Chapter 1

Yirmeyah Hudson

I have an unusual name. My parents wanted to name me after someone from the Bible, but thought Joseph and Peter and Paul and even Moses and Elisha and Isaiah were too ordinary. I'm glad they never thought of Maher-shalal-hash-baz. It's not ordinary, but I'd hate to have to go through life with that. Just think of trying to fit it into the little spaces on government forms.

They eventually decided to go back to the original Hebrew of "Jeremiah." I don't know how the ancient Israelites, or modern Israelis either, would pronounce my name, but I grew up with yur-may-ah. It's definitely not something you'll find in your average American town.

I was born in 1983 in Dallas, but grew up east of there in the little town of East Tawakoni. My parents helped found a church there. They were devout people, as my grandparents had been. My granddaddy on my mother's side had been a deacon for 50 years when he died. My daddy's daddy had been a bivocational preacher, working as a mechanic during the week and pastoring on Sunday. My daddy himself had pastored churches here and there before he had a heart attack and had to settle down to less stressful work. I never could see how farming was less stressful. It's hard work, trying to grow the right crops, sell them at the right price, buy seed for not too much, stay ahead of the bank, survive drouth and flood and insects and a government that can't always decide whether to pay you a price support for your crop, or pay you to not grow it at all, or just ignore you.

But I'm not here to talk about my daddy's farming. I grew up on the farm, but after high school I went away to Bible college. Or perhaps I ought to go back a bit further than that.

I grew up in the church my parents helped found. I grew up knowing about Moses and the first Passover. I learned about Jesus feeding the 5,000 about the same time I learned to walk, I suppose. I never knew a day without the Bible, and without my daddy's theology books. He'd kept those even after he had to give up pastoring. He never did altogether stop preaching. In fact, I grew up reading my daddy's books – Charles Hodge, John Calvin, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, James P. Boyce, Lorraine Boettner, Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards ... My daddy was a Baptist born and raised, and his daddy before him, and my mother's people too, but he liked to say that good theology never wore a denominational name. He had Puritans and Baptists and Congregationalists and Presbyterians and I don't know what all in his library indiscriminately.

Yes, I grew up reading my daddy's theology. I grew up listening to him expound the Bible around the table. And I grew up hearing sermons and Sunday School lessons. But growing up in a garage doesn't make you a mechanic. I grew up hearing it, but I didn't imbibe it. The words went into my ears, but not into my heart. In Luke 9:44 Jesus said, "Let these words sink into your ears," but they never sank into mine. It wasn't that I rejected them, but that they simply bounced off, like rain off of pavement.

And so I reached 15 years old. I knew that I was a sinner. That part was easy. My daddy says that you never have to teach a child to sin – that's one thing that comes natural. The hard part, he says, is teaching children to do right. I sometimes thought the hard part was being the child, for he believed in applying the board of education to the seat of learning. There were times when my seat was pretty sore.

My daddy loved me. But he never spoiled me. And if he never taught me anything else, and if I never learned anything else from his books, he made sure and they made sure that I learned just how far from godliness I was.

I never killed anyone. I never went with a girl, nor a woman, to commit immorality. I never stole nor lied. Well, I didn't lie much, probably no more than any other kid trying to get away with something. The one thing I naturally had no inclination to do was gossip, so that wasn't one of my sins. But there was one thing that hung over me like a cliff ready to fall. I didn't love God.

I believed in Him. I had no doubt at all that God existed, and that He hated sin, and that He would punish my sin if I didn't get shut of it, in the Texas phrase. I sometimes couldn't sleep nights, knowing that God was there and that I was a sinner in His sight. But I didn't love Him. I wanted to. I wanted to find the way to Him, the path that would lead me into His kingdom. But somehow I never found it.

I was in church every Sunday, and I learned by heart some of the phrases that preachers used over and over in their invitations. I could quote hunks of Scripture verbatim, and I could quote sections of my daddy's theology books. But I couldn't find a way to get free of my sin and come to God.

There came a time when our church had sent us teenagers away to youth camp. It was fun. We fished, and swam, and had a barbecue or two. You can't be a Texan without a barbecue, of course. And there was plenty of Bible teaching. But I still got nowhere. By now I was getting desperate. It was 1998 and I was at the point of thinking that there was no way out for me. I wanted to believe, but I couldn't. There wasn't any faith in me to exercise, or I'd have done it. I was beginning to think that those who said that God sends some people to hell no matter how much they want to serve Him just might be right, even though my daddy and his books said otherwise.

On the last night of the camp, the scheduled Bible teacher came up sick. It was something he ate, perhaps, or it might have been some sort of intestinal bug. I don't know. I just know that he was spending half his time on his bed looking like death would be an improvement, and the other half of his time in the toilet sounding like death would be an improvement. It seemed he was losing his lunch – and breakfast, and supper from the night before – at both ends.