miscellaneous thoughts and explanations

In a comment on the previous entry, I read this: "I would imagine any farmer would love to have someone plow for them."

Not necessarily; farmers don't plow these days. That's how Cliff ended up with two huge plows last weekend for free... they were sitting on farmers' properties, unused for years. Farmers practice minimum tillage farming these days to prevent erosion.

So if someone allows Cliff to plow on their property, they'll simply be doing it as a favor. I'm not sure, it could even affect government grants they get. We do have a couple of acres that needs to be replanted, right behind the house. I don't know whether that's enough to break in the Oliver or not.

In the final episode of my mother's story, she mentioned being baptized at age thirteen. Since I was raised a Christian and grew up familiar with the various denominations and many of their differences, I don't stop to think about the fact that folks from other cultures don't know all the subtle (and no-so-subtle) differences in the denominations, of which there must be thousands.

Mike V., a Jew, left this comment: "I thought they baptize you as a baby but it looks like she was 13,probably a different custom in your church."

Mike is the first Jewish person I've known personally, so he'll forgive me, I'm sure, for forgetting the fact that not everybody in the world has a Christian background.

Catholics, Lutherans, United Church of Christ, Methodists (I think), and undoubtedly scores of churches baptize infants (and also older converts) by sprinkling water on their heads.

Baptists, the Christian Church, Assemblies of God, and the Church of Christ in which I was raised (and no doubt hundreds of others) believe a person comes to a knowledge of Jesus, is convicted of his sins, confesses those sins, and is then taken to a body of water (or a baptistry inside the church, these days) and fully immersed in the water, because that's how it was done in the New Testament. I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything here, please understand. I simply want to explain the different methods.

This got me thinking how the confusing the Christian realm must seem to outsiders. Why all the splits and denominations? I was raised not to call the Church of Christ a denomination, but to call it "the Church". All the others were considered denominations, but not us.

Sigh.

I comfortably go from one denomination to the other these days; I love, and am very comfortable worshipping with, the Baptists. My actual preference (and membership) is in the Assemblies of God (yes folks, the one Jimmy Swaggart was associated with). But I accept others, even some that many Christians call "cults".

This is as deep into a religious discussion as I've ever gotten on my blog, and I hope I haven't stepped on anybody's toes or hurt any feelings. That certainly wasn't my intention. Feel free to comment, but if things get too controversial or heated, I'll close comments. I've don't care to argue about religion. Personally, I'm pretty open-minded. "Live and let live" applies.