Pastor, go Locke your mouth up!

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

On January 23, 2022, Pastor Greg Locke, preacher at the Global Vision Bible Church in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, abused both of those rights.

He preached a sermon, Desperate For Deliverance, that grabbed attention because of a comment he made about autism.

After reading a transcript of that comment, I was furious.

(Content warning: From here on out, I will be mentioning offensive comments related to both autism and mental illness; as well as some background information on Greg Locke. Please use appropriate self-care if you choose to read further.)

This is not the first time Locke has been in the news. In July of 2020, Locke stated his refusal to wear a mask, calling masks "gags."

In January, 2018, he announced his divorce from his wife Melissa. That August, the Christian Post wrote  that he'd married his church assistant.    

Locke claimed that she divorced him. The Pulpit and Pen blog paints a different picture, saying that she withdrew divorce papers she'd filed, and then Locke filed for divorce. 

Dee Parsons, writer at The Wartburg Watch blog, posted in 2020 about an angry encounter he had with a Dunkin Donuts employee when he refused to wear a mask inside. A YouTube video that went along with that blog entry has since been removed for violating YouTube's terms of service.

In order to determine the context of his "autism" comment, I found the YouTube video of that January 23 sermon. The comments on that particular video are turned off.

The sermon begins at 23:09 on the video. His main text is Jeremiah 8:11, the King James Version: "For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly."

From then on, he talks mostly about spirits, especially spirits of oppression. At 40:41, he refers to Isaiah 61:3, talks about swapping the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, and quips, "you don't need the pills, you need the Gos-pill."

Around 48:38, it becomes Locke's opinion that what we think of as being possessed by a demon, as in the movie The Exorcist, is not what the Bible teaches. He then explains that the word "possessed" isn't in the Bible in the Greek; rather, the Greek word actually means "demonized," and then says that yes, even Christians can be demonized. 

At 58:43, he begins the section that contains the comments about autism. I've transcribed the next few minutes from the YouTube video:  

"We know so few people, if any, that are totally surrendered.  Why? Because they've always got some tic about them. They've always got something about them they just can't get over. They have a compulsory about them. You know, if you'll study evil spirits, you'll find they compel you to do things that you would not normally do. Not even wicked things. Here's what we say.  Now don't get mad at me, I'm talking. We say things like this:  "Well, I've just got OCD."  You know why you do things that are out of the ordinary over and over and over and it ticks you off if it's not done?  Because you have a spirit of oppression, that's why. You ain't got OCD. I knew a chick that used to wash her hands every five minutes all day long when she was awake until she literally washed skin off of her hands.  Saved.  Loved God. Baptized.  Read the Bible. Went to church. Fasted. Prayed. You going to tell me that's natural?  That's supernatural oppression, is what that is, and she needs deliverance.

"And a lot of times, what we call stuff, it makes us feel better because it's the medical term, not the Bible term. Look. I'm telling you, this is real. We've been all over this, haven't we, baby? We've been studying it. Look.  Do not, do not jump up right now and rebuke me for what I'm about to say. But I've read the Bible too much to worry about what you think. Did you know that on three occasions -- we're going to go through all of them, not today, thank God.  On three occasions, kids were brought to Jesus, not of their own will or their own volition but by their parents, that had epileptic fits. Anger issues, outbursts of emotion. And because we've called it possession, parents refuse to deal with it. "Are you telling me my kid's possessed?" No, I'm telling you your kid could be demonized and attacked, but your doctor calls it autism.(emphasis mine, TAS) I don't care if you stand or not.  I don't care if you leave or not. I'm telling you, there is deliverance in the name of Jesus Christ for your children! And their children's children! There's deliverance in that! Ain't no such diagnosis in the Bible! Jesus cast out that oppressive spirit and the child was made whole that very hour, the Bible says! That very hour.  That's what the Bible says. Now, I'm just figuring all this stuff out so don't quote me on everything I'm saying. I'm just saying, quote me on everything I'm saying.  

I stopped there.

I'm offended on two points.  One, I have OCD. (Mine manifests itself by intrusive thoughts.) Two, my son is autistic.

So, Pastor Locke, you are telling me that those with the diagnosis of autism and those with the diagnosis of OCD only need deliverance from oppressive spirits and the "gos-pill"?

No, what you need are several hours' -- or days' -- worth of conversation with autistics, parents of autistics, and sufferers of OCD who have heard it all; that they are crazy, they should be ashamed of themselves for their thoughts and rituals, and that autistic children just have bad parents who don't discipline them.

Believe me, by the time you finish with those people -- or rather, by the time they finish with you -- you will be the one needing deliverance!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Happy New Year?

At the end of 2020, I stayed up until midnight just to make sure that 2020 went away.  I know that's superstitious, that a calendar is going to change whether I'm awake or asleep. But 2020 was one of those years where you wanted to make sure that it went away and never came back. 

However, today I read an alleged quote from the diary of Czar Nicholas II saying, "The year 1916 was cursed; 1917 will surely be better!" (I've done a quick Google search and can't verify that this was an actual quote from his diary.) But for those of you well-versed in history, 1917 was about as bad as you could get in Russia. That was the year of the Russian Revolution, and among its victims were the Czar and his family, who were deposed and placed under house arrest. They were all executed in 1918.

2020 seemed to be cursed with the arrival of COVID, racial unrest, and a hotly contested election. But at the end of 2020, we had a vaccine and we'd elected a new president. Surely 2021 would surely be better, right?

Riiiiight. 

2021 saw a riot at the US Capitol aimed at stopping Congress from certifying election results and placing Donald Trump back in power. It saw numerous dates when Donald Trump would be "reinstated" as president. I think Trump has given up on being "reinstated" and is now putting his energy into running for president again in 2024. 

Beginning in April, I heard so many reports of people getting shot that a day without a shooting was odd. 

Our country is pulling further and further apart.

And although there is a vaccine for COVID now, there's a sizable, vocal group of people refusing to take it in the name of "freedom". (This is different from those who cannot take it due to medical reasons.) 

COVID has proved to be a sneaky little virus.  It's mutated into versions from Alpha to, now, Omicron, (skipping Nu and Xi). Omicron is labeled as "mild", but if a "mild" version of COVID was anything like what I had in September, it is not something I want to go through again. Yes, I was vaccinated.  I had a breakthrough case. Both my son and I tested positive, and I'm convinced all of us were ill, even though my husband, through a mix-up, wasn't able to get the results of his first test and had to be tested again and tested negative. We are learning the Greek alphabet whether we want to or not.

We still have racial strife simmering beneath the surface, and Joe Biden has not proved to be the "problem solver" that everyone wanted. To be fair, Biden inherited a mess from his predecessor, and no one person can meet everyone's expectations. 

And the "I" word, "inflation" has entered the national discourse again, with the press screaming about "the highest inflation rates since the end of Carter's term and the beginning of Reagan's." (I notice that the press isn't commenting very much on the days in the 1970's of double-digit inflation and double-digit interest rates.) 

I'm not sure if this is a sign of the year to come, but yesterday, our church met solely online due to the sharp rise in COVID cases in GA. We plan to meet in person next week, but I will not be shocked if we end up going back to online church if COVID rates keep rising. 

And anyone who tells me that because I wear a mask and have gotten my shots that I am "living in fear," my answer is:   Taking precautions is NOT "living in fear". It is being prudent. Living by "faith, not fear" does NOT include putting God to the test. Remember, one of the temptations of Jesus was Satan telling him to jump off of the temple, because God would catch him.  Jesus' retort was that you should not put the Lord to the test! 

In November, mid-term elections will happen; and we here in Georgia are gearing up for what is predicted to be a contentious governor's race.

So will this be a happy new year?

Most of that is going to depend on my attitude, I admit. I am happily married, I have a son I am very proud of, we are able to pay our bills and we have friends. There are plenty of blessings I can count. 

But after 2020 and 2021, the fact that 2022 is pronounced "2020-too" sounds rather ominous to me.   

Let's see if I'm wrong!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

From 12:55 p.m. to 2:26 p.m.

 At 12:55 p.m. on a Sunday, at Ralph and Ary Chitwood's house in Harlan, Kentucky, they and their three children were probably enjoying Sunday dinner. While seven-year-old Mary Alice and three-and-a-half year old Thelma could feed themselves, Ary was probably helping one-and-a-half year old Jack with his meal. 

With dinner finished, Ary -- maybe with help from Mary Alice -- cleared the table, washed and put away the dishes, and bundled up any leftovers she had. (Before doing all of that, I'm sure she cleaned up Jack and took off his bib.)

Meanwhile, Ralph flipped on the radio, settled into a chair, and read the Sunday paper, while Thelma played on the floor in the living room or maybe in the bedroom she shared with Mary Alice. 

If Mary Alice, Thelma, and Jack had gone outside to play, Ary no doubt would have reminded them to put on their coats, hats, and mittens because it was cold outside, and told the two older girls to "keep an eye on Jack!"

Finished with her chores, Ary settled into a chair in the living room with Ralph, maybe with mending or darning socks; or perhaps she read the paper when Ralph was finished. 

*****

In another part of Harlan County, Rosspoint, Mary Sergent and her five children were probably enjoying a Sunday dinner cooked by Mary with help from 15-year-old Ruth, her oldest and only daughter. The four boys -- Wallace, 12; Arlie, 11; Tony, 9; and Jerry, 2 -- probably chatted around the table. In the back of Mary's mind were thoughts of her husband John, who'd just been killed in an accident last month. Occasionally, either Mary or Ruth would give Jerry some help with feeding himself.  

After dinner, either Mary or Ruth or both would probably wash and put away dishes and store any leftovers (after cleaning up Jerry and taking off his bib.). 

The boys, full of energy as preteen boys are, would probably have yanked on coats, hats, and mittens and ran outside to run off their energy. Or perhaps some of them stayed inside, read the paper, and played the radio in the background. 

*****

Up in Reading, Pennsylvania, Irwin and Emma Rapp were also finishing Sunday dinner with their children, Alice, 13; Curtis, 9; Shirley, 7; and Sylvia; 3. In Alice's mind were the additional responsibilities she was taking on helping her father, a banker, who had a heart condition. He would die six months later. In Pennsylvania, snow might have already been on the ground that Sunday. Or perhaps it was waiting for Christmas. 

With dinner finished, and Emma -- and perhaps Alice and/or Curtis helping -- washed dishes and put away leftovers. Alice turned her attention to her father while Emma, or maybe Curtis, turned the radio on. 

****

Farther north, in Mount Olive, New Jersey, in the house of Frank and Mabel Seward, they were perhaps finishing Sunday dinner as well. On Frank's mind were the cows in the dairy farm he ran; how to keep them healthy and producing milk.  He was an immigrant from England and had built a life in his new country. Since their marriage, Frank and Mabel had had the challenge of running a farm and raising a family that eventually numbered six children, Rena, 27; Elizabeth, 25; Mildred, 22; Annabel, 20; Caroline, 17; Reginald, 15 and the only boy; and Vera, 11.  

Rena would have been 27 had she not died earlier that year.  Her absence at the dinner table surely left a hole that nothing could fill.  

Elizabeth and Mildred may have been married by then, perhaps cleaning up after their own Sunday dinners.  

Annabel, Caroline, Reginald, and Vera, after enjoying dinner, may have gone outside in the New Jersey cold. Or maybe they wanted to stay inside, where it was warm.  

One of them put the radio on.

****

From 12:55 p.m. to 2:26 p.m., they went about their tasks in blissful ignorance. They played. They did chores. They rested. They talked about the coming week, what they would need to do . . . and since Christmas was only 18 days away, they talked about "what are we going to do for Christmas?"

At 2:26 p.m., during a football game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, with the announcer pattering and the crowd cheering, the sound stopped, quickly replaced with, "We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important bulletin from United Press."

Over the sound, the audience -- probably mostly men -- groaned at the interruption. Who wants their football game interrupted?

Then the words:  "Flash. Washington. The White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor."

Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Five words that changed everything.

It was 7:55 a.m., 80 years ago today, when those first bombs dropped. 

In the four places I just described, it was 12:55 p.m.

The news broke an hour and a half later. 

For an hour and a half, husbands, wives, mothers, and children from the four families I just described did all of the things I just described, not knowing that five words were about to drop and upend their entire lives. 

Bombs dropped and exploded, men shot back, ships sank, trapping men inside, fires started, people panicked . . . and those four families had no idea.  Not until a football game was interrupted, not until the radio started buzzing with variants on those five words:  Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

In the days that followed, new words became part of their vocabulary:  Ration points. Ration cards. Draft. Enlistment. Blue stars and gold stars in windows. V-mail. Recycling. 

And one person in those four families, Reginald -- who then began using his middle name of Frank -- was drafted and became a calibration technician; the person who made sure that the instruments in the airplanes the Army Air Corps depended on worked.

Why did I choose to focus on those four particular families?

Irwin and Emma Rapp were the parents of my mother-in-law, Alice.

Frank and Mabel Seward were the parents of my father-in-law, Frank.

Ralph and Ary Chitwood were the parents of my mother, Thelma.

Mary Sergent was the mother of my father, Tony. 

 The parents were the members of the Greatest Generation, as Tom Brokaw called them.  The children were the members of the Silent Generation.  Both of them "bucked up" and did what had to be done. Whether it be following the draft, as Reginald Frank did; whether it be producing food, as Frank Seward did; or growing a Victory Garden, as all of these families probably did.  

They all learned to do without because of a greater cause. They learned the meaning of sacrifice. 

Our parents and grandparents rarely talked about the Depression and the war. They didn't talk about the sacrifices they made; or if they did, it was in the tone of, "this was what we had to do, and we did it".

Today, if Pearl Harbor were attacked, it would not take an hour-and-a-half to learn about it. It would probably only take a minute-and-a-half, and we'd see the "breaking news" alert on our smartphones or TVs. We wouldn't have the bliss of ignorance my parents and grandparents did.

Eighty years ago, our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents heard five words that upended their world. Like 9/11 for my generation and my son's generation, you can see the before/after, the abrupt dividing point in history where you can't go back to the way things were before.   

Eighty years later, how would we react? 

Would we take the lessons learned from the Greatest and Silent Generation and do what we needed to do?

Or, as I fear we Boomers, Xers, and Millenials are doing, would we object and complain that "my freedom" and "my rights" are the most important thing?

Would we come together?

Or would we fall apart?

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Four days apart

Rachel and I are the same age, except that I am four days older. 

By coincidence, her father got a job on my birthday — and just in time, because he needed money to help support this second daughter.

Like me, she’s the youngest of two girls, and she probably grew up squabbling with her big sister. 

All similarities end there.

Unlike me, she didn’t spend the first six weeks of her life in an incubator. 

Unlike me, she was not born in the Appalachian Mountains.

And unlike me, she would never know her father.  

Because today, 58 years ago, her father was murdered.

Ever since I learned that Rachel and I were about the same age, I’ve wondered about her; I’ve wondered about the twists and turns of fate that landed her where she was and me where I am. 

Why this obsession with a woman named Rachel, born four days after me?

Well, the main reason lies with her full name:  Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald.

If that last name sounds familiar, it should. 

Her father, Lee Harvey Oswald, 58 years ago, on November 22, 1963, pointed a rifle out a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, pulled the trigger three times, and murdered President John F. Kennedy. He also seriously wounded Texas Governor John Connally. 

Two days later, a man named Jack Ruby wormed his way into a supposedly secure police garage, pulled a .38 Colt revolver, and shot Lee Oswald in the abdomen. Despite the efforts of doctors at Parkland Memorial Hospital (ironically, the same hospital that treated Kennedy), Oswald died an hour and a half later. 

Rachel was 35 days old, probably just beginning to smile, and mostly unaware of the drama around her. 

In March, 1995,  Texas Monthly wrote an article on this daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald. The article told about the life she’d led as a child and young woman. Rachel, in 1995, was working as a waitress to pay her way through nursing school.

Rachel was seven when her mother told her and her older sister, June, that Kenneth Porter, the man they knew as their father, was not their biological father.  Their biological father was Lee Oswald and “he had been accused of killing the president of the United States.” 

That, Rachel realized, was why her school bus sometimes got followed by the news, why some people shot at their mailbox, why sometimes kids asked her if her daddy shot the President. But at home, Rachel said, “we were just trying to be a normal family.” They didn’t really talk about what had happened. 

In the town she grew up in, Rockwell, Texas, everyone knew Rachel’s mother. They were “of interest to people” and “for the most part, people were nice, but they were always whispering things.” 

Despite the assertions of a 1982 tabloid article that claimed that the Oswald kids didn’t have “dogs or dates”, Rachel, as a teenager, was healthy and active, involved in gymnastics and ballet, made good grades, was a varsity cheerleader, and was even voted “most popular student” by her classmates.

She wondered, when do I tell a date about Lee? On the first date? The second? The third? She said, “What it boils down to is that every time I meet someone—every person at a party, every customer I wait on, every classmate, every teacher, every would-be friend—I ask myself, Do they know who I am? Are they looking at me that way because of me or because I’m the daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald?”

Her opinion on the JFK assassination? “Lee was this 24-year-old guy . . . that got himself in over his head . . . I don’t know who else was involved, but clearly it was too big of a deal for one twenty-four-year-old kid to do by himself.” She continued, “There are just too many loose ends for it all to be dumped on my father. . . I’m sorry for my father’s pain, but basically I just want it to be over, one way or another, especially by the time I have kids.”

She described herself as a regular person who drove a beat up car, who had a bachelor’s degree in natural sciences, but that there were still people “who refuse to believe that I could be normal.  That’s what I hope my kids will never have to go through.”

Rachel did graduate from nursing school and found a job. 

Keith Kachtick, the writer of the Texas Monthly article, called Rachel “the daughter of a presidential assassin, an attractive and healthy woman who apparently wanted nothing more from life than to be a good nurse. If it is true that poetry is the silence between words, then there is something genuinely poetic about the life Rachel Oswald is quietly living between the headlines.”

I am four days older than this woman. Call it fate, coincidence, whatever you will . . . but just suppose I had been the one born October 20, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, and she had been the one born on October 16 in Harlan, Kentucky? 

Suppose my father was Lee Oswald, the man who killed Kennedy? 

Suppose her father was a small-town teacher? 

Suppose my mother had to explain who my father was? 

And suppose I had to grow up in that shadow, wondering if the people who knew me, or knew my name — was it about me, the person I am; or it is about my father? Do they want a relationship with me because they like me, they are attracted to me, they think I’m nice, cool, etc . . . or do they just want a link with an infamous historical personage? 

Would I, as Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald did, forge a path for myself, working to have a successful career?

Or perhaps would I have tried to capitalize on whatever fame I could get from the last name of “Oswald”? 

Would Rachel have decided to become a nurse, or possibly found another career?

I didn’t find any other information about Rachel after that 1995 article, which tells me that she’s mostly succeeded in living the normal life that she wanted. If she is still a nurse at 58, I hope that career is successful for her . . . and I wonder, too, how she has handled this pandemic. Does she suffer from burnout and exhaustion, like so many of our medical professionals have and do? 

Two women, born four days apart, who have never met, probably never will meet, who share nothing in common but a birth month and year . . . and it makes me wonder, had our circumstances and positions been reversed, who would we be, what would our lives be like, and what would the world be like? 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

 

 

Forty years

Forty years ago today, I took a splash of faith.

After reading the Bible and studying with two women, I was baptized at the University Church of Christ on November 11, 1981.  I was 18.

I grew up religious. I attended the Baptist church with my family. Around the age of eight, I went forward and "prayed the prayer" with a very nice older woman who'd asked me, "Did you come to be saved?" 

We had all stood up and "gone forward" that particular day. I vaguely remember an older gentleman coming to the house and talking with us; my grandmother also told me much later that "your mother asked, do you understand what this means? And you said, yes."

I think my parents went forward because they wanted to place membership at that particular church. 

The next week, my sister and I were both baptized. I told the preacher my name and he said, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

I started reading the Bible daily after a Pioneer Girls leader challenged me to read a verse every night. I thought, "I can do better than that, I can read a chapter every night!"

I prayed daily, read the Bible daily, tried to live a Christian life. 

So why get involved with a Church of Christ? Why get baptized again?

Well, for one thing, if I understand Acts 2:38 correctly, we're to be baptized for the forgiveness of our sins. I was not. 

Number two, if this was what God said, then yes, I wanted to do what God said.

Finally, and honestly . . . I was afraid of going to hell.

So I did it.

I didn't know at that time that the church I'd been baptized into was considered a cult. Or, at the very least, controversial. 

The church I was part of was also part of a network of churches loosely associated with the Crossroads Church of Christ in Gainesville, Florida. They had a school of preaching and sent out preachers to other churches.  Crossroads had had great success with reaching their community, particularly college students. They used a variety of methods such as small group Bible studies and prayer partners, or discipleship partners. They encouraged people to turn away from their sins and to lead a life pleasing to God. They encouraged people to study their Bibles daily, pray daily, have close relationships with other Christians, confess their sins to other Christians, and share their faith with non-Christians.

None of those things are bad in and of themselves.

What happened at Crossroads and at other Crossroads-related churches was that these very good things became a method of control. The "prayer partner" relationship, instead of the one-on-one discipling method it was supposed to be, became a one-over-one relationship, with, "I'm the older Christian, so you need to do what I tell you," It also became a session where you were asked, "What are you studying in your quiet time (a period of daily prayer and Bible study)?" "What sins have you committed that you need to confess?" "How many people have you shared your faith with?" If you weren't having a "quiet time", why weren't you? If you weren't sharing your faith, why not? If you weren't having visitors at our weekly Bible studies (designed to attract non-Christians), why weren't you?

That term, "sharing your faith," really meant "inviting people to church, including total strangers." The more people you invited to church, and the more visitors you had at events, the more spiritual you were considered. And if those people you studied with were baptized into Christ, they were considered your "fruit" and you were considered to have "borne fruit". And the more people you lead to Christ, the more spiritual you are considered.

I have heard of at least one person who made it their goal to "share their faith" with every person they made eye contact with. Another person vowed to fast until they shared their faith . . . and fasted for eight days.

Groups of Christians that met together weekly as "discipleship groups" became meetings where you were asked "how many people have you invited to church this week? How many people are you studying the Bible with? If not, why not?" 

I learned much good during my years in Tallahassee, I learned ways to actually study the Bible, not just read it. I learned the value of Christian relationships. I learned that it was okay to pray and tell God how you felt, not just, "Dear God, thank you for this day, please be with everyone, in Jesus' name I pray, Amen."  I enjoyed going out on dates and getting to know other guys. 

But after five years in Tallahassee, I was exhausted and burned out, spiritually. The things that were meant to be good were vicious and controlling. Leaders became controlling and angry when they felt that you were not measuring up. After the last group Bible study I attended before I graduated from college ended, I felt a vast sense of relief that I would never have to worry about inviting someone to Bible study ever again. 

This is not the way to live a Christian life, riddled with guilt that you hadn't "done enough" and riddled with fear that someone would rebuke you -- sometimes very harshly -- for not inviting enough people to church events, or for not having a daily "quiet time", or basically, for not living the way they thought you should live. I had a prayer partner one time who walked into my dorm room, had a conversation with me and my roommate, and then at the end asked us, "Have you thought about rearranging your room?" I got rather ticked off and told her that we'd arranged the room the way it was because we only had two electrical outlets and were trying to get our stuff in a place so we could plug in what we needed to plug in. 

I deliberately moved to another church that had been part of the Crossroads movement. The church I moved to, I'd heard they taught grace, and I badly needed it. Right at the time I got there, in 1987, the Crossroads movement morphed into the Boston Movement. Chuck Lucas, the preacher at Crossroads, was fired for "recurring sins" in his life. One of his proteges, Kip McKean, was then preaching at the Boston Church of Christ.  Kip is bold and charismatic in his preaching, and he took over as the de facto leader of the Crossroads movement. He and the leaders under him began visiting churches, "encouraging" (i.e. practically ordering) the pastor to move to Boston for additional training, and then sending a replacement preacher in. At least two churches I'm aware of, one in Atlanta, the other in Tampa, split as a result of the actions by people from Boston.

My church, in Miami, refused to be taken over . . . so people from Boston planted a new church in Miami. At the same time, my church was having serious financial problems. So, in 1989, the solution the leaders came up with was to start meeting in independent house churches. It was sold to us mostly as "this is the way the early church met". There were those who decided not to go that route and went to other churches. I went the route of the house churches. 

The idea of an independent house church looks good on paper: having a small group of believers meeting weekly and sharing what they've learned, praying together, helping those who are struggling, etc. I think there's a lot we can learn from a house church movement. But we did house churches as a direct result of the abuse we'd experienced at the hands of Crossroads/Boston, and I think that was a mistake. We were so desperate to get away from what we called legalism that we went 180 degrees in the opposite direction. 

By 1993, I was engaged to be married, and my father was ill with ALS. He would die four weeks before my wedding. 

Right before we got married, I told my now-husband, "The house churches are not working. We need to get out."

It took a year, but we eventually did get out. I took a job in Atlanta, and my husband and I moved and went back to a traditional church setting. We've been there since 1994, and while the place has had its ups and downs and turnarounds, I know that churches are not perfect and I believe the place we're at is doing the best it can. I believe our leaders love God, and they do not try to preach a "formula" for a perfect Christian life. 

Where am I, after 40 years? 

I call myself an imperfect follower of a perfect God. If someone asks, are you a Christian, I will gladly answer, "Yes." I struggle at times with believing God loves me. I wonder about what is literally true in the Bible and what is allegorical. I get very frustrated with "Scripture wars"; such as, "Acts 2:38 says you have to be baptized in order to be saved," "Oh, yeah! Well, I'll see your Acts 2:38 and raise you an Ephesians 2:8, where it says you're saved by grace!" And I can name more and more. 

And yet . . . if God exists, if Jesus of Nazareth was God in the flesh, who is the perfect, sinless sacrifice for us, if he did rise from the dead and go back to heaven, and if the Bible is true . . . that Bible says that God is love, and that God so loved the world. That means me. 

I don't understand a lot about God. I don't understand why evil and pain exist, especially when innocents are the victims of that evil and pain. I don't understand certain parts of the Bible where God commanded the complete destruction of a people, including men, women, and children. I don't understand why some prayers get answered "yes" and why some prayers get answered "no". 

There are also the questions I've seen people ask, such as, "Was the world created in six literal, 24-hour days?" "Can women lead/preach, etc. to both men and women?" "Is homosexuality a sin?" "Is there a  hell with a literal lake of fire? Does everyone get to go to heaven? Or are non-believers just 'annihilated'?" "Does someone have to be immersed in water in order to be saved? What about those who don't believe that, or who believe that immersion is 'an outward sign of an inward grace'?"

To be honest, the questions exhaust me. The extra-Biblical expectations placed on people also exhaust me, especially the expectations placed on women:  be a perfect "keeper of the home", which means household tips, how to please your husband, how to raise your kids "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" (preferably by homeschooling them). 

But, when I strip it all down to what I understand the "basics" of Christianity to be, it comes out to: God loved us first. God created us in His image. God wants a relationship with us. He sent Jesus (God incarnate) to give himself as a perfect sacrifice for our sins. (I have heard Jesus' death on the cross interpreted as, "You're so awful you made God kill himself." That ignores Jesus' statement in the book of John, where Jesus himself said, no one takes my life from me but I lay it down of my own accord.")
But Jesus didn't just die for our sins. He came back to life -- the ultimate triumph over death. He went back to heaven and we're still waiting for him to come back to gather His people. 

If I accept that I'm a sinner (which I am) and I believe that Jesus came to forgive my sins (which he did), and I repent -- turn away -- from my sins, and -- I believe -- if I participate in the act of baptism upon confessing that I believe Jesus is Lord, and I want him to be in charge of my life and live how he wants me to live, then I am saved. I can call myself "child of God", "Christian," "disciple," etc.  And God will not leave me to wander in the wilderness. He gave me three things to help me: 1. The Bible, 2. the Holy Spirit, 3. Other Christians. He does expect me to turn away from my sins, but when I sin, God promises that if I confess my sins, he will forgive them. 

I do struggle with the fear of hell. Whatever hell is, I do not want to be there. More and more, though, I want to serve God because I love him back. Not because I'm afraid of what he'll do to me if I don't obey him.  He loved me first, I want to love him back. 

There are answers to questions I don't have. The longer I live, the less certainty I have. 

But after forty years? 

Even with the struggles, even with unanswered questions, even when I go "Huh?" when I hear/read certain things . . . I keep coming back to, there is a God, he is wiser than I and he knows best . . . and he loves me. He can take my pain and anger because he is bigger than my pain and anger. I don't know "why (fill in the blank)", but he does, and if he is a God of love -- which I believe he is -- I can trust him with the pain, doubt, unanswered questions, etc. that I have. 

It's been forty years of pain, struggle, sometimes triumph, questions unanswered, faith challenged.

I still choose to believe.

I still choose to put myself into the hands of a loving God. 

I look forward to more years with him.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Dare I hope?

When you live in Atlanta and follow sports, you learn very quickly to -- in the words of the Dread Pirate Roberts -- "get used to disappointment."

Atlanta is the home of the team that blew a 28-3 lead over the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. Someone later commented that Atlanta hadn't been burned that badly since Sherman in 1864.

So when the Atlanta Braves made it to the National League Championship Series, I didn't pay much attention . . . until they started winning.

The last time Atlanta was in the World Series was 1999 (the year my son was born). The last time Atlanta won the World Series was 1995, the year after we moved here. In the years since 1995, Atlanta has done a good job of winning their division, the National League East, but just couldn't seem to "seal the deal" and get to the championships. 

The last few seasons have ranged from good to mediocre and just plain bad. 

This year, bleacherreport.com said this about the Braves at the All-Star break (a game Atlanta was scheduled to host but that was pulled due to controversy about Georgia's voting laws, a controversy I will not get into here): " Relative to preseason expectations, the Atlanta Braves might by baseball's most disappointing team in 2021 because of their 44-45 record . . . A year after coming one win away from reaching the World Series, little has gone right."

But they did go on to say, "The wide-open nature of the National League East division of the National League East division means they are still only four games back in the standings even with a sub -.500 record, and that could be enough to chase another postseason appearance, especially with [first baseman] Freddie Freeman headed for free agency."

Despite that sub-.500 record, Atlanta staged a comeback, and last week, they beat the Los Angeles Dodgers four games to two.  The morning after that game, I picked up my phone, dreading to see the results, and when I saw "Braves win!" I said to myself, "Yes!"

Now our city has been seized with World Series fever, everyone who owns any sort of Braves paraphernalia has dusted it off and put it on, and I'm sure that you cannot buy, beg, borrow, or steal anything with the name "Atlanta Braves" on it!

So dare I hope?

Dare I hope that this will be the year that the Braves will repeat 1995 and win the World Series?

Dare I hope that at least one of our sports teams will give us a reason to celebrate, especially in this year two of COVID?

Last night, in Houston, the Braves beat the Houston Astros 6-2. Game 2 is scheduled for tonight in Houston, and the Braves will come back for Game 3 on Friday. The slogan around there is, "Party like it's 1999!" and I'm guessing that Truist Park, the home field for the Braves, will blast the song so that it can be heard through the neighborhood at full volume. 

Dare I hope that the Braves will pull it off, despite the Astros having home field advantage?

Can Freddie Freeman and the guys do it?

I'm not much of a baseball fan, but when the Series comes around, I pay attention to who's playing, and I may or may not have a favorite team. 

This year, I'm rooting for the Braves.

If they win, I will treat myself to a large bowl of chocolate.

But, if my hopes are dashed, I will drown my sorrows . . .in a large bowl of chocolate.

So either way, I win. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

"He'll never amount to anything."

When my Uncle Jerry was a young boy, a teacher told his mother -- my Granny Mary -- that "he'll never amount to anything."

Why she said that, I don't know.  Maybe it was because he didn't know how to tie his shoes yet (a skill which, by the way, I didn't learn until I was eight.) My father stepped in and tied my uncle's shoes . . . while my uncle read a comic book. (He couldn't tie his shoes yet, but he could read!)

But he spent the rest of his nearly 82 years of life proving her wrong.

My Uncle Jerry was born in Harlan, Kentucky in November of 1939, into a world that was just beginning World War II. He was the youngest of five children, and too young to remember the personal tragedy that hit nearly two years later, when his father was killed in an accident. 

He grew up in a world without a father, and in a world shaped by World War II and its aftermath. 

I don't know what made him pick electrical engineering as a path in life. But Harlan, Kentucky was not the place to do it. 

So he went to college and eventually earned his doctorate at the University of Cincinnati. Cincinnati was a popular place for people from rural Kentucky to end up. One of his big brothers was already there. (Two of my mother's siblings also moved from Harlan to Cincinnati.) 

His doctoral dissertation had something to do with neutron-irradiated silicone. As an adult, I worked at a university library and used their interlibrary loan computer to look up Uncle Jerry's dissertation. When I found it, I read off the title to the other woman working at the reference desk.  She just looked at me and said, "Sure!"

The boy who would "never amount to anything" eventually moved to Clearwater, Florida, got a job at Honeywell, and taught engineering at the University of South Florida. He also traveled worldwide, visiting countries such as Israel, Japan, and Poland. I remember the slide shows he would have when he'd come back from one of his trips. I still have a pin he gave me after a trip to Moscow, an Olympic pin with "Mockba '80", It was the Olympics that the US ended up boycotting. 

Uncle Jerry would eventually live from coast to coast doing consulting work. He's lived in Colorado Springs, Bellingham, WA, Palmyra, New York (where he lived on what he described as "23 acres of weeds") and finally in Sarasota, Florida.

He and my father were very close, as befits the last two members of a family.  He once said about my dad that "he was my hero before I ever knew about heroes." 

My father fell ill with ALS in 1992, My now-husband proposed in May of 1993, and I knew there was a chance my father might not live to see me get married. 

So I wrote Uncle Jerry and asked, if Daddy can't give me away, can you?

He called me and said three words:  "I'd be honored."

My father died on September 11th, 1993. I was married on October 9, 1993, with my Uncle Jerry walking me down the aisle.  He also loaned Frank his wedding ring for our pictures because I had forgotten to bring Frank's. That is a funny story now. Then, it was tragic.

After his first marriage ended, he married again in May of 1980 to a woman who made him happy for many years. That marriage also brought him three stepchildren.  He had no biological children, but he stepped in as a father figure. 

It devastated my Uncle Jerry when his wife died several years ago. 

The last time I saw Uncle Jerry was right before my mother died.  He came to see her on the same day I did.  He told met, through tears, that you knew you were getting old when you started losing the people you loved. 

Uncle Jerry loved his work and contributed much. My father told me that Jerry was one of maybe ten people in the country that knew what he knew. 

In the end, all he wanted to do was go home. 

His health would not permit him to go back to Harlan, so he settled for assisted living in Ohio. It helped that his sister-in-law was at the same facility.  

Just a few days ago, I learned that he had a wound on his foot that was not healing. He made the choice to refuse amputation and signed paperwork for hospice care. He was going to leave the world on his own terms. 

Last night, at 11:15 p.m., October 20, 2021, he did just that. 

His stepdaughter, who's spent time and energy and love caring for him and keeping the family informed, told us that Uncle Jerry's body will be cremated and the ashes spread at Cumberland Falls, Kentucky, a place he enjoyed taking his grandkids (the children of one of his stepdaughters). 

So in a way, he will go home.

My uncle, Dr. Jerry Sergent, will be remembered as an engineer who traveled the world sharing his knowledge and who gave his knowledge to his many students. 

He will be remembered as a man who would live life on his own terms.  

He loved his family, his brothers and sister and sisters-in-law, and his nieces and nephews. 

Quite an accomplishment for someone who was never supposed to amount to anything.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.