Dear Jimmy,
Well, I've about worn out both of your Uncle Orley's ears with my grumblin' so I've decided to write you. At least you have the opportunity to stop readin' if you want to. Your poor uncle probably could just quit listenin' but when I get my hackles up about somethin' I just can't seem to quit goin' on about it.
That's probably why he discovered somethin' he desperately needed this morning at Price's hardware store. He took off at a run, I'm tellin' you.
Jim White
What happened is this. Uncle Orley and I are big supporters of the Bluebell Baptist softball team. We went down to the high school ball field where the games are played to apply our spiritual gift of encouragement to the disappointment of the county's longest losin' streak. As it happens, our team needs an extraordinary amount of encouragement. To say we are winless is not quite accurate. We did win one game when the Episcopal team didn't have enough players show up.
As it happens, on Thursday evening of last week we were playin' the other Baptist church in town. I don't rightly know if the proper term is hardshell Baptist, but some of them do seem to be a pretty hard lot. One lady in particular. She's the one that got to me, you might say.
Orley is always sayin' I'm too outgoin' for my own good, but what was I goin' to do when she set up her lawn chair right next to mine? Naturally, I had to talk to her. We hadn't been in conversation two minutes when she let me know that our whole church was on its way to perdition because some of the women on our team wore shorts.
Now, at that my mouth must have flopped wide open because she is sitting in that lawn chair next to me wearing — you guessed it. Shorts! Now I haven't worn shorts in years out of respect for my fellow citizens. It just seemed the loving thing to do at my age not to subject other folks to such a sight. In fact, in the interest of state beautification, the General Assembly ought to pass a law that after a certain age or weight wearin' shorts or certain styles of swimmin' suits would be a ticketin' offense. Lord have mercy, what I saw at the beach! The state coffers would be so full they could stop cheatin' people in the lottery.
Well, a more intelligent woman would have just let the matter drop, but the hypocrisy of the situation seemed to call for comment. Well, I tried to be nice about it, but in spite of my best efforts, the lady took offense and then she lit into Brother Bobby and Bluebell Baptist like she was an Old Testament prophet callin' down fire on apostates.
She said we were slidin' down the slippery slope to everlastin' damnation because Bro. Bobby said in a sermon that it was God's place to judge and our place to love. It didn't matter, he told us, what that person had done or even what kind of lifestyle that person lived, we are not excused from loving other human beings and desirin' the best for them even if we don't agree with them.
Well, in Bluebell Baptist these remarks were met with a chorus of “Amens.” But this lady took the entire third, fourth and fifth innings to tell me how wrong that was. She said if we loved some people it was like tellin' them that God approved of sin and all manner of evil. God wanted these folks to know that he was rejectin' them, and it was up to us to tell them so. We needed to call down God's justice on evildoers like those short-wearing hussies on our team and homosexuals.
One good thing about our church softball league is the 10-run rule. If one team is ahead of the other by 10 or more runs after the fifth inning, the umpire can call the game, which he did. The players on our team took the loss like champions due in part to their spiritual maturity and in part, I suspect, to repeated opportunities to perfect their response.
The other team, however, whooped and hollered and called our team a bunch of losers. My lawn chair buddy saw our loss as God's vengeance on a church that was just pretending to be Christian.
I don't suppose it will ever occur to that lady that she could be wrong until she stands before Jesus. I wonder if he will say, “Why did you call me ‘Lord' and refuse to do what I said to do?” — which I know from bein' in Sunday school for a hundred years is found in Luke 6:46.
How can people who think they have attained perfection and are God's true guardians of the word completely ignore Jesus' command to judge not? And Jesus didn't say that we would be known as his disciples if we refuse to let sinners and those we disagree with worship with us. He said all people would know we are his disciples by our love. Now, I don't think that means we should accept anything as right, but if we are to take Jesus' words to heart, shouldn't we love even those we question?
Maybe I'm the one who will get surprised when I stand before Jesus. If he tells me I loved too many people, I will beg for his mercy and pardon. My only defense will be that I took his words too literally.
Well, I didn't tell you everything that woman said, but I put down enough to get it out of my system. I'd call your uncle on his cell phone and tell him it is safe to come back home now, but he's got the thing turned off. I know that because I tried to call him before I decided to write. I was goin' to ask him while he was in town to buy me some shorts.
Come see us whenever you can.
Love always, Aunt Ida