The Faith I was Born Into

As I became aware of my own existence I found that I existed in a very important family. We were not an important family in the estimation of the world, but we were hugely important in our own minds. I didn't know this immediately, of course, but I came to view my family the way they viewed themselves: as important. 

Now no one ever sits you down and explains family dynamics to you. What I came to know about my family was learned by growing up among the Normans by listening to their stories, and by watching tiny expressions on their faces.

When I say my family was not important to the world, I'm correct, but if I were to limit myself to Austin, Texas, and members of the church of Christ, and perhaps a few other churches of Christ scattered around the Rio Grand Valley, well, then my family was important. We were a prominent family in the Northside Church of Christ. My great grandfather, Luther Norman, had started dozens of church of Christ congregations around Texas, he had baptized and performed marriages and funerals for hundreds of people around Texas. By the age of four, I knew that my granddaddy, Wilford “Bill” Norman, was Vice President of the First National Bank of Austin, Texas, and he was a mover and shaker in the Austin Lions' Club. My granddaddy was also an elder at the Northside Church of Christ, and while the Church of Christ didn’t have Head Elders, it was very clear that my granddaddy was the defacto head of the elders there and anyone who disputes my view has a right to be wrong.

I was often toted around Austin by various members of the Norman Clan, and no matter what store we entered the adult family member I was with would be recognized, and stopped, and inevitably long conversation began. It was hard to pick up a bag of coffee and get the beans ground, and pick up some eggs and milk, because people seemed drawn to my family members.

Over the years I witnessed people coming to my grandfather's home and seeking advice. I heard lots of living room debates over areas of doctrine as it applied to things like: what are the pros and cons of having a Sunday school?, do we have communion using one cup or many cups?, can several churchs of Christ support the same person as a missionary or is cooperation among autonomous churches of Christ a sin?, can a man who only has one child still serve as an Elder?, if a an elder's wife were to die must he resign as an elder?

I have to remind myself that I was a young impressionable child, but it seemed very clear to me that my granddaddy did not just give his opinion of controversial church of Christ matters, but he was the final word on such issues. It was clear to me that we did not just go to the church of Christ, and we were not just involved members of the church of Christ, but there was a sense that we were the church of Christ, that the identity of my family and the True Church of Christ were two peas in the same pod, indistinguishable, one and the same. This trait cannot be over estimated. In my mind, my family was the church of Christ and we allowed other people to join us, but we were the true heart and soul of the church of Christ.

At age four I was hearing that I was going to grow up to be a church of Christ preacher. Visitors at my granddaddy's home would be talking with him, and when they saw me they would stop and say, “Son, someday you're going to be a church of Christ preacher.” Unfortunately, they were right.

I was told that while my family was not rich, that they did fairly well during the depression. When the depression hit, my granddaddy and grandmother had their oldest son Dick, the nickname they gave my father, Richard Lee Norman. My granddaddy was a Banker, not a great job during the Great Depression, or so I’m told, so he moved his family into the home of my great grand daddy and incapacitated great grandmother, and the two families lived together until my father turned 16 years of age.

During this time the two families lived together my grandmother had another child, Burt Norman, but some time in his early childhood, Burt got an ear infection that was so bad it caused him to be death for the rest of his life. As soon as Burt was old enough he was sent to the deaf school which was a boarding school, where he was taught to sign and how to function in a hearing world. Burt came home on weekends and holidays but what this mean was that during the week, and most of the time, the only child in this home with four adults, was my father. And my father was perfect. He was able to hear, and therefore, he was able to sing Singing is a very important skill in the Church of Christ, a religion that allows only a capella singing in its worship services. My father not only could sing but he sang well.

I was told about how his grandfather [my great granddaddy] would pick my father up and stand him on the dining room table and have him sing some song from the Church of Christ hymnal. It was easy to do. At that time my father was a thin, small, pampered child. I can almost imagine how he was praised and fawned over. There was no other competition. My uncle Bert was born, but he was deaf, disabled, with no hope that he could be a Church of Christ preacher, or song leader.

I know that during this time my great granddaddy would promise my father a coin for performing certain tasks connected to my father’s talents and the
Church of Christ. I know this had to have happened because my great granddaddy did the same thing with me.

“Here is a silver dollar,” he would say. “If you can recite, from memory, the 23rd Psalm,” and he would bend close to finish, “I will give you this silver dollar.”

Off I would go to start trying to memories the 23rd Psalm. At age 5. I”m sure that sort of thing happened all the time to my father. My great granddaddy was not only a Church of Christ preacher, but he also sold insurance. While he suffered through the Great Depression, he didn’t suffer as much. The Church of Christ congregation he served provided him with a Preacher’s House right next door to the church building. We did not call it a parsonage, because that is what false-teaching-denominations called their preacher’s house.

The Church of Christ folk may not have been able to pay my great granddaddy much money, but people made sure things were OK for him by dropping off chickens, or a big ham, of venison if someone shot a deer. During gardening season I was told that the fresh vegetables were unlimited and as gardening season ended, jars of canned vegetables were left on the porch to the point that that two family home had too many canned vegetables.

Oh, yeah, and before the depression, and after the depression, until the day my great grandmother died, they always had a Mexican housekeeper.

My great grandmother had cancer. The entire time I knew her she had cancer. My great grandmother usually stayed in bed. When we went for a visit I was always ushered into her bedroom, and she was propped up in bed by a pile of pillows. I was brought in close where the smells of camphor and rubbing alcohol was close to suffocating. I saw the bony arms of my great grandmother reach out to me, and I reach out, by obligation, to hug her. It felt like hugging a birdcage.

I was told a lot of stories about my great grandmother. She was said to be addicted to morphine, per doctor's orders because of the cancer pain. My great grandmother was given all the morphine she wanted and some in the family, my mother for one, felt she took more than morphine than she needed. My mother told me that eventually my great grandmother had surgery and was cancer free, but still addicted to the morphine. Over a long span of time she was a weaned off the morphine, but about the time she was morphine free, the cancer returned, and so did the morphine.

As a child I saw needles sleeping in a shallow bath of rubbing alcohol. There were bloody cotton balls around. The smell of a hospital filled the house.

Everyday life is full of complications, obligations, pressures, disappointments and ordinary duties. Many families are crushed by the ordinary, but there was something extra going on in my family. The adults around me had all the same ordinary common crushing concerns, but there was also some sense that my family carried a special burden. This burden seemed most intense with the males, but there was no imagining going on, this special burden was very real, and to me it was clearly a burden placed squarely and exclusively on the shoulders of my family members.

Over time I came to know this burden. Over time I came to accept the weight of this burden as it was placed around my neck. It was as daunting as. I was not sure if it was a heavy yoke, or if it was a huge millstone, but what I was sure of was that I was the inheritor of this impossible, onerous, crushing incumbency

‘We know ourselves by hearsay.’ -- Eric Hoffer.

Around the time of my birth, the Norman family was very close. This closeness goes all the way back to the Depression Era. When the stock market crashed and jobs dried up like hope pulverized during an angry Texas wind, the Norman family turned inward. My father and his parents moved into the home of my great grandfather Luther Norman. My father and grandparents lived with my great grandparents until my father reached the age of 16.

My father was the oldest of three children, but he was raised like an only child. My father's brother, Burt, was deaf, which was a significant disability for that family, and Burt spent much of his time away from the home, in deaf school. My father never really learned to sign well, so their communication was very weak. My father’s sister, Patsy, now Pat Combs, wasn’t even born until my father was 18 years old. So my father was not only the oldest son, he was whole, “. . . a lamb without blemish or defect. . .” [I Peter 1:19] and he was pampered. My grandmother, my dad’s mother, told me that they knew they had spoiled “Dick” that they did everything for him.

 
Their plan was to send him to college and use that experience to teach him to take care of himself, to do his own laundry, handle his own money, learn how to work, and be a responsible adult.

My grandparents’ plan for changing my father into a responsible adult failed because of sex. Since we were taught that it was a sin to have sex outside the bonds of marriage, and since my father was horny as a horny-toad, he had to get married to easy that natural human drive.

It was the summer after my father graduated from high school. He sees the girl doomed to be my mother showing up at the Northside Church of Christ. My mother grew up in Cameron, TX, but she wanted to go to a better school because she had aspirations to go to college, and perhaps even become a medical doctor. The better high school was in Austin, TX. My mother moved in with her grandparents the summer before school was to start. She was a member of the church of Christ, so she went to church and that was when she came under the horny view of my soon to be father.

My father was 19 years old and to him, my mother was hotter than a $2 cook stove. My father knew that you have got to marry it to get it. So after a few dates my father proposed. Their initial plan was to wait until my mother graduated from high school, but that didn’t work out.

My Aunt Dorothy Beaver played a part in my creation. “Aunt Dot” told my maternal grandfather, Tim Crawford, that it was scandalous for my mother to be living away from her parents while being an engaged person. The implications were that an engaged girl living away from her parents was a girl who might be vulnerable to vaginal compromise. My granddad Crawford wrote my mother a letter saying, “get married or come home.”

My parents decided to get married rather than endure this separation. The church of Christ was not the only religious body that stressed sex comes AFTER marriage, and the urge to have sex was a powerful reason for people getting married way before they were actually ready to be married.

My father said to me at least a dozen times, “I was ready to be a husband, but I was not ready to be a father.” It was one of his rare moments of clear insight.

~^~

In the church of Christ there was this absolute belief that we, the True Church, had no creed. This was, of course, not true. The church of Christ creed was actually an adopted slogan from Thomas Campbell, father of Alexander Campbell, the undeclared father of the church of Christ: “Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent.” When I was a kid I heard the adults calling this the “battle cry of the restoration movement,” but it is, or was, the church of Christ creed.

The word creed come from the word credo. The Latin derivations of the word credo is a blending of two Latin words cor meaning heart [we hear this root echoed in our word coronary] and do meaning to give [we hear this root in the word donation]. This means a creed is something to which we give our heart.

There is also a “proof text” for this creed --

“...see that you do all I command you, do not add to or take away from it.”

Deuteronomy 12:32

What I witnessed dozens of times went something like this:

Brother Norman, the scriptures clearly say that an elder must be the father of believing children. [The proof text for that belief comes from Titus 1:6 “An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe . . . “ ]

“Yes, Brother Fignose, that is what the scriptures say,” said my grandfather.

“But Brother Miller, our newest elder, only has one child. How can he be an elder? He is not the father of believing children. He is the father of one believing child. The scriptures want elders to be able to raise several children to be faithful believers, and that isn’t what happens when a man only has one child.”

This set off a debate in the living room of the house. The women were in the kitchen washing the dishes and putting up the after church dinner. The debate would go on for a time, and at some point my grandfather spoke up, with a voice that tore the earth like cotton cloth.

“Brother Fignose, consider this,” my grandfather said. “If I asked every man who has children should stand, would that exclude the men who only have one child, or would all fathers be included in the order to stand?” Without waiting for an answer my grandfather moved on. “The phrase believing children is, remember, a translation. Also, given the economy of speech, children is a term that would cover off spring. If it were really critical that an elder must have several children then the scriptures would have been more explicit. It is clear that an elder must be a father and those children must be believers. Another question to consider is this: what if the elder has, five children, and only four of the children are believers and one of the children is a non-believer. Could that man be a believer. The scripture says the elder must have believing children, but it does not say that all the children, that 100% of the children, must be believers. I would not think that having one child fall from grace when the majority of the children were faithful, would be a reason to disqualify or ask an elder to resign.”

That settled the issue. According to my grandfather an elder could be the father of one child, and if that child were a believer that man could be an elder.

My memories stretch back to when I was 3 and 4 years old, but those memories are incomplete, shards or recall. I read somewhere that the eye doesn’t see everything, but the brain fills in the blanks so your mind has a complete image. I think the brain does the same thing for incomplete recollections. The discussions were beyond what I could comprehend at age 4, but the sense that my family was special when it comes to the church of Christ, was

something I got, very early on. My grandfather was an elder, but there were always multiple elders in each congregation, and the church of Christ dogma claims that there is no “head elder,” but to me it seemed like my grandfather was the head elder. And my great grandfather was like something really big, really important, like he was a plainclothes Pope.

As I was growing up I noticed how, everywhere we went, that strangers would come up to my great granddaddy Luther Norman, or my granddaddy Wilford Norman, or my daddy Dick Norman and they would engage them in conversation. This seemed remarkable to me. I watched other grown-ups enter a restaurant, of a Five and Dime, and strangers didn’t walk up and start talking to them. This recognition seemed limited to my family only. If, occasionally, I saw adults being greeted and engaged by other adults, the conversations were usually involved in chit-chat. “How are you? I haven’t seen you in a while?  Where you been hiddin’ out?”

But when people came up to one of the four generation adults and the conversation was more intense. Problems were handed over and solutions were awaited. Requests for prayer were made. Questions about what the Bible says about some issue and what should they do about their son’s drinking.

If I were ever noticed I would be told something like: “You know your great granddaddy performed or marriage.” OR “Brother Norman baptized me, my husband, and all six of our children.” OR “Your great grandpa, Brother Norman, was our preacher for years and years.”

~^~

My granddaddy Norman and another man are talking and smoking at a picnic table in the backyard of granddaddy Norman’s home in Austin. I come up and stand and the man turns to me and says, “You’re gunna be a church of Christ preacher when you grow up.”

“I am?” I made my reply sound like a question, but it was really puzzlement. I saw preachers all the time. I saw how people lined up to shake the preacher’s hand after church. I watched the preacher shout, and get worked up, and everyone seemed to just wait to catch each word that fell from the preacher’s lips and all the preachers I knew were spilling words like crazy. How could I ever be that important? I didn’t feel important. I had to pull on my grandmuddy’s dress to get her to hear me. My mother was always telling me to shut up, be quiet, to stop flappin’ your gums.” Why would a grown-up think I was going to someday be a preacher?

“Son,” said the man, as if he could see inside my mind, “your great grandfather, your grandfather, and your father are all just great preachers. How could you be anything less. It’s your destiny, boy. It’s what God intends.”

I came away unsettled. I mean, I was being brought up to respect grown-ups, and grown-ups were to be obeyed because grown-ups know what is right and what is wrong and their judgments are sound, trustworthy. In my stupid brain, I was certain that if a grown up said something that it was the truth. I had no idea that a grown-up could lie. It didn’t occur to me that it was even possible for a grow-up to be mistaken. In my shallow brain, my family was ordinary in most ways, but extraordinary when it came to the church of Christ. Learning that I was going to grow up and continue this legacy, that I was going to be a respected authority in the church of Christ was bumfuzzling with a double bum and a tripling of the fuzzles.  

EARLY DOUBTS

I can’t explain why, but my lean towards doubt started very early. As soon as I was able to understand language I was being told that the only true church was the church of Christ. All the other churches were “denominations.” I remember thinking that the sound of denomination was disgusting. It was like the very word filled your mouth with infectious snot. I would watch my father or my grandfather say de-nom-in-ation, and their face would scrunch up.

I was puzzled. If the church of Christ was the one and only true church, then why do people go to other churches? Why would anyone go to a denomination?

“The people who go to denominations are often sincere,” my father told me, “Sincerely dedicated to error.” I was told that people who go to denominations are not going to heaven because they have not followed God’s word.

I accepted this, at first, but then, one summer spent at my grandmother and granddad Norman’s home, I witnessed something that shook me like jello in an earthquake. About 10 houses down from my grandparent’s home was a Baptist Church. I had been told clearly that people that go to the Baptist Church are not members of the true church and were lost. They were heading for hell, no ifs, ands, or buts about about it.

What shook me was a fire. The Baptist Church burned down. I was about 7 years old. I remember standing in my grandparents’ back yard and watching the church burn. Flames were leaping from the roof. Behind my grandparents’ home was a field, undeveloped land, cleared land waiting to become residential properties, I’m sure, but land filled with tall dead dry weeds. I watched a huge cloud of smoke lift from the burning church building and rise into the air. The cloud of smoke was high as it drifted away from the flames, and then this smoke cloud cooled, and dropped into the field. As the cloud touched the dry tall grass the grass burst into flames. I remember a smaller contingency of firefighters taking a truck into the field and dousing the grass fire. They had to do this several times.

The church was a total loss. I stood and watched as the fires consumed the building. The brick crumbled as the heat and loss of supports did their job. I was ordered inside before the fire was out, but when I left that back yard I was thinking how God probably caused that fire to burn down the church because it was not the true church, it was a denomination. I imagined that those flames whirling from the roof of the church were like the fires of hell, and people that worship there, Baptist people, would spend forever engulfed in fire that would burn, but would not kill.

Mark 9:48, and 49 said that that the bad people would go “. . .where  ‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched. Everyone will be salted with fire. They will be consumed in fire forever.”

This consumed by fire forever stuff bothered me the first time I understood what the adults were saying. But that day, as the Baptist Church on the corner burned to the ground, I just accepted that God was going to roast those people in fire forever because they did not obey his Holy word.

The following morning was Sunday. As soon as I had my Sunday clothes on I rushed out to the back yard and looked over to see the condition of the burned church. I was shocked to see a crowd of people standing in the parking lot of the burned down church. There could have been 150 people there, maybe more. And these people were praying. And then they sang some hymns and they were singing some of the same hymns we sing in the True Church. This was stunning to the 7 year old me. These Baptist people seemed to be good people. They were praying. They were singing church of Christ approved hymns. What were they doing that was bad enough to send them all to hell where the worms that eat them do not die and the fire is not quenched?

Like Mary the mother of Jesus [Luke 2:19] I pondered these things in my 7 year old heart.

Later, when I asked why God would send people to hell if they were trying to be good Christians, I got lots of lessons about the church of Christ and why it was the one, and only, True Church.

Now all this was not dumped on 7 year old me, but over time this is the information I was given, this information was nailed into my brain with the ball peen hammer of love. I was informed that the word “church” is a translation of the Greek word (ekklēsia). Greek is the language in which the New Testament was first written. Ekklesia means “the called out.” Called out from what? Called out from the world, called out from the way everyone else lives. The word church [and that meant the church of Christ] refers to God’s people who are called out of the world and ushered into fellowship with Him The church [of Christ] is a holy nation [I Peter 2:9] Members of the church [of Christ] are citizens of a heavenly kingdom [Colossians 1:13; Philippians 3:20-21]. The church of Christ] is part of God’s eternal purpose in Jesus Christ [Ephesians 3:8-11] When Jesus said: “I will build my church,” He meant our church, the church of Christ. And Jesus built the church of Christ to establish His redeemed people who would be a holy nation, citizens of his heavenly kingdom [Matthew 16:18] Since Jesus Christ Himself established His church, [the church of Christ] then no man on earth has a right to establish a church other than the church of Christ. Martin Luther started a church and named it after himself, I was told [the Lutherans]. I was told some men started their own churches and named them after how they governed their churches. Presbyterians govern with Presbyters. Episcopalians are just Catholics that speak English instead of Latin. Catholics were so bad I thought they were more like a cult than a church.

I was taught that it was a sin to establish a church that was not the church of Christ. Jesus said: “Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up.” [Matthew 15:13]. The passage didn't say who would do the rooting up, and I figure that was the job of God, maybe with the help of church of Christ preachers. This means that God condemns all denominations and will uproot, or destroy them, on judgment day, therefore, anyone who is a member of a church other than the church of Christ, the True Church, will be part of that uprooting. In Psalmist King David wrote: “Except God build the house, They labor in vain that build it” [Psalm 127:1]. To my father and grandfather, these scriptures mean that any church other than the church of Christ is an abomination to the Lord, therefore, anyone who attends a church other than the church of Christ has joined a church condemned already by Holy Scripture.

Saint Christopher

In the the third grade I had a kid assigned to the seat next to me named Christopher Ryan. Chris wore a necklace, something I’d never seen a boy wear. I asked about it because I thought it was cool looking. It was on a green cord, and the pendant was shaped like a Chiclet, with a green picture of a man with a beard. In the 1950s, the only people I knew who had beards were Jesus and Santa Claus.

Chris said that this was a picture of Saint Jude. Chris said that Saint Jude was the Saint of lost causes. Chris said that when something happened that was a so bad that nothing could stop it from happening, that Saint Jude was the patron saint you prayed to. I said I thought all your prayers had to be in Jesus’ name. Chris said it was like this. He said that he believed people that died were still alive in heaven, so there was no difference between him asking me to pray for him and him to ask Saint Jude to pray for him. 

When I asked what his “lost cause” was, he used a word I’d never heard before. Leukemia.

Other than being small and thin, Chris seemed OK to me. I did notice he was absent a lot.

One day the teacher said we were having a test on Friday. Chris popped off, “Not me.” The teacher said, “Yes, Chris, you too.” Chris said, “But I’ll be at the clinic that day.”

The teacher’s face changed. Tiny muscles in her face moved and the expression went instantly from aggravated to profoundly sad.

Half way through the school year Chris was showing up less and less often, and then he just stopped being in class all together. One day the teacher told us all that Chris was dead.

My mother found something in the newspaper that said Christopher Ryan was dead after a long battle with Leukemia. His funeral was going to be at the Catholic Church, but the day before the funeral there was going to be an open viewing at the funeral home. I told my folks that I wanted to go to the funeral, but that was out of the question. We were not going to step inside a Catholic Church. Finally, my father agreed to take me to the viewing.

On the drive to the viewing my father told me how said it was for a school friend to die, and that it was extra sad because he died “outside of the church.”

“But Chris did go to a church. Wouldn’t that be OK with God?”

Sadly, no. Catholics baptized with sprinkling. Catholics baptize babies. Catholics worship idols. There is no way a Catholic could be saved.

That meant that my friend Chris, was probably already in hell. He was probably screaming in agony right then, while I was walking in to see his body resting in a box. This was not the first friend I’d seen in a casket, but it was the first friend I’d seen dead, who was “outside the True Church.”

I was sick. It was almost like I was pleading with my father to save Chris.

“But Chris was a good boy. Chris prayed all the time. I’d see him pray at lunch and I knew he was praying because he made the sign of the cross after he was done.

That was laughable to my father. “The sign of the cross? That’s like waving a wand and expecting magic to happen,” my father told me.

“But the only reason Chris is a Catholic is that he was born to parents who were Catholic.”

My father explained to me that “ignorance” of God’s truth is no excuse. The Bible says, in 2 Thessalonians 1:8 that the Lord Jesus shall come In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. My father said because Chris and his parents have the Bible there is no excuse for ignorance when the truth is right there in the Bible for anyone to read.

What if they read it, but because they are Catholics they read it in a way that makes it seem OK to be Catholic. Would God send you to hell for not reading something right?

My father explains that not obeying the gospel was what sent you to flaming fire, and not obeying was was what was demanded of us by the Bible. There is no excuse for not obeying the Truth, because the Truth is right there in the Bible.

You can be sure I was pondering this in my heart big time. I had a friend, a child, like me, an 8 year old boy, and God was burning Chris in the lake of fire from the moment he died to forever. It didn’t seem fair. I thought, I was a member of the True Church because I was lucky enough to be born to parents were where leaders with the True Church. What if I’d been born to Lutheran parents or Baptist parents? I would probably believe what my parents believed and then I would be lost. Why would God send anyone to hell if they were trying to be a good Christians but were just unlucky enough to have been raised to believe the wrong things? I was 8 years old, but I was asking questions. I was only 8 years old, but some of the stuff I was being taught did not sound nice. God was supposed to be love. I heard that from sermons all my life, God is Love. Would someone who was the word LOVE send little kids to hell because they were born to Catholic parents?

I was raised by church of Christ parents. My parents were black belt fundamentalists. The Norman family believed that the Bible was the perfect word of God, that God caused the writers of the Bible to write down the words, that the person was not responsible for what got written down. In the church of Christ where I was raised the Lord only speaks to us in His Book [John 12:48; Hebrews 1:1 & 2]. The Bible is a complete book. Not only does the Bible contain everything needed for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness [II Timothy 3:16 & 17] but every word and phrase comes from God, and all of it is useful to us in becoming the kind of disciples we are supposed to be.

How was the book inspired? I wondered about this. Did God send down his spirit to inhabit the arm and hand of the writer and the words went down on the paper as a sort automaton-dictation? You can sort of buy this idea of God possessing the writer and causing the guy to write down exactly what God wanted down. It is harder to accept this when you actually read the Bible.

My questions started early and went throughout my life. II Tim. 4:13 says, “When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments.”

I remember asking why it was important for God to have Paul write down, “don’t forget to bringing my coat.” To me this sounds like what you would put in a letter if you wanted the reader to bring you your coat. It sounds like something jotted down in a letter, and not part of the issues discussed in the body of the letter. Would God inhabit Paul’s are and would God want Timothy to remember to bring Paul his coat?

Or consider the following verse from I Corinthians 7:25:

Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy.

In this passage the Apostle Paul said . . .I have no command from the Lord. . . which sounds a lot like it is not being dictated word for word by God.
Then Paul says he is giving his judgment. Some translations use the words, “. . . I am giving my opinion. . .” or “. . . I am giving my advice. . .” If these words were all from God, and none of this was from man, then why does Paul say, “this part is not from God but I will give you my opinion about the matter?”

Jesus said: “thy word is truth” [John 17:17] This meant that we must measure a church by the Word of God to see if it is the true church of Christ.

GOD’S WAY OR THE WAY TO HELL

When I tell someone that the church of Christ believed that the Bible was the perfect word of God, people nod and think, “yeah. I think that too.” The thing is, most people have no clue what I mean when I am saying God’s word, the Bible, is the Word of God, exactly the way God wanted us to have it, that it has no flaws, that it is inerrant. The word inerrant means “freedom from error or untruths.” Synonyms would include words like “certainty, assuredness, objective certainty, infallibility, total perfection.” The biblical phrase often quoted here is:

2 Peter 1:21 New International Version (NIV)

For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

The way this passage was taught to me is this: the people who wrote the scriptures were”moved by” or “carried along” by the Holy Spirit, meaning that while the writer was not dictated to, he was used, and that use included the writer’s personality, and style.

Later it was pointed out to me that this inspiration of the scripture applies to every word of the scripture, it only applies to the original documents, not to the copies. If I ever had a question about something I was usually told that if it appears to be a conflict or error it is a copying error, that the original, lost to time, had no such error. I mean how could the original have an error if it was inspired by God and God is perfect?

Perhaps it is time to consider some of the unspoken but certain dogmas of the church of Christ. If you were raised in the church of Christ you might object to the phrase “dogma of the church of Christ,” but it is an accurate way to describe it. I say they were unspoken because the church of Christ I was raised in would never admit they having dogmas, because they claim that they promulgate the truth of the Bible ONLY, and the word dogma implies a human or denominational spin on what they believe. If you admit to that, well, you are admitting that Bible only teachings is not what is happening and that violates the first dogma of the church of Christ: SPEAK WHERE THE BIBLE SPEAKS. KEEP SILENT WHERE THE BIBLE IS SILENT.

My hindsight says there are church of Christ dogmas. There are assumptions made that turn people sincerely trying to be God’s people into mean people eager to do God’s job of the condemnation of sinners.

Consider the conclusions made by church of Christers, through the worship of the Bible:

THE TRUE CHURCH STARTED IN JERUSALEM

The church which did not begin in Jerusalem is not the true church [Acts 2:5; Isaiah 2: 1 & 2; Micah 4:1 & 2] This means, of course, that a Methodist church started in England, or a Lutheran church started in Germany would be wrong because it did not start in Jerusalem.

But as I looked in to matters it appeared to me that the church of Christ started in America, not Jerusalem.

The Norman family answer to this was as follows: The church of Christ was not part of the Reformation Movement pushed by Martin Luther and others, oh, no. Those guys were just trying to reform the wrongs they saw in the Catholic church. The church of Christ was the Restoration Movement. We were not trying to reform a denomination, we were restoring the original church as it existed in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost [see Acts 2]

The restoration movement started in the 19th century and blossomed among a number of denominations almost simultaneously. Recent religious freedoms and easy access to scriptures translated into the language of the people seemed to push clergy to explore the Bible and compare what they found there to what they were practicing in their various denominations. The “man made religious bureaucracy” and traditions of a particular denomination did not seem to fold into what they were reading in the Bible.

In 1931, in a gathering of Campbellites [followers of Thomas and Alexander Campbell], and Stoneites, [followers of Barton W. Stone] a fiery restoration preacher named Raccoon John Smith said:

“Let us, then, my brethren, be no longer Campbellites or Stoneites, new lights or old lights, or any other kind of lights, but let us come to the Bible alone, as the only book in the world that can give us all the light we need.”

Raccoon John Smith’s call reflects what was going on among many religious leaders of the period. The call was going out among some that we not reform the church but seek instead to restore first century Christianity exactly like it was in the Bible, and that we toss out any practice that did not comply with the church depicted in the New Testament.

The father of the father of church of Christism, was Thomas Campbell, and he was contemporary with Thomas Jefferson. I add this just to give you some sense of when things were happening.

According to my family, if first century Christianity was established in 19th Century America then it was actually the same church started in Jerusalem in Acts. chapter 2.

THE TRUE CHURCH HAS NO WOMEN IN AUTHORITY

The church which has women in authority, or allows them to preach, is not the house of God [I Timothy 2:9-15].

There were, of course, women who had some standing in the New Testament, but the culture and tradition of that time would have made religion a primarily male dominated activity. As I approached my teens I began to have questions about this.

I remember once, when my father had a tiny church in the rough area of Milwaukee Wisconsin, that at our Wednesday night gathering there was only a small number of people who braved to twenty below zero night. Instead of trying to have a class and a service in that frigid church building my father suggested we just do a chain prayer and go home. As the prayers were finished by one man, and taken up by the next, the turn seemed to fall on my mother, who said a brief prayer. We ended up having a big debate about this. Can a woman participate in a chain prayer, said out loud, and in the presence of men?

I heard the outrage and fear in the voices of some of the men present. Women were forbidden to have authority over men. Was my mother guilty of failure to be subservient, and under the authority of men by participating in that chain prayer? Would see go to hell for this sin? She could repent, of course, but what if she participated in a chain prayer that included both males and females, and after she prayed in front of men she were to have a stroke and die, would she go to hell then? I was worried.

Here is what I really pondered in my heart: What was the big deal? Was a penis so important to God that non-penis praying people upset Him? Who was upset? Was God upset, or were the men there that night the only people upset by a woman praying?

It almost seemed that men, hated women. Later I learned that women were supposed to be subservient to men because Eve sinned first. Eve was tempted by having the same knowledge God had, the knowledge of good and evil. Eve saw that the fruit looked good. Eve reached out and took the fruit, she ate of the fruit, and then she pressured Adam to eat from this forbidden fruit persuading Adam to share in her sin. One thing I do know for sure, it is hard to NOT be persuaded when it is a naked woman doing the persuading.

Old Joke: we know Adam and Eve were members of the church of Christ because they were naked, but Adam was tempted by a piece of fruit.

THE TRUE CHURCH BAPTISM IS PERFORMED THE ONE AND ONLY SCRIPTURAL WAY

I heard a lot of sermons about baptism. I learned that some people are so stupid they baptize babies. There are several proof texts for baptism, but if there was a main text to cite it would have to be Acts 2:38:

Peter replies, “Repent and be baptized, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins may be forgiven.”

How can a baby repent? First off, the church of Christ rejects the concept that we are born carrying the sin of Adam, or Original Sin. Secondly, babies are nonverbal, and their understanding of adult concepts are limited.

The true church of Christ practices adult baptism by immersion ONLY. The doctrine of the church of Christ clearly teaches and believes that any church that sprinkles or pours water on a baptismal candidate is not following God’s word, which means in the subtext, that they are practicing a sin, and sinners are outside of the reach of Christ’s protective embrace therefore you who sprinkle or pour water, rather than the immersion a sinner in water, are doomed to burn forever in a lake of fire.

Today most church of Christers would not say you are going to hell if you do what you are doing. Well, they might tell you about you ticket to hell if they were in a “personal evangelism situation.” There is zero doubt that the church of Christ believes that God only recognizes adult baptism by total immersion, and every other baptismal practice is a sin.

I was a church of Christ minister back in my 20s. I was a thin guy back then. I only weighed 114 lbs when I got married.  

As a young minister I had my first experiences baptising people, and I was honored and excited by this wonderful responsibility.  I did what everyone else did.

There is the baptizer’s pose: You stand in the baptistery water, facing the auditorium [we didn’t call it a sanctuary] with my left hand resting on the shoulder of the candidate. For some reason unknown to me the baptizer holds his right hand up with the palm open. Oh, and the baptismal candidate holds a hanky in their hands.

I, as the baptizer, say the words adapted from Acts 2:38. Often the confession is taken after the song of response has concluded. Usually it is Just As I Am, and the candidate had walked to the front pew and filled out a response card. Then they are often asked if they believe Jesus is God’s Son and do they wish to repent and have their sins removed by the waters of baptism. If they say yes then they are sent to the back are to put on a white robe and get into the water tank that waits behind the pulpit.

Sometimes, while we are both in the water I would repeat the questions.

“Do you believe that Jesus is God’s only son and do you wish to be baptised for the remission of your sins. If they say yes then I say, “I baptize you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven.”

After these specific words are said the candidate puts the rag over their nose and mouth of the candidate. Then the candidate leans backwards. I would hold them by the back of their neck. Once the candidate is totally under the water I use my left hand to push them up out of the water and they are suppose to help by attempt to go back to a standing position.

This worked great with 8 to 12 year old boys and girls, but when I had a chance to baptize an obese woman the whole thing was much more difficult. The older lady was not as strong so her attempt to stand up was on the very very weak side. My lifting her by a hand on the back of her neck was difficult. I had her weight and the resistance of the water. Her breast area was a no touch zone, of course, and that prevented me from using my right hand and arm to attempt to help pull her out of the water.

With great undignified effort I got the lady to a standing position in the baptismal tank but not without flooding my waders, and we were done.

I wanted to avoid this from happening again. I eventually had an idea that would

prevent this problem from ever happening again.

You see, I’d seen the movie, The Greatest Story Ever Told, that has a scene in it where John the Baptist baptizes Jesus. Instead of laying Jesus backwards, Jesus just bends his legs and squats into the water. John the Baptist guides his head as it went straight down into the water, and then John the Baptist cups his hands raises water in his hands and lets the water pour down on the place where Jesus just submerged. It was like being baptized and poured or sprinkled at the same time. There were no struggles with water resistance or the pull of gravity on the obese.

The next time I had some baptisms I tried this squat down into the water, without the sprinkling part. The words all stayed the same. It seemed like an improvement to me.

Well, I had to meet with the elders that afternoon. That was when the elders explained to me about how the cow ate the cabbage.

“Baptism is a burial, and when you are buried your laid backwards.  There is no \squatting in burials and there will be no squatting in baptism.”

THE TRUE CHURCH IS THE KINGDOM

This point may be difficult for some to grasp, but as I grew up I heard a lot of arguing about the establishment of the church, and the establishment of the Kingdom.

The church of Christ Theory about Church

The Protestant Reformation, often referred to as the Reformation, was the schism within Western Christianity initiated by people like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli as well as others. The motive for the movement, like most moment motives, was in reaction to unethical actions by the universal church, the Catholic Church. Martin Luther found the selling of Indulgences more than a little bit off putting. The Catholic Church was willing to extort money from poor people after they scared the hell out of them about going to hell. This misbehaviors of the Catholic church was going on around the same time as the Bible became more available to people in their own language. There was widespread illiteracy, the Bible was in Latin, and the cost of owning a book was astronomical. After the development of movable type, growing literacy, and translations of the Bible into the language of common people, things started to change. People no longer had to rely on the priest's interpretation of the Biblical Latin, there was now a way for the hearers of that interpretation to check on the veracity of what was being sold to them by the clergy. The Reformation sought theological changes, but theology was not the only thing involved in the Reformation movement. Prior to the reformation movement there had been a tension between what was sometimes referred to as the two swords of God: one sword of God was the King, and the other sword of God was the church. Over time the church had gained the upper hand and was dictating policies to Kings and Kingdoms, and demanding money from various Kingdoms. A King that tried to buck the Pope could be excommunicated and lose their immortal soul. The Pope could excommunicate the entire Kingdom should that become necessary. The Reformation Movement coincided with a wave of Nationalism that passed through Europe like a tsunami. In some cases the people sought to overthrow their King, and establish a government that allowed them more freedom and having their own national religion fed into this spirit of Nationalism.

In the United States some of these National Religions were transplanted with the immigrants who carried their faith with them to the New
World. There were faithful seekers of the truth who looked at the Bible, and at their denomination and threw up their hands saying, THIS MESS CANNOT BE REFORMED. 

Perhaps they were right. Sometimes a fishing line gets so tangled the only thing to do is to cut out and discard the tangled mess and start over. That was what the early church of Christ leaders did. They threw their denomination out, they gave up on trying to reform their church, and instead they decided the best course of action was to restore Christianity as it existed on the Acts 2 Day of Pentecost.

After people repented and were baptized by immersion in the Name of Jesus Christ, so that their sins could be removed the church was established. The way in to the church of Christ is through baptism.

After searching the scriptures that there was a plan of salvation and that was something they went over Sunday after Sunday and day after day.

But was the church of Kingdom of God, or was the Kingdom something other than the church. Jesus prayed that the Kingdom would come. A.C. McGiffert stated that the Kingdom of Heaven should not be reduced to any identifiable church body, but should refer to the broader, general reign of Christ’s Spirit on earth. Those were fighting words.

The church is the divinely appointed means to a divinely ordained end. The function of the church is to extend and upbuild the Kingdom; to execute the will of the reigning sovereign. The Kingdom relates to the purpose to be achieved; the church is the means by which that purpose is realized.  men get into the church by what they profess; they get into the Kingdom of God only as they hunger and thirst after righteousness.

--Charles Roberson, 1940

Reuel Lemmons, a man I knew, and a close friend to my Great grandfather, grandfather, and father had a much clearer view of the Kingdom of God. Lemmons stated, “Thus far we have shown that the Kingdom and the church are in actual existence now; that Christ is the head of both of them; that he received the positions at the same instant, by the same process, and that the Kingdom and the church began simultaneously, at the same spot and by the same process.”

If you have not been drug up in the church of Christ it may seem silly to have this debate over the Kingdom and the church. The point comes when we consider Premillennialism, an eschatological doctrine arguing that the True Kingdom of Heaven is yet to be established on earth. The general belief is that when Christ returns he will set up an earthly Kingdom and rule for a thousand years. The churches of Christ rejected Premillennialism.

If the church of Christ makes church and Kingdom synonyms then the problem of Premillennialism is mute. If Kingdom and church are synonyms then this 1000 year reign isn’t happening, since the Kingdom is already here inside your nearest church of Christ congregation.

THE LEADERSHIP OF THE CHURCH IS BY QUALIFIED ELDERS.

The true church Christ is governed by elders. The Apostle Paul defines the responsibilities of the Elder, and who might qualify to be an elder. Oddly, there is no process in Paul’s writings that explains exactly how someone goes from member in the church to elder in the church. Do we vote? That doesn’t seem too church of Christ-like. Men who are unmarried, and/or who do not have well behaved children who believe, is not the Lord’s church [I Timothy 3:2-5;Titus 1:5-9] are unqualified by the Bible.

The term “Elder” never bothered me as a child because I grew up hearing the term. My grandfather, Wilford “Bill” Norman was an elder in the church of Christ. I was much older before I heard the terms, episcopate, bishop, presbyter, or vestry. One of the big differences between the church of Christ and other Christian denominations rests with the use of Elders. It is essential to understand the role of elders in the church of Christ. The English term bishop means “overseer” and is sometimes used to translate the Greek word episcopos which means one who over (epi) sees (scopos) . 

Consider Titus 1: 5-7:  

The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you. 6 An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. 7 Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain.

I understood from this passage that Titus was directed by Paul, an Apostle Chosen out of season, and Titus was told to appoint elders that had lives consistent with behavioral traits defined by Paul. But how are we to appoint elders today? Who does the appointing? We don’t have people selected by Paul to do this elder appointing. Can the minister of the church do this appointing? Does the congregation have any input? Is there voting?

In one church where I attended, the preacher came up with a list of names and asked the members to let him know if they had some specific objection to these potential elders. That was the only input the members had. 

It seems clear that Titus 1:5 is talking about elders as overseers, and an overseer is a bishop. But in the Episcopal church you have one bishop in a diocese, and it appears that Titus is appointing a panel of bishops [or elders] in each congregation, and each congregation, according to the church of Christ is autonomous, there are no zones or areas. In Titus 1:7, where bishop/overseer and elder are apparently interchangeable terms. Paul begins by saying that Titus should appoint elders (presbuterous) in every town (verse 5). Then he gives some qualifications that they must meet (verse 6), and continues without a break in verse 7 by saying, For a bishop (episkopon), or “overseer” as God's steward must be blameless. Virtually all commentators agree that the same office is in view in these two terms: elder describing the man with reference to his dignity and standing (older); bishop describing the man with reference to his function and duty (oversight).

Another passage that clarifies things regarding the role and position of elders is Acts 20:17 & 28 New International Version (NIV)

17 From Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church.  28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.

Paul calls the elders to come down from Ephesus. Then he says to them in verse 28 that God has made them guardians (or overseers which is another term for bishops; episkopous) among the flock. The elders are the bishops or overseers in Ephesus.

Other terms that were or may have been synonyms for elder:

Pastor

The term pastor (poimen) occurs in the New Testament only once, in Ephesians 4:11: where some translations say:  “He gave some . . . as pastors and teachers.”

It may explain why the usual translation preferred in the church of Christ is the NIV where the word pastor is replaced with the word evangelists:

11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers. . .

The pastor word [poimen] has a verb form (poimainein which means, to shepherd, or feed ) and overseer and shepherd are close concepts.  closely related to the noun pastor which helps us discover how the role of pastor was related to the role of elder and bishop.  

People in the church of Christ object to calling the minister the pastor because a pastor is an elder and a minister is an employee of the church, not an overseer/bishop/elder.

In I Peter 5:1-2

To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed.  Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve. . .

Elders are told to shepherd the flock of God. In other words, Peter saw the elders as, essentially, pastors or shepherds.

I have already mentioned the sometimes debate over an elder having believing children and being the husband of one wife. My personal experience indicates that when a church wants someone to be an elder then they allow flexibility in those passages, and if they don’t want someone to be an elder they are inflexible in how they interpret those passages.

I worked for a church of Christ that had an old guy who had been an elder forever, he was a big giver to the church, and he was clearly the head elder. When that elder’s wife died, he was no longer the husband of one wife, but he continued to serve as an elder. This same elder later wooed and married another woman making him the husband of two wives. He was allowed to continue to be an elder because he was the husband of one wife at a time. This same elder only had one child so he had a believing child but he did not have believing children. The elder was allowed to serve.

I grew up not really caring about these rules and restrictions that go into who can or can’t be an elder, but I was bothered by the debate. It seemed picky. Can you be an elder with only one child? Why would that matter? Would having more than one faithful child show you to be a better leader than having only one believing child? Wouldn’t some really competent people be excluded by this picky interpretation?

And why were the rules always interpreted differently? I went to a lot of different church of Christ(s) and the elder rules had wiggle room. That didn’t seem very perfect.

The True Church of Christ Sings Only

The church which uses instruments of music (such as drums, guitars, organs, etc.) in its worship cannot be the church of Christ [Colossians 3:16; Hebrews 13:15]. Why? This restriction seems stupid to people who were not raised in the church of Christ. There is a term I hear in the Episcopal Church that you never hear about in the church of Christ, and that term is rubric. A rubric means a standard of performance for a defined population.” Not singing with instrumental support is definitely a standard that applies to the membership of the church of Christ. When people found out about this rubric they usually say, “What about the instruments in the Old Testament?” OR “What about the harps and lyres played by angels in heaven?”

Amos 6:1a, 5: Woe to you. . . You strum away on your harps like David

and improvise on musical instruments.

Enough said.

Really? The church of Christers would say that none of the Old Testament law is binding on Christians today. The Old Testament was given to the Israelites, not to Christians. Things we tend to honor like the 10 Commandments is not binding because it is in the Old Testament, it is binding because 9 of the 10 Commandments are repeated in the New Testament. The only Commandment not found in the New Testament is the one about remembering the Sabbath Day. Christians honor the first day of the week not the 7th day of the week. When Jesus died on the cross, He put an end to the Old Testament law (Romans 10:4; Galatians 3:23-25, Ephesians 2:15).

But why is the piano or an organ a problem?

The church of Christ answer was that the church was under persecution and often the church had to be in hiding. The church had to be mobile. Often there was no church building, they worshiped in homes, in gatherings by a river, and if we only sing, then we have no problem singing regardless of where we find ourselves when we worship.

If you are a member of a denomination that has an organ and the organist is sick, that group will often have to worship without any music, but because the church of Christ has no dependence on instruments of music, hymns can and are sung easily by a church where everyone has learned to sing a capella.

The church of Christ position actually rests upon authority.

After all, the controversy is not upon the question of interpretation, for no scholar has ever risen to claim to find warrant for it in the New Testament  churches. The matter is purely one of the authority. . . . The word “sing” is a specific, not a generic term. There is no authority for instrumental music in the command to sing. It excludes it. The New Testament and Church history for nearly seven centuries are silent on the subject of instrumental music in the Christian worship. Why was it not mentioned? Evidently because it was not used.

--F. B. Shepard

OK. So history and scripture shows that the early, first century church sang hymns and if they played instruments no one ever noted that. So what? I have no problem with people having differences of opinion, and I don’t care if there are people who feel they should sing a capella. My problem comes when the singers who have an aversion to instruments, feel it is a sin to sing while someone plays along on an instrument.

In 1961 Hershel Dyer insisted that the real question is always the authority of Christ:

“If we would obey Christ, we must not only start with what he commanded, but we must also stop where he has given no command.”

--Hershel Dyer

My problem is with the second part of this rubric. The Jesus I read about was willing to violate clear written Old Testament law, which he was still under, justifying some good work on the Sabbath Day saying that the Sabbath Day was made for man, but man was not made for the Sabbath Day.

Logic is not a sin. Be reasonable. The church of Christ was so strict on this no instrument things that they divided from the Christian Church and they teach and believe that those who violated this matter and worship with an instrumental music, will be lost forever in the fires of hell.

Now why would a Loving God do that? Amazing Grace with a piano sends you to hell? To believe that God is that picky is to believe in a God who is just not loving. There are bad things being done in this world. There are horrible incidents of child abuse, rape, murder, torture, huge ponzi scams that destroy the lives of old people, but in the church of Christ a sincere believer that loves God and tries every day to live like Jesus, is going to scream in hell for eternity because they dared to sing “Jesus lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly,” while someone strummed a guitar. To me that just seems like an evil position to take.

Other Church of Christ Dogma

The True Church requires its members not to eat certain foods is not the church of God [I Corinthians 8:8; I Timothy 4:1-5].

The church which calls its preachers “Reverend” or “Father” cannot be the body of Christ [Matthew 23:-12].

The church that teaches it has the power to pray so that its members can receive miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit is not the True church of Christ. The Bible shows that only the apostles had the power to impart the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This was done by the laying on of hands (Acts 8:14-21; 19:5-6). Since the apostles are all dead, we know this does not continue today. When the complete New Testament was revealed and confirmed, the need for miraculous gifts ceased [I Corinthians 3:8-13].

The Bible teaches that if one is wrong on one point, he is not just wrong he is totally wrong, and totally guilty. [James 2:10].