First Contact – Part 30 – Conclusion

Well, it’s time to bring this First Contact series to a close. As you have read, I have had a lot of First Contacts. Everyone does, I suppose. I could have written more, but I wanted to concentrate on just my first contacts with various religious and philosophical groups. There are plenty of other first contacts I could have written about like jobs, girls, sports, etc. But I didn’t want to go too crazy with this project. Actually there are a few other religious groups I have had contact with that didn’t warrant a full post. I thought I would mention them here in this concluding post.

In Part 21 I talked about the Baptists. But in reality there are a number of different types of Baptists. One kind is the American Baptists. Back in the 1980’s Kathy and I took a long vacation out west. On our way home we stopped to visit some friends that attended an American Baptist Church. The Sunday morning service we attended was memorable for one reason; the preacher complaining about having to wear a tie. During his sermon, the preacher was talking about things we do for the benefit of others. He lifted up his tie and said something like, “For instance, I wear this tie each week. I hate wearing ties, but I wear it because you expect me to.” My thoughts were, “Amen, brother. Preach it!!”

Just an hour north of my hometown is an Amish community. My first contact took place when I was an older teenager. My cousin needed a small wagon for a parade he was going to participate in. He and his dad along with me and my dad traveled up to the Amish community to check out one particular Amish man my uncle had heard could build wagons. While parked alongside the road, I noticed an Amish man exiting his driveway (perhaps better called a trotway) on a horse drawn wagon. I lifted my camera to take a photo. The horse started rearing up and going nuts. The Amish man told me to put my camera away, which I did. Who knew that horses could be that camera shy? My family passes by the Amish community quite often on our way to Nashville, TN, and points north. Occasionally we will stop at a store on the main highway and buy some sweets. They’re good, but nothing special in my opinion. One time we actually drove out into the community and found a roadside stand in front of one of the homes. The food was at the stand, and payment was made using the honor system. While we were browsing the goods, a long-bearded barefoot man exited the house and greeted us. We picked out a few items and paid him. He began asking my son his age and whether he was married or not. When he discovered Andrew was in his 20’s and not married, he began insisting that it was time for him to wed. I guess they encourage marrying young in the Amish community.

There have been two US presidents that were Quakers: Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon. This is interesting to me since I think of colonial America, oats, and motor oil when I hear the word Quaker. But the Quakers still exist today. You may know them as The Religious Society of Friends. I have never been to a Quaker church, but my wife’s niece works at the private Friends Select School in downtown Philadelphia. When we were visiting there a few years ago, she gave us a tour of the school. It was quite impressive. The school is in a multi-floored building with an indoor swimming pool and an athletic field on the roof. As you might expect, the cost of attending this school is quite high, but probably well worth it if you have the money.

Perhaps you have heard of the Shakers, also known as the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. If not, you may have heard of the Shaker style of furniture, which consists of simple cuts for panels and other things. According to Wikipedia, the Shakers were founded in the 18^th century in England, some of whom came to colonial America. The Shakers were a spinoff of the Quakers, their name being a shortened version of Shaking Quakers, which came about as a result of their shaking behavior during worship services. I remember visiting the Shaker Village in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, many years ago with my wife and her parents. We were told that members were separated into men’s dorms and women’s dorms. They were not allowed to come together except for worship. Members were to remain celibate, which meant that the only way to replenish the sect was to bring in converts. As you might expect, they didn’t last. I guess there just weren’t enough people who wanted to go their entire lives without sex. What a surprise!

After my father’s death about two years ago I began receiving a lot of his mail. Somehow certain organizations thought my dad was still alive and living in my house. And even more surprising, I began receiving mail addressed to my mom who died over 12 years ago. One magazine I began to receive of hers was “The Way of Truth”. It is a publication of the Church of God (Universal). The masthead states it has no published subscription price and exists based solely on freewill donations. So, I don’t know whether or not my mom gave them money or not. I am still receiving this magazine, having just received the April 2015 issue. Apparently the main church is located in Hagerstown, Maryland. Some people online were claiming they were a cult, trapping family members in it. Others countered by saying they were probably just dealing with a few overzealous members. I have read some articles in their magazine and I just listened to parts of a recent sermon online. It all sounds like typical church teaching and preaching to me, so who knows.

One thing that I find fascinating is how many different denominations there are in the Christian religion. The differences started immediately after the Christian Church started. You can see these differences emerging in the New Testament itself. One of the first divisions was over who could be a Christian. For quite some time after Jesus’ death, only Jews were converting to Christianity. Some leaders, such as James, the head of the Jerusalem church, initially had a problem with Gentiles coming into the faith without first becoming a Jew via circumcision. Paul, who claimed to have received his gospel directly from God rather than from the apostles who walked with Jesus, believed differently. Eventually James relented and decided that only four things were required of the Gentiles converting to The Way, which you can read about in Acts 15. We also know from the New Testament that Christians were dividing themselves up by who had baptized them or who they admired. Paul talked about this in 1 Corinthians 1:10-17.

Another well known division was over the relative importance of faith and works. Paul emphasized faith, basically believing that a person of faith will do good works. James, the writer of the epistle carrying his name, believed that works was how one shows their faith. A subtle difference to be sure, but apparently there were some that believed that faith alone was what saved people. Hence the need for James to address this issue in his epistle.

Over time the church split over issues such as what the essence of Christ consisted of. Also, the Gnostic movement came about teaching that secret knowledge was needed to be a Christian. The Gospel of John gives you a taste of what this type of Christianity was like, but there are other non-canonical Gnostic gospels also. Keep in mind that during the time of the early church much of the New Testament had not been written and as Paul wrote his letters not every church had every letter. Also, over time many “Christian” documents were written, not all of which were accepted by every Christian. Charges of heresy were being slung back and forth between different groups all claiming to be true Christians. It is easy to see how such confusion occurred during those times.

The infighting subsided to a great extent when Emperor Constantine became a Christian and called for some order in the church. Eventually many of the contentious issues were settled, not to everyone’s liking of course, but settled nonetheless. This brought at least a semblance of unity in the church. For hundreds of years the church was one in the form of the Catholic Church. This ended in the early 15^th century when rival popes eventually caused the church to split into the Roman or Catholic Church (aka the Western Churches) and the Orthodox Churches (aka the Eastern Churches). The next great split came after the time of Martin Luther. His efforts to reform the Catholic Church eventually led to the Protestant movement.

The thing that brought back many divisions in the church was the printing press. With this invention, copies of the Bible could be printed at a low enough cost to make it available to the common man. Before this, every copy of the Bible had to be handwritten, which was an expensive and time consuming endeavor. Common men not being able to read the Bible allowed the clergy to maintain control of the Bible’s interpretation. In addition to Bibles becoming affordable to more people, a number of scholars began translating the Bible into the languages of common men. This really threatened the clergy. I’m sure they knew that once that happened, they would lose their control over the Bible’s meaning. Every man would be able to determine its meaning on his own. Thus, the church outlawed this practice. But the Bible was like a modern day drug. If people want something bad enough, no law can hold them back. Thus, over time huge numbers of denominations sprang up as many different interpretations of the Bible became commonplace.

So, divisions came full circle. The divisions of the early church due to a lack of canonical books morphed into divisions due to differing interpretations of canonical books. Oh, well.

I hope you have enjoyed this series of blog posts. I certainly enjoyed writing them. I am toying with some ideas for a new series, so stayed tuned.

First Contact – Part 14 – Christian Church

Back in the 19^th century a new church movement began. Two independent groups decided that Christ’s church should be united rather than divided. They sought to be known only as Christians. Not Baptists. Not Presbyterians. Not even Protestants. Just Christians. The movement came to be known as the Restoration Movement since it sought to restore the church as it was in the first century. One of the two movements originated with Barton Stone in Kentucky. The other originated with Thomas Campbell and his son Alexander in what is now West Virginia. Over time the attempted unification failed and the movement ended up splitting into three major groups: Church of Christ, Christian Church, and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). I discussed the Church of Christ in my first post in this series. I will now discuss the Christian Church. In the next post I will discuss the Disciples of Christ.

My wife Kathy was raised in the United Church of Christ, which, by the way, is not related to the Church of Christ. However, when she went off to college she found a new church home in the Christian Church. She joined a Christian Church affiliated student fellowship called His House and began attending the Christian Church. When she moved back home to start her teaching career, she found a nearby Christian Church to attend. That is where she was attending when she and I started dating.

Kathy and I first became acquainted during our senior year in high school. We had a couple of classes together as well as study hall. I developed a crush on her, but was way too shy in those days to do anything about it. She went off to Murray State University to get her Master’s degree so she could teach math. I stayed at home and went to the University of Louisville to get my Master’s degree so I could be a chemical engineer. As I mentioned in my first post in this series, it was after I started my career in Alabama that I became a Christian. I was a member of the Church of Christ.

In early 1981, I was home visiting my parents. A good friend who grew up just down the street from me asked if I would like to go to church with him. He went to a Christian Church. He informed me that Anita went to church there also. My wife’s name is Anita Kathleen. In high school everyone knew her as Anita, but she dropped that name in college since all her family called her Kathy, and she was tired of being known by two different names. Anyway, I knew that the Christian Church used instrumental music and had other differences from the Church of Christ, but I was not as strict about such things as others were. So I attended the Christian Church with my friend. This was the first time since high school that I had seen Kathy. It was in Sunday School that I realized that I still had feelings for her. However, I was dating someone else in Alabama at the time.

In October 1981, I was once again in Louisville, but this time I was not dating anyone. I called Kathy up and asked her to go to dinner and see a performance of the Louisville Symphony Orchestra. She accepted. We had a great time together on that date. Thus began what some would call a whirlwind romance. It started with letters, then phone calls, then visits. Keep in mind that we lived 300 miles apart, so visiting was not easy. Also, in those days long distance phone calls were expensive. So we were racking up monthly phone bills in the hundreds of dollars.

When we would get together, one of the things we would discuss was our Christian beliefs. We both knew our relationship was getting serious, and we wanted to make sure that our beliefs were close enough to not cause us problems down the road. She knew I had no problem with the Christian Church since I had been going there when in Louisville. When she visited me, she attended the Church of Christ where I was a member. There was no Christian Church anywhere near where I lived, so that was not an option.

Both the Church of Christ and the Christian Church had a code they lived by: Speak where the Bible speaks, and be silent where the Bible is silent. It bugged me that both churches believed this statement, yet somehow came to different conclusions on some matters. Upon analyzing it for a while, I finally realized why there were differences. The first part of the code, speak where the Bible speaks, caused no problems. If the Bible said to do something, both churches did it. If the Bible said to refrain from something, both churches refrained. It was the second part of the code, be silent where the Bible is silent, that was causing the conflict. You see, the Church of Christ took being silent about something as being the same as refraining from it. The Christian Church took being silent about something as meaning that God didn’t care one way or the other. This difference made for some interesting discussions.

The New Testament says we should sing to God as part of our worship, but it is silent about musical instruments. Therefore, the Church of Christ refrains from using instruments in worship as its way of being silent on the matter. The Christian Church believes you can use instruments or not since God is silent and thus doesn’t care. There were a number of other differences that stemmed from these differing interpretations of what being silent on an issue means. Personally, I came down on the side of the Christian Church even though I could argue either position. In fact, I was so familiar with differing doctrines I could argue either side of a lot of issues.

As I said, Kathy's and my romance went quickly. Just four months after our first date, on Valentine’s Day 1982, I asked Kathy to marry me. She said yes, and we were soon in discussions with her mom about what date and venue to choose. Ultimately, we decided on July 3, 1982. That allowed Kathy to finish teaching for the school year, and it was around a holiday, thus allowing more people from out of town to attend. As for venue, we decided to wed at Kathy’s church. It was to be officiated by both the preacher from her church and the campus minister of His House at Murray State University.

After marrying, Kathy and I began studying the Bible together at home on a regular basis. We started in Genesis and planned to work our way through Revelation. But plans have a way of being disrupted. There were a number of passages in Genesis that bugged me. I had questions that neither Kathy nor the Bible could answer. I began discussing these issues with our preacher, elders, and deacons. I soon found that they did not have any answers either. At least not any acceptable answers. Many times the answer was, “Sometimes you just have to have faith.” But I knew that oftentimes people had faith in things that were untrue. I needed evidence to distinguish between truth and untruth. In too many cases, that evidence was not forthcoming. So, Kathy’s and my Bible study fell by the wayside.

About five years into our marriage, I found myself rejecting the Bible as being God’s Word. This was something Kathy and I had never even considered before we got married. We had discussed our differences in religious beliefs, which were minimal. But never did we consider the possibility of one of us rejecting those beliefs sometime down the road. It was a difficult time. But ultimately, our love for each other won the day. Our love was able bridge even the gap between an agnostic and a Christian.

In 1 Corinthians 13:1-8a, the Apostle Paul says this about love:

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

Hey, I believe Paul was on to something here. Five years into our marriage, Kathy and I faced what some might call a crisis. My beliefs were diverging from hers. In fact, had I had my new beliefs before we wed, we most likely would not have gotten married. Yet there we were; married and believing differently. But as Paul says, “Love never fails.” It certainly didn’t fail us, but it required us to latch onto it and not let it loose.

I look back on this now with wonderment. It almost seemed like a supernatural intervention occurred. I became a Christian just long enough for Kathy and me to fall in love and get married. I became a Christian in 1980. We started dating in 1981. We married in 1982. I began doubting the Bible soon after. I became a nonbeliever in 1987. Could it be that God, or fate, or something else, wanted Kathy and me to be together, so arranged the circumstances just long enough for that to happen? I don’t really know, but it’s something to think about.

So, after over 32 years of marriage, Kathy and I love each other more than ever. I am reminded of the 1969 Spiral Starecase hit song “More Today Than Yesterday.” The lyrics say, “I love you more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow.” It’s a great song. Yet, there are many who believe that Kathy will go to heaven, and I will go to hell. To me, that is saying that love is more powerful in this life than in the next. Yet, God is supposed to BE love. Is he incapable of loving me at least as much as Kathy does? Why would he deny our love in the afterlife? And why would this denial be based on sincerely held differences in beliefs rather than our actions? It makes no sense to me.