DONNIE JOHNSTON: Hot Religion, Cold Heart
There is a lot of that “cold heart” disease going around these days, especially in politics, people using religion as a means of hate and a path to power.
By Donnie Johnston
COLUMNIST
On a chilly Friday night when I was about 13 years old, I learned a painful lesson about religion and people.
I had ridden a student activity bus to an away football game and during the trip to the game a cute little girl caught my eye.
Of course, I was too shy to even think about trying to sit with her, but I did find the courage to approach her and engage in an awkward teenage conversation as we students walked around during the game.
I was on Cloud 9 until another boy, a bit older than me, walked up and started talking to this girl as if I was not even present. Within a couple of minutes, the two walked off and left me standing alone.
Yes, that hurt, but it was not the first time a girl had walked away because of some other guy, and it would not be the last (it still happens). After a few seconds, I gathered myself and walked on.
Later during the game, I saw the guy again – without the girl – and he came up and said, “Nothing personal.” When I asked him what he meant he said that a man in the stands, who had seen me talking with this girl, had promised him a dollar – a sizeable sum for a kid in those days - if he could get her away from me.
At first I thought he was joking, so I asked him who the man was, and he pointed out a middle-aged guy who was now looking at me with a smirky smile on his face.
It was my Sunday School teacher at the Baptist church I attended.
Why a grown man would do such a mean thing to a young boy is still a mystery to me, but at that moment I realized that everyone who says he is a Christian is not necessarily what he professes to be.
Two days later this man would be in a basement Sunday School room preaching a biblical lesson on love and grace, but I would not be there. I never went back to his class, choosing to only attend worship service. And when I was able, I moved to another church.
That Friday-night-at-the-football-game lesson has not diminished my faith. I still attend church, and I still say my prayers before I go to bed. But it taught me to be skeptical of those who preach one thing and practice another. And it taught me to beware of those who have a hot religion and a cold heart.
There is a lot of that “cold heart” disease going around these days, especially in politics, people using religion as a means of hate and a path to power. From the Moral Majority of the 1980s to the cult-like followers of Donald Trump, religion has too often been used as a tool, and an effective one at that.
George W. Bush used religion to get elected as did Trump, who readily admitted at Charlie Kirk’s funeral (and many other times elsewhere) that he hates Democrats, who are his enemies. That philosophy appears nowhere in my Bible, but many Christians today idolize a leader who lives to that end.
Religion in America is a curious thing. You ask, “Do you believe in the separation of church and state?” and everyone screams, “Absolutely! The government should stay out of the church’s business!”
But when you ask if the church should stay out of the government’s business, you get a different answer. I have attended services where the sermon was 90 percent politics with a little out-of-context scripture thrown in as justification. It got so bad at one service that I had to get up and walk.
What about prayer in public schools? Isn’t the school system a government agency?
While one guy was urging this practice (which I am not opposed to and was part of my early school life), I replied that that was fine with me, that maybe every morning students should recite a Christian prayer, a Buddhist prayer, a Muslim prayer and one for every religion represented in the classroom.
Well, you know how that went over. There followed a religious uproar with the final conclusion being that everyone but Baptists (and maybe a few Methodists) were going to hell. I saw no reason to pursue the “separation of church and state” discussion any further.
Statistics show that church attendance in America has been steadily declining for almost half a century. Despite this, there are more megachurches and TV evangelists than ever before.
Maybe that’s because the religious leaders of today preach that you either believe exactly what they believe, or you are wrong and you’re going to hell! I guess if they tell you that you are already hell bound, why bother?
I’m not perfect and I know it, but I do read my Bible and try to lead as Christian a life as possible.
I am a Baptist by birth and by choice, but I do not condemn those of other denominations and other faiths. I figure we’re all headed for the same place, but just taking different paths.
And remember that in this nation of religious freedom, there was a time when preachers stood in the pulpit and asserted that black people and Indians could not get to heaven because they didn’t have souls.
I often wondered how those people felt when the got to heaven – if they got there – and were greeted by the Indians they shot and the black men they enslaved.
Not a sermon, mind you, just something to think about when some guy starts quoting scripture at a Friday night football game.
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Amen
Yep he got this one right.