Peter - A Common Man with an Uncommon Courage

Wouldn't it be great to sit down and talk with Matthew about taxes? Or how about discussing the high cost of medical care with Luke? Maybe, like me, you would like to sit and watch Peter and Andrew mend their nets and listen to some of their stories. Just imagine what they could tell!

Unfortunately, we can’t do those things until we get to heaven and then I imagine that Peter and Andrew won’t be allowed to tell some of their more interesting exploits.

I really wanted to know Peter better as a person, so I began to search the Bible for information about him. I also searched in “The Search for the Twelve Apostles” by William Steuart McBirnie, Ph.D. This is a good book for someone interested in both historical, legendary, and Biblical accounts of the apostles. My search revealed a lot of things I hadn't considered before, some very surprising. I began to think about Peter and the great events surrounding him in a very different way.

Peter was the perfect name for this symbol of the common man. He was a strong, hardworking man. He was what some term “a real guy” or “macho”. He loved the outdoors and his life’s work, fishing. He must have been muscular because you don’t haul in nets filled with fish if you weigh 100 pounds.

Peter liked feeling the warm sun on his skin. I am certain of this. For instance, after the crucifixion, he was out on a boat naked (possibly in his undergarment). When Jesus approached, Peter jumped into the water to keep Jesus from seeing him. I don’t believe it was the first time Peter had been on his boat in his Skivviesä.

Peter also loved his family, especially his wife. How many men today would have their mother-in-law living in their house? And how many men would call a doctor for said mother-in-law if she was sick? In the general population, not many, is my guess. Peter surely must have loved his wife.

Like many physically active men, Peter was impetuous. Impetuous men tend to live in a whirl of activity and give gray hair to those who love them. If life wasn't a whirl before, it certainly was after he met Jesus. Peter stepped out of a boat on a wind-tossed sea, never thinking he could drown until he felt the water rising around him. While the scripture doesn't say so, I can just see the other disciples scrambling and reaching for Peter and yelling at him, “What do you think you’re doing? Are you crazy? You can’t walk on water!” He didn't stop to think . . . he just did it. In fact, I have heard it suggested that Peter may have begun to sink because all the other disciples were yelling at him that he couldn't do it and he better get back in the boat! Ever hear the expression “Don’t rock the boat?” Peter did.

Heaven knows what his wife said when she heard the story. I suspect she just shook her head and sighed. It wasn't the first time he had done something foolish and it wouldn't be the last. Remember later on, he cut off a man’s ear attempting to defend Jesus. Not the actions of a cautious man!

Despite Peter’s obvious human failings, only once does the Lord rebuke him. Peter so loves Jesus that when Jesus begins to explain what is going to happen to him in Jerusalem, Peter immediately begins to oppose his speech. He doesn't want Jesus to die, refuses to allow Jesus even to talk about it. But Jesus tells him in no uncertain terms that Peter is not looking at things with the right perspective. Peter “savourest not the things that be of God. . .”

But there is more to Peter than muscle, impetuosity and lack of vision. He is also a thinker. He was curious and constantly questioning everything, searching for answers. In all the gospels Peter is asking questions of Jesus or answering questions put to him by Jesus. Yet, when everyone else is making guesses as to who Jesus is, Peter answered with certainty, “Thou are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Is this the same Peter who denied he even knew Jesus at the end? Yes, but Peter was, after all, just a common man and fear is a very natural and common human response in moments of crisis. Besides, he hadcut off that guy’s ear. No telling what kind of snit that fellow was in, even though Jesus did make it grow back. And there was Peter, just trying to calm down and get warm by the fire and who should recognize him but a relative of the very man whose ear he had whacked off!

One can only wonder what Peter was thinking at that moment but the scripture makes it pretty clear he was thinking fast. Pretend he didn't know Jesus and no one would know he was the sword happy disciple. After all, if they crucified Jesus for preaching and healing, what would they do to Peter! Peter was not stupid.

In spite of all that, Peter fell on his face and repented, not for being afraid but for allowing fear to control him. No wonder Jesus gave Peter the keys to the Kingdom. Here was a man who knew his limitations and weaknesses and how to deal with them. Here was a man of strength, integrity, determination and courage. This was a man whose character had been shaped by the Lord himself. This was a man who, on the Day of Pentecost, would boldly stand and shout to the multitude, “REPENT! This is That!”

A Righteous Legacy

Several years ago, I purchased a book called A Dynasty of Outlaws by Paul I. Wellman. It is unique in that it details the history of outlaw gangs, primarily in the Midwest, during period from the Civil War until the early part of this century.

You may ask, what possible spiritual insight you could get from reading a historical book about outlaws?  Actually, history is a great topic to learn spiritual truths.  And, as I discovered, studying about outlaws can give you an amazing insight to the spiritual realm.

Wellman’s book begins with a description of a raid on August 21, 1863, in Lawrence, Kansas.  William Clarke Quantrill and his raiders sacked Lawrence and left 142 people dead. The book ends with the bloody death on October 21, 1934 of Charles Arthur Floyd, a.k.a. Pretty Boy Floyd. What lies between these two events reveals an astounding truth.

“For the squeamish, this book is not bedtime reading. . .” said one review. Truly, for this is a book that traces seventy-one years of violence among a series of outlaws in the mid-west.

I was fascinated with the history, but I was horrified at some of the acts these men and women performed with no apparent remorse.  Murder was met with the same excitement as a child greets Christmas.  But what astounded me even more was the fact that in seventy-one years, every one of these gangs was directly connected to the previous one in some way. Mr. Wellman includes a “genealogy chart” of these gangs to show their relationships.  Bear with me while I briefly review this.

From Quantrill’s original raiders came three groups of men named respectively, James, Younger, and Shirley.  From 1861 these groups were separate gangs.  The James and Younger boys united in 1866-1882 and a woman named Belle Starr became Cole Younger’s mistress.

The Daltons, cousins of the Youngers, formed their own gang, which lasted from 1891-92. A member of the Dalton’s gang, Bill Doolin, went on, after the deaths of the Dalton’s, to form the Doolin Gang.

Belle got a new boy friend and with her brother, they formed a gang.  She later got involved with three other men and from 1880-1889 she had her own gangs. She is murdered and it is suspected that her own son may have committed the crime in jealousy over her last boyfriend.

After her death, Belle’s son, Henry, and her last lover, Jim French, Cherokee Bill, Dick West and Ben Howell, former members of the Doolin gang, joined Bill Cook to form the Cook gang from 1893-1895.

Then, Al Spenser, survivor of the Cook gang, meets up with John Callahan, Eddie Adams and the infamous Pretty Boy Floyd.  Floyd has two more cohorts before his death in 1933.

The terrible things I read shocked me but the significance of this generational connection brought an even greater shock. Bloody Bill Quantrill was the father of a legacy of evil in the Midwest unlike anything I have ever known. In seventy years of death and destruction, each group begat a succeeding group, sometimes two or three. There were direct and overlapping connections within each group.  Pretty Boy Floyd could trace his criminal roots back to Quantrill.  What a horrible legacy!

I wondered later if any of these men and women knew of the connections they had to the past, beyond their own generation.  Did Floyd know he was a spiritual descendant of Bloody Bill Quantrill?  Did Henry Starr know he too, was a descendant?  Did the Dalton’s know who they really were?  Probably not.  Each of them would have viewed their exploits as being superior to any who came before.  And in some ways, they were right.  Each generation was more evil that the preceding one.  Each inherited a greater blood-lust.

You will think me foolish but as I closed the book, I thought about Quantrill and his dynasty, and I began to weep.  What a terrible legacy to leave behind.  He and his descendants left no noble deeds, no glory, no honor -- no good thing at all. They left behind death, destruction, sorrow and pain -- to themselves and to their victims.

Then I thought of my own family, my grandparents and great-grandparents.  I thought of all the things I knew, both good and bad, about them.  Into my mind came the memory of my grandmother telling me about how her father came to the Lord.

She told me about the time she was baptized in Salter’s Pool, a local swimming pool. As a child, when we passed this pool I would look down in the deep gully where it lay off the highway and think of her and imagine that day.

She told me about the camp meetings that were so prevalent at the turn of the century. I can trace my spiritual family back to the early 1900’s to a large, fairly poor, family who heard the early Apostolic ministers traveling through south Alabama.

Eventually, some were lost; some became preachers, and most continued on a walk with God until they left this world. Some of their descendents are still carrying on in the faith and some have joined other faiths.

When I went home a couple of years ago the pool was gone.  So is my grandmother but the legacy she and others left behind, it remains.  And oh my, what a wonderful legacy it is.  It shines with promise and there is no shame in telling our children of the past or the future.  There is a hope because someone blazed a trail and left a legacy of righteousness.

Killing the Bug

The last Saturday of January 2002, I spent most of the day and all night looking for a bug. Not the nasty brown bugs that scurry for cover when you turn on the light, but a bug of a different color. However, this bug is harder to catch than the multi-legged kind.

The day started pretty well. I had it all planned. I was going to have everything done in time for church that night. Saturday’s are usually the only day I have to do laundry and clean house. It usually takes all day and part of the evening to get everything done. But we were in revival and I wanted to try and make it that night. Due to a variety of things, Thursday and Friday had been a wash. The week had not ended well and perhaps that should have been a warning.

Anyway, I planned to pay the bills and tally up the bank account so we could see where we stood financially the coming week. After all, Jerry got laid off that week and we were short an income. You don’t want to spend money until you know how much you have to spend, especially when there is less that there was the week before.

I sat down and began to work on the account but was rudely kicked out. A little box told me there was an error and if I could not resolve it I should contact the vendor. O.k. I turned the machine off and tried again. I didn’t even get into the program that time. It just locked up. So I turned it off again and tried again . . . several times. No luck. Now I was worried. Something was wrong and I could not figure out where. I read the error message carefully. It told me what it was and where it was, sort of. Actually, it gave me a bunch of numbers and letters arranged in meaningful clusters that made total sense . . . to a computer guru. (Guru: A person of great wisdom or extensive knowledge.) But again, it told me if the problem continued to contact the vendor.

I thought I might be able to work this out. I am fairly literate about computers. What I know I learned the hard way. I had a computer when there were no windows! I am one of the few ancient wise women who actually know what DOS stands for and how to use it if the need ever arises. Bill Gates will have to die first.

So, I uninstalled the program. After all, I could have a corrupted data file that was causing the crash. I reinstalled the program. I started to work, made a few entries and was booted out again. I scanned the drive. For the non-computer person, this means I ran a system check, not physically looked at it, to see if there were physical problems with the files or hard drive. There wasn’t. Next, I defragmented the drive. No it wasn’t broken. This means I told it to get itself organized, to put the files in a logical order that it could easily understand. Then I ran a virus scan to see if a bug had crept in. Nothing.

I uninstalled the program and reinstalled it . . . five times. Each time it locked up and wouldn’t let me in and if I was able to get in, it kicked me out. Something was VERY wrong. So I called my service technician. I got a woman. Great, I think, someone who speaks my language, shares my grief, and understands my frustrations. She asked me if I had virus software and if it was up to date. I said I did and explained what. She said I might have a virus it missed because I did not have an up-to-date version of the program. Hmmm. Then, she walked me through a process she said would fix the problem. I thanked her and hung up, happy that the problem was solved.

I started the program and got to work. Worked great. I thought I should print out the register, though, just in case something else went wrong. You can never be too careful with computers. I hit the print key. Up pops a window telling me I have an error. It tells me what it was and where it was, sort of. It wasn’t the same error. It was a new one.

Stupid woman. She didn’t actually sound very nice either. She had a cold, know-it-all voice. And she must not have had a clue or I wouldn’t be having another problem. And the system was not booting up correctly now, at all.

I called back. I got a man, who sounded like he was in a smoky room in Casablanca. He said something and I said, “Excuse me?” I could barely understand him. When we are able to finally communicate, which means I dredged up my Spanish class ears and put them on, I told him my problem.

He said, “Is all your data backed up?” I did like the way words rolled off his tongue.

“Well, sort of.” I said. That means not in the last six months. “Why do you ask?”

“You should back up all your data and reformat.”

There was a long, pregnant pause. I put my head in my hand. “Do you know how long it takes me to get everything back on after a format?”

“I understand,” he said.

“It takes weeks and I have a church newsletter to have out by next Sunday.”

He didn’t respond. Perhaps we had a bad connection. “What might be causing this?” I asked.

“It might be a virus that your software failed to catch.”

I sighed. He had read the note screen, of course. Stupid woman.

“Thank you,” I sighed again and hung up.

So, I began backing up data, stopping only to eat and take potty breaks. It took the better part of three hours to locate and backup all the data I had to save. It is a time consuming, boring, tedious process. You have to hunt down everything you think might be important and copy it to an external disk. Some things are easily found because you tell the computer where you want it stored. Sometimes programs store information where they want to store it, unless you order it not to. And sometimes they do it anyway!

Around 9:00 p.m. I was ready to reformat. At 3:00 a.m. I went to bed, secure in the knowledge that I had rooted out the bug. I had reinstalled all necessary software but I suspected the church newsletter was going to be late. I just hoped I would not be late for church in the morning!

I wasn’t, but I was dead on my feet. As long as we were standing I was fine but when I sat down, I wanted to curl up and snooze. But during the service a voice in my head began to speak. I grabbed my trusty notebook and pen and started to write.

“The computer is a great tool. You load it with all the necessary things to make it work efficiently and as long as you follow the operating procedures everything is great. Follow the manual and you can do a lot of great things that would take hours without a computer.

“You also have the Internet. It is a great resource, a place where tons of information is provided, usually free of charge. But there are a lot of hazards. You go out on the Web and there is always the risk of infection by a virus. Even though you may have an anti-virus program to protect you, a virus can get through and cause terrible damage, even a system crash. Then, you have to locate the problem and root it out. Sometimes the only alternative it to wipe everything out and start over.

“Infection can result without your knowing it. A virus can come in and attach itself to a file and secretly corrupt it so badly that the program no longer even works. Sometimes a virus has the ability to replicate and move to other programs until, suddenly, right in the middle of the most important thing the whole system comes crashing down. Some viruses have the power to totally wipe out everything on your system.

"The computer is like Christians and the Internet is like the world. Christians can cruise along in the world, unaware of their surroundings, secure that they are protected by their beliefs and faith. They move from place to place and at each stop, hidden viruses lie in wait. They attach themselves secretly and begin their work. Even though Christians are trusting in their “anti-virus” religious experience they can still be infected by the viruses lurking in the world.”

I stopped writing at that point. I understood the message. More importantly, I understood why my computer crashed that weekend.

Spiritual viruses lurk around every corner. Each person we meet, each place we go may have something waiting to infiltrate our minds and cause a system failure. And if we don’t detect it, we risk passing it on to someone else. Just because we are Spirit-filled Christians doesn’t mean we are impervious to contamination. It means we are supposed to be on guard, watching for those viruses that may attach, replicate, and corrupt us, and those around us.

Anti-virus programs are absolutely necessary for any computer that will be exchanging information with another computer. However, all anti-virus programs must be updated, usually weekly. Every day a new computer virus comes out and whole companies are devoted to developing applications that will stop them. As of January 25, 2002, my computer was protected against 58,571 viruses and as of November 5, 2005, my protection had reached 70,773. So too, do we need to keep our spiritual programming updated. What worked to get us through today may be useless tomorrow. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. – Matt. 6:34”

After I left church that Sunday, I ate lunch and went back to work on the computer. I stopped and went to church Sunday night. By then, my eyes were beginning to cross. When I got home I worked until midnight. Finally, I had had enough. I crawled off to bed. Monday morning could truly be called Black Monday. I missed four hours of work. I had a migraine coming to call and I was soooo tired. But the computer was working. However, I still had days of work to do.

The bug is dead and my anti-virus program is running. I hope it is working.

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