KurtSchroeder.com

Archive for the ‘Loosing my Religion’ Category

In the church, I mean as a Christian, I tried very hard to be honest to my self and others. I tried to better myself. This meant challenging my feelings as what I felt was right or felt was wrong. The Bible is the one standard by which we were to measure our direction, ourselves. It is the last authority. Where the Bible and I disagreed, the Bible was right.
My first pastor was/is a very intelligent, honest man. He strongly opposed so called “Blind Faith”. His name is Wayne Hansen and I a proud to have known him. He deserves my gratitude for many things including the tools given to those, like myself, who were under his care as a pastor. Wayne, did not curtail psychology, counseling, and spoke freely of his limitations, always offering alternatives where he felt he lacked. At times he could be rigid, but this more had to do with personal convictions and personal interests. He did not go to movies or listen to contemporary music, but did not stop others. He’d warn that some messages are just not healthy, be careful. That’s no different than any parent. At the time, early 80′s I never once heard him preach damnation on evil liberals, the immoral society destroying homosexuals, the Red threat, and so forth. Very different than many other pastors of the day in the evangelical tradition. I’ll guess this had to do with his honestly, intelligence, and secure personal comfort with himself. I think likewise those of his contemporaries who did likely had unresolved personal issues that caused them to continuously convince themselves of the wrongness, perhaps hoping to save themselves from their evil thoughts or actions. Example: a Pastor I knew preached incessantly about virtually all married men lacking ethics concerning fair treatment of their wives. Soon he was discovered in an extra-marital relationship. Even then he lied, saying it was not “yet” physical. I’ve likewise thrown a few rocks in my time, but to the best of my memory this was not ever true of Wayne. One morning he preached a sermon that was rather uncharacteristically harsh about spousal relations. It turned out this had all to do with him and he made it clear. Another time I believe he did not taking communion with the congregation. It was not talked about for reasons he did not share, but I consider he was taking care of others in his life. Wayne was being honest, making amends in ways that wouldn’t injure them or others. maybe in seeing an event that never occurred, but I do not doubt Wayne’s doing this where circumstances warrant.

This is not hero worship at all. Understand, I cannot start a blog titled thus with out first pointing out the good examples of Christians, believers, I’ve known, their sincerity and devotion to truth. Wayne is the best example by far than any other and there are quite a few!