Editor’s note: Centralia resident John Martin wrote this on the occasion of former President Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday. Carter died on Dec. 29, 2024.
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter Jr., 39th president of the United States, has been blessed by the God he serves with 100 years of life, starting his 101st year with the anniversary of his birth on Oct. 1, 2024.
The former president has been in home hospice care for 20 months, eschewing normal medical care and trips to the hospital. Many times, those who sign up for hospice are near the end of their lives. Carter's wife, Rosalynn, for instance, signed up Nov. 17, 2023, and died two days later. But Carter himself has defied the odds.
Carter served a four-year term as president from 1977 until 1981. Politically, I disagreed with him and still do with some of his policies. However, I have always admired him for keeping his faith front and center.
When he ran for president, it was well known that he was a member of the Plains, Georgia, Baptist church. At the time, his affiliation and his public statements about his faith seemed to cause concern for many people, with the flames fanned by the media. Some feared that he might try to force some of his fundamental Christian beliefs on the nation, if elected.
The speculation may have been heightened after he won the presidency because when he moved into the White House he ordered that no hard liquor would be served there during his term.
But many reacted negatively, as if Carter were bent on starting a whole new era of prohibition. All he was doing was establishing his own preferences for the way things would be in his residence.
“We made one major change when I reached the White House that caused a lot of controversy," Carter recalled. "We stopped serving hard liquor in the White House — which had been standard practice for my predecessors. And in that decision we saved about $1 million a year for White House meal expenses, but we did serve wine.”
But the media had started in on the future president earlier, when, during his campaign, he agreed to sit for a Playboy Magazine interview. Later, he realized what a mistake it was and it could have cost him the election, as his political foes took their best shots to use it against him.
Toward the end of the interview, he was pressed on whether his piety would make him a “rigid, unbending president” unable to represent all Americans.
Carter answered by speaking about human imperfection, pride and God's forgiveness. He said he believed in “absolute and total separation of church and state” and explained his faith as rooted in humility, not judgment of others.
He then quoted Matthew 5:27-28, explaining that Jesus Christ considered an offending thought equivalent to adultery, and by that standard, he was in no position to judge others since he had “looked on many women with lust” and, thus, “committed adultery many times in my heart.”
All Carter did was acknowledge that he, too, had sinned, including in his thoughts, just as every other human being has. But the management of Playboy, who no doubt also lusted after women and earned their living by making it easy for others to do so, knew they had a firecracker issue with a Baptist leader making such an admission, so they released the Q&A to the mainstream media in advance of the interview's publication in their magazine.
The media had a field day with Carter's statement, along with political cartoonists and TV shows such as "Saturday Night Life," and, of course, many of his political foes.
Somehow, Carter survived the ridicule and mocking for what was actually a Biblically-correct statement.
"I was explaining Jesus' sermon on the mount," he wrote in 2015, saying the media had taken the quote out of context. The fallout still preyed on his mind in later years.
The press was out to get this man who wore his faith on his sleeve. But he endured through it all and maintained his Christian faith and testimony, and even won the election.
Whether he was president or not, Carter always took seriously the instruction by Christ to His disciples in the last chapter of Matthew's gospel: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."
So, he continued to openly practice his faith while serving as president.
For instance, Carter, who had taught Sunday school classes in the church in Plains, kept up the practice in Washington, D.C., taking his turn with others to deliver Bible lessons for the Baptist church he attended there. He became the only U.S. president to teach Sunday school while in office, and he continued to do so for many years afterward at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains.
During his presidency, it also became news when Carter, while visiting South Korea in 1979, shared the principles of the Gospel with President Park Chung Hee, whose regime had often been accused of human rights violations.
It's likely that messages of faith are seldom a topic when national leaders confer behind closed doors. But a South Korean Christian leader had urged Carter to share some thoughts with Park and the discussion took place while the two were being driven from Seoul's airport to the Korean president's home.
"I told him about our faith and he was very interested," said Carter, expressing regret that there was not enough time for a longer discussion.
But, Carter had planted a seed, following the Biblical admonition of the Apostle Peter, who wrote in his first epistle: "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear."
Did Carter's words have any eternal impact on Park? The book of 2 Corinthians says: "Now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation."
No one knows how much time they have to make an eternal decision, and Park surely had no idea his "now" was only going to last for two more months, with death coming in the form of bullets fired by his own security chief.
And Carter's expression of his faith continued in many ways, including his association with the Christian organization, Habitat for Humanity. Carter and his wife had public ties to the effort to help poor people with the opportunity to have affordable homes. And they would spend a couple of weeks each year leaving peanut plantation duties to others while wielding hammers and saws to help the organization build homes.
It brings to mind Paul's epistle to the Galatians, which Carter undoubtedly knew and perhaps taught in some of his classes: "And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith."
A Habitat for Humanity website says: “Thanks in no small part to the personal involvement of U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, and the awareness they have raised, Habitat now works in all 50 states in the U.S. and in more than 70 countries and has helped more than 59 million people achieve strength, stability and independence through safe, decent and affordable shelter."
At 100, the faith of Jimmy Carter endures. He's also feeble, and may not be able to do much these days but reflect and pray as he waits for the time when he will hear his Lord say, "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things. I will make thee ruler over many things; enter you into the joy of the Lord." — Matthew 25:23
