Purging

We gathered around a burn barrel behind the church.  As instructed, I had my one bracelet, some barrettes, and my roller skates.  We were to bring anything unholy and not of God…to be burned.  One person after another dropped items into the barrel.  As a lover of books, it was hard to watch as volume after volume was tossed into the flames.  Some teenagers had several bracelets, rings and necklaces.  A few, the horror of it all, had lipstick.  

Our church was being purified.  

My insides trembled as I wondered if I had remembered everything I needed to bring.  I knew the roller skates were evil.  When I turned twelve my mother had explained roller skating was a form of dancing.  I was now twelve.  God would be very angry at me if I kept any wicked article.  

Sixty-five years later, those sights and smells, shouts of praises and crying of children are permanently etched in my memory.  In the past few weeks, that remembrance has emerged again.  

I viewed a documentary called American Gospel.  

Transfixed by the scenes unfolding before me, I sat motionless as one hour and then two passed.  The true colors of pastors and speakers I admired were being revealed before my eyes.  I had read their books and our church had participated in their studies.  Blindly I had followed their precepts, without any research of my own.  

Their books and DVDs were available for purchase at Christian bookstores.  That meant they were alright, didn’t it?  

In one interview, a well-known pastor explained that going to heaven was easy and the road to hell was very hard to travel; just the opposite of what the Bible says.  Books written by people who say they died and went to heaven were compared.  No two views of heaven were the same.  One author has now totally admitted he made it up.  The “heaven tourism” books are big sellers.  

I have been purging my bookshelves.  Even though it pains me, I am no longer comfortable owning books written by what is known as a false teacher.  So, I’ve made a few trips to the dumpster. 

I’ve learned a lesson in accountability.  I am responsible for what I allow to enter my mind.  

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing.  Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable.  Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”  Philippians 4:8 (NLT)