Gregg J. Rieker
My conversion story started pretty early. Having been raised a Catholic, seasoned with Catholic school since age five, and with a strong Catholic upbringing, I was ripe with the Lord. I was at church every Sunday and on every holy day of obligation. My upbringing not withstanding, it didn’t take too long for the skeptic in me to ask the first questions of Atheism 101: How can you have an all forgiving God and Damnation? Can I be happy in heaven knowing a loved one is burning is hell?
These thoughts were an incessant torment. It was a never ending storm of the soul, but these storms didn’t prevent me from performing my duties as an Alter boy. I spent a lot of time in church and saw more than my fair share of masses. During these endless and tedious celebrations I exercised my doubts in an oppressively heavy-handed and fantastically ornate environment.
One Sunday, I got called in to serve a special funeral ceremony for a dead Monsignor. This mass would have all of the bells and whistles of a Roman Catholic high mass. Extra candles, incense, big gold covered books…..the works.
Before the doors opened, all of the local priests had the corpse in its coffin in the church for a special ceremony. They were praying over it and anointing it with oils. The plan for the service was to wheel the coffin out after the priests were done with it, let everyone in for the mass, get them seated, and then wheel the Monsignor back in for his big entrance as the guest of honor.
In the time between the priests finishing up with him and the pall bearers wheeling him out, I needed to light the special candles that they set up lining the aisle to the alter. The priests had left the church, it was dark and empty, and I was standing alone next to the corpse with a lit candle in my hand.
Now at this moment, I am struggling with my faith, no less the disposition of my eternal soul. This day is no different than any other in this regard; I am having an epic struggle in my head over my faith, a constant battle that still rages to this day in one form or another. This day, I was ready for a fight.
“Show me a sign!” I shouted in my head, for the 30th time that day.
I was ready to have it out with Him. God was such a personal being after a decade of training, that I had had it, I was calling him out. I had largely given up on faith by this time but getting over the fear was the hardest part for me. Fear was the primary impediment to my freedom.
Now while the armies of logic raged in my head and the waves of doubt crashed on the shores, there was still the pressing matter of an open coffin with a dead priest in it. Being 12 years old, and new to dead Monsignors, I bent in to check out what all the fuss was about and to see what the priests were up to. As I leaned in, I silently shouted again to the Lord, “Show me Something, Anything!”
Wouldn’t you know it that sucker twitched.
I’m not sure if he was settling after being moved by the priests, or if it was gas, or whatever, but that son of a bitch twitched.
Now a lot of kids in a dark, empty church with a twitching dead priest, would probably freak out a bit.
I was no different, but it was more than just panic and terror. I was mad!
“Fuck you!” I yelled out loud to an empty church.
I scowled at the 30 foot tall Risen Christ over the alter of the church.
With my heart pounding in my ears, “Fuck you!” I said, “That’s it?”
With the echo of my blasphemy still rattling through the church, I asked the Lord, “Is that the best you can do? Scaring the shit out of a boy! Fucking parlor tricks? I’m struggling with my eternal soul and you’re fucking around?”
I was pissed off. I realized in an instant that if this cruel and spiteful God did exist, he was worthy of nothing but scorn. From that day forward, I never feared for my soul. I knew that all God was good for wass scaring children.
So that was my moment, It’s not easy to throw off the shackles of Catholicism. This was my banner day in making the first solid steps. I’ve never looked back and I’ve never been happier.
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