In about 36 hours, 1,000 pastors from around the country are coming to my megachurch, where I have worked for the last six years. They are coming for a pastors' conference to learn how to run their churches more effectively.

My job is to make them laugh.

I don't have to convey information; I don't have to say anything interesting or insightful. I just have to make them feel comfortable. I have to make them laugh because I am employed as the Creative Director of the church. My job is to create theatrical productions and short films, produce church meetings, and occasionally perform as a stand-up comedian. I am a Swiss Army Knife of creativity -- I can employ any variety of creative elements to make any event at the megachurch successful.

Thirty-six hours before the conference, I schedule a meeting with two fellow employees, Mike (associate pastor) and Skip (administrative pastor), to help me decide how to make the 1,000 pastors laugh. We talk about our task for about 30 seconds before we head down a rabbit trail.

This is a tradition among the church staff. I couldn't possibly count the number of planning meanings I have attended in which we spend little to no time discussing the principal subject of the meeting and instead discuss politics, sports, summer blockbuster films, or our sex lives.

Philosophy is not often in the normal range of meeting-derailing subjects. But 36 hours before a big conference, anything is fair game.

"I don't know how to deal with predestination in my book," Mike says. Mike is working on a novel about heaven.

"What do you mean?" Skip asks. He is one of the most genuine and caring people at the church, one of my favorite people on staff, and he will always take a moment to help a friend through a problem. 

"In the opening chapter, my protagonist dies. So, did God kill him?"

A question like this inevitably led us into the usual predestination discussion topics. Does God know how we are going to live and when we are going to die? Does he allow us to die? Does he allow airplanes to fly into buildings and kill thousands of people? Does he allow some babies to be aborted while saving others? Does he allow some to die of cancer while others are healed? Does God have complete control over our lives or does he sit back and watch the human drama unfold?

Skip finally said, "For everyone that dies, I believe God allows it."

I had been listening the whole time and decided to speak up. "So, God kills people?"

"No, not necessarily. In the universe there are four wills that cause events to happen. There is God's will, Satan's will, Man's will, and Natural Law." Skip gave me the church's textbook response for conversations like this.

The idea is this: God wants us to worship him and prosper. Satan wants to kill, steal, and destroy us. Man does whatever the hell it is that he feels like (some men and women follow God, some don't. Some men and women cheat; others are completely honest). And Nature has preset laws -- if a person jumps off a building, gravity will come into the equation and send said person plummeting to his death. So for every action that is made on Earth, the four wills fight with one another. But God always has the trump card; he can stop the will of Man, Satan, and Natural Law whenever he wants. 

Skip elaborated on the four wills for a moment more before Mike interrupted: "Yeah, but if God allows someone to die, isn't that the same as killing them?"

Skip took a deep breath. He could sense this conversation was trouble; that we were traveling down a slippery slope. "Listen guys, these aren't heaven and hell issues. This church was built on pragmatic ideas that spread the gospel and encourage people to live godly lives." 

He was right. That is what the church is all about. The megachurch has over 10,000 members, a paid full time staff of 100, and ten departments. Among the departments are a children's department with a themed kids' play land, a worship department with extremely skilled musicians who create worship songs for the people at the megachurch to sing, and a singles department that organizes meetings to help people find godly husbands and wives.

The reason to have such a large church is so it can meet the needs of most of the congregation. The idea is that Americans like their churches like they like their Wal-Marts -- they want one place where things are easy to find and accessible, a place that can satisfy every faith need they could possibly have. So, the church's theology is simple: Believe in Jesus and you'll go to heaven; don't believe and you'll in end up in hell. In between, let God help you live a successful life on every level: family, business, community. Like Wal-Mart, the church has a culture of simplicity and convenience. And it works.

Skip continued. "I have a couple of close friends who have started asking questions like this, and it has lead them away from the church. They say, ‘If there is a problem with predestination then there might also be problems with the other presuppositions of the Bible, and so maybe all of it isn't true.' I don't want to see that happen to you guys."

This way out of the problem is also common at my megachurch. The conversation usually ends there. But the question I always ask is if seeking philosophical knowledge makes us lose our faith, does that mean knowledge is evil and we should just walk through life mindlessly? Or does it mean that if I put God under the microscope I will find nothing but pleasant belief system?

"Well," Mike said, "Maybe we should go back to discussing the conference."

Our high school summer camp is called Coram Deo, which roughly translates to, "In the presence of God." At Coram Deo we spend the evenings putting on something like a rock festival, complete with smoke, sweeping lights, dramas, speakers that pump out music with the sound decibel of an airplane engine, and a little bit of preaching. We spend our days playing souped up versions of "Red Rover" and having food fights with barbecue sauce, mayonnaise, water balloons, and shaving cream. Part of my job is to help pull these camps off.

The camp began a few days after the conference, but I couldn't focus. I still had the conversation from 36 hours before the conference rattling around in my head. It forced me to ask, how could I work at a place like this? How could I work at a church that didn't spend more time carefully dissecting who or what God is -- a church that didn't discuss the innate problems within the Bible? How could I participate in a faith where people followed God so blindly?

Despite my frustrations with the megachurch, Coram Deo went off without a hitch. Rock music blared, high school students sang and danced, they laughed with the drama, and they were awed when the stage was filled with smoke. In the afternoon, they threw K.C. Masterpiece sauce at each other. Someone threw a little bit at me and it got in my eye -- it felt like wasps were stinging my retina, but I laughed it off. It wasn't hard to do -- I knew it would be my last summer camp. I knew I would be going to grad school at UCLA in the fall, and I would no longer have to deal with this brand of Christianity that I had been immersed in for the last six years. This brand of Christianity, which I now thought of as a simple, and pleasant, and fluffy, that was as easy to digest as Chicken Soup for the Soul, was something that I could simply dismiss and leave behind.

When I thought like this, working at the church was easy. I could tell jokes, be creative, and feel comfortable at my megachurch.  

Then I met a 15 year-old girl named Laurie. On the last day of camp, she approached me and in a soft voice said, "Here." She handed me a small tattered plastic bag, it was maybe two inches wide.

"What's this?"

"Look inside," Laurie said. I looked inside and there were five rusty razor blades. "I used to use these to cut myself when I got sad. I don't need to anymore. God healed me." Laurie smiled and walked away.

At church the next Sunday, I talked with one of the counselors from our camp, a 35 year-old named Dan who loves to skateboard. I asked him, "How did you like camp?"

His eyes lit up. "I loved it. I haven't told a lot of people this, but my wife left me six months ago. I didn't have anything to live for, and I didn't think I was going to make it. This church has given me something to live for."

Had I died and ended up in an after school special?

Nonetheless, I had a problem. This brand of Christianity that I had dismissed as trite and insubstantial gave a 15-year-old girl a reason to stop cutting herself, and helped a 35-year-old man find a reason to live. They had done these things because of a blind faith in a God who could help them overcome their problems.

There are two reasons for their blind faith: One, as Americans we rarely analyze the way things work -- we just have faith that they will. When we turn on the water faucet we have faith hot water will come out; when we go to the supermarket we have faith fresh food will be there; we have faith that our cars will work, that Batman will defeat the Joker, that the stock market will not crash, and that the sun will rise tomorrow. Two, faith is innately blind. People of faith have no absolute way of knowing exactly what or whom God is, of how he works. People of faith are people of faith because they choose to have faith. They believe that God is real, that he can help them with their problems, and that fellowship with him will change their lives.

This is not without its complications. In the same way Wal-Mart patrons rarely ask troubling questions about the store (e.g. where their products come, how much the employees are paid, and so on) the people at my megachurch rarely ask troubling questions about their faith. Everything is kept simple. That's why many of the sermons focus on living a devoted life to God, working hard, and avoiding sin. The heaven and hell issues Skip was referring to are at the core of this philosophy. For them, faith is simple -- following God and repenting of sins will lead you to heaven; denying God and sinning like you're on a Girls Gone Wild video will lead you to hell.

Concerns about God's role in the four wills of the universe are not raised because they could lead you away from the megachurch. Conversations about inconsistencies in the Bible are discouraged because these conversations frustrate and confuse members of the church. Church should be an uplifting place and our conversations should be full of hope and life.

I used to dismiss this line of thinking as trite, but that's too easy. The problem is more complex than that; I have seen too many lives changed and a lot of genuine faith in God to simply dismiss things as trite. In the end, all I know for sure is megachurches and Wal-Marts are uncannily similar. They are brilliantly constructed facilities where patrons can find easily accessible products. With no questions asked.   

Colby Fisher worked for a megachurch for six years before pursuing the bright lights of Los Angeles, where he is a graduate student in screenwriting at UCLA.