You can lead a horse to water….………….[Pause and let people complete the statement.] You can lead a horse to water and if you can get him to float on his back you’ve got something.
Actually, I was thinking what you were thinking. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. And if it’s a Baptist horse God help you. You may not even get a Baptist horse out of the stable. A Baptist horse-----well, who knows what a Baptist horse would want to do.
We Baptists are an interesting lot, aren’t we! Stubborn. A mind of our own. Mulish. Independent cusses. Protective of our freedoms, particularly our religious freedom which is not only freedom of religion but also freedom from religion, freedom from those who would cram their religion down our throats.
If you have a choice between counting the grains of sand at Myrtle Beach or forcing religion on a Baptist I’d suggest counting the grains of sand.
If you have a choice between attending 4,000 Amway conventions or gagging a Baptist on your doctrines and creeds you had better go the Amway route.
If you have a choice between riding out one of this season’s hurricanes or trying to push your religious certainty down the big mouth of a Baptist, I’d strongly advise that you go to Home Depot and get some plywood and board up your quarters and then go to the Piggly Wiggly and restock your cupboard.
True Baptists cannot be coerced. And true Baptists do not coerce. Or put another way, in a Baptist dictionary coercion is very bad word.
If you force a person to have sex with you, what is that called?
Rape.
If you force a person to think a certain way, what is that called?
Indoctrination.
If you own a person and force that individual to work for you, what is that called?
Slavery.
If you force someone to do something by physically lashing out at them or hitting them, what is that called?
Physical abuse.
If you force someone to do something by your harsh words and you play mind games with them, what is that called?
Mental abuse.
If two countries try to force each other to do something through use of their armies, what is that called?
War.
Rape, indoctrination, slavery, physical abuse, mental abuse, war, and another ugly form of coercion is religious coercion.
One day Jesus taught his disciples that religion was not to be coerced, taught them that if a person’s relationship with God is to authentic it must be voluntary, and taught them that you don’t treat poorly others who have different religious beliefs. According to Luke 9:51 Jesus went to a Samaritan village. Anytime you read the word Samaritan look for a red flag. Do you see it? Jews and Samaritans did not get along because they did not share the same religious beliefs. One disagreement, for example, was over what was and was not scripture. But there were other major differences. And when the Samaritans realized Jesus was going to Jerusalem, that is, that Jesus was a Jew, they would not receive Jesus. “Well, la te da,” said the disciples. “Aren’t these Samaritans being a little hootie tootie! Let’s just call some fire down from heaven and see how much they like their religious beliefs.” But Jesus would have none of it. Instead of rebuking the Samaritans Jesus rebuked his disciples.
What to do with religious differences.
In the book of Acts the shoe is on the other foot. Christians here are not wanting to persecute others, rather they are the ones being persecuted for their religious beliefs. In Acts Peter and the disciples are before the Jewish High Council. They have been told repeatedly to stop preaching their brand of Judaism and have disobeyed and now some on the High Council have had enough of the Christians and they want to have them executed. Fortunately, in this instance, they are not killed. Unfortunately, though, they are beaten. That point aside, one of the Jewish leaders gives what I believe is some excellent advice with respect to how to handle religious differences. Gamaliel says, “Leave them alone. Don’t take any action. If what they are doing is from God, there is no way we could ever defeat them. If what they are doing is not from God, don’t worry, they will disappear in time.”
Learn to coexist peacefully with religious differences the text teaches us. Learn that you don’t have to straighten out the rest of the world the story teaches us. It is a lesson American Christians these days need to be reminded of.
Luckily for us, many of the founding fathers of our country had learned the lesson, learned the lesson from Europe’s history of ecclesiastical tyranny and history of Christians killing Christians over their differences. European Christians, that is, had a bad habit of calling fire down from heaven on each other and the framers of our constitution did not want that history repeated in our country. So our founding fathers made the crucial decision to make the constitution of the United States a godless constitution. Or put another way, they had the foresight to make the United States not a Christian nation, but a secular state.
Now modern so-called conservatives would have us believe our nation started out as a Christian nation but through liberal courts and liberal judges our nation has become secularized. Nothing could be farther than the truth.
What is true is that many of our founding fathers were deeply religious people, not all of them, but many of them. It also is true that the Declaration of Independence invokes the Creator in laying out the human rights that propelled the colonists to revolt against England. The Articles of Confederation of 1776, America’s first framework for government, does, it is true, give credit to “the Great Governor of the World.” And it likewise is accurate that most of the earliest state constitutions contained an explicit acknowledgement of God and the relationship of Christianity to the civil order and that 11 of those 13 state constitutions had a religious test for an individual to pass to become an elected official. That is, they had to be Christian or Protestant or agree to some creed or meet some other religious standard. In Pennsylvania, for example, public officials had to believe in the inspiration of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Several states required officeholders to acknowledge that God was a “rewarder of the good and punisher of the wicked.”
All of that is true and all that makes the achievement of a secular state by the main principals behind the Constitution of the United States even more remarkable. When they wrote our constitution they made no mention of God in the constitution. They made in the constitution no reference to Jesus or to Christianity. The Constitution’s sole reference to religion was one that restricted religion, a restriction that only added fuel to the fire to those who wanted a Christian nation. Article 6 of our nation’s constitution declares that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
No religious test. Underscore that. Memorize it. Don’t forget it.
The principal framers of the American political system crafted a constitution that intended to make a person’s religious convictions, or his lack of religious convictions, irrelevant---------irrelevant in judging the value of his political opinion or in assessing his qualifications to hold political office.
So successful were the drafters of the Constitution in defining government in secular terms that one of the most powerful criticisms of the Constitution in the ratification process was that it was indifferent to Christianity and God. It was denounced by religious conservatives as a godless document. And so during the ratification conventions in the states outraged Protestants in their advocacy of a Christian commonwealth proposed specific changes in the Constitution to make the U.S. a Christian nation, all of which, fortunately, were rejected. The godless constitution remained intact, unchanged, and ratified.
Now also part of our country’s history is that this movement to make the United States a Christian nation has never died. A movement to undo what Jefferson and the other principal authors, the framers of the federal constitution achieved is alive and well even to this day, especially in our day and time. And this movement has had some success. In 1863God entered in of all places, yes, God entered in the U.S. currency. In God we trust was printed on our currency. Now that’s ironic and laughable. We are a nation that worships money, worships things, tries to worship God and materialism at the same time and we put “In God we trust” on our currency? Please, don’t get me started on that one.
The move to a Christian commonwealth had another success in 1912 with mail service no longer providing seven day service because of Sabbath concerns. And in 1954 God made it into the Pledge of Allegiance. Did you realize God was not in the original Pledge of Allegiance written by Francis Bellamy?
These days folks wanting the U.S. to be a Christian nation are trying to get God back in school as if God was ever taken our of schools. God is where God wants to be. These people want our children to be forced to listen to a prayer or forced to have a time of silence. What they really want is shame people who aren’t Christians, shame them into being Christians. And the want their particular brand of Christianity providing the pray for all to hear. I wonder how many times they would let a Christian like you and me say the prayer. Believe me, they would not want their children to hear me pray. But you and I don’t need to be saying a prayer for the children to hear either. The teaching of Christianity is a responsibility of our homes and our churches, not a responsibility of the schools. Schools and teachers have enough on their plates to worry about without having a lazy Church trying to get other institutions to do its job.
The modern day version of those seeking a Christian commonwealth are also trying to get the ten commandments posted in public places. The Big 10. I wonder what version of the big 10 they want inscribed. I wonder if they know they are different versions of the Big 10 in the Bible. I wonder if they are aware a shortened version of the Big 10 is the one that always gets posted. I wonder if they have even read all of the Big 10 because there is some stuff in the Big 10 that Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Jesus say no longer is true. The Big 10 contains the saying that “I bring punishment on those who hate me down to the third and fourth generations”, but Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Jesus teach that the sins of the fathers do not pass down. (Exodus 20:5; Jeremiah Ezekiel John)
But the real issue is why these Christians aren’t doing the job God has given them and why they are seeking government to do their job. The real issue is their inability to live with people who don’t want their brand of religion. The real issue is they want to force their religion on others. The real issue is either their momma didn’t teach them to play well with others or they have forgotten the lesson their mamma taught them. In the south we call it having good manners. We call it being hospitable. We call it acting like you have some God given sense.
If I could force everyone to do it, and I can’t because I’m a Baptist and we don’t force our beliefs on others, but if I could force everyone to do it I would force every single American to study the life and writings of Thomas Jefferson. Thank God for old Tom.
Thomas Jefferson was a thinking Christian who never formally left the Episcopal Church but usually identified himself as a Unitarian. Jefferson wrote: “Almighty God hath created the mind free.”
Unfortunately, preachers, according to Jefferson had missed this important development. Jefferson said all denominations should be like the Quakers who don’t have clergy. Jefferson said clergy, he called them the irritable tribe of priests, he said clergy had perverted Christianity into an engine for enslaving mankind, a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves. In addition, Jefferson said, all priests dread the advance of science….They preach bigotry and fanaticism at the expense of human reason. A band of dupes and impostors they sponsor ignorance, absurdity untruth, charlatanism, and falsification.”
Jefferson also was well aware of the violent nature of Christians. He wrote: “Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned.”
Christians who do not play well with others.
In the book of Isaiah we have a picture of how God wants the world to be. It is a photo of playing well together, living with differences in peace. It is a text about the lamb lying down with the lion.
Too many Christian lions want to devour lambs.
The framers of our nation’s constitution shared a conviction that religious beliefs should not divide or destroy a nation. They did not want America to be godless, only its constitution and government. They knew there were many versions of Christianity. They knew Christians could be unchristian to other Christians and to non-Christians. They knew that “in your face” religion was not healthy for the country. They knew that religious correctness and people who were sure of God’s will could be very dangerous.
At fate would have it, I saw a bumper sticker this week with these words: the last time church and state got mixed people got burnt at the stake.
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