Tag Archive - church

Rules 101

June 10, 2011 in Religion with 0 Comments

A few weeks ago I heard preacher say that, at his church, men couldn’t serve at the Lord’s Supper without wearing a necktie (Yes, it is 2011). In other words, they all had to look like they had emerged from a 1950s time warp. The church I grew up in also had this rule. I tried to get around it: When I was a teenager, my mom bought a string tie from Texas (I think). It was hideous. Slim Whitman comes to mind for some reason. I’m not sure if the string tie thing would have passed muster at this church though.

Boss neckties jpg

But, the preacher wasn’t praising the “no-tie-no-serve” rule. He was pointing out that these laws are neither biblical, based in common sense, nor particularly pleasant to look upon.

His swipe got quick results (considering the rules based tendency of this church): The next Sunday, not all the guys wore ties at Communion – not even a string-tie.

I’ve read that social groups adhere to unwritten rules; the rules that everyone knows instinctively. In most churches, there are probably hundreds of taboos or unwritten rules. Mine – it seemed to me – surpassed most in accumulating them.

This week, we are on a mini-vacation. I am sitting by a swimming pool in Orange Beach watching one of my daughters interact with some other young folks (using this word clearly shows my age) from Missouri on their Senior High School trip and I smell a cigar. Now I grew up with a father who specialized in inhaling the putrid and disgusting smoke from Pall Mall cigarettes (see here for details). But a cigar is nothing like a nasty cigarette. I don’t know the brand, but I really liked it. If I weren’t such a sissy I might just start smoking them.

My uncle CA (which stands Connie Alonzo – and not your typical Southern name) smoked Prince Albert pipe tobacco. I loved this smell, but again never took up smoking a pipe either. I am guessing that the Pall Mall’s inoculated me against any possible desire to smoke.

The unwritten rule in our church (and society in general now) is that smoking is a sin (but a tolerable indulgence that the church of big government readily sells to finance social programs). I don’t remember reading anything in the Bible overtly against smoking tobacco, but it is highly frowned upon nonetheless.

Which is funny because:

As a young teenager, I remember deacons standing outside the building corralling men to serve on the Lord’s Supper or say a prayer or take part in the service in general all the while puffing away on some awful smelling cigarette.

Now, if the deacons had been smoking a nice Ashton VSG or a Por Larranaga Hondouran blend, things might have been different.

They also didn’t have Google to find a cigar name, but that’s not the point. It may be a nasty habit, like almost any thing involving tobacco, but I just don’t see it as malum in se sinful.

Purposeful disobedience to Jesus? Now that’s is a different matter.

Sometimes it is just easier to build straw men arguments against bad habits and call them sin than to love and accept folks.

What are some of the taboos you were raised with?

 

 

Orange Beach

June 1, 2011 in Travelogue with 2 Comments

We spent a few days at Orange Beach on a mini vacation. White sand, loud tourists, free breakfast, relaxing waves.

Loud tourists.

Local Native

But it’s Orange Beach and I get to meet folks from all over: We ran into a group of kids on their senior trip from Missouri and in the last few years, I’ve also meet people from Russia and Ukraine.

This will likely be the last time at the beach for us for a long while. With both of us starting new teaching positions at Harding soon, we will likely do our vacationing somewhere close to central Arkansas.

Like Branson.

It is interesting to me where people chose to vacation. I grew up in South Alabama, so I naturally migrate to Gulf Shores and vicinity.

But I’m not against vacationing in, say, the Swiss Alps or the South of France, or even Alaska. South Alabama beaches are just convenient.

I cannot count how many times I’ve been here. This time we are staying at the Holiday Inn Orange Beach. I thought we’d never stayed here before, until we walked back to the swimming area and I remembered that we spent one night here about a year ago.

Breakfast is always a bonus with Holiday Inn. I didn’t have to stab too many of the loud tourists to get to the sausage this time either.

It wasn’t more than a mile or so to the east of here that I’d given my bride, Inna, the engagement ring. We were visiting Robin and Dana Dickerson at Innerarity Point church of Christ at the time at the same time when Hurricane Andrew was also beating down on the Florida panhandle.

Somehow I had managed to struggle onto the beach long enough to give her the ring. True to the Russian mindset, she didn’t want me to just give it to her without something special as a background (like fireworks, a Blue Angels flyover, or even a hurricane).

The hurricane sufficed. We stayed there about 11.5 seconds before realizing that these weren’t optimal conditions for giving away small items that could conceivably be carried by the wind and land in Tacoma.

We headed back to Robin and Dana’s and Inna shared the news with them.

It probably would have been smarter to give her the ring when I asked her to marry me, but I can’t say that planning was my forte back then.

Next month will mark 18 wonderful years of marriage, so I guess it didn’t matter anyway.