Lee Harbaugh

Introduction

This post is part of my series, Who Is God?, an exploration of my personal journey with the mystical and spiritual realities.

In my previous post in this series, I provided a brief overview of my spiritual journey and laid out the roadmap for the entire series. In this post, I offer much greater detail about the earliest phase of my life. Though I attended church regularly, this particular stage of my life was not marked by overtly spiritual events. What follows covers roughly the time of my birth through age 12.

In the Beginning

I grew up in a family of four, with me being the oldest of two boys. Though we have an older sister, she had moved out by the time I was about three or four years old, so for all practical purposes, we functioned as a family of four.

My mom and dad met at a Southern Baptist church in Dallas in the 1960s. They began dating after regularly attending Dallas Cowboys games and game-watching parties on Sunday afternoons after church. I joke today that my brother Clark and I have to be Dallas Cowboys fans—because if it weren't for the Cowboys, we likely wouldn't exist!

My parents were married in that same Southern Baptist church in 1969, and they continued to be faithful attendees right up to the day I was born two years later in 1971. As a result, from the time I landed on this planet, I attended a Southern Baptist church. Even as far back as age two, I have memories of going to church regularly.

In 1973, we moved from Dallas to Grand Prairie, Texas—a city right next to Dallas. One of the first things my mom and dad did was find a new church in Grand Prairie to attend. I don't recall ever asking how they settled on Inglewood Baptist Church, but from about the time I was two until I was about 20, this became the church I would attend regularly. It became the foundation for many of my early religious beliefs.

It's strange the things I remember from a very young age. I am certain much has been forgotten, but one vivid memory I have is that I hated church as a young child. I don't know why. To my knowledge, nothing bad ever happened to me at church. I was not abused by any church leaders. No one was mean to me. As far as I've ever known, the other kids were nice, and I was nice to them. I think I was simply bored, and so attending Sunday School and church each week felt dreadful.

I remember being about five or six years old and telling my dad I was going to take my new toy tools to church so I could tear it down. I think my parents wondered why I had such an aversion to church, but attending was not optional. When the doors were open, we were there.

Ironically, I remember going to church one Sunday, and crews had begun doing some kind of construction on the building. I looked up at the façade outside and saw a portion of the bricks missing. When I saw that, I got scared. I asked my mom and dad if they were tearing down the church. For all my yapping about tearing it down myself, when I saw evidence someone else might be doing so, I felt deep regret and sadness. My parents assured me no one was tearing the church down and that they were only going to add a new section to the building. I was quite relieved.

Accepting Jesus

By the time I was about nine years old, many of my friends were talking about accepting Jesus into their heart as their savior and being baptized. At first, I just ignored most of this talk because it didn't make sense to me. But over time, I began to wonder if I should be doing the same. Our Sunday School teachers and pastors frequently talked about God speaking to our hearts. They said he was inviting us to open the door of our hearts and let Jesus in. This imagery seemed confusing at first. But after some time, I learned that people weren't literally having Jesus come live inside their physical bodies. In some childlike way, I understood that asking Jesus into my life was symbolic—the man Jesus didn't really open some door in my heart and come live there. But I also understood that there was a literal aspect to it in the sense that I would be committing myself to God.

Once I got past the literal aspect of Jesus coming into my heart, I figured he might want to come into mine as well. So at age nine, I decided to ask Jesus into my heart and be baptized. This was not some deep spiritual experience for me. I didn't have a sudden epiphany or some light shine on me while a voice from heaven spoke. It was more of a rational decision. My friends were doing it. My church teachers encouraged it. My parents seemed eager for me to do it. For me, the experience was about doing what seemed the right thing to do. Afterward, I didn't feel a sudden shift. No huge burden was lifted. The main thing I felt was relief that I had made my parents and teachers happy by doing what they considered to be the "right thing." I remember after I came out of the baptismal at Inglewood Baptist Church, my dad handed me a towel and excitedly said, "You're a Christian now!" And so it was. Just like that, I became a Christian.

(For context, Baptists practice a baptism by immersion. This means the pastor places one's entire body under water very briefly and then immediately brings them out again. This method of baptism follows the method that John the Baptist used to baptize Jesus in the Jordan River as described in the gospel narratives of the Bible—see Matthew 3:13-17 and Mark 1:9-11 for details. In Baptist and evangelical practices, a person is only baptized after they are old enough to and willing to accept Jesus as their savior.)

The Early Years of My Faith

At first, my faith experience seemed rather unremarkable. I was a good kid by nature, so there weren't many behavioral issues I needed to change. I don't recall feeling any great adjustment in me right away. But not long after my conversion experience and baptism, early spiritual curiosity began to take shape.

Shortly after I was baptized, I learned a teaching tool called "The Bridge." One of my Sunday School teachers approached my parents and me and asked if I might like to participate in learning this program. I don't remember what prompted me to say yes, but I accepted the invitation. The Bridge program was largely developed by the father of one of my friends at church. To this day, Jim Wilson and his family are some of the sweetest people I know. The program consisted of a storyline and accompanying Bible verses that informed people that they—that all of us—are sinners from birth. Furthermore, sin separates us from God, and Jesus came to the earth to "bridge" that separation by dying on a cross and rising from the dead three days later. Learning this teaching tool was fun for me, and I remember even going to several churches and presenting the message to a number of other people. Looking back on it now, I would say my fondness for The Bridge was more an intellectual one. It challenged me in the sense that I had to memorize quite a few Bible verses and remember the storyline in order to present it to others. But I don't remember feeling a deep spiritual connection as a result of learning and presenting the program.

Having said that, I do think something else may have been sparked in me during this season of my life. This was the first time I learned to appreciate the scriptures at more than a surface level. And as I learned more about the Christian scriptures, I was struck with some of the teachings. For example, a year or two later, I remember reading Matthew 17:20 where Jesus said, "...if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." (New International Version) I was intrigued by the idea that even a tiny amount of faith could have a huge impact on the world around me. I remember asking my parents if Jesus really meant "nothing" is impossible. They said, "Yes, that is what he meant!"

I decided to try a little experiment. Where this idea came from, I haven't a clue. But I decided to close my eyes and try walking down the hallway in my house with faith, believing I wouldn't run into anything. After doing so successfully—and it could have just been luck—I became more fascinated by the scriptures. I remember telling one of my neighborhood buddies about the verse and my little experiment. He looked at me doubtfully. I said, "You can do it too!" He said he didn't think so. We were standing in my front yard at the time, and I told him to close his eyes and walk across my yard and across the street with his eyes closed. Finally, he decided to try it. I kept my eyes open to make sure no cars were coming, and he started his little journey. He cleared my yard, then the east-bound side of the street, then the median, then the west-bound side of the street. Finally, he cleared the last curb and walked into the yard across the street without tripping or walking into a tree, a bush, or anything else along the way. When he got to the other side, he opened his eyes in shock.

Now, one could rationally argue that the little blind-walking experiment we did was just luck and that God was not involved in any way (I took this view later in my life). But for me at age 11 or 12, this was significant. This was the first time that I, of my own accord, decided to try something in faith—and it worked! The result was a further shift in me toward a lifetime of spiritual exploration—even though I eventually went through a season in which I didn't necessarily believe in God at all. More on that later....

The Next Chapter

By this point in my life, I was entering middle school. Adolescence was about to kick in, and more growth would happen. In my next post, I'll talk about my faith journey during those early adolescent years and how I first encountered what I would now call truly mystical experiences.