We often say we should be careful to examine the words we teach, but how careful are we at examining the way we are teaching them?

It's no secret that once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away I dated a Baptist girl. I got to know a whole lot about Baptists, as her family were very devout members of that group and I found myself often defending the word of God if I wanted to or not. She was her father's favorite of three daughters, and he had decided for her that she was to marry a preacher when she grew up. That wasn't me. So his pleasure was to pick at me every chance he got. Once when watering his lawn he told me he was "saving it" and then launched into a debate with me about the foolishness of baptism in salvation. Another time he saw me mowing grass for my Uncle, and when I came by the house later he wanted to compare that to "works" and how useless they are (the grass would just grow again, right?) and the "wages" were something "earned" rather than "given". Yes, we had a lot of clashes like this, of which my girlfriend said very little for or against, seeing as she would prefer not to annoy either of us.

One day, though, he said something that I couldn't let slip by. He mentioned Christmas being a blessed holiday given by the Lord. WHAT?!? So I said, in simple terms, prove it. Well, much to my glee he got out his concordance because he couldn't recall the verse "off the top of his head" but he was sure it was in there. After looking and looking, he did what I would have done - he called the "pastor" and asked him. About 10 minutes later he showed up at the door (after all, I grew up in a SMALL town) apparently to do damage control. First he determined I was a member of "that church" (which amuses me to this day. The father said I was a member of "that church" and the pastor knew immediately what that meant. Wow!) and then he ignored me for about 10 minutes as he patiently reinforced that members of "that church" believe a lot of non-biblical crazy things, like baptism and earning salvation by work by making God a debtor, etc. It was very interesting the spin they put on the truth we teach so they can stomach it, makes me mindful to be careful in quoting them by word and in spirit, so they have no cause to dismiss me and no excuse not to listen to what I might have to say.

In any case, eventually he got around to me. He showed me that baptism (which I didn't bring up, he did) is not essential to salvation and in fact anyone who believes that is teaching contrary to the bible. He dazzled me with logic, such as "You know that part where it says 8 souls were saved by water? That's a reference to Noah. Now, what happened to those that were IN the water? They perished, see?" Eventually he gave up on me and went home. Later that night, as I was still hanging around playing cards with them, my girlfriend's father smugly said "I guess the pastor straightened you out." "Well," I said, with a big fat sarcastic teenage grin on my face, "at least I know how he stands on baptism, but what about Christmas?"

My girlfriend's father was more than a little annoyed, as you might imagine. It took a long time before he would even kid around with me about the bible again, and I don't think he ever heard a word seriously that I said about God from then on. That's too bad, because he was serious about God but he was a proud man. Some smart-mouthed teenager ruffled him up, and that closed his mind tight. I should have said "That's very interesting, sir (yes, we were usually polite to our elders back in dem daze) but could you explain about Christmas again? I would love to study that with you." But I didn't.

Now that I am much older, I see that I should have been gentle and careful. I should have left him room to not lose face, should have not been so quick to shove the truth on him. I was right, but I was wrong. This is something that I have to think about.

Randy