Hayter for April 23, 2023
“A world of religion”
I noticed in the Courier last week that Charles Stanley died. Died at the age of 90. I have every confidence that that’s five to 10 years longer than I’ll be hanging around.
It was around 1985 that I first heard of Charles Stanley. It was a fluke. I left the house around six a.m. and traveled south on I-45 on my way to Oak Ridge High School.
Back then the traffic on the two-lane southbound freeway was slow most mornings. To keep my mind off of worries, I listened to the radio. – Beg pardon? Oh, that was a device where announcers, called disc jockeys, played music for a few minutes between the news and about 18 commercials.
I listened to Hudson and Harrigan for a good while. At times, one or each of them would play characters in some silly skit. I was just desperate enough to listen to them. Even smiled on occasion. That’s how bad I had it.
But one morning, I was not up to listening to H and H, so started looking for another channel. At one point I ended up on 105.7 FM, at a time when Charles Stanley was on the air. The guy was in the middle of a sermon from the previous Sunday.
I agreed with what he was saying, I’d just never heard anyone else say it before. I’ve made no secret of the fact that each Hayter child went to church on the first Sunday after birth. None of us knew what the Sam Hill was going on during that time, but we were there. In fact, it took each of us years to catch onto a mere fraction of what was going on.
The bottom line, when you do wrong, you’re going to the devil. We never said ‘hell’. If we did, we were going to hell. Over my many years on this planet, I have had bad thoughts about every sermon I ever heard. There were two given every Sunday of my life. Fortunately, I listened to very few. Just depressing as all get out. I kept going, just in case I died doing something good.
Fast forward a few years, when I’m on the road to school, and accidentally tuned in to hear Charles Stanley. The lesson had to do with something called “grace”. I had been taught that “grace” was unmerited favor, and that it was a gift from God. As such, it was the only thing that gave you any chance to go to heaven.
Unfortunately, every sermon I heard was
about how we had to earn grace. When you sin in life, God takes his grace away
from you. You’ll have to prove your worth to God before you can get back the
grace. Mess up again, and the devil’s got you again.
With that logic, there is no sermon out there that could possibly endear you to God. My parents still seemed to love me after I messed up, but God? I have to re-earn His love.
During the summer, I began listening to Stanley’s early morning lessons and took notes on each one. After Stanley’s lesson, 105.7 introduced me to Tony Evans. Hokey smokes, what a great speaker! Today I’ve got about 12 notebooks containing outlines of lessons from both men. What I loved most about each of them, was that they confessed that they too, mess up. They each said, that if humans were able to act righteously in every situation, there was no use for God to ever send His Son to earth because we had enough discipline as humans to never sin.
I didn’t believe like many of those in my church, but I continued to attend. I even taught adult Bible classes. The last class I ever taught was on “grace”. Afterward, it was agreed that someone needed to take my place. Shortly after that, Kay and I visited a class on a Wednesday night, at another congregation where someone was teaching about “Grace”. In fact “Grace” was in the name of the church. Kay and I have been going there ever since.
I realize that Stanley was in no way close to being perfect. The same with Tony Evans. But they knew it, and they both helped me to realize it, and learn the value of Jesus. – Not religion.
Religion is the method people use to
worship a god. There are hundreds of varieties of various religions. Buddhism, Shintoism,
Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity… They’re all over the place. And get
this. Each one of them is divided into different beliefs that they can’t all agree
on.
Christians? Don’t get me started. We are all over the place. It might’ve been so much easier had the Bible been a little more specific on some things. When and how to take communion, what kind of songs to sing, specific reasons to dis-fellowship, how to handle political issues, including an explanation of the point at which a fertilized egg develops becomes a child, the appropriate dress for services, when services should be held…
Research has shown that religion is the main cause of most wars. I imagine that land, immigration, wealth, pride, and resources played a part in a lot of ‘em.
What’s the solution to all of this? I don’t know, but it’s not religion. If this country ever had another civil war, it would be much like the first one, in that Christians would be killing Christians. We just don’t seem to get along well with each other.
The answer to the many opinions concerning
the worship of God was answered by Jesus after a Jewish leader asked him what
the most important command was. Jesus answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with
all your heart, with all your soul, with all of your mind, and all of your
strength.’The second is, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
He apparently gave two commands that were way too simple for mankind. No worries. We’ve managed to weave a wicked web of details that the Son of God neglected to include. The wicked web is referred to as “religion”.
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