Knowledge 5

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27. During much of high school, my sister Sharon was the assistant pastor of my church. Everett Putney was the senior pastor, although part time. He was a public middle school principal from the Cooper City area. They made an interesting pastoral team. He was very open-minded and, I suspect, would have felt more comfortable in a United Methodist setting than in many Wesleyan churches. My sister started at Frankfort and finished at Hobe Sound. She brought the older holiness tradition to the table.

It worked because, as a true liberal would, he believed we should respect all people and all positions. My sister represented the holiness traditions of his youth in Indiana. So he could respect her and her positions in areas they might disagree.

My sister brought with her attention to some old holiness issues. Should I wear shorts to track and cross-country? I wore sweats for about a week then decided it wasn't necessary. My mother was always very practical about such things, having gone through her own wrestling in the 50s.

Should my mother dress my sisters in knee-socks? I'm not sure I have the issue straight. Did people in the church think they were showy and prideful? Did they think they should wear long dresses instead? But it can get cold in Indiana in shorter skirts, which I think were the style of the day.

The Lord gave her a verse, Philippians 2:12--"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." She took the verse to mean that she needed to do what she felt God required of her, not what other people required of her. This isn't exactly what the verse meant originally, but it works. The Spirit meets us where we are because we certainly cannot get up to his level. And we will inevitably often not know what the original meaning of the Bible was.

So my mother was often very practical about these "standards," even when I was not. I was at that time an idealist. If I'm not supposed to wear shorts then I shouldn't wear shorts. She was much more, "God will work all these things out. Don't stress too much about them."

28. I did not go to prom. My parents let me decide. Dancing was a no-no still, technically, for Wesleyans. Most Wesleyans, I suspect, couldn't care less. Frankly, I couldn't make a good argument against it. It was just something we didn't do. Genni Clements tried to get me to dance at her 16th birthday party. I would have very much enjoyed to but didn't.

Still, I could have gone to prom and stood on the sidelines. It would have been ok. Of course now I wish I had gone, to be part of the experience. But as a good introvert, I didn't mind not going. A junior girl volunteered to go with me. She made me a nice mug of a sort as a graduation gift. I still have it. But I didn't go.

29. Those years of the 80s were the time when the culture wars began to rise. My mother began to pay quite a bit of attention to them. I wondered later if it was because she saw the empty nest coming and was finding something else to occupy her mind. But she didn't think so.

Living in the shadow of Coral Ridge, we were aware of the leading edge of the wave. We listened to Marlin Maddoux's radio show, Point of View. This is what we might now consider classic fundamentalist fare. There was also a bit of Reformed thinking hiding in there. So my mother was exposed to Francis Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live? 

Then there was a lot of rhetoric against the new age movement. When I began to study for ministry, mom funneled some material defending the King James Version my way. I remember when a speaker at Frankfort camp made arguments to the people to switch to the NIV. It might have been Paul Sebree Sr, who actually came for a slightly rocky time at my church in Fort Lauderdale. He adjuncted at IWU in the religion department a little before I got there.

Whoever the person was, he told the people at the morning service that they were hindering the salvation of their children by having them read the KJV. I did read the KJV. I tried to read a chapter a day. It usually went well until I got to Exodus 21. Then I would fail at my reading for a couple months. Eventually I would get through Leviticus and everything would continue a pace.

At some point in my teens I did a reading with an orange highlighter for all the holiness words--holiness, holy, sanctification, sanctify. I defined them all in terms of a "second definite work of grace whereby the heart is cleansed of inbred sin." More on this question to come.

30. I was completely on board with these currents at the time. We were riding the wave of the culture wars on the fundamentalist side. My mom would buy me Harold Lindsell's The Battle for the Bible when I began to study for ministry. When I later began to take the other side of these books, she interpreted it as rebellion, but that was not the case. It's just that sometimes your starting position doesn't turn out to be the right one. Those who are really interested in the truth are willing to change their positions if the evidence and logic doesn't support their initial position.

My high school years coincided with Ronald Reagan's first term. I was walking home from the high school the day and time he was shot. We were of course great Reagan fans. I voted for Reagan my first time to vote in a national election in November 1984.

I take from Reagan a principle I have seen play out over and over again in politics and pretty much everywhere. Again, Jonathan Haidt has given words to the intuition. People do not make decisions primarily on the basis of logic or reason. If a politician is a good speaker who makes them feel good, that person is far more likely to get elected than someone who is boring but has great arguments and policies. The same goes for preaching.

People are not really rational animals. We are herd animals who are primarily driven by our emotions. This is true of the academy as well, although we do a better job pretending that it is all about the logic. Those who expect people to behave rationally are bound for frequent disappointment. Those of us committed to the quest for true objectivity are few and far between.