The Atheism That Saved Me

By Robert Morlan

Bob Morlan was a young boy growing up in southern Illinois, who was the product of a broken family. After dealing with the heartbreak of his familys dysfunction and brokenness, he spent time on the streets, and lost himself. Morlan, totally disillusioned by faltering role models, was filled with anger and rage. Without college as an option after high school, he enlisted in the army and while serving in the military, came to the conclusion that God did not exist.

Years later in the face of an adoption that was unraveling, after the loss of two children, the emotional welfare of his wife hung in the balance, and he found himself in a state of despair. With absolutely no options left, his desperation forced him to pray to a God he did not believe in.

Filled with light-hearted stories of his youth, poignant experiences in the army, a heart-warming love story, and the redemption of an atheist turned Christian, this religious biography will force you to examine your own walk with Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490886107

Robert Morlan

Founder and lead pastor of Grace Fellowship Church in Mokena, Illinois, Robert Morlan now serves as shepherding pastor. He currently lives with his wife, Jann, of forty-eight years, and is blessed with a daughter, Susan, a son, John, pastor of First Baptist Church of Evergreen, Colorado, and five grandchildren.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS BEFORE WE were to get the baby, the lawyer called and told me the young lady was having second thoughts. She was, perhaps, going to change her mind. I knew this was a possibility, but I was not prepared.

Silence. I couldn’t even respond. I had no words. How could I bring this news to my wife? After everything we had been through—the tragedies, the horror of losing children, the entire adoption process—and now this. What would this do to her?

I thought about my options: Should I go to the hospital? Barge in this young lady’s room and plead with her to give us her baby? Beg if necessary? Somehow convince her? No, I couldn’t. It was her child, but it should be ours. What could I do?

I was desperate. No, I was worse than desperate; I was hopeless. A million thoughts ran through my head as I paced back and forth in my office. I had no idea where to turn. We couldn’t go through this all over again. My wife. What would she say? What kind of effect would this have on our marriage? The shock and reality of the situation began to set in. Then a thought occurred to me, a thought so unusual and unnatural for an atheist, but I didn’t know where else to turn. I simply yielded to something that I had promised I would never do again—I bowed my head and prayed.

It wasn’t a prayer, really. How can you pray to a God you don’t even believe in? Nevertheless, there I was.

I did not believe my words were being heard. I said, God, I don’t know why I’m talking to someone who doesn’t exist, but I am desperate. If you will permit us to have this baby, I promise I will take him to church. If he chooses to believe, that will be his choice.

Life, I believe, is made up of defining moments. There are events and moments in our lives that mold and make us into what and who we are. We all have them. It is the way we react to these moments that determines the course of our lives.

CHAPTER 2

I GREW UP IN southern Illinois, the fifth born of ten children, the first boy after four girls. My earliest childhood memories were of my father being in the army. He would have been exempt from the military but chose to join anyway. Patriotism ran very deep in our country in the 1940s during World War II, and both men and women believed it was their duty to serve. I am not aware of any of them going to Canada to escape enlistment—so great was their patriotism. There is a reason why they are referred to as the greatest generation.

I was born in August of 1944, and my father deployed for Europe shortly after my birth. He arrived in November of that same year and was assigned to General George Patton’s Third Army. Just after his arrival, the Battle of the Bulge broke out. There had been a lull on the battlefront: the Allied forces had paused to permit war supplies to catch up with their fast-moving invasion, and the German army took advantage of this lull and counterattacked the Allies.

It turned out to be one of the greatest battles in US military history. The Allied forces had been totally unprepared for the counteroffensive and, consequently, the German army had great success initially. As much as some historians have said, I don’t believe there was much of a chance of a German victory. That is not to say the German army didn’t inflict a lot of damage on the Allies. As it turned out, the German army used up a lot of resources in the battle, and that led to an earlier end to the war.

My dad, being an infantry soldier in Patton’s army without any real combat experience, was rushed into the battle. They needed every available resource they could muster to stop the Germans. He never said anything about being in the Battle of Bastogne, where the 101st Airborne Division was surrounded by the German army, but he was more than likely there.

The 101st Airborne Division fought one of the most heroic battles recorded in military history. It was because of their unwillingness to quit or surrender that the Allies had time to regroup and stabilize the battlefront, leading to an incredible victory that hastened the war’s end.

The combat death rate among newly arrived troops was alarmingly high. In fact, many of the veterans refused to become friends with the new soldiers because of the high death rate—they just didn’t want to have to deal with the loss of another friend.

My father wasn’t in combat long before he was wounded. It was an injury that would affect him for the rest of his life. Combat, I believe, affects every soldier to varying degrees for as long as they live. One just can’t be a part of and witness death and destruction on that level without it having an effect.

His wound was a severe concussion from artillery. It was referred to as being shell-shocked. Soldiers often die from this injury. Shrapnel from the artillery shell can be deadly, but no more deadly than the concussion from an exploding shell. A soldier may have no visible injuries, but be totally destroyed internally.

My father liked the army and perhaps would have made it a career, but with his medical condition and large family, he gave it up and reentered civilian life in 1949. He had grown up very poor, was uneducated, and had no job skills. For the first time, while in the military, he had lots of clothes, plenty of food, and a security that he had never had. The army gave him all of these things. That, no doubt, had a lot to do with his liking it.

***

Several years ago, my wife and I visited Admiral Chester Nimitz’s Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas. (Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur were co-commanders in the Pacific theater in World War II.) When we finished the tour, we exited the museum through the bookstore. As we were browsing, there was a particular book that caught my eye that was written by George W. Neill. It wasn’t the title, Infantry Soldier, that had caught my attention as much as it was the cover of the book: a picture of several soldiers standing in a chow line. The weather in the picture is terrible, and one can clearly see that it was taken during World War II. But more striking, one of the soldiers was my father.

I first saw the picture while still in high school. It was the front cover of a magazine. My father showed it to me and explained the story behind how the picture was taken. It was in mid-January of 1945. The Battle of the Bulge was winding down, and his unit had brought up a hot meal for the soldiers who were fighting on the front line. As my father was waiting to be served, a photographer snapped the picture. The picture has become quite famous and has been used in books, magazines, and other news sources that recount the Battle of the Bulge.

CHAPTER 3

FOR THE FIRST FEW years after leaving the army, my father didn’t have any real direction. He tried several jobs and even tried farming. He attended classes under the GI Bill in Flora, Illinois, to learn farming, and it seemed as though he liked it. The quiet and solitude of this life seemed to have been therapy to him. He was out in the fields working mostly by himself. Farming was very hard work, but there was also a lot of time for reflection. He wasn’t healed from his wartime wounds, but I do believe it helped him at the time.

Living on a farm was ideal for our family. It was new to my dad, but not to my mother. She had grown up on a farm, and so she did very well. We had a cow (my mom knew how to milk, but my dad didn’t), a huge garden, chickens, pigs, and even two horses. It was really a good life and good for our family. I often wonder how different things might have been had we been able to stay and grow up on the farm.

After a few years on the farm, my father lost his job. The man he worked for had ordered him to kill a dog that had been hit by a car; the dog didn’t have a chance of recovering, but my father refused. Perhaps he had seen too much death in his lifetime, and he could not be the cause of any more.

Our lives changed dramatically after he lost his job. We were poor to begin with, but now our family was thrown into deep poverty. We had to leave the farm, but we stayed in the same area. Since there was no work, it was necessary for my father to leave us and try to find a job. It seems to me, as I look back, that we had been abandoned by him.

We were stuck out in the country, miles from nowhere, with little food and certainly no money to live on that I was aware of. We had moved from the farm to a rental house that was nothing but a shack. It had no electricity, no plumbing, no water—though in the early 1950s in southern Illinois, that was not so unusual, particularly where we lived.

We went weeks on end without hearing from my father. There was no form of communication for us apart from the mail. I don’t know of him ever writing or sending money. When he did come home, it was just for a few days, and then he would leave again.

CHAPTER 4

IN 1953, WHEN I was eight years old, we moved from the country, near Johnsonville, Illinois, back to Mt. Vernon, Illinois, which was like a big city to us. Nothing really changed. Rather than living in poverty in the country, we now lived in poverty in town.

My dad was still gone most of the time even though he had moved back home. He was running around and drinking a lot. This wasn’t anything new; it was just something that I was not aware of. And even then, my mother protected me as much as possible from what was happening with my father.

In spite of this going on, I have some very fond memories of my early childhood. It wasn’t all bad. When one is a part of a big family, there is always a lot of activity. Being poor and not living in the best part of town brings you into contact with a lot of characters. It’s not like the better part of town doesn’t have its characters, but it seems there are more among the poor.

In many ways, the TV series The