I grew up attending Bethel Baptist church in South Charleston, West Virginia.   Bethel was an American Baptist church and my family line was all Southern Baptist.  Gasp.  What had ever possessed my mother to join an American Baptist Church?  In addition, the church had a woman pastor.  Double gasp.  

I never thought anything about it.  I grew up that way, came to the Lord through the preaching of that woman.  She baptized me.  God was in the church. 

Later in a Southern Baptist Church where I interned, a visiting evangelist told the pastor I should certainly be re baptized so that all taint of that other church, (The American Baptist) and that woman preacher was washed away, I laughed at the idea.  How we have perverted the word of God to fit our own sexist ideas.  The church, at times are as legalistic as any of the Pharisees we rail against.  

I do remember as a boy, walking through the neighborhood and seeing the multitude of churches with different names and wondering why there were so many?   

I thought all churches were  the same.  You go in on Sunday morning and go through a class that was age and sex graded.  A teacher tried his or her best to tell you something about the Lord.  Then you sat while a pastor yelled/stomped/ turned red in the face or simply taught the word for an hour.  Then you promptly forgot the sermon and lived live the way you normally did.  

When it hit me that I was to actually do those things in my life and not simply preach them I was shocked.  it was much later in my life.  I was amazed not that I was to live a different life but that it took me that long to understand I was to live differently.  

Then slowly I began to divest myself of bad habits and things not pleasing to God.  Those habits die and are changed slowly.  Ones perception of oneself takes a lot of time to change however it can be done in Christ.  

I took a personality exam and it came back that I was probably a sociopath.  A borderline sociopath but still a sociopath.  The test predicted that I would have multiple jobs.  Lots of marriage difficulties because I would be prone to adultery.  In short I would be a mess.  

I knew the test was true and reflected my character.  I struggled with those temptations.   I only had one "job" being a pastor, for thirty years..  I only had two churches in that time, one in Florida and one in Kentucky.  

I only had one wife and was never unfaithful to her.  So while the test reflected what I should have been, what I really was had been tempered by God.  He saved me from doing what my character wanted to do. 

When I was really young my Sunday School teacher had us color something that could be a gift for someone in the hospital.  Somebody related to someone in the church or someone in the church was sick with something.  We were to color.  I don't remember finishing the paper or the sketch.  I really only remember the teacher holding up my paper and getting angry.  

"Would you like to receive something like this if you were in the hospital?"  It made an impression on me.  I wasn't particularly upset.  I knew art was not in my future.  I really had tried.  The teacher really thought I had sabotaged the assignment.  I knew her thoughts were, "no one could be this bad naturally"?  "This child is not a good kid.”  

It didn't bother me for I got plenty of that at home.  We lived in a "temporary" house my dad had purchased to eventually rent. I moved out after 17 years there and my Father and Mother finally moved to the  house my mom always wanted after about 20 years.  

The “temp" house  had two bedrooms and one bath.  Our family, Dad and Mom and five children, (three boys and two girls) would live there.  

it wasn't to be long.  We were always reminded we were too good for the neighborhood and too good for the house.  Actually I thought I fit the neighborhood pretty well.  It was all lower class kids that lived with abusive, drunk, fist fighting wives and husbands that were never averse to theft of anything left lying around.  

Dad was a spoiled rich kid.  His mother was just as spoiled and obviously felt children would get in the way of her drinking and gambling. So Dad and his one full brother and one half brother were raised by his wealthy grandfather.  

My wealthy great grandfather was idolized.  He had come from pig farmer roots to become quite wealthy.  He had built buildings in the middle of the capitol of Charleston that had his name on them.  What a great man we had come from was drilled into us. Later in life a man who knew him well was talking to us and matter of factly mentioned our great grandfathers secret of wealth.  "yep, whiskey and whores, that is how Liz made his money".  My great-grandfather was a bootlegger and a pimp!  So much for the wise benevolent community leader we had been taught to respect.  

I only realized years later that my grandfathers/father's philosophy of life seeped into us and it wasn't a good philosophy.  "Treat a whore like a lady and a lady like a whore"!  Good dating advice.  

My Father told us reverently of the great secret gift his grandfather had given him for his 15th birthday, a whore.  Certainly I bask in the knowledge of that wonderful birthday present.   So my Dad's philosophy was understandable.  Women were only to be used and certainly not really important.  A man could have and should have one wife and as many girl friends as he could handle.  A wife on the other hand had to be completely faithful no matter how she was treated.Men had to be tough.  Drink hard, chase women, gamble and fight, yes, that is what made a man a man.  

In order for my brothers and myself to be made men Dad was tough on us. Most  evenings Dad would come home from the "club".  Dad didn't exactly work.  He had lots of rental property that allowed him to stay at the "club".  Playing bridge and drinking.  I think each of us still remember the number of the club, Dickens 30119.  I have forgotten our first telephone number but I remember the number of the club.  Someone would call with an issue or a problem and we would call the club.  Sometimes we would call 3 or 4 times in an afternoon.  

I know I could pick out the voice of the man hired to answer that phone fifty years ago.  I knew it better than I knew the voice of most of my friends.  

It was good when dad answered the phone at the club because it meant he wasn't on his way home.  We really didn't want Dad home.  

When we were younger, We children would be playing in the woods behind our house.  We would hear my Dad's whistle which meant we were to come immediately.  We would run to the house to find Dad and find Dad waiting.  "You left your bicycles out"!  "You didn't empty the trash".  Of course he would have been drinking.  It was always something that we little boys had forgotten.  

Our excuses were simply "we forgot" or something else inappropriate for there really was no excuse.  We already knew we were going to get it when we heard the whistle.  

"You need a reminder don't you so you don't forget'.  What could one say to that?  Dad would be pulling off his belt and it was only a question of who got it first.  

It seemed like it was a daily routine.  Probably not every night, since many times Dad didn't make it home.  Ahh, thank goodness he would stay at the club or find some other woman.  

I remember one special meal.  Every Sunday was a great dinner fixed by mom and one Sunday we were at the table. I don't remember what I did or my brother did but my Dad decided we really needed to be taught a lesson.  "You don't eat with manners".  "You eat like babies"!  "Then you need to be dressed like babies".  We had to strip and were put in diapers.   We were made to  stand in the dining room.  Dad, while we were being changed, called all the neighbors in.  I remember the neighbors standing, pointing and laughing at us as we tried to hide but there was no escape.  It was the most humiliating experience of my life.  

Yes, we were losers.  That message was delivered every day in various forms.  

So when the Sunday School teacher told me how bad my coloring was, it didn't particularly bother me.  Of course it was bad.  I was bad.  How could I produce anything good?  

Mom was almost completely beaten down.  She was a pastor's daughter, working as a secretary in the Jacksonville, Florida naval yards when she met this sailor who became my father.  

She should have run screaming in the other direction but Dad was a good looking, personality plus man.  Maybe the hint that he was a "bad boy" drew her more than repulsed her.  

She loved us and nurtured us but she couldn't protect us or herself from my father.  

She would insist we would go to church and Sunday School every Sunday.  Not my dad of course.  Real men didn't attend church was his message.  He would put up with it in his boys while they were young but when they came of age they would drop it.   

It wasn't that we didn't like church.  It just didn't match the philosophy that we got at home.  Of course I really didn't understand or pay enough attention to what was going on most of the time.  The sermons were aimed at the adults, as they should have been.  

Now I understand that we were being raised in  a house of spiritual warfare.  My Dad was in the business of creating sons in his image, a satanic image.  My mom tried to turn us the other way.  

I grew up knowing fear.  Fear of almost everything.  Somebody is going to get you.  Someone is going to beat you up.  There is no place of safety.  

I developed into a liar.  Tell anybody anything that they want to hear and then you can escape.  Blame someone else.  If someone is weaker than you then grind them down.  Yes, I was a loser.  

Looking back on my teen years I would say I was a liar, a coward and a pervert.  Yes, I fit the neighborhood where we grew up.  

A child's face has some features that reflect the genes of the mother and some features that reflect the father.  The character is not seen but does essentially the same.  You get some of your character from your mother and some from your father.  This is how it worked out in my life.  

I talked to a fellow naval officer one night.  He was telling me what a great dad he had.  He and his dad did all these things together.  They called and talked and wrote.  He said that he loved his mother but number one in his life was his father.  

i was astounded by that.  I thought all fathers were the same.  God created fathers not to teach you but to beat you down. Here was a dad that raised his son completely different than how I was raised.  

Subconsciously I probably saw God relationship to me in the same way.  One really needed to "take out the trash and put the bicycle up" or God would call you out just as Dad did.  

Even when one becomes a Christian, the bad habits and beliefs don't fall away.  I wish I had realized children need nurture and support as I raised my own children.  They need to be uplifted as much as possible.  You can't love them too much.  

Isn't it great that God changes your identity?  Isn't it great that one, under  the power of God begins to walk differently?  Isn't it great that we don't idolize pimps and bootleggers.  Isn't it wonderful that women have a great and wonderful value both in and out of the church.  Isn't it wonderful that God doesn't want us to become hard men who drink, fight and chase women?  

Isn't it wonderful that God wants to  change!  us.