A Tale of Two Jim's

One of my hobbies is doing genealogy research on my family. I have managed to trace my ancestry back hundreds of years.

Another hobby is to use my genealogy skills to track down old friends from my youth, and from the time that I spent in the military. Often I will hit a dead end, only to come back a year or two later and find some recent information on a long lost friend.

Recently I was researching what I could find on a family that I had known in the mid 1970's while I was in my last years of high school. Let's call them the Johnson family. The daughter was my age, and I remember going on one date with her, which was just a walk on the beach, as best as I can remember. 

Her father, Jim, was in the US Navy, and I think I had encountered him only a few times during the several years that I knew the family. 

The mother was the leader of my church "youth group". She was a very kind woman and a devoted and honest Christian. She had a great impact on me in the early years of my Christian experience and I have always looked back with gratitude on the time that I knew her.

Around 1990 I reconnected with them just briefly. They had retired to another part of the state and I had gotten out of the military and was moving. I tracked them down and stopped by for a short visit on the way to my new home. It was a nice visit, but that was the last contact that we would have.

Back to my recent search - unfortunately one of the best tools for tracking people down are on-line obituary's. And that is how I found them. I discovered that Mr. Johnson had passed away.

This post is about Mr. Johnson and my father, two men named Jim, and the similarities that these two men shared, as well as their differences.  I am gleaning the information on Mr. Johnson strictly from his obituary and what little I can find elsewhere on the web.

The similarities:
~Mr. Johnson and my father were born one month apart in 1938 - Mr. Johnson in North Carolina and my father in south Alabama.
~Both lived on a farm at some point in their youth.
~Both joined the US Navy right after high school and both men married within a couple days of each other in December of 1956.

~At some point during his Navy carrier Mr. Johnson went to college and subsequently became a Navy officer.  My father remained in the enlisted ranks rising eventually to Master Chief (E-9), the highest enlisted rank.

~Both men spent time in or near Vietnam during the war - my father was on an aircraft carrier but I am not sure in what capacity Mr. Johnson served.

~Both men retired from the Navy in the same area of the state - Mr. Johnson at 23 years of service, my father at 26 years.

~Mr. Johnson and family moved to a farm a hundred miles west after his retirement from the Navy, my folks stayed put for a few years but eventually moved 50 miles south to live on the banks of a river.

~After working in the furniture industry for a few years Mr. Johnson went to bible college and became a Baptist minister and during the next 30 years he was pastor over four different Baptist churches before retiring.  

~My father worked in real-estate for about 10 years and then started his own home repair business and worked at that for many years after leaving real-estate, until finally completely retiring.

~By all accounts, both men were genuinely loved by all.  In both men's obituary is a photograph of each holding a fish that they caught.  

Both men were conservative's - Mr. Johnson, a member of a conservative Baptist association, my father, for many years, would organize an annual fish-fry for the local Sheriffs department.

Both men died a month apart just a couple years ago.

The differences:

Mr. Johnson was a Christian, my father was not.  

There was never any indication in my fathers conversations during my entire life that would lead me to think that he believed in God.  There was no indication that he ever prayed or read the bible, but he did go to church for some years long after retiring - and he went for one reason - my Mom went.  Dad even did the maintenance on the old church, keeping everything working and repaired.  They even had a surprise day in his honer, just because of his generosity in spending his time and money on the church upkeep.

Dad was a good man and I don't think I could find anyone who would speak differently.  I never knew my Dad to lose his temper, never knew him to be mean or vindictive.  I never knew him to be dishonest.  Dad was only, and always, fair and helpful.  Even in my teens, on a few occasions that I encountered a young Navy sailor who knew my Dad, they would remark that they wished that he was their "Chief".  He was a universally respected and liked member of his community, always willing to step in and do what others lacked the knowledge or ability to do, even in his old age, even as cancer was slowly killing him.  The only thing that finally stopped him from constantly helping people in his very small neighborhood with home / car / boat / lawnmower repairs, was cancer.

So what's the point of this post?  Well, perhaps several points.  

1 - It is obvious - to me - that being a Christian WILL NOT make you a "better" person.  My father was "better" than any Christian that I ever met.

2 - If the God of the bible will actually punish my father for all eternity just because he never found it within himself to believe in God, then that God does not deserve any respect or allegiance from anyone, ever!

3 - Any person who would follow such a God should seriously, for the sake of human society, reconsider what they believe and why they believe it.  It is far past time for every Christian to examine why they would sing songs of praise and offer prayers of adoration to such a being as the God of the bible - the God who apparently considers the crime of unbelief worthy of eternal damnation.

As a Baptist minister, Mr. Johnson, had he of known my father, and known that he didn't believe in God, Mr. Johnson would most likely have concluded that, when my father died just a month before he himself died, that my father was sent directly to hell by the God that he worshiped.

Mrs. Johnson, if she were to encounter me now, if she is a follower of Baptist beliefs, she would likewise have to be consigned to the idea that I myself am going to burn in hell for all eternity for my lack of belief in God.

~ ~ ~

It forever amazes me that I could have once accepted such a doctrine - that I could have worshiped such a God.

It is this mentality that constantly makes me so very glad that I got out of Christianity when I did.

bob

r.u.reasonable@gmail.com

"If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men . . . What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel, to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do not believe this doctrine, neither do you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena."

~Robert G. Ingersoll