THE ULTIMATE FOUNDATION

5. September 2008 by Frank.

My wife is very disappointed in her church because they decided to make the youth pastor the new senior pastor. He’s under 30 and his style is definitely more appealing to teenagers. Despite this, she is more determined than ever to be fully involved with their AWANA club and choir. And even after 10 years she still doesn’t understand why I want nothing to do with it.

You can’t just give up on god and lose your faith.

The thing of it is she isn’t so gung ho adamant because she’s a bible scholar, it’s all emotion for her. Emotion and training. She has never read the bible, not even the new testament, just bits and pieces she was told to read. Her mother constantly harped on her family to go to church and now she feels it’s her duty to carry on that tradition. She believes all the “right” doctrines that her church promotes but has no idea what they’re based on or what makes them “right” in the first place.

I’m not putting her down. I’m just using her as an example. The vast majority of people in that church have only a rudimentary knowledge of the bible. This was true of people who had been believers for over 50 years as well as those just starting out. I used to question the Sunday school adults why they held certain doctrines, very few of them knew. This is the average American churchgoer. Assured that their’s is the only way but lacking a love for the foundation of that way.

I was the exact opposite. I could have cared less about all the social programs and activities. I hardly ever studied what the pastor said to study. I studied the bible cover to cover relentlessly. It was of the utmost importance. My viewpoint was that without a solid foundation you could be swayed by anything.

Which is where the strangeness comes in. You can’t sway my wife or her church at all. They won’t budge. And they won’t be persuaded.

I came from a charismatic church that preached love for the word of god. It was a church full of people who were sure they were “mature” believers because they studied the bible thoroughly and because they were filled with the spirit of god. They had all the spiritual gifts functioning to build up the body. They had a much better base than those old dead mainline denominations.

Except that they fell apart and imploded because of false doctrines.

All their bible study and spirituality didn’t do a thing to keep them from destroying their church. I saw the same thing at Sumrall’s church. He had his own bible college, the church bookstore made a huge profit selling his college syllabi. Studying the word was a huge part of the church activities. And yet there were totally unqualified guest speakers, false teachers, and in some cases, complete idiots allowed to preach there. I never saw the slightest bit of discernment that these people had no business preaching.

Sumrall never missed an opportunity to condemn the old mainline “dead” denominations and the Baptists never missed an opportunity to condemn word of faith and pentecostal denominations. While they all claim to be bible based and preach love for the word of god, their foundations are radically different. The Baptists were far more cohesive because of their social structure. These big faith churches don’t have that.

Unlike Sumrall’s church where people were definitely following the man, the Baptist church is on their 7^th or 8^th pastor with almost no variation in how worship is conducted or the types of sermons presented. The people are there for each other not for the man of god and the word he brings to them.

I never fit into that. Even though I was teaching constantly and filling in for various pastors I never really belonged. I was regarded as an outsider from the very first time my wife took me there. The reason was quite simple but it eluded me for a long time. I wasn’t a Baptist. I was one of those dreaded Pentecostals and I didn’t have the decency to keep it secret. Eventually I took a stand for that and got myself thrown out of the church. I was informed that I would be happier somewhere else and that I didn’t belong among that congregation. And, of course, I could never be allowed to speak there again.

So I was not a typical Christian. This sort of thing doesn’t happen to the average pew warmer. My foundation was the bible. The social part was secondary or nonexistent (at least at Sumrall’s church). It was also missing at other churches I attended and tried to be a part of. The first church I started at that destroyed itself tried to force a social order on itself. It failed miserably. Social foundations happen on their own.

Perhaps that explains why being away from church never bothered me any.

It also explains why the bible is what finally convinced me god doesn’t exist. It was my foundation as a believer and, ironically, it’s my foundation as an unbeliever.

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