"Scared religion isn't worth a plugged nickel."

Doc Watson was a renowned musician from Deep Gap, North Carolina.

This post has been made possible by our wonderful partner High Mountain Creekside Cabins.

Scared Religion Isn’t Worth a Plugged Nickel

When I was 14, my Daddy taught me the meaning of work.  He needed me to help him, but he gave me a gift, whether he knew it or not.  It was a valuable gift for a blind man to find out I didn’t have to sit in the corner. I was 14 when I started learning hard work.  We were cutting wood with a crosscut saw when a block came off and bumped my shin, and I said a bad word I won’t repeat here.

“Son, hold your temper!” he said.  “A man without one ain’t worth a plugged nickel, and a man that’s got one and don’t control it is worth less.”

He was pretty wise in that way.  He had them temper fits himself every now and then, but I didn’t dare say what I was thinking.  It got quiet for a minute.  I think he read my mind.

Temper fits and outright meanness are two different things: meanness lasts all the time, because the devil’s got you in his control.  I’ve known people that I’ve liked, but they let their temper rule them.  

Now Jesus had righteous indignation when he run that bunch out of the temple with a whip. The Bible says, “In our anger sin not” (Ephesians 4:26).  Willful sin is when you don’t turn loose of your anger, you keep pushing it and turn it into something bad.  

Going Through the Motions

It was about that time I went through the motions of church, went to the altar, and was baptized, so I considered myself a Christian. I knew God was the Creator of all things, but I thought of God as a tyrant who could kill you if you batted your eye wrong.  Part of the time I would try to live the Christian life.  I would do something wrong and it would bother me, but it didn’t convict me to get on my knees and find what I needed to really change.

In The Presence of God Almighty

In 1966, my son Merle drove me to help the Flatt & Scruggs team to do an album.  While I was there, I woke up in the middle of the night with pain I thought was food poisoning.  The next day I went to see Earl Scruggs’ doctor and found I had a ruptured appendix.  After the operation the surgeon said, “We don’t know for sure whether this was successful or not, but you’ll know in three days.”  

I went into the isolation ward and, from what I could tell was going on, I knew I was going to die.  Then all at once I found myself, not in the ward, but in the presence of God Almighty and his Son.  I was suspended between the world and eternity.  I could almost reach out and touch them.  It didn’t scare me, like He did when I was a boy.  He was the judge of the human race, but with a love that can’t be measured. 

I said, “Lord, I thought I’ve been a Christian all these years, but you know I’ve not been.  Please forgive me of my sins.  I know I’m going to die.  I don’t want to be lost.”

 I was afraid to make a vow that I couldn’t keep.  The strange part of it is that my sins were lifted right then.  And He gave me an extension on life -- why, I’ll never know -- but He knew the time would come when I would accept His mercy.

Doctor Jesus

After four and a half years, I was listening to a Randy Travis album with a song called “Dr. Jesus.”  Some of the words said, “Lord, I need you to mend my heart, and save my soul.  There’s so many out there who need you, do you think you could work me in?”  I listened to that song about five or six times and the last time I realized I needed that Doctor just like Randy did.  

And something happened to me that had never happened before.  Till then I didn’t quite understand that “coming to Christ” meant, but this simple song told me where it was at.  I called on Jesus, and a door was opened.  I was able to find the love of Jesus Christ and have His love enter my heart by the Holy Spirit.  In my heart, I’ve been a different man since then.

God Used My Work Before I Was Walking With Him

God used some of my work even before I was walking with Him. I remember sitting on a bench in front of little old time church in Ashe County having my picture made of the Gospel album “On Praying Ground”.  I prayed, “Lord, if this album will help save one soul, I don’t care if it doesn’t make one dime, it will be worth millions of times the effort.” 

When I was on the road, people would come up and shake hands with me and say, “Your Gospel album changed my life.”  It brought tears of gladness and my own prayer, “I need to be closer, Lord.”

Another time God used me -- I don’t know what made me to do it -- I said to Merle one day, “Son, I’m not a good candidate to ask you this question, but how is with you if death was to slip up on you?”

He said, “Dad, I’m not afraid to die.  I’ve been on my knees and I’ve made my peace with God.” That was three weeks before the accident that took him (in 1985 when his tractor overturned).  After he’d gone, it helped a lot, me and his mother both, knowing that.

When Merle was born, they brought him to lay on my lap and his little feet were going like he was riding a bicycle -- I’ll never forget that while I live.  When he was two, I carried him many a time on my shoulders, and he’d put his fingers on my earlobes.  I walked down the road I knew by heart and I could hear where the bank was (back when my hearing was that good).  If there was a mud puddle, he’d tug on my ear and say, “Go this way, Daddy” or “Go that way, Daddy.”  Bless his little heart, he was a sharp fellow.  Thank God I have those memories.  I’ll go and see my boy one of these days.

The Lord Was Guiding Me All Along

Even though it wasn’t until I heard Randy’s preaching in that song and it unlocked the door to my own salvation, the Lord was guiding me all along and helping me make right decisions.  We’ll never know until we get to Heaven the full understanding of all the things that happen in our lives.  But I know the bad things won’t be on the other side in Heaven.

We’re here for a reason, and God gives us the chance to choose the good road and step off the worldly one we’re walking on before we’re saved. He knows when we’ll have that change and whether we’ll ignore it and turn away from it.  

I don’t deserve what He did for me.  Even though I’ve hurt him, He pulled me out of death’s jaws.  And He’s done that for millions.

He is such a wonderful Savior and a wonderful Friend.  He understands when I find myself dealing with even a little sin -- like those little temper fits that last hardly half a minute, but it hurts my darling wife when I let go like with one of them. I can say “Lord, why did I act a fool like that? Forgive me.”  I’m thankful to the Lord I’ve got Him to guide me.

Every sermon, in my opinion, should end with an altar call fully explaining the tender, sweet love of Jesus Christ that leads us to salvation.  You can’t scare people into the Kingdom: that’s fanaticism.  My Daddy told me, “Scared religion isn’t worth a plugged nickel.”

Doc Watson

Deep Gap