AND THE LORD SAID…

I’m reading “The Given Day” by Dennis LeHane. It’s not the kind of book my parents would have approved. The language you know. Tonight I read a passage that helps put words to my real feeling about growing up in the church.

The story is set in 1917 America. Luther and Lila left Ohio when he lost his job and moved to Oklahoma where her aunt would help him get a job. At their arrival Aunt Marta learned that Lila was pregnant and not married to Luther. Uncle Cornelius is a minister and neither was going to allow an unmarried couple to live together in sin in their home. Besides, Luther needed to man up and marry the woman he made with child. They were married that night. Luther sort of loved Lila, but at 22 was not ready to settle down to one woman.

Luther got a job and began spending nights out with the boys drinking whisky, playing pool and taking small amounts of heron. He feels Lila is holding him back. On Sundays they attend church and spend the afternoon with the aunt and uncle. Luther is upset that they all seem to be trying to be white folk. He hates them for this and thinks they will never be accepted no matter how hard they imitate white behavior.

So often the Sunday afternoon conversation turned to what God thought about things and it irritated Luther. This quote hit me like a ton of bricks.

“Their saying fell more along the lines of ‘The Lord hates a …’ and ‘The Lord don’t …’ and “The Lord shall not abide …’ Making God sound like one irritable master, quick with the whip.

All I knew as a young teen was that I didn’t like church. I didn’t like the screaming, the crying, the threatening and I was afraid of God. Few at that time in history came to God because of love and compassion, but rather as a fire insurance policy to escape hell. I have told many a person that growing up in my church I believed God had declared that anything fun for a teen was a sin. The only thing they never mentioned was what to do about sexual urges so a good many kids stayed out of pool halls and movie theaters and did not play cards, but needing to do something with their time they were necking in very dark places. No one said they couldn’t.

I good friend of mine drew me into a Bible quizzing program with Youth for Christ. What that did was cause me to begin to read the Bible. That led me to a grand search for the “no’s” of God. There were some, But I found more “do’s”. Neither did I find a single no about most of what I was hearing preachers say was an abomination to the Lord. In fact I began to see how ticked off God was at all the phony baloney leaders laying guilt trips on people He loved and laying burdens on the laity that were to heavy to bear.

That’s why Martin Luther tacked his thesis on the Wittenberg church door. It is by Grace we are saved, not by works. Scripture has everything to do with “doing” and very little do with “don’t” The don’ts there are seem to be very much common sense which explains a lot since there is not much common sense going around these parts.