We stood in the pews, mom and dad’s hands lifted, faces upturned, my little brother jumping up and down happily to the driving rhythm. And me, just standing there with my hands on the back of the bench. Everyone around me could feel the Holy Spirit, but I couldn’t feel a thing. Sound stuffed the sanctuary as the drums beat, the keyboardist riffed in an organ tone, the congregation wailed, and the pastor shouted, “Break!”
The people wailed, shouted, “Amen!” and a slight, uneasy feeling set in.
The pastor ran across the stage and jumped straight up in the air. “He knows that sometimes you feel like he’s so far away that he can’t hear you. But he can hear you. He’s always right there—right next to you watching over you, ha! He sees your every move!”
I shuttered, uneasiness growing to dread. If he sees everything, then that means . . .
“Yes, ha! He’s there when you’re all alone. He’s there when you think there’s no one else around! He knows what you do in the night!”
My heart started to race, and I gulped. The night!
“He sees you! He’s here! Holy Spirit!”
A woman two rows up released a splitting moan—
“UUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHH!”
Frantically, I punched the volume down key and waited in the dark, heart pounding, head cocked, hands illuminated by the white of the screen. The house creaked, but no doors opened, and no one came downstairs. I breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to the woman on screen, feeling a stirring I didn’t quite know what to do with.
Suddenly, the guilt crashed down on me. Oh, my God! He saw! God was watching me, and he knows. He knows everything. What was I thinking? What was I—he knows my every thought, but I have so many, I thought maybe he wouldn’t notice if I just . . . why would I think he wouldn’t see me? Why hadn’t I thought about him at all? Suddenly, it was 100 degrees, and I wanted to run, but I was trapped in between my mom and my brother, both dancing and praising the Lord.
The pastor spun on stage, arms splayed, mic in hand. He rushed toward the edge and stared directly at me, eyes wide with passion, face dripping with perspiration. “He wants you to let him in, but first you must repent of your sin!”
I couldn't swallow, my throat was dry, my stomach turned, my skin crawled. What could I do? God saw me, and now the only thing left was judgment. I looked up to the ceiling and waited for it to rip open, to reveal God and his fiery, reproachful glare, his accusing finger pointing directly at me damning me for all eternity.
“REPENT!” The preacher’s shrill scream shattered the air.
“Yes, God,” a man cried.
“Yes! Oooh, yes, just like that. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you like that, baby? Don’t stop.”
Heart pounding, fist pumping, better than middle school sex education, this is what your parents tried to keep you from with their content blocker and constant monitoring, but you were always smarter than they were, and the preachers on TV said it was corrupting the youth, but you don’t feel corrupted, you feel excited, so why were they always trying to keep you from this?
Now I knew. But the preacher wouldn’t stop.
“If you’ve got sin in your life and need to repent, I need you to come up to the altar right now!”
A few people started shifting to the ends of the pews.
“If you’re sick and tired of living the same old way and you just need a change, I need you to come to the altar right now!”
The people slowly began trickling toward the front of the church. But I stood still.
“If you need forgiveness from your sins, I need you to come up to the altar!”
I needed forgiveness. I couldn’t tell if it was my heartbeat or the drumbeat, but the guilt was eating me alive. I need forgiveness, but what if . . .
“REPENT!”
. . . I liked my sin? By now almost a third of the church was in front of the stage praying and dancing and wailing. They were experiencing the Holy Spirit, free from sin, washed white as snow. And I was back here, doomed by God, trapped, tricked. Tears brimmed in my eyes, and I tried to hold them back.
Dad nudged mom and gestured toward me. He leaned down. “Do you need to go up there, son?”
“Come up to the front,” the preacher snapped. He hunched over the podium, wiped a slick of sweat from his forehead with a cloth and sipped on a cup of water. “God sees you there in the pews, ha! He sees you in the aisle, ha! He even sees you listening from outside, ha! He’s calling you to come!”
The tears spilled over now, and I was sobbing, nodding my head. I was a sinner. Dirty, rotten, deserving of hell. My dad lead me out of the pew, and I started walking down the aisle. I thought he was walking with me, but when I turned back, I was alone and pushed forward by the stream of sinners seeking salvation.
The crush of people closed in around me, standing, arms outstretched, dancing, wailing, crying out to God. I lifted my hands and my wet face to the ceiling. Around me, prayer leaders laid hands and prayed in tongues. The preacher leapt from the stage and joined them, panting his prayers through the microphone.
“Oh, he knows what you’ve been doing. But he says, ‘you’re healed now!’ He says, ‘You’re clean now!’” He pressed his palm on a young woman’s forehead, and spoke in tongues, “Hush-shabada hashek hima kana! Holy Spirit, fill this vessel!”
Suddenly, the woman started twitching and gyrating until she collapsed to the floor, riling uncontrollably. The preacher left her and moved on to the man next to her, crying, “Jesus! Touch!” The man doubled over as if punched and collapsed in a whimpering heap.
Around me, the Holy Spirit’s power grew. It was getting closer, I could feel it in the energy of the room, in the loud wails of the congregation, in the sobbing, guttural shouts of the people by the altar, in the terrible writhing of those whose who’d let the Holy Spirit enter them and wash them clean. The temperature reached a fever pitch, until I was sweating, and my heart was racing, and the people were dropping like flies, and the voices raised in a crescendo and the pastor squealed, and I closed my eyes, and oh my God, ohmygod, there it is, the Holy Spirit is coming, a great white light at first receding but now speeding forward until it crashes upon me in a white explosion.
Oh!
I was on the floor, panting, and twitching, for a bit. When the sensation subsided, I realized that the sanctuary had gone quiet, and the pastor looked down on me with an expression of horror.
“Sweet Jesus,” he said into the microphone. “Somebody get this boy a towel.”
