There are some things you don’t forget even if it’s been decades since the experience occurred. In Sunday School yesterday, we began a study of the book of Romans. In the first chapter, the assertion of Paul stood out: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
The teacher asked: “Have you ever been ashamed of the gospel?” Though it wasn’t because I was ashamed, the question brought-to-mind an experience when I didn’t speak up to a question asked a small group of people. The question was this: “Are any of you people born again Christians?”
President Jimmy Carter had been in the Oval Office for less than a year, and he often said of himself that he was a born-again Christian.” No doubt, that is why the question was raised.
When I think of President Carter, I think of a peanut famer from Georgia that became President of the United States. I discount the fact that he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, served in the military, became governor of Georgia and subsequently a U.S. Senator before returning to his roots.
On his second day in the oval office, President Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders. That same year he approved status reviews of those Missing-In-Action with the presumptive finding that there was no evidence that military personnel listed as MIA were still alive, and their status was changed to “killed in action/body not recovered”.
As a family member of an MIA, we were not ready to acquiesce to the notion my brother wouldn’t subsequently be found alive. Yet the burden on proof fell on our family to substantiate he was still alive. Otherwise, the change in status would be made.
Forgive me, I got side-tracked. Personal feelings sometimes get in my way. At any rate, early in President Carter’s Presidency, I attended a workshop in Topeka Kansas at the Menninger Foundation. In addition to The Menninger Memorial Hospital and the Menninger Sanitarium, they also established the Southard School for Children in 1926. The school fostered treatment programs for children and adolescents that were recognized worldwide. Dr. Karl Menninger was a world renown psychiatrist credited for advances in treating patients.
At the time, I was the residential child care standards and policy specialist for residential childcare licensing in Texas. At the request of my boss, I attended the workshop on managing behavior of adolescents. The workshop was limited to about twenty people. Of that number, all of the participants were affiliated with or had an interest in residential programs for children with one exception.
One of the participants, presented himself as a very successful businessman and he was there to learn to be a better parent. He reportedly had a fifteen-year-old daughter that offered parenting challenges he didn’t know how to address. Actually, the man’s interest in finding information to be a better parent in-and-of-itself is pretty impressive.
Yet, in the group he came across as a know-it-all and I was fairly certain when he asked the question in a hotel restaurant about born again Christians, he wasn’t seeking answers, but an endeavor to set the record straight.
I didn’t respond to the question, but a man to my right immediately said, “I’m not sure about being a born-again Christian, but I am a fundamentalist.” He then talked about a strict interpretation of Scriptures.
I am obviously Baptist or Catholic because guilt sometimes is a companion I’d prefer to live without. So should I have said something in response to the man’s question? I honestly don’t know, but the fact that I didn’t still bothers me.
All My Best!
Don
Carpe Diem 