One can talk about religion in generalities and about churches being staunchly Reformed and very orthodox, but what was my personal experience as a child? I can’t remember that my mother often told Bible stories, but she must have done so. At table Dad read from Anne De Vries’ Bible Story Book and when I could read, I read these two volumes for myself. I believe these books were published during the war. They have been translated in English but lost their Dutch flavour and idiom in translation. At school, teachers made much of the Bible lesson. They were expected to know the stories so well that they would be able to tell them without making use of notes. Some teachers were quite dramatic and to those teachers we listened breathlessly. I remember that after a story about Abraham building an altar unto the Lord, I built one myself on a Saturday morning beside the stinking cemetery ditch. It had been freezing a bit, and the fields were covered with rime.

It is hard to remember the contents of my faith. I don’t think I ever doubted then that I belonged to Jesus, although in our churches we did not speak too much about personal relationships with him. You loved God, the Father, and this love meant that you obeyed him. But the Father was so far away, so unexplainable. How do you love someone you’ve never seen or spoken to? But I remember that the stories about Jesus and especially those about His death on the cross made a very deep impression on me. Later, when I heard the St. Matthew Passion for the first time, I remember that shivers ran over my back and that I held back tears … for boys don’t cry! That first listening to the St. Matthew Passion, made both Sense and me fervent adorers of Johan Sebastian Bach. Sense would try to sing arias from the passion with me accompanying him on the organ but oh boy, that music was so, so difficult to sing and to play!

While I can say little how I experienced my faith in my childhood – which adult can? – I know that I was interested. Our bedtime prayer was a little form prayer, and when I got a bit older, I would add my own petitions. We always knelt beside the bed and somehow never forgot to do so. I must have disliked the long services, but we hardly ever complained about them. They were so much part of our lives, that we just took for granted that any other form of Sunday worship was impossible.

When I was 8, I wanted to become a minister. When I was 8 ½, a sea captain. Once, when we had visitors, my mother wanted to show me off. I climbed on a chair and recited the ten commandments and the Lord’s prayer. When I was twelve years old, I became a catechumen. The earlier mentioned Rev. Hommes had a tremendous influence on young people, I think. You could listen to him as you listened to your teacher in school during a Bible story breathlessly. His sermons even spoke to 12-year-olds. And I learned much from him during catechism. He had the knack to explain things clearly, but also called us time and again to make room in our hearts for Jesus. His preaching was very Christ-centered. Always Jesus shone, even in a sermon about the Old Testament.

While the keeping of commandments was God-honoring, and sort of determined whether you lived out your faith, compassion and mercy, the doing of good works wasn’t stressed so much. Maybe our religious leaders were afraid that we would fall back into the heresy of the Roman Catholics, which elevated good works to practically the only way to earn salvation. We were taught that Jesus earned our salvation for us, and then … out of thankfulness you couldn’t help but do good to others. So, our religion was mostly about the vertical relationship with God, and not so much the horizontal fleshing out of faith, of which Matthew 25, last verses, speaks.

Of course, the faith experiences in your youth will have a lasting effect on your experiences later on in life. The rather strong ‘head’ faith would be with me for a long time. For many years to come I would feel quite secure in the best mode of religion, that of the followers of Calvin. Hindsight tells me that part of the problem in the ‘Gereformeerde’ Churches to which we belonged was the underestimation of the Holy Spirit’s dynamic work in our hearts. Consequently, we thought little about mission, evangelism, outreach. Of course, these things were present, and maybe more so than in other Dutch churches, but it did not form the heart of the church. We took this legacy to Canada and are still struggling with the consequences.

The End

Now, what else is there beside church, school, and family. Oh yes, sports! In the summer we swam almost every day in the public swimming pool. We had a family subscription. It was quite a walk, and Dutch summers could have many cold, rainy days, but we took that in stride mostly. Further I played street soccer, and handball on the school yard. We walked endlessly, later on we biked endlessly, enough to keep us in excellent condition!