Author's Preface
1. Accepting Or Uniting
   
2. Who Is A Christian?
   
3. "Why Don't You Leave The Church of Christ?"
   
4. The Iniquity Of The Fathers
   
5. Our Judicial System
   
6. "You Are My People Now"
   
7. Serving "Otherwise Than As Prescribed"
   
8. Does Baptize Really Mean To Immerse
   
9. Our Relationship Through Baptism
   
10. Those Gospel Meetings
    
11. A Prelude To Worship
    
12. Worshipping In Spirit And Truth
    
13. The Forbidden Prayer
    
14. "I Didn't Hear Nobody Pray"
    
15. Communion Prayers
    
16. Communion With Bread, Wine, And Money
    
17. Thursday Is The Lord's Day Too!
    
18. Not Forsaking The Assembly
    
19. Acts 20:7 One More Time
    
20. Our Father Who Art Where?
    
21. Does Nature Reveal God's Love
    
22. Copyrighted: All Rights Reserved
    
23. Don't Pour Water On Them
    
24. The Remaining Restriction For Women
    
25. Some Questions About Revelation
    
26. Must One Fully Repent Before Baptism?
    
27. Nicodemus In Context
    
28. Our Respected Myths Of Religion
    
29. Hook's Points: A Potpourri
    

It is likely that the title above brought a negative response in your mind. You may be ready to admit that myths are believed in the religion of others. But our myths? No way!

As hard as it will be to sell some of my points, perhaps I should try to camouflage them behind pleasantries and enigmatic metaphors. But I prefer that both your eyes be open so that the truth may look you straight in both of them.

Yes, we have respected myths. Of the different definitions of myth, I am referring to this one: "An illfounded belief held uncritically especially by an interested group." Some of the most widely believed and accepted matters relating to Christianity and to the Church of Christ in particular are without foundation. We shall consider some of them.

1. JESUS DIED ON A CROSS.

Now wait a minute! You mean that Jesus did not die on a cross? That is blasphemy!

I am not denying that Jesus died for us, but it was not on an upright pole with a crosspiece. Look in Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible. There are twentyeight listings of the word cross as it is used in the New Testament writings. Young's definition: stake, stauros. There is no other definition given.

Look now to An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words by W. E. Vine. Under his listing of the word, he defines and comments at length: "Stauros denotes, primarily, an upright pale or stake. On such malefactors were nailed for execution. Both the noun and the verb stauroo, to fasten to a stake or pale, are originally to be distinguished from the ecclesiastical form of a two beamed cross. The shape of the latter had its origin in ancient Chaldea, and was used as the symbol of the god Tammuz (being in the shape of the mystic Tau, the initial of his name) in that country and in adjacent lands, including Egypt. By the middle of the third century A. D. the churches had either departed from, or had travestied, certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system, pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the Tau or T, in its most frequent form, with the crosspiece lowered, was adopted to stand for the cross of Christ. As for the Chi, or X, which Constantine declared he had seen in a vision leading him to champion the Christian faith, that letter was the initial of the word "Christ" and had nothing to do with "the Cross" (for xulon, a timber beam, a tree, as used for the stauros, see under TREE)."

We admit that those two scholars were not inspired, but neither is history or tradition.

There are about two dozen common forms representing the cross out of more than four hundred shapes that have been devised. No other symbol has been so artfully pictured. Yet none of the forms are represented as a stake or pale. A stake would not be very decorative on a building, on letterheads, or dangling on a piece of jewelry.

Whether you believe that Jesus died on a traditional cross or a stake is of no concern. The efficacy of the atonement is not affected by the shape of the wood. I am bringing this to your attention hoping to challenge you to question inherited ideas and traditional practices. When we can investigate without being defensive, many surprising truths come to cheer us, and our faith will become founded more firmly.

2. CHRISTIAN IS A NAME GOD GAVE US TO WEAR.

This myth is as popularly respected as the one concerning the shape of the cross. Change from its use will be no more likely than changing our image of the cross.

There are several considerations that should arouse suspicion even among the most trusting. The designation is mentioned only three times in the Bible, and those uses were evidently in derision or disparagement. There is no record of one believer calling another a Christian or of accepting that as a name for himself. God did not refer to them by such a name. About ten years after Pentecost, the people of the Gentile city of Antioch called the disciples Christians for the first time. For more of my expressions on this subject, please read the chapter in this book titled "Who Is a Christian?" and Chapter 17 of my book, Free To Speak.

Accepting no proper name for individual followers of Christ, Alexander Campbell generally referred to them as disciples. Barton Stone preferred to call them Christians.

Even though this is not a Godgiven designation for us to wear, we may accept it with propriety. Peter urged disciples to glorify God in this appellation which was meant to be derogatory.

3. JESUS BUILT THE CHURCH.

We are not denying that Jesus died to purchase his people and that he built his community of them. But the word church should not even be in the Bible! It has been mistranslated from the Greek ekklesia which means called out. God's called out form his community, congregation, or assembly in both the universal and local sense. The English word church is derived from the Greek kuriakos which means of the lord. No such usage is made of it in the scriptures.

Our people have persistently maintained that the community of believers is named Church of Christ, Churches of Christ, or church of Christ. They make the claim while ignoring that a part of that name has no basis for being in the scriptures.

4. THE SCRIPTURES PRODUCE THE CHURCH.

Not one word of the New Testament scriptures was written when the church was produced. Here we are using the word church as it is commonly misunderstood. Christ's community was called out and enlarged by the preaching of the gospel. It is through the preaching of the gospel of salvation in Christ that he continues to call his community into being. The apostolic teachings now contained in the epistles guide God's congregation but they do not produce it. Those called out by the gospel are the new covenant people of God, but they are not the New Testament church as we have thought, for the New Testament and the New Testament scriptures are two different things.

The New Testament scriptures were not written, identified, and collected until generations after the apostles. They could not have produced Christ's community. On the contrary, the disciples of Christ produced the New Covenant scriptures!

5. THE BIBLE IS COMPOSED OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS.

We have been taught from preschool through adulthood that the Old Testament is composed of 39 books and the New Testament has 27 books. But that is a myth! The Old Testament (Covenant) is not a book. Neither is the New Testament (Covenant). God has dealt with mankind through agreements/covenants/testaments. We learn of the old covenant through the scriptures that give its history. We learn of the new covenant through those writings that relate to it. Thus, we may rightly speak of the Old Testament writings and the New Testament scriptures. But the writings are not the covenants.

For surprising enlightenment on this subject, please read Carl Ketcherside's marvelous little book, The Death of The Custodian, which I have recently reprinted.

6. THERE ARE NO ERRORS IN THE BIBLE.

Did I lose the few of you who have stayed with me? We have been afraid to approach this subject candidly. We may become modernists! We will surely be pounced upon! Let's just not talk about it!

All of our many translations of the Bible are identical, aren't they? Surely not. They all say the same thing in different words, don't they? You know they do not. If they all differ, then only one version could possibly be free from all error. Which version is it?

You may respond that there is no error in the original manuscripts. How do you know? Have you ever seen the originals? We will grant the inerrancy of the autographs. Since we have none of them, that doesn't help in our determination. And since all of the translations that we have differ, we cannot claim to have a version free from all errors.

This does not disturb me. Surely God has preserved the information that is necessary for us to find him. That information is not a legal code whose every point we must understand and obey, making a perfect translation necessary to our eternal life. Our salvation is not conditioned upon perfect knowledge. If we must know and understand all, then we are all without hope. Our concern for versions is born of legalism.

These six examples illustrate my point that there are many illfounded beliefs held uncritically by interested groups. More could be listed, such as the Law of Moses being nailed to the cross, Jesus sweating blood in Gethsemane, a thousandyear reign of Christ on earth, the rapture, the coming of a man designated as the antiChrist, and many others.

Most of these myths are not vital. One may be misinformed about them and still have life in Christ. My purpose here is not to create skepticism but to challenge you to restudy everything that relates to your religious beliefs. Much of the opposition that Jesus raised was due to his challenge of traditional interpretations. The muchneeded change that the Spirit is working among us today is bringing pain because it questions so many longheld beliefs.

We like the comfort of old shoes and familiar explanations, but sometimes both should be outgrown. A constant examination of beliefs in which we continue to "prove all things" will add freshness and assurance to our years of life in Christ.