GENESIS
“Hurray, we have a brother!” was painted in large letters on Gerard’s cradle.
So the whole family was happy, even though Gerard did not notice all of this.
As he grew up, he began to enjoy life to the fullest.
This was expressed in kindergarten, where he was dating his first girlfriend, Marianne.
Together they walked to and from school without paying too much attention to each other.
Gerard was more attentive to playing with his toy-cars and later to “lifelike” playing cowboys and indians in the large central garden of their flat at the Maartensdijklaan in The Hague.
The stirs of the world passed him by and large.
Playing with his friends was much more important than the national and/or international news that occupied the adults in his vicinity.
” As he grew up, he began to enjoy life to the fullest. This was expressed in kindergarten, where he was dating his first girlfriend, Marianne ”
Many children from the neighborhood gathered in the house with the only TV in the apartments building, if there was a children’s show on television on Wednesday afternoon.
Of course Gerard was almost always there.
Only in the last grade of primary school, but especially in secondary school, Gerard understood step by step, that there is a world outside his own creations of shooting cowboys and indians, or the reality of the comic book heroes like Archie, the Man of Steel, Spiderman etc..
That was also the time when the music started to have an important influence on him, especially the often romantic lyrics of Cliff Richard were sung at the top of his lungs in his room at home.
Much to the annoyance of his very serious, older brother Henk.
Gerard did not care about it and he ignored the attempts to correct him.
” That was also the time when the music started to have an important influence on him, especially the often romantic lyrics of Cliff Richard were sung at the top of his lungs in his room at home “
Although many of his friends in secondary school regularly smoked a sticky, Gerard miraculously has never gone beyond smoking cigarettes.
However, he was open to the flower power movement concerning to peace in the world in general.
However, at that age he did think that the USA fought a justified war in Vietnam and hoped that Israel would win the war in 1967.
So he thinks and talks quite contradictory about this subject of war and peace.
It is only much later that he finds out that in reality there is not something like a justified war and that at the heart of the matter there are only losers.
Yet Gerard was already looking for an answer to these contradictions in his way of thinking and feeling.
He thought perhaps the answer to this can be found in religion and he decides to go on a youth camp of the church, of which his older brother was a member.
Here, at the age of 14, Gerard comes into contact with faith in Christ for the first time, is baptized, and then relinquishes to the many do’s and don’ts that the church applied.
This was actually and in fact the beginning of the theological consideration of the Christian faith on its meritus, even though he did not realize it as such yet.
” What he did realize at that time was that he did not want to lose his freedom as a human being. He did not want to join in a tight straitjacket, which meant that Christians do not actually belong to this earth ”
What he did realize at that time was that he did not want to lose his freedom as a human being.
He did not want to join in a tight straitjacket, which meant that Christians do not actually belong to this earth.
Christians must live as aliens in their country on earth.
The actual world is malicious, scary and very depraved.
If you withdraw as much as possible in/on your ecclesiastical island, you will suffer the least damage.
The worldly living people are enemies of the true believers, the Christians on earth.
The notion of a make-believe world versus reality began to in Gerard’s thinking and acting.
He had very little or no affection at all with this way of thinking and decided to break with his brother’s church community.
Only later, in his twenties, he would realize that the church is something entirely different from Christ Himself.
This, despite the fact that the Jesus movement from the sixties tried to do it in a completely different manner.
The meetings of this movement took place under the slogan “Enter the tent, were Jesus plays with his band”.
Even though the Christian music was better to listen to, Gerard had nothing at all with this kind of meetings.
The do’s and don’ts, the ecclesiastical dogmas were still in effect.
He already worked in the company of his parents and obtained his middle class trade diploma and his grocery diploma, in order to be able to take over the company from his parents at a later moment.
However, the acquisition Gerard planned would never see the day of light, as business went pretty bad in the late sixties.
Moreover, he was married and had a baby to support.
Through the Ministry of Defense, where he worked for a year, that is to say he played a lot of chess with a colleague, he was eventually admitted to the police school in The Hague.
Here, during his training for policeman, the already planted seeds of serious consideration of certain things, sprouted.
In Gerard the quest for truth, real peace, love and happiness begins to take more shape as well as more content.
The quest of this searching human being is not yet at an end, but appears to just get really started.
