Inconsistent Truths: My Fight with God

By Tracy Lutz

From the very moment I became aware of myself, the search to discover my being and my purpose began. I discovered that my being was far greater than the illusive purpose. The journey to discovering what every human was endowed with was my reckoning day. Every dream we have could possibly be a fractional glimpse into the real reality of our origin. Take a trip back “home” with me to see if your discovery of God shifts the needle of your belief back to the original beginning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532097010

Tracy Lutz

Tracy Is the author of Fishing Under The porch, Life is But a Dream and Inconsistent Truths. He closes the gap with his latest project, Untwisted Word “A Being Human” Tracy realized his love for writing when the questions he had about God were going unanswered in mainstream religion. Upon deep study and soul searching Tracy discovered and uncovered that what he was taught in church didn’t line up with life and reality. Studying hypothesis around the science of miracles and extended periods of meditation lead to the writing of UNTWISTED WORD “A Being Human”. Believing that it’s not the known that produces miracles but success appears to manifest in the atmosphere of the unknown.

Book preview

THE BEGINNING

It all began in the summer of 1970, I was five years old. Finding myself sitting in a tall grassy field, barely visible to anyone, I hear the roar of a jet passing overhead beyond the clouds. I immediately thought it might be Uncle Ray on that airplane. Uncle Ray was my dad’s younger brother who was serving in the Army in Germany. I had never met him before, unsure of what he actually looked like. Their sister, Aunt Juanita, (Neet), would always tell the kids that whenever we saw a plane overhead that it was Uncle Ray. Eventually I started to wonder if he ever really existed. FYI, I did get to meet him later on when he came home to North Carolina with his Son, (my new cousin Curtis).

It was in that field while looking up at (uncle Ray’s) plane flying over, I realized that there has to be more. It was an epiphany as such. I wondered if those airplanes really landed anywhere or if they were just a phenomenon, like a shooting star. Amazing what goes through the mind of a child when he is just beginning to discover the world around him. I remember sitting there for a quite some time while my brothers and my cousin Chris played nearby in the church yard. I wondered what would happen to me when my mom, dad and grandmother were no longer alive.

I felt an overpowering fear in that moment. I thought that I would have to die as well. I didn’t see a future at all, with or without them. We were very poor and we knew it. In my finite mind, there was no hope for that poor little boy. That day was the first time I ever prayed. My prayer was merely 5 words..God don’t let me die. I am crying inside as I write this. After all, where did these emotions come from? My brothers and my cousin were just almost out of sight nearby, although I could hear them laughing and enjoying themselves.

Why am I sitting here alone with absolutely no desire to play with them? I enjoyed and needed to be by myself. I didn’t have to answer to anyone, didn’t have to pretend or act any way to satisfy anyone, just free to wonder and think. After what seemed like forever, I stood up and walked out of my Field of dreams.

A few years later, at ten years old. I experienced another epiphany. This time I was sitting on the steps of McQueen’s Chapel Church. It was here that dad’s aunt Catherine played the organ. Of course we never attended, other than Christmas programs so that we could get free candy or toys. It was about five thirty in the evening when I heard my dad’s blue Pontiac Bonneville come up the hill from work.

Normally, I would run home to meet him and say hi. I loved my dad and was glad to see him. This particular day I just sat there lost in thought. Just a few yards from the field where I had the original experience, it happened again. That relentless fear overpowered me. I heard ambulances off in the distance. I wondered if my mom was ok at work, since she worked second shift. We were latchkey kids growing up so we fended for ourselves from three pm to six pm each school day.

During that time on the steps my thoughts went to my great Aunt Catherine (Katty). She will save me, I thought. She plays organ in this church so she must know God well enough to help me get in when the end of the world comes. As a kid, I was always told and taught that I was going to hell when I died. This was the catalyst for my life long search for the person of God. I also remembered my mom’s cousin, Benny. He was a smart educated, gospel singer and Reverend. He was very popular and revered in the family. I figured that he could pray for me and get me all saved up for heaven when I died.

Why was a little kid so enamored with dying? Looking back, I saw it all coming but couldn’t believe it would happen. So many deaths of family and friends. I was searching for someone to lead me without judgement to the throne of mercy and salvation. At the time, we didn’t attend any church, although we called ourselves members of The Rose Of Sharon Holiness Church of The First Born. It started to consume my every thought. There is just no way I was going to hell without a fight. My mom’s aunt Emma Kate attended that church every Sunday so I knew she would help me get saved. Then it happened!

My mom let my cousin and my brothers go to church without her or my aunt. The pastor, Victoria Fowler, made the altar call. I knew this was my chance. I was getting saved so I went up to the alter to give my life to the Lord. I confessed myself a sinner and received the free gift of eternal life. The next week, aunt Emma Kate came to visit. She had a private conversation with mom.

She said that she had spoken with Pastor Fowler who had told her what I had done last Sunday. She went on to say that she had spoken to the Pastor and told her that we had made a mistake. We were too young to know what we were doing and to disregard our receiving of salvation. I overheard all of it.

Aunt Kate, later that visit, told me that I was free to get saved later on when I knew what I was doing. Looking back, I know how wrong she was. No one has the right to tell anyone when it’s time to seek a greater understanding of life and the world we live in. After all, Jesus was preaching to adults by the age of twelve.

THIRD GRADE DISASTER STRIKES

I am nine years old and because my birthday comes later in the year, I started school late. Mrs. Peoples class. I quickly fell in love with this teacher. Something about her made me feel wanted, like I belonged there. It was there that I met fellow classmate Jeffery Christenberry. He was a small framed short kid like me. He and I quickly became the best of friends. We ate lunch together. During parent lunch day, we met each other’s mom. He was actually shorter than me and I am still shorter than average. I recall living in what we called the old house. A dilapidated, condemned two story house with only three livable rooms. Bad wiring, no running water or indoor plumbing. It was the place we called home.

One Monday morning as mommy was getting me dressed for school, I heard the local news talking about an accident on Sipes Road. It was the road where Aunt Kate and her husband lived. Mom tried to take my attention away from the television but I heard it! She explained what I had just heard. My best friend Jeffery, his dad and older sister were all killed over the weekend in a head-on collision. I was numb, crying violently inside but nothing came out, just a catatonic state. Mom hugged me and told me she was sorry.

I went to school and heard the news again which made it all the more real. Jeffery really wouldn’t be coming back to school, ever! After his funeral, which I was too young to attend, his mother came to school to share pictures of him with the class and to help us heal from this horrifying loss. After leaving my class, she went down the hall and did the same thing at his sister’s sixth grade class. That must have been a difficult yet healing day for Jeffery’s mother. I felt so bad for her … . and me.

I could not reconcile in my head why God would allow something so terrible to happen to Jeffery. I missed him very much. I never met another best friend for six years. So here we begin with the questions. I so needed to know and understand why Jeffery was dead. Made no sense to me why a nine year old innocent little boy had to die, and in such a horrific way. I didn’t know anything about the Bible, so there were no answers coming anytime soon. Even a biblical explanation would have softened the blow of hearing the news about Jeffery but there was no one available or willing to help console the broken spirit of a little boy who desperately needed to understand. Just the one lingering question that lasted for many years, why did Jeffery die?

IT’S SHOWTIME!

A few years later at around age eleven, mom heard me singing an old Al Green song while she was cleaning the house. Love and Happiness! How Ironic, a song entitled Love and Happiness. I didn’t feel very much like love or happiness, but the song offered a brief reprieve from real life. She asked me to keep singing but I couldn’t because I was embarrassed. She said it sounded pretty good. I quickly escaped outside to play.

Later on, she heard me singing a gospel song. She said, I want you to sing that at church. The only problem I had with that is that I was never taken to church. Didn’t know how church worked. Church protocol was as foreign to me as living in the White House. Terrified was an understatement. She incorporated my brothers to support me as back-up singers. We rehearsed a song that came to be known as Deacon Sherrill"s song.

When I done the best I can. I was the lead. Sunday came and I was so scared and embarrassed to be up in front of those people. Sister Jolly clapping her hands, Mom, Aunt Kate smiling so proudly. Aunt Karen and Aunt Carrie Bell all staring at what I assumed would be an embarrassing fiasco.

I started the song, they came in behind me with the chorus. All fear left me and I went threw caution to the wind and just sang the song as best I could. We nailed it! The applause was nice. They actually thought it was good. We eventually became known as the short lived, Lutz Brothers. They NAMED us!! Of course just like Michael Jackson, I went on to become a solo act, as in I was always being asked to sing alone. That went on for years.

I gained confidence in my signing ability. Began learning more ABOUT God but not really getting to KNOW Him. Attended some bible studies, revivals and reading on my own to develop some knowledge that I could attribute to my own efforts instead of being force fed information. I was never one to just follow what someone else said, I needed to know for myself who God was, really. The Bible was coming to life for me. I was learning and praying and becoming more and more scared of hell at the same time. I tried to be a good boy, but . …

A LITTLE BOYS’S SECRET

I tried to be a good boy but as hard as I tried, there was something lurking beneath the surface of young Tracy. A ten year old boy reading the bible and studying the word of God. I assumed the Bible was the words of God. I wanted so desperately to live by the book. There was just some things I could not control. I remember stealing food from stores. Yes, I could control stealing, but I could not control physical hunger. I could control stealing money but I could not control my clothes wearing out.

I could not control being poor. I had some secrets that I just couldn’t ever let be known if I was to have any chance of being saved. I had discovered that I liked boys more than girls. I made the discovery four years prior when I was six! I couldn’t dare let anyone know. I thought it would pass but it got worse the older I got. The more involved I became at church, the harder it got to suppress my sexually maturing body. Pubic hair starting to sprout, genitalia growing larger.

Puberty is a monster by itself, add to it a sexual proclivity taboo to the church and society was a recipe for suicidal thoughts. The only reason I never went through with my suicidal thoughts is because I knew beyond all shadow of doubt that hell would by my soul’s destination. I asked God why me and not my brothers? No answer. I asked God why me and not the other boys in the neighborhood. It was awful. All I wanted was to be good, obedient to my parents and be left alone by those who I knew didn’t care for me.

It was apparent that a lot of people didn’t like me growing up. I was called names like miss Tracy, faggot, sissy, funny, just to name a few. The one I hated the most was he’s THAT way. It hurt a great deal, because of it, I never joined any social activities. Staying out of sight to me meant they would leave me alone. I was bullied long before being bullied became the national epidemic it is today. I was beat up quite a bit. I used to think it was because we were poor, I was too naive to think that it was because I liked boys because