CYBERCOLUMN: Amish Baptists_younger_51903

Posted: 5/19/03

CYBERCOLUMN:
Amish Baptists

By Brett Younger

My parents, my church and most of my friends called them selves Baptist, but in reality we were, in most of the ways that mattered to a teenager, Amish. We not only didn't drink or sleep around; we didn't personally know anyone who did. We saw those people. They went to the grocery store that sold beer. Everyone at our church went to the store that didn't sell beer. We knew where the pool hall was, where most of the drinking reportedly took place, but no one in my youth group had ever been there.

Not only had alcohol never passed my lips I had never seen it pass anyone else's lips either. We knew that there were seventeen-year-olds who slept around, but we didn't know any of them–though I tended to imagine such girls. I imagined those women wore bright red dresses or tight-fitting blue jeans. They had long painted fingernails and were always looking for young Baptist/Amish victims to lure into depravity. (The Amish kids may have been less sheltered than I was.)

Before I went to Baylor a deacon who was concerned that I was going some place more worldly than Bob Jones University pulled me aside and said,”When you get to college, you will face temptations that you have never imagined. There will be hard drinking, loose living women. You need to decide right now that you will have nothing to do with them, because if the devil gets hold of you she doesn't let go.”

As a freshman I was constantly on the lookout out for wild women with drinking problems, but I couldn't find any. After a while I let my guard down. While taking Introduction to New Testament I was distracted by a Lutheran pastor's daughter who sat right in front of me. Yvonne was attractive enough to frighten me, but she seemed like a nice person. After a couple of weeks she said “hi” and I said “hi” I was thrilled that we were hitting it off. After a few more weeks of waiting for her to say”hi" again I finally asked if she would like to go out to eat and to a G-rated movie. We went to a nice family friendly Mexican restaurant. We talked about our churches and how wonderful it is to be a preacher's kid, but when our food came, she said, and I'll never forget this, and for a long time I tried,”Isn't it strange to have Mexican food without beer?" I tried to keep breathing but couldn't. She might as well have said,”Isn't it strange to eat enchiladas without crack cocaine sprinkled on top?" or”Isn't it strange to have tacos without small children as an appetizer?

I realized who she was. She was temptation. The devil had finally arrived and she was wearing blue jeans. She was a hard drinking, loose living woman planning to lure me into the depravity that I had been warned about.

I spent the rest of the evening terrified, but apparently she recognized my spiritual strength, and the invisible armor of God I was wearing, and to my disappointment, made no further attempts to steal my soul.

What I've learned since then, also to my disappointment, is that for most ministers most of the time temptation doesn't wear a red dress or tight-fitting blue jeans. Temptation is not usually flashy, frightening or obvious. The temptations that are most likely to steal ministerial souls are quiet and boring. They are the temptations to be dull and apathetic, and they are more dangerous than Lutherans.

Brett Younger is pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth