In God We Trust: Further Along the Spiritual Journey of a Patriotic Christian Convict

By P.B. Turner

I was in shock. One day, I was running my own business, with my family and myself as the majority shareholders. The next day, I was someone looking at my business from the outside, facing criminal charges and possible jail time. I was also witnessing all of my hard-earned assets disappear into a legal morass over which I had zero control. And it was all due to what was certainly an error in judgment, but nothing that was criminal as deï¬ned by the statutes of the United States government. My wife and I were not prepared, however, for how God would turn this tragedy into triumph. After much prayer and soul searching, we decided the best course of action was to plead guilty to one felony charge and let God take over from there. It was a decision we will never regret. I experienced a seventy-week adventure in a federal prison camp that propelled my walk with God to levels I wish I had attained many years earlier. In prison, I teamed up with some of the ï¬ nest and most mature Christians I have ever met. We cultivated our own church, expanded each other's Biblical knowledge, and helped other inmates ï¬nd salvation through the loving grace of Jesus Christ our Lord. This book describes in detail, month by month, my experiences in prison and my growing Christian worldview. I examined each month's current events in the world and reflected on how Christians might react to them. My growing biblical knowledge strengthened my prayer life, and my conversations with the Holy Spirit convinced me that part of my Christian mission was to share with the world what you will read in this book. In God We Trust is not just for Christians but also for anyone who is curious and wants to understand the Christian worldview. In America, we live in a nation divided by worldviews, and often those arguing for their cause have no clue how the other side thinks. I hope this book helps bridge that gap.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643497624

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In God We Trust

Further Along the Spiritual Journey of a Patriotic Christian Convict

P.B. Turner

Copyright © 2018 by P. B. Turner

Cover Photo – P. B. Turner

Author Photo – Ulrich Birkmaier

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

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Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

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I dedicate this book to my wife Noel, without whose comfort and support, this project would not have been possible.

Preamble

On November 1, 2013, I pleaded guilty to a felony crime I did not commit. This action unwittingly served as the catalyst for a seventy-week adventure in a federal prison camp that propelled my walk with God to levels I wish I had attained many years earlier. I am a Christian and a patriotic American. I am blessed to have been born in the United States of America, raised in a healthy Christian family, educated in the finest schools, a husband to an extraordinary woman, a father of seven children (five biological children and two stepchildren), an entrepreneur who has lived his dreams of starting and managing multiple enterprises, and a volunteer with my church, my community schools, and the Boy Scouts of America.

But the biggest blessing in my life is my personal relationship with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And this relationship grew and matured while in prison to levels I had not consciously known to exist. Here God brought me together with fellow Christians who helped open my eyes and ears to his Word that in many ways was new to me. Our congregation in prison was similar to the church of the first century. All we had was the Word and each other.

In this book, I recount this journey month by month. The prologue retells the events leading up to my guilty plea and subsequent sentencing. Then, each chapter focuses on a theme stemming from either something that occurred that month at the prison camp or in the world at large. I start each chapter with a letter to my wife, which is actually a compilation of all our weekly visits and daily phone conversations for the month. I then discuss in more detail my thoughts on the theme from the perspective of my growing Christian worldview. I have spent most of my life in mainline protestant churches, but my bias now is an evangelical Christian worldview. My first hope is that, whatever your biases may be, you keep an open mind and will follow my heart, my mind, and my soul as I describe where the Holy Spirit has led me and is still leading me. My second hope is that, upon reflection, you either begin a similar journey with Christ or allow your established journey with Christ to mature at an accelerated pace. And if I am unsuccessful in these endeavors, I at least hope you will come away with a greater appreciation for what Christians call the common grace of God. In Psalm 19, King David writes:

The heavens proclaim the glory of God; the skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world. (Psalm 19:1–4, NLT; Italics mine)

This scripture passage defines common grace. Everything God has created goes out to all peoples in all corners of the world. This is why many non-Christians, with their God-given gifts and talents, can exceed Christians in their wisdom and morality. Christians know that nonbelievers can be used by God for enormous good. But Christians also know that their faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ gives them the guiding power of God in everything they do. And it is the grace of God, through this faith, that saves them and gives them eternal life. It is not by their good works that they are saved but by this gift of grace (Ephesians 2:8–10).

Christianity in Twenty-First Century America

In May 2015, the Pew Research Center released the first of a series of reports discussing their findings from a thirty-five-thousand-adult telephone survey entitled the 2014 Religious Landscape Study.¹ This same survey was conducted for the first time in 2007, and the 2014 report compares and contrasts the two surveys looking for trends. The report’s title factually states what most observers already knew:

America’s Changing Religious Landscape

Christians Decline Sharply as Share of Population; Unaffiliated and other Faiths Continue to Grow

The underlying data, however, depicts a different story that supports the view of Christianity that evolved in my heart and mind during my incarceration. The fifteen-page overview of the study contains the following chart.

EXHIBIT 1

Those who are self-identifying themselves as Christian declined over the seven-year period from 78.4 percent to 70.6 percent, or roughly 5 million adult Americans.² But practically all of this percentage decline occurred among mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics. Evangelical Protestants, while declining as a percentage of American adults by 0.9 percent, actually increased in number of adults by approximately 2 million over this seven-year period from 60 million to 62 million. And those Evangelicals identifying with nondenominational churches moved from 13 to 19 percent, an increase of between 3 to 4 million people. So while those self-identifying as Christian has fallen by 5 million people, those self-identifying as nondenominational Evangelicals has risen from 3 to 4 million. What do these substantial changes really mean?

Exhibit II helps illustrate, from my perspective, this change in the current state of Christianity in the United States.

At the top and center of Exhibit II are those religious groups (denominations) that promote the Gospel of Jesus far more than they promote their denominational rituals—those rules, customs, and traditions developed since the time of Jesus. Many nondenominational churches today fall into this category. Directly opposite this group (bottom and center) are denominations that emphasize their rituals; not to the exclusion of the Gospels but to an extent that the Gospels sometimes disappear into the sacred soup. Twenty-first century Roman Catholicism falls into this latter category.

To the left are those denominations that emphasize God’s love found throughout the Bible but deemphasize many of the basic truths found in the Bible. Mainline Protestant denominations fall into this category, best illustrated by this tidbit from the website of the United Church of Christ, The Bible is like GPS—A brilliant guide. All knowing. Occasionally wrong.³

To the right are legalistic Christian denominations, who emphasize the inherent truths of the Bible, but underemphasize the love and grace of God.

Let’s look at these groupings in more detail. Roman Catholicism has been incessantly criticized by the secularists of today as not keeping up with the times. But they are to be greatly admired for their unwavering stance on obeying the truths of the Bible in a loving way. For example, life is sacred, from conception all the way through to natural death. Christian marriage is an institution created by God between one man and one woman that is a lifelong commitment. But their adherence to rituals conceived and designed long after the first century, such as celibacy for priests, the worshiping of saints in a similar manner to worshipping Jesus, and the exclusion of non-Catholic Christians from participating in their Eucharist, are all examples of an emphasis on ritual over the Gospel. I see their motto as the Catholics are in, and the non-Catholics are out. From the 2007 to the 2014 survey, their membership has decreased from roughly 54 million to 51 million adults, or 3 million people.

Protestantism in the United States over the last century has divided itself into two predominant camps (for a more detailed analysis of this see chapter 8). On the left are those liberal Christians whose core belief system stems from the idea that mankind can establish God’s kingdom of justice in this world by themselves. People are inherently good, and advances in science and evolution are signs of God’s concern for his creation. The Bible is full of stories that are not to be taken literally, and one’s talents, time, treasures, and prayers should be devoted to advancing social justice in this world as the principle means of creating God’s kingdom here on earth. Spending time with God’s word is secondary (if necessary at all) to doing good works with love. My motto for this group is, The open minded are in, the bigots are out. This group is mainline Protestantism today, and over the last seven years, their membership has fallen from roughly 41 million to 36 million, or 5 million people.

On the other side of the Protestant spectrum are the legalists (described by many as fundamentalists, and not to be confused with evangelicals, more on this in chapter 8). This movement grew out of a fear that modernity as articulated by scientific advances was out to destroy religion in general and Christianity in particular. To them, the laws of the Bible, and Christian traditions, trump modern science. Legalists tend to segregate themselves from the rest of society, creating their own communities within society as a whole. Evangelizing the pagans is not their top priority. My motto for this group is The good (saints) are in, and the bad (sinners) are out. The Pew survey did not attempt to segregate legalists from fundamentalists from evangelicals, so we don’t know definitively how large this group is, or whether it is growing or declining. My view is that this group is relatively small and not growing.

And then there is a middle ground, represented mainly (but not exclusively) by nondenominational churches that has grown, as noted earlier, by 3 to 4 million adults over the last seven years. This group believes in the authority and the sufficiency of Scripture. The Bible is God’s Word as communicated to man and is unchanging. There is no need for man to try to add anything to the Scripture because it already contains everything we need to know to achieve our salvation through Christ and specifically how to trust and obey Him. These churches are not burdened with the traditions and rituals of Roman Catholicism and established Protestant church denominations on both sides of the Protestant divide. They understand that much in the Bible, particularly in the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis, is mysterious and beyond the total comprehension of mortal men. There is no need to have an exact scientific explanation for each event in Genesis. There is also nothing that has been discovered in the last several centuries about ourselves, our earth, or the universe that contradicts the Bible. The New Testament, or the new Covenant upon which Christianity is based, is an historically accurate accounting of the first century recounting the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the lives of his disciples and apostles who spread his message throughout the Mediterranean world. The Gospels, and the letters of the apostles, reveal God’s new covenant with man through his son, Jesus Christ. They contain God’s truths and also God’s love and grace. These churches emphasize evangelism, as evidenced by their growth. And their members understand that trying to lead their lives as closely as possible within the tenets of God’s Word is the way to further God’s will here on earth.

And this Christian approach, my friends, is what I was fortunate enough to experience in prison.

Why God Will Not Die

About halfway through my incarceration, I read an essay in Atlantic Magazine by Jack Miles entitled Why God Will not Die.⁴ The introspection of Mr. Miles about his desire for closure, or a way to stop thinking about questions whose answers were beyond my reach, penetrated my heart and helped me articulate why Christianity can be (should be) a way (the only way) for human beings to achieve closure in their quest to understanding life. It was at this moment that I knew where the Holy Spirit was taking me in formulating the central theme for this book.

I was immediately struck by the unbiased nature of his analysis. He recalled his own quest for meaning in his life, and he reflected that his own agnostic existential worldview was the secular equivalent of what the German theologian and martyr of the (World War II) German resistance Dietrich Bonhoeffer had scorned as ‘cheap grace.’⁵ His views were just as ridiculous as the views of real religion.

He went on to express that each new scientific discovery of our age is accompanied by an increase in our collective ignorance. He quotes Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg: Physical science has historically progressed not only by finding precise explanations of natural phenomena, but also by discovering what sorts of things can be precisely explained. These may be fewer than we thought.⁶

Mr. Miles then contemplates whether religion (I will substitute Christianity here) has a special claim to knowledge or is just a ritualized confession of the growing ignorance referenced by Mr. Weinberg. And my answer to this question became a resounding, Both! For two thousand years, Christianity has survived the onslaught of human evil like no other worldview. Our entire western civilization has been designed around the fundamental beliefs of the Bible. But in the last century, that has been changing, and many American Christians today do not have the basic knowledge of their faith to be effective ambassadors for it. Again, referring to the Atlantic article by Jack Miles, he asks his readers where they would place themselves on a spectrum of postures toward religious faith, which I present to you below:⁷

Organized Hostility

Muffled Contempt

Resigned Forbearance

Never Crosses my Mind Indifference

Curiosity (against my better judgment)

Serious Interest

Fellow Traveling

Heartfelt Engagement

Missionary fervor

Exhibit III is my attempt to categorize Americans into Mr. Miles’s nine descriptive categories above.

Referencing again the 2014 Religious Landscape Survey from The Pew Research Center: 70.6 percent of Americans in 2014 self-identified as Christians, as noted above. For purposes of this analysis, I tweak only one of his category descriptors. To Curiosity (against my better judgment), I add Lukewarm Christians (more on this below). So, dear reader, where do you fall on this graph? Do you know for sure? To help, let me expand on my definitions of Mr. Miles’s categories.

Group I

Organized Hostility, Muffled Contempt, and Resigned Forbearance

This group consists of those who believe that Christianity is a negative influence in this world, if not outright evil (organized hostility). Noted atheists (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, et al.) use their (God-given) talents to attempt, in an openly hostile manner, to discredit anyone who espouses supernatural belief.

Others, most notably some Washington politicians and elites, show their contempt for religion (and Christianity in particular) in subtler ways (muffled contempt). The absolute numbers in these groups are small, but the noise they create can be deafening. Those naysayers to religion in general (and Christianity in particular) who feel constrained by twentieth and twenty-first century decorum make up the resigned forbearance group, larger in number than the former groups but sharing similar values.

Group II

Never Crosses My Mind Indifference, Curiosity (Against My Better Judgment/Lukewarm Christians)

In absolute numbers, this is a much larger group than the first and, in my judgment, represent just over half of all Americans. Many are hanging on to childhood religious experiences and will self-identify as Christians in a pew survey (hence their lukewarm status). Others live their lives in the here and now, and Christianity has never been part of their lives and never will be (never crosses my mind indifference).

Group III

Serious Interest, Fellow Traveling, Heartfelt Engagement, Missionary Fervor

I believe this group represents roughly 40 percent of all Americans. Most are evangelical Christians (white and black), and many are devout Catholics. Those with serious interest attend church most every week and have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Those fellow travelers are actively engaged in their church life and are happy to discuss their personal relationship with Jesus. Those with heartfelt engagement are the Christian leaders of today, involved either by vocation or avocation. And those with missionary fervor have dedicated their entire lives to the great commission of Jesus: the spreading of the good news, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I also believe that the Christians I have identified in group III above are well represented in all four categories of Christians defined in exhibit II (Liberal Christians, Catholic Christians, Legalist Christians, and Gospel/Evangelical Christians). But there are logical reasons why three of the groups are declining in size while one is growing.

Liberal Christians (mainline Protestants) are declining in size because their theology has become almost indistinguishable from secular America’s theology. Social justice is to be achieved primarily through government programs, with a sprinkling of Christian charity thrown in. They reinterpret the Bible to meet their secular worldview. Many leave the church altogether because they are convinced that Christianity is outdated, illogical, unscientific, and simply irrelevant in the twenty-first century. Others leave the church and move to evangelical churches because they still believe in the authority of the Bible and cannot believe that the church of their parents has become so radicalized.

Catholicism is also declining in size for multiple reasons. Like mainline Protestantism, many congregants have simply decided that Christianity is outdated and no longer relevant to the times. But there are also those who still have a solid faith who are disenfranchised by the issues that have arisen through Catholic tradition (most notably priestly abuse). Some of these migrate to Protestantism (in either direction), but many also move to the Gospel-based nondenominational churches.

I believe the legalists are losing members because many of the faithful realize that evangelism is a central tenet of their faith and that they have more in common with churches that emphasize evangelism. This migration is another major element in the growth of the Gospel churches.

There are also entire congregations within a denomination that have migrated or are migrating toward the evangelical Gospel model. In my experiences with New England based Congregationalism, many individual churches have left the liberal United Church of Christ and become autonomous, more conservative congregations focusing on the Gospels.

What Does Genuine Christian Faith Look Like?

I return to the question posed by Jack Miles. How can human beings achieve some type of closure in their quest to understanding life? For me, and to tens of millions of other Americans, that question is answered by applying the lessons of the Christian Gospels to our lives as best we can, developing a personal relationship with our Christian God, with the Holy Spirit as our counselor and Jesus Christ as our mediator. Through prayer and worship, we find an inner peace that is found nowhere else. As the apostle Paul states,

You will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus (Phil.4:7, NLT).

In prison, we would challenge each other to describe our Christian faith in ten minutes or less. After all, Matthew concludes his Gospel of Jesus Christ with Jesus’s Great Commission:

I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age. (Matt 28:18–20, NLT)

If we are to teach others to obey everything Jesus has commanded us to do, we better have an opening sales pitch that is precise enough to convey His core message and concise enough that we do not bore them but encourage them to learn more.

So here, after seventy weeks in prison, is my precise and concise sales pitch for the value of Christian faith as the worldview that will bring you closure.

God created mankind in his own image (Gen 1:26). God gave mankind free will. Free will is the only thing that makes love, goodness, and joy possible. Satan is a fallen angel (Is 14:12–15). He is also the prince of the world (John 12:31).

The heart of sin is unbelief. Sin manifests from disobedience to God and not trusting in God. Instead of trusting in God and letting him supply us with what we need, we try to do things our own way. Mankind fell into sin in the Garden of Eden by disobeying God and not trusting in him (Gen 3).

After handpicking his chosen people, the nation of Israel, God handed down his laws to Moses. The Ten Commandments were not given to us so that by keeping them we would earn our way into heaven. The principle purpose of the Mosaic law was to make us realize that in our fallen state there was no possibility of our adhering to these laws completely. Our situation is hopeless, unless we stop trusting in our own abilities and look to Him for our salvation. (Rom 3:19–20)

To solve the problem of our alienation from God caused by our sin, God sent his only Son to earth as a man. While on this earth, Jesus, the Son, taught his disciples how to lead a righteous life on earth and how to achieve eternal life, through faith in Him. Because of our inherent sin, we deserve