The Cross and the Switchblade

  There were two other young men in the dimly lit room; they had rolled up the sleeves on their left arms. On the table before them lay a needle, a bottle cap “cooker,” a glass of water, and a small cellophane bag containing a white substance: heroin.

  “Who’s he?” said Tammy, jerking her head toward me.

  “He’s okay,” said Shorty. “He’s a preacher. I asked him here.”

  Tammy turned her back on us and went ahead with the heating process we had interrupted.

  Shorty turned to me and whispered, “Don’t try to stop them, Preach. If you mess up the fix, they’ll kill you. I mean that. If you go out and try to get the cops, we’ll be gone by the time you get back. Stick around. It’s good for your education.”

  So I stuck around and got my education in what it’s like to be a teenage addict. I shall never be the same, as a result of the scene I witnessed in the next few moments. The preparation of the fix had taken some time. Now each teenager, including Shorty, pushed and struggled to shoot up first. The sickest was allowed to drill before the others, and Shorty suddenly went into a seizure of shaking and retching and moaning—I suppose so that he could be first. The four youngsters watched one of the boys pour heroin into the cap cooker.

  With shaking hands the boy lit two matches under the cooker and boiled the contents. The other addict took off his belt and applied a tourniquet to Shorty’s arm. The others were getting very agitated. They stood by gritting their teeth and clenching their fists to keep from grabbing the loaded needle from Shorty’s hand. Tears streamed down their cheeks as they cursed and bit their lips.

  Then, one by one, there was that final puncture that was so exhilarating.

  I have never felt so close to hell. The kids drifted off into a kind of euphoria.

  “What about it, Preach? You going to get Tammy off the stuff?” Shorty asked, suddenly remembering why he had asked me in.

  I told him I would certainly try. And I did try to talk with Tammy then and there, but she simply looked at me with glassy eyes. What could I offer that she didn’t have right now, she said. She was in heaven. I just didn’t know what heaven was like. She could handle herself without any help from me.

  Shorty, too, thought better of having invited me in now that he had his fix. When I told him that I had no magic cure, that all I could offer was help while he went cold turkey, he looked at me and said, “Well, what’d you come here for, then?”

  So I failed.

  I left the apartment. When I went back to try again, Tammy and Shorty had disappeared. Nobody knew where they were. Nor did anybody seem to care.

  20

  The tremendous hold that drugs have on the human body cannot be explained in physical terms alone. My grandfather would say that the devil had these boys in his grip, and I think my grandfather is right. The boys themselves say this, but in a different way:

  “Davie,” I was told over and again, “there are two habits you’ve got to kick if you’re hooked. The body habit and the mind habit. The body habit’s not too much of a problem: You just stay in sheer hell for three days, put up with a little less torture for another month, and you’re free.

  “But that mind habit, Davie . . . that’s something terrible! There’s a thing inside you that makes you come back. Something whispering to you. We can’t get rid of him, Davie. But you’re a preacher. Maybe this Holy Spirit you talk about, maybe He can help.”

  I don’t know why it took so long for me to realize that this was, indeed, the direction we should take. The realization came about as an evolution, starting with a failure and ending with a magnificent discovery.

  The failure was a boy named Joe. I’ll never forget the four traumatic days I spent with him, trying to bring him through the pain of withdrawing from addiction to heroin.

  Joe was such a nice guy. He had not come into his addiction by the usual route. He had been working for a coal company. One day he slipped and fell down a chute. The accident put him in the hospital for several months, and for most of that time Joe was in severe pain. To help relieve his agony, the doctor prescribed a narcotic. By the time Joe was released from the hospital, he was addicted.

  “I couldn’t get any more of the drug,” he told me. “But I discovered that there was a kind of cough syrup that had narcotics in it and I started walking all over the city buying it.”

  After a while this didn’t satisfy Joe’s growing need. He knew that some of his old high school buddies were using heroin, and he got in touch with them. From then on the pattern was typical. First sniffing, then skin popping, then mainline injections. When Joe came to us, he was deeply addicted.

  “Can you stay here at the center for three or four days?” I asked. “You can live upstairs with the workers.”

  Joe shrugged.

  “It won’t be easy, you know. You’ll be going off cold turkey.”

  Joe shrugged again.

  Cold turkey—instantaneous withdrawal—was the method we used partly because we had no choice: We could not administer the withdrawal drugs they used in hospitals. But we preferred cold turkey because withdrawal is faster: three days vs. three weeks. The pain is more intense, but it is over sooner.

  We brought Joe to the center and gave him a room upstairs with the male workers. Barbara, our registered nurse living at the home, would keep an eye on Joe all the time he was with us. We also put a doctor on alert in case we should need him.

  “Joe,” I said, as soon as we had him settled in, “as of this moment the withdrawal has started. I can promise you that you won’t be alone for one second. When we aren’t with you in person, we will be with you in prayer.”

  We weren’t going to take the boy off drugs and leave him alone to suffer. The entire four days would be coupled with intensive, supportive prayer around the clock. Day and night boys and girls would be in the chapel interceding for Joe. Others would be with him in person upstairs reading Scripture to him.

  We had Joe learn the 31st Psalm. We call it the Song of the Addict.

  Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me: for thou art my strength. (v. 4)

  Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly. (v. 9)

  For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing: my strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my bones are consumed. (v. 10)

  I was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbours, and a fear to mine acquaintance: they that did see me without fled from me. (v. 11)

  I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel. (v. 12)

  Once the withdrawal pains began, Joe sweated through the symptoms. Barbara checked his condition regularly. I hated to go into his room. Joe lay on the bed gripping his stomach as the cramps hit him again and again. His body was a high pink. Sweat poured off him, leaving the mattress soaked. He cried out in his pain and pounded his head with his hands. He wanted water, then threw it up. All I could do was hold his hand and promise him that we cared.

  At night we set up a tape recorder by Joe’s bed and played Scripture readings to him. I stayed at the center during this. Often during the night I would slip into the chapel to be sure someone was there, then up the stairs to see how Joe was doing. The recorder was softly repeating portions of the Bible to the boy as he tossed in fitful sleep. Never once during those three days and nights did the torment let up. It was a terror to watch.

  Then, on the fourth day, Joe seemed better.

  He walked around the center smiling wanly and saying that he thought maybe the worst was over. All of us were happy with him. When Joe said he wanted to go home to see his parents, I was a little dubious, but there was nothing we could do to detain the boy if he wanted to leave.

  So, smiling and thankful, Joe walked out the front door and turned down Clinton Avenue.

  The next morning we learned that Joe had been arrested for robbery and possession of narcotics.

  “What went wrong?
” I asked at a staff meeting. “The boy got all the way through the worst three days he would ever have to spend. He had a tremendous investment to protect. And he threw it all away.”

  “Why don’t you talk to the boys who have come off successfully?” said Howard Culver.

  There were several such boys. One by one I called them in and listened to their stories of deliverance. They all spoke of a common experience.

  I spoke to Nicky and asked him when it was that he felt he had victory over his old way of life. Something tremendous had happened to him, he said, at the time of his conversion on the street corner. He had been introduced at that time to the love of God. But it wasn’t until later that he knew he had complete victory.

  “When was that, Nicky?”

  “At the time of my baptism in the Holy Spirit.”

  I called in others and asked the same thing. Again and again I got the same report.

  A pattern was emerging. I felt I was on the verge of something tremendous.

  21

  Shortly after we became interested in the Holy Spirit’s role in helping a boy rid himself of an addiction to narcotics, we had a visit at the center from a Jesuit priest. He, too, wanted to know more about the baptism. He had heard our young people at a street rally and was so impressed that he wanted to know their secret.

  We spent an afternoon with Father Gary at the center. The first thing we did was show him the references to the experience in the Bible. “The baptism of the Holy Spirit is not a denominational experience,” I said. “We have Episcopalians and Lutherans and Baptists and Methodists working with us, all of whom have been filled with the Holy Spirit.”

  In its essence, we told Father Gary, the baptism is a religious experience that gives you power. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,” said Jesus when He showed Himself to His apostles after His death.

  Father Gary and I bent over the Bible. “The first reference to this special experience comes in the early part of the Gospel story. The Jews, you remember, wondered for a while if John the Baptist was the Messiah. But John told them, ‘There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost’” (Mark 1:7–8).

  From the beginning of Christianity, then, this baptism of the Holy Ghost has had a special significance because it marks the difference between the mission of a believer, no matter how bold and effective, and the mission of Christ: Jesus would baptize His followers with the Holy Ghost. In His last hours on earth, Jesus spent a great deal of time talking to His disciples about the Holy Ghost, who would come after His death to stand by them, comfort them, lead them, and give them power that would allow them to carry His mission forward.

  Then, after the crucifixion, He appeared to them and told them not to leave Jerusalem. “You must wait,” He said, “for the promise made by my Father, about which you have heard me speak: John, as you know, baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, and within the next few days . . . you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” (Acts 1:4–5, 8, NEB).

  We continued to the second chapter of Acts. “It was immediately after this,” I reminded Father Gary, “that the disciples were gathered together in Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost. ‘While the day of Pentecost was running its course they were all together in one place, when suddenly there came from the sky a noise like that of a strong driving wind, which filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues like flames of fire, dispersed among them and resting on each one. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them power of utterance.’”

  “A vast change took place in the apostles after this experience at Pentecost. Before, they had been powerless. Afterward, they received that power Christ spoke about. They healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead. The same men who had hidden during the crucifixion went on after this experience to stand up to the world with their message.”

  I told Father Gary about the gigantic revival that swept the United States, Canada, England and South America in the early 1900s. At the heart of this revival was the message that the power given to the Church at Pentecost had for the most part fallen away but could be brought back through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. “The book of Acts tells of five different times when people received this experience,” I said, “and the early Pentecostals noticed that in four out of five of these times, the people who were baptized with the Holy Spirit began to ‘speak in other tongues.’”

  Father Gary wanted to know what speaking in other tongues was like. “It’s like talking in another language. A language you don’t understand.” I pointed out the places in the Bible where this experience followed the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The disciples spoke in tongues at Pentecost; Saul was filled with the Holy Spirit after his Damascus Road conversion and subsequently spoke in tongues, saying, “I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all” (1 Corinthians 14:18). The members of Cornelius’s household were baptized with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues. The new Christians at Ephesus were similarly baptized and began to speak in tongues.

  Father Gary wanted to know what the actual experience was like.

  “Why don’t you ask the kids?” I said. We invited him to have lunch with us, and there Father Gary listened as several of our young people described what it had been like when they were filled with the Spirit.

  The first was a girl named Neda. We had found her on Coney Island, wandering around as if lost. “I used to drink a lot,” she said now, “and I hated my parents, especially my mother. I came here to the center and sat in the chapel and listened to the other kids talk about how Jesus helped them. ‘We still get tempted,’ they said, ‘but now we run into the chapel and pray.’ When they prayed, they spoke in another language but they looked happy and sure of themselves. When they were done, their temptation was gone.

  “So they made me want the same thing. I went into the chapel one day to pray by myself. I started telling God all about my problems and I asked Him to come into my life like He had to those drug addicts. Something took over my speech. It made me feel like I was sitting down by a river that somehow was flowing through me and bubbled up out of me like a musical language. After that one of the workers showed me in the book of Acts what it was all about. It was the most wonderful thing that ever happened.”

  The next boy spoke. “First of all,” said John, “I know this is real. And you know how? Because afterward Jesus Christ seemed to come right out of the Bible. He became a living person who wanted to stand with me through my problems.”

  “Yes,” said Father Gary. “This is wonderful.”

  “With me,” said a boy named Joseph, “He helped me get rid of drugs. I was beginning to skin pop heroin. When I heard about Jesus, it kind of shocked me that He loved people in spite of all their sins. Then I heard that He comes into us with this baptism of the Holy Spirit.

  “So I got to wanting this, just like Neda. In the chapel, I cried to God for help, and that’s when He came around. I was speaking in a new language. At first I thought I was crazy, but I knew I couldn’t be. I wasn’t lonely anymore. I didn’t want any more drugs. I loved everybody. For the first time in my life I felt clean.”

  On and on the kids went, each telling what happened to him or her. Father Gary left an hour later. I wish he had stayed a little longer because that same night another boy received the baptism, and he could have witnessed the experience himself.

  22

  Our hopes were very high now that the baptism would always, and permanently, free boys from the hold of heroin.

  There was a good basis for this hope. As soon as we suspected that there was a relationship between the baptism and a boy’s ability to throw the habit, we made a special effort to lead our young addicts into the experience.

  Time and
again we got the same results. Harvey had been referred to us by the courts; he had been deeply addicted to heroin for three years, but after the baptism he said the temptation itself went away.

  Johnny had been on heroin for four years and pulled away successfully after his baptism.

  Lefty had used the needle for two years, and after his baptism he not only stopped drugs, he decided to go into the ministry.

  Vincent used heroin for two years, until his baptism, when he stopped instantaneously.

  Ruben had a four-year addiction; at his baptism he was given the power to stop.

  Eddie had started on heroin when he was twelve years old; fifteen years later he was still using the drug, and was nearly dead from its continual use. The baptism of the Holy Spirit released him from his addiction.

  Then one of the boys slipped. Even after the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He had not learned that living in the Spirit is as necessary as receiving the Spirit.

  Ralph had been on heroin for three years. He tried a hundred times to break the addiction. He tried to leave his gang, where his buddies were mainlining with him. Each time he failed. There was only one way out, Ralph thought: He had to take his own life before he took the life of someone else when he was desperate for a fix. One night, Ralph climbed on a roof. He stood at the ledge, ready to dive headfirst into the street. He was waiting only until the sidewalk below him was clear.

  At that moment, he heard singing.

  It came from one of our Gang Churches, meeting in a building directly across the street from where Ralph stood. He stepped down from his perch. He listened to the rest of the song, and then he walked down the stairs of the building and crossed the street. A sign outside invited him to come in and hear the story of how God was working in Brooklyn streets to help boys addicted to drugs and tied to the gangs.

  He went in. And Ralph was never the same. He turned his life over to Christ, and later he received the baptism of the Spirit.