YOUR SAY: No matter the opinion, it's still the most important book

I would never presume to judge whether Dr. Bill Cummings is anti-Christian. I would like to give him my thoughts on why he has received this label. My Christian background is about as varied as you can get. My mother was Methodist, my father Lutheran. As a child growing up in Philadelphia with a father who traveled extensively for The Coleman Company and a mother who did not drive, my sister and I attended the closest church, regardless of denomination. We continued this practice when we moved to Macon and began attending Tattnall Square Baptist Church. Then I attended First Presbyterian with a good friend.

My next change came when we moved and found there was a Lutheran Church close by, so that became my church home for quite a few years and was the first church I actually joined. I remained a member of that church until I was asked to sing in the choir of First Street United Methodist Church, and I subsequently became a member there. During the years that followed, I sang in the Christian Science Church for five years and also Temple Beth Israel for 18 years. I came back to Methodism in 1963 when asked to sing in the choir at Mulberry Street United Methodist Church, where my membership remains today.

I am most at home in the Methodist Church because they believe in a personal gospel and "growing in grace." I am, like Cummings, a person who asks a lot of questions and am always looking for answers. The main difference is that I have always found my answers in God's Holy Book — the Bible. Through the years, God has been very good to me — blessing me in many ways and meeting my every need.

If Cummings is sincerely looking for Jesus, I can tell him he will only find him in this book that he is constantly dismissing as "full of myths and stories." As for me, I have found nothing on this Earth that I can depend on like I can depend on my Bible. Anything else I could read or hear from any other source would be simply the thoughts of another human being. Why should I trust them more than my Bible? As a former Lutheran, I understand discomfort with James' statement that "faith without works is dead" as opposed to Paul's "man is saved by faith alone." Martin Luther did not care for the Epistle of James at all. But to say that they violently disagreed with each other is the kind of comment Christians find offensive.

I disagree with some of my friends on certain points, but we do not "violently" disagree — that is where the doctrine of a personal gospel comes in. As to the disciples thinking Jesus was a man, that is not true. Peter stated that he was "The Messiah, the son of God." Did he and the other disciples truly understand what that meant? Probably not. That is until the resurrection. That is the most compelling reason for believing the gospel. Nothing could have changed those very human, frightened men into the founders of the Christian Church, willing to face persecution and death, but the knowledge that the man they had been following and listening to for the prior three years was indeed the son of God, who had been willing to die on the cross so that they could be saved.

These men knew Jesus better than anyone now living or dead and I find reading their remembrances of him to be very beneficial in my life. I do not like reading that it is full of myths and that those who wrote it hated each other and were always in disagreement. Many years ago I was complaining about the "begats" (I have since learned to love them). A dear friend commented, "you know that is the most important part of the Bible for the Japanese." That comment brought a whole new understanding of this wonderful book to me. Now when I read a verse that I do not understand, or that holds no special message for me, I imagine someone on the other side of the world reading that same verse and finding exactly the word they needed. It was not written just for me, but it contains everything I need. Please do not belittle it and those who labored to write it.

Roberta R. Johstono is a resident of Macon.

This story was originally published October 19, 2015 at 10:02 PM with the headline "YOUR SAY: No matter the opinion, it's still the most important book ."