Installment Number 2.

By T W Ladd 11/14/2020 

Robert Lee Shotts was 54 years old in 1980. A tall man, six-two in his leather Oxford wingtips — the only kind of shoes I ever saw him in. He also always had on either dress slacks or sometimes dark olive chinos, which also had a crease over the knee. Six days a week at least he wore a tie — it was always a full Windsor knot. (His son Jimmy once told me the half Windsor was for liberals.) When the whole church went camping he would sit around the campfire with either the sleeves of his Oxford shirt rolled up, or maybe he’d take the shirt off and sit around in an undershirt covering his generous paunch. No dungarees, as he called jeans, for him. James Dean, after all, was no Christian gentleman. 

Pastor Shotts was an odd looking bird. His nose was very long and a little pointed on a very long face. His was a massive head. He kept his hair as short as Navy regulations required at all times. He had a nice round bald spot in the back like a medieval friar. His ears were also enormous and the tips ever so slightly pointed and tipped outward. Since I was a big fan of the Salem’s Lot miniseries with David Soul, I saw a resemblance to the show’s hairless vampire monster. It was very Nosferatu. It didn’t help his appearance any that he had dark wiry hairs growing out of his ears — a sight I don’t recall often seeing since, especially not in persons under that age of a hundred. 

But Pastor Shotts, though large, socially awkward and physically unappealing was a very gentle man. He was warm and kind. I liked him. He wasn’t macho, talking about sports or hunting or monster trucks. He was quick to smile or laugh — he had a comically loud laugh. In fact, his whole brood had the same odd, boisterous laugh, mouth wide open, head tipped back. Where others might simply exhale a little sharply to express amusement, the Shotts clan would give a blast on their hilarity horn. As a kid, I found it equal parts annoying and amusing. 

In one of his sermons you were likely to hear an anecdote about Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. (He had accepted the common misconception that Michelangelo painted the ceiling while lying on his back.) Or he would site statistics on how many times the average heart would beat over a lifetime. He loved odd facts. And he loved tales of survival in harsh conditions. I recall several stories about Shackleton’s exploration of Antarctica. Shotts was a sucker for any of that overcoming adversity crap. Anything that was like the Donner Party with a happy ending. He loved Corrie ten Boom’s book The Hiding Place.  There was definitely something sentimental about his mind. On the one hand he was like a Hallmark Holiday Special. On the other he was quoting “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” He frequently told the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man from the Gospel of Luke:

The rich man died and awoke in hell. “And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.” 

Pastor Shotts reading those words in his resonant bass voice, so full of conviction, made me see the flames and picture the pain and suffering of the damned. The rich man only wanted one drop of water to ease his suffering. But even that was impossible. 

This didn’t strike me as an unfair punishment. Hell had it’s own rules, I suppose I thought. I don’t know. All of the adults in the room accepted these things. This wasn’t my first time hearing about hell. It had to be real, right? Black holes were real, and they didn’t make any sense. Hell was just like that. It didn’t make a lot of sense but the main thing was just that you didn’t want to go there. 

I don’t remember what sermon Pastor Shotts preached the first time I heard him. Maybe it was the Lazarus sermon. Maybe that was when my brother and I went forward after the sermon during the altar call. If you haven’t experienced an altar call, you really should. You’re missing out. The piano and the organ play, the people sing something like “Just as I am without One Plea,” a hymn from the 1860s. The plunking piano and the humming Hammond organ, the anemic effort of the singing are all part of the tragicomedy. And in between the melody phrases is the most important part: the pastor intones an almost broken invitation to come forward and give your heart and your life to Jesus. “If you were to die tonight, do you know where you’d spend eternity? Will it be in paradise with the poor man Lazarus, or will it be in the fiery torment of hell with the rich man? This will be most important decision of your life — of your entire existence!” 

I was not made of such stern stuff at ten that I was able to resist that kind of emotional manipulation. What fool wants to spend eternity burning in hell? That’s a no-brainer. 

So we went forward, Chuck and I. I believe he went first. It may have been one of the few times when needed a cue from my brother, who was three years older. We knelt on the green carpeted steps of the podium in that windowless church — a pole barn with paneled walls — and deacons read to us the “Romans Road.” I still remember Deacon Burkhardt kneeling beside me, his farmer’s hand gently on my back, mumbling in my ear. He went through the series of six short verses in Paul’s Epistle to the Church at Rome: We’re all sinners. The wages of sins is death. Jesus died for our sins. Confess that you’re a sinner and declare that Jesus is Lord.

Boom, you’re a Christian! 

I’ve known a lot of people who have gone forward at an altar call and said all the words only to go about their lives with no lasting effect. That was not the case with my brother and I. We were definitely changed. That decision changed us. It changed me. Not in the way that my mom and dad had hoped — especially my mom. But it opened up new possibilities for me. I wouldn’t be who I am today, even if I no longer think of myself as a Christian. How I see the world would be so very different. I never would have gone through so many labyrinths of elaborate horrors — imaginary landscapes, visions of Armageddon, fears and reassurances of the Rapture, a sense of calling and mission (to what I wasn’t ever sure, but I knew that God had something planned for my life). Where would I be without my fascination with the USSR? I suppose some of it would still be there, but it wouldn’t have felt so personal. I used to have a National Geographic map of the Soviet Union on my wall. My dad asked me why I would have a map of that Godless country up. My mom was also popping her head into my room at that moment and without missing a beat said, “Well, he’s praying for them.” 

Did I pray for the Russians? I don’t remember doing that. I remember imaging myself stuck in frozen Russia. I pictured being a prisoner in one of the Gulag cells, starved and beaten like Haralan Popov or Richard Wurmbrand, both of whom were obsessively discussed in the fundamentalist Baptist circles I moved in. 

And this was no accident. After the service where my brother and I went forward, Pastor Shotts approached us and grilled us if we had really asked Jesus into our hearts, or were we just going through the motions to please the adults. I’d never encountered a question like that. I recall mumbling something about really believing — visions of damnation still filling my head. The Pastor Shotts said one of the strangest things I’ve ever heard anyone say to me. “Would you be willing to die for your belief in Jesus? Because some day you may be forced to choose. Would you deny Christ?” 

Your savior or your life? The gun is held to your head. What would you do? 

I assured him that I would not deny Christ. I, ten-year-old asthmatic weighing all of fifty-something pounds, was willing to forfeit my life for my belief. Or words to that effect. Pastor Shotts smiled and laughed and said he believed I would. Then he put one of his giant paws on my boney little shoulder and asked if he could say a prayer, into which he immediately launched. 

I was left wondering who would ask me to give up Jesus or die.