Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin-Eater

My older brother, Bill was a cheater. I say “was” because he passed away a few weeks back. And when I claim he was a cheater, it’s not that he was cheating on his wife, or cheating on his taxes, or even that he was cheating at Monopoly when we were kids — although I might stand by that last allegation.

I discovered that my brother was a cheater in 1973 while I was a senior in high school and enjoying the best year of my life (up to that point). As the youngest of five kids, my older parents had grown too weary to constantly challenge my lifestyle. Consequently, I was devoted to the unholy trinity of my generation — sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.

My brother was away at college and came home most weekends to do his laundry and enjoy home-cooked meals. Bill and I had always observed that tenuous truce brothers typically abide by, but one weekend when he came home, everything had changed.

My previously normal brother had become a bona fide Jesus Freak. We couldn’t have a conversation about anything of importance like hot girls, The Rolling Stones, or even motorcycles without him working Jesus into the conversation. After our new relationship obstacle persisted for several weekends, I did the only thing I could; I went into debate mode.

While a few know-nothing knuckleheads might, on a bad day, characterize me as “argumentative,” I was anything but. I simply pointed out with great civility, every tiny crack in my brother’s theology and brought up for discussion the slightest inconsistencies in his lifestyle.

This back-and-forth went on for months until my brother moved back home for the summer of 1973. I figured I could go at him fulltime and eventually win him over to my perspective, but that’s when he cheated. My brother was involved in a weekly bible study with several of his friends and instead of debating me face-to-face, he and his pals began praying that God would intervene in my life.

You have to admit that recruiting the Creator of the universe to join your theological debate team is seriously cheating! That’s like getting the whole Texas Rangers line-up to join your church just so you can outdo the Baptists in the interchurch softball league.

Long-story-short, on June 27th of 1973, I went to pick a girl up for a date and ran unexpectedly into the youth director from her church — who was supposedly using her parents’ washer and dryer to do his laundry. This guy didn’t know my brother and my brother had never heard of him, but after four hours of an intensely familiar discussion, something unexplainable happened. It was as if all the puzzle pieces fell into place, and for the first time in my experience, I understood what life is really about.

That one event in 1973 radically altered the direction of my life. Most of the friends I had before that night are now either dead by their own hand or incarcerated. Why I survived is still a mystery, but it all hinged on the fact that my brother cheated by recruiting supernatural help in our ongoing debate.

I don’t mourn for my brother because I know, even as I type these words, he is healthier and happier than he ever could have been in this life. He now knows the answers to the perplexing questions he and I discussed over coffee in recent years. And I expect he has already explored those wonders of this planet which he lacked the time and money to visit before.

My only hope is that when the moment arises, that I — and you as well — can mimic my brother and cheat, if necessary, to become the influence in someone else’s life which detours them down the last exit ramp before they crash head-long into the highway pileup their worldview is headed towards.

And if you happen to meet my brother face-to-face before I get there, tell him to save me a seat in the cheaters’ section. I’ll be along as soon as I’ve completed what I’m working on here.

A meeting of great minds who think alike