Christian Living – Page 7 – A Work in Progress

The Least I Can Do

I once saw a homeless man politely asked to leave a church I used to be part of. The person that did it did not have any malicious intent (at least it didn’t seem like it), and may have been concerned of the effect this gentleman may have had on the other people in the sanctuary. That may have been true, because the man was pretty aromatic. He sat in the very back row, but I could still smell him when I walked in. I saw the man look up when he was approached, and then get up and leave a few seconds later.

I remember the pastor saw this happen from another part of the sanctuary and immediately came over and had words with the older guy who had just asked the homeless man to leave. Then he opened the back doors to the sanctuary and went after him, walking down Linda Vista road. Several minutes later, he came back with the homeless man, and sat him down about midway through the sanctuary. I don’t know how many others noticed this, and the pastor did not address it publicly, but I do remember him being especially passionate during his sermon.

It made me wonder how much we mean it when we say “come as you are” when talking about our church. I wonder what I would do if some ragged and smelly homeless person sat down in the back row of the Kofa Auditorium? I would like to think I would greet him and introduce him to people. I would like to think I could represent Christ to him in a way he might not have considered before, given his life circumstances. It’s easy for me to say, “Of course I would treat him well,” least of these and all.

Would I, though? If I am honest with myself, the truth is, I don’t know. I’ve seen lots of homeless people in town, and sometimes I talk to them and just ask them if they’re ok, and sometimes I don’t. I remember a few months ago, my wife and I were pulling out of the Albertsons parking lot, I think, and there was a woman holding a sign and pleading for money standing near the corner of Avenue B and whatever that other street is. Something about her car, I think it was. I didn’t see her at first, but my wife said “I think I’m going to give her some money.”

“OK,” I said, and she handed me a few bills. I was feeling rather cynical about it, because this lady didn’t look quite as ragged as some people do you see around town.

I rolled down the window (my wife was driving) with the bills in my hand. “Here you go,” I said, and slipped her the five or ten dollars. She took the money, but she didn’t let go of my hand right away. I looked at her for a moment to try and get a sense of things, and I could see she suffered from that skin condition that adds an almost-sunburned hue to a person’s countenance (rosacea? I don’t know).

“God bless you,” she said, and I could see her eyes fill.

Not me, I thought. “You as well,” I said. “Good luck. Keep praying.”

“Oh, I will,” she said.

I was just thinking about that day, and the day when Tim went and got that guy who’d been evicted from his pew. How often have I missed opportunities to show grace to people? How often have I been tired, or irritated, or just wanted to get to wherever my destination was rather than give someone I didn’t know a few minutes of my time? Many times.

One thing about The Rock Church that has been nice is we’ve only been going a short while, but have already had several chances to interact with the community, including our first outreach, which was to the Yuma military community. It was a really nice–though hot–day. And even though I was tired as hell, and didn’t want to go, I sucked it up and went anyway. I was blessed to have been there.

So my line of thought today was like this: don’t let chances go by when they come. You will regret it if you miss something. I believe that God sends people and chances our way–opportunites he means for us to take. They might seem like difficulties to us. They might seem like (and often are) obstacles to completing whatever we have on our own agenda.

They aren’t.

They’re opportunities to do ministry. To help seek out the lost.

Let’s take them.

Time After Time

I remember when women (it was always women) started losing their…stuff over 50 Shades of Gray. Women were inundating social media platforms with comments and consuming the “novels” at alarming rates. Probably similar to how some teenage boys process broadband pornography–as if it were potato chips. And judging by how the ladies are responding to the movie being released, we are likely in for more of the same. It will sell tickets, but it wouldn’t surprise me if people walked away from the theaters hiding their faces with newspapers.

From what I understand, the author first published it as Twilight fan fiction—and an ebook—and was somewhat surprised when it took off the way it did.

Me, too.

First of all, from what I understand of fan fiction, if often tends to lean toward erotica. These books are no different. Typically, that sort of thing is not written very well (by that I mean both fan fiction and erotica. If you don’t believe me, check out one of those older Anne Rice versions of popular “fairy tales.” Not written by a fan, but certainly more badly written than her very popular vampire series—which I have read). In any case, the excerpts I have read from 50 Shades read more like a Penthouse letter than art.

Secondly, most people don’t admit to reading or viewing pornography—even of the soft-core variety, but make no mistake, these books fall under that umbrella. I suppose the women I know do not read these things because of the quality of the literature. They read it because “everyone” is reading it, and because it is supposedly titillating (I know, but it was a slow pitch and I swung at it). Mommy porn, I have heard it called, and that is very apt indeed.

It is porn—perhaps not the flagrantly hardcore stuff, but porn nonetheless.

Many might think it harmless, but I submit to you it is not. Not in book form, and even more so not on film. Porn is a stumbling block for many—yes, usually more for men than women—but women are not excepted from this particular…vice. Clearly. Look at the popularity of these books.

I think human beings are not naturally bent toward sado-masochism. I suppose those that are all have their reasons for reading or viewing it, but I think those attempting to normalize it or legitimize it in some way are simply fooling themselves. It is not just a little adventure in the bedroom, even if it does start that way. I believe that God created sexuality as a means of not just pro-creating, but expressing our love and devotion for our spouses—yes, spouses.

Like all things God made, he designed it to be good, and it is. I am not sure where whips fit into that equation.

It’s a thing designed to be beautiful, and as I said before, enjoyed within the context of marriage. Have I indulged otherwise? Yes, but for a time it absolutely did harm to my outlook and how I view both women and sex. It was the same with porn (and yes, there was a time when I struggled with that as well).

I am fairly certain most wives are not OK with their husbands looking at porn, but can somehow rationalize reading these books (and now, watching the movies) because they are “just books,” or “just movies.”

They aren’t. I believe that if we can look at someone and sin, and if the entertainment we are taking in causes us to look away from our spouses or significant others and indulge in any sort of fantasy, then this is exactly the same as porn.

I think it would be fair to say most folks would agree pornography is harmful to both viewer and performer, and those that don’t agree would typically make the argument that it is a victimless crime. Allow me to express why I do not agree with that statement.

A year or so ago, a story kept popping up on various online news sites (I saw something about it on CNN.com, Foxnews.com, Yahoo, and Drudge Report), regarding a young woman—a freshman at Duke University—who was “outed” by a classmate as being a porn star. Ostensibly, she chose this particular career path because college is really expensive and she needed help with her tuition.

As a former student who just recently completed his BA, finally, I can personally attest to the truth of this. College is expensive. I chose the student loan path, however, rather than trying to break into the adult film industry as an overweight guy in his mid-40’s with more hair on his back than his head.

What got my head to spinning a little bit about this young woman was not her work (no, I did not try to find any, though I am certain it would have been easy), but a comment she made in an interview. There was a very short blurb on CNN where she said words to the effect that she found performing in porn “freeing.”

Who is freed?

As I can only speak from a male perspective, I would submit to anyone who cares to listen that porn isn’t freeing at all—quite the contrary. It’s enslaving. Whether you are talking about the really vile stuff, or 50 Shades of Gray, once that ball starts rolling, it is difficult to stop and easy to rationalize.

But that does not mean it isn’t harmful.

It’s my belief that the attitude of this young woman is something symptomatic of this current generation, which has somehow found itself steeped in moral relativism rather than any sort of values, traditional or otherwise. Hey, go ahead and do it if no one gets hurt. And sometimes even if they do. Because that’s hot. Or not.

Porn is freeing? It is not. I only wish I were not speaking from experience. If you want statistics, I am sure there are plenty of articles out there that will give them to you. That isn’t what I wanted to talk about today.

Porn is dangerous and harmful in so many ways. It is not, as the industry and those partaking in it would have you think, harmless or victimless–in my opinion, not to the consumers or the performers. Whether you’re talking about 50 Shades or something with a few more X’s behind the title.

This line of reasoning, however, is what makes it so easy to fall back into the habit of looking at that shit and rationalizing it as simply entertainment.

Why is it harmful?

Again, from a male perspective, it gives young people–young men–a highly skewed (and highly incorrect) perception of what sex should be like, and how women (or men, I suppose) view it. Especially with something like 50 Shades. Hey, liven up your sex life—that’s cool. But watching or reading pornography is not the way (no, I am not going to give you a manual with this post). It objectifies both women and men and makes the act itself often a carnal buffet of grossness, supposedly meant to be titillating but often more along the lines of sickening, at least to me.

Perhaps those without “religious” values or some kind of moral center would think of porn like the performers and partakers do, but it is so difficult for me to get my mind around that way of thinking, now that I realize the truth of it, and think about my own kids potentially getting involved in it or with it.

This young woman at Duke is not freeing herself, no matter what she might say or think. Kudos go out, I suppose, for her entrepreneurial spirit. She found a way to pay her tuition without going into debt. Yay.

Numerous meaningless sexual encounters with people who likely view her as little more than a…means to an end.

Meanwhile, young men (and possibly women—I don’t know anything from that perspective) are partaking in her work and developing an image in their little heads about what women are like, and what they want from a sexual encounter (which, I believe, is meant to be—as designed by God—within the framework of a marriage). Often, as with 50 Shades, that involves pain and often a sort of enslavement. Certainly , these forms of entertainment are also subject to escalation—it starts with a little titillation, which ends up going further and further into very dark places. In my opinion (and in my experience), that is much more complicated than just a little “slap and tickle.”

As someone who was single for most of my adult life, there was a time when I held that image of women that porn wanted me to. I am thankful that God showed me the truth of it. I was chained up by that nasty garbage for a number of years, and I know plenty of other men who were, too, at one point or another. I know men who have had their relationships and their marriages threatened by it, and lost to it.

It’s not harmless, people. It’s not victimless, either.

I can’t say how performing in porn damages the female psyches of young women.

I can’t say how it damages the psyches of the male performers, either.

What I can say is that if left unchecked, it can be an addiction like any other addiction. It can affect and even ruin lives. It can prevent or harm otherwise healthy relationships and marriages by giving men and women unrealistic and unhealthy ideas about sex and love—as with the domination and bondage featured as normal expressions of sexuality depicted in 50 Shades of Gray.

My personal belief is that if you reduce sex to a simply biological act, or an expression of carnal adrenaline, then you are detracting from what it was designed to be. The formula that porn tries to sell people is false. It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s bull, completely.

If you had a daughter, would you want her to be a porn star? How about your sister? Your mom? Would you want her handcuffed in a dungeon somewhere being flogged? Would you want to be?

Would you instruct your son on how to find the “best” porn online? Would you give your wife a copy of 50 Shades?

Rhetorical questions, certainly, and I hope the answers would be “no” if given.

All I know is when I was slave to that crap I was lost in almost every way a person can be lost. I found my way out, by the grace of God and the accountability of people I trusted. You can, too, if you’re stuck in that particular rut.

I think about that stuff sometimes. I remember how it felt, and how much it took to get out of it. Hard as it was, it was also the right decision. I know this is a big part of my testimony, and I often have to ask God what I should say about it? How can my words mean anything to anyone?

Recently, I was driving down I-95 on the way to work and a snatch of lyric from a 1980’s song occurred to me. It occurred to me when I was slave to so many different things than God as well.

If you’re lost you can look and you will find me

Time after Time

If you fall I will catch you, I’ll be waiting

Time after Time

I don’t know if that will mean anything to anyone else, but it did to me.

Clearly, she wasn’t writing about God. But that’s what the chorus made me think of today. Funny how that works.

Lunar Communion

With everything that’s going on in my life, I forgot until just now there’s an anniversary this weekend. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. Before all you conspiracy nuts try to whack me upside the head, that isn’t why the anniversary is significant to me (I was, after all, just one year old).

I think it would be fair to say many people don’t know about something that happened that day, inside the very tight confines of the lunar lander. They don’t know because what Buzz Aldrin did was not broadcast as the rest of the landing was.

Aldrin paused before Armstrong got ready to head out and asked everyone to simply give thanks in their own way. Here is some actual audio:

Even more significant is what happened next. It moves me incredibly just to think of it. Aldrin pulls the elements for communion from a pocket on his spacesuit, and reads from the scripture before he takes it. All off the net, of course. It moves me because some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, and the first meal taken was in memory of what he did for all of us. Not just Americans, or Christians. Not just white people or black people. Not just US Citizens.

All of us.

Whether or not you believe does not make it any less true. Nor does it make Aldrin’s act any less brave. It just kind of bums me out that even in 1969, political correctness was beginning to rear its ugly head.

Here’s another short clip, from the Earth to the Moon miniseries of a few years ago.

Father’s Day in Yakima

For about ten years, now, I’ve been getting this pain in my neck every once in a while. I imagine it’s some kind of pinched nerve, or something of that nature, but since it’s only occasionally, I never sought any kind of treatment for it. I call it my “tourette’s neck,” because it sometimes makes me jerk my head to the side when it happens. It happened during our wedding ceremony and it was all I could do not to jerk and twitch. I didn’t, thank goodness.

It hasn’t happened in a while, which is good.

Last August, I had my right rotator cuff surgically repaired, and it has never been the same since, not really. I have my range of motion back, but it still hurts pretty good most mornings, like maybe Dr Peare forgot to put something back in.

Over the past week or so here in Yakima, both things have been bothering me, on and off. My shoulder, especially. I know Jenny has been having a hard time of it as well, and I’ve been missing her and the boys something terrible. Last week, I went to a church Jorge told me about, and it was amazing. It’s called Changing Pointe, and if you’re ever in Yakima, that would be the place I’d send you. Last week it was about “Surviving the Pressure,” and it was right on point (I need to get Jenny to listen to it). At the end of the service, Pastor Eli did an altar call, and probably 30 or so people came up. Never seen such a response to an altar call. He prayed for everyone, and found a way to lay hands on each and every person for just a few seconds while he did it.

So another week went by, and every day I missed Jen a little bit more. I had lots of time to think, and what I mainly thought about is how I have to do better for my kids. I’ve got the providing part down, and God has really blessed my wife and I financially over the past year. The part I struggle with is leading my family–in giving them an example of what it looks like to really love God, and give everything to him. I mean everything in the sense of myself, by the way.

Today, father’s day, the sermon was the second in the Surviving the Pressure series, with an understandable segue toward what this day means to fathers and children. There was a slide presentation for Pastor Eli some folks made, and while it played a man on the praise team sang a song the Pastor had written, and it was really beautiful. I was a wreck before the sermon even started. Plus, my shoulder was burning, and I kept jerking my head around like one of those Roxbury guys on SNL.

Two quotes from his talk stuck in my mind (regarding fatherhood. He talked about witnessing his own father praying for his family–earnestly praying for them–in the small hours of the evening one time, and how he thinks about that when he wonders what do about being a parent), the first being this:

Fathers, what do your children see you doing as an outlet for pressure?

Crap. My kids see me get mad, or lash out in some way, or simply retreat and clam up.

The other was, Dads, don’t lose heart. Find a way. Lead the way.

Exactly what has been on my heart lately. In fact, it would be fair to say this was one of those times when it seemed like a pastor was talking directly to me the whole time he was in the pulpit. And the thought that occurred to me today was in the form of the Sanctus Real song “Lead Me,” which absolutely destroys me every time I listen to it.

So that was in my mind when Pastor Eli got to the end of his sermon and to the invitation part. I don’t remember much of what he said at that point, exactly, but it was something about dads and pressure. And leading. And finding a way. I thought about going up there, and then decided against it. Then I figured there would be thirty people again, and I could be relatively anonymous.

The urge to go was almost overwhelming, so up there I went, and you can probably guess what happened. It was just me. So there I was in front of the stage, and the music started swelling loudly. He placed his hands on my head and began to pray–I couldn’t hear a word he said, but it didn’t really matter. He placed both of his hands on my neck for a few seconds, and then on my shoulders. Had my stress and tension been that obvious?

I couldn’t hear his words, but I could feel them. My shoulder loosened up, and my neck stopped twitching. I stood there for a few more seconds, and then he shook my hand and that was it.

I went out to my rental car and listened to the voicemails my kids had left while I was in church. Started crying like a schoolgirl again, and then I sent a video message to my wife for them to listen to (it took me two tries before I could do it without tearing up).

So if I take nothing away from this trip except some extra per diem and a couple of paychecks, in the end I did realize what the most important thing was:

Finding a way. Leading the way.

How can I expect my kids to behave in a way I don’t behave myself?

How can I be an example to them if I do not follow the example Christ set before me?

I have some work to do.

Here’s Changing Pointe’s Vimeo link if you have some time:

http://vimeo.com/changingpointe

Funny how sometimes things just fall into place.

Bionic Dad

Father’s day is coming up once again, and I am understandably thinking about my own father. Every time you turn on the TV, there are Father’s Day commercials. People post them online, and tell you to grab Kleenex before you watch. Inevitably, I will watch, and often end up a little (or a lot) on the misty side. The commercials all show dads doing dad things, and what usually tears me up is that I don’t remember a lot of that with my own dad. This is not to say that it did not happen, only that I don’t remember it.

My father was from a different generation than a lot of my friends parents were, and he was much older. He was 39 when I was born, but he looked and acted much older. The irony there is that he was younger than I was when my little guy was born. Anyway, it seems to me that the generation he came out of was not so…nurturing and…”touchy-feely” as a lot of men–a lot of dads–later became. I don’t remember a single instance of him talking about his feelings, or anyone else’s. It wasn’t his fault–it was just how things were.

So most of the memories I have of feeling nurtured or loved on concern my older sisters. I suppose that is often the role of women in the lives of boys. It certainly was in mine. Consequently, I wanted to spend as much time as I could with my sisters. It made sense to me then, but I have no idea how it made my dad feel that I didn’t want to be around the house much. I never had the opportunity to ask him. Not when I was old enough to understand that my behavior toward him might have been hurtful in some way. He died in 1984, when I was 16. He died before I learned to drive. He didn’t see me graduate. He didn’t usher me off to college (nobody, did, actually. I didn’t start until I was in my 20’s, and I didn’t graduate until this year).

Recently, though, I have been actively trying to remember things, and looking at a lot of pictures, and little snippets of Dad have been coming to me. Rising up in my memory like little slips of paper with things written on them.

Dad sitting in the kitchen with a BB gun, waiting to shoot a mouse.

Dad driving through Jack in the Box to get me pancakes before we went out on his sailboat.

Dad making me rubber band guns in the garage.

Dad taking me and one of my friends to see the first Jaws movie.

Dad finding me when I got lost at the swap meet once.

Dad taking a washer or dryer in his arms and wrestling it out of the back of his pickup.

Dad seeing a swear word on a rock at the bay and draping a towel over it so my mom wouldn’t have to see it.

Dad teaching me how to pull the guts out of fish.

He didn’t often–possibly ever, that I can remember–tell me he loved me, but he sure showed me an awful lot.

I remember listening to him getting ready for work and drinking coffee and talking with my mom. I would go out to the kitchen and say goodbye. We would do that whole “see you later, alligator” thing, and I loved it.

So there was a lot of good there, I just needed to go looking for it. There’s much more than the things I shared above, but I’m keeping them just for me.

I wonder what I would say to him given the opportunity?

I think I would certainly tell him that I loved him. Part of me would have wanted him to be different, but an even bigger part would have wanted me to be different. I suppose I was just being a typical adolescent and teenager, but that doesn’t excuse anything. Of course, had I known he only had a few short years left, I would have perhaps tried to do things differently. I didn’t know, and consequently I wasn’t the person I would have wanted to be.

I can’t live in the past, though when days come around like Father’s Day and Mother’s day I think to regret a few things.

What I do know is that I don’t want my own kids to wonder about me later on in their own lives, so that means I need to be a better and more significant part of their lives now. My generation is touchy-feely, and I need to get off my ass and touch and feel (in a non-creeperish sort of way, of course).

So as you might have guessed, I’m feeling pretty sentimental right now. I haven’t seen my kids or my wife in almost two weeks, and it is weighing on me something terrible. I hope the conviction I’m feeling now does not leave me, but stays burning in my heart.

I want very badly to be a good dad.

To that end, I know that some things need to happen. I need to depend more deeply on God, and not on myself and my own understanding. I need to turn to God, and trust him more (I don’t think we can ever do that enough). I need to stop thinking so much about what was lost and think about what is–thanks to His provenient Grace–yet to come. I need to think about God’s promise, given in Joel 2:25 to “repay the years the locusts have eaten.”

Absolutely no credit to myself, but I feel like things are looking up in that regard. Over the past week, all of my siblings, finally, are in touch. Yes, it is via social networking, but that is a very big something for us, and I feel that more good is to come.

There are only a few weeks left in this program, and then I will be home. And I can begin to do things like seek his truth for my life in scripture–along with my kids. They need to see that is important to me, and I need to show them.

I can’t turn back any clocks, and I don’t think I would want to if I could. What I can do is my best to be different.

Better, stronger, faster (ok, no, I’m not bionic, but I’ve always wanted to be. I liked that noise it would make when he did bionic stuff on the show–sort of a ch-ch-ch-ch kind of thing).

So there I go again. Out of place humor.

Jesus Loves Me

This morning I saw a short video clip that really touched my heart. From the description, the video featured a very old woman in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, who was mostly non-verbal. At least, she had not spoken in some time. A man who looked to be in his 50’s or perhaps early 60’s–along with an off-camera woman–softly sang the old children’s bible school standard “Jesus Loves Me” to her, encouraging her to sing along. You see her mouth open and close, and hear her little wisp of a voice mouthing the words

“yes, Jesus loves me…

yes, Jesus loves me…”

It amazed me, to tell you the truth. I love that song, and I think it is, at its heart, the beautiful truth of scripture and the heart of Jesus toward those he created. In the case of this video—and likely many other situations–most of this woman’s memory is gone. She doesn’t speak. Yet within her is some kind of spiritual muscle memory, and she is able to sing the words as she nears the end of her long journey.

I have no proof in any way, but it’s my belief that it is with this truth Jesus will speak to each of us as we approach the finish line. It may be that we have forgotten most things, or that we’re suffering terribly. Yet there is something within each of us that will remember He who made us at our ends. I think that is where the idea of the “light at the end of the tunnel” comes from. I think that when one looks from dark to light, the light can seem far away at first, and then come closer and closer. I think we will see a light beyond our ability to comprehend as we fly from darkness to light. Surely, the experience will be specific to each person, but the commonality will be Jesus waiting for us, his face the ultimate light.

Jesus loves me this I know

I think of Luke, 16:22, which says

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side.”

I think when the time comes we are all beggars. What else could we be? We can’t save ourselves. And we want the sense of assurance that comes from knowing we will one day be carried to Abraham’s side. I think it was the innate knowledge in the heart of every believer that reminds us of this and makes this hardest of transitions bearable. Or even possible.

I don’t know anything about the faith of the old woman in the video, but it occurs to me as I write this, at 0915 in Yakima, Washington, that if the last words I speak (or hopefully, sing) when my time comes are the powerful words of that song, then the knowledge that what is waiting for me just a whisper away will make me reach out for him who also reaches out for me.

There is a personal context to all of this, because as I write this, I’m also thinking of my wife’s paternal grandfather, who is struggling with alzheimer’s as he nears the end of his own journey. I am glad beyond measure that I was able to know him briefly before his struggle began in earnest. I remember his hearty and incredibly loud voice greeting me with words like “Whattaya say, Tom?” And then cracking my fingers in a powerful handshake.

I think of the terrible financial situation we were in when we got married, thanks to a lifetime of irresponsibility. I think of Jack helping us out, and getting us through the hard times with an unexpected gift, and then shrugging off the gift because it was what his wife would have wanted to do. I remember kneeling and thanking God in my father-in-law’s living room, and crying like a baby (with no shame in my game).

I haven’t seen Jack in a while, but I think of him all the time, and not just because of his generosity. I think that he raised his boys right, and they are both honorable men who love their families and God, each in his own way. I don’t know my wife’s uncle well, but her father is one of my heroes.

I hope that when the angels come to take Jack home, that he hears this beautiful song in his heart.

I heard Brennan Manning say once that when our time nears, Jesus calls out to each of us from the Song of Songs, as his father called to him when he was on the cross. I believe him. It sounds like something he’d do.

10 My beloved spoke and said to me,
“Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, come with me.
11 See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
12 Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
is heard in our land.
13 The fig tree forms its early fruit;
the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.
Arise, come, my darling;
my beautiful one, come with me.”

I can’t wait to speak to Papa Jack again one day, when he’s all there, because I know he will have a lot to say. And I hope he’s there to welcome me, with a strong handshake and a “whattaya say, Tom.”

The Splinter

My friends and I found this huge wooden spool when I was in junior high school–almost exactly like the only pictured below. It was at the base of a telephone pole near my house, and clearly had been used to hold some kind of telephone wire. The “wheels” of the spool were about the size of a small car tire, and it was heavy enough that we just rolled it back to my friend’s house. We knew we could do something with it.

The something ended up being my friend’s idea that we could make a “teeter-totter” out of it, and we quickly fetched a 2x8x8 board from the wood pile behind my friend’s house, and it worked out perfectly. Then we decided one of us could stand on the end of the board on the ground, and the other would jump off something moderately high and catapult the other onto a mattress we’d placed behind the teeter-totter.

If you see where this is going, you’re right. I was the first to stand on the low end of the board, and when my friend jumped off the back of a slide onto the board, my feet slipped off the sides, and it rocketed directly toward my crotch, catapulting only my teenage bean bag onto the mattress and depositing a thick splinter about 6 inches long on the inside of my left leg just above my knee on the way to my junk. I almost passed out.

When I was able to stop crying and hyperventilating, I realized the sting in my leg was actually something I was going to have to deal with. I carefully extracted the splinter and could not believe how long it was. I dropped it on the ground and we decided we were going to go play Atari instead.

I didn’t think about the splinter again until a couple days later, when my leg started to swell up and turn red. I didn’t know much about infections, but if mine didn’t clear up soon, I realized my problems were going to be larger than a splinter. The next day, the swelling was even bigger, and the wound was oozing a little goop.

I didn’t know whether that was good or bad, but in the interest of finding out, I decide the best thing to do was to treat the thing like a zit, so I gave it a good squeeze. It was pretty gross, but at the end of the grossness was another small piece of wood. I hadn’t pulled the whole thing out after all. Still have the scar to prove it.

I think that’s what we’re like sometimes with our sin. We don’t deal with it right away, and it builds and builds. We get infected. This is probably an issue for lots of people–it really has been for me, historically. I feel like I’m getting away with something if there is no resolution to the issue right away or no…culmination at the least. I can’t think of a time when I wasn’t wrong about that. No one gets away with anything.

The thing about sin that we know we’re supposed to confess it, or that is the hope. So we do confess, but only partly. We’ll be at a bible study or something like that, and we know we’re dealing with something that has the potential to really affect things, and instead of giving voice to our real struggle, we’ll say things like, “I haven’t been reading my bible enough.” Or maybe, “I need to pray more. I feel like I’ve been neglecting my prayer time.”

These things, of course, are usually true to some extent–maybe a large one. They can be and often are problems.

But sometimes not the real problem. We need to be real if we expect any healing to occur–not that better study habits aren’t helpful to everyone–but I think the kind of repentance God is looking for isn’t from a bad work ethic. It’s from rending our hearts.

We hold onto our sin because we’re ashamed of it, because we think no one would understand, or maybe that no one else is as bad as we are. We wouldn’t be forgiven if we really dropped a truth bomb, especially if it’s something potentially embarrassing. I’ve thought that or worse many times in my life.

I’ve clutched sin to my chest like a baby, clinging tightly to it, afraid that if I somehow opened up I would bleed darkness.

And so I would confess something, anything, other than what was really sticking in my heart—binding me—and keeping me from really growing, and healing, and getting closer to Jesus.

Take a look at steps 3 through 7 from alcoholics anonymous:

We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

This is not to say that every sin is an addiction, but I believe the same “rules” apply to everyone regarding sin, even if they are not addicted to something.

Confession, and freedom, involves quite a bit of navel-gazing, and is quite a bit like being in recovery. And the truth is, regarding sin we are all in recovery.

We know our struggles, and the devil does, too.

We are beset on all sides by our weaknesses.

We are tempted continually.

There is always more of the splinter stuck in our legs, and it usually hurts quite a bit to get it out. It can be messy. Full disclosure usually is.

We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Hey, I know. Nobody likes to surrender. We value our will and ability to decide what is best for our lives very highly. We know best, and don’t like being told what to do. Just last week, a guy at my work was arrested for possession of child-pornography. No doubt he knew what he was doing was wrong–at least at some level–but it didn’t stop him. He may have confessed something to someone at some point, but he clearly had not gotten all of the splinter out. And I imagine he will be paying the penalty due for years to come.

I suppose it’s only human nature to keep something like that under the cover of as much darkness as we can. Hiding our sin from the world is something we all try to do.

The only problem with that is faith in Jesus tells us to do the opposite. We must drag it out of the cellar and into the light. We must surrender all, and as Carrie Underwood said, let Jesus take the wheel.

It isn’t easy, but if we can do it, everything changes. Maybe not all at once, and maybe it will take a while, but even the smallest candle makes a light in a dark place.

We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Looking—really looking—at ourselves and the things we’ve done can be horrifying. Because really, everyone wants to be a good person, don’t they? No doubt if we are mostly kind to kids and dogs and older people we feel like we’re all set. And the moment you realize there were times when you weren’t—when you were the opposite of good—can really be a shot to the heart with a rusty arrow.

We have to get past the realization of what we’ve done, and accept the forgiveness that only Jesus can offer.

That is way harder than it probably should be. I think that is because we really all know that we don’t deserve to be forgiven. Because we would not forgive others for something like we’ve done. And after all, we sort of helped hammer the nails.

But that is part of the beauty of forgiveness.

We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

The only saying really is true: confession is good for the soul. And it isn’t the “giving voice to our sin” part of it. Saying it does make it real, though. It means we realize what we’ve done. Telling it to God (even though he already knows) is acknowledgment to him and before him that we realize the truth of things. And confessing to another human being helps us to realize we aren’t alone. That, I think, is one of the most important parts of recovery, or freeing ourselves from our chains, whatever they’re made of.

We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Sometimes that takes hitting the bottom, hard. Or realizing our legs or our hearts are horribly infected. We need to want the splinter out.

We need to ask God to take it out, no matter how much it hurts, because when we do it ourselves we usually aren’t going to get everything.

We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Sometimes that’s the spiritual equivalent of ripping off a Band-Aid. Sometimes–heck, always–we need a little help.

This, I think, is what it is really all about. We cannot, no matter what we think, do this on our own. Will power can only go so far. White-knuckling sin doesn’t work forever.

It can’t always remove a bottle from your hand.

It can’t always stop you from clicking a mouse on something you don’t need to see.

It can’t forgive your sin.

Only Jesus can do that.

Brennan Manning said something once to the effect that “faith is the courage to accept acceptance.”

That’s true.

The only thing harder (for me, at least) than admitting sin, is accepting forgiveness. I remember wondering how in the blue heck Jesus could forgive me?

I have done a great many mean and stupid things in my life, and there are many people I have hurt. Realizing the truth of my forgiveness and the depth of his love for me literally brought me to my knees.

Why, God? Why do you forgive me?

The answer is what makes it all possible.

Because I love you. I think having kids has helped me understand that a little more. There can’t–or shouldn’t be–a point where we stop forgiving. To help facilitate that, we have to keep things “on the real” at least as much as we can. With that in mind, I think one of the most important things we do after coming to faith is finding a place we can be real, and people we can be real with.

People we can do life with.

Maybe that’s why so many churches stopped saying “home group,” or “small group,” and started saying “life group.”

Take a look at your church the next time you’re sitting in a pew or a chair and enjoying the service. There is probably a group with people in it that have shared your struggle or are willing to. Someone is waiting to hear your story, and someone else is waiting to tell theirs.

There are people you can talk with, and laugh with, and cry with, and most importantly pray with. People that can come alongside you, and help you, along with Jesus, remove the splinter. Because if you don’t, it will kill you eventually.

On Porn, and how Cyndi Lauper Can Help You Find Yourself

Over the past week or so, there’s been a story that keeps popping up on various online news sites (I saw something about it on CNN.com, Foxnews.com, Yahoo, and Drudge Report), regarding a young woman—a freshman at Duke University—was “outed” by a classmate as being a porn star. Ostensibly, she chose this particular career path because college is really expensive and she needed help with her tuition.

As an adult student nearing completion of my BA, finally, I can personally attest to the truth of this. College is freaking expensive. I chose the student loan path, however, rather than trying to break into the adult film industry as an overweight guy in his mid-40’s with more hair on his back than his head.

Who is freed?

As I can only speak from a male perspective, I would submit to anyone who cares to listen that porn isn’t freeing at all—quite the contrary. It’s enslaving.

It’s my belief that her attitude is something symptomatic of this current generation, which has somehow found itself steeped in moral relativism rather than any sort of values, traditional or otherwise. Hey, go ahead and do it if no one gets hurt. And sometimes even if they do.

This line of reasoning, however, is what makes it so easy to fall back into the habit of looking at that shit and rationalizing it as simply entertainment.

Why is it harmful?

Again, from a male perspective, it gives young people–young men–a highly skewed (and highly incorrect) perception of what sex should be like, and how women (or men, I suppose) view it.

It objectifies both women and men and makes the act itself often a carnal buffet of grossness, supposedly meant to be titillating but often more along the lines of nauseating, at least to me.

Numerous meaningless sexual encounters with people who likely view her as little more than a…means to an end.

It’s not harmless, people. It’s not victimless, either.

I can’t say how performing in porn damages the female psyches of young women.

I can’t say how it damages the psyches of the male performers, either.

My personal belief is that if you reduce sex to a simply biological act, then you are detracting from what it was designed to be. The formula that porn tries to sell people is false. It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s bull, completely.

If you had a daughter, would you want her to be a porn star? How about your sister? Your mom?

Would you instruct your son on how to find the “best” porn online?

Rhetorical questions, certainly, and I hope the answers would be “no” if given.

I was thinking about that stuff all the way to work today, and I remember asking God what to say about it? How can my words mean anything to anyone?

I was driving down 95 when the words of an old 1980’s song occurred to me, from the unlikely Cyndi Lauper.

If you’re lost you can look and you will find me

Time after Time

If you fall I will catch you, I’ll be waiting

Time after Time

I don’t know if that will mean anything to anyone else, but it did to me.

Clearly, she wasn’t writing about God. But that’s what the chorus made me think of today. Funny how that works.

Of Ragamuffins and Scars

Back in 2007, author and speaker Brennan Manning gave a conference at my church in San Diego. He spoke over the course of three days on many topics, but at the center of it all—in my opinion—was the first talk he gave, which was titled “Healing Our Image of God and Ourselves,” or something close to that. My pastor had quoted from his writings many times over the few years I’d been there, but I had never read one of his books, and never heard him speak. He was quite a character.

He wore these very old, but clean-looking jeans patched over with many different colored pieces of cloth. He had on a blue chambray work shirt and his white hair was cut short. He looked to be in his late 60’s, and his voice was somewhat slurred from his many ailments, except for when he became passionate, or was quoting scripture. Then his voice carried a bell-like clarity. I remember there was quite a line to speak with him, and I never really had the chance, though I did walk close to him at the front of the church and he gave me his signature “hi.”

Healing Our Image of God and Ourselves.

One of the stories he shared was when he was at an extremely low point in his life, he had fallen into the depths of alcoholism and homelessness. He was laying on a sidewalk near a building, I think, and a woman with a small child walked by and told her child not to look at “that filth.”

Manning’s great revelation had been that God loved him just as much in that state of disgrace as he did at the moment he was speaking at Canyon View Christian Fellowship.

I was thinking of that talk when I got out of the shower the other night and was looking in the mirror and contemplating shaving. I took inventory of my scars, and it occurred to me I was a bit of a patchwork, much like Manning’s jeans.

Scar on the heel of my left palm from broken glass—check.

Three scars on my right shoulder from my rotator cuff repair—check.

Four scars on my abdomen from my gallbladder removal. Check.

Several small scars on the back of my head from an Alaskan street. Check, again.

Many more red spots and scars on my arms, legs, and torso from my psoriasis. Checkety check.

Numerous scars on the inside, from the wounds both intentional and unintentional—sometimes those scars are the ones that hurt the most, and make me feel the ugliest.

I wished for a moment that they weren’t there—all my scars, both seen and unseen. I wanted to be whole and unmarked for my wife. My scars are ugly, or at least they make me feel that way. Always have. For the most part, they aren’t my fault, and there’s not a lot I can do about them.

They are ugly.

I stood in my bathroom and I wiped the steam from my mirror and I thought about an old man nearing home, speaking to a church full of eager listeners about how they can learn to see God differently, and hopefully also learn to look at themselves differently, through the eyes of a carpenter.

Yes, my scars are perhaps not aesthetically pleasing. But they are part of who I am. They detail my path to Christ, who has a few scars of his own.

He traded his beauty for my ugliness, my rags for his Glory.

I looked in the mirror and asked God, “Do you really love this?”

I snapped out of it without hearing an answer, and I shaved my neck and the upper part of my cheeks (if I don’t I get the bumps, man). I put on my sweatpants and a tank top and I went out to the living room to hang out with my wife a little before bed.

She was doing some work on her laptop and she looked at my for just a second. I could see the love for me in her eyes, and I knew without question where it came from. I had my answer. She put her laptop away, and as I sat down, she reached out her hand for mine.

And as I sat next to this beautiful and Godly woman that it had taken all the events of my life to lead me to, I found myself grateful for my scars.

Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce

It was fourteen years ago this month–the exact date escapes me.

My friends and I were on our way to Peoria, Arizona for a Padres Spring Training game, with a stop along the way at my friend Ken’s father’s vacation spot on the Colorado river, somewhere between Blythe, CA and Yuma Arizona. Not really that far, relatively speaking, from Martinez lake. A little place called Walter’s Camp, which was not a lot more than a small store selling bait and tackle, and renting boats. There was a small park for mobile homes, and perhaps a couple dozen (I’m guessing) fishing cabins and halfway decent vacation rentals along the river.

During the day, people water skied some, or kayaked. You could swim in the river if it wasn’t too cold, and a little ways down was a sandbar where people would hang out and drink, and enjoy the sun. At night, though, it was a little bit different. The cabins were far enough apart and it was dark enough that you could have a good amount of privacy while still getting your party on. I don’t know about everyone else, but we would usually indulge in almost medieval amounts of beer, and often were still in fairly bad shape when we headed off to the game the next day.

It was the sort of fun that it seemed only single young men could have, and with the exception of Ken, the other three of us were exactly that. This particular trip, though, was a little different for me.

Over the past year or so, I’d developed a healthy curiousity about God, thanks to a good friend I’d met at Grossmont College, otherwise known as Harvard on the Hill. It would have been a fair statement at the time to say I was seeking in earnest. I wanted answers to what in the blue heck I was doing on this weird, sad, and sometimes outright tragic planet. To that end, my friend introduced me to his pastor and friend, an ex-chaplain named Tim Wakefield. He was a really great guy, and had a lot to say about Jesus, and what he could mean to a life. My friend was a great example. He’d come from a serious drug addiction and almost losing his marriage to leading worship and beginning his own road to pastoring.

I was developing a friendship with Tim as well, and was started to feel comfortable at his church (Calvary Baptist, in Linda Vista). Then the week before our trip to Peoria, he was killed in a motorcycle crash, while in Arizona.

I thought about cancelling my trip, but I knew my friends were counting on my being there (and also on my car), and decided to go anyway. I couldn’t stop thinking about Tim, and how messed up it was for God to take him when I had barely gotten the chance to get to know him. I also knew his family would he utterly destroyed, and wondered what would happen to them as well. And to me, for that matter. Who would help me find my way to God, if that would even still happen? I was angry, and sad, and looking forward to getting into my 30 pack of Bud Light and forgetting about things a little.

I remember driving up and unwinding on the back deck a little, looking down at the river and talking about whether or not the Padres were ever going to get back to the level of excellence they’d shown back in 1998. Right about sunset, my friends went to the fire ring in front of the cabin to get a bonfire going (because alcohol and fire sound like a great combo when you’re in a certain state). I remember hearing them call to me to bring the beer coolers, and I stood up from my chair and lifted a cooler in each hand. I looked down at the river, and for some reason, I decided to walk down the short ramp to the boat dock.

(That was pretty much the view I had, although I didn’t take that picture. I Googled Walter’s Camp, and selected the image–it was perfect)

I thought about Tim, and thought about God, and thought about all the shit that had happened in my 32 years that to all intents and purposes pointed to the absence of God, rather than the presence. It actually surprised me when I started crying.

I remember crying out something almost primal, more sound than words, and then dropping the coolers at my left and right and dropping to my knees on the dock, ripping out both knees on my Levis. It was about as simple as that. I would later read something from CS Lewis talking about his own conversion, and he referred to it as giving in and admitting that God was God. That’s what it was like. There was no voice from above (at least not then), but it did feel as if a blanket or maybe a strong arm dropped over my shoulder and I remember slapping my palms onto the dock and saying something like, “God, please…”

My tears cut the wood beneath my bowed head and I waited for…something. I could hear a cabin maybe three down having a party, and smell their fire as well as the one in front of our cabin. The Rolling Stones song “Midnight Rambler” was playing and I could see people milling around on their deck and down on the dock when I turned my head to the side:

(I’m pretty sure this is the exact cabin, but it was fourteen years ago and I was tipsy and emotional so I can’t say for certain)

and then it was like…being enveloped by a sense of peace about things. They weren’t totally OK then, and weren’t even the next day, or for a while after that. In fact, our weekend continued on our planned course. Something was different, though. I stood up, and I knew God was real, and wanted to know me, and have me know him. I hadn’t known that when I fell to my knees. It gave me hope, and that was something I hadn’t really had before. I knew I had a long way to go, but now I also knew I would not be alone on the journey.

That was how it started, fourteen years ago.

Today, things are different. I live a short drive from Walter’s Camp, but I’ve only been back once since that time, and it was over a decade ago. I’d like to go back sometime, and take the kids and Jen. I’m doing about as well as I’ve ever done, and life is pretty good.

I love God, and I love my family. My wife is my best friend, and we’re coming up on five years of marriage. It never would have happened had it not been for that day in Walter’s Camp.