Odds and Ends, Public Life, Standards

Car Codes of Conduct

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Since its inception, the primary purpose of the automobile has always been to provide venue for pastors to lose their testimonies. It may also (as a strictly secondary function) provide some modicum of useful transportation.

It is a well known fact in fundamentalism that even the most restrained and moderate of people lose all self-control once they set foot in a motor vehicle. Unless carefully monitored, riding in a car with a member of the opposite sex can lead to fornication, drunkenness, and head-on collisions with trains — possibly all three at the same time.

In the interest of preventing these unfortunate occurrences, the following rules should be observed by any fundamentalists who intends to travel by automobile.

– Pastors should never enter a car with a woman. Ever. If that means leaving her to be eaten by wolves then so be it. Your ministry is too important to risk.

– If two people who are dating should happen to need to travel together for sanctioned ministry purposes such as traveling too and from Bible college, they must travel in no smaller vehicle than a 15 passenger van and be seated for maximum separation distance between them. Please consult the following chart:

– If two people are currently pretending not to be dating so they can sit together on the long, long missions trip to Mexico they must be separated at all times by the width of a King James Bible (Wide Margin, Oxford Press, 1769 edition, 3rd printing).

– Chaperons shall be strategically placed in the vehicle in such a manner that all hands, feet, elbows, and knees are in plain view at all times. If a chaperon is unavailable this task may be relegated to a child who has demonstrated great alacrity in the tattling department.

– Every trip shall begin with a prayer in which the driver shall make it clear to all within earshot that the continued safety of all passengers from accident or freak avalanche depends on the above rules being kept with utmost vigor.

Observe these rules well and it may be possible to keep the inevitable vehicular orgies to a bare minimum. And keep an eye out for those oncoming trains.

Doctrine

Looking Back (An Atypically Serious Post)

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As I chanced to read through Philippians 3 in a moment of devotion, it suddenly seemed to me that those oft-read words had strangely moved and changed as if some Subtle Hand had writ them large upon my own life’s story. And what I read was this:

Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh
also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have as good as anyone:

Dedicated as a baby in a fundamentalist church, son of an Independent Baptist preacher, grandson of an Independent Baptist preacher, a fundamentalist of fundamentalists; as to the rules of conduct, I kept them to the letter (as far as anybody knew); as to zeal, a graduate of a fundamentalist college, a fundamentalist deacon, song leader and Sunday School teacher and uncompromising judge of those I deemed too liberal; as to standards in my music, dress, and language I was blameless.

But whatever gain and prestige I had as a fundamentalist, I now count as loss for the sake of Christ.

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing grace in Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of my worthless fundamentalist accolades and count them as garbage, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

And as I read, I wished with all my heart the words were truly true — a lesson long since learned and mastered instead of one so often and so easily forgot.

Christ, save us.

Ok, enough maudlin introspection. Back to the regularly scheduled insanity…

Family

Keepers At Home Redux

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Undesirable consequences of wives going out to work

a. Since she is bringing home part of the income she will want a voice in how it is spent.

b. Children to a babysitter — no discipline.

c. Contact with other men at work — temptation, flirting, unfaithfulness and divorce. It is no accident that the divorce rate has been climbing since World War II when women went to work for the war effort.

d. The husband will soon be expected to help with the housework – after all, it is unfair for him to expect her to work all day and then do all the housework.

e. Meals will be thrown together — leftovers and TV dinners.

f. Physical well-being will suffer — she cannot work all day and clean house all night; she is the “weaker vessel.”

g. Her spiritual life and that of her children will suffer.

h. The added income will lead to worldliness — the things of this world will become more preeminent in the life.

i. In attempting to make it up to the children you will spoil them — you feel guilty about leaving them so you let them do anything they want and you give them anything their little heart desires. This will not compensate for parental neglect nor will it cause them to love you.

j. Her respect for her husband will lessen — she will resent the fact that he couldn’t provide for them. Should she be moved ahead by her employer, she will wonder why he never gets a promotion. Perhaps she will make more money than he does; she begins to chide him, trouble ahead.

k. Children rebel in reaction to the neglect and lack of love. Again it is no accident that teenage and college age rebellion runs parallel with the increase in working wives over the last thirty years.

Taken from the The Christian Home Manual by Paul L. Freeman

A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.