I read this article about the movie “God’s Not Dead” the other day online, and it was less a review than a callout to the filmmakers for misrepresenting atheists. Something akin to “What I learned about atheists from “God’s Not Dead.” The answer, of course, was either nothing, or falsehoods.
What stuck in my craw about it, was to wonder what they were expecting? It’s a faith-based movie about a student who defends his faith when a teacher tries to compel him to admit that God is dead, with the real statement being that he never existed at all. The student is made to try and attempt to convince the opposite, which is, of course, that God is not dead.
If the film wanted to educate people about atheism and how atheists perceive themselves, it probably would have done just that. That’s not the kind of movie it was. I believe it was meant to encourage believers in their ability to defend and represent their faiths. In that regard, I think the film succeeded.
However.
The professor was represented in the film as kind of a snarling bulldog and all-around jerk. It was a stereotype, to be sure, but it is also true that stereotypes exist for a reason. I have had many, many encounters with atheists who were actually quite similar to Kevin Sorbo’s character in the movie. They were indeed snarling, and condescending, and insulting, and very misrepresentative of Christians and faith in general.
Today I kind of understood why, at least to my line of thought.
I think people often respond in a hostile manner to things they don’t understand. Like faith in Jesus, or atheism for that matter.
As a person of faith, it’s difficult to understand why someone would respond to people of faith with so much hostility, as so many atheists do. Where the filmmakers went wrong—as I have done myself so many times—was to assume that all atheists are the same kind of lunatic as the professor in the movie.
Clearly that isn’t true at all.
I have several good friends and family members that are also atheists—who while they might not agree with what I believe and how I practice it—are also not condemning or insulting to me. They’re still people I love and pray for, and enjoy hanging out with. I’m not going to treat them like they are rabid or infected with the zombie virus.
The filmmakers of “God’s Not Dead” might have chosen to qualify the central premise of the professor character as being representative of some atheists, rather than all of them. Clearly not all atheists are as loathsome as the professor in the movie or people like Richard Dawkins (To me, he seems a step or two away from espousing the virtues of eugenics, and should definitely stay the heck off Twitter).
Now, where atheists go wrong is to assume all Christians are hypocrites and charlatans. That is also quite obviously not true. And to treat all people professing faith as if they are deluded dolts who hate everyone not like them and deride belief in any other religion (or lack of religion) is a mistake.
Christianity is not about derision, or hate. It’s about a relationship with the creator. It’s about trying to help others find that same relationship. It’s about loving people as you love yourself. It’s about loving God.
Certainly, there are Christian jerks, too. Lord knows I have been one of them.
So atheists should qualify their platform—their statements—as being representative of some Christians. Not assuming all are the same, as all atheists are not the same.
What I’m getting at is this: don’t assume you know people and are qualified to judge them because you may have had a bad experience or sometimes heard about a bad experience. You don’t have that right.
Get to know them, whoever they are. Have a conversation. Don’t try to convert the person either way. Just talk to them. You learn more about people and who they are by enjoying a cup of coffee than by holding a sign in their face and telling them what a tool they are.
And also, that plank in your own eye can get super uncomfortable.
Quite a few years ago, my friend Ken’s brother Ryan and his fiancé were driving to see Ryan and Ken’s dad at his Walter’s Camp cabin. The plans were to stay for the weekend, I believe. In the back of Ryan’s pickup was a 12 pack of Corona and their gear. On the way to the river, the pickup sideswiped another vehicle—a tractor/trailer—and Ryan was killed, almost instantly. His fiancé had quite a few cuts and bruises, but ended up mostly OK.
Ryan wasn’t drunk or on any drugs. Best guess is that he fell asleep at the wheel. In any case, he didn’t make it.
I remember there was a public funeral at some Unitarian Universalist church in El Cajon, and it was about what you would expect. Non-religious, lots of people crying, and a nice picture at the front of the church. Afterward was a reception, with even more tears and a few speeches.
Shortly after that, there was a much smaller gathering at the Walter’s Camp cabin, and I was a part of that. I remember we all had one of the Coronas which had remained completely intact in the back of Ryan’s truck, and toasted his memory. The next day Ryan’s dad attached a small, brown paper-wrapped package filled with Ryan’s ashes to a few very large balloons, with Ryan and his fiance’s wedding rings tied to the balloon strings. The object was for the balloons to be launched from a bridge over the river, and gradually drift down toward the water. The package would dissolve, and the balloons would rise to the heavens, carrying the couple’s rings.
It worked exactly as planned.
I remember standing on that bridge, and everyone was a wreck—though I was mostly able to keep it together. I placed my hand on the back of Ryan’s best friend’s neck as he knelt on the bridge crying and said anything I could think of to comfort him, praying silently for peace to come to these people.
We headed back to San Diego a little later that afternoon, and I never saw any of those people again. I don’t know if peace came to them, but I know those couple of days at Walter’s Camp made me heavily consider my own mortality. At the time, I also carried a lot of unresolved grief within my heart, and sometimes it was as bitter as bile, other times I was simply…stuck. In my grief, in my life. Stuck.
I would sit at home sometimes, or at work, and it would occur to me that for some, peace doesn’t come. At least not when you want it to, or the way you want it to. Sometimes, God doesn’t lift the burden right away. You get through things, and afterward you can’t remember how you did it, but you survive.
That was me. I realized it was mostly my own doing, but that didn’t change the way I felt.
I would think about my own experience—my many experiences—with death and grieving, and I would wonder why it had to happen that way? Hadn’t I tried to be the best person I could? I loved my parents, and they were gone. I loved my friend, and he was gone. He gave his life to a bullet, within shouting distance of my bedroom window on the day before the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded.
I didn’t really understand then—nor do I now—why endurance of those deaths was required of me. I trust God today that one day I will understand why those things happened. I don’t know how long that will take.
Maybe for me it’s like the refining process for gold. Heat is applied to the gold, and it melts. Impurities rise to the top and are skimmed off. The gold is cooled. More heat, more impurities, more skimming. Eventually, the gold is pure and valuable.
Perhaps I needed to be refined somehow. Perhaps we all do.
I just wish I hadn’t held onto my grief for so long. That was a mistake I didn’t really know how to correct at the time. I can tell you when things finally got to the point where I let go of them, though.
March, 2007. Canyon View Christian Fellowship.
Many years after everything went down, including those four deaths—five, if you include Tim Wakefield, which I completely should have. He died in 2000.
That day in March, my friend Ron came up to where I was sitting just before the service started, and said he was going to sit with me if that was ok. It was.
I had been a believer for about seven years at that point, but I never had given my grief to God, and that day it was heavy on my heart. Pastor Mike had given a bit of testimony just before Easter, regarding the death of his own mother. It hit me so hard I was nearly shaking. I made it through the sermon, but at the end I knew I was in trouble if I didn’t get out fast when church was over.
Without saying goodbye to Ron, I made tracks for the door. I stopped at the door like I’d hit a brick wall. I knew—somehow I knew—that today was supposed to be the day. I didn’t want it to be. I didn’t want to grieve. I didn’t want to think about things, or remember.
Yet I knew that my grief had been a slow poison to my life over the years and miles and so many tears since those deaths happened. It was a weight around my neck. It was so damn heavy.
I went back to where Ron was still sitting, and I asked him to pray for me. I don’t remember what he said, but I remember he prayed for me with his arms around my neck, and his face right next to my ear.
That morning, in the third row of the CVCF sanctuary following the 9am service, I finally handed 20 years of accumulated grief to my God. I grieved my mom, and dad, and my friend. I grieved for Tim, and even Ryan. I think I was still puffy eyed when the next service began, and I sat through that one, too. I was surrounded by members of my small group, and I leaned on them. It was good.
If I learned one thing over the years since, it’s that holding onto things really doesn’t help. It may delay your pain, but it doesn’t heal it. Acknowledging your pain does, when it is done before God.
Sometimes the comfort doesn’t come right away. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it comes when you least expect it, through the comfort of a good friend and whispered prayers. It can be a long and intricate process—it’s like that for me.
Grief can also sometimes be like a broken windshield. It starts with a speck–a chip in the glass. If it isn’t repaired, it begins to gradually creep out over the rest of the windshield, like a spider web of pain—with offshoots in many directions. Sometimes I see or feel things I haven’t thought of in years, and it triggers those old feelings. It’s easier, now. I have God to remind me he will carry them for me. I have my wife, who knows how to love. I have my kids, who lift my spirits when they get heavy.
The hands of God can feel like a strong grip, and also a gossamer touch. Often, you feel them through proxy. It’s always been that way for me. Yet comfort is comfort, and pain can be assuaged in so many different ways. Remember, one of His many names is Comforter.
Surrender. Give him your grief. Drop that burden at His feet. Be refined. It can be a lifelong process, but it’s worth it.
I learned a while back that besides the obvious value of finding and keeping in touch with friends and family on sites like Facebook and Twitter(as well as mass-marketing events and other promotional-type activities), there is also quite a bit of potential for problems with those same people you were just sharing photos with.
No matter what your platform of choice is (and there are many), it can get you in a lot of trouble, even if you had the noblest of intentions. This is for many different reasons, and in the interest of not crashing the WordPress server with examples, I will only enumerate a few within the confines of this particular post.
1. Subtleties:
Like text messaging, you can’t grasp the intended tone as well as the other nuances of a conversation when you’re reading a status update, tweet, or whatever other services call it.
Also, because even though the people reading the things a person says are supposedly “friends,” they often don’t really know each other, or at least not well. You may think their cat memes are hilarious, but they may privately not hold your fondness for sharing Taylor Swift videos in similarly high regard. In short, they aren’t really your friends in many cases.
2. Don’t Be a Jerk
So while whatever point you’re trying to get across may be true and valid, you never know who you’re going to offend by making it. And there are clearly also some people who sometimes use social networking to say things they would never say in person.
Because of this, there are times when something that starts with a perfectly innocuous question often ends in ugliness, hurt feelings, and possibly even far reaching consequences.
Mainly, this is because you never know what’s going on (or has gone on) in a person’s life when they read your stuff.
Consequently, you also never know when they’re going to flip out on you and start puking ugliness or saying things they won’t be able to get back.
3. Know your audience
The other thing to consider is a person needs to weigh the material they’re going to share and decide if a huge and impersonal platform is appropriate. Remember, anyone and everyone has the ability to read your stuff.
If you don’t want your mom seeing your vacation shenanigans, don’t post them.
If you don’t want your boss to read your whiny little missives about how mean he is, don’t post them.
If you don’t want people from church to see you doing body shots, that might be one to send your frat buddies via email or private message.
Speaking of church, if you don’t want to look like a bad example, or hypocrite, or charlatan of some sort, keep that stuff to yourself online! Gosh! There is absolutely no need to post screen caps, memes, or movie clips that require a valid ID to view.
4. Solving Problems before they happen:
I would also offer this: if one has a problem with something said, a simple email or private message can go a long way toward clearing things up. It can also avoid dozens of people feeling the need to attack or defend a person or point.
It’s possible to confront someone in an appropriate manner and resolve a situation without hurting feelings or having a person blow a gasket, which is what happened to me a while back. Yes, I often have to learn things the hard way.
I’d also say that if you’re a person with thin skin and a hair trigger, then social networking is probably not for you. But if you do choose to use it, stay away from contentious topics.
5. It’s Only a Joke:
Maybe that’s how you mean it, but don’t expect everyone to get your sense of humor. Don’t expect everyone to react like you do, or share that same level of verbal sophistication you think you have. Here’s a tip: if you think you’re hilarious and clever and full of wisdom, and just have to share your cleverness with the world, try to contain yourself.
Not everyone thinks cats barfing to techno is funny, or likes watching frat boys light gas or drink tequila from a morbidly obese navel.
Use your brain, man.
6. Like It Or Not, You ARE An Example
Look, I know everyone is different. Everyone likes different things, and may laugh hysterically at something that makes you see red. You may think that blog is chock full of profound truth, or that that live clip of dudes eating cockroaches or women giving birth in wading pools is really cool and interesting. Just don’t expect me to. The thing is, you never know who will see your posts.
You never know how they will react to them.
Don’t cause harm to a friendship, or relationship, or cause someone to stumble or turn away from God by being an idiot online.
It’s not worth it.
For my part, because I have a problem with not saying what I really feel, or not calling BS BS, I will probably hereafter restrict my comments to things like “lol,” and only share things like
There are some issues where I end up struggling with what I know to be right as a follower of Jesus. I know I am supposed to love God, love others, and turn the other cheek, as it were.
Sometimes I honestly can’t really do that.
Not that I have acted in any sort of way, but I think about how I would like to act. That can sometimes be more than a little harshly.
I think of the Jerry Sandusky case from a few years ago, where he was convicted of raping several young boys. He went to prison, but was entirely unrepentant, and denies wrong-doing to this day.
I remember thinking that if I ever came upon someone doing something similar (as an assistant coach did at Penn State), that person would likely need some severe dental and facial reconstruction.
I think I would still do that today.
Now, we have Islamic State (IS) militants (I will not use the word soldier to describe those men), decapitating US reporters with what look to be your average hunting knife. They proudly release video of those men being executed for simply being Americans. First, James Foley, and now the other man shown in Foley’s execution video, Steven Sotloff, was also beheaded. Threatened was a British journalist.
My outrage at these barbarities exists on several levels. As an American, I want our armed forces to sweep down on these animals and wipe them from the face of the earth. Because that is what you do with rabid animals who are a threat to human life.
You put them down.
Except it isn’t that simple, not with Jesus.
I know vengeance is his, and that these men will in due time pay the penalty due their sins. It’s just difficult to see these black-clad cowards spout their rhetoric and murder people and walk away from it.
It does not seem right, not ever.
And I think that is because it isn’t right. But these men don’t follow Jesus. Also, based on what I have heard of Islam, they do not necessarily follow Allah, either.
They exist outside of law (because the shariah law they claim to follow is barbaric horse manure, and not representative of any sort of god), and any traditional morality. They exist outside of humanity, and seem nearly a representation of the demonic rather than anything human.
As a man, and a human being, I want to blow them out of their black “uniforms” and into another dimension.
There is no doubt in my mind they deserve it.
But I think given the opportunity, I don’t know if I would be able to do any such thing. Because of Galatians 2:20.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (NIV)
Nothing in that verse—or any verse I know of—tells me to take revenge for anyone, no matter how unjustly their lives have ended.
If Christ lives in me, then I am no longer capable of killing, whether or not it seems righteous, or justified.
If these men are my enemies—and they sure seem to be—then I am supposed to love them.
How on earth do I do that, when what I really want is the complete opposite?
I think the struggle against what I want vs. what I know to be right will be what ultimately defines me as well as how I represent Jesus to those who do not know him.
There’s been a great deal written over the past few years about how the church is “losing” millenials (young people coming to adulthood around the turn of the century, the year 2000, that is) or members of Generation “Y.” Many have speculated as to the reason, but it seems to me to have something to do with the rise of liberalism in both politics and the church. This is manifested in many ways, but I believe most significantly is the extreme antipathy of many young people toward conservatives for what they feel is a hawklike view of the war in Afghanistan and the potential for war is places like Syria and Gaza. Not to mention conservative support for legislation like the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and legislation against gun control reform.
There are probably lots of personal reasons people have for turning away from or leaving the church, but based on news coverage and changing public opinion, it seems to me the perceived treatment of LGBT men and women by conservatives and “evangelical” Christians has had the most effect on young people as far as changing their views of the church.
I do believe in God, in Jesus, and in his sacrifice on behalf of the world and everyone in it. Not just everyone who believes, but everyone.
Many of the people who share my faith also share a view that (and I am not speaking solely of the loathsome Westboro Baptist “Church” here) homosexuality is chief among sins, and will be what will ultimately bring down the country, the world, and bring about the return of Christ to wreak vengeance on a gay-loving world. Or something like that.
Often, the approach of my fellow believers toward gay people—both at gay events and in other forums, such as online, in newspapers, magazines, etc.—is to let those men and women know in no uncertain terms what fate awaits them should they choose not to change their evil ways and repent. Seldom–if ever–mentioned is the true message of Christ.
The problem that I have now—and have for many years—is that approach sounds nothing like Jesus to me. Jesus didn’t tell his followers to condemn. He told them to love their neighbor. That doesn’t mean love their sin. It just seems to me that spewing vitriol at people does not let them know a loving God exists, a God who is in the business of deliverance. Not to mention that if I ignore the plank in my own eye, I am also sinning before God.
Let me backtrack a bit—all the way back to the very early 1980s.
My first encounter with a gay person was in the 8th grade, shortly before I moved up to high school. I wrote about that day a while back here. For those of you younger folks, homosexuality wasn’t something much talked about then. It was a different time, in almost every way. For my part, and also for many of the kids I hung out with, the word “fag” was tossed around almost haphazardly, without any concern for what it meant (many of us didn’t have anything but a rudimentary understanding of what homosexuality was, or how it was practiced. I include myself in that number).
We just said it, and it was almost a…good natured insult. Never considered was the fact that it could have been hurtful to anyone. It was just something we said. A lot.
I still regret what happened that night in my friend’s backyard, and I probably always will, to an extent. I’ve asked God’s forgiveness for my part in it, and I wish I could find the young man we hurt and ask for his, but that is not to be. Believe me, I spent a considerable amount of time looking.
So what has happened since then is that I have come into contact with a great many gay men and women at various jobs, and at the junior college I attended back in the 1990’s. With each encounter—and with each friendship developed—I began to notice something.
Each one of these men and women were people just like I was. They ate, and slept, and got dressed, and showered, and pooped. The only difference I saw was that they were drawn to people of the same sex and I was not.
They loved the people they were with, and in many cases had been committed to them alone for long periods of time. I worked with one lesbian couple that had been together for decades—almost as long as my parents were before they died.
Another thing to consider is the tendency of many gay people (not to mention the unquestionably liberally-minded media) to single out Christians, conservatives, and the “religious right” as chief amongst their oppressors, in a world that otherwise loves and supports the LGBT lifestyle and practices. The truth is, in many parts of the world (including the parts practicing Islam and orthodox Judaism) homosexuality is condemned in stronger words than most Christians use, and gay marriage isn’t mentioned at all. That typically is not discussed, though.
Another thing I do disagree with is the tendency of late for LGBT people to liken their quest for what they call “marriage equality” to that of the struggle African-Americans faced during the civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s. Yes, they are fighting for what they deem a right they are being denied, but of the states who are denying LGBT men and women the right to use the word “marriage” to describe their unions, I would submit that many—if not most—of them are doing so based on the definition they have to work with on what marriage is—which for a great many conservatives and those on the religious “right” means the union of a man and a woman. While that is how I would personally define the word as well, I would do so while taking the following into consideration.
What had changed in my heart over the years (and this is way before I became a believer) was that I no longer cared about whether or not these people wanted to do the same things I did with the people they were involved with. It occurred to me it was none of my business. It still isn’t, and I still don’t care. I wouldn’t want them to try and peek into my bedroom, either.
I dealt with and related to gay men and women on a personal level, based on how they treated me and others and not who they slept with (or didn’t). It worked out pretty well, and I made a couple of good friends over the years.
When I came to belief in 2000, I was in a place in life where I didn’t work with or know anyone who was gay (that I knew of, anyway). I began to grow and deepen my faith, and it was so interesting to see that the Jesus I came to know through scripture and discipling was not the same one I’d heard about over the course of my life before knowing him.
In the course of time, I became somewhat involved with a young woman I worked with, and we began to spend time together with a group of friends of hers—most of whom were gay men.
I did not make a secret of my faith, and they respected it. I treated them just like I did everyone else, and I began to notice something the more time I spent with them. The gay community—at least to the extent of my involvement and casual friendships with these men—was way more of a community than the straight people I’d hung out with prior to that. They supported each other unconditionally, and seemed less interested in judging themselves and others than they did in simply living their lives.
I didn’t preach to them, and they didn’t try to convert me. I was more than willing to talk about any aspect of my faith they wanted to hear about, but I did not shove hell down their throats, either. I just tried to love them the way they were, to the best of my ability—even if I didn’t understand their lifestyle. It just didn’t seem to fit with the way we were made. But I could let that slide, for the most part. They didn’t share details of what they were doing in their relationships, and neither did I. So we had a mostly very friendly relationship, each of us understanding we were different, and that—for the most part—was OK. And the truth is, this particular group of gentlemen was a lot of fun to hang out with.
One time in particular, one of them told me, “It means a lot that you’re here. I don’t think anybody’s used to that with people like you.” I assumed he meant straight people at first, but then I realized he meant Christians.
I told him that I just loved God, and that scripture says I’m supposed to love people, too. He smiled and gave me a hug.
Eventually, though, things began to change a little bit, and I started to struggle with some of the things I saw. It culminated in an evening where the young woman I was involved with and I were at a party where we were the only straight people, and things started happening around us. Very quickly, it started making me feel really uncomfortable, and I told the girl that I wanted to leave. It got to a point where I could no longer balance what I believed versus what these men did—mostly because I was being confronted with it in a way that got me a little weirded out, to tell the truth.
It wasn’t in the privacy of anyone’s bedroom, so I no longer had the luxury of not being involved. She didn’t feel the way I did. That was the night we decided to “take a break,” which we never recovered from. There have been times when I wondered what would have happened if things hadn’t gotten so crazy that night. Would God have convicted me in some other way? I don’t know. And with things being as they are now, I can’t imagine wanting to change anything or go back. Yes, it ended up being a painful end to my relationship. Perhaps that was what it took to refine my heart.
In any case, after the party that night, I didn’t spend much more time with the group of guys, as I didn’t spend much more time with the girl—not any more, actually, outside of work.
It was five years later before I was involved with anyone else, and that was with the woman who would later become my wife. As we grew into our relationship, and our marriage, it was around the time all the gay marriage propositions were going through the process of becoming law. “Marriage Equality” and all that. I hadn’t thought much about the fact that gay people couldn’t (or could) be married over the course of my life prior to that time period, so it was interesting to see all of the various things on the news, including the Chik-Fil-A controversy of couple years ago.
It was interesting—and I felt a little conflicted inside—because while so many of my fellow Christians were up in arms about the potential legalization of gay marriage, I just…wasn’t. I knew what the Bible had to say about homosexuality, and I agreed with it, but I also did not have a troubled heart about any of those people who wanted to get married. It didn’t matter to me what these folks wanted to do in the privacy of their own homes, and it seemed fair enough that they should be able to marry, if it made it easier regarding insurance and benefits, etc. I never felt that if they were able to marry it would threaten the sanctity of my own marriage. How could it? How could two men or two women marrying each other make my own union any less holy in the sight of God?
What did occur to me, though, was to wonder if all these people who complained, and protested, and cried out about how gay marriage was a danger to the family felt the same about divorce. Why is it we never see news stories about millions of people marching to protest how common arbitrarily ending a marriage has become? God is also very clear how he feels about divorce–perhaps even more clear than about gay marriage. And while all these people were spouting off about how a word is defined, it occurred to me to wonder about how a marriage is defined? What does it mean to these people?
Certainly, I am not trying to say that divorce is never the right course of action, because sometimes it is the only course of action. It’s just that people are often so…fickle about it. The statistic you hear all the time about 50% of marriages ending in divorce? I believe it. Why wouldn’t it be true? It seems that few people understand what a covenant is these days. To me it suggests a sacred promise, and the rings my wife and I exchanged are a symbol of that promise. In short, I got married to her because I wanted to, because I knew I didn’t want anyone else, ever.
And last week, I think I realized what marriage really was. It’s spending the night before Valentine’s day in the ER with your husband, while he practically yells and pounds chairs and walls in his pain. It’s spending the day itself in a chair next to his bed, and praying for him. It’s holding his hand and making him think of other things. It’s sleeping (sort of) sitting up rather than going home, even for a little while. It’s devotion to the person with whom you made the covenant, and that is what my wife showed me last week, and it made me love her all the more, if such a thing is even possible.
So to recap. While I understand the biblical reasoning behind the stance so many take on whether or not homosexuals should be able to marry (based on the “biblical” definition of what marriage means), the conflict I feel comes from feeling like if people are devoted to one another, and are willing to make a covenant saying they are going to mean it for the rest of their lives, it’s hard for me not to want to just let them. Even if I don’t agree with or practice the same lifestyle they do.
Also, a while back, my adopted state of Arizona has passed (and sent to the governor–who vetoed the legislation) SB1062, a law that in essence allows people who refuse service to someone a defense (‘deeply held’ religious beliefs) in the event they are sued for descrimination or something of that nature. Of course, while legal recourse may ostensibly be what the law is about, the unspoken subtext is that it would also give others what they feel is license to treat gay people and their potential business in an unfair and descriminatory manner.
I believe that is it in a nutshell, and is also what has millions of gays and pro-gays in such an uproar once again. They’re crying foul, and likening the legislation to the old Jim Crow laws from decades ago. While that may be a much lengthier discussion for another time, it does seem to me that while the “Jim Crow” battle cry is closer to pro-gay hyperbole than anything else, there is also a great deal of potential for descriminatory ugliness with this law, because people are people, and prone to do bad things with ambiguously worded legislation such as this.
With all that in mind, I think perhaps it is not just what some Christian folks are saying, but how they’re saying it. The arguments are the same, and probably always will be. Scripture decrying homosexuality is referenced, and gays along with supporters throw up scripture they feel counters their Christian counterparts efforts in the same regard. It gets uglier all the time, and nowhere on either side of the discussion is the real message of Jesus referenced.
It seems like this to me: if the bible is true, and it tells us that God is love and that all people will know we are the disciples of Christ if we love one another, then how are we showing the people who do not know his love the face of Jesus by so often treating them with open hostility? How does feeding gay people fettucini alfredo or making a wedding cake for them make you a participant in whatever sin you feel they’re committing? I mean, I get it, but I don’t agree.
The problem is the wording and the design of the legislation, and I wonder sometimes if that was an intentional, CYA move on the part of the legislators. If so, we have to think about how this legislation is like (or could be like)…giving people already inclined to do so the right to treat others shabbily. There may be a place for some similar type of legislation, but this particular law is not going to go over well, not with the social climate surrounding this issue what it has become.
For my part, I can’t do it anymore.
I can’t treat people that way, and I never really could. Maybe some of it is my California-ness regarding gay people carrying over into my life in Arizona, but it’s really more about not wanting to feel like I’m any better than anyone else because my sin is different. I am not better than anyone else. I am the same. In my dotage, I’ve found it so much easier to treat people kindly. I would rather make them their food or a cake or floral arrangements, and then tell them God loves them and died for them. I want people to know the Jesus I do. Whether they’re gay or straight or…whatever, I want them to know him, and know how he feels for them and what he did. I do not now—nor have I ever—felt my marriage (or any marriage) could be threatened in any way by who else can get married.
I wonder, though, how many gay men or women are known by the folks protesting gay marriage?
I also wonder how many Christians are known by gay people?
If we don’t know each other, how can we expect anything to change in either direction? Jesus talked to people. Walked with people. Ate with them. Probably fished with them, and laughed and drank and danced. I believe that in the end, the Eternal Kingdom will not be filled courtesy of those who spoke out against the things God hates the loudest—those who shouted condemnation from every rooftop. I think souls will quietly slip in thanks to the people who have shown them the most love, who have shown them Jesus.
To that end, because I am loved, I will try to be loving. I will choose to show people the Jesus I know by telling them about what he’s done in my life. I will tell them about how I am incomplete, and wounded, and broken, and still sin, but am loved in spite of the things that queue up to keep me from Jesus. I will explain what scripture means to me as I understand it, and I will tell people what I think if they ask me. If I love Jesus like I say, I owe them the truth.
I just have no intention of shouting it at them, or telling them God hates them because of their sin. Brand me a heretic if you must, but I feel that if God hated people because of their sin, he would hate all of us equally. And he would not have redeemed us from anything. You don’t die for people you hate.
And to see so many people caught up in the definition of a word and how it threatens them rather than simply getting to know people and telling them about Jesus just doesn’t make any sense to me. I can’t understand how telling people they’re damned for what they do in their bedrooms is going to show them the Jesus I know that has changed my life and could also change theirs.
To be clear, once again, I am aware of the mentions in the bible of homosexuality, and that it is addressed as sin. While it is true that God hates sin, it would be errant—once again—to imply that he hates homosexuality more than any other type of sin. And that he hates homosexuals more than anyone else. Sin is sin. If God hated homosexuals, he would also hate every other type of sinner, and probably all Christians. The bible doesn’t say any of that.
Homosexuality is not something I indulge in, and whether or not I “approve” of it does not really even matter. I think the bible makes it clear what God thinks of homosexuality and what it entails, and I acknowledge the punishment for it is the same as any other sin—all other sin. Omission of mention by Jesus is not the same as approval. While Jesus himself may not mention homosexuality specifically, he did come in fulfillment of Old Testament Law, and prophecy, not to nullify it. I think where we go awry is when we start classifying sins, and justify ours as less terrible than homosexuality.
It isn’t.
No one is righteous, no not one. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9)
Certainly not me.
We’re all different, but we are also all the same. We need God.
We need Jesus if we are to be freed from our chains and our sins. God knows it, and Christians do, too. Yet if we can condemn someone else for what they’re doing, then we don’t have to think as much about what we’re doing. All of which means that we can take comfort in our own perceived righteousness, while we decry the unrighteousness of gay men and women as if it were anything different than sins that we have committed, now, and throughout history.
Take a look at Matthew 5: 27-28. Go ahead. Read it and come back. Still here? Good. Let me repeat what I said before. Sin is sin. No one is righteous, no not one. How can I justify condemning a gay person with my own words, while justifying my own actions as a lesser sin. To God, they are the same. The punishment is the same.
Let’s talk about those Old Testament laws for a few minutes. You know the ones. Many people will talk about how scripture also mentions other things as being sinful that people don’t seem to care about anymore, like eating shrimp and other sea creatures for one example (take your pick, there are many others). They will tell you that those old laws—like the ones that condemn homosexuality as well as other sexual sins—do not matter or apply anymore, because the world is a different place. That’s partly true, and I’ll get back to that in a bit.
Those laws again, from the Old Testament. Taken specifically, there are three different types.
Laws pertaining just to the (ancient) state of Israel. They are pretty specific.
Also for consideration are ceremonial laws (many pertaining to sacrifice, and diet, and things of that nature), which were superseded by the New Covenant, fulfilled in the person of Christ.
Lastly, moral laws. It is only the moral laws of the Old Testament which remain and are held as truths by most Christians based on the validity of the Ten Commandments. I won’t go into every piece of scripture here, but at least to address the dietary laws and some of the other laws that seem to apply mainly to those of the Jewish faith rather than Christians: take a look at Mark 7:19, Acts 15: 5-29, etc.
Of course, if one does not hold the Bible as truth, then this would make little sense. And there’s the rub.
Then Jesus enters the picture, and everything changes.
As believers, we are called to share him and his truth with people. So while the biblical principles of the Old Testament make it clear how God feels about all different types of sin, there is hope, and in a world that seems to have so little, that is indeed something.
I posted a picture on Facebook not long ago I’d seen online of a group of Christians (mostly men) at a Gay Pride event, and they were holding signs and wearing shirts that said “I’m sorry.” They were apologizing to gay people for the treatment they’d received at the hands of standard bearers for Jesus. In the picture I posted, a gay man in great physical condition wearing tighty-whiteys gripped one of the shirt-wearers in what looked to be a very emotional bear-hug.
I thought it was a great picture and that it was a great way to actually show Jesus to people who needed to know him instead of just telling them they were on the Bullet Train to hell.
I got a bit of an ass-chewing from a couple of people to the effect that treating gay people as if their lifestyle was OK was the same as personally condoning and supporting it, and that wasn’t right—as if because I was a Christian, I should tell them they were going to hell. Never mind all that “love your neighbor” stuff. I want to tell people about Jesus, and I will tell them about sin. I just feel the right thing to do is let them know they are loved first.
I can’t convict someone of any sin, and I wouldn’t want to if I could. Jesus does that. And it isn’t my function, as a believer, to punish people for sin. Let him without sin cast the first stone?
That ain’t me, man—I’m a mess.
I’d rather tell someone I’m sorry, then hug them and tell them Jesus loves them.
I was sitting here today with a little time to kill on my lunch break, and it occurred to me there may be a few people out there reading this who have no idea how I came to faith. The following jumble of words is how it finally happened for me—how I came to faith, and why, after most of my life. It’s a long story, but it’s true, and it’s mine. I don’t expect to convert anyone with my words—because I am just a person with a story, like everyone else. It’s God who convicts, not me.
So here we go. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that it would make more sense for me not to believe than to have faith, considering how my life went prior to my “conversion” to faith. And indeed, I did spend most of life not believing, though with a healthy dose of curiosity.
My childhood was fairly normal, as far as the things I did. I played, I read comics, I spent time with friends. I did well in school, and I did badly in school. There were a few incidents when I was younger where my older brother took out a great deal of his frustration on me, whether or not that frustration had anything to do with me was immaterial. I was there when he felt it, and I suppose working out his issues on his little brother may have offered him relief in some way. I don’t know, I wasn’t privy to his thoughts. The result of his behavior toward me, though, was a tremendously negative self-image, and quite a few scars (on the inside and the out). I learned how to feel and act like a victim, and that was mostly what I did through my childhood and adolescence.
Additionally, my mother began to struggle with cancer when I was around ten, I think, and she had a lot of both victory and defeat in her battle with the disease. Which culminated, of course, with her losing the final battle. Cancer treatment was not in the 1980’s what it is now.
One other thing about my adolescence. That was where I first heard about Jesus, while attending the youth group of a Foursquare church two of my friends attended. The word fell on rocky soil in my case, but I did hear it. And I remembered it.
My dad died from a heart attack when I was 16, and it was shortly after that I left the youth group and never went back. I remember the youth leader wanted me to give a testimony to the church about how Christ had gotten me through the experience. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t feel that he had. After I left the group, I didn’t think about God for a very long time.
When I was 17 and a senior in high school, a very close friend shot himself in the head less than half a mile from my house, and bled to death on a flat spot of dirt, under a pepper tree I could see from my front yard. That was probably one of the worst things I had ever experienced, because one day he was here and the next he was gone. We had no time to prepare for his loss, and had no idea how to deal with it once he was gone. To make matters worse, two of my friends and I saw the immediate aftermath of his death. Not knowing it had been him, we were walking past where it had happened, and no one had thought to clean up the mess. And it was quite a mess.
The next day the space shuttle Challenger exploded on takeoff, and we found out the kid who’d died on the hillside under the pepper tree was our friend, and for me at least, the wheels came off after that. I didn’t want to hear about God, or anything to do with God. I just wanted to listen to my metal, and hole up in a dark place, both literally and figuratively.
I was young, though, and eventually got most of my life back in time for the remainder of my senior year. I had a girlfriend and I was doing passably at pulling myself up by the bootstraps. I graduated by the skin of my teeth, and proceeded to not think at all what to do with my life.
My mom also finally took her final turn for the worse. I remember the day of my graduation she was lying on a hospital bed in our living room and could not attend the ceremony, which was all I really wanted. Didn’t happen. She was pretty messed up at the time, and in lots of pain. It was only going to get worse.
We had to move from the house I grew up in to an apartment, because treatment and everything else was so expensive. Also, by that time I had stopped getting money from my dad’s social security because I was over 18. We were pretty much broke, and didn’t get that much for the house because of the condition it was in. Mostly, thanks to my brother and his penchant for destruction.
I drove my mom to the hospital for her final visit in February of 1987. She died on the 27th of February, two months shy of my 19th birthday.
I remember her funeral being weird and uncomfortable. The pastor doing the service knew nothing about my mother, and instead talked about Jesus and the path to salvation during the eulogy. I REALLY didn’t want to hear that. It sounded like bull crap to me.
Following that, I went into what was pretty much a tailspin that lasted until the early 1990’s. I tried to fill this yawning void down the center of me with so many things. I became a binge drinker, and a very bad one. I ate like a Roman at a banquet. I looked at pornography. I indulged in several completely empty relationships. I lied, I cheated, and I even stole from a couple of employers. I was a walking disaster. Finally, FINALLY, it began to change for me when I met someone that was a Christian, and a legitimate one. She represented a different Jesus to me than I had ever heard about. My curiosity was piqued, and I once began to try and figure things out. Who was God? Was he real? Was Jesus? What did any of that mean to me?
I had job at a window covering factory at one point, and one time I was working next to a guy when he broke his hand on one of the machines. He came back to work a day or two later, and I remember having this philosophical conversation with him one day (he could still run the machine with one hand in a cast). I told him I didn’t feel God had ever done anything for me except take things and people away. He told me God had done more for me than I knew.
How could these people I knew believe in a God that seemed so…arbitrary? Even cruel sometimes.
I had no idea, so I read things, lots of things. I read apologetic books from people like CS Lewis. I began to read the bible. My curiosity and desire for answers continued to grow, but my faith did not.
In 1996, I met a guy at a Junior College I was attending who was the same age as me, and had gone through many of the same things I had. He even knew one of my good childhood friends (he used to buy drugs from him). This guy I’d met was the first person to ever tell me his testimony, one-on-one, and it was quite a story. He’d been about to lose his family to his drug habit. He’d been in the Army for a while, which was where he met his wife.
He started attending his wife’s church to save his marriage, and it worked. His marriage was saved, and soon after he was as well. He began playing guitar and leading worship, which is what he was doing when I met him. Now he’s pastor of a church in Pittsburgh, PA, in a community called McKees Rocks.
My friendship with this gentleman—and his pastor—was what finally began to work on my heart. The pastor was a man named Tim Wakefield, and he was awesome. I began attending the Sunday evening service, and Tim and my friend always took the time to talk to me after service. They answered the questions I asked, and they prayed for me, which felt a little strange, but somehow also good.
But I still wasn’t ready.
In the Spring of 2000, Tim was riding his motorcycle to Arizona to visit family, when he was killed in a crash. It was a freak thing, and it was horrible, and everyone mourned. There were bikers at his funeral. There were a lot of Navy people. There were people from other churches—all the lives Tim had touched. The small sanctuary was filled and the doors were open. The love for this man oozed out into the parking lot.
A few days after that, I went on a vacation with my friends—my drinking buddies. We each had a thirty pack, and we meant to destroy them. I remember standing on a dock looking over the river at Arizona and thinking about Tim. Thinking about my life. Thinking about my sin. And then awareness of my sin hit me all at once. The consequence of potentially and suddenly dying with that sin still around me took my breath away. I realized, finally, that I needed God.
I needed him desperately. And I could have him through Jesus.
So I literally fell to my knees and I prayed sincerely for the first time in my life. I confessed, for the first time in my life. I asked for the forgiveness only Jesus could give, for the first time in my life.
Nothing physically happened. I was still kneeling on the dock. I still had holes in the knees of my Levis. I was still a sinner, in need of grace.
I realized the difference was that I now had it. It was like peace about my life poured over me like a big jug of cool water. And so it began.
That’s the how of my transition from non-belief to belief in Jesus. There’s a great deal more to the story, but it has to start somewhere, and that’s the beginning of my story.
The “why” is a little bit more complicated, in a sense.
Why do I believe?
I believe because of the life and witness of two really good friends, who were not insane, not hypocrites, and could sincerely and truthfully attest to the presence of Christ in their lives. They were people transformed and I believed them.
I believe because of a dozen or so quiet conversations with an ex-Navy chaplain named Tim.
I believe because God touched my life and gave me hope in my otherwise worthless life. No one could convince me differently.
I believe because shortly after praying at the river, God showed me what I meant to him. He showed me that he saw me, and loved me, and wanted me.
He showed me through a vision, of sorts. I didn’t appear in it, and he didn’t appear in it. Not all of him, anyway.
Imagine a hand in a cone of light, as if from a spotlight. The light is warm and yellow. The hand is extended, palm up. In the palm lies a fresh oyster, still covered in slime and muck. Water pours over the mollusk, cleaning off much of the sediment and grossness.
Another hand enters the picture and it is clearly a hand that has seen many years of hard work. It is covered with calluses and scars from the fingers to the wrist, including two ovular pads of scar tissue at the heel of the palm, matching the one holding the oyster.
The hand holds a small, curved knife, and moves toward the shell. The mollusk is pried open, and the inner parts quickly searched through, revealing a small round object covered in slime. The hand drops the knife and gently wipes away the offending goop, revealing what has been there all along: a pearl of great price.
The pearl shines softly in the scarred hand.
I really believe that was the day my life began. At least, the part that involves Jesus. The part that counts. The part that began to reveal the path set for me, toward a beautiful and strong-willed woman in the Arizona desert.
It wasn’t all easy after that, and I don’t expect it to be in the future. The future I have thanks to the carpenter who had me in mind from the beginning.
I believe because God healed the worst and most broken parts of me, and revealed a strength I never knew I had.
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.
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:
We took a very brief day trip to San Diego today with the kids, and it was great. We didn’t do much at all, really. We just decided to go this morning, and we got ready and off we went. We saw my sisters for about an hour and did a couple other things, and it was really nice. Then we came home. Normally, my first thought, or my first instinct would have been to whip out my phone at every photo opportunity and take pictures–mostly for blog fodder later on.
I didn’t do that today. My phone stayed in my pocket, and I didn’t take a single picture. Instead, I just visited, and ate lunch, and talked to my family. We played video games and skee ball at the Viejas Outlet Center, and we watched the water show while Jenny did a little shopping–or retail therapy–whatever you want to call it. It was fun just to hang out with my guys.
I hadn’t thought about writing anything about the day until just now, when I thought about how nice it was just to be with the family–to play games with the kids instead of taking pictures of them doing it.
It occurred to me those moments can’t be replaced. If you miss them, they are gone.
I think I want to start doing things differently. Maybe save blogging for reflection rather than documentation.
I don’t want to miss anything–I’ve missed enough already.
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.
A Work in Progress 