On Spiritual Growth

By The Rev. Dr. H. Gene Straatmeyer

I recently ran across an article by Stephen Matson who was on the Staff of Northwestern College in St. Paul, MN when he wrote it. One paragraph caught my attention, “I used to be like the Pharisees, someone who proudly believed certain things that I thought were utterly and undeniably true — until I realized that I didn’t.” I believe those growing in their faith have to reach that same threshold sooner or later in life or be mired forever in the likeness and behavior of the Pharisees.

Being like the Pharisees is the inability to re-think one’s theology or to incorporate new information. The usual result of that mind-set is to hunker down amid the swirling sea of change

When we decide to move forward it becomes a significant step in our spiritual growth – to understand that when we thought like a child and believed like a child we were children but when we grow into adulthood we have to leave so much of that behind by understanding it was our starting point rather than our final destination.

Of course there are too many Christians who cap their growth at the Pharisee stage or at other various levels and then form their own churches or join churches who feel as they do. To reinforce their intransigency they usually brand others as not having the truth. They then spend enormous amounts of energy trying to convert those who are already Christians by using fear or implying that they are not real Christians – they are one or two doctrines away from the truth which only their Pharisee-type-religion possesses.

I met such a Christian recently. I started visiting with him when I saw him sitting in a booth in a café. He was reading a Bible. We soon found out about each other. He is a Christian who is not highly educated. I am a highly educated Christian. He told me how many years ago he came to faith in a highly emotional way. In many ways, he is to be admired. He knows what is between the covers of his huge King James Bible and he interprets each word of it literally. He is not afraid to joyfully share his faith. He is a pillar in his church. He prays for me. So why does he fit into the group of Christians who are hunkered down in their faith and won’t move forward beyond what he absolutely knows to be true? Because, he believes that every Christian has to have exactly the same spiritual experience he had nearly 50 years ago. To him, I am not a Christian because even though I see his faith experience as valid, he doesn’t see mine that way – because mine does not replicate his. Now, we may have to go to another restaurant on Sunday morning for breakfast because we are locked into his radar – educated people who worship but who “are not saved” like he was saved.

Groups like this maintain their existence for a time but if they are to last for any amount of time, they have to rely almost solely on their children to believe as they do or proselytize others like myself to squeeze into their mold of the Christian faith. In the whole scheme of Christianity they tend to become inconsequential as they cling to the belief that they alone have the pearl of great price.

These types of Christians build a wall to protect their personal doctrines because they cannot deal with change in culture or different but valid understandings of the Christian faith. They are fearful that if they change they will fall out of favor with the Almighty. One of their popular hymns always has been “Give me that old time religion! Give me that old time religion! Give me that old time religion! It’s good enough for me!” Backwards is good, forward is questionable! In the words of another old hymn, their theology is “Hold the fort for I (Jesus) am coming!”

Until I was 12 years old, I knew nothing of the Bible other than the King James Version (KJV). In 1947, my Sunday School teacher warned my class of an impending catastrophe. She claimed that if we accepted the new translation, the Revised Standard Version (RSV), which, according to her, had not been translated properly, Christianity would move quickly away from the truth.

The result was that some Christians moved forward with the RSV while others dug in their heels and stayed with the KJV. When I listen to Christian radio and television programs these days, some 65 years later, I notice there are a number of ministers who still read Scripture from the King James Bible. I have heard laity say King James English sounds more godly and sacred. English has changed so much since King James but apparently the near perfectness, in their minds, of that translation, supersedes the necessity for modern people to understand what the Bible says in the English language of today.

Change is difficult. Moving from what we think we know as truth to what I would call a greater truth, is a step of faith growing Christians take all the time. Growing as a Christian is when the Holy Spirit leads us forward. Phariseeism is when we think the Holy Spirit has a tether on us so that we will not be led astray. Growing Christians see that God deals with each one of us in different ways so that our spiritual experiences are not the same. Phariseeism is when we are thoroughly convinced every spiritual experience is nearly the same and those who haven’t walked that line are off the narrow path which leads to spiritual safety and certainty.

Bill Tammeus, writing in a recent “Presbyterian Outlook” magazine says one of these small/giant steps forward is to understand not only Biblical literalism but also Biblical metaphor. He believes, and I agree, that if we don’t move beyond literalism we may eventually move away from faith. I believe we are seeing that in our time with the growing numbers of “nones” in our society, mostly younger people who have abandoned the faith of their parents because the faith of their Sunday School days caused too many questions as they approached adulthood.

Tammeus believes children not taught the power of metaphor in Scripture may think the church is irrelevant as they grow older and more educated. He says the Bible is written as a sufficient revelation of who God is and it was written in religious language, which is inevitably metaphorical. He says it is critical for Christians to “understand not all truth is literal.”

Stephen Matson concludes, “Wise people admit when they’re wrong, but when it comes to theology most people spend all of their time and energy buttressing and protecting their own personal beliefs instead of critically, prayerfully, humbly, and honestly questioning them…. Thankfully, through the grace of an unchanging God, I changed. When the time comes, are we willing to accept and embrace change within ourselves and those around us?” He asks God to help us to move forward rather than to become immoveable.

On Christian Liberals

By The Rev. Dr. H. Gene Straatmeyer

I’ve been reading a book by R. C. Sproul called Lifeviews. The subtitle is “Understanding the Ideas that Shape Society Today.” In one of the chapters he discusses the definitions of liberals and liberalism. It is about this that I am writing.

Sproul is a Conservative Calvinist, who according to Wikipedia, left the United Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in 1979 and joined the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). In his mind, at least, the issue was liberalism in the PCUSA. In this book he shares his interpretation of liberal and liberalism, part of which I will contest.

He defines liberal as a good word that means a free thinker, one who is open and tolerant, and one who is scientific and responsible. He says the word includes all of those elements we regard from a Christian perspective as being virtuous. That’s a good starting place and more conservatives should be more open to this definition.

However, for Sproul, when it comes to theology, liberal is not a good word. He says theological liberalism means “a distinctive movement to reconstruct Christianity….” It is a liberalism that attempts “to extract from the New Testament anything that was of a supernatural flavor: miracles, the Resurrection, the atonement of Jesus, the Transfiguration, and the Virgin Birth.”

Sproul is correct, at least partially. There are Christians who have attempted to find the human Jesus at the expense of the Jesus who is also divine. But not all those who are called liberal have rejected the supernatural in Scripture and it is about this group of liberals that I write, a group I call liberal evangelicals – a group Sproul has ignored – for whatever reason!

The glitch in Sproul’s argument is his contention that liberalism always leads to the social gospel and his only definition of the social gospel is humanism which is bad and not Christian.

It is so much easier for Sproul to win a theological battle when he (or we) set up a single theological position as good and right and anything different is bad and wrong. When we hold such a rigid position we can easily dismiss every position other than our own but in doing so, we isolate ourselves from other possibilities that also may hold merit.

The position I raise is that many pastors, theologians and lay Christians have not rejected the supernatural in the gospel and in addition, have also included the social gospel as a valuable part of their Christian mission. These are “the liberal evangelicals.” They are not a new group. They have been among us for centuries – such as those who consciences were seared by human slavery. They fought for justice in spite of the fact that many Christians accepted slavery as something the Bible condones.

Martin Luther King preached for integration and against segregation and for justice and equal treatment for African Americans. That was the social gospel! I have met many over the years who considered King a liberal heretic because they felt he was not about the basic essential of the gospel which is salvation through Jesus Christ.

I was raised in an evangelical PCUSA Church and served two congregations who could be described as solidly in that theological zone. Then in my tenth year of ordination I visibly became part of the Civil Rights Movement which emphasized justice for those Americans who had been legislated into segregation after the Civil War and who’s right to vote had been nearly obliterated. It was then, for the first time in my life, after participating in this aspect of the social gospel in the South, that I was labeled a liberal by both pastors and laity. As far as I know, that branded me as a liberal and it stuck.

Sproul’s assumption does not always hold true, that by adopting the social gospel as a part of one’s ministry, one leaves the genuine gospel behind. The liberal evangelical believes the gospel that Sproul argues for is incomplete without caring for the poor, and letting the oppressed go free….(Luke 4.18). The social gospel was clearly a part of the mission of the Messiah and therefore it should be in the genes of every Christian.

Climate change is also a current social issue that Christians who are conservative call liberal, and therefore a cause easily dismissed as the social gospel. Many in this group have bought into the theology that God will make a new heaven and a new earth so it won’t matter if we save this planet. A congressman said recently it was for this reason he would drive a new Hummer and those among the conservative crowd kept silent, while others smiled and agreed. The contention among this group is that this is not an issue for the Christian Church. It is humanism; it is the social gospel, not the real gospel.

It is good to see more liberal evangelicals emerging all of the time. One such person is Ron Sider, a faculty member of Eastern Baptist Seminary in New York. He checks in on climate change by writing that “we are destroying our land, water and forests in these ways: by global warming through greenhouse emissions, by depleting the ozone layer and by deforestation. The result will be vastly changing weather patterns and a warming of our global temperatures.” Caring for Mother Earth was a task given humankind at the very outset of life itself according the Book of Genesis.

I believe the social gospel “is where the rubber (the Gospel) hits the road and blessed are those Christians who are in the highways and byways of life calling on Christians and non-Christians alike to protect our planet home, to love their neighbors and enemies and to care for “the underclass.” Christian prophets need help to spread the message in every generation.

So, when Christians hear the word liberal from the mouths of other Christians, they should be a bit more discerning about accepting and hearing the liberal evangelicals. In most cases, those who are involved in social gospel issues are the prophets of our time.

ON CHRISTIAN WEDDINGS

By The Rev. Dr. H. Gene Straatmeyer

I officiated at the wedding of my grandson recently in a community some distance from where we all live and the church informed me this would be the last wedding “of strangers.” Henceforth, they would only allow church members that privilege.

I certainly understand their position. Even they were saddened by their new policy. However, they feel the growing secularization of our society and fewer of this age group attending and joining a church led them to the decision. Their experience has been of nominal and non-Christian young people treating the church as a rental rather than sacred space.

They have my sympathy. In my last congregation before retirement, a young woman, whom I had never seen before, requested an appointment and as she sat down said, “I have looked at all the sanctuaries in the community and because yours is the most beautiful, I have chosen this church for my wedding.”

I then spent the next few minutes telling her what a church wedding would require – Christian counseling to help the couple to know what it means to have a Christian home and marriage. When I finished she thanked me for my time but thought she and her finance did not want counseling. She said all they wanted to do was to be married in a church because they thought it was a nice setting. I suspect that more and more pastors are running into the same situation. Couples want to be married in a church if the God thing and counseling about Christian marriage can be muted. I think Nevada has had church-looking chapels for a long time and they come with “Marryin’ Sams.”

Peter Gregory is the pastor of First Church, Lambertville, NJ. Writing in “The Presbyterian Outlook,” he says he has opted out of the “over-the-top excess, stress and politics of the American marriage industry.” He writes, “Marriage in America has very little to do with the historic principles of commitment and mutual sacrifice, and much to do with atmospherics, keeping up with the neighbors, image and perception.”

In addition, the Rev. Gregory says modern weddings have become festivals of consumption and consumerism since the average cost, including lavish receptions, averages about $20,000 to $30,000 each.

Maybe some churches, however, want to continue to make a Christian witness by allowing couples who are not affiliated with the church to be married in the church. That’s great! However, churches who want this kind of witness need to think about the tremendous amount of time weddings take – if pastors are to make an adequate witness to what a Christian marriage involves. Counseling is a big time consumer of a pastor’s evening meetings – two nights as a minimum while three sessions or even more are desirable to do a good job. If there are a lot of weddings, it takes a lot of time.

It is also important that the pre-wedding counseling take place long enough before the ceremony so that plans for the wedding can be changed or cancelled. I made that mistake once when I discovered that the groom was already physically abusive to the bride. The lateness of the counseling happened only because both were hesitant to come for counseling at all, and then after two sessions, they decided they didn’t need the last one. I said there would be no wedding in the church if they didn’t come so they came later than sooner – within the same week as their scheduled marriage. In the final session the bride broke down and said she was being physically abused by the groom. I told them both I would not proceed until we brought their parents into the counseling, and although the wedding took place, the bride’s parents insisted on further counseling with a professional after the wedding. I have always felt that maybe I let that young bride down by proceeding, even though she insisted, but on the other hand, as so often happens, couples seem able to find a pastor who will marry anyone, anytime, anyplace – no questions asked.

I’ve noticed that larger churches now have the couple take their counseling with professional Christian counselors a rather long time prior to the wedding. I like that idea. It takes the time burden off the pastor, lets the counseling be done by professionals in that field, and allows time to call off the wedding if a mismatch is discovered.

Perhaps it is time again to simplify things. Maybe churches should lead the way in having a couple come to the front of the church at the close of a regular service to be married. This would also cut out the consumerism and consumption aspect of a wedding. A reception could be held after the worship service in the fellowship hall.

I’m sure this would be a hard sell for most young couples but I’m betting some parents would say “Take this $20-$30,000 we would have spent on your wedding and use it on a down payment of a house where you can begin your life together. That would be a much better plan if young couples could stand the cultural blow-back.

I have never refused a wedding although after I explained that I only did Christian weddings, a goodly number went elsewhere. Counseling was always the biggest stumbling block in their leaving and seeking a “rental Church and pastor.”

There is the possibility of another outcome to Christian weddings even if the couple is not Christian. Years ago a non-Christian couple came and asked that I marry them in a small, private ceremony in the church. They knew people in the congregation and respected the ministry of the church in the community. They said they would like to have the counseling to see how a Christian marriage differed from how they understood marriage. It was a fun time both in counseling and during the ceremony because they were so receptive.

After the wedding I never saw them again. However, twenty years later and thousands of miles away I received a letter. It was short. They just thought I’d like to know. They said it started during their wedding counseling. Just a couple of weeks ago, they said, they were led to profess their faith in Christ and be baptized in a Christian congregation – which goes to show that pre-marital counseling is a way of sowing seeds in those who may not know about the One who is the bedrock of a long and happy life together!

ON CHRISTIAN ADOPTION

By The Rev. Dr. H. Gene Straatmeyer

“Mother Jones,” the magazine, recently published an article titled, “Returned to Sender.” The introductory sentence is, “Hundreds of evangelical families thought they were bringing God’s word to kids from war-torn countries—by adopting them. And then reality set in.”

The author, Kathryn Joyce, quoted another magazine called “Above Rubies” heralding an “orphan theology movement that had taken hold among mainstream evangelical churches, whose flocks are urged to adopt as an extension of pro-life beliefs, a way to address global poverty and a means of spreading the Gospel in their homes.”

Rick Warren, who serves a mega-church in California, provided the theological basis for the movement when he wrote, “What God does to us spiritually, he expects us to do to orphans physically: be born again and adopted.”

Joyce claims that many of the children adopted were older and taken from their far-off homes and cultures which created new problems when they were thrust into a totally foreign culture – our culture. The result was that some did not adapt well, in part due to the adoptive parents not understanding the strain of the cultural shift. One adopted kid said, “They expected us to adapt in a heartbeat!” One problem with an African child was the adopted parent demanding, while shouting, “Look me in the eye,” when the cultural norm for the child back in Africa was to never look an adult in the eye.

On the other hand, the African children saw their new adoptive parents as “money trees” because that was their African view of Americans – everyone was rich. Having lived in Malawi, I have always wondered what happened to the Malawian child Madonna adopted – a child plucked from poverty into instant wealth. Also, I have often wondered how that child will turn out. I hope and pray for the best. What I observed, however, was that the culture of Malawian children worked positively even in poverty. What these orphans needed was a home. Madonna provided that but the culture of her secular and lavish lifestyle might have impoverished the child in different ways.

Discipline is also different between cultures. Sometimes the problems, says Joyce, appeared to be unsolvable to the adopting parents and so they sent the kids back to their country of origin. Joyce says failed international adoptions have become so common that a panel on the subject at Rick Warren’s Saddleback church drew a very large crowd. Joyce says 6-11% of all U.S. adoptions fail, with the number climbing to nearly 25% for children adopted as adolescents.

I have been in the courtroom for four adoptions and the judge has always said basically the same thing. The parents, surrounded family – actually any family that can attend, are asked to accept the child just as though he or she had been physically born into their family.

I know there are parents who throw away their kids these days, and I find that disheartening. That’s why one of the values of the Christian faith is the promises parents make before God and God’s people when a child is baptized or dedicated as an infant.

In my Presbyterian tradition parents presenting their child for baptism must first state publically that they are Christians. It makes no sense to bring kids and make promises about what we want for their lives if we ourselves do not know or really care who Jesus is and what it means to be a Christian. Once they have stated their faith in Christ, parents then promise to do what it takes to raise their child to be a disciple of Christ, defined as one who obeys God’s Word and shows God’s love.

Baptism can become a ritual without meaning, like weddings in a Church when those being married don’t understand what it means to have a Christian marriage, like “two becoming one,” keeping one’s commitments until death ends the relationship, or the warning which goes to the heart of faithfulness – the admonition against adultery.

So, in a Christian family the lines between birth parents and adoptive parents have to be extinguished – there should not even be any blurriness. The lines between the two have to be erased. They are our children, no matter how they came into our lives, adopted abroad, adopted in our country, or born in a hospital after being conceived by their parents.

I am a pro-adoption person and the story in “Mother Jones” saddens me for several reasons. First, it seems that many adoption services for children from other countries are not giving any training in cultural differences of the children to be adopted or reminded how much skin color still makes a difference in American society.

Secondly, are Christian adoptive parents shying away from adopting American kids who need a home? Is cost a part of the problem? Is it cheaper to adopt kids from abroad? If so, do we need to change some laws to eliminate the financial difference?

Finally, a lot of Christians who are against abortion are also against adoption. I know that opposition is lessening, but there are still grandmas and grandpas around who believe “blood” connections are all important in kin relationships and I’m betting, knowing human nature, those prejudices will never be eliminated “until Jesus comes.” Any couple seeking the adoption of any child has to leave “the blood kin” prejudice behind as a relic of the past and toss it in a drawer where all the prejudices go that we have overcome.

A final thought! Sending an adopted kid back to where they came from probably says a lot more about the parents than it does the kid.

ON BEING A PROPHET

By The Rev. Dr. H. Gene Straatmeyer

Being a prophetic Christian is very difficult because Christians, on the average, don’t care much for prophets. Yet, when we look at the gifts of the Spirit in I Corinthians 12:4-11, prophecy is there along with “the utterance of wisdom, the utterance of knowledge, faith, healing, the working of miracles, the discernment of spirits, various kinds of tongues and the interpretation of tongues.” Romans 12:5-6 adds teaching, moral exhortation, generosity in giving, and acts of cheerful mercy.

No one has all of the gifts, and on the opposite end we can say that all of us have some of the gifts. We are given the Holy Spirit’s gifts as Christians so we can put them into use during our earthly stay. They are not spiritual trophies to be held in abeyance or buried as the unwise servant buried his talents. They are to be developed and used.

Earl S. Johnson Jr., a retired Presbyterian minister, writing in the April 2013 edition of “The Presbyterian Outlook,” says it must be very important among the gifts since in the Romans passage it is first on the list.

Johnson goes on to explain that Presbyterian Christians are called to proclaim justice, compassion for the weak, peace for those living in violence, and the preservation of God’s creation (The PCUSA Directory of Worship). I saw some Christians reminding us on Facebook about caring for our globe on Earth Day – and every day.

Under the single word prophecy there are different ways to prophesy. The first is to speak about the future. To illustrate, the Old Testament prophets often foretold that Israel would be punished because of her unfaithfulness as a nation and that their punishment would end in war or captivity. Two special traits the Holy Spirit gives to his prophets are seeing evil and its consequences far in advance of others and the courage to say what others don’t want to hear: “Thus says the Lord!” As Jesus said, if the truth is not spoken at times, “the stones will cry out.” The stones may remain silent but his prophets do not.

There are also prophetic utterances that lead people astray. On Facebook this week I read one Christian’s message that the Boston Marathon bombing is evidence that the parousia is near. Another connected politics to the coming of Jesus believing that our president and his policies are a sign that the end is “drawing nigh.” A better prophetic word would be to remind us all that our last breath on earth, that can come so unexpectedly – even today, is the moment of our face-to-face with the Creator and Savior of the Universe. That’s why the spiritual asks, “Are you ready for the judgment day?”

The business of foretelling the future is crowded these days with end-timers. They go to Scripture and see some verse or verses that they then weave into a belief that tells the exact date of the Lord’s return. Their inaccurate prophecies have left people waiting for Jesus on roof tops while others sold every possession they ever owned because they felt there was no need for earthly goods once the end comes. We know these shamans are false because we know how many predictions they have made since Jesus ascended into heaven. Yet, not a one of them has come true! I don’t listen to them. They are charlatans.

A second way to prophesy is to preach the Gospel – not just the nice parts of the Gospel – the entire Gospel! Not just those parts that make listeners feel good! Too many pastors preach on the comfortable side of Gospel and never tackle “the hard sayings of Jesus” like the meaning of Jesus’ words, “Take up your cross and follow me.”

I heard laypersons talking recently about their pastor. They said that every once in a while he “punched them in the gut,” said things they didn’t like to hear but things Jesus said. There is not enough of this kind of preaching today mostly because of a modern understanding that says the most important part of a preacher’s job is to make people feel good about themselves. The Rev. Dr. Robert Schuler of the famed Crystal Cathedral in California believes that preachers should not mention sin because the real problem people have is low self-esteem. That is important, but it is the more difficult part of the Gospel that reminds us, “Thus says the Lord.”

While living in Iowa, I heard a preacher say in a sermon that at the time of the Civil Rights Movement he didn’t speak up because he didn’t want to upset his congregation, but now, years later, he was regretful for his silence. Now, living in the South, I heard a preacher say he was the pastor in a city where racial problems resulted in riots but he was silent. Many years later, he confessed he was sorry for backing off his prophetic responsibility.

Earl Johnson says another way to prophesy is to express Christian convictions in public ways through nonviolent protest and civil disobedience even though these methods bring the risk of getting arrested, risking one’s life, putting one’s family open to unpleasant criticism and causing problems in one’s church.

My favorite Prophet is Jeremiah who was called at a time when he was still young (Jer. 1.6). On one occasion he was trying to get Israel to understand that God was going to allow Nebuchadnezzar to rule over their land because of their waywardness. The false prophets rebutted him by saying they were the ones who spoke for God and the future would be rosy. They did not see Nebuchadnezzar in the picture. So, to dramatize the predicament and future of Israel, God instructed Jeremiah to put the yoke of an ox around his neck and carry it with him as he spoke to the leaders and people of Israel about the will of God (Jer. 27.2).

The spiritual gifts God gives to his people through the Holy Spirit, says Earl Johnson, “are more than innate talents which are part of our DNA or psychological makeup….They are apportioned to us individually by the action of the Holy Spirit for the work of the church.”

Johnson says that in spite of our not liking the prophets, in the end they become our Christian heroes, like John the Baptist, Dietrich Bonheoffer and Martin Luther King, who all died to fulfill God’s prophetic call. Why do we kill these men of God? Why is it that in their dying we finally come to understand the truth that they were God’s spokespersons to us? Why do we persecute them when they are living and preaching and marching and debating and being rejected? Why do they have to write us a “Letter from the Birmingham Jail?”

Rev. Johnson says his family tells him that he shouldn’t feel bad about not being prophetic because he wasn’t given that gift. We have all heard that before – even from those who should be prophesying. But Rev. Johnson replies, “Maybe so. But the Spirit keeps nagging me. Is it possible that my words and deeds lack prophetic urgency when it comes to issues like fracking, gun control or the use of drones, not because the call is absent, but because I want to ignore it, am afraid of danger or do not want to risk the church’s unity?”

He concludes by writing, “Pentecost is a good time to put away all rationalization and excuses and consider what it means concretely “to share with Christ in establishing God’s just, peaceable and loving rule in the world.” And I agree. Prophetic voices are always needed – but if there was ever a time to employ the special gift God has placed on us, it is now. Today is always the day of salvation. Today is always the day we need to hear a word from the Lord – from you and me, our friends and relatives as well as the stranger.

On the Consequences of Temptation

By The Rev. Dr. H. Gene Straatmeyer

I’m a fan of Tyler Perry and I saw his latest movie a week or so ago titled “Temptation.” I’d recommend it to teenagers, young married couples and all married couples. Perry, known for his Christian witness in Hollywood films, packs a punch in this one. The message is not subtle, it is real. It clearly and tearfully deals not only with the power of temptation but also with the consequences of yielding to fantasies and desires.

The story is about a young Southern couple who grow up in the church. At least the gal’s mother is a Christian. They fall in love in childhood and all the way through high school and college they are a pair. Finally, they are married – a Christian marriage in a Christian Church.

They move to a northern city where he plans to eventually work his way to the ownership of a small pharmacy and she has her eyes set on being a counselor with her own shingle.

They both find jobs, he in a mom and pop pharmacy that will be available for sale when the owner retires. She finds a position in a company that matches singles/divorced with persons who are compatible with each other. She doesn’t like her work. She wants her own counseling business.

After six years of marriage, the routine becomes boring for her. Husband is engrossed getting ready for the day when the pharmacy will be his. The crisis comes in the form of a temptation. At work she has a client who is wealthy, her age, who is a computer genius, and who wants to co-opt her to write a computer program so he can partner with the company for whom she works. He has a private jet, the best car money can buy, an expensive condo and charisma. When her husband forgets her birthday, the handsome, relatively new, male acquaintance, turns on the charm and plants the seeds that maybe he is the one who can make her life more fulfilling by putting up the money for her own counseling business. He professes his love for the young, married woman and says that she will have a world of pleasure at her fingertips through his wealth. That’s the temptation and she succumbs.

In the midst of all this her mother comes for a visit. The husband is beside himself. He wants his wife back. So mom takes her aside and reminds her she is a Christian who needs to get back to church, so that the spiritual nourishment the church provided her as a child, teen and young adult can be replenished. Mom finishes by saying that she will be praying for her beloved daughter. But the daughter, blinded by her own leap into sin, rejects her mother’s counsel.

When the young wife comes home with her new boy friend to fetch her computer, they find the mother with a group of Christian friends praying for her to come back to her husband. The overtly nice but inwardly evil boy friend is offended by such nonsense and when mother stands up to him he punches her to the ground. This is the turning point for the young woman. In this violence she begins to see the “other” side of him, the evil that was lurking within his heart. When they return to his condo, she prepares to leave. He won’t have it and beats her bloody and leaves her wounded.

Husband comes to the rescue but the consequences of her fling have infected her with aids. Yielding to temptation cost a marriage, her health, her first love, her faith (at least for a time) and hours of loneliness in the future.

The end of the movie shows the husband owning the pharmacy, remarried with a young child, giving aids medications to his ex-wife. She has grown old quickly after her beating, infection and divorce but as she leaves the pharmacy she is on her way to her mother’s home where both of them will head for church. The prodigal daughter in the end had been found – she lost everything but the pearl of great price.

We usually don’t talk about the results of sin – but it is there and some bear a terrible price for rationalizing the consequences of temptation and proceeding into the danger zone without a clear idea of what trouble lies beyond the moment of pleasure.

On Revisiting Mississippi 45 years later

By The Rev. Dr. H. Gene Straatmeyer

Not long ago Jean and I took a trip down memory lane on our way back from Homecoming at the University of Dubuque in Dubuque, Iowa, driving south to our present home in Crystal Beach, Texas. We stopped at Hattiesburg, Carrollton, and Vaiden, Mississippi where we participated in the Civil Rights Movement in 1964 and again in 1968-1970.

In 1964 Jean and I were in Hattiesburg involved with voter registration. On our last night there, we were at a rally in an African Methodist Episcopal Church in the heart of a black area of Hattiesburg. After the rally ended near 11 pm, we began driving south towards New Orleans where we planned to visit relatives. From the moment we left the church we were followed. As we drove into the Piney Woods of Mississippi, I sped up, and then slowed down, but no matter what my speed, the car behind followed. Finally I told Jean we were being followed and I hoped that if we were to lose our lives, someone would see those who did it. Just then an all night bar/gas station appeared – it was like an answer to prayer.

We rushed into the bar and drank cokes until sunrise. As we looked out the window, we could see the front of the car that had been following us parked behind trees on the edge of the highway, so we waited and waited. Finally they left.

Until this trip to reminisce, Jean had never gone back to Mississippi. We had two young daughters in 1964 and that possible scrape with death made us realize they could have been orphans if our lives had been taken. When I later became involved in the Cousin County Program between Grundy County, Iowa and Carroll County, Mississippi during 1968 – 1970, Jean remained at home.

Now, some 45 years later, we took pictures of the Church in Hattiesburg. Although the church was in good shape it looked like the community around it hadn’t improved very much. The church was locked and we didn’t talk to anyone, but it bought back a flood of memories. We were “converted” that night to the rightness of Christians participating in the Civil Rights Movement. Many in the community in which we lived in Iowa and most, if not all, of our immediate family in South Dakota, did not believe the Civil Rights Movement had anything to do with the Christian faith. They strongly felt Christians should not be entering the fray. That night in Hattiesburg, however, a mother with teen-age children convinced us that our family and church were wrong when she thanked us for coming. She said prior to white ministers and white Christians coming from the North, her children told her Jesus was a white-man’s Savior, not one for blacks, but with the arrival of Northern Christians who were risking their lives in coming, her children were reconsidering.

We also tried to find the all night bar/gas station south of Hattiesburg, but both roads going towards New Orleans had been changed from two lanes to four, one being an Interstate Highway. We could find nothing that remotely looked like the place where we took shelter from harm’s way over 45 years before.

After 1964, my next trip to Mississippi was in 1968 when Grundy County, Iowa was establishing a Cousin County relationship with Carroll County, Mississippi. The purpose of the program was to relate rural, white Iowans to rural, black Mississippians.

We (the Cousin County program) made several trips to Mississippi in the next two years and spent most of our time in and around Vaiden and Carrollton, Mississippi. We noticed quickly that the Confederate flag was still flying over the Carroll County Courthouse, not the Stars and Stripes. I was told I was the first white ever to stay overnight in a non-white home in Vaiden.

One Sunday morning when we were in Vaiden, I wanted to attend the Presbyterian Church but my hosts said they would not be allowed inside so I agreed to attend their church, the Midway United Methodist Church, a rural church near Vaiden.

When their minister became ill on that Sunday morning and could not preach, I was invited to the pulpit. It was a very emotional service. One elderly woman said afterwards, “Maybe there is hope that one day white and black Christians can worship together.”

When I drove on that church property after all these years all kinds of memories flooded back. There was no one around. The church looked abandoned. I stopped at a nearby home to find out that the church had finally closed its doors several years before and the only thing left was the vacant building and the nearby cemetery.

But the voices of the past were still there. The pianist said during my sermon, “You tell ‘em white boy!” There were a lot of “Amens!” But there were also a lot of tears which I didn’t understand at the time because I preached a “white, middle class, Presbyterian, non-Southern sermon.” It was only after the service that I learned that the symbolism of the first ever white preacher in the pulpit of this black church in Mississippi was a bit too powerful for several members who had lived through the harsh years of segregation. Could it mean progress? Did it mean that white Christians were changing their minds about their black brothers and sisters? Could it be possible we could “love one another” as equals?

We drove around Vaiden and talked to one of Mattie Mae Alexander’s friends. Mattie May was our contact person back in the 60’s but she had passed away a few years ago. We were told her daughters now live in Nashville. Her friend said it was better in Vaiden than in the 60’s but there was still need for improvement.

We took pictures of the Presbyterian Church in Vaiden. Blacks were not welcome way back then and I wondered if they were allowed inside now. It is presently a well-maintained Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation.

The last time I traveled to Mississippi during Civil Rights days was in 1970 when I was asked to preach at the Bear Marsh Baptist Church near Carrollton, Mississippi. Here we found someone at the church who told us that Stanley and Hattie Bowman lived just four houses down from the church. We could see them standing outside in their yard. We quickly drove over to their home. Hattie’s first words to me were, “You look familiar!” When I told her who I was, she said she remembered that Sunday I preached in her church. I told her she had a good memory for being 73 years old, and she replied, “It isn’t every Sunday that a white preacher is in our pulpit.”

They thanked me for coming in the 1960’s and said those of us who came helped make things better for them, although it still wasn’t as good as it could be. The KKK was still active, but now more secret.

It was the consensus of friends in Vaiden and Carollton that life had improved but they were hopeful of more progress. I think that still sums up where we are in 2013 in our nation. We have made progress, but we need to continue the work started by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Prejudice is a sin that has long and deep roots that extend past our hearts into our brains and probably its worst trait is that it hides so effectively that we don’t even know it is there.