InTouch Ministries Out of Touch

April 19, 1998

Dear Charles,

   Oh dear; I've enjoyed your preaching for so long,
basically, and now it seems you can't see the forest for the trees.

	I should mention, I suppose, that invariably you have said
things with which I would take issue in your television broadcasts
(just as I mentioned in an earlier open letter to Frank P. [and yes,
anonymity seems to be a thing of the past for this site on the 
Internet, so I divulge a little more about the producer, if you will,
of the sermons I have criticized in the past. Actually I have
apologized to The Baptist Hour's pastor for the tone if not the
content of those earlier criticisms, though he hasn't acknowledged
it.].)

	At any rate, an earlier than normal Sunday morning found me
scrolling through cable offerings and, at the next-to-last channel
on my provider, discovered an early edition of your In Touch broadcast
on the Family channel and, as usual, I decided to watch.

	I only discovered at the beginning of your sermon on the eight
am broadcast with which I'm familiar that I chanced upon it right at
the beginning of your sermon, and your statement just following that
imaginary-problem sequence of some terrible happenings (that can happen,
like an unmarried pregnant daughter) caused me to take pen in hand and
make some notes.

	"Things in those (New Testament) times were very different from
what we sometimes think they were" is pretty close to the statement I'm
referring to and, coupled with the fact that your scriptural 
references were to a small portion of the Sermon on the Mount, 
actually compel a response.

	Matthew Chapter 6, verses 25-34, provided the focus for your
sermon. (I'm including the verses preceding and following your selection:
24  No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love 
the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. 
Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
25  Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat,
 or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not 
the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
26  Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor 
gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much 
better than they?
27  Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
28  And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how 
they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
29  And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed 
like one of these.
30  Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and 
to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye 
of little faith?
31  Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we 
drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
32  (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly 
Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
33  But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all 
these things shall be added unto you.
34  Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take 
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
7:1  Judge not, that ye be not judged.)

	You don't use the King James Version, of
course, but I've gotta say it's more aligned with truth than yours. "You cannot
serve God and money" is one Baptists don't, in my experience, like to dance
around with (so to speak), and I'm putting myself dead in your aim (I reckon) 
by including the first verse of chapter seven. So it goes...

	We don't have to worry about food or drink ("there's plenty of water
around" is about what you said about 'drink') or clothing, because there's
plenty of all of those, but not for people of New Testament times because
"it was a whole different story".

	Give us a break, Charley. Tell us this was a sermon you made as a
seminary student.

	In the first place, you forget the tired, poor, huddled homeless
of Amerika, even, to say nothing of the masses in the world who struggle
for daily bread, or the Peruvians living barefooted in the snows of 
The Child (El Nino, everybody knows huh?).

	But let's go back to then, when you say it was different. Some people
back then sure enough not only didn't have pantries full of canned goods 
and staples, they didn't have a place to lay their head (ring a bell, 
anybody?), let alone have closets and attics full of clothes and shoes and
extra winter coats. (Today some call homeless people 'street people' because
that's basically where they live. Big difference from back then when they were 
called 'path people' I guess.) Back then, you inferred that water was not the
abundant resource it is today. Really though, the New Testament peoples were
living in the same land that some would describe as 'arid' today. You wouldn't
find a population center away from a water source, but don't forget Stephen King's
adage about keeping those 'undesirables' on the move. But hey, even rich people
might break a leg on their donkey and not just thirst but hunger as well, trying
to make it to that big committee meeting that's worth going out of town for just 
to cop the per diem. (Did anybody read what I wrote about the Episcopalian dude 
asking the city council here for fifty bucks a month to buy 'transients' bus tickets 
to the next bigger city?)

	I really don't think things really were terribly different
come to think of it. Just today I read again in Isaih 1:17  "Learn to do well; 
seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow."
"Come now, and let us reason together" the next verse goes, and "though your sins
be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow..." Seek judgment: just 'cause it don't
look like it possibly could happen is no reason not to try and make it happen. The
oppressed and the fatherless and the widows are the undesirables.

	I really see no reason to continue; I'm gonna believe this sermon was just
a test to see if I was paying attention.

	But I raised a point with Matthew 6:24 that you touched upon in your
sermon, preacher, and I guess I should comment on that (and another thing or
two). You admonished your congregation and television viewers "don't allow
yourself to get caught up in the rat race". Surely you jest. To participate
is to get caught up in it, and if you think street people aren't caught in
a rat race to beat all, you ain't ever been on the street. But I can see that
you might say this is mere semantics, and I would agree. But stopping to smell
the roses isn't just for the well-off, and that's just paying lip service, I
got to say, to the fact that we are in a race most aptly referred to as
'rat'. Timothy Leary didn't quite get it right when he said tune in (to reality)
and drop out (of the rat race). We can't do that, for the most part, because of 
this thing we call 'time'. Drop out of the bullshit stuff, he might have said,
and let's change it all by getting our priorities right
by reasoning together that our first duty as people is to agree that everybody eats
a good meal today and that everybody who needs a coat gets one. (And I reckon I'd
agree that's really thinking small.)

	I made a lot of notes today, because you got a lot
of things wrong. Maybe later I'll continue this.

	My prayer (the effectual, fervent prayer of a
righteous man availeth much, Chuck; the Bible tells us that;
only it also says there is none righteous, no, not one) for
you and everyone caught in the devil's trap of ordinary
mind is that you might renew your mind and be transformed
like Romans 12:2 says; and that you might prove that
good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God of which
that verse speaks. 

	Those last two paragraphs are from a critique I did a year ago on
a televised sermon, but they fit pretty good there, so I'm gonna repeat myself.

	You did talk a good bit today about God's promises, but you gave the
impression that these are promises for the future. "Give me your whole life
and you'll never want for anything" was a personal promise God made you in the
early '70s you said, for just one example. Then you ended the sermon by reading
that saying where God said "I am". He paused; I waited (you read). When you live
in the past I'm not there; my name is not I was. When you live in the future, I'm
not there; my name is not I will be. When you live in this moment I'm here,
because my name is I am.

    The continued thrust of Jesus' message back then was simply that the
Kingdom of Heaven was/is at hand. To day. Right now, this very moment. Repent, He
continued, turn away from the rat race, take up your cross that identifies you as
a believer of Me. I've commented before on this site that putting on the yoke of 
Christ is like being born again, and I don't know many women who would describe the
act of labor being easy; also I mentioned that as His following grew, his sayings
grew even harder, so that most turned back to their old ordinary mind. It ain't
easy, and yet it's the easiest thing in the world. What do you say, Charles? I
don't doubt that you'd lead the way in trying this spirit of mine; does it bother
you much that I would try yours?

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