First Contact – Part 24 – Presbyterians

When I was in the third grade, my mom and dad and I moved from a rental house to a purchased house. There were a number of boys close to my age that lived near our new dwelling. One boy, Mike, became a close friend that I stay in contact with to this day. He attended a Presbyterian Church just a few miles from home. The church had a dartball team, which is a knockoff of baseball using darts and a dartboard. At some point Mike joined the dartball team. The first time I set foot in a Presbyterian Church was with Mike at his church. We used to go by occasionally to play some dartball and table tennis. Sometimes we would stop by during the day when the minister was in his office. One day we stopped into his office when he wasn’t there. Mike sat in his rolling chair behind his desk while I sat on the opposite side. Mike got to goofing off by rolling the chair around on the plastic mat it sat on. At one point he pushed off hard, sending the chair and himself across the plastic. But he had pushed too hard because he suddenly disappeared behind the desk. The wheels of the chair had rolled off the plastic onto the carpet which brought the chair to a sudden stop, toppling it and its passenger onto the floor. Luckily Mike wasn’t hurt, and we had a belly laugh over it.

I love pipe organs. There’s something powerful and majestic about being in a large building such as a cathedral and hearing the sound of air rushing through those carefully tuned pipes and then echoing multiple times off the walls. It’s even better with an expert at the helm of the keyboard.

When I was in college in Louisville, Kentucky, my friend Richard and I heard about a pipe organ concert at a local Presbyterian seminary. Richard loved pipe organ music as much as I did, so we made arrangements to attend the concert. It was not in a large cathedral, but sounded fantastic anyway.

After Kathy and I got engaged in early 1982, I heard about a pre-marriage counseling class being held at our local university. I thought it couldn’t hurt to attend. Perhaps I could pick up a few tips about how to be a good husband and how to keep my marriage alive. Since Kathy lived 300 miles away, she was unable to go with me. As it turned out, a Presbyterian minister from a nearby church was conducting the class. From the get go I realized he was different from other ministers I knew. He was very informal, sometimes conducting the class while we all sat on the floor. I don’t remember anything that was said in the class except for a brief exchange about the words in 1 John 4:8, “God is Love”.

After getting married, a couple of friends, who were members of the Church of Christ just as Kathy and I were at the time, came to visit so they could attend a wedding. Interestingly, the minister who conducted the wedding was the same one who had conducted the pre-marriage class I had taken.

After the wedding one of those friends expressed his dismay that at the reception the minister had ordered an alcoholic beverage. When the bartender asked how he wanted it, he replied, “Straight up, the way God intended it.” Our friends, being teetotalers, were flabbergasted that a minister of the Gospel would be drinking any type of alcohol. Even though I was not a drinker, I knew that the Bible did not condemn drinking alcohol; only drinking alcohol to excess. So we got into a spirited discussion about the issue. Unfortunately, I later learned that the minister had become an alcoholic, which led to some problems in his life. Far be it from me to condemn this man. It seems that everyone has their own personal demons they have to fight. And I’m not picking on Presbyterians. I remember my parents talking about a Baptist minister they knew that had had a drinking problem. Apparently he used to tell people, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Hey, there was a Church of Christ minister who was friends with one of the elders at our church that hired a couple of men to murder his wife. So, immorality can strike any of us regardless of our status. We must all be ever diligent lest one grab hold of us and not let go.

There was a TV and radio evangelist I used to watch and listen to years ago named D. James Kennedy. He was the founder of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. There was something compelling about his preaching style, although it sometimes seemed overly dramatic and almost arrogant. Some of you may remember D. James Kennedy because of his support of Judge Roy Moore, a former and now current Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. In fact, Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries was the group that filmed the 2001 installation of the 5280 pound granite block that contained two large carved tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments. I know many people supported Moore’s action in installing the monument, but I found his actions problematic. Moore’s contention is that the laws of the United States are based on the Ten Commandments. But if one studies these commandments in the Bible along with God’s decreed punishments for breaking them, you will quickly see that U.S. law departs greatly from them. I cover in detail the Ten Commandments and their associated punishments in my book “God Is”.

First Contact – Part 12 – Catholicism

My earliest memories related to Catholicism were of a Catholic school just a block and a half up the street from our house in Louisville, KY. It was named Most Blessed Sacrament, but my friends and I used to jokingly call it Most Blasted Sacrament. It seems kind of silly now, but as a child it was a real hoot.

I do not recollect ever attending a Catholic service or even going inside a Catholic Church building as a child. The first time I remember being inside a Catholic Church was to attend a wedding. It was in 1979, just a short time after graduating from college. My friends Richard and Denise were getting married. My wife Kathy and I had graduated from high school with them in 1973. Kathy and I did not wed until 1982. Richard and I actually attended school together from the first grade all the way through college. We lived just a couple of blocks from each other.

I had become interested in photography in high school and began buying more professional level cameras and lenses while I was in college. Richard knew of my interest, so asked me to be the photographer at his wedding. I had never shot a wedding before, but he was aware of that and still wanted me to do it. But he had a twist. He also wanted me to be his best man. At first I thought that would not work. However, given that I could put the camera on a tripod and set the timer for the pictures I needed to be in, I agreed to do it. All worked out fine. However, I do remember getting a bit annoyed by having to kneel so much during the ceremony.

Yes, that’s me third from left with the fro and mustache. Cool dude, huh?

Being mostly associated with Protestants growing up, I was skeptical of some of the beliefs of the Catholic Church such as infant baptism, holy water, transubstantiation, Mary worship, and so forth. But I eventually came to realize that when it comes to the supernatural, there is really nothing more bizarre or unbelievable than another thing. If God truly exists and he is omnipotent, ruling by fiat, then he can choose to deal with man anyway he wants. He can ask us to worship him in any way he wants, and he can ask us to believe anything he wants us to believe. Basically, anything goes. It then boils down to what we individually decide is the proper way to determine what his desires for us are.

After moving to Alabama, I came to realize that some of my friends at work were Catholic. I attended a few services to see what it was all about. The most memorable visit to a Catholic Church was to attend a performance of the musical “Jesus Christ, Superstar”. A friend from work was performing the role of Jesus, and he did a great job. Interestingly, the man who played Judas Iscariot was probably the best singer of the bunch. But somehow it just didn’t seem right for the bad guy to be that good.

A few days ago I listened to a one hour speech by a man that had been a Presbyterian pastor, but gradually came to realize that the teachings of the Catholic Church that he had thought were anti-Biblical were actually Biblical. At the end of this journey of discovery, he resigned his position of pastor at the Presbyterian Church and of teacher at a college and joined the Catholic Church. Here’s a link to that speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW-qX6DgcPw