So here is the story the
elders and older folks told us so we wouldn’t live our lives in a panic: your
parents were baptized, so you were “born holy.” Now all you must do is earn
your way into Heaven. Avoid fornication by getting married in your teens. Avoid divorce,
no matter how bad things are in your marriage. The rules in the bible do not
release you from marriage if your husband abuses you or molests your children or
other people’s children.
The only way out of
marriage, for a woman, is the death of her husband. If her husband sleeps with
other women, tsk tsk, she must not be putting out.
But for a man, it’s not
so difficult to throw out a wife you don’t want. Just make her life miserable.
She’ll leave. You can tell your children that their mother is going to hell
(this has happened before – poor children). Now that you have been abandoned by
a “non-believing” wife, choose a new victim – er wife.To be free, to start
over, you have to convince the church of your innocence. Make the woman the villain.
It was all her fault. She is guilty; you are innocent.
I understand the
unforgivable sin to be blaspheming the Holy Spirit. But I always believed that
divorce was the real unforgivable sin – for women. A man can go on with his life if his wife
cheats, she is cast out. He is still in. Just one of hundreds of double standards
and biblical misinterpretations.
There was a young lady
who committed a different “unforgivable sin.” Please forgive me for not having
perfect recall about this incident. If I get something wrong, I am not lying, I
am writing about something the way I remember it. If I get some details wrong,
please be gracious in correcting me. I will change them. So this young woman,
she was a few years older than me. Glenford was still alive, so our church had
a form of leadership, but no real hope. No one to “save” us through baptism.
This girl was maybe
fourteen (maybe?) and she had grown up like me, being told that salvation comes
through a human who can bestow sanctification through full immersion baptism.
Her father was a controversial man – a friend to Tom Nichols – and someone who
had his own ideas – gasp! Her father had been entertaining a man who claimed to
be a “called apostle.” The church didn’t accept the man – he wasn’t from Oregon
City, so how could his claim be authentic?
Well this young lady
listened to the man who was spending time with her family. She asked him to baptize
her. And he did. When the church discovered that she had been baptized by this “false
prophet” she was done for. Going to Hell for sure. Her fate was sealed.
She continued attending
the church services, but the girls her age were told by their parents to shun
her. Better not speak to a damned child, it might rub off. What was she to do?
She was part of our church. This was her life. This was all she knew. Except
that she had done the unthinkable.
After hearing all her
life that she needed baptism for salvation, she had done it. She had done was
she was told she needed to do. And in doing so, she had committed an
unforgivable sin. She would be damned if she did, and damned if she didn’t.
Only by doing so, she was to endure hell within the church. Shunned.
She wasn’t my age, but
she started sitting by the girls my age because she couldn’t endure the
shunning her former friends were enacting against her. I asked my mom what to
do and she told me that I could say hello to her at church. I was glad for that. I always said hello. But
I didn’t say anything else. “Hello” was all that was authorized. I wasn’t much
of a conversationalist anyway.
Of course, the young
lady didn’t last too long. I don’t remember when or how she left. Maybe she
just sat with her parents at church after a while. Of course she left. She had
been condemned. There is no living through that. There would be no period of
shunning followed by reincorporation. She had committed the unforgivable.
There is no such thing
as being “born holy” unless you’re Jesus. And even Jesus was baptized. But don’t
fool yourself into thinking baptism is what saves you. We all deserve hell.
Every mortal person deserves it. That is why Jesus died.
This analogy is not my
own. I have heard it from others. I’m sorry I do not know where it originated,
but it has helped me to comprehend the good news of Jesus Christ. Imagine that
you are standing before a judge (God). You are being accused by the district
attorney (Satan) for your crimes / sins. Jesus is your attorney. For every sin
that Satan accuses you of, Jesus responds by saying, “I have paid.”
We
all deserve to die. We cannot save ourselves. Only the blood of Jesus can pay
for our sins. Without Jesus, we are damned. What will you choose? To try and
defend yourself for crimes you are guilty of or accept the free gift of Jesus?
I have made my choice. I deserve Hell, I have deserved it since I was in second
grade or so, but I’m not going. Thank you, Jesus, for paying the price.
For all have sinned, and come short of the
glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation
through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of
sins that are past, through the forbearance of God
Romans 3:23-25
