The Left behind

I was about as sheltered as a kid could be.

I went to private Christian schools for the entirety of my
pre-collegiate life. My dad was the principal at the majority of these
institutions. My mom, a kindergarten teacher. My two favorite songs
were Evie’s “Come On, Ring Those Bells” (which, contrary to the bangin’
title, was a late ’70s Carpenters-esque Christian Christmas carol, not
a modern hiphop classic) and “Sail On” by the Imperials (my dad’s
favorite band, kind of like a Christianized “Kokomo”-era Beach Boys,
complete with bushy graying beards, aloha shirts, and an unfortunate
lack of Brian Wilson). In the world of cinema, the only thing over a
“G” rating I had ever seen was E.T., and I remember my family
huffing out of the theater early due to the movie’s over-the-top
obscenity. Horror movies were out of the question. Especially hardcore
satanic snuff films like Gremlins, Ghostbusters,
Poltergeist, and Ernest Goes to Camp. All these curious
plots my classmates were happily bonding over were completely beyond
me.

Turns out, I didn’t need secular Hollywood to scare the hell out of
me.

I never got the chance to meet Christian music founder Larry Norman,
though my high school band played a Christian rock festival with him in
the mid-’90s. That’s about as close as I got. I can’t even say I’m a
fan of his music. I can only name one of his songs, but that’s quite
enough for me. This specific song has haunted me to the core. Its
essence kept me on the proverbial straight and narrow for the first 27
years of my life, through a healthy combination of guilt, regret, and
sheer heart-pounding terror. I’m sure Slayer or Cannibal Corpse would
be proud to have etched this legacy upon a young boy’s subconscious,
but I’d like to assume differently about the motives of a hippie
Christian folk singer. I know it’s bad to speak ill of the dead, so
I’ll refrain from judging Norman’s character. I’m sure he was every bit
as saint-like as Frank Black claims he was.

The song in question was called “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” and it
was the theme to the movie A Thief in the Night—a
Christian film about the Rapture. I was probably around 10 years old
when I experienced both song and movie for the first time. My
well-intentioned parents drove me to a small church in a suburb of the
small Hawaiian town we lived in at the time. The movie was showing on a
pull-out projector screen in the middle of a cramped assembly room. I
remember the laminated floor being dirty. Everything in Hawaii is
stained red from volcanic soil, but this floor was exceptionally
filthy. I should know; I spent over half of the movie looking down at
my flip flops, tears spilling from wide eyes, sweaty hands pressed over
small ears, unable to bring myself to look back up at the screen.

My brain will be forever branded with these lyrics: 

“A man and wife asleep in bed

She hears a noise and turns her head he’s gone

I wish we’d all been ready

Two men walking up a hill

One disappears and one’s left standing still

I wish we’d all been ready

There’s no time to change your mind

The Son has come and you’ve been left behind…” 

The Son (yes, both capital “S” and non-solar spelling intentional)
has come… And you’ve been left behind. Is there anything more
horrifying? Not to me. I knew my mom would be taken to Heaven. From my
birth up until her death several years later, I never saw her commit
any sort of sin. Not one. My dad, too. Yeah, Jesus would certainly take
him. Even my sister was a no-brainer for a starring role in the Book of
Life. Me, though? No way.

At 10, I was already flying headfirst down the slippery slope. I
stole little pink M.U.S.C.L.E. toys at drugstores by stuffing them into
my socks. I drew primitive pictures of naked ladies before quickly
burning the evidence in the backyard. I was caught saying the word
“shit” and got out of being bare-assed spanked by saying, “No, I said
SHED, as in Jesus SHED his blood for you!” I heard Janet Jackson’s song
“Nasty” on the radio and got inexplicably funny feelings in my stomach.
I hated every second of church every Sunday and I secretly enjoyed
skateboarding light years more than memorizing Deuteronomy.

My fate was sealed. I was sure of it. I was still at least a decade
away from any run-ins with sex, drugs, or rock ‘n’ roll, but I knew
that the “everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels”
(Matthew 25:41) was also prepared for skinny, awkward, prepubescent me.
I knew that on some unforeseen night, at exactly 11:34 pm (I bumped my
digital alarm clock off the dresser and it landed upside-down, spelling
“hell” in glowing red light. I’ve been petrified of this daily moment
ever since), when all of us were sleeping, Jesus would silently creep
into our house and Rapture my faithful family, one by one. He would
lovingly touch their foreheads and they would instantly disappear into
thin air, off to spend an eternity in the clouds with golden streets
and no crying, and no lusting, and no stealing, and no memory of their
wayward son/brother. But my bedroom would be ignored, as if I had
goat’s blood slathered upon my door frame. Tidbits, my pet mouse,
sensing something was awry, would begin running crazily on his wheel. I
would wake up in a sweat and sprint down the hall to my parents’ bed,
but all I’d find would be a warm outline of where their bodies were
seconds before. I would lie there numbly, feeling the sheets growing
cold around me, alone with the rest of the sinners in a godless world,
for eternity.

So what’s it like up there, Larry? At the very end of it all, were
you really ready? Or were you just as scared as I forever will be?

Danny Seim plays with local rock idols Menomena.