Basic Christianity

Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

-1 John 3 King James Version (KJV)

Hudson Taylor, missionary to China, said that when he reached China he had only $0.87 in his pocket, but all the promises of God. One man plus God, and anything is possible. 

This writer, from the poverty of an eastern North Carolina tobacco farm, dirt road, no power, phone or water lines. From a small country school with thirteen in my graduating class, from the despair of years of poverty seen everywhere, particularly among the black people, tenant farmers, cotton mill workers, who found daily life a matter of survival... at the state university, matriculating with elitist students from prep schools and the hierarchical families of North Carolina. LBJ and his Great Society programs did not have an inkling about real poverty.

There are waterloos in quotes of every real human being. In this writers life, perhaps the times I received degrees from Universities, the time I was married to a woman who I thought was far different than she turned out to be, the time I became a commissioned military officer, the time I was told by a female doctor that I would never see again, the time I was called by a male doctor and told that I was a victim of cancer. Things that happen in your childhood and crucial episodes at other times in your life, are times from which you never recover.

When I arrived at the State University, I felt I had died and gone to heaven... a seeker of knowledge surrounded by so much knowledge. It was later that I had my waterloo experience with God. Looking back, religious experience from a fundamentalist church, where both my mother and father's parents and grandparents for many generations have attended, built in 1874, I felt I could depend on the promises of God. But, penniless and hungry, I was sitting on a stone fence just across from the university bell tower trying to reach a decision about returning home or staying in school. There was food at home, but retreating, I would never again have the opportunity to excel as a student, success as a man. Perhaps God had spoken to me before, but there was no doubt about that day. He said, "The medical school library in which you are working has large leather armchairs. Money falls out of pockets in those chairs." That night, after I had closed the library, I searched those chairs and found enough money to get me through until my next payday. 

In 1964, I read the Eric Berne book, "Games People Play". Too many people play games with God. In a world of deceptions, pretentiousness, technological devices, too many of our fellow citizens pretend to be religious as well as patriotic. We know full well that even the fear of hell converts very few of these pretenders. We know full well that even the fear of losing the promises of our country's constitution affects most citizens who even hang out the flag and pledge allegiance, who even attend church and recite creeds.

Now, in the sunset years of my life, I look back knowing that very few Christians know the basics of Christlike. In fact, making it a practice to attend Christian churches all over the world having been active in both large and small congregations. Most church members do not choose to be different from non-believers. Most of us want to act, dress, talk like those in our midst who are unbelievers. It is hard to separate ourselves from sins of pride, anger, laziness, lustfulness, envy and even, in many cases, gluttony. We like to eat the wrong things too... and too much of it. More people dig their grave with a fork than smoke or drink their way into it. Evangelical Christians are known for their meals, and there is nothing wrong as I can find, with Christian fellowship at the eating table. It makes me joyful to believe that our blessed lord enjoyed eating food at that small home in Bethany with Mary and Lazarus. It saddens me to know, that too many church members, don't participate at the Lord's table... the one place he told us to remember him... bread representing his body and healing, wine representing his blood and forgiveness. 

Perhaps I am wrong, I speak as a redeemed sinner but I honestly believe that the greatest hindrance to God's work is church members who are ashamed to profess what they are supposed to possess. I truly believe that most of us, chosen-elected, keep more people from the church by our hypocritical living than can be led there by their wanting to follow our example. There is no happiness in wrongness, but real joy in genuineness. Reverend Jackson was in my house involving a business transaction. He said, "Dr., before I was saved, I was a wicked sinner, now, I want to be a much greater Christian than I was a sinner." The transformed Christian (2 Corinthians 5:17) is a new creation. All things are become new.

The Christian will not support wickedness is government. I personally blame America's two largest denominations, the Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist for the administration in Washington, D.C. These two denominations, their memberships had the voting power to keep Barrack Hussein Obama out of office, the first time and certainly the second time. Anyone with an IQ above room temperature could have evaluated what this man and what his ilk were all about... abortion, gay agenda, support of the Muslim world. The evils of the Obama administration are beyond comprehension, not only affecting America but the entire world. We could make a long list, the total lack of decency for everything noble in the world. Just think, all USA military uniforms and even McDonalds uniforms manufactured by slave labor in foreign countries. This writer saw the slave labor in China, children at machines. This writer has traveled the entire world, every continent, every land-every culture, children having a mother and father. Everywhere I have traveled, I heard children speak of momma and poppa. It has always been that way. God established the family, mother and father. When the Spanish conquistadors landed in South America, the children ran screaming calling for momma and poppa. Every child deserves to know his biological parents. One is very blessed to have knowledge of grandparents. Like a serpent shedding his skin, America has shed its skin of education and sophistication to claim, in the name of political correctness, and attracting the votes of the heathen, repudiation for the family. Nothing could be more anti-social, anti-Christ, than same sex marriage. I blame the Christian church for allowing this worse-than-heathenism to advance, because in my travels I have found that the heathen and those of false religions still believe in fathers and mothers and the ritual of marriage. 

The Christian should rejoice in not being a pretender, should have joy in the promises of God. The Christians should rejoice in knowing the Christian life is eternal life and take sorrow in knowing that for the unbeliever today is the best its going to get for them. Everything is downhill the rest of their natural clinical lives.