65 Years –

By now, if you have followed this blog at all, you know I share my life experiences in an attempt to help other people avoid some of the mistakes I made along the way. I don’t do this because I think I know more than anyone else. Nor do I use this space for personal gain or because I have a specific agenda. I will admit there was a little ego involved when I first started it but it did not take long for God to show me that no matter how smart I thought (operative word) I was and how important my words were going to be to others, I still have so much to learn and this blog is helping me realize that and seek out answers to questions I have always had.

This entry is an acknowledgment of both my need to continue listening and learning and how deception can result in life-long misconceptions. To give you the full picture of where this is going I need to take you back to when I was four or five years old – hey, I’m almost 70 and some of the memories from that time of my life are a little cloudy. Not the one I am going to share with you. The events of a Sunday morning, some 65 years ago, are still impacting my life today. I recall, very clearly, the morning we pulled up in front of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Albuquerque. Before we could get out of my Dad’s 1957 blue and white Plymouth Belvedere he told us to sit tight until he came back. “We” included me, my Mom and my sister. I had no idea why we weren’t going in for the service but looking back on it now I believe my Mom new exactly why. About 5 minutes after my Dad entered the church he returned to car, calmly got it in, put the key in the ignition and fired up his blue pride and joy with the enormous Plymouth fins. My sister started crying because she wanted to go see her friends in Sunday school. Still not knowing what was going on, I chose to stay silent as the car began to move toward the parking lot exit. It was dead quiet in the car – the only noise was the sound of the V-8 pushing the sedan down the road. A couple blocks out or the parking lot my Mom finally broke the silence when she asked my Dad what happened. All I heard him say was, “we have to find a new church.” It took me a while and some pretty concentrated eavesdropping but I finally had an idea what happened. My father was a Mason and when the Elders at Redeemer Lutheran Church found out, they asked him to not come back to “their” church. That’s right, we had been kicked out of their church. To a child my age this was very, very confusing. I was five years old so there wasn’t a lot about church that I really understood at the time. I knew we enjoyed Christmas and Easter because of church. I knew I enjoyed Sunday school because we got to color pictures and learn a few songs. I knew going to church was important to my Dad and Mom because that’s what we did virtually every Sunday, followed by lunch at one of our grandparents homes. It is important to note that my Dad was only 31 years old when all this happened. To his credit he was determined to make sure his family attended church (keep this in mind, it’s an important insight as this story unfolds) so after talking to friends, relatives and doing a lot of study we found a new church. The new church was also a Lutheran church but belonged to a different synod and wasn’t near as hard line as the one we were asked to leave.

As time went on, despite the Redeemer Lutheran experience, the Masonic order became a very large part of our family life. My Dad continued to participate in his “Blue” lodge and started moving through the process of passing the “32nd” degree and joining the “Scottish Rite.” His goal was to become a Shriner – the pinnacle of Masonry. My mother participated in “Daughters of the Nile”, my sister joined “Jobs Daughters” and I got involved in the Order of DeMolay. They were all “fraternal” organizations associated in one way or another with Free Masonry. I never really questioned if what we were doing was right. We continued to attend church, my sister and I went through Lutheran confirmation. There was never any talk about Jesus being anything but the son of God sent to redeem us from our sins. When I questioned my Dad about Masonry and the role God played in it all he would say is that belief in God is central to the teachings of Masonry. In fact, both the Masons and DeMolay had a strict rule that a meeting could not be opened unless the Bible was open on the altar of the meeting room. When I joined DeMolay the first thing I as given was a Holy Bible. I think I was somewhere around 14 years old and like most guys that age I didn’t spend a lot of time in The Bible so although I still have it, I probably never opened The DeMolay version more than once or twice. I had a couple of Bibles of different translations and since the DeMolay version is a King James translation I decided all those thees, tho’s and thine’s did not work for me. Today I opened that Bible and was shocked at what I found – or maybe more importantly, what I didn’t find. We will get to that a little later.

Let me see if I can pull all this together and explain why I was compelled to write this post today. The Pastor of our church, Jim Burgen, started a new series last week entitled, “Hidden in Plain Sight.” I wish I could share some of the scriptural references Jim used today but it would be much better if you would simply go to YouTube, do a search under Flatirons Church, find “Hidden in Plain Sight” week 2 and listen to the message. Here is the link for anyone who is YouTube challenged like me. (https://www.youtube.com/live/3RshiwROEvM?si=x_a9g0kjvWQymNjt) It will be well worth your time. For me the entire message was impactful but Jim told a couple of stories related to the subject, one of which shook my core. The story Jim related was about Free Masonry and their denial of the deity of Jesus. He shares some deep detail about their beliefs and some of their rituals including one particularly disturbing election day practice. Again – watch the video on YouTube (link above)- it’s a real wakeup call. The full on blast to me is the message about Jesus. For virtually my entire conscious life I believed the Masonic order was an organization that relied on a foundational belief in the trinity as it is defined in The Holy Bible. Like so many others, during the years my ideology was being formed I was not mature enough to ask the questions that needed to be asked. I am quite sure, like my father, I accepted what I was told and didn’t question it. Belonging to the Masons was ok because Masons were Christians, over and out. Back to the DeMolay Bible. I pulled it off the shelf today and opened it up. The text of the scriptures appears to be in tact but looking a little deeper I discovered something that bothers me. The first 16 pages deal with everything from the founding of DeMolay to the purposes of the fraternal organization and some of the ceremonies and rituals not designated as secret. There is a section that deals with “The Bible and DeMolay.” Another section talks about the need to be “religious.” Yet another section speaks about charity and ties it to scripture through quoting 1 Timothy 1:5. However, there is one glaring omission. Even with the scriptural references that are intertwined throughout the first 16 pages, there is not one single mention or acknowledgment of Jesus or the Holy Spirit. Coincidence? I highly doubt it after what I learned today.

So, what is the lesson in all of this? First, you must understand in my heart of hearts I know my father would never have intentionally deceived me about anything and especially about his faith in Jesus. What I do believe is he himself had been deceived and unfortunately never had anyone who came alongside him to encourage him to question the path he was going down. Masonry was a family thing. His father was a Mason so he became a Mason. It was something you didn’t question, it was something you did. He wasn’t spiritually mature enough to know he needed to turn away from the deception and to embrace the truth of the Gospel. My guess is he never realized, in his entire 82 years of life, how he had been deceived. I can assure you that when I was 31 years old there is no way I was mature enough to see through the myriad of ways I was being deceived and separated from Jesus. There is no question, there is a deceiver out there who wants to ruin your life, separate you from the love of Christ and make you believe your life is all about you and nothing else.

It is scary and very humbling to realize that I lived under a false assumption for 65 years. I could sit around and beat myself up about it but I know God does not hate me because of it. I firmly believe it was God himself who protected me from falling into the same trap. In 1978, not too long after Terrie and I married, my Dad approached me and said, “it’s time for you to join the Masons.” I didn’t question it, it was an expectation. I filled out the application and expected the journey through the Masonic degrees would begin soon. A few weeks went by and finally my Dad called me one day and explained that my application had been turned down due to my job. At the time I was working for The Gallo Winery and according to the rules of the lodge no one involved in the liquor business could join. Talk about a hypocritical contradiction – I had never been to an event with my Dad’s Masonic friends where liquor wasn’t part of the get together. The Shriner’s were especially known for their parties that included alcohol. Although my father waged a successful campaign to change the rule, I never again thought about becoming a Mason. Today, I am convinced God steered me away.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines deception as: the act of causing someone to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid : the act of deceiving. Use my example as motivation to look at everything you do and believe. Stop denying the existence of the great deceiver and embrace the truth and freedom of The Gospel.

It would be easy for me to have a pity party over my lack of discernment. 65 years living under a false assumption. 65 years of allowing myself to be deceived. Feeling defeated would be an understandable reaction. That would be the difficult and depressing way to handle this news. But I have a much better way. A way that encourages me. A way that is available to every single person. A way that will always defeat the efforts of the great deceiver. In John 8:31 Jesus said, “if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” How much easier could it be?

Soon I will celebrate my 70th birthday. It would be easy to allow myself to be deceived into believing I have learned all I am ever going to learn. Obviously not!