The Herbal Essence and my Bible Camp Presence
My summer vacation started off quite regularly. My friends from school, whose amount had grown since my sophomore year, all formed plans to hang out during the three month break. Unfortunately, my best friend Irvin was caught off guard on account of his parents by getting informed of their plans for him to fly overseas to live in Hawaii for, at the least, three months. This obviously meant that Irv and I would not have a chance to conform to the layout of our plans that summer; one of which was our plan to share a cabin at Pioneer Bible Camp, which we had been attending annually for a few years. The change was unexpected. “Unexpected” had to have been the theme of my summer, due to the varying changes I underwent during the vacation. During my sophomore year, I went through a stage of minor depression. I was familiar with self-medication, but was always told by my mom that drugs were ground for disownment in her eyes. Her threats frightened me ever since first grade when I had first heard the word, “drug”. She would only mention the word when she was angry, and as I grew older I realized that this term was often used in association with my father and his habits. The only thing I couldn’t understand is why my mother had put up with so much of his drug abuse, without disowning him. I guess it was because she loved him; but did that mean she wouldn’t love me if I fell into the teethed snare of the herbal essence? I didn’t want to find out, so when I was introduced to weed the first time in seventh grade, I turned it down. It wasn’t until the middle of my sophomore year, after being persecuted by both friend and foe for my lack of an open mind; and the recent uprising of my periodic depression, I curiously and expectantly gave into the enticement. I’m going to be honest. I tried it, and I liked it. It didn’t just make me happy, but it made my friends happy. Irvin had been into it before I was, so he became even more of a friend than he already was. Nearing the middle of my Junior year, Irvin and I began selling the product to our friends and relatives. However, our legitimate interests had shrunk down to liking only a few things, as opposed to a variety of things, and due to our habits that had become iniquities; the light of our faith grew dim and blew out. We no longer considered ourselves Christians. No, not even of the lukewarm kind. This was due to our growing database of what we thought was knowledge. Irvin and I, along with our new friend Isaiah got into an (at the time) uncommon set of beliefs referred to as, “The New Age Movement”. This set of beliefs leads us to believe that we were Gods, and that the universe was also God, meaning that we were godly extensions of our source. We believed that everything was interconnected, and that the universe, being an extension of us, had us in its favor.
Living life with this belief made things a bit more entertaining. Not only did our newfound religion allow us to partake in the activities of our choice: like smoking weed and selling it, but it also supported our choices, along with giving us the spiritual pie we desired. However, an odd event occurred in my home and within my head. Our beliefs started getting out of hand, and I began thinking that I alone, was God. This tends to sound funny at first, but understand that this was true for me at the time. Later, I literally went crazy, as I like to explain it. My mom and dad claim I was possessed, and I don’t disagree with them: I wasn’t myself. The point is that I was no longer Christian, not even a bit. I had even gone as far as looking up fallacies in the Bible, and further, reasons why Jesus was merely a myth. About a month later I had almost completely recovered, which spawned the realization of how unrealistic I was behaving. Still not believing in Christianity, I continued life casually until school was out.
Bible Camp was a sure thing for me. Fragments of memory reminded me