The Stoning of Stephen

It was a hot Sunday morning in July, 1959 at the First Church of God in Henryetta, Oklahoma. I was a 12 year-old sinner sitting in a front row pew, anxiously awaiting the alter call; that dreaded time at the end of each service when heart wrenching songs were sung in the most mournful guilt provoking tones. I had made up my mind that this was the day I would be “saved”. When the invitational hymn was sung that day I was determined that I would go forward to kneel at the altar and ask Jesus to forgive me of all the sins I had committed in my life and be saved from a torturous eternal burning in hell.

In my adolescent mind, my sins were great and numerous,like masturbation and thinking about all kinds of sexual things. Now at last my fear could be forgotten and I could go to sleep at night without worrying about what would happen if I should die an unexpected death. I was only a young boy, but inside I felt like a very sinful person.

The church had been a kind of second home for my family. My dad, Everett Middleton, was the Sunday School Superintendent and Treasurer of the church. But sitting there on the front row at church that Sunday, my heart was pounding faster and faster as the time for action approached. Reverend Sloan peered down from the podium and I felt as if I were the only person in the audience as he presented a compelling case for dying a martyr’s death. His sermon was on the stoning of Stephen, from the New Testament Book of Acts, chapter 7, verses 54 through 60.

What a horrible choice for a kid to make. I could suffer in hell for eternity or become a Christian and be expected to accept death by stoning at the hands of an angry crowd of non-believers with the promise of spending eternity in heaven, a blissful place where rejoicing goes on indefinitely around the clock throughout eternity.

How unfortunate that no one in my family had the courage or the wisdom to see through this bullshit called religion and expose it as being nothing more than a cruel perversion, the greatest of all sins. Instead, here I was, an innocent child functioning in the ways that I was designed to perform. I was born and sustained as a natural child, sensing and feeling life as most children have done throughout the relatively brief time of humanity.

What is the truth about the major religions of the world? How did all the lies and deceit begin? These are questions that I have come to ponder and think about increasingly as my life experiences have accumulated.