Hereafter the movie: What is it all about? Rowdy Yates, Dirty Harry, Thunderbolt, Philo Beddoe, Josey Wales, Bronco Billy, and William Munny are some of the film characters Clint Eastwood has played and which I have seen between two and a dozen or more times each. They are all unforgettable in my mind. He is without question my favorite actor and director. The world he has lived in both in terms of geography and culture, I have shared. Clint is a man twelve years older than I am, and perhaps, like me, he is wondering how much more time he has left. On October 20, 2010, my wife Katie and I saw the movie at a theater in San Rafael after reading two reviews of the film earlier in the day. I was fairly certain I would write as essay based on the film, exposing the theological error that I was certain I would find. The film was superb in every way, a real masterpiece. The acting, script, story, special effects, and camera work, among other aspects—it was all captivating. The film’s major theme was whether there is a continuation of conscious life after death. After being a pastor of Christian churches for more than four decades I can understand the things that run through most people’s minds when they realize that their personal end is looming, and I can well imagine that Clint Eastwood might have an interest in the subject. A Christian world view was not in evidence in Hereafter. And that is not surprising. If I had not been suddenly and convincingly converted some forty-seven years ago, I might possibly have investigated reports of near death experiences and mediumistic contact with spirits of the dead. After all, before my encounter with Jesus Christ I was quite interested in Edgar Cayce, Bridie Murphy, and all things to do with UFOs and aliens. If I had known where to find a medium, psychic, or palm reader, I might have been tempted to find out what they had to offer a young inquiring mind. It was only after becoming acquainted with Scripture that I learned about the occult—everything in magic and witchcraft to spiritualism that has to do with mediums or psychics making contact with the departed. The Bible has much to say about fortune telling and mediumistic activity, and it takes it all seriously. Without presenting particular passages which demonstrate what I am writing about, I will keep it simple and summarize my view—the demonic realm works ceaselessly as a clever counterfeit or alternative to the life of grace and faith we find in the Messiah. The point is to subtly lead people away from Jesus who is eternal life in person and who is the only way to that life. Clint Eastwood and millions of others are hoping that the grave is not the end and are especially looking for assurance that the judgment and hell Christians talk about is complete garbage. They are desperate to find another way, not of a religious nature as we think of religion, but something that is both plausible and possible and, most of all, without strings attached. The character of George, a hesitant reader or psychic, is played by Matt Damon, and toward the end of the film, he reluctantly agrees to contact the tragically killed twin of the young boy Markus. The dead twin Jason informs Markus from the “hereafter” that his was the invisible hand that had knocked off his brother’s hat on the loading platform of the London Underground while Markus was desperately trying to board a train. A frantic search for the hat causes Markus to miss his train, which meets with disaster and a great loss of life moments later. George, in revealing this concrete contact of the dead with the living shows Markus that he is not a manipulating trickster and is therefore worthy of his trust. The story line is plain—there is conscious life after death, and that life is far grander than anything a human living on the planet has ever experienced. Proof now that Jason is “alive” and can speak with him comforts Markus. I found myself smiling as well, and I will wager most of the other movie goers had a similar warm glow about them. Was the film simply entertainment or did it also have a message? To put it another way, was Eastwood, the film’s director and producer, playing the role of a spiritualistic evangelist? Had he come to a conclusion about life and death and wanted to share that with an audience wider than Billy Graham would ever have garnered? From a pastoral perspective I cringed at the counsel given by the departed Jason to his twin brother Markus, advice that might be boiled down to “get over it.” Through psychic George, Jason encourages his brother and urges him to move on, though he will be with him every step of the way. Is this a comforting thought? What a burden for a young boy to carry: the spirit of his dead brother will be a constant companion, watching but not intervening any longer, but a continuous presence nevertheless. During my years as a pastor I have officiated at hundreds of funerals or memorial services. My experience has shown me that we human beings are especially vulnerable, emotionally and spiritually, when we lose a loved one, someone important in our lives. Life brings us loss after loss, and without proper rebuilding and recovery from the natural grief we experience, there is a spiritual and mental price to pay. And, it is at times when we are in the pain of loss that we are open to deception, more than we normally would be. We seem to lose our ability to bring sober evaluation to a situation, and thus we are open to being misled. My experience has been that psychics and mediums can take advantage of such situations. During the ten years that I operated the Marin Christian Counseling Center in San Rafael, California, people who had experienced loss, especially through death and divorce, required special and tender care, because they were overly influenced by suggestions and easy means to resolve their grief. My concern then, and the chief reason for this essay, is that people who have experienced traumatic loss, especially through death, not rush to the mediums and psychics for comfort. George knew himself that the supposed gift he had was really a curse and rejected the temptation to re-engage in it, for a time, until his compassion for a boy’s suffering broke down his resolve. He comes close to expressing the premise of this essay—that in the broad scheme of things, it is far better that the dead be dead, which allows for us to recover and live our own lives. Life is grand and ugly all at once. It takes courage to face it full on. It is best to look to and rely upon the Maker of heaven and earth, who is the beginning and the end and who offers us eternal life, without strings, through His Son, Jesus Christ.

David at 10A Judson Lane Mill Valley

Driving back across the bridge into Marin, now with David Hoyt in the car, he and all his worldly possessions. He still had on his religious garments, and he had that look in his eye, expression on his face, and the body language of someone who had totally imbibed eastern spirituality.

The time was 1967 and the place was a Southern Baptist Seminary. Everyone on campus was Caucasian, the professors mostly spoke with southern accents, and no one looked like I did, with a mustache and slightly longer hair, and certainly no one looked liked David Hoyt. Now he would be living there among them.

Then there was my wife Bobbie, about as straight an arrow as you could get, plus my two little girls, a kindergartner and first grader – Dory and Grace. With only two small bedrooms and neighbors on each side, there was no place to hide David.

I was working part time, and Bobbie worked as a minimum wage sales clerk. We had the G.I. Bill, without which I would not have been able to afford a seminary education, but I was also pastor of Excelsior Baptist Church in Byron and making $10 a week. (It had been $20 a week but the deacons got mad at me for bringing migrant workers to church and baptizing them.) We barely survived as it was.

Bobbie and the kids were quite shocked when David and I walked into the place carrying his belongings. He ended up making our tiny front room his bedroom and we managed as best we could, but the pressure was on Bobbie. My dear, sweet daughters made the best of it and got along with David just fine.

How it all worked out is kind of blurry to me now, but I recall David coming to classes with me, and I would hear stories of his wanderings around the campus and talking to students. He spent some time with Timothy Wu who was living in the men’s dorm. Due to David’s strange appearance and presence in the admin and academic buildings, a ruling was made to the effect that students could not have non-relatives living with them. (This rule is still in force.)

My job was to disciple David and I did the best I could. All my life it seems I have been constantly busy and especially then. But we fit it all in. David and I started from scratch: who is God, what is sin, what was the Fall, and the longish story about what God did about it all. David was nothing else but intense and eager. He was a sponge and grasped complex biblical ideas quickly. After a few weeks he was ready to go with me into the city on what were now routine visits and ministry on the streets of the Haight-Ashbury. It was the “Summer of Love,” which David and three others had actually organized. As I am thinking through these things I realize David Hoyt was not only one of the first, if not the first convert in the Jesus People Movement, but he was also one of the chief evangelists for the whole hippie scene in San Francisco.

So our adventures together began. At least once a week we drove into the City, arriving as early as possible and staying as late as possible, visiting David’s old friends at the Krishna Consciousness Temple and others like the Buddhist priest, Robert Sutherland, to whom David did his best to tell about Jesus, and hippie after hippie by the hundreds. Early on we wrote up flyers, some of which I still have, and passed these out. We bought hundreds of Campus Crusades, The Four Spiritual Laws, and other materials to use in our witnessing. Some were converted, but it was only the trickle before the flood that was to come.

One other thing David and I did together: he began coming with me to Byron on Saturdays and Sundays. That story comes up next.

Some background:

This is the first in a series on my life as a flaming Pentecostal; well maybe not so much flaming as in Holy Roller, but my life in the Charismatic/Pentecostal fold. It all began, strangely enough, in Portland, Oregon with what happened down at the local Odd Fellows Hall.

Two blocks from the family home in Northeast Portland, on Deacon and Durham Street, was the Odd Fellows Hall, which was rented out by different groups. It no longer exists, and probably the huge old wooden, two-story structure burned down. When Pentecostal meetings were sweeping Portland one met there and it was wild. We kids, my brothers and I plus a kid named Topsy, would sneak in and watch. We slipped in the back doors, found seats in the back, and got our entertainment. Since that day I have never seen anything quite like it. There was actual rolling around on the floor. My dad said nothing too bad but nothing too good about it all. I don’t know that he ever went in there, but he definitely went to the North Baptist Church about a mile from the house.

My dad had not yet become a Christian, a real one I mean, and I think he attended church out of tradition, because his folks were the quiet, serious kind of Baptists.

Jumping now to 1963 and the First Baptist Church of Fairfield, California and my conversion at age 21. I will not walk us through that here, but after a period of nine months of sporadic listening to the Gospel preached by Pastor Bob Lewis, I experienced the new birth. It is still mostly a mystery to me. Pastor Bob was in his mid-thirties and was serious about discipleship. A book he gave to all of us new believers was on the Bible-based American cults. It was a small volume and discussed only five such groups: Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Science, Adventists (Seventh Day), and Pentecostals.

Back then Pentecostals were rightfully included in such a book, but today that is not the case. Most people do not understand that in the early years of the 20th century Pentecostals earned the designation of “cult,” because they believed that they were the only ones really filled with the Holy Spirit and that speaking in tongues was the only sure mark of a real born-again Christian. This took them into the cultic realm.

So then, reading that book I was convinced that Pentecostals were cultic, and I gave them and their doctrines wide berth. This was my mind set all the way to 1968 and the Jesus People Movement.