Pastor's Corner: Tom T. Hall
Tom T. Hall (1936-2021)
When I was a little kid, I rode around with my grandpa listening to Tom T. Hall cassettes. But as a teenager in southern Illinois (an Illinois as different from Chicago, as Cheboygan is from Detroit), I rode around listening to Garth, Brooks & Dunn, Joe Diffey, etc. But occasionally, on a Saturday morning you’d hear classic country and there he’d be, Tom T. Hall, crooning out the good stuff!
In, 2013 I bought an iPhone 4 and shortly after I subscribed to Apple Music. As a bona fide “son of a preacher man” I wasn’t permitted to have cassettes of secular music when I was a kid, so in my 30s I started searching Apple Music for the old songs that my grandpa listened to, and I found them. They were all there, Tom T. Hall’s Greatest Hits, and track number 11 was "Me and Jesus." I’ve listened to that song many times and every time I hear it, it makes me sad because it is the message of people everywhere, especially in America. The message of the song is in the chorus, “… me and Jesus got our own thing goin, Me and Jesus got it all worked out… we don’t need anybody to tell us what it’s all about.”
Friends, this is the American Religion of Homebrew Christianity, but it is not authentic Christianity, it is pseudo-Christianity. It is the kind of “Christianity” that says everyone is OK, just believe in God, don’t kill anybody, or drink too much. It is the kind of “Christianity” that pretends to save but just leaves people on the road to hell. It offers no salvation and, in the end, offers no hope at all; NONE.
I have taken Tom T. Hall as my subject because just last month they released what caused his death in August of 2021. I had read that he died, and I just assumed that COVID-19 or something related killed him. But the sad reality is Tom T. Hall killed himself with a self-inflicted gunshot. He took his own life at age 85. People take their own life when they have lost all hope.
So what? Well, if Tom died following his “own thing going” principle with Jesus, then more than likely he did not go to heaven. Jesus is explicit in John 14:6, “I am THE way, THE truth and THE life, NO ONE comes to the Father but through me.” The only way to get into heaven is personal faith that the blood of Christ was shed for you and that it can save you. You don’t get to work out a special deal with Him, you submit to His way of salvation, or you don’t go to heaven.
If you are thinking about taking your own life, please don’t; reach to me (580) 695-3461 anytime, reach out to another minister in town or call your doctor, but above all, please do not harm yourself. If you are part of Homebrew Christianity, I urge you to turn to the True Christianity of Scripture. If you’d like to talk about that call me up, OK? And I really hope old Tom is in heaven, I hope that at some point he gave up this own thing and trusted in Christ alone to save him from his sins.
I hope you will too. Jesus loves you.
Terry Basham, II is the pastor at Faith Baptist Church in Cheboygan.
This article originally appeared on Cheboygan Daily Tribune: Pastor's Corner: Tom T. Hall
