CHAPTER 6: “WELL, I AIN’T JESUS!”

I WASN’T THE ONLY ONE in my family trying to figure out my true identity. In the midst of this volatile, violent family, Uncle Jack was beginning to wrestle with how to live out his newfound identity in Christ.

The first thing I noticed after Jack got saved was his new obsession with the Bible, which suddenly appeared on the end table next to his favorite chair. I was surprised to see him reading it pretty much every time I was over at their house. But even more surprising was seeing him mark it up while he read it, underlining and highlighting things. I’d never seen anyone write in a book before —in fact, I thought it wasn’t allowed —but Jack said it helped him understand and remember the things he was reading. Sometimes he would stop and tell Earlene about what he’d just read, and they would talk about it awhile. I didn’t understand much about what they discussed, but sometimes things got a little heated, and they argued about what they thought it meant.

But even though Uncle Jack didn’t always understand everything he read in the Bible, that didn’t dampen his enthusiasm. He wanted to be strong in his faith, just like he was strong at the gym. He knew from working out that if you wanted to be the strongest guy in the room, then you needed to find the strongest guy in the gym and do exactly what he did. Jack figured that what was true of working out was true of studying the Bible. If you wanted to master the Bible, then it would be a smart move to follow the lead of someone who had already mastered it. So Yankee was his guy. Pastor Yankee Arnold marked up his Bible, underlining verses, highlighting passages, and jotting notes in the margin. So that’s why Jack did the same thing when he read his Bible.

Jack and Earlene stopped sending Tammy and Jackie on the Sunday school bus and instead drove their whole family to church and Sunday school. Even in the middle of the week, the whole family would head off to church together to attend the Wednesday-night service.

Jack’s sudden, radical conversion to Jesus not only astounded me and my family, it also sent shock waves across our neighborhood, leaving many wondering if his conversion was the real deal. Because Jack had quite a reputation.

At the meat-packing plant where Jack worked, his short, violent temper was legendary. Jack once told Grandma, Grandpa, and me the story of how he’d earned the respect of all his coworkers. One not-too-smart, humongous butcher who worked alongside him had developed a nasty habit of taunting him by cutting the strings of Jack’s apron with his butcher’s blade.

“Finally, I’d had enough,” Jack explained. “‘Cut my apron again, and I’ll throw you headfirst into that vat of fat,’ I told the guy, pointin’ to the 55-gallon drum where we threw the fat from the carcasses we cleaned and cut.

“But the next day, the fool cut my apron strings again. So, without thinkin’ or blinkin’, I did my signature move on the guy’s windpipe but with an added twist. I simultaneously grabbed his crotch hard, lifted him up over my head, and then threw him headfirst into the vat of blubber.” Jack smiled at the memory.

“Then I calmly went back to work and left the guy headfirst and waist deep in cow fat. Eventually, another meat cutter ran up and kicked the vat over.”

Jack paused for a moment for dramatic effect before adding, “And he never cut my apron strings again.”

For obvious reasons, Jack was feared at the butcher shop by most and respected by all for his work ethic and his ability to military press a man twice his size over his head. Was it any wonder that some people were skeptical about his conversion to Christ?

Still, there was no denying that something dramatic had changed. Not only was he set ablaze by his passion for God, but he also became a spiritual arsonist, setting others on fire with the gospel too.

So he decided to start by talking to his coworker Thumper. Jack liked Thumper because he was a hard worker. Thumper was a bodybuilder too. He came from a large Catholic Italian family. And he was a straight shooter, which Jack respected.

Jack got the biggest kick out of telling anyone who would listen how God had arranged it all so that Thumper was ready to hear about the gospel before Jack even opened his mouth to try to bring Jesus up.

Thumper had come to work one day freaked out, which was out of character for him. He was one tough dude with substantial bodybuilding chops.

But he’d seen the movie The Exorcist over the weekend —the one about the girl who was demon-possessed. “That scene where her bed starts shaking really, really scared me,” Thumper told Jack.

Jack knew this was his opening. “Well,” he said, “I ain’t afraid of the devil ’cause I have someone greater livin’ inside of me —Jesus Christ!”

Thumper thought Jack was just joking, but he was dead serious.

Then Jack used the hand motions Yankee had shown him when he explained the gospel to Jack and Earlene. “I mighta messed it up some,” Jack admitted to Thumper, “but here’s the main message loud and clear —Jesus died for sinners, and salvation is a free gift to everyone who puts their faith in him. If you put yer faith in him, you become part of God’s family forever. And, just like in a regular family, once yer in, nobody, not even the devil himself, can mess with you!”

Thumper had been a churchgoing Catholic all his life, but this was the first time Jesus’ free gift of salvation really clicked with him. So he put his faith in Jesus right then and there in the butcher shop.

“You’re no longer afraid of the devil, or death, or nothin’, right?” Jack asked him, making sure Thumper understood the gospel of grace.

“Right!” Thumper said. “Now you gotta tell my whole family about this!”

“Hell, yeah!” Jack said.

For the next two weeks, Jack and Earlene went over to Thumper’s house pretty much every day after work. There were eight people in Thumper’s family —a good Catholic family —and all eight gathered around the dining room table most nights just to watch the fireworks between Thumper’s mom, Dolores, and Jack.

First, Jack always told them about Jesus’ free gift of salvation, and then Dolores always launched into him.

“Of course Jesus died for our sins,” Dolores would say again and again, “but you still got to be good!”

So Jack always said back, “If we had to be good enough to make it into heaven, we’d all go to hell!”

Dolores would respond, “Not true. That’s why we have confession and last rites and all those other sacraments!”

And all this time, Lonnie, the father of the family —who had been raised in a Baptist church —was sitting there, mostly quiet. But Jack could tell he was thinking hard about what Jack was saying, and so were all the rest of Thumper’s brothers and sisters.

Again and again, night after night, Jack would read them the verses out of Ephesians that Yankee first told him about: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

Finally, one night after Jack read those verses, he said, “If I buy you a gift on your birthday, I’m not gonna charge you for it. It’s a gift. So when the Bible says that salvation is a gift of God, it’s a gift! Jesus paid for it with his own blood on the cross. You don’t pay for it. You receive it!”

And over the next week, without telling their mom about it, one after another of the family had put their faith in Jesus.

“Winning a soul for Jesus is kinda like winning a fistfight, but even better!” Jack declared with a laugh when he told us the story.

Two weeks later Dolores gave in, too, and the whole family started going to Yankee’s church with Jack.

That was another dramatic change I noticed in Jack: he was continually inviting people to come to church with him and Earlene. “Yankee gave the whole congregation a challenge,” Jack explained. “Whoever brings the most people out to church over the next four weekends, Yankee’s gonna give ’em a brand-new, leather-bound, King James Version, Old Scofield Reference Bible. Which is the exact same kinda Bible Yankee uses to preach from every week.”

The King James Version was code for “no compromise” to Yankee. All other translations, according to his fundamentalist tradition, were weak at best and heresy at worst. To own and use an Old Scofield Reference Bible meant that the explanations for the passages on each page came from a dispensational theological point of view. It taught a pretribulational, premillennial, pre-everything view of the end times. Those who claimed to be fundamentalist (versus liberal) in their theology had better have the Bible backup to prove it. There was no better proof than wielding an Old Scofield Reference Bible —and the fact that it was both black and leather bound made it quite the treasure for Christians who were ultraconservative theologically.

“I’m gonna win it,” Jack declared matter-of-factly.

For the next thirty days, Uncle Jack went on a redemption rampage. He invited his coworkers, fellow bodybuilders, weightlifters, tough guys, and street thug friends. Nobody liked saying no to Jack. And not many did.

Jack brought 250 guests to church in a single month. Of course, he was pleased that he won the Bible, but more importantly, he was thrilled that all of them had the opportunity to hear the gospel firsthand from the guy who had shared this message so boldly with him.

Although Jack had trusted in Jesus and was inviting pretty much everyone he knew to church, some of his old habits, especially when it came to violence, didn’t change overnight. If someone he was sharing the gospel with wanted to argue or didn’t accept the love of Jesus, there was a good chance he’d give them “the law of Moses” right upside their heads.

In the early ’70s, long before big-box fitness centers littered the landscape like weights on a sloppy gym floor, the European Health Spa was one of the primo places to be. It boasted more than just the best barbells and weight machines on the market: it had steam rooms and saunas as well. It even had ice plunge pools to ease into after a hard workout to relieve your sore muscles.

Jack was proud of the fact that he had a lifetime membership at the European Health Spa, where he could press, curl, squat, and lift huge amounts of weight and impress other powerlifters and bodybuilders. He only weighed 185 pounds, but for his size, he was definitely the strongest man in the gym.

After his conversion to Christ, he still regularly went to the gym to strain for his gains with the best of them. Just because he was a follower of Christ was no excuse to be wimpy. But now, instead of just talking smack or shooting the breeze with his fellow bodybuilders, in between sets, he’d share the gospel with them.

At the gym, the size of his biceps was the only pass he needed to share Jesus with anyone and everyone. And, even if only for their own safety, they’d generally listen.

It was at that gym where one of his more infamous gospel-sharing stories took place. I first heard the story from Rico, the man he shared with, at a family gathering years later.

Jack and Rico had been sitting in the sauna after a hard workout at the gym when Jack started telling him about Jesus.

They were in a sauna, so they were buck naked, which was awkward to begin with, but Jack was determined to convert Rico regardless of the setting. “You’re a sinner, just like me,” Jack explained, “And you need to believe in Jesus, just like I did.” Jack was just getting into it when things took a strange turn.

There was another guy in the sauna with them who had been sitting there quietly when he made the mistake of chiming in with his opinions about God and religion.

Jack turned to the guy and said, “Hey, I’m tryin’ to tell this guy about the love of Jesus. Why don’t you shut your mouth?”

Rico laughed when he told us the story. “Here was Jack talking about Jesus with me and threatening to go Old Testament on this guy!”

Determined, Jack kept sharing the gospel with Rico, but the guy interrupted again, trying to argue with him.

“If you interrupt me one more time, I’m takin’ ya out!” Jack shouted.

Just as Jack turned back to Rico and started talking again, the man interrupted again. Jack turned around, hit the guy with a short right hook on his jaw, and the man fell to the ground like a wet towel on the steam room floor.

The man pushed himself up from being flat on the floor, rubbed his jaw, looked up at Jack, and said, “Jesus didn’t go around hitting people like that!”

“Well, I ain’t Jesus. I’m Jack!” he replied.

There was no doubt that Jack was on fire for Jesus. When he’d said, “Hell, yeah!” to Jesus, he’d meant it. He carried himself with a new confidence, like he knew who he was and where he was going —even if there were some bumps along the road.

I, on the other hand, still had a big hole in my heart. I longed for a place of safety, security, and significance —like Uncle Jack seemed to have found. With Jesus in his life, he’d found new purpose at home, at work, at the gym, in the neighborhood —everywhere, really —while I still felt like a misfit in my family, a loser at my school, and a wimp in my neighborhood.

And things were about to get even more dangerous for me.