I awoke today to see that an unnamed “contributor” to the blogsite known as “The Bastion” had taken out against me under the mocking title, ”On a Mission from God.” I suppose I should have expected this sort of piece at some point, given who I am and how I strive to live my life.
I regret that for me to address and respond to the two most damning of the charges leveled against me that I must mention them.
The first is that in comments (not a “sermon” or “speech”) I made at an event to which I was invited some weeks ago, I allegedly “compared the somewhat disgraced Gunstock Commissioner Strang to the Lord Almighty himself…”
Doctor David Strang is a friend of mine, but I do not think he would be at all disappointed or hurt to learn that I cannot and do not believe he can be compared to God. Nor have I ever implied such. What I did claim was my belief that the treatment being given to Dr. Strang by some of his political opponents was reminiscent of the way Jesus was treated when he was brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea at the time. Both were “railroaded” to unjust judgments.
The Gunstock issue is complicated, with many twists and turns in its sorry recent saga. But one thing is clear regardless of this week’s court decision dismissing Dr. Strang’s suit because the judge said he did not sue the correct party—a technical point having nothing to do with facts and merit.
The one thing that is clear is never once and to this very day have or can Dr. Strang’s opponents produce a letter of resignation. Dr. Strang has said he never wrote, signed, and submitted such a letter. The assertion that it exists somewhere appears to be a fabrication, a fabrication that was the basis for the rendering of a vote accepting its existence and by a bare majority of the Belknap County Delegation.
We want to thank NH State Rep Rev. Paul Terry for this Op-Ed. If you have an Op-Ed or LTE
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Similarly, there was no evidence produced upon which to charge Jesus and serve as the basis for a conviction. Pilate is recorded as having said, “You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against him” (Luke 23:14, NIV). Subsequently, however, Pilate capitulated to political pressure and gave Jesus over to judgment.
The comparison I made between Jesus and Dr. Strang was not personal. Jesus was the Son of God. Dr. Strang is not. The comparison I made was on the wholly unfair and unjust way in which the two were treated at certain key moments in their lives. Lacking the necessary evidence to act justly, both were nevertheless indeed “railroaded.” So, as Jeff Kuhner often says on his weekday morning show on WRKO, I say too: “If no one else has the guts to say this, I will.”
The second charge made by the unnamed writer of the hit piece posted in “The Bastion” was that I “can often be heard at various events delivering invocations and political speeches resembling tiresome and rambling sermons of New England’s early Puritan past.”
This charge is almost so laughable as to not merit a response. But to be fair, I invite the party attacking me with this charge to meet and speak with me. I would love to learn what he or she knows about “New England’s early Puritan past” and its notable pastors and preachers. I would be thrilled to speak with the person about the works of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards, for example, two brilliant and often unfairly maligned figures of their times. Or is this comparison merely a uniformed and mean-spirited caricature about a period in American history and Puritan clergy? Come out from the shadows please, and reveal which of the two is true.
Before I ever was a New Hampshire State Representative I was an ordained minister who served four different congregations over thirty-nine years. But before both. and long before both, I became a Christian by faith and a follower of Jesus Christ. As much as I love my family, my highest calling in life is to be faithful to my Savior and Lord and to live as he has taught me in his Word, the Bible.
Accordingly, I am duty bound to obey Jesus’ command (one that he adhered to in the most extraordinary way by “laying down his life” even for those who hated and killed him). In one of the harder things for me to do, Jesus said: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45a, NIV).
I suspect some of those who have attacked me know that I have to do this. What they may not know is that I actually want to do this, not for any personal gain, but for their sake. Rail unjustly and meanly against me as they might and may, they like all of us, like it or not, are ones who are in the words of the old spiritual, ”’ Standin’ in the need of prayer.”
Mock me, ridicule me, tell untruths and make uninformed and unsubstantiated accusations against me. Tell me you care not for me to pray for you. I will do so anyway—because Jesus tells me to. And who knows? One day, one or more of you may become more than a name to me, but also a brother or sister in Christ.
Note: This op-ed is written on my father’s birthday, the man who more than any other showed me what it meant to be a man—and, a man for God.
Paul Terry is a Pastor who honorably retired from active service to congregations after 39 years. He was elected as a New Hampshire State Representative from Alton in 2020 and is standing for reelection on November 8 of this year.
