Family life – Page 2

Christianity & the Family I

I Timothy 5:4 But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents; for this is [a]good and acceptable before God. 5 Now she who is really a widow, and left alone, trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day. 6 But she who lives in [b]pleasure is dead while she lives. 7 And these things command, that they may be blameless. 8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

I.) Form

As we begin with our consideration of this text let us first speak briefly about the form of the passage.

The form of this passage takes the form of what is called a Hebrew Chiasm. We have talked about this in the past but it has been quite some time since we have raised the issue. The Hebrew mind was constructed by God so that it thought in what we might call connected parallelisms.

A Chiasm is when a series of statements are made elongated to different lengths whereupon a counter series of statements are made that correspond in a mirror like fashion to the first series of statements that were made.

Paul does that here in this passage but before we look at that let’s consider a couple Chiasms elsewhere in Scripture so you can get an idea of what I am talking about.

Isaiah 6:10

A.	Make the heart of this people fat,

and make their ears heavy,

and shut their eyes;

C¹.

lest they see with their eyes,

B¹.

and hear with their ears,

A¹.

and understand with their heart, and return, and be healed.”.

Another common form of parallelism is the use of negatives, where two opposing ideas are stated as we see in Proverbs 11:19-20.

A¹. Righteousness brings one to life

B¹. Pursuit of evil brings one to his death

B². a twisted heart is an abomination of YHWH

A². a mature path is his pleasure

You find this all over Hebrew poetry – Psalms, Proverbs, Job, portions of the Prophets but you also find it in didactic parts of Scripture and we find that here. Paul employs a Chiasm starting in verse 4 of I Timothy 5

A1 – Words to the Relative vs. 4
B1 – Words to the Widows vs. 5
B2 – Judgment on disobedient widows vs. 6
A2 – Judgment on disobedience Relatives vs. 8

Chiasms are all over the Scripture because, as I said, this is the way the Hebrew mind whirred. I’ve seen scholars take whole books of the Bible and demonstrate how those books were one long Hebrew Chiasm.

Think of this methodology as starting and ending with matching bookends so that the ending corresponds to the beginning. Meanwhile the bookends continue on through the passage so that with each initial statement there is some kind of corresponding echoing statement – perhaps in a parallel fashion and perhaps in an antithetical fashion – that will be made.

Well, I’ve introduced you to this Hebraic technique. If you want to know more you can find all kinds of examples on line. If you can’t find them just ask me. But the reason I bring this up here is so that you can read the Scripture in a more informed manner and so you can listen to sermons in a more informed manner. For example, it is a mistake for a minister to make two different points when Scripture is using a parallel Chiasm. It would be error to take the passage “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path,” and try, in a sermon, to make two points out of that since it is communicating the same idea in a parallel fashion.

Practice finding a Chiasm in Psalm 1 –

https://www.chiasmusxchange.com/2018/03/23/psalm-1/

Well, that gives us the form of the text and also offers a little lesson on hermeneutics. It is good thing to keep in your back pocket.

Now let us turn to the meaning of the text;

II.) Meaning

A.) Words to the Relatives

In vs. 4 the Holy Spirit is direct in the responsibility of family to take care of their aged. St. Paul clearly says that there is an obligation on the part of children to care for their parents who can’t take care of themselves even saying that in caring for them that those children are repaying them.

Now, this obviously implies that the parents had been responsible and had taken care of their adult children when they were children. This is something that we can’t automatically assume as occurring in our culture of broken homes. But the assumption here on the part of the Apostle is that children owe a debt of honor to their parents.

The problem here that the Holy Spirit is addressing is apparently there were deadbeat children who were fobbing their responsibility in this regard off on the Church.

5:16 If any believing [e]man or woman has widows, let them [f]relieve them, and do not let the church be burdened, that it may relieve those who are really widows.

Here the Apostle is communicating what should be a “Captain Obvious” statement that each Christian family bears the primary responsibility of caring for their own.

And in doing so, the Holy Spirit limns out the truth that distinctions are to be made as to what the family realm is uniquely responsible for and what the Church realm is responsible for, while at the same time teaching that where there is no family to care for a widow there the Church must be the family of God to those family-less widows.

I Timothy 5:3 Honor widows who are really widows.
And the idea of “honoring widows” there per the instruction of the Holy Spirit, is to financially provide for them. By calling the Church to “honor widows who are really widows” St. Paul is teaching that the Church must care for those who are really widows.

Verse 3. – Honor (τίμα). The use of the verb τιμάω in the comment on the fourth commandment in Matthew 15:4-6, where the withholding of the honor due consists in saying, “It is corban, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me,” and so withholding the honor due, shows clearly that in the notion of honoring is included that material support which their condition as widows required. So again in ver. 17 of this chapter, the “double honor” due to elders who labor in the Word and doctrine is clearly shown by ver. 18 to include payment for their maintenance.

So, if there is no family to materially support the aged then the Church must step in to do so. However, normatively it is the family that is responsible for the care of its own aged.

As an aside let us note here that the call for the Church to be concerned with taking care of the widow would have been a stark contrast to what would have found among the pagans who viewed women as second class citizens – especially aged women who had no kin to care for them. In taking up this care for “the least of these” the Church was demonstrating that the social-order that a Christian community would create would be far different than what was found among the pagans.

“Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” James 5:16

Now, let’s note briefly here that one implication of this is that the NT does not define “Church” primarily where the members are to be passive recipients listening to two sermons on each Sunday. The Church envisioned in the NT is to be active in the very way that Holy Spirit speaks here. It is to be active in caring for the aged among their membership if they have no people to take care of them.

Some may tend to think that the Church doesn’t need to do this today because that is what welfare and social security are for but I can tell you as someone who spent his first six years ministering among many poor senior citizens that the Government only gives the aged enough to make sure that they remain poor and dependent on the FEDS. They receive just enough to remain at the poverty level.

But this ought not to be so among the Christian aged. If they do not have kin to provide for them then they ought to be able to look to the Church.

However, ideally, St. Paul teaches here it is the family whom God has designed to care for its own and this care is to be taken up inter-generationally. Note, St. Paul says it is Christian children and grandchildren who are responsible to care for the aged. Today, given the longer lifespans we may well include great-granchildren.

This inter-generational responsibility and privilege works to tie the generations together along lines of both blood and faith.

And here let us note that this inter-generational care should work in both directions per the instructions of the Holy Spirit in Proverbs.

13:22 A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children,

So, the goal of Christian parents should be to leave an inheritance for their posterity and the goal of Christian children should be to provide for their aged if needs be.

And of course the once Christian West no longer embraces this Christian social-order mindset. Instead you will see on the one end of the generation continuum bumper stickers on these huge houses on wheels that say, “I’m spending by children’s inheritance,” and on the other hand you’ll see, as I did as a boy who was often in a nursing home since my Father worked there, old people abandoned and lonely.

Now, combine this destructive generational self-centeredness with the fact that the FEDS are systematically attacking this vision of inter-generational family faithfulness with its program of the inheritance tax, no default divorce, government schools and other programs designed to weaken the family. More later on opposition to the Christian view of trans-generational family life.

So… the generations in their families are biblically designed to take care of one another and we must pause here and ask ourselves if we are doing so?

There is a great deal that is beautiful about the Scripture, but on this matter there is little that is more beautiful of our Lord Jesus Christ, while dying on the Cross, taking up the mindset of God and there, in spite of unspeakable torture spends His strength to make sure his mother is taken care of after His death.

What is implied in the instructions here in I Timothy 5 is the idea of the Trustee family. Carle Zimmerman in his book Family and Civilization teases out the difference between the Atomistic family, the Domestic family and the Trustee family – all different models of family life. The Scripture presupposes and teaches in the main the Trustee family model;

1.) Trustee

When the state is weak, the extended family or clan is the primary social power, and the state itself is seen as a union of families rather than individuals. Rights and property belong primarily to the family itself, and its current living members see themselves as mere trustees, charged with passing along what they have received.

Illustration – Members of a band.

Carle Zimmerman noted that;

“The family brings the past into the present.”

This is especially true of the Trustee family. We find it exemplified in these lyrcis from Dan Fogleberg;

The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul
My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man
I’m just a living legacy to the leader of the band
I am the living legacy to the leader of the band

Dan Fogleberg

In the Trustee family the music does not die with the members of the band from one generation but continues on in the subsequent generations.

Pretend you were a member of a band. The band retains its name despite band members coming and going. The band excelled so much it became transgenerational. Despite key members changing over the years, everyone associated this band with a particular sound and quality. There may be variations but the band is the band regardless of the individual members who comprise the band.

Whether you had an album from when the band first started or an album from its centennial anniversary you could pick out its familiar sounds and riffs.

This provides an illustration for the Trustee family. The Trustee family, like the band, has key members come and go, and yet it remains the self-same Band. The family (hopefully) has the same quality from generation to generation. It has the same sound (same mannerisms, temperaments, dispositions) over the years so one can readily identify the family. The members of the family may change but new family members are not completely inconsistent with the family members who are no longer living members of the family.

The family is not a one-and-done generational phenomenon. It stretches from the past into the present while all the time remaining one unit. Sure, it has different members but it remains “The Band.”

Because of this I am as attached to my Great Grandfather as he is to my Great Grandson. Different members…. same band.

Because of this, it is not improper to say as I often heard when I lived in South Carolina; “My family has been knowing that family for 100 years.”

In Zimmerman’s analysis the family is the primary instrument of justice: the family itself is held accountable for the misdeeds of its members, and each member has a duty to avenge wrongs against his kinsman. Historically Trustee society have often been naturally polytheistic, with each clan having its private gods. Greece, Rome, and the Germanic barbarians all began with the trustee family system. However, Israel in many respects though not in totality also practiced the Trustee family model.

2) The domestic family.

As the state gains power, it takes over the role of enforcing justice and tries to stamp out the private justice of the trustee family. That the domestic family also has biblical roots to a degree is seen in the fact that the families of Israel were not allowed to implement the judicial death penalty apart from the concurrence of the community, and apart from witnesses. The family was not judge, jury, and executioner such as was found in the American lore of the Hatfields vs. the McCoys.

In Domestic family arrangements and social orders there are more duties that are extended to non-kinsmen. There is thus more co-operation between families. Judges, Magistrates, Sheriffs, public personnel as from many different families work together to make the social order work.

With the spread of trade, it becomes useful for a family to be able to sell the property which it had been holding in trust. Out of these pressures arises the domestic family, the type which Zimmerman believes constitutes the best balance of family and society. The domestic family consists of the living members of the nuclear family unit: father, mother, and children (Nuclear Family). Family property belongs to the paterfamilias; the living no longer hold it in trust. Rearing children is the family’s primary function. Religion provides strong social sanctions against divorce, childlessness, and sexual immorality.

3) The atomistic family.

As individualism and impiety spread, the ideological foundations of the domestic family are undermined, leading to the atomistic family. In an atomistic society, marriage is seen as a temporary and socially unimportant contract between independent individuals. As atomism spreads, divorce becomes common, adultery loses its stigma, sexual perversions of all sorts come to be accepted and even celebrated, children rebel against their parents, childbearing comes to be seen as a burden, and the population implodes. A society cannot survive without the will to produce a next generation, and so the decedent society is eventually replaced by a new civilization embracing a more virile (trustee) family type, and the cycle begins again. Greece after the Peloponnesian War, Rome during the late empire, and the contemporary West have the atomistic family as their dominant type.

It is in the interest of the State to undermine the family since an Atomistic family is no threat to the State’s increasing power. Where the family is weak there the State can assume the former’s authority and power of the family to itself.

Zimmerman sees Western civilization headed for destruction if it cannot revive the domestic family. One of the heroes of his story is the Emperor Augustus, whose anti-adultery and anti-celibacy laws can be seen as a rational attempt to protect the Roman family and hold Rome’s destructively atomistic tendencies at bay. This history’s most important hero, however, is the Church, which was forced to fight a war for the domestic family on two fronts, against both Roman atomism and barbarian pagan trustee-ism. By the High Middle Ages, the Church had established her own sacramental version of the domestic family as the primary type in Christendom. This work was undone by the anti-Christ partisans of divorce and immorality of the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

What we see in I Timothy and elsewhere in Scripture is a hybrid form of the Trustee/Domestic family.

That especially comes through in vs. 8 where we read;

8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

The “own” there refers to what we would call today a “man’s Nuclear family.” “The especially for their own household” refers to what we would call today “his extended family.”

And with that observation we will pause and take this up again next week, continuing to draw out the meaning in the text and then also considering recent and current opposition to this family model that we are currently fighting against.

Let us close with a quote from Thomas Fleming in support of returning to the Trustee family;

“For most of the past hundred years, defenders of ‘family values’ have limited their attention to the so-called bourgeois or nuclear family, and some have even pretended that these isolated households of parents-cum-children are a human norm. To anyone who knows anything about chimpanzees or primitive societies and, indeed, to anyone who has read the Old Testament or Beowulf or the Iliad, such a notion will appear preposterous. In rough times, isolated households are incapable of defending themselves from predatory enemies, and in the conditions imposed by modern state, nuclear families cannot stand up against the legions of public-school teachers, child-saving social workers, and children’s rights advocates. Stripped of the protection of offered by broader networks of kith and kin, the nuclear family cannot even protect its children from mass culture, much less from the vast network of social agencies arrayed against it.”

Thomas Fleming – 3213

Josh & Becca’s Marriage Homily

The orthodox and Christian expectation is that the Christian faith will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Indeed we are explicitly told in the OT text that is the most commonly cited text by NT authors that;

The Lord said to our Lord,
“Sit at My right hand,
Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.”

All of history is the fleshing out then of the enemies of Christ being conquered by a vibrant Christianity and so being made footstools of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So our expectation and indeed our certainty as adherents of the Christian faith and disciples of Jesus is that because Christ now has dominion Christ shall have dominion.

But now the question arises as to how that happens and the answer to that question is a long answer, all of which we will not be touching now. However, there is one aspect of that answer … one slice of that we want to examine briefly right now and that slice is standing before us dressed in a beautiful white dress and in a natty tux.

This dominion of Christ that is sure to cover the globe begins with husbands loving wives and wives obeying their husbands. The dominion of Christ, before it sweeps across nations, before it animates our social institutions in a Christian direction, before it defeats all contesting ideologies, it shows its first expression in marriage and family.

Dr. Bavinck reminds us that;

“The history of the human race did not begin atomistically, with a group of isolated individuals, but organically, with a marriage and a family.”

So, marriage and family are the seedbed of civilization and where that seedbed is fouled there civilizations die. So, if we desire to see the inevitable present triumph of Christ continue to come to pass we have need to tend to our marriages and to our families.

Tending to our marriage and families means concretely that husbands become so selfless that they die to self in order to provide, protect, prosper and train their wives and children in their undoubted catholic Christian faith, thinking, and living. This is why husbands are instructed to love their wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Tending to our marriage and families means, concretely, that wives becomes so selfless that they delight in wearying themselves out creating homes that husbands and children keep looking forward to returning to. This reality is pointed to in Titus 2 when the Holy Spirit encourages the Older Women to

urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, ⁵to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

In some ways it sounds so simple Josh and Becca. However, both experience and the evidence around us suggest that it is far from simple. At least that is the conclusion that we must come to if we lift our eyes and look upon the carnage that litters the landscape of our modern culture in terms of marriage and family. You need to take that carnage seriously because the enemy desires to make of your marriage what he has made and is making of so many shipwrecked marriages. Scripture teaches that the devil is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour and you can be sure as anchored in Christ the devil seeks to devour you and your marriage. Don’t let it happen.

Don’t let God’s glory be diminished in the sight of men because you didn’t cherish your marriage. Don’t split your future children in two because you couldn’t figure out how to be one. Don’t become another statistic that testifies to the success of the enemy.

One way to push back against the enemy is to realize that your Marriage i not primarily about you individually or considered as a couple. The chief end of your marriage is to glorify God by enjoying him in the context of marriage. The secondary end of your marriage is to benefit your people and your church community via the social stability that comes through a healthy marriage, via the knitting of families together, and via the children we pray will follow. Because of that reality the celebration here today is not primarily a celebration of you as bride and groom but rather it is primarily a celebration of the union that God in Christ is creating here.

We here witnessing your vows have great hope for your marriage in successfully portraying Christ and the Church as husband and wife. We here witnessing have great hope that your marriage will be a tool that God uses to evangelize those damaged and bruised by sin, who seeing the beauty of your marriage and family will say to themselves… “Whatever it is that accounts for the beauty, stability, and harmony of that marriage, I want.” We here witnessing your marriage have great hope that your Christian faith, which is more precious than gold, will be passed on to your children.

And now for just a moment I lift my voice to speak more directly to you in attendance. It is altogether possible that there are those here who are in marriages that are a strain to your health and are a raking of your soul. My heart breaks for you. There has been nothing more burdensome in the ministry than seeing marriages crack, split, and finally sunder. To you I can only offer Jesus Christ. To those beat up from marriages gone bad Jesus says “Come unto me you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ I can offer you no hope. Christ alone can forgive and then heal the selfishness and self-centeredness that often accounts for the failure of the institution of marriage — an institution — which was designed to be the place where one is supposed to find in life the most delight, the most security, and the most love. To those of you truly wronged in marriages and perhaps embittered with life, only Jesus Christ can return to you your joy. If you will cast all your care upon Him you can be certain that you find in Him your only comfort in heartache and sorrow.

Now, let us end where we began. Let us end, Josh and Becca speaking as to how your marriage is going to contribute to the dominion that is characteristic of Biblical Christianity. Let us note again how all this that you are entering into today is much larger, and much grander than what you could possibly imagine. With the crafting and building of your marriage, as consistent with Scripture, you are rescuing civilization and help to rebuild the culture once known as Christendom. You will be passing on to the next generation what you have received from your faithful parents and that is the manful and womanly work of incarnating your Christian faith into hearth and home. And because God is faithful he will use your marriage and numerous other Christ centered marriages to be a neo-sign pronouncing His faithfulness to His people. By such means God purposes to cover the world with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the earth.

May God bless you and keep you on this grand adventure and may He always remind you of how big all of this is. God is going to use your marriage to help in the work in making His enemies His footstool.

Interacting with Rev. Isker’s “Boniface Option”

“The modern family w/ its labor capacity auctioned off to the highest bidder, has more in common w/ ancient slavery than it does the household. You can be married. You can even have children. But you are owned by a master. Sure, your master treats you well, and your wife’s master treats her well. You receive lavish amenities. You have a nice McMansion in a safe cul-de-sac away from crime. You might even get to own a BMW or a brand new F-150. You get to enjoy plentiful food and drink. You get to wear stylish clothing. Your respective masters give you free time every so often to take your children (who are raised by strangers while you serve your masters) to places like Disney World. You might be able to choose to leave one master for another. But you will always have a master.

We don’t think of this existence as slavish because we equate slavery with utter destitution and barbaric, torturous abuse. But in the ancient world, that was not universally the case. Some slaves were indeed worked to death in the mines. Others lived decent, full lives tending to fields and herds. And others lived comfortable lives in the households of nobles. But one thing was certain — slaves did not have their own households. We think that modern life is not the life of the slave because of comparative luxury, but the structure of modern life is almost same. In fact ancient slaves w/ wives and children had something much closer to a true household than modern men today, especially the intentionally childfree.”

Rev. Andrew Isker

Boniface Option — p. 94-95

This is quite excellent and it doesn’t even include the thought that slavery is a guaranteed reality given the debt that most moderns have embraced. Scripture teaches that the debtor is the slave to the creditor and with the incredible credit card debt that Americans are weighed down with it is just as simple fact that we are a slave people.

However, we love it so. We love being slaves and the we here applies just as much to “Christians” as to non Christians.

The impact of all this slavery is we are a people who are afraid to speak the truth. Slaves dare not step up to the microphone and say anything against those who hold the keys to his chains. For this reason the one place where we might well expect the truth to be spoken instead has gone silent. The clergy in America belong to the slave class and so they go out of their way to kiss their master’s tush. As such the truth that Slavemerica needs to hear goes unspoken.

In point of fact with the rise of the heretical R2K the clergy are now trained to be able to wear their chains comfortably while at the same time extolling the ability to spend their whole careers in pulpits quite without telling God’s people that they can and should be free of their chains as well.

It is all quite disgusting and discouraging.

“You must stop thinking of yourself as a mere individual but rather as a member of a hierarchy with duties and responsibilities to his people. The world that existed before Trashworld, the world Christendom existed within, had a word for men like this; Nobles.”

Rev. Andrew Isker

Boniface Option — p. 104

All this friction that exists between Christian Boomers and Christian Zers ought not to be. If Christianity is premised upon the truth of “harmony of interests” than each generation should be seeking the best of the other. The Boomers as the older and wiser should be seeking to come along side and help the successive generations all they can. The younger generations, when they find wisdom among the Boomers should treat them with respect and honor. (This would mean losing the “OK Boomer sobriquet).

We need to understand we are the body of Christ with every part seeking to help every other part.

We will rise or fall together.

“You must teach your children to love the things you love and to hate the things you hate. You must overcome your aversion to hate. If you cannot bring yourself to hate a malignant world built upon child sacrifice and crowned with genital mutilation, you are not going to make it, nor will your children. Hatred of such things is something you MUST pass down to your children, and your must raise them among others who understand the same.”

Rev. Andrew Isker

Boniface Option — pg. 113

Look, the problem now for generations has been that our loves and hates have not been passionate enough as combined with the reality that we have not taught our children why we love and hate as we do. Instead we have emphasized the necessity to “be nice” and the consequence to this has been the reality that 2-3 generations of God’s covenant seed have walked away from Biblical Christianity. We have not taught our children how to think. We have not taught them what we believe and why we believe it and what we don’t believe and why we don’t believe it and the result is that we have lost too many of our children because they have decided that their loves and their hates will be other than ours. This is our fault because we didn’t detail out for them a particular world and life view. We gave them the gruel of “love Jesus,” without telling them precisely who Jesus is that they were supposed to love. Many generations didn’t train their children this way because they themselves refused to do the hard work of becoming epistemologically self-conscious. And that in turn is the fault of the Church. The clergy failed to sound the tocsin. The clergy failed to raise the cry of the character and nature of God, of the beauty of our undoubted catholic Christian faith, of the idea of honoring the fearful and majestic Kingship of our Liege Lord Christ.

We have lost our children because we didn’t instruct them to share our passions. We have contributed to Trashworld because we didn’t train up warriors and shield-maidens for the Kingdom of God.

And now God’s house is left largely bare. The warrior spirit has melted away. The willingness of our Christian men to fight the good fight has evaporated and the willingness of our women folk to tell their men to “come home with your shield or upon your shield” is absent.

Where are the warriors? Where are they who will teach their children to be warriors for the Kingdom? Where are men and women who will love God enough to manfully hate the enemies of God. Where are the men and women who will give up all to train up a generation who themselves have only one desire and that is the desire to slay the dragon?

Oh God raise up such a generation once again please and do it that thy name may once again be honored.

Carl, Buster, and Hoy

I was born in 1959. As such I am old enough to have memories of the vets who fought in World War II. I knew three of them fairly well. All three of them were two generations older than me. Two of the three were Buster McFadden and Hoy Bundrick. I met them as connected to the first Church I served in Longtown, South Carolina. The third vet I knew the best was my own Grandfather; Carl Edward Jacobs.

Buster McFadden (John Clyde McFadden) was born in 1920 and my relationship to Buster was as the chief Elder in the first Church I served (Longtown Presbyterian Church). If it had not been for God raising up Buster in my life, it is, at least doubtful, that I would have ever ended up in the Ministry. I had been almost 2 years out of Seminary and all my resumes had been greeted with silence. Then one night out of the blue Buster phoned me and asked if I could fill the pulpit the coming Sunday. The chap who had been filling the pulpit for them (J. Tomlinson) was a couple years ahead of me in Seminary and due to some unforeseen circumstances JT was moving on and JT had left my name with Buster as a possible candidate to fill the pulpit. When Buster phoned I wasted no time responding with a energetic “yes,” to his offer. One week turned into two weeks which turned into two months which turned into a call to permanently Pastor the small rural Southern congregation. There are many many stories here but in this entry we want to focus on Buster.

I quickly learned that Buster was a WW II vet. He had fought in the Italian campaign and like many men who have seen combat he did not speak a great deal about his time in combat in Europe. He had mentioned buddies that had been seriously hurt and killed in a general way. I also remember Buster telling me how he used to get ribbed by this comrades for being a good old Southern boy.

Buster loved Longtown Presbyterian Church. He was the keyboardist for the hymn service even though he couldn’t read a note of music. He played all by ear. It was amazing to me how he could do that. Not only was Buster the main Elder and the Church musician he also mow the large church lawn weekly with a push mower. He would also often go with me when I did Church visitation and even occasionally hospital visits.

More than all this, in order to bring Jane and I and the girls (Anthony was not yet part of the family) out to Longtown SC, Buster arranged with the congregation’s approval to purchase a doublewide home and place it on the Church property as Church’s new Manse. He further provided a glorious front porch, children’s play house, and an out building for storage. Jane and I were convinced we had fallen into paradise. (If you knew where we had been living in Columbia SC, that would make more sense to you dear reader.)

One of my clearest memories of Buster was on a occasion when I was especially discouraged because I had suffered a particular loss in something I was pursuing. Buster, somehow had heard of my struggles and he showed up at the Manse and on our large front porch he addressed me.

“Get up. Get up. You can’t let this bring you down. You must rise above this. We need you here. Get up. Get up. Get up.”

I was shocked. This man of few words cared enough for me and for the Church that he would speak more at that time to me than he ever did at any one time in the whole time I served with him.

Like all of us Buster had his quirks. He always wore brown khakis — shirt and trouser and jacket. He didn’t much drive his brown khaki colored truck much over 45 mph up and down Longtown Road. He could be a real challenge to get around to this or that project that needed done. However, there wasn’t many other doing projects at the Manse or Church and so it is understandable if it took awhile for projects to be attended to.

Like any Grandfather, Buster loved his children and grandchildren and could often be found doting on them.

I can still hear and see in my mind’s eye Buster’s gentle laughter. He was a good man to have as my first Elder. He knew when I came there that I was still working through some Reformed issues in my mind (especially Baptism) but when I told him this he said, “Well, Bret, I will tell you what, if you promise to continue to do your reading and studying on these matters we will be patient with you coming around.” Within two years I baptized my three toddlers.

Yes, I know, from a Reformed polity position this was hardly according to Hoyle but it worked for me and I’m not sure any other arrangement would have worked. I thank God for Buster’s presence and patience in my life.

There in Longtown Buster had a friend named Hoy Bundrick. Hoy was also two generations ahead of me and had fought in World War II. More than once he told me the story of how he was with Patton in Europe and he figured having been with Patton in Europe he wasn’t going to be shy about asking Dot’s Father if he could marry Dot. It seems being with Patton in Europe filled Hoy with confidence.

Hoy, like Buster, was a good man. I slaughtered my first hog with Hoy and learned how to “use everything but the ‘oink.’ Hoy was routinely hosting pig roasts. He invited me to my first “Turkey shoot” and took me around the community introducing me to people that needed to be ministered to. Hoy consistently attended our midweek Bible Study, though he was true blue to his “Church of God — Anderson Indiana” connections. By that connection Hoy took me to my first “foot washing” ceremony. I’ve never done another one since.

Hoy loved Jesus and “the Lord” was always on Hoys mind. He would spend a good deal of time grilling me about this or that aspect of doctrine or denominational differences.

Hoy was also generous with his time. I was working two jobs (the Ministry and 30 plus hours a week with United Airlines in Columbia SC) and sometimes I didn’t know if I was coming or going. Hoy would, at those times, step into the gap and do this or that around the house. Hoy would cut the lawn, or fix this or that breakage (Air-conditioning, fans, etc.) in the Manse.

The thing about Buster and Hoy is that even though I was forty years their junior they always treated me with respect and honor. I never had to fight for my place with these men. Maybe it was a Southern thing. Maybe it was a military thing. Whatever it was they made me feel comfortable in my own skin. I did not have to put on pretensions with any of the congregation at Longtown SC. They loved Jane and I for who we were, warts and all.

The third WW II vet I knew was a man I knew the best of all three. His name was Carl Edward Jacobs. He was my Grandfather. Carl was born in 1916 and so when the war broke out he was 25, married, and with two children. Those men were a little lower on the draft board priority list and Grandpa Jacobs didn’t end up going to Europe until a little bit later. However, there was still plenty of fighting to be done.

More than Buster and Hoy, my grandfather spoke more about the war. However, this conversation didn’t happen until the last 5 years or so of his life. There were a couple thing particularly he confided to me in a conversation. I never coaxed this information. It just came in the context of a grandson talking to his grandfather.

The first arresting thing that Grandpa told me was about what happened to him during his time fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. Grandpa was driving with the Big Red One moving men and supplies around. If you remember the Bulge was the last large German offensive push. The German army now was exhausted and depleted of men and as such the German offensive was manned by soldiers who had seen either too many winters or too few. There was German boys fighting as soldiers.

My grandfather had captured some of them. He brought them back to the Commanding Officer to ask what to do with them. Now, if you remember the Germans came within a whisper of breaking through the Allied defensive perimeter and if they had it would have been a new war. As such matters were hot and heavy. This included the disposition of Prisoners of War. Grandfather had these German kid soldiers who were POW’s and he asked the C/O what to do with them. The C/O told him “Take them out back there and shoot them.” Grandpa Jacobs responded, “I can’t do that. I have boys back home not much younger than these boys.”

Grandpa Jacobs also said he was part of the liberating forces of some of the German concentration camps. He spent some time describing what he saw there. It left an impression on him. I don’t know if he realized that what he saw would be the inevitable result of any nation with prisoners who could no longer even feed their own soldiers on the front lines. I don’t subscribe to the modern narrative that the Germans were building death camps that were any more remarkable than the concentration camps of all other combatant forces in terms of attempting to kill people.

Grandpa Jacobs was decorated (Bronze star as I recall) for his valor during the Battle of the Bulge. It seems he helped clear a road for the trucks to get through after a superior officer had told him to “give it up, and turn back.” He was a determined man (some might say stubborn) so it did not surprise me in the least that he cleared the road after some Lewy told him to turn around.

I could never know for sure but I think Grandpa Jacobs wore some of the hardness of that war through the rest of his life. Granted, up to that point he had had a pretty hard life and so maybe it wasn’t the war but just hard-scrabbling it as a child in a really bad family life during the depression.

The man was a workaholic. To this day I’ve never seen a man work harder, morning, noon, and night as my Grandfather. There are many stories down this line that perhaps will be told another. Suffice it to say that being a dairy farmer found him up at dawn to milk, to then move on to the other chores (hay, chopping wood, silage, tending to the other crops, etc.) to be done to keep the farm afloat, to be followed by the evening milking. Today my standard for working hard remains the memory of how that man worked on the farm.

Hoy, Buster, and Carl — three men from what is called “the silent generation.” Three men whose lives ended up being bound up with what happened “over there.” Three good men who did not fight and watch their buddies die in order that this country would become what it now is. Were they alive still they all would take up arms again, only this time to overthrow the Communists in Washington and in every state capital in America.

They were good men. Not perfect but honorable and men today are not the men they were.

I thank God that I was given the gift of knowing each one of them.

Remembering My Grandmother Fondly; Eva Doris McAtee (Bower)

I’ve been meaning to write this post for several years now but it always seemed to get pushed out of the way for something else. Now, I am writing about her because I am feeling my own mortality more. I mean, it is not the case that I am having dark premonitions, rather it is a sense that if I don’t write about her, she may well be lost to the ages, seeing as there are not too many left around who remember and of that number fewer even still whose writing habits extend beyond writing out a grocery list. So, allow me to spend a few lines praising my grandmother, Eva Doris Bower McAtee.

Grandma McAtee was born in 1905 coming into the world as the daughter of David Ezra Bower and Barbara Margaret Bower (born Chamberlain). She was the youngest of seven children being born when her Mother was 40 and her Father was 47. I know absolutely nothing of her childhood. When one is a grandchild one fails to ask those kind of questions and so her past is largely lost to me. I know she grew up in a hard scrabble life as was characteristic of much of rural America at that time. Her mother died when she was 23 and being the youngest she was left at home to take care of her Father who died when she was 31 and likely still at home. I say likely because this period of her life is kind of fuzzy. Her Father dies in 1936, she gets married the same year and she gives birth the same year to her only child, my Father.

So, 1936 was a bellwether year for Eva. No doubt still mourning over the death of her Father, Eva names her son David, introducing him into a home with several half-siblings. You see, Eva married Carl Bernard McAtee who was married to my Grandmother’s best childhood friend, Bertha Collins McAtee. Bertha had died giving birth in 1932 and in God’s providence, of which I know few details, eventually Eva, shortly after her Father’s death, married Carl McAtee and became an instant Mother to a rather large family that very soon included her own son.

I wish I could say that the marriage was a happy marriage but as is often the case with Step-Mothers and blended families combined with Carl McAtee’s reputed fondness for liquor Eva did not have a happy marriage to Carl. Of course, soon enough, the country is sunk in the throes of depression and one can only imagine the struggles of a woman trying to protect her own son from the dynamics of half-siblings that may have reason to resent him and her. There were all kinds of stories that I will spare you dear reader about those family dynamics but I will pass them by except to say that by all accounts they were not good years.

Maybe all of this is why I remember Grandma as being a resilient person. She was able to cope with the vicissitudes of life and did so without me ever remembering her complaining.

Carl Bernard McAtee passed away in 1952 after 16 years of marriage and 47 year old Eva and her 15 year old son (my Father) were left to make it with the help of her widowed Mother-in-law (Lorraine Reid McAtee) who lived directly across the old dirt road that ran between their houses. Grandma-Great was reputed to have smoked a corn cob pipe and lived by observing old superstitions (e.g.; don’t sit in a rocking chair that is moving).

Perhaps Lorraine had a soft spot for Eva, having lost her own husband (Murlin) in 1929 at 52 years of age. I know that David McAtee had a tender spot for his Grandma Lorraine McAtee as witnessed by the rose from her funeral in 1963 that remains pressed in his Bible that was passed down to me.

All of this kneaded grit into Eva. I can remember more than once my Father shouting to his mother (my Grandma), “Damn it Mom, would you quit being so stubborn.” So, my Grandmother was fiercely independent. That reality was demonstrated by the fact that she lived in her small farm-house in Tekonsha, Michigan until appx. 1969 without electricity or running war coming into the house.

When we would go to visit her, I have boyhood memories of the inside pump that would have to be worked to draw the water and then how we would have to heat up the water to do the dishes. One pan of water to wash the dishes in and one pan of water to rinse those same dishes before drying them and putting them away.

Grandma McAtee, being widowed, had to work to keep life and limb together. My vague memory recalls that she retired in the late 60s from an orphanage in Coldwater, Michigan. As I recall she worked in the kitchen as a cook but that memory is hazy.

I remember visiting her frequently. We live approximately 45 minutes away and it seems that many weekends we would go for a visit. She would always have the old archway cookies waiting to be generously distributed. As any rural grandmother from that generation she knew her way around the kitchen and visits to grandma were always characterized by a table full of food. My memory of her is often in this context as she puttered about the kitchen and dining room in her full length apron carrying this or that plate of food. When the food was finally set upon the table there would be a table prayer. A table prayer is so foreign to 2023 American families but in the late 1960s it was still something that was part of the furniture.

Speaking of meals, Eva spent a good deal of her time cooking wild game. Her farm house was surrounded by woods and fields wherein squirrel, rabbit, pheasant and deer were often harvested for the table. I can remember many a meal of squirrel and dumplings, or pheasant or venison cooked with perfection. She prepared them all and was involved a good many times in the pulling the pinions off the pheasant after being dipped in the hot water and paraffin mixture.

After the meal and clean up there was the inevitable family game of aggravation. She always used the white marbles. I miss those family times united around the throw of the dice and the movement of the marbles across the board punctuated by laughter and the sighs and giggle accompanying the progress of the marbles across the board moving home.

Grandma was a big Detroit Tigers baseball fan. I still have memories of listening to the radio with her as the Tigers battled the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1968 World Series. To this day I remember asking her what a RBI was and feeling like I had learned some deep secret that none of my friends would know when she told me.

Like most Grandmothers she never missed a birthday and on my birthday, without fail, she would put in the card she would send me in the mail her widow’s mite. Then when we would see her next I was sure to get a gift of pajamas for my birthday. At least that’s what I recall. I remember thinking at that time that I would never run out of pajamas.

Having lived a hard scrabble life, she was frugal with her money and so there was little excess associated with her spartan life. In 1980 I was hard put to meeting my rent obligation while living off campus during college. When she found out she sent me enough money to pay my rent with wise counsel on how important it was to be careful with my money.

I don’t think I ever heard a harsh word come out of her mouth. Maybe that was from being beat down so hard in her life. Maybe it was because she was just a kind person. Regardless of the reason, I was a child who needed to be around an adult who could only speak kindness and because of that I remember her, now almost 40 years since she passed with fondness.

Later in her life (appx. 1969, I think) at 65ish Grandma remarried to Floyd Persail. It was an adjustment to address her now as Grandma Persails as opposed to Grandma McAtee. Though remarried, I never felt like any of her affection diminished towards her McAtee grandchildren even though she inherited, via marriage, a passel of Persail grandchildren. She showed her humility when her new husband put up a large photograph of his former wife who was deceased in the middle of her tiny living room in the tiny house in Tekonsha. So far as I know she never uttered a word like, “What the blue blazes are you doing putting up the picture of your dearly departed wife so as to find it front and center in our home?”

It’s really kind of humorous because for years I would stare intently at that photo when visiting Grandma and wonder, “Who in the world is this woman who suddenly showed up covering most of the wall in Grandma’s living room?” It was only years later that I would learn that that was Grandpa Floyd’s deceased and honored wife Hazel. I’m now in my 60s and I can’t tell you that I would recommend this as a course of action for second marriages.

Grandma got to meet Jane circa 1981 while we were dating. She told Dad about Jane that, “I better be smart and not lose this girl.” So, you see with that comment she had good people instincts.

In 1982 I moved away from Michigan. Before moving I had been able to help her with a bit of a crisis when Grandpa Floyd landed in a hospital with a clot problem. She needed someone to chauffer her back and forth to the hospital and as I was sitting out college for a semester because I was broke, I was able to aid her in those trips and in sitting with Grandpa Persails in the hospital. During that time, she was as steady and stable as ever. I don’t think I ever recall her being unnerved or worked up about anything. Straight and steady. Neither too high nor to low.

Before I moved away from Michigan to Maine in 1982 I visited with Grandma. By this time she had been diagnosed with a cancer. She was clearly distressed by that news and by the fact that her son had recently moved to Florida. With my Dad’s move to Florida and the news of her illness it is my conviction that she was feeling alone. Dad had always been there as a kind of extra layer of protection since his military duty had been completed in the 50s. I remember our last conversation. She said she had done some things that she didn’t want to recently but she felt like she didn’t have any choice. To this day I have no idea what she was referring to.

I was married to Jane in 1983. She could not come to the wedding due to the advance of the cancer. I know she would have given anything to have been present. A few months later in the winter of 1984 Eva Doris McAtee — my grandmother slipped this mortal coil. I wish I could have been near to visit her during her dying season. Not having her son or grandchildren around her as she fought cancer is still something that haunts me about her dying time.

Another of my regrets was that the Methodist Church she attended with their female “minister” was already far left. I don’t know how much exposure my grandmother had to Biblical Christianity. At this time I was Arminian and so while I could identify the leftism of her local church I wasn’t much good besides that.

As a wife, mother, and grandmother during some very hard times she lived a very courageous life. She was an important person in my life and as such I’d like folks to know a wee bit of her before she, and eventually I, are lost in the sands of time in terms of the memories of the subsequent generations.

These are my 4-6 decade old reminiscences of my grandmother. Others may remember otherwise. Others may and should think it proper to correct where my reminiscences are not accurate. However, this is my attempt to honor my (grand)Mother.