Note: Alot of this stuff could be answered by reading my Growing Up Church of Christ entry in the personal section of my website. I’ll probably end up restating what I’ve already said before.
1. Were you raised in a particular religious faith?
I was raised in a Christian environment, although I didn’t profess my Christian faith until just before my teen years. From just a few weeks after being born, my parents brought me to church. We attend a church of Christ. We started out at one particular church and then moved on to the present church. Presently I’ve been attending this same church since I was 2 years old. I don’t remember anything else. Church is home to me.
2. Do you still practice that faith? Why or why not?
Definitely. I can honestly say that what once was my parent’s religion is now my own religion. I’d like to believe that I didn’t inherit it, but in all likelihood, if I was raised Southern Baptist, I would have been a Southern Baptist. If I was raised Hindu, I would have been Hindu as an adult. I guess I’m not good at changing things.
That being said, I honestly believe what I believe. I love church. It is a place where I can express my love of God. People truly love you there. My closest friends are Christians.
At times I hate it. I hate it that some people use it as a country club. I hate that people aren’t involved outside of being in the audience during Sunday mornings. I hate it that people don’t sing….that they don’t volunteer when things need to be done.
3. What do you think happens after death?
In short, bad people go to hell; good people go to heaven. How do we know what’s good?
“Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.”
Matthew 7:21
It was explained to me thusly. When someone dies, they either go to Paradise or Tartarus. Paradise is Abraham’s bosom; while Tartarus is a terrible place where everyone thirsts and gets to see into paradise for what they missed. The term “Tartarus” should not be confused with a Ford Taurus which is just as bad as hell (have you driven one lately?).
Then comes the 2nd coming of Christ where the dead are raised and everyone gets judged. People either go to heaven or hell. The Tartarus/Paradise part doesn’t make sense to me since it seems souls are put into a sorta “holding pattern,” before Jesus comes back again. Why even wait on this holding pattern?
Then again this Tartarus/Paradise argument is based on the rich man and Lazareth parable (Luke 16:19-31)…..which it might just be a parable. Who’s to say? In any case, there is an ultimate end to everything. Either heaven or hell.
“Sheep go to heaven. Goats go to hell.”
–Cake, “Sheep Go to Heaven”
“He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.”
Matthew 25:33
As far as who goes where, God is our ultimate judge. We are judged according to if we followed His commandments while here on earth. I can never do enough good works in order to earn my way into heaven, which is where grace comes in. But grace is only part of the picture. God has given us a set of things which by doing so, along with grace, we will have eternal life. Anytime the Bible says do something in order to have eternal life, then it is obvious that that particular act is just part of the larger salvation spectrum.
4. What is your favorite religious ritual (participating in or just observing)?
Baptism. I believe in total immersion of believers as being the correct form of baptism (after all baptism means “immersion.”). There is nothing better than seeing a earnest believer being baptized into Christ. It helps if you are already friends with the person being baptized.
In enjoy singing during worship services. Some songs are better than others. Favorite songs usually have some type of emotional attachment to them. Maybe the song was sung during a very moving worship service. Maybe the words are particularly touching. There is nothing worse than sitting in a huge crowd of people and feeling like you are the only one singing. Happens all the time. I hate that. SING, PEOPLE!
5. Do you believe people are basically good?
“I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
– Anne Frank
I’d like to believe that. And I think for the most part it is true. When I was in China, I met people who would been over backwards for a silly American and expect nothing in return. People are good. People want what’s best for their families. They are willing to help out a neighbor.
People are good. Sometimes they are misdirected, due to a revenge factor. If people would just stop and try to love one another, we wouldn’t have wars and violence. But due to revenge and anger there is sin within this world.
Author Archives: Jeff Whittle
Rolling Houses on Halloween
When I was in junior high and high school, I was always paranoid on Halloween night about being rolled with toilet paper. “Rolling” or “TPing” ….whatever you call it. Around here it has always been known as “rolling.” I’d always spy outside ever so often on the night of the 31st to make sure no one was in the yard. Little did I know that neither me nor my family was first on anybody’s revenge or embarrassment list. There were bigger fish to fry. Pranks are usually pulled on good friends. I remember being told at church camp that if kids roll your car it means they like you. Maybe so.
Just once, I might like to dress in all black, go out to the local grocery store, buy a hugh economy pack of toilet paper, and roll someone. Never once did I do that growing up.
Total number of trick or treaters tonight: 0
Sad. We do decorate and leave our lights on to let everyone know that there is free candy to be given out here. But no one came. So we have all this candy to eat.
For future reference I would recommend using a sturdy pillow case for gathering Halloween candy. I always got stuck using a cheap plastic bag for candy. Pillow cases have much more capacity. Then there are those stupid plastic Jack-O-Lantern which don’t have any capacity. Good for little kids. But if you are looking for large amounts of candy, definitely use a pillow case.
Right now, thousands of kids are getting sick on all the candy they’re eating. All those 3 Musketeers, Milky Ways, Snickers, M&Ms, Juicy Fruit, Pixie Sticks….. I don’t recall ever really getting sick on Halloween candy. But I do remember seeing leftover candy appear in my school lunchbox in November. You know if you really think about it, November is a pretty boring month. October has the anticipation of Halloween….there’s a buildup over time…up until the end of the month. Same way with December and Christmas. But November and Thanksgiving? Besides college students and far away relatives, who gets excited about Thanksgiving anymore? You can’t go out on the Friday afterwards because it is so chaotic around the stores. November is just blah.
“No scray costumes, please.”
Yeah, it’s Halloween. School kids are at school hoping their teacher won’t assign too much homework so they can still can go Trick-or-Treating tonight. I had a few teachers in my past that tended to purposely assign lots of homework on Halloween night. I remember having to read a huge part of Romeo and Juliet in 8th grade. In elementary school we were allowed to have 3 class parties….each held on/for Halloween, Christmas, and Valentines Day. My 5th grade teacher cancelled our Halloween party by saying “You’re too old for Halloween.” I still remember that.
Do tissue makers take into account the slight increase in toilet paper purchases around October each year? Do they supply stores with slightly more tissue just for that surge? A friend of mine told me the best way to get toilet paper out of trees was to burn it (seriously). Light a flame to the part of the tissue hanging down. The tissue will burn; the tree will not. I might try it sometime if I ever get rolled.
My friend Dustin sent me a postcard of the Praying Hands of Oral Roberts University. The postcard reads “the hands are a 60 foot tall, thirty-ton bronze structure.” Crafted from molds of Oral’s hands. That’s probably the tackiest thing I’ve heard of: a monument to the world’s biggest ego. Oral once called on his followers to raise 8 million dollars or else God would “call him home.”
“The God I believe in isn’t short of cash, Mister.”
–Bono of U2
Some nice software I’ve found lately:
Privoxy. Blocks banner ads and other annoyances.
DeadAIM. It’s an add-on for AIM. Makes the program transparent to the desktop; blocks those silly AOL ads; logs conversations. By the way, I found that AIM users and ICQ users will soon be able to talk to each other.
Halloween Urban Legends
Photo Enlargements
Phil is wanting to get various youth group pictures enlarged to put up in their classroom around church. Digital picture enlargements can be fairly expensive compared to Wal-Mart’s prices. For example, a 16 x 20″ enlargement costs $16.99 at ofoto.com compared to a 11 x 14″ at $3.96 at Wal-Mart. So I guess I’ll go for all Wal-Mart for now.
My reservations against it are as follows. The enlargements won’t necessarily be put into frames. We’ve displayed pictures on the bulletin boards at church before. Kids tend to scratch out and put a permanent marker to people’s faces they don’t like. I’d hate to spend 4 bucks on each enlargement only to have them ruined by someone drawing on them. Why couldn’t we get some really cheap (but decent looking) frames to go with them? Display them properly. Not like some cheap boyband poster on a teenaged girls’ bedroom wall. But then again it’s the church’s money, not mine, so why should I worry?
One particular kid from church keeps IMing me. First he wanted me to walk him step by step through how to install a favorite peer-to-peer file sharing program. Next he wanted to find music to listen to online. Finally he wanted me to burn a CD of certain songs. All of this was just too much. Borderline annoying. I know that peer-to-peer programs are made to install fairly easily (which is why everyone seems to have one installed on their computer). I am not a subsidiary of CDNow or Amazon. I don’t burn CDs made to order for people. Since it is so easy to do yourself, the novelty of burning CDs for friends has worn itself out.
Lunch with James and Josh yesterday at CiCi’s Pizza. All you can eat lunch buffet for $5. Pretty decent price for what you get. The only problem is that the pizza quality is just not as good as Pizza Hut or Papa Johns. Sausage pizza is also hard to find there. Usually they will tease you with some pizza which will appear to be sausage, but when you taste it, you find it is hamburger pizza. Why would anyone put hamburger on pizza? It’s meat that looks like sausage without the spice.
I guess it might be that time of year where I post my obligatory Halloween entry. It was always a fun holiday. There was always the awkward time in my life where I was too old to go trick or treating; felt staying home handing out candy was too lame; and didn’t feel like intentionally messing up someone’s yard by TPing it. (I still have never rolled anyone’s yard; I guess I missed out) Now I’m content to stay at home and hand out candy. My parents were always stingy with the candy…only gave out 1 candy bar each. On the other hand I throw in lots of candy in to the kids bags.
It’s too bad certain conservative Christian groups have attempted to put a negative spin on Halloween by calling it an evil holiday. Halloween is what you make it. If you’re a satanist and want to sacrifice animals to the devil on Halloween, then it is an evil holiday for you. But if you are Mr. and Mrs. American, who like to dress up your kids in scary costumes and take them trick or treating, then it is a fun holiday. I hate it that I could be considered “evil” in some people’s eyes by seeing no problem with kids dressing up in scary costumes.
Who actually reads this?
Who actually reads this? Do I have people hanging on every word I type? Or do most people skim over the entries ever so often looking for key words of interest? I’d admit that sometimes I write entries just so “bob” can have something to read when he gets home. However most other times I write for myself. Usually it is something significant that I want to share. Other times it is something I want to remember. The general consensus on the internet is that weblogs have become overabundant…..ie the web’s new Geocities. Who cares about my daily routines, my opinions on the latest current events?
Mark Sexton told me some strange stories. It’s alot like those “what-if” scenerios which teenagers try to test you with in Sunday School. An old lady…walking down the church alise to be baptized and falling over dead of a heart attack. Two boys deciding to get baptized on the last day of church camp…..calling their parents who said to wait until they got home…..then getting killed by an 18 wheeler in front of the church building. I never thought anything like this had happened before. But according to Mark, scenerios like this had happened. His purpose for telling me these stories was to illustrate that ultimately God is our judge, and it’s not upto what anyone else thinks might have happened in the afterlife to these people.
U.S. Army is working on the 3 year PB&J sandwich
Marching Band
Kevin Bass showed me some really good pictures he took of David Shannon preaching on Sunday morning. Kevin has an Olympus digital camera with zoom lense. He was able to take pictures from the balcony of David preaching without using a flash. Makes me wish I had a camera like that. Mine is a 3.3 megapixel, while this one is a 2.1 megapixel. I’m not sure if the zoom lense is worth the reduction in mexapixels.
I put my life into someone else’s hands when I got in the back of that pickup truck at the hayride Saturday night. We were going to the place where we’d scare the people on the hayride. I didn’t realize how unsafe this teenaged driver was. I don’t know who he was trying to impress. If he had hit a tree, I would have been seriously injured. In the middle of our night drive through a tobacco field, the headlights went out on the truck, so they had to drive according to the flickering of the left turn signal. This old Ford truck was a junky vehicle. No glass in the rear window. “It’s a farm truck,” was the excuse the kids gave.
Contest of Champions was this weekend. It is the superbowl of marching band competitions for Middle Tennessee. I only know about this because a friend of mine reminded me about it. All of the bands in the area look forward to this competition in hope that the will place in it (or at least make finals). It’s not what you play, it’s who you know. Near the stadium there is a sign that says “Through these gates march the best bands in the world.” There should have been an asterisk at the end that said “and a bunch of bands which don’t deserve to be here.” We lived very simple lives in high school. Our biggest goal was to make it to some meaningless contest. It felt good back then, but looking back on it, the whole thing reaks of pointlessness.
I played trombone in high school. I never practiced. I never really knew the music. In some ways I think our band director let me stay in band because my parents were heavily involved with the band boosters. He could have embarrassed me by asking me to play the entire halftime show in front of the entire band. But he didn’t.
I have been considering a mission trip to El Salvador with my church. They’ve actually got it on the calendar so that everyone (not just the select few) will make plans to take part. It’s in April. It would be alot easier to decide to go, if I knew if I’d have a job in April. It involves a medical mission trip plus a Gospel Meeting while we are down there. Who knows. I’ve still got a little time to decide. Even if I end up getting a job before then, there will probably be someone who would want to take my place. It happened last year with someone else. It can happen again.
Bible Bowl
Big day today. Left at 8AM for Portland for the Sunday morning worship service. The afternoon was Bible Bowl time. Ended it with a PM worship service at MJ and a preteen devotional afterwards. Sundays can be busy days for some people.
Like I said before, Mark Sexton, the youth minister for Corinth church of Christ, is a good guy. I stayed after the Bible Bowl and talked to him for about an hour. He is very sincere and has a common sense approach toward Christianity in general. I’m grateful for his comradery and friendliness shown toward me, even in the short time he has known me.
Small rural churches have their problems, just like any other large church. The only thing is that sometimes due to their size, their problems can be magnified at times. So when a family leaves, it is very noticeable. I found out a particular family I knew had left a rural church for some reason or another. I wasn’t sure of the reason, but I hate that they felt they had to leave. I can only wish them the best and hope they find a church to their liking. I hope we can still keep in touch, but it will be more difficult since they are no longer affiliated with the church I’m familiar with.
Ending the day with a preteen devotional with almost 30 kids present was a boost for me. Realistically I know some of them came for the food. But many came to worship God. Singing was great. The kids were attentive during the devotional. It was a good day.
Scottsville Hayride
I am back from the hayride in Fountain Run, KY. It was great to see everyone there. There were even some old friends who don’t necessarily go to church in Scottsville who came. In fact there were tons of people there. Plenty of people I didn’t know. Many visitors. Many extended family of the hosts.
The hayride began at the Pedigo house. We rode to the bottom of a valley in the middle of a tobacco field. We had a bonfire right beside a stream. Plenty of hotdogs and potato chips. Large fire. It was a bit hot to try to roast hotdogs on.
On the ride back, it is traditional for the high school/college aged guys to scare the hayriders. This year they went all out. Strobelight. Fog machine. Mechnical bats hanging from the trees. They pretty much just jumped with with masks on to scare them. It was a good effort. I don’t know if they will be able to top it for next year.
I helped them get setup. Immediately after the devo was over we got on 4 wheelers and a truck to ride to the place designated as the place to scare the people. The only mistake I made was getting in the back of a pickup truck with a 15 year old driving. He took the gravel road a little too rough. There were some huge bounces and I ended up bruising my backside due to the impact.
At times I worry about some of the kids in Scottsville. Sometimes it appears that they are just giving lipservice to church activities….then when they get out of church, they tend to overlook what’s right and choose to live the wrong way. Their only fear is their parents finding out. Case in point, one of them was turning 18 soon and planning on doing all the things he wasn’t allowed to do before. Am I being a prude? Wet blanket? Or is all of this just lipservice? We spend years in Sunday School telling kids “Don’t do this….don’t try these things…” yet they do the complete opposite when given the choice. It is difficult to converse with someone who just doesn’t take Christianity seriously. I would almost rather they choose not to go to church, rather than lead 2 different lives – acting like angels while in church; acting any ole way outside of church. Then again sometimes church and being around Christian friends may be the only thing keeping them from going off the deep end competely. Am I worrying too much? I’m not ready to desert them completely. They are my friends and I feel like I should stick around for them.
As a side note. On my way up to Fountain Run, I drove through Lafayette, TN. They have a combination KFC/Long John Silvers in one building. I had heard that the parent company of KFC/Pizza Hut/Taco Bell had bought LJS. Apparently this is a result.
Time falls back this weekend. I hate that. I hate it when it gets dark at 4:30PM. Dreary days. Dark mornings. The only good thing is having a 49 hour weekend this weekend.
Judgement Houses
Those Judgement Houses. I haven’t heard of anyone doing one this year. I did a quick search on the net and found only one church in Nashville which was doing one of these attractions this year ( www.harpethheights.org )
The few memories I have from them are from the early 90s. One production was very good. It had an actual wrecked car and ambulance in the death scene. The funeral scene featured a coffin. I remember someone in our party tended to think the funeral scene was a bit funny and giggled at an awkward moment. I cringed when that happened.
The other Judgement House at another church wasn’t so good. The condemned prisoners in hell were little kids. There’s something slightly strange about hearing little kids scream out in agony in the darkness of a church basement made up to look like hell. Their heaven was an empty white portable classroom. I don’t know which was worse, their heaven or their hell.
Anyways like I said, they’re playing on people’s emotions. Yeah, it may work on some people, but it is really worthwhile to try to scare someone into making what should be a lifelong committment. I know that this is the only way to reach some people.
For some odd reason, there is a Mr. Peanut costume at church. Planters brand. Big plastic peanut body with a top hat and cane. Phil said it was one of the kid’s costumes. While I was at church today, our minister put on the costume while yelling “This lottery referendum is driving me nuts!” I guess you had to be there to experience the full effect.