father’s religion was full of holes and not really practical in the real world. He never rebuked me… but I sensed that it hurt him when I spoke badly about the church or its leaders. He never talked about his personal feelings with me and for that reason I was absolutely astonished when, at the age of 75, he walked out of the Christian Reformed Church and never returned. It was probably the most difficult thing he had ever done in his lifetime.
I do not claim to be a Christian any more but neither would I classify myself as something else. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in GOD and in His Infallible Word… I just don’t think that His Infallible Word is the Bible, because I do not believe His Words are something that can be written down on paper or scroll. They are not more accurate in one language then in another. They can not be understood better by the intellectual elite, do not need to be taught by the highly educated, and do not belong to any Superior race or color (or lack of color) group. They can not be purchased by the wealthy, nor given away as a gift to a wayward loved one, and… They can not be withheld or taken away from those who are in confinement or bondage, because I believe that The Infallible Word of God is simply the language of the Heart and It can be understood by even the most severely mentally challenged, can be seen by the blind, and can be heard by the deaf… for The Words are Handwritten with Love, by the Creator Himself, on the inner walls of the Heart of each of His Created Beings. My mission in this life is to help people find this Inner Knowledge, by allowing them to be comfortable with who they are… and expressing Love to them in a way that makes them feel Loveable and Capable of knowing GOD on their own.
I do not ask you to believe as I believe but encourage you to seek for yourself the GOD Given Knowledge that is within you, because there are Bogeymen in this world that we live in and they do not go away when we hide our heads beneath the covers... they only grow stronger. Bogey men are nothing more then a reflection of our own fears and doubts and they can be defeated by simply facing up to them or by just walking away from them, like my father did .
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