The church I grew up in was Southern Baptist, with all the paradox, irony, and guilt that the words "Southern Baptist" carried in 1960s Georgia.
It was a church that struggled with the same complexities that afflicted most of the South during that time, a struggle between the Old South and the New, a South that was trying to find itself in the midst of the look-ahead attitude being shaped by "the greatest generation'' and holding on to the traditions from which the South drew so much of its identity.
The conflict was everywhere in the church in which I grew up. We had a pastor that taught scripture and understood that so much of the Southern church tradition was not Biblical, yet he also knew years of tradition couldn't be changed with one or two sermons. It would take time.
It was like the woman at the well. When Jesus got her to admit that she had been married several times and the man she was currently living with wasn't her husband, He didn't tell her that she needed to marry this man or else leave him because what she was doing was living in sin. Jesus simply said, "Go, and sin no more." I think Jesus understood coming to know Him takes time, that it was going to be a relationship that needed to grow, which meant it might take time for people to realize what that phrase "go and sin no more" means. The truth is, it's a phrase that means more and more the closer we get to understanding Jesus, and what might not have seemed like "sin'' yesterday becomes something we know we have to put behind us before tomorrow.
Just because you become a Christian, you don't immediately stop sinning. Sometimes it takes awhile to learn what sin really is. It's called maturity - spiritual maturity.
It wasn't just that the culture of the Southern church looked down on drinking, dancing, card-playing, cussing, going to movies, even what was known as "mixed bathing" (relax: it means boys and girls swimming together).
It was also very segregated. There were deacons posted at the doorway to turn away blacks who might want to visit. They weren't posted to be mean. In fact, the men told such visitors that they'd be glad to share the gospel with them and direct them to a good, solid, Bible-teaching black church.
Sure it was wrong. But it was actually a pretty progressive attitude for the time and place.
I can remember one Sunday afternoon at youth group when the assistant pastor gathered us to explain the "Biblical reasons'' for separation of the races. He did a great job of expressing love and respect for "all of God's children, red and yellow, black and white," while explaining that God made us red and yellow, black and white for a reason.
We - teenagers affected by the changing times of the late 1960s and early 1970s, who were already a source of consternation with our long hair, jeans, and rock music - heard it. We didn't buy it, but we heard it.
And while that assistant pastor expressed beliefs that were held corporately, in the individual homes of many of the individual families, it wasn't that way. It wasn't that way in my home. I was even allowed to go to dances and movies, something my older brothers and sister were not allowed to do when they were my age - a sign of the growing maturity of my own parents, particularly my Southern-born and Southern-bred mother who was very much a woman of her changing times.
Still, it was a church that taught the Bible, even if some of the adults teaching us didn't quite know how to apply it outside the constraints of the tradition they'd always known. We were encouraged to learn the Bible, to memorize scripture, and especially - and here we get to the point - to have our "life verse."
Everyone had one. Or was supposed to have one. Even if you didn't really have one. It was just expected that, when asked to give your "testimony" (which everyone was supposed to be prepared to do), you had to have that verse that God had given you that really shaped your life.
Never mind that, at 15 or 16 years old, our lives were hardly close to being shaped.
And being the smart-alecs that we were, some of us picked life verses that were ... well, non-traditional.
The goal was to find the most obscure verse, take it completely out of context, and somehow convince people that it had real meaning for our lives. We explored Song of Solomon and obscure Minor Prophets and long passages of Leviticus, searching for the one that the adults would hear and be too embarrassed to admit they probably had never heard it before, or certainly never heard it the way we were going to apply it. And we knew we were safe, because to suggest that we were not being sincere was to run the risk of doubting the work of the Holy Spirit, which was considered dangerously close to the "unforgivable sin" of blaspheming the Holy Spirit.
My own personal favorite was Ecclesiastes 10:19, which says, "A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything."
You should have seen the reaction. Even now, when you quote that verse, you get almost horrified looks from people who don't know what to do with that verse (primarily because they don't know the context of Ecclesiastes).
It was supposed to be a joke. But as it turns out, the joke was on me. The older and more experienced I get, the more I look back and wonder if Ecclesiastes 10:19 didn't really become my "life verse." I can look back now and see much of my life was indeed lived that way.
But eventually I found two verses that really had meaning. I found them separately, one in the Old Testament and one in the New, through completely different circumstances, at completely different times of my life, only to have them eventually merge, seamlessly, tying together the Old and New Testament seamlessly.
Maybe I grew up.
And that's what the next few blogs will be about, as we explore Micah 6:8 and Philippians 2:5-11.
There will, of course, be some history, some politics, some social justice, a lot of opinion, and hopefully some of God's Truth will come out as well.
Stay with me?
No comments:
Post a Comment