There was a very, very narrative pastor I used to listen to at home on cassettes that my family owned in early elementary school. I'm not sure that I was an eager church attender as a tiny child, but after a few school years I started to find the stories very deep, and notice that my family living arrangement was calmer than nearby kid's with no church.
The preacher was a special fellow, he also taught theology at a college, and he could both narrate and elucidate at the same time, as well as being a very American man who talked about the Torah and leaving Egypt, so I had the back of the dollar bill and its secret symbolism nailed down pretty early on. I was taken with how the republican side of it moved from personal relationship to promises only for those who sacrificed on alters and prayed, and then to humanist family values bust up causing 400 years of slavery. The law didn't arrive until they were freed, and nation building came after that, so to me it sounded exactly like the United States history in class, with the law being inspired and then the colonization and the building of the state.
I think I quit listening at the episode where Ahab and Jehu have a war, simultaneously as Elijah and the Baal prophet competed for alter recognition. It was very important to me at the time, though, and later when I went away to college, I was glad that my family, always poor, had spent more of it's budget on books than most of my friends' houses.
The preacher was a special fellow, he also taught theology at a college, and he could both narrate and elucidate at the same time, as well as being a very American man who talked about the Torah and leaving Egypt, so I had the back of the dollar bill and its secret symbolism nailed down pretty early on. I was taken with how the republican side of it moved from personal relationship to promises only for those who sacrificed on alters and prayed, and then to humanist family values bust up causing 400 years of slavery. The law didn't arrive until they were freed, and nation building came after that, so to me it sounded exactly like the United States history in class, with the law being inspired and then the colonization and the building of the state.
I think I quit listening at the episode where Ahab and Jehu have a war, simultaneously as Elijah and the Baal prophet competed for alter recognition. It was very important to me at the time, though, and later when I went away to college, I was glad that my family, always poor, had spent more of it's budget on books than most of my friends' houses.
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