Evangelicals misread the Gospels to provide for an oversimplified view of salvation. All one needs to do, as presented to 13-year-old Langston, is to make Jesus your personal savior. The instant and permanent salvation experience that follows is modeled somewhat after St. Paul seeing a bright light on the road to Damascus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_to_Damascus

In fact, Jesus taught that salvation requires more than a single assent at age 13. These include baptism (Mark 16:16; John 3:5), believing Christ and putting faith in him (e.g., Luke 7:50, 8:12), self-renunciation (e.g., Matt 5:3, 10), repentence (Matt 3:2; 4:17; 18:8-9; Mark 9:42-48), obedience to God, doing what is right and just (e.g., Luke 10:25-28; John 12:50), adopting the humility of a child (Matt 18:3-4; 19:14), eating the bread of life (John 6:51, 53-54), and endurance to the end (Matt 10:22, 24:13; Mark 13:13, Luke 21:16-18).

Hughes concludes his story:

That night, for the first time in my life but one for I was a big boy twelve years old – I cried. I cried, in bed alone, and couldn’t stop. I buried my head under the quilts, but my aunt heard me. She woke up and told my uncle I was crying because the Holy Ghost had come into my life, and because I had seen Jesus. But I was really crying because I couldn’t bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, that I hadn’t seen Jesus, and that now I didn’t believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn’t come to help me.

Unfortunately, Hughes rejects actual Christianity on the basis of the parody he experienced at age 13.

Cheers,

Bruce