The Mason Dixon Gulf

 

 

  America has become two nations, and “we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure”.  In that 1st civil war, there was the Mason Dixon line.  In the present, that line has become a gulf, and the man who tries to straddle it will be ripped apart`.  Bear with a couple of stories from long, long ago.

 

  It was the best of times;  a banner year at the Sidney, Iowa rodeo in 1966.  Colored posters had bedecked the store fronts in every little neighboring cow town for a month.  My Grandpa would have been my age then.  I didn’t get much of his bodily genetics.  He ate more than I did.  I remember Grandma saying, “Land sakes Leslie!  You’re a gonna bust!”  He stayed spare and tight though;  workbrickle and tough as hedge.  Couldn’t tell he was Caucasian ’til he took off his hat. 

  I think it was a ’55 Ford,  bare bones 223 with 3 on the column;  no radio;  4/70 A/C. Narrow concrete roads with drainage curbs.  Bias ply tires would climb right up them and onto the dirt shoulder if you got too close.  No seat belts.  Steel dashboard.  Glass that broke into deadly shards.  The speed limit was 70 in daylight and grandpa didn’t care.  He ran his tractor full throttle, and his car almost.  I was in the passenger’s seat with my bare elbow out the window,  flexing my muscles for, but never looking at the cowgirls we passed.  There were plenty, all headed for Sidney.  Barrel racers in big hats with horses in tow.  Both of us sat deadpan.   Jake Blues with Elwood at the wheel and we were on a mission for ourselves!   A little reward after a Summer of hard work.  Didn’t talk much.  For him, it would have been like talking to a clod.  I knew how to say “Yeah.  Nah.  Dunno.  Please pass the taters” and that’s about it.  Highballing Northward, the tar expansion strips, swollen by the early August heat hammered lightning up our spines but we had put up hay all Summer.  Maybe as tough as the bronc and bull riders we were going to see, but it’s for sure we were smarter.   Just him and me on a little holiday. 

  Sidney is one of those towns where the elevation is higher than the population but it still plays host to a championship rodeo.  It is a “must” stop for all the top competitors if they want to amass winnings toward a national title.  Superstars like W. G. “Freckles” Brown (then aged 45, he would compete for another 8 seasons) and Larry Mahan were there.  We enjoyed the events, but there was always an intermission while they prepared for the bull riding.  Suddenly, over the loud speaker came the theme from “Gunsmoke”;  you remember;  the one they played while they showed a coffee pot on the stove.   Everyone jumped to their feet with wild applause.  Ambling out of the chutes and into the arena they came.  True corn ball rock stars.  I had been watching big animals explode out of that 7’ gate all afternoon so they looked a little frail and smaller than life.  In full costume, Festus (Ken Curtis) did his bow legged strut, grinning his signature facial expression: One eye squinted, the other brow raised high.  Doc (Milburn Stone) shuffled along beside acting cranky as usual, rubbing his hand over his mustache and daubing the back of his neck with a hanky.  They reached into their pockets and slung hard candy into the crowd, creating a melee amongst the youngsters and not a few adults.  They sang some old Western ballads.  “IIIII’ll keep rolling along;  deeeep in my heart is a song;  heeeere on the range I belo  ong;  drifting along with the  tumb a ling tumbleweeeeds.”  (Curtis was with the “Sons of the Pioneers” for a while and Stone could harmonize.)  It was pretty good.  Real good.  And then they did a comedy routine.  If you watched any Gunsmoke reruns you know what a chemistry those two had.  I read somewhere that a lot of the dialogue they did on the show was ad lib.  They just sat down at that table in the Long Branch over a beer (which Doc always wound up paying for) and the director simply turned them loose.  They said sometimes Matt (James Arness) and Kitty (Amanda Blake) couldn’t look at them without laughing so they had to quit filming for the day and come back the next after they had all settled down.  I thought my Grandpa, sitting next to me, was going to pop a rib .  His laugh was a long, wheezy exhale and a very audible catching of the breath that sounded like a six cylinder with a straight pipe.  I elbowed my way down to the fence to get a black and white autographed picture of Doc and Festus, suitable for framing.  $2; almost half of what I spent that day.  I shook their hands.  They were soft and some of Festus’ makeup came off on my thumb.  I guess he had drawn me a little too far into his character.  Grandpa didn’t care if he met them.  He grew up with guys like that so it was no big deal.  I took the picture to Bible College with me, and after I got married, I hung it opposite the commode in our bathroom so I could look at it while enthroned.  It disappeared shortly thereafter of unknown causes.   I’d give anything to have it back but she won’t say.  Stone and Curtis were in sync, on and off stage.  It is difficult to think of one without the other.  They represent the antithesis of the next event that transpired, which speaks more to the subject of this article.

 

  On the far side of the arena appeared a family of trick riders with a bevy of beautiful  Arabians.  (Horses, I mean)   The father, leader of the troupe, explained over the P. A. system that he was going to attempt to “Roman Ride” (put one foot on one horse and one on another as they run flat out side by side).  He explained that one of the horses had been in training, so there may be a wreck, but that’s what the people came to see anyway and he knew it.  He said the horses needed to do this in front of a crowd to perfect their synchronization so we were all to whoop and holler so they could get used to it.  I thought he was a hippie with his flowing blonde hair, pastel blue silk jump suit, and ballet shoes with no socks.  No socks!  Even the women wore socks back then!  The horses stood motionless.  Bareback with only decorative bridles.  Not even the flick of a tail to shoo a fly.  I had seen a Roman Rider at a circus once but he used reins.  I had never seen it done before without reins nor have I since.   This rider climbed the fence and deftly leapt aboard. A knee on each horse and a fistful of mane.  Seemingly of their own volition, the equines bolted.  Up he stood with his arms outstretched like a bird of prey, his billowed sleeves flapping in the wind as he leaned into it.  I watched as his knees independently absorbed the undulations; his head perfectly still.  Halfway around the arena things were perfect, but as they neared the grandstands on the South side the cheering got louder.  This seemed to spook the younger horse who was on the inside.  He got out of sync a little, then a little more.  The rider’s legs stretched farther and farther apart.  I thought he was beyond the point of salvation, destined for a 30 mph slide in the “mudnure”.  I wondered if the dainty seam in those sequined silk breeches would hold.  What lie beneath?  Will the men have to shield the ladies’ eyes with their Stetsons??  A public exposure like that in Iowa in ‘66 with women and children present would make the Omaha Newspaper just a little ways up river.  My grandpa, sitting beside me said with increasing volume;  “He’s gonna…...whoops.  Whoops.  WHOOPS!”  Finally the rider pushed off with one foot to the older horse and the younger one went plumb loco.  He lost his bearings altogether, loped to the middle of the arena and stood facing the crowd, shaking his head as if to get the noise out of his ears.  Grandpa took off his straw Fedora and waved it by the brim and laughed that wheezy laugh while slapping his knee.  He had milker’s hands that were those of a man twice his size.  They looked out of place on his willowy frame.  I was afraid he would break his own leg!  I didn't have my license yet and driving my grandpa home from a rodeo with cracked ribs and a dislocated kneecap would be hard to explain to a statie.  The crowd cheered anyway, because the man didn’t wind up with a mouth full of dirt and the crotch of those pants held out.  High entertainment for a hayseed!

 

  I said all that to say this:

 

  After 50 or so years’ awareness concerning this nation’s gees and haws I have seen it settle into two fairly well defined blocs on moral issues and fiscal matters.  It seems to have little to do with political party affiliations.  Neither Republican nor Democrat;  these blocs are now conservative (right) or liberal (left).  I plainly believe Biblical Christianity (there is no other kind)  has more in common with present tenets called conservative than those called liberal.  To say an individual is “liberal” or “conservative” may be an over simplification.  Personally, I am an extreme conservative on moral issues, I am equidistant between center and extreme right on fiscal considerations.  I am glad to pay the government a fair salary to defend the Constitution, and I am glad when my taxes go to help those who can’t help themselves.   There are some social issues that do not compromise my moral compass;  and on those I am yet farther toward center.   You can see that conservatism and liberalism may come in shades and hues depending on application to individual topics;  nevertheless, moderation is less feasible than it has ever been.  I may have to drink some of the “bathwater” of radical conservatism to protect the moral and religious matters that are my “baby”.   In a broad stroke, we shall say that these two major creeds are found in both parties, and conservative party platforms are moderating in a vain attempt to span the gulf;  and a bridge with too long a span collapses. 

  Pinning one label or the other on a politician may be an exercise in futility.  Campaigns give one identity, incumbency produces another.  How can you tell who is who with all the vote trading and deal making over pork?  There is more vicissitude in the halls of congress than on the street.  Amongst the constituency, the labels are clearer and the contrast is coming into sharper focus.  We are obligated to choose and get both feet firmly planted in one or the other.  No honest man can ride them both.  The Mason Dixon line has become the gulf of Hades which no man can cross. 

 

  The major factor in our recent general elections is that slightly more liberals came to the polls than conservatives (duh);  but I think the reason that happened is that our president appeared more transparent about his convictions, be they right or wrong.   His competitor did not present a bold enough contrast to engender confidence among enough conservatives.  It was the same in the 2008 election.  I believe “conservative” political analysts and advisors are dead wrong when they tell their candidates to appear more moderate.  The issues are so polarized that there isn’t enough rope to build a swing for a “swing” voter anymore, so why try to capture their vote?  I surmise that for offices higher than State Representative, straight ballots based upon liberalism or conservatism are cast.  How I long for a conservative candidate who will say, “This is where I stand!  If you agree, vote for me.  If not, vote for my opponent.  Either of us will do our best.”  Unless a conservative like that can garner the funds necessary to run a campaign, then America’s day in the sun is over.  We’d better renew our devotion to our Heavenly citizenship and remember Who truly grows, bakes, and butters our daily bread.  Conservatives had better prepare to live as a tyrannized minority (that is only barely a minority).  True Christians have always been a minority, so what’s new?  Conservative Christians have enjoyed a modicum of toleration in this nation for quite a while.  World history will show that to be quite abnormal;  but remember that the church waxes or wanes regardless of it’s approval by the outside.  The church waxes or wanes due to it’s internal health and according to God’s plan which either incorporates or stands above the ebb and flow of politics.

 

  As I have said in previous kommuniques, we cannot go out of this world for now.  The chasm is ideological, not physical.  Conservative Christians must walk, talk, work, and play side by side with non believing liberals.  (There are some “liberals” who are “believers”,  but the terms are oxymoronic.  These folks just don’t know it yet.  So there.  I love you but there are times when I can’t be nebulous.)   They may want to get off this planet of “knuckle draggers” so they can go evolve, unhindered.   We may want to go to Heaven before it’s time and let those with gods of their own machination go extinct down here, which they surely would PDQ.   But we’re crowded into the same pig pen for now.  Christians need to be concerned and participate in the debate,  but never fearful;  for we are well equipped.  We have the most complex and astounding piece of matter in the universe right inside our skulls, we have a will, and we have the Spirit of our Creator that is strengthening and urging that will.  We are well educated.  We have the printed and readily available Word of God which is absolute truth.  We eat persecution for breakfast.  We are not like instinct driven animals who have to be fenced off from each other.  We can refrain from biting off the tails of other pigs we don’t like.  There are areas where we can defer without compromising the essentials and if we want to be the pig with more largess, we should.  As Paul said, he was made all things to all men that he might by all means save some.  However, there are lines we cannot cross.  I doubt Paul got gassed at a Greek bacchanal or copulated with temple prostitutes as part of his evangelistic method.  If our wills are malleable to the Spirit,  He will stick our nose to the Book and our conscience will show us where the line is every time.

 

  I got a John Wayne coffee mug for Christmas.  It is oversized with a handle that I can get three chubby knuckles through.  On one side is a picture of the Duke, and on the other in bold letters it says, “A man’s got to have a code;  a creed to live by.”   That line did not originate with a script writer.  It is his personal statement cited in a biography written by his wife.  (For what it’s worth:  I met Stuart Hamblen at the Kiamichi Men’s Clinic one year.  He was a good friend of and fellow actor with Marion Morrison, a.k.a. John Wayne.  They were also drinking buddies off screen, until Hamblen became a Christian.  Hamblen and Morrison remained fast friends.  He wrote “It is no Secret” and some other lesser known Christian music.  Hamblen told us that he baptized Morrison two years before his death in 1979.)  I am urging you now; draw up a personal code.  You know the Bible.  You ought to be able to write your constitution based upon it.  Make a list of things you must always do and things you must never do, under any circumstance.  Plant both feet on it and don’t step off it.  Live with people of other codes.  It is more likely that you will be living with people who don’t have a code at all.  You have to live with them;  but have the lines clearly in mind of how far you will go;  and if they go too far, keep your mouth shut!  You ought to approach a brother with meekness, but dressing a non Christian down, especially in front of his peers, never has a positive outcome.  Just don’t do the sin with him or show your approval of it.  Believe me, that says a big plenty.  Once in a while I remember who I am and behave like it.  I was at the café with friends  and a guy came in whose breath smelled of alcohol at 9:00 in the morning.  He was loud and vulgar.  He told a dirty joke.  My peripheral vision saw everyone looking at me.  They still call me “reverend”.  Once a “reverend” always a “reverend” I guess.  I sat silent with the brim of my hat shadowing my face, staring into my coffee.  The only one who laughed was the man who told the joke.  People are keeping score.  If you “claim the Name”, there are more people who will take their lead from you than you know.  Until the Lord returns, there will always be those who are taking notes.

 

  The horse that went awry;  did they take him out back and put him down?  Of course not.  He represented a great expenditure of time, energy, money.  I can say with certainty that they took him out of the trailer at the next rodeo and made him do the same thing.  I can guarantee that he became the lead horse and they trained other young ones beside him.  They knew he would eventually put food on the table for them!   You put up with your kids because you know they will get big enough to push a lawnmower and scrub the floor, and eventually lead you by the hand to places you should go but may not want to.

  Friend, please don’t give up on this world yet!  There are those you come in contact with every day in whom God is investing.  He foreknows that they will opt to follow Him.  The Holy Spirit is riding drag behind them, goading them toward salvation.

  God may purposely  put you together with them if He can trust you as the lead horse.  I don’t know how you train a horse to run in perfect harmony beside another, but I doubt that they are trained by whipping them after a failed attempt.  It would only confuse them, for they are yet ignorant.  As Jesus said, “forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  Keep on walking amongst them. 

 

  CWII is on!  1 Kings 18:21  And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal , then follow him.  There are only two horses and they are severely out of sync.  There are only two kingdoms.  There is no survivable middle ground.  Walk and talk among the enemy’s hapless slaves calmly, unafraid, dressed in the whole armor of God.  Take a bullet.  Heal up.  Go back and do it again.  Of course, the gulf of which I speak is not a physical one;  therefore, we walk and talk among those who bear little resemblance to us.  It is a separation of mores and values.   God knows those on the other side who will defect, and that’s why we must walk in their midst.  When they want to be granted asylum, we must be there to take them in;  to give them a new circle of comrades;  with God’s power, protect them;  and show them that there is another “alternative lifestyle”.

 

  Unlike CWI, brother is not fighting brother here.  The non believing world has morphed into some sort of new species;  bipedal hominids like us but that’s about as far as it goes.  Impacting our society is not the pink tea pastoral visit to Aunt Bea’s anymore.  It’s raw, rugged, rough and risky.  If you’re a fake, you’re going to eat dirt.  A man’s got to have a code, a creed to live by.

 

The Box

For as long as she could remember, her world was 12’x12’x7’.  There was a dresser with no mirror, a nice bed with a colorful comforter and fluffy pillows, a picture of Jesus praying in the garden, a bin full of toys and a toilet and shower.  There were no windows and only one door, locked from the outside.  She knew there was another room, for 3 times a day a lady would enter with food and sometimes clean and change the bedding, brush her hair, and do other necessities.  No words were ever spoken.  She got a glimpse of the other room when the door was opened, and she was afraid of it, for it was only a dark and mysterious hallway.  She was content to stay in her room, for it was much more cheery and interesting than that dark and foreboding hallway outside.  Over the years, the room became smaller.  Her head was closer to the ceiling and the bed was shorter.  The lady who came in also grew much smaller, until she was looking down at her.  One day she was alarmed by a clamor outside the door.  She heard the sounds of many footsteps coming down the hall.  The door opened and she was terrified when 3 beings entered.  They had short hair, and dark blue suits.  They had strange, hard objects strapped to their belts and clothing that wrapped around each leg.  They were much larger than the lady she knew.  Her fear intensified when sounds came out of their mouths, but the sounds were low and soothing, and slowly she realized that they were not going to harm her.  One of them squatted and held out his hand to her with a piece of candy.  She had seen candy and knew how good it was.  The fear was gradually replaced by curiosity, and she reached out to touch the hand.  It was gentle.  Slowly, it wrapped it’s huge fingers around her own delicate hand and she instinctively wrapped her fingers around it.  Ever so slowly the hand tugged on hers.  It was beckoning her in the direction of the dark hallway.  She resisted.  One of the beings stepped outside and she heard a “click”.  Suddenly, the hallway was flooded with light.  She saw that it had bright walls and a shiny hardwood floor with beautiful grain in the wood.  A soothing breeze wafted into the room and the pleasing scent of flowers met her nose.  She took a deep breath.  She wanted to go in the direction of that fragrance.  Surely, something beautiful was there.  She took a tentative step, and then another.  There she was, standing in the hallway.  She was still alive.  On she walked with the beings.  Brighter light was up ahead.  The first window she had ever seen.  Outside she saw the flowers that were producing the bouquet;  roses.  She stopped and stared at them.  Red was a color she had never seen.  Green trees with leaves slowly waving in the breeze.  Blue sky.  She was overcome by the vastness of what she saw out that window, even though she could not see more than 40 yards in any direction.  And sounds.  Sounds of traffic on the street and the laughter of children.  It was all astounding.  She saw things that her mind had never conceived.  Things she thought impossible.

  We shall call her Anne Smith.  We shall say she was 17 when “rescued”.  Under the tutelage of social workers she quickly learned to speak and read.  She had above average intelligence and it was not long before she understood what had transpired.  Her mother was the victim of a rape.  So traumatized was she by the event that she deemed the world an unfit place in which to raise her daughter. 

  Anne soon adapted to the world around her, but never ceased to be amazed at things that she could never have imagined while in the “box”.

 

  The above story is fiction, perhaps.  There may have been actual cases like this;  but I wrote it to illustrate the point of this paper.

 

Ex 33:20  And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live

 

 1 Cor 2:9  But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

 

  Much trouble has been wrought by vanity.  Atheists have been made, and churches split by the simple fact that humans believe that they must be able to scientifically define or draw up a mathematical equation that explains something before they will accept that it exists;  however we are a bit fickle in relegating inexplicable phenomena to the dust bin of non existence.  None would say there is no gravity nor would they refuse to respect it;  though our most astute do not know what causes it.  More hastily do they scrap the idea of a three personal God;  for that God suggests that we may not be our own masters.   Such is the case with the concept that we call the “Trinity” or “Godhead”.  The nature of and relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is impossible for us to explain.  The “Trinitarian Controversy” has caused grave stress on the unity of believers since the 4th century.  I personally know people who have given up the faith because their preconceived notions about the nature of the Godhead made the Bible seem absurd.

  To borrow one of my favorite “billclintonisms”, I feel yo’ pain.  The relationship of what we call the “Trinity” has given me more mental Charlie horses than pondering any other subject, with the possible exception of infinity.  Perhaps that is because the two are related.

 



c s lewis

  I have always felt a strange familiarity with C. S. Lewis, not speaking only of his non fictional writings;  but the man himself.  I bear some resemblance to his physical features.  He lived a short distance from my pre American paternal ancestors.  He died when he was 65.  I am 63 now and if my doctor is to be believed, I have one foot in the grave.  He took care of an alcoholic brother (Just kidding Curt, Wayne.  Were that the case, sorry about your luck.  You’re on your own, bros!)  He cared for his senile and ungrateful Landlady, which hopefully I would do given the chance.  The height of my earthly glory would be to sit in on his “Inklings” literary club 
meetings, as quiet as a mouse.  I will say without doubt that C. S. Lewis has consoled me in these conundrums more than anyone.  Some of what I will say reflects that which he wrote in his book “Mere Christianity”;  particularly in the section “Beyond Personality” chapter 2: "The Three Personal God. 

  Please bear with this long paragraph.  It is leading toward a point.  Lewis explains the Godhead using dimensions as an illustration.  He uses 3 dimensions of space and his point is that a two dimensional being, for instance, could not conceive of a 3 dimensional object;  hence, humans cannot fully conceive God, for God is supra dimensional.  I will recognize the fourth dimension, for it is crucial to my reasoning.  The first 3 are called “space” (height, width, depth);  and the fourth is “time”.  Time is only relevant because all space is defined by time.  The distance of anything must be measured in time as well as inches or miles.  When driving in the city, people do not say that it is a certain number of miles to a place, for there are stop lights, heavy traffic areas, etc.  They say it is so many “minutes”.  You may not think that time matters when considering a small distance, but try to tell that to the cripple when he must go to the bathroom in a hurry.  If any distance at all is under consideration, time is relevant.   Everything you see, you are seeing as it was in the past because light travels 186,000 miles per second.  It may be only a split nanosecond in the past, nevertheless, it is past.  I still have the universal Harley Davidson Tattoo;  a scar on my right calf.  I was wearing shorts, and my calf touched the exhaust as I dismounted.  The burn was more instantaneous than the time it took the feeling to travel up my nervous system and for my brain to interpret it as unpleasant and send a message back to my leg to move.  We can understand by observing lightning.  We see the flash.  It traveled through our optic nerve and was sensed by our brains at 186,000 mps.  The sound of the air condensing back together along the path of the lightning bolt, we call thunder.  That sound is only traveling at about 750 miles per hour.  It may take several seconds for it to reach our brains via our auditory nerves.  We know that we are hearing an event which happened in the past.  Now take a star that is 100 “light years” away.  What we are seeing when we look into the heavens are photons that left that star before we were born.  Were that star to suddenly disappear, we would not be aware of it until 100 years after the fact.  We are actually seeing 100 years back in time.  There is no such thing as the “present” for humans.  The concept is only figurative to us, because we are moving continually through time.

  If you have not gone to sleep yet or moved this to your trash bin, here is my point.  THERE IS NO TIME FOR GOD.  We cannot wrap our minds around this because of our slavery to time!  Our past and future are before God in an infinite present.  He is the only Being who can truly say “I AM”, temporally speaking.  If we are technically precise, we can only say “I was” or “I will be”;  and we cannot say “I will be” with certainty. 

 

  When Jesus left the “ivory palaces” He made Himself subject to time, (although He seems to have exercised executive privilege over those bonds on occasion.)  When He cries out on the cross and asks why His Father has forsaken Him, perhaps it is His divine nature who is willingly suffering those hours of torment, expressing His misery to His divine nature Who has the ability to pass them in an instant.   When He says “Unless I go, the Comforter (Holy Spirit) will not come” perhaps He is saying “My divine nature that has for now been made subject to time must defer to My divine nature that knows no such subjugation.”  These things are mysterious to me.  They are things beyond scientific definition, we must accept them by faith.  After all, who has decreed that scientific method can be successfully applied to define all reality?

  Asking someone to accept something by faith is not a “cop out”.  We accept by faith all the time.  Gravity is beyond scientific definition, and yet we plan our futures on the firm conviction that it will still exist.  My next doctor’s appointment is in two weeks.  I am already dreading it because I know I will first be asked to step on the scales, and gravity will once again send me on my way feeling like dirt.  I have no doubt that it will.  I actually believe the depression and anxiety caused by gravity and scales and the privation of diets will kill me quicker than the weight will.

 

  Sorry.  Back to the matter at hand. We try in vain to explain these concepts with earthy illustrations.  We try in vain because all that is earthy is strapped by time.  I have heard it said that the Trinity is like water.  It can be gas, solid, liquid.  The problem is, it cannot be all these things simultaneously.  At the same time.  I have heard it said a man can be a father, a welder, and a member of the Lion’s Club.  The problem is that I doubt there would be a plausible scenario when he was acting in a 100% capacity as all these things simultaneously.  We can’t even do one thing 100%, let alone 3.  100% is only quixotic when referring to our efforts;  an unattainable goal for us.  Faith, faith, faith!  Some things must be accepted by faith and the nature of and relationship between the Godhead is one.  Don’t let the skeptic call you an airhead.  He has not scientifically verified everything.  He acts on faith a hundred times a day.

 

  When my daughter was very young, she had a high fever that persisted.  The doctor finally told us that we’d better get her to the hospital.  There we stood in the hallway while nurses prepared a bath of ice water, the ice cubes still suspended in it.  I watched as they gently lowered her into it.  I heard her scream like never before nor since.  She was in the hands of strangers and I think she thought we were going to stand idly by while they drowned her.  The worst moment was when she looked over the side of that tub out into the hallway at me and screamed, “Daddy!  Why don’t you help me!”  My eyes still moisten after all these years when I think about it.  How could I explain to her what was going on?  All I could hope for is that she would get old enough that I could explain it to her, and that she would love me for doing the right thing for her, even though I knew it would shake her faith in me.

 

    God transcends our attempts to capture Him fully in a box.  He may let us get bits and pieces of Him.  Moses wanted to see Him.  He had to hide Moses in a rock fissure and cover the opening with His hand; just to let His backside pass by;  and still what Moses saw was only a theophany!  No physical sight that we can see is the essence of God, for He is spirit.  Revealing these mysteries to us is tantamount to revealing calculus to an earthworm.  Bless His holy Name that He would reveal anything at all to me!  He knows what my mind can hold, and He fills it to bursting.  The rest He requires that I accept by faith.  When I do, it pleases Him.  Think outside the box.  We have no option.

A Better Idea?

Once upon a time, I was helping a farmer haul grain and he told me how he wanted me to position his truck under the loading auger.  The auger was in tight quarters.  I was to stop on a busy highway, back a 42’ grain hopper into the driveway which was flanked by two big trees, and back around some outbuildings, finally backing underneath the auger.  I usually do as I am told without asking questions, but after repeating this arduous and time consuming method, I had an epiphany. “Why can’t I just drive around the bin and pull underneath the auger forward?  That would be quicker.  It would save enough time that I may be able to get in an extra load today.”   So I decided to try it.  I turned in off the highway, wove my way through the maze of outbuildings, drove ’round the bin and was thinking, “This is a breeze!”  I was also thinking, “This is too easy.  I must be doing something wrong but I can’t for the life of me think what it is.”  With trepidation I pulled slowly into the narrow passageway between the bins and nosed under the auger.  My cab cleared.  And then…...BANG!  I knew immediately that my stack had not cleared.  I had forgotten about that tall stack.  After 25 years of driving, to make a sophomoric mistake like that is insane.  Like Icarus, my wings melted and I plummeted back into the sea of incompetence, affirming my idiocy under my breath. 

  I got out to survey the damage.  They say God takes care of drunks, fools, and children.  I am neither drunk nor child.  Fortunately, the stack was heavy gauge metal and sturdily braced, so it was not damaged.  I had moved the auger a few inches and there was a little scratch on it.  It was old and marred anyway, so I knew it would go unnoticed, and I saw no need to tell what I had done.   There was another bin very close on my left so I couldn’t  swerve around the auger.  I didn’t have the hydraulics to raise it.  Help me Rhonda!!  I had to back all the way ‘round the bin, through the out buildings and out onto the highway, pull forward, and then back in.  I caused a serious traffic jam and not a little road rage.  I don’t know why they put horns on cars.  All they are used for is to blow off steam.  After I backed into the driveway, there was rubber burning and several drivers gave me the Ohio “salute” as they sped by.  My CB radio was filling channel 19 with very colorful epithets ………..so I switched it off.

  No one was around when I did this, so you are the first to know of it.  (And no, Ron or Jeff, it wasn’t when I was in your employ.)  That farmer has probably noticed my tracks going around the back of the bin, and knows that I had attempted an ill advised “innovation”;  but so far he has not mentioned it to me, and I am fool enough to live in denial of his awareness.  Fortunately, he is an easy going chap and I still drive for him occasionally.

 

  “Innovation” is a word that causes my eyebrows to rise slightly.  When a product says “New and Improved”,  you and I both know that the only thing new are the words “New and improved” on the can.  It is always ill advised to innovate with the commands of scripture.  Some of them seem overly complex, and we think we’ve got a better idea.  Such seems to be the case with the ordinance of immersing (baptizing) believers for the remission of sins.  Even as I write this, I know it will offend some, and I am not one to offend over minutia.  I would not sweat this issue at all, were it not connected to the remission of sins.

  Since I have retired, my wife and I have been able to visit around to some of our sister congregations.  When the invitation is given, I have heard the plan of salvation repeated, sans immersion.  I must admit that it is more efficient that way.  The un saved hearer can put his trust in Christ right where he sits in the pew.  He can decide to repent right where he sits in the pew.  Slightly more labor intensive, he can raise his hand in answer to the question:  “Who believes that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God?”  These are all convenient.  But when it comes to immersion, well now, that requires some doing.  The believer usually must go to a changing room, take off his clothes, put on a baptismal robe, wade down into some water that may be a bit chilly and get dunked;   come up soaking wet with hair matted and dripping.  Then he must go back into the changing room and dry off and re clothe.  A lot of ladies (and some men) want to do their hair again so we keep a blow dryer, combs, brushes, hair spray (some use enough that they could play football without a helmet), a mirror, etc. in the changing room.  My wife takes the robe and towels home to wash, dry, fold, and replace them neatly.  Then we drain the water, scrub the tank, fill it with another several hundred gallons, and warm it again.  It’s all inconvenient and just a little humiliating to some.

  Perhaps closer to the truth is a reason more insidious.  If we make immersion optional, it makes it more convenient for the person who is coming out of denominationalism to “join” our congregation.  Many denominations immerse believers if it is their desire, but it is optional;  so it makes us seem more homogenous if we are not insistent.  We don’t want to imply that the denominationalist was yet in sin all the years that he was  un immersed.  It makes us seem legalistic and sectarian if we require it.  It may be offensive to him and he may lose interest in us.  (I should mention that the Lord’s Supper also is being increasingly marginalized, for making it the centerpiece of each Sunday worship could offend the denominationalist who may be “checking us out”.  It implies that his former congregation was mistaken in not observing it each Lord’s Day.  It is nowhere commanded to be observed each Lord’s day, but there are strong examples that this was the practice of the early church.  It was the primary reason for their meeting together.  Acts 20:7)

 

  When God told Moses how to build the tabernacle, He was very detailed and complex.  I’m sure there were some ordinances that must have puzzled him, yet Moses was faithful and followed the commands, right down to the last tiny detail.  How thankful I am that he did!  I remember how we built a model of the tabernacle in vacation bible school.  Our teacher, Thelma Miller, explained to us the symbolism expressed in the placement of the furnishings and the structure itself.  The tabernacle was a foreshadowing of our spiritual journey under the New Covenant.  The outer court, the altar, the laver, the holy place and it’s appurtenances, the veil, the holy of holies, the ark of the covenant covered by the mercy seat;  all of these were rich expressions of our experience under the lordship of Christ.  My understanding took a giant leap and I was saved a short time later after that VBS;  saved according to every requisite to salvation mentioned in the scriptures.  I doubt that Moses knew that his meticulous attention to detail would help a denim clad country boy walk the sawdust trail some 3400 years later; squishing all the way home with heavy, soaked blue jeans and a considerably lightened heart.  I doubt Moses knew that his compulsions would bear the fruit of every good thing in that boy’s life.

  The laver of the tabernacle represents immersion.  One had to wash in that laver before he could enter the holy place, which represents the church.  Immersion is such a clear picture.  My old sinful man is killed and buried beneath the waters.  I am now covered with the blood of Christ in God’s estimation.  Immersion in another sense is the “womb” from which the new creature emerges.  I am “born again” as I come out of that fluid, not by the water, but by the Holy Spirit that was installed as I was plunged.  I am born as a new creature;  I am resurrected to walk in a newness of life.  Immersion is every bit as demonstrative as the Lord’s Supper.  God knew there would be some NASCAR fans who couldn’t read words (sorry Bubba), so He drew them “pichers”.  Oh, how He loves us all!  Please; let us not mess with His “pichers”.

  Many denominational churches used to require immersion for the remission of sins, but the non denominational congregations are about the only group that still does, and there are some of these churches that have begun to make it optional.   The Devil fears the blood of Christ like Superman fears Kryptonite.  He is stricken impotent in it’s presence.  Is it not curious that the two prominent elements of doctrine that refer most plainly to the blood:  Immersion and the Lord’s supper;   are the ones being suppressed in our practice?   Oh how subtle is our adversary!  He makes men go around feeling that they are saved when actually, they have never met the blood in Christian immersion.  Perhaps they will be part of the crowd that hears these awful words:  Matt 7:22-23 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works ?  And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

 

  In times past, I have striven mightily to study my way around the necessity of immersion.  I loathed being perceived as a cult leader because I taught it.  I feel, and am, ostracized from the “main stream” of evangelicalism.  Try as I might, there is no way to ignore the plain scriptural inferences, examples and mandates.  Among all the obligations of the sinner who wants to become a Christian, immersion is one most prevalently exemplified.  Of late, I have quit loathing my lot and have embraced it.  God has plopped my tonnage squarely in the path of dozens of good people who have obeyed the gospel according to a denominational plea.  They have never been encouraged to complete the obedience of immersion.  I needn’t have worried that they would be offended if I urged it upon them.  Because they were truly submissive to God, they readily complied with scriptures that they had not previously given serious attention to.  Had they been indignant, I would have suspected them disingenuous.  I now see my role as “Boz the Baptist”.  They have been taught the gospel except for the necessity of this one obedience, so that’s where I come in.   I’m OK with that. 

  Exodus 4:24,25:  The Lord was ready to kill Moses because he had not circumcised his son, Gershom.  Moses had probably neglected this to keep the peace with his wife, Zipporah of Midian.  She obviously did not share an affinity for these detestable Hebraic customs.   She hastily circumcised Gershom herself, but did so with disgust.  Notwithstanding Zipporah’s attitude, Moses’ life was spared because the Lord’s requirement was satisfied.  Although circumcision is not a foreshadowing of baptism, it does serve to illustrate the point that not every aspect of faith is metaphysical.  If no concrete obedience, either mental or physical is required, we are left with universal salvation (or damnation) and the church is rendered superfluous.

 

     The necessity of immersion is so obvious to me that I can’t understand why others don’t see it.  I have even thought that I must be crazy.  100 people in a room see a red light and everyone but me says it is green.  How can that be?  What is wrong with me??  I have thought, “perhaps it is just a compunction engrained in me by years of tradition.”   I don’t think that is true.  I fear human tradition that becomes obligatory.  I fear it so much that I probably have wounded “the weaker brother’s” conscience with my irreverence toward it.  I believe compulsory performance of human tradition is a part of the “leaven” of the Pharisees that Jesus warned against;  therefore I carefully avoid it.  

   

  It only takes one bullet to kill, but bear with me as I “overkill” here:

 

Matthew 28:19,20     Mark 16:16     John 3:3-5     Acts 2:36-39     Acts 8:35-38     Acts 10:44-48     Acts 16:14,15     Acts 16:30-33      Acts 18:8     Acts 19:1-5     Acts 22:16     Romans 6:3-5     Galatians 3:27     Ephesians 5:26     Colossians 2:11,12     I Peter 3:21

 

  Read these passages.  Study the context around them.  If you can deny what these clearly communicate about immersion, then forgive me if I fear the whole of scripture has become a little too pliable in your hands.  I am aware that you can call upon John 3:16 or Acts 16:30 and say I am wrong.  What you are saying, then, is that verses that only command belief are contradictory to the ones enjoining baptism.  God forbid!  We must take EVERYTHING that the Bible says about a certain subject into account to make a determination of the whole truth.  The verses I mentioned are not contradictory to those that only mention belief.  They are complementary.  Some passages are not fully prescriptive concerning the remission of sin without the others.  Good hermeneutics (principles of interpretation) require that we take everything the Bible has to say on a certain subject into account before we draw our conclusions.  I am skeptical of “nutshell” summations.  There is no single verse in the Bible that sums it all up.  We can’t redact the scripture to only those verses we like and ignore those we don’t.  If we do, the scripture ceases to be dynamic.  It ceases to “use” us and becomes used (perhaps abused) by us.

  Genesis 22:1-20:  Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac, his miraculous son of promise.  Do you suppose he would have been blessed by God if he had arisen early and saddled his ass, and stopped there?   That would have shown an intent to obey.  Do you suppose that if he had made the three day trip to the mount which God had shown him and stopped there, that God would have blessed him?  You get the picture.  Abraham didn’t stop until God stopped him.  He split the wood, took fire and a knife, laid the wood upon his own son, marched up that mountain, laid his son upon the altar, and put that knife to his own son’s jugular before God intervened.   In so doing, Abraham’s actions present a beautiful picture of what God was going to do with His own Son.  Hebrew 11:17ff elucidates the reason that Abraham was blessed.  By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called:  Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead;     Abraham did the “faith walk” completely, and furthermore, he was anxious to do it.  He wasted no time.  I believe we are remiss when we conjecture that Abraham was hesitant and obeyed with reluctance.  Neither should we forestall the obedience of immersion.

  I’m sure God knew Abraham would do as he did.  Why, then, did God test him?  For our sakes, brother!  Along with a picture of the atonement, we needed the picture of what faith is.  God knew Abraham would paint every last brush stroke of it;  and He inspired Moses to include the story in Genesis.   Should we, then, stop at belief?  Hah!  Even the devils believe and tremble!  (James 2:19)  Should we stop at trusting in Him, at confessing, at repentance?  It is not until we are immersed that we can consider ourselves “in” Christ.  Even then, immersion is only the birth.  The Spirit, from that point, leads us into further obedience;  however, it is no more the obedience of a sinner yet needing salvation.  It is the normal behavior of one whose flesh has been dealt a mortal blow and buried, and who is now but a vessel, carrying the Spirit and being animated and manipulated by Him.

 

  Where would we be if Jesus had stopped His obedience before He scaled the gruesome face of Golgotha?  Would He have been able to say “It is finished”?  Phil 2:8  And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.    John 10:18  No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.    In similar fashion, when it comes to that which is commanded, but is inconvenient and humiliating;  can we stop short and yet say truly, “It is finished”?   

 

   Those of you who teach sinners how to get rid of the penalty of sin; do you tell the whole story;  or do you have a better idea than God?  To those of you who love Christ but have not been immersed;  if I were on my deathbed and you came to visit me, my last words to you would be:  “Get yourself under the water!”. 

  Don’t misunderstand.  Let no man say I am advocating “baptismal regeneration”!  There is no power in the water itself.  The power is in the mind of God as He changes His verdict about you.  If there were efficacy in the water alone, my time as an evangelist would be better spent at the local swimming pool.  Having procured a vial of holy water, made so by the incantations of the local priest;  I should surreptitiously pour some into the pool and pronounce baptism by the authority of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as each oblivious diver went off the board.  They would then, like unknowing babies, be made a part of Christ’s church;  righteous in the sight of the Almighty.  No!  It is your desire to practice faithful obedience as a result of your trust in the wisdom of God and acceptance of the Lordship of Jesus that causes immersion to be the point at which God changes His mind about you.  Figuratively speaking, it is what causes God to consider that tank, that pond, that river;  to be a “fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins.”  Immersion, per se, has no talismanic effect.  It is not a human work that merits salvation.  Neither can your belief, repentance, nor any of the good things you do before or after you become a Christian, merit salvation.  The water is only the place God has commanded us to go to get THE WORK OF CHRIST applied to us;  and CHRIST’S work is the ONLY work that merits salvation for all who will accept it!  Everything we “do”, to accept salvation or after we are saved, is a result of the work of the Holy Spirit.  Your only responsibility is to slacken the reins, click your tongue, and hang on for dear life. 

 

 

  The Mona Lisa is far inferior compared to God’s artistry;  but imagine the horror should we blow a hole in her face with a 12 gauge slug!    Joyful sojourner, I beseech thee, don’t exclude the water!  When God has an idea, we haven’t a better one.