Culture Wars

          There is an ongoing culture war in the United States. It’s a timeless war that ebbs and flows with the winds of change. The current wind is political, but it’s also religious. As strange of bedfellows as politics and religion may seem, this is America and we are not surprised. The battle between church and state and the resulting culture wars are more American than mom, apple pie, and baseball. This pastime has been nothing short of a national lovers’ quarrel from our founding.
          Our culture wars evolve as the issues evolve and the battles may take various forms such as between: White vs. Black, North vs. South, urban vs suburban vs rural, conservative/traditional vs. liberal/progressive, Christian vs Non, and so on. But there is always that pervading element of culture in each pushing forth the notion that groups must preserve and protect their beliefs and ways of life. If we could simply stop at preservation of culture, then there’d be no war. The aspect of war comes from one group’s collective fear that a group with opposing or differing beliefs and values poses a threat.
           The issues include the debate between Evolution and Creationism, gun-rights/gun-control, homosexual marriage, affirmative action, abortion and women’s rights, access to healthcare, poverty issues, social justice issues, school prayer, 10 Commandments displays and nativity scenes on public property, English as official language, and immigration and the list goes on.
          Our country has had some knock down and drag out fights including the one that almost cost us the Union, other unfulfilled threats of breaking up, many mind games, lots of back-stabbing, but the prevailing sentiment has been to stay together for the sake of the kids. We the citizens are the kids in this scenario, but our two parents of church and state seem always to get back together without ever reaching a lasting compromise. One might suggest marriage counseling, but should it be from a secular or Christian counselor? 
          Convenient targets though they are, the culture wars are not the fault of your least favorite politician. Obama didn’t start this, nor did Romney, and regardless of who wins in November neither will end it. We are fighting battles that are older than our country, much older. I’m in the U.K. right now and as I am wont to do I have been talking the two subjects we are often taught to avoid in polite conversation: politics and religion. Our British allies appreciate our struggles and one cannot help but perceive them enjoying wry amusement at our expense as they observe our young country as we squabble amongst ourselves much as their older nation has done lo these many years.
          It is tempting, though it would be fruitless in this discussion to compare the Obama years to the George W. Bush years. Most of us are convinced one way or another, so instead of casting blame on the one whom many on the right think is unworthy for their believing he’s the foreign-born, Muslim, antichrist or the one who many on the left think was ineligible because of the perceived partisan decision of the Supreme Court who decided the election or because of a lack of faith in his intellect, let us look at ourselves individually and at our nation collectively. No matter how we break it down, this is about all of us, individually as well as collectively. What are the roles of both church and state, and what are the cultural ramifications? Should the church tell the government how to operate? Should the government dictate the actions and procedures of the church?
          We seem simply incapable of the notion of “live and let live”. Too often it is not enough to simply disapprove or not partake of another culture, we want to denigrate it, regulate it, legislate it, or eradicate it. We as Americans love and celebrate our freedoms, and rightly so, but so often we have difficulty extending to others their freedoms if we believe they are wrong. We in God’s Kingdom seem to want to do legislatively what we have failed to do relationally. Our individual Christian witnessing and the collective work of the church has not provided the results we long for, that we feel God wants of us, so we turn our attention to the United States government to enforce our beliefs. In so doing we have divided the church, divided the nation, run off younger generations of believers, and alienated non-believers to the point that our beliefs are of little consequence. Those we wish to reach, are called to reach, have written us off because they have seen our rampant hypocrisy, incessant power-grabbing, bruising infighting, and unrestrained greed.
          Neither of our two major political parties can claim a monopoly on God or morality. Democrats may, if they bother at all, rather uncomfortably and often unconvincingly, pick up the religious banner when vying for black and Hispanic votes, just to lay it down in the world of academia or Hollywood just as Republicans bible thump significantly more when in evangelical strongholds than they do with Wall Street and Country Club Republicans. It wasn’t Scripture that Obama was quoting that helped him raise massive funds in Hollywood no more than Romney was telling the story of the rich young ruler to the millionaires at his now infamous Florida fundraiser.
          Without delving in to the content, the title of Jim Wallis’s book says it all: “God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It.” As long as we hold to positions that declare our side is right no matter what, we lose. Regardless of which side you take on any of the culture war issues, there are good people on the other side. Yes, even the issues that seem so open and shut, cut and dry, and that you have a crisp little Scripture to place behind, maybe especially those issues. It is also true that there are forces and influences on both sides of these issues that are suspect and bear watching. This should motivate us, not paralyze us, but let us look as critically at our side of the culture wars as we certainly do our opponents. Spiritually speaking, my friend Charlee refers to the role of God in such exercises of humility as the Giant Mirror. On both sides of these various issues we are so busy attempting to remove that speck from our opponents’ eyes that we fail to see the beam in our own.
          Winston Churchill once acutely observed with penetrating insight that, “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing . . . after they have exhausted all other possibilities." It’s one thing for that to be said of us as Americans, but what is truly mournful is that it could also be said of the church in America. No matter your stance on these significant cultural issues, if you are a follower of Jesus you are first called to love. No matter how sincere, how right, or how justified you may feel in your position, it is meaningless if your viewpoint is not grounded in love. But what about your opponents whose beliefs aren’t rooted in Christ or on your biblical interpretation? Love them anyway. No, love them especially.

Room in the Kingdom

Sometimes church and churchy people make me want to scream. I feel like an outsider among my own people. From being with a few individuals or crowds of thousands of evangelical Christians, I can feel that I’m simply the only one in the room that is hearing what’s just beneath the surface – cultural, religious, denominational, political undertones and sometimes even sexist, racist, and anti-poor undertones. At one such recent event, I heard a famous lady prophet rail against homosexuals and those who defend them all in the name of our God who so loved the world. She shouted that America should model our government after Israel. (Israel, by the way, in its current state is a secular state that has universal healthcare). Then, she railed against secularism and universal health care. She shouted how the church should be about love, then she announced raising up 500,000 intercessors to pray against our President so we can “take our country back.”

I wanted to absolutely scream. I wanted to yank the microphone out of her hands and. . . well, scratch that. Anyway, this lady, who loves and serves the same Jesus that I do, said such ludicrous things that I was embarrassed to be present. I was literally praying to God that my face not be caught on camera and later be shown on youtube being in this crowd listening to this shrieking woman. I was embarrassed and ashamed for myself, for her, and for the thousands of people in this church building applauding wildly as she spoke and “prophesied.” I realize that I’m in charge of my own thoughts and attitudes, but this woman made it difficult for me not to speak in tongues and I’m talking redneck tongues not the heavenly kind. Not only did I not agree with her, I thought she was horribly out of line on so many levels and I did NOT believe that she was getting her information from God, which would be the indication since she considers herself a prophet.

I actually had a few moments before I walked out in protest where I said to God in my mind, “I am so ready to be done with this whole movement, I am sick of these people.” Now, there’s no way I’ll ever be done with God. He’s my Rock. I could not live, would not want to live without Jesus, but once again the lyrics to the country songs, “Me and Jesus got our own thing going” and “I don’t believe that Heaven waits for only those who congregate” called to me in my desire to just do my own thing.

Then, God spoke. I was complaining and sharing my list of reasons for wanting to walk away from evangelicalism including the speaker who was violating my ears as well as a growing list of other offenders – Lou Engle for rallying support for an anti-gay bill in Uganda with the death penalty being one of the consequences for the “guilty”, for Pat Robertson saying that it’s okay to divorce a spouse with Alzheimers, for the pastor in Florida hosting a Koran burning, for that old preacher-man in California telling of how the Lord told him the world was going to end last year, for my Conservative friends who demonized Bill Clinton for his affairs now turning a blind eye towards Newt’s infidelities, for my Republican friends who criticize Obama’s version of Christianity if they recognize it all now defending Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, for the Texas televangelist referring to the Catholic Church as the Great Whore, for the same televangelists claiming that largely black New Orleans deserved Katrina going on to express sympathy for largely white Joplin during the tornadoes there, for preachers, pastors, and the media for making the word evangelical synonymous with Conservative politics.

I felt surely I had made a good case to God for why I no longer wanted to be an evangelical Christian. I believe in an Ever-Present, Living God, who yet speaks. I believe that I know my Father’s voice. There are many times when I feel like God lays something on my heart or that His Spirit impresses something on mine. Here’s what I heard:

I did not call you to be a Christian, I called you to follow Christ. I did not call you to be an evangelical, I called you to share the Good News. I did not call you to follow any Christian man or woman, but to love them whether you agree with them or not.

I felt the Spirit lovingly challenge me, How can you hate Lou Engle when he is my child, your brother? How can you criticize him for his involvement with something you see as hateful, then turn and hate him? Why spend time criticizing the man in Florida for burning a Koran when you haven’t handed someone a Bible in years? Pray for these men and for yourself. Why speculate on whether Pat Robertson is right or wrong when you have friends that need encouragement in their relationships and yours could use some work? Why choose to be identified with just evangelical Christians which is a manmade term, when I speak of one church and Kingdom? Why be exclusive when I am all-inclusive? Why allow the loud-mouths who get the microphone and media attention to run you away from the Kingdom? Why turn your attention towards them when you’re called to be seeking first the Kingdom of God?

I was momentarily humbled, but not finished, so I tried again. I was pitiful in my whining before the Lord, hinting that He should be merciful with me, that He should excuse me from being associated with certain Jesus followers who in my opinion are mean-spirited morons. God wouldn’t have it, not even after I stated my case so clearly. I cherry-picked evangelicals of note whom I deemed as racists. I hand-selected televangelists who I’ve decided are money hungry and greedy. I reminded God of the Moral Majority getting started because middle class black families were sending their children to private Christian Schools in the South and the U.S. Supreme Court said the schools had to allow this much to the chagrin of the “Christian” segregationists. God still wouldn’t budge.

I shared with God my version of Christianity and was even nice and patient enough to explain to Him how much superior my version was to that of many of my peers on opposite sides of the proverbial church aisle. They preach a health and wealth prosperity Gospel, while I count more verses calling us to love and serve the poor. They preach a traditional, conservative way of life, while I honor diversity. They preach good stewardship of finances, when I like the verse about the rich young ruler being told to go sell all that he has and follow Him (as long as I’m not the rich young ruler).

I went on and on about how all in the name of Christianity our country stole this land from the Native Americans, more or less killed them off, and then went on to enslave another race of people for generations and continue to benefit from their labor. All of this while many of the slave owners considered themselves devout Christians. I reminded God of how many of the descendants of these slave owners continue many of the same tactics all these years later. I even reminded God that the Southern Baptist Convention didn’t officially apologize for their role in slavery until 1995, and that they didn’t support the Civil Rights Movement in its day either.

I tried to get God to see that the liberals in the It Gets Better commercials/ads show more love without mentioning Him than the preachers and pastors making Adam and Steve jokes. I reminded God of MLK’s words that 11:00 on Sunday is still the most segregated hour in Christian America. I urged God to consider the millions of dollars that have been spent on Pro-Life causes by Christians who do not adopt or foster homeless children, nor support programs that provide housing and healthcare for destitute women, infants, and children. I even pointed out to God that these same Pro-Life people are often very pro-death penalty and pro-war. Surely, this would make God take it easy on me.

I reminded God of Ann Coulter’s quote about His Creation, “God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.” I pleaded with God to remember all of the Christians who laugh in the face of the science that God created and say global warming isn’t real and the ones who believe that the gifts from God that are our air and water can be compromised in the name of profit for a few at the top.

In essence, having made my case, I sat back, crossed my arms, felt smug, and waited on God. His response to my asking Him to save me from his followers? He reminded me of the Greatest Command as stated in Matthew 22:36-39:
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Man, that second one gets me every time! Love God, check. Love others, d’oh! However, it can be asked – this stings! – that if we do not love others, do we truly love God? God does not call us to agree with what is disagreeable to us. God does not call us to be ‘yes’ men or women to everything the preachers or politicians say regardless of whether they claim to be Christian or not. It’s pretty simple – love God, love others (all others).

In all its splendid nonsense the modern church has in many cases divided itself along lines of doctrine, theology, class, race, ethnicity, politics, denominations, etc. However, the collective Kingdom of God is diverse. Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” God has called us to love Him, love others, share His Good News, be a representative (to re-present Him). It really isn’t that hard until we start looking at what divides us, then it’s crazy hard – insurmountable! Despite what the media and certain political or religious leaders may suggest, God is trying to get people in the Kingdom, not push them out. But, if you listen, He’ll likely remind you as He did me that “There’s room in the Kingdom for you.”

Disclaimers: I clearly and admittedly have cultural and political biases. I have Conservative friends who challenge me on the regular and whom I challenge every chance I get. When we do this in a respectful manner, it’s edifying – iron sharpening iron. I just like to be a reminder that there are other voices and faces within Christianity other than the dominant ones and that it is healthy for the church that this is so, and that there is room in the Kingdom for diversity.

The Grudge Report: A Dispatch from the Desert

A word of caution: Don’t ask God to mature into the fullness of the person that He intends for you to be unless you are convinced in yourself of your sincerity. Chances are that if you’re bold enough (or dumb, or drunk, or high enough) to ask Him to do such that in that moment you think you can handle it. However, I wasn’t drunk or high in any substance- or chemical-induced way when I asked God to grow me up, but I was flying my Jesus kite way up high in the third heaven of God’s cosmos.

Anyone who has had very many God-talks with me has heard of my two-plus year honeymoon with God. It wasn’t that all my circumstances were great – not at all. My parents went from middle-aged to ancient and between the two of them developed innumerous unheard of and ridiculous diagnoses. My brother all but died, and I had just in adulthood started liking that guy! I was on a transatlantic cruise and could not get to him for a week - agony. I’ve had to watch my sister-in-law go through more trials than any one white woman I know and my precious nieces and nephew struggle to make sense of the senseless. I’ve had to watch my brother literally be trapped inside of his own body, though I thank God and good doctors for his progress. The business I started with my two best friends went from zero to ninety to out of business (we didn’t go under so much as we just didn’t care to keep it alive, but it was not the success story of our times to be sure). I experienced the “one who got away” and was humiliated, embarrassed, and felt certain that God had placed a “do not date” sign on my forehead visible to everyone but me. Yes, all of this crap (and more where that came from) was going on. However, I was sustained by my relationship with God. None of it mattered because I was experiencing the manifestation of God and His promises in my life. I was as happy as if I had good sense, as my older Ozarks relatives say.

Then, it was as if Elvis had left the building. I had been living day to day walking with Christ and living in the Spirit and learning what it meant to be a child of God. In his loving nature and in knowing what was best for me and in answering that bold prayerful request of Him maturing me, He allowed His presence to be hidden for me. I say for, not from, because he did not hide Himself away from me. He hid Himself for me to find. Being a good Democrat with a career in social work and counseling, I am so familiar with hand-outs that it’s not even funny. But as the politicians say, those clever devils, we don’t need a hand-out, but a hand up. This is what God has been doing in me. He took the training wheels off and said, Go ride and I’ll watch.

Like any normal child, I hesitated until He encouraged to the point that I believed momentarily in my ability. I accepted the challenge and when I did He stepped aside to watch. I rode for a minute all proud of myself – look Dad, no Hands – and then I wobbled and steadied and hit pesky speed bumps and did everything in my power to correct this ride and ultimately failed. I fell off and got scratched up and pissed off. I pouted, whined, asked God nicely to fix this. Didn’t work. I changed my approach. I pouted, whined, and demanded (in Jesus’ Name – LOL) that He fix this. Didn’t work. I became cold, indifferent, calloused, hurt and developed one hell of a grudge. Yes, I have had a grudge against God. Yes, I hear and see in my own words before me how utterly ridiculous and fruitless this is and sounds, but it is exactly what happened.

You might ask, So how’s that working out for you? Fair question. I believe in spiritual seasons and I’ve just been in the Winter of my soul. Spring is coming, the ice is melting and hope is in sight. A wise man told me, So God placed you in the desert and you’ve fought Him because you missed Autumn, but until being in the desert is your choice you cannot escape it. God has made it clear to me that I was in a desert, a dry spell. This sucks so horribly because I had just been in a prolonged harvest time and was as happy as Mother Teresa on Resurrection Day only to get hurled into the Lion’s Den blind-folded, wearing a Lady Gaga carnivore outfit without my pocket KJV. I was so mad at God for (my perception) Him abandoning me.

A telltale sign of me not being in a good spiritual place is my usage of the F-bomb. In a good place, it goes from rare to occasional and then either a slip or a good-natured joke or I allow myself to drop one in a quote in my beloved story-telling (that way I get to blame the actual offense of the dreaded word on the one I’m quoting while I simply repeat it in the name of humor), but when I’m in a bad place it’s effing this and effing that all over the place like Heather Hill in a room full of obese women with shape-up Sketchers and baggy shirts being naysayers to her manic inspirational talks. I let the proverbial hammer down and (F-)bombs away. And it feels good, real good. Out of the mouth, the heart speaks. I won’t rattle on about cursing and cussing and tell you what to say or not, if you can read this you can figure it out. A middle school I work at just de-criminalized that word and suddenly 6th graders aren’t as apt to say it. And critics say our schools aren’t working! Silly Republicans, your tax dollars are too being well spent.

My bad, excuse the foray into politics and my foul mouth, but allow me to present it as evidence that I have been in a low-down, dirty-rotten funk. Now, in my head, I knew from the start that holding a grudge against God was probably not the best or wisest use of my time. But, my heart was hurt and wounded and what’s a child to do? So, Spirit-filled, love-the-Lord me made a big long mental list of all the things that had not gone my way. The list grew and grew and I could no longer control it. It controlled me. I could not keep up with all the ways in which I felt God had let me down. Before long I felt pretty justified with my list and crossed my arms and let God know that if He cared to make it right with me, I would re-join Him on our journey together.

Oh, that God! He is absolutely relentless. . . and persistent. . . and patient. One of the first words that I ever got from God that was not canned or given to me by someone else was a repeated, “I wasn’t mad at you. I wasn’t mad at you.” Apparently, pre Spirit-filled me, the religious check-list me, had believed that God was and had been mad at me because I could not check off all of the things on my to-do list. I screwed up most of the Thou Shalt Not’s and made a mockery of a good number of the 10. I was as busy trying to please Him as a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest and could not keep up with His demands. What a Task-Master a religious god is. It was a religious spirt, though, not God, and when I became filled with His Spirit all of that nonsense melted away.

I grew and grew in God thanks to His incredible patience, mercy, grace, understanding and most of all His love. I grew in Him to a point where I was able to have enough child-like faith in the heat of moment to say, Yes, God, I want more of You. I want to go to the next level, the next season with You. Yes, even if that means the training wheels come off. I’m ready, Jesus, to stop looking at your hands to see what you may give me and am ready to look into your face and see my destiny. This was my prayer and thinking at the end of my spiritual Autumn. My prayer in agreement with God led me into my own desert and winter. I blamed Him and felt justified in doing so, but He loved me enough to let me fail – to fail forward. To fail my way back to Him, but the true Child of God never fails as our Father will re-give that test and grade on the curve until we get it! That religious spirit of me wanting to produce good works and to perform for Him sneaked back in, but the eternal loving God of the Universe has more or less said I could not care less what you can do in your own power, I would just like to hang out with you. You’re my kid, we’re friends, I love you. He wants that kind of intimacy. We want to earn it; He wants to give it!

Do you remember when Jesus got baptized? I always struggle with this sinless man getting baptized and Old Baptist John must have been like, Have you completely lost your mind, I’m not worthy to wash your donkey or shine your sandals much less baptize you! Well, it turns out Jesus knew what he was up to. He had all this stuff in the Old Testament to fulfill, something about in his role as priest – High Priest – he had to be baptized to appease whoever wrote Deuteronomy, I suppose. The Old Testament prophets had written kindles full of this stuff predicting this event and Jesus played it out perfectly like He had known the whole time or something. Another reason that Jesus was baptized (remember that at this point he had shed his deity and was totally real people like me and you) was to receive the fullness of the Spirit.

"And the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form, as a dove upon him(Jesus, the Son); and a voice (God the Father) came from heaven: Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased." Luke 3:22. Now, if that’s not a lesson in the Trinity, I don’t know what is. Parentheses mine.

Just after Jesus was baptized and received the fullness of the Spirit, God told him that he loved him and that He was real proud of him. Next thing you know, Jesus was in the wilderness where he was not all buddy-buddy with God, but rather he was having to depend on what God had taught him previously (he still knew his word and remembered God’s promises) and was learning to live by the Spirit. And in that desert time, here comes Satan taunting and tempting him. Here’s Jesus as a very real man, having had nothing to eat for a long time, and probably little to drink and not a whole lot of sleep or comfort and he had to face the Devil. Satan is an old slickster, he was literally offering Jesus the world. This was make or break time. He didn’t get to watch GodTube or his favorite televangelist and get a fresh word, he wasn’t devouring the latest Christian pop-psychology self-help books, he wasn’t doing double back-flips in a store-front charismatic church getting his praise on in the safe confines of a church building. He was alone and in the desert and faced with pure evil. Having been Spirit-filled in a way-cool manner, he now had to learn to live and walk and depend on the Spirit.

The same is true for us as Believers. My interpretation of God’s word is that when Jesus walked as a man on this earth, he was no more equipped than we are to face sin, Satan, and adversity. The Holy Spirit was his Source. Jesus defeated Satan via the Spirit in Him and we are to do the same. When Jesus went back to be with the Father, He more or less said, Hey, Y’all, no sweat, I know you’ll miss me, but I’m a send this Other Dude who is Way Cool and He’ll be like your own Counselor, Guide, and Way-Maker. Scripture says that even with all the cool stuff Jesus did, we should do even greater things (John 14: 12 – 14). This is way too bold and cool and awesome for the very weak collective church to accept so in its brilliance (read scaredy pants) the church has dumbed this way down to the point that we explain it away and I believe miss God’s point. It sounds too good to be true, too radical to accept. So centuries of theologians with the help of Satan have watered this down and explained it away to the point where we read the word of God and dismiss it in its entirety. I challenge my friends and readers to seek what Jesus meant when he said we’d do greater things. I tried watered-down, religious Jesus and he was a drag, but when I started believing what he actually said as opposed to the old white beards’ interpretation of his words for me, I got changed within.

Remember this, despite what Christian self-help, which all too often is pop-psychology with a sprinkle of Jesus and a dash of Holy Spirit, tells you. . .it is not all about name it and claim it. His is not a health and wealth get rich quick Gospel (though, I do think he wants our health and finances blessed). You don’t always get your victory right now in this moment. Sometimes, often I think, it’s a process, a journey, a season. Dry spells suck, but this is when real, lasting growth occurs. Desert and wilderness experiences are part of our walk with God. There is much purpose and great power in these times. Remember to embrace it when you can – it’s your desert experience, own it! - and accept grace when you can’ because it’s okay to be weak. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you if you have accepted it. Jesus experienced the desert place and Satan was a real jerk, but the Holy Spirit empowered Jesus to his Victory.

The world, and especially our American culture, will lead us to believe that we are to be rugged individualists. If you try and strive and work hard enough, you will be rewarded is the message. In the natural, there is some truth to this. There are plenty of stories of people in ours and every culture working hard and getting rewarded. This is by no means unique to America or Christianity. However, God values our weakness because in it He makes us strong. A desert place is hell to pass through, but when you leave it you will have been broken down to the point that you can grow stronger than before to learn new lessons, new truths, and enjoy new experiences that but for that desert you could not have experienced. Don’t long for where you’ve been, you can never go back there. Lean forward, fail if you have to. We have been promised the same Helper that led Jesus out of his wilderness experience. We are called to do greater things than he. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you!

For Brianna

It’s an age-old question, but one that has resurfaced for me just this week: Why do bad things happen to good people? We seem to have this internal notion that things should go our way. Bad things should happen to other people in other places that likely deserve it. However, any of us who have lived any kind of normal life in the real world realize that good people endure hardships at the same pace or even greater than the people we deem “bad”. In an otherwise normal childhood, I saw plenty of suffering experienced by some of the best people in the world – at least in my little corner of the world. It’s not a new theme in my life to see good people suffer, but a recent tragedy by an old acquaintance once again has me looking to Heaven and asking, “Why?”.

In my freshman year of college in Paragould, Arkansas (of all places), I became instant friends with a couple of sophomores at a college who weirdly took pride in being “the only two-year Church of Christ school in the nation”. Mike and Josh were musicians who played guitar and sang Country and Southern Rock in local dives from the Ozarks to the Delta. Taking college classes that were scarcely more demanding than our rural high schools had been, there was plenty of time for other things – work and play.

Mike and Josh along with friend Chuck delivered pizzas for a local joint, so naturally I joined them and soon learned all the streets of Paragould and memorized the addresses of the good tippers (and the bad ones for that matter). Mike and Josh used the same charm that made them popular on campus to our advantage so that we could get away with having fun (having fun = breaking rules) at work. The restaurant gave free meals to local cops, so we could speed all over town without so much as looking in our rearview mirrors.

At this pizza joint was another driver named Brianna. She was from rural, Podunk northeast Arkansas who unlike the guys and me actually had this job as a primary source of income. Not that any of the four of us who soon transitioned from the dorm to our own apartment had it made. None of us had parents who were sending us hundred dollar bills on a weekly basis, but all of us had the assurance that if we made decent grades and promised the loan companies their money back that we’d be okay. Brianna on the other hand was only a year or two older than us, but instead of spending her money on cell phones (this is back when they were optional), nice clothing, road-trips, and concerts she spent her money for bills – rent, medical bills, helping take care of her ill mother and her younger school-aged siblings.

Brianna didn’t dress or act like a college-aged girl, but rather like someone from another time and place. Her car was never clean, dusty and dirty from the rural Crowley's Ridge rural roads, and I never remember her dressing up or even fixing her hair. Three of the four of us guys were Christian college boys, but we were still boys in our late teens. Old enough to know better, but still too young to care was our unspoken mantra. We kind of had this frenemy relationship with Brianna. We were still immature enough to make fun of or pick on people like Brianna who were different and such easy targets, yet good enough guys to befriend people who weren’t like us. Bad boys trying to be good, or perhaps good guys trying to be bad. Anyway, thus began our year of working with Brianna. We’d pick on her until she would scream at us and cuss us out. She played by the rules and respected the policies, a real fire-marshall type from elementary school by personality. This was a job she needed, while we did as we pleased because we were college kids who were only passing through and if fired could have cared less or would have glorified it as a badge of honor.

We would accuse her not pulling her weight and instead of learning to ignore us she would deliver a dissertation on how she had actually done her job correctly while we had fubar-ed it. When it was her turn to take orders on the company phone, we would prank call her from our cell phones making up sexually perverse names and addresses. I can still see her storm out of the back door and scold us with her backwoods, country phrases. We would howl with laughter and our managers would pretend to get on to us, but enjoyed the show as much as we did. We weren’t always asses to her, though. We would hang out with her and even had her over to our apartment for barbecues. In our mischief we immaturely saw it as a win-win, she gets friends out of the deal and we take a little self-satisfaction out of being good guys, but we also did it for the entertainment. Brianna was very serious and talked like a philosopher – a rural philosopher, that is. We would engage her in what she thought was going to be a “deep” conversation, only for one of us to lead this to ask her about her love life. Her favorite insult was to call one of us a pig. “You boys are pigs – swine! You dis-gust me!” We’d just fall out laughing knowing that we had set her up. I can still hear the cadence of her voice and how she would storm off hurling insults over her shoulder at us only later to apologize because she felt guilty for using that kind of language, though we certainly warranted it. If the Lord held that against her, then it's hopeless for the rest of us. I'm sure we deserved it, but doubt that we should have enjoyed it so much.

One by one the four of us moved from college to career – counselor, teacher, physical therapist, and coach – while Brianna kept delivering pizzas in what looked like the world’s third oldest car. Brianna took a night class here or there and worked for years towards a degree that we more or less just drove past a university that tossed a diploma through our truck windows as we cruised by. Well, remembering plenty of all-nighters and loans that might be paid off by the time I’m dead or Jesus returns, it wasn’t quite as easy as the drive-by I suggested, but in comparison to all of the obstacles that Brianna faced, none of which she brought upon herself, it’s probably a fitting comparison.

Looking back, the person I was freshman year and the summer that followed is hardly recognizable. I thought then that those guys would be my best friends for life, that we would continue to live near each other and continue with our mild mischief-making and having the time of our lives. Life had different plans. I talk to them irregularly and see them even less and then only on random occasions. Gradually, my friends and I dare say theirs, too, became a different kind of friend depending upon lifestyle and career. I think back to that year occasionally and mostly fondly, but it seems like the distant past when I didn’t have a clue who I was or what I wanted out of this life. If I say I only occasionally think of the guys, it’s safe to say that I haven’t really thought of Brianna since my last day in Paragould in Summer ’99.

Last week I received a facebook message from another girl from the pizza place that other than facebook I haven’t seen or heard from since the Paragould pizza days. The message was something along the lines of: Just thought you would want to know that after a very long battle with cancer, Brianna died. It turns out that she bravely fought breast cancer for six years. I was flushed with guilt. Guilt for teasing her mercilessly. Guilt for being healthy while this girl who already had a difficult, hopeless life got cancer. Guilt for never having talked to her sincerely about the things that mattered in life. I remembered that she was a Christian and I found peace in that. I wondered how many fellow-Christians she had known who had looked down upon her for not looking right, not dressing right, not being from the right family. I wondered how many health and wealth preachers had shamed her for her fate in life. I became judgmental thinking of the preachers who scream health and wealth but wouldn't voluntarily spend a tax dollar for a poor soul like Brianna to have actual health insurance that might have saved her young life! I bet like the rest of us from this evangelical stronghold that she had tried the health and wealth/name it and claim it approach, but while putting herself through school and being a primary-caregiver and breadwinner for her sick mother and her younger siblings, she probably didn’t have the time, energy, or funds to do the latest televangelist’s 7 steps to a better life. Brianna’s was not a rags-to-riches-Jesus-wants-you-to-be-healthy-and-drive-a-beemer story. Hers was an “all my life I’ve had to fight” kind of story . . . and just like that she got cancer and died. Why? This news and all it stirred up in me really brought me down. I’m so glad I got the rest of the story and with it a little hope.

I found out later that her last wish was to meet Dolly Parton and through some organization this dream came true a week to the date before she died. I am not making this up or stealing this from Designing Women or the Southern Gothic playbook, but this is God’s honest truth. Surrounded by friends and family and on some good pain meds and practically escorted to the Pearly Gates by earth-angel Dolly Parton, Brianna left this world of pain, sorrow, heartache, cancer, hypocrites, poverty, and other ills and entered Paradise. It strikes me as odd and strangely very fitting that this poor girl from Nowhere, Arkansas who fought and fought to be the person the rest of us wanted her to be is now completely sorrow-free, safe in the arms of Jesus while the rest of us who never quite accepted her are still down here trying to be people that we are not, rats in a maze, rabbits chasing dangling carrots. My, how the tables have turned. God bless, you, Brianna! How beautiful Heaven must be! Welcome Home, you beautiful person! Welcome home.

Dark Night of the Soul

Dark Night of the Soul

It was first in the Tennessee wilderness around campfires beside free-flowing streams that I realized that I was a spiritual being. Surely, as a PK and a Christian school grad I knew it on some level, but not really, not in any way that made a difference. I wasn’t even comfortable with the term born-again back then. Too right-wing, too what? Baptist? Fundamental? I wasn’t even comfortable with the term ‘saved’ as that term sounded too much like a church camp kid on a Jesus high one week only to be fornicating and partying it up the next. People in my neck of the woods, literally the woods of northeast Arkansas, threw the term ‘saved’ around like it was something you might pick up down at the Piggly Wiggly. I got: pickles, baloney, and saved. People were always talking about getting saved or someone else getting saved, but rarely did I see a lasting difference. Besides my flock put the emphasis on whether one was baptized, not whether Jesus saved one, but whether one was baptized. Interestingly enough, being baptized and getting saved are both biblical terms, though I’m sure that some 2000 years later we’ve distorted the terms and meanings somewhat even if inadvertently. Asking if one is baptized puts the emphasis on the individual whereas inquiring as to whether one is saved emphasizes the salvation Jesus offers. I gave the Baptists and fundies a hard time above, but the truth is most denominations have baggage in terms of what they teach about salvation. The church/es got in a mell of a hess when they took the salvation that Jesus provided and made it into a religious, doctrinal do-it-our way issue. I say who cares what the old white men say, get a Bible, talk to God, do it the way you feel - Sprinkle, pour, wade in it, wallow/waller in it, or go down to Mud Creek with a preacher with duck-hunting waders, but do it according to your conviction based upon what God has placed upon you - not following section 7, code 1, of denominational handbook 203.

I about took off in a direction there I did not intend to go. All of the above to say that despite being knocked upside the head with the Buckle of the Bible Belt my entire life, I didn’t know beans about spirituality. It took big-city back-to-the-earth hippies with degrees, bare feel, funny accents, wild ideas, and create-your-own spirituality to get me to defend what it was I purported to believe – Christianity. The trouble was mine fell flat. I was in dire need of a spiritual Viagra as I simply could not compete with these Canadian and Yankee hippies and their spirituality.

They spoke of the Great Spirit, the Creator, the Universe, and even God, but they weren’t talking in Sunday School terms. No, there’s was a Jesus-was-a-good-guy-to-look-up-to, but there's-not-just-one-savior kind of spirituality. Uh oh, Hello, Momma done warned me ‘bout these kinds of folk! But these weren’t drug-induced Satanists set out to destroy the Kingdom of God, and America to boot, they were fellow seekers. Now, I reserve the right to believe that they were misguided, but they certainly felt the same about me. That was the beauty of our friendships. They talked to me about their Great Spirit and the Universe and I talked to them about Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Truth is, they believed in their version of god more than I did of mine. I was arguing out of conviction from my mind and my religion, but not my heart or spirit. They showed me that I could talk a good game, but it was evident I didn’t really believe it. They talked passionately, I talked factually.

Thanks to them I became awakened to spirituality even if I didn't follow their lead. I took it to the God I barely knew and presented Him with what I had always thought I knew, and what these folks had said of Him, and asked Him to become real in my life if He was indeed real. Wow, this has been a long journey, that started out with what I have referred to as bipolar spirituality – roller-coaster-like ups and downs. High as a kite, flat as a flitter. A whirlwind tour of the supernatural. Feeling under attack for a season, feeling as if you’re walking hand in hand with God the next. Spiritual whiplash. The highs are so high that you can’t not go back for more, but the lows are worse that the lows before you accepted Jesus causing you to consider dismissing the whole shebang.

Finally a couple of years ago I noticed that the lows just stopped. My six-week to two-month cycles of riding the spiritual waves stopped. Less ebb and more flow. It got to the point that my lows were like other people’s highs. I had a super-saved college friend who's smile and positivity would have put Joel Osteen to shame who said that he didn’t have bad days, that he refused. Nonsense!, I thought. But, low and behold, I stopped having them. Horrible things would happen, family tragedies, personal setbacks, relationships upended, failures, disappointments, but none of it mattered because I had God. Not in any religious, I’m in church every time the doors are open kind of way – I wasn’t in church. No choir, no Sunday School, no nothin’ – just me and a dogged pursuit of God. Turns out that He wasn’t quite the Jerk or Task-Master that the world or the church had presented Him to be. I can go to church and feel guilty as Hell, but spending time with God I feel loved beyond measure. Granted, there have been times when God has been firm with me about a position I’ve taken or an attitude, but this is so minor in comparison to the liberation and encouragement and love that I feel in His presence. Ever been in love? That’s what this relationship with God has been like. When you’re in love, you don’t care if you’re broke or sick or ugly or fat or bald or if the person you love is a felon with misspelled tattoos. Love is love and when you’re in it, nothing else matters. Insert your Hallmark/Kodak moment here because cheesy as it sounds, it fits. God is love.

But what about those times when life sucks, when you can’t make heads or tails out of anything? What about those times when you pray like a black woman and it feels as if your ceiling is made of Teflon? What about when everything and everyone you’ve been praying for gets worse? What about when you wake up and you feel that God is not there anymore? You remember back to the times when you felt like you were the Teacher’s Pet and you know God didn’t leave or forsake you per his Word, but is sure feels like it. . . What about the times when you pick up your Bible and Russian-Roulette it in desperation for a word that is relevant to your life now and you come up with a talking donkey and nothing that applies to 21st Century now? Name it and claim it doesn’t cut it in this mode. Having faith and giving a testimony of what you’re believing God for doesn’t cut it when you’re in this place. Suddenly you remember all the people who died believing they were going to get healed. All the people who got up and shouted in church about what God is doing for them, two months later their name in the paper for a DWI, divorce, bankruptcy. Where is God? The world seems to be falling apart, families falling apart, nations dissolving. Where is God?

The critic comes in with his nonsense talking about you sinned, or it wasn’t real, it was a weakness for you to ever believe in God. Talking about you don’t deserve it, you don’t deserve to be one with God anymore. You just can’t do it. The church folks and the conventional wisdom among the saved is to blame the individual. Isn’t that just like people to blame the victim? People cannot stand to have the God that they have placed in their little minds to be criticized or questioned. It rocks their world and shakes their foundations and they run screaming and crying to religion and self-help books with 7 simple steps. It's like pulling teeth to get people to cut the religious crap and have some real-talk about God and life. I don't know where we get this image of Jesus-followers being mealy-mouthed, baby-talking, G-rated do-gooders. I once knew a jaded preacher who said that if he was ever in serious trouble, not to send for the church folks but to call his buddies down at the pool hall or bar because they could at least talk sense and be real.

I admit that I feel shocked having come down off the mountaintop with God. I’m just like, where did You go? The enemy would love nothing more for me to think that it was psychology, that I was so weak that I needed to believe in a God who wasn’t there so I created an idol. Nonsense! What I’ve experienced in the supernatural, spiritually, has been more real to me than anything on this earth. That’s just it, where did it go? This isn’t a why do bad things happen to good people kind of a question, nor is it a struggling-with-my–faith kind of ordeal. It’s pure and simple, God, what’s the deal? Where are you? Have you purposed this or did I screw up? I’m sure I screwed up, but you don’t abandon people for that, do you? The Interstate billboard says you didn’t leave, but I feel like you did. Wisdom says believe not that which you feel, but that which is. Who needs wisdom when you can have relationship, okay kidding, but seriously, let’s get this show back on the road. I miss you. I’m sorry I was seeking you for the answers more than I was seeking you for you. I feel like you didn’t allow this time because you were mad or upset, but because you’ve been testing my faith and allowing me to take steps on my own. I know you’re here, but I miss your presence. I miss your voice. I miss walking with you in the garden in the cool of the day.

The Gospel According to Country Music Revisited: My Apologies to David Allan Coe

After my Gospel According to Country Music bit, I thought I had written the perfect Country and Gospel blogpost. But, a friend of mine wrote me back and told me that I had NOT written the perfect Country and Gospel post because I hadn’t said anything about Momma, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or gettin’ drunk. So, I sat down and wrote a Part II to this post and I felt obliged to include it on this blog, and it goes like this here:

Despite what most of us have been taught all our lives, Jesus was and is not a stuffy, churchy, religious deacon-type driving a Cadillac and wearing a suit following all the rules and living quietly and fading demurely into the proverbial sunset. Not even close, He made it apparent that he preferred hanging out and serving the “least of these” including those whom Country Music lovers would easily recognize: thieves, sluts, liars, not to mention the lowest of the low, those tax collectors. Of course, Jesus didn’t want these folks to stay in their sinful conditions, but it’s pretty clear as I read the Scriptures that He preferred the Bible-era Bubbas and the Bethlehem rednecks gettin’ drunk as opposed to the super-religious stuffed-suits of Jerusalem.

It has been said that if a Country Music singer makes it to Nashville, they will likely already know Jesus but if they don’t they better learn in a hurry. The big wig music execs could probably care less with their business motto of “show me the money”, but the fans, the audience wouldn’t cotton to kindly to an unclean heathern or a treacherous vixen a singin’ to ‘em if’n they hadn’t been washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Confederate Railroad will take it from here:

She never cried when Old Yeller died
She wasn't washed in the blood of the Lamb
She never stood up for the Star Spangled Banner
And she wasn't a John Wayne fan

Speaking of Confederate Railroad, they reminded me that Jesus and Momma Will Always Love Me. My friend was right, Country Music just ain’t Country Music without Momma. Merle Haggard’s Momma tried to raise him better, but her pleading he denied. His Momma seemed to know what lay in store, but despite all his Sunday learning, he turned 21 in prison doin’ life without parole. Turns out, like Paycheck, he was the Only Hell [His] Momma Ever Raised.

Josh Turner churned out a classic Gospel-inspired Country song with his, Long Black Train, the hauntingly memorable story about temptations and allurements of the world. He encourages the listener to believe that there’s Victory in the Lord (I say) and he warns us that the Devil is driving that long, black train.
Well, this brings us to trucks and trucker songs and of course there’s the classic and my favorite trucker song of all - Convoy. Even C.W. McCall honored Country Music’s Gospel roots, uh sort of, as he sings about the eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse micro-bus.

It can be argued that the premise of the Gospel is that Jesus was human, God in the flesh. I realize that this post and the post before it have been quite theologically thin, but as well as just having fun with my Southern, Country Music, and Christian roots I think it is important that we realize while He was fully God, Jesus was also fully human. From the classier Country tunes of Patsy Cline to the raunchier redneck ballads of David Allan Coe to Charlie Pride’s enduring love song Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’, Country Music, perhaps better than any other genre, best represents the human condition and our need for a Savior.




* The Ryman Auditorium image (The Mother Church of Country Music) is from www.keywest-art.com.

Confessions of an Evangelical

• I think it’s fine for you to have one, but your Jesus fish decal doesn’t impress me, especially if it’s placed perfectly beside your political bumper sticker of choice. . . As if they are equal?!
• I believe in Creation, but I won’t freak out nor am I threatened if you believe in evolution.
• I believe in being politically and socially active, but I believe the biggest mistake of evangelicals in this generation is relying on our elected officials to do the work of the Kingdom.
• I cringe when I see an American flag draped around a Cross.
• I believe in Global Warming.
• I don’t think of God as being a Caucasian male.
• I love Contemporary Christian Music, but I cannot stomach most Christian radio deejay’s. Try as I may, I cannot find them funny. I can’t even courtesy-laugh.
• I find Christian-themed t-shirts seriously lacking in creativity. You know the ones: HisWay instead of Subway. CreatorAid instead of Gatorade. Jesus (in yellow, orange, and brown) instead of Reese’s. If you see me in one of these, rest assured that I haven’t take my meds or I’ve lost a bet I thought surely I’d win.
• I have heard from God more often in the woods, at the cabin, on the river, in friends’ living rooms, driving down the road, and at Waffle House than I have in church buildings.
• I played Gospel and Christian Music (Hallelujah FM and KLOVE) in my office in a public school in Little Rock and had my counseling clients who were interested reading the Bible, T.D. Jakes, Donald Miller, and others IF they were interested, while I received countless e-mails and complaints from friends about “them liberals” taking God out of school. Meet me at the pole.
• I don’t think Obama is the antichrist, but I can’t tell you why Biden is always smirking that smile.
• I often forget to pray for people who have asked me to, but I find myself praying for people I see in public that I don’t know.
• I confess that I like and support some televangelists, but I don’t believe that you can purchase a miracle with a credit card. And what’s with the pink hair?
• I don’t want Big Gumment to suppress the work of the Church, but if they could just do me one little favor, I’d plead with them to outlaw church marquees.
• I believe that we’ve developed a sin check-list that differs seriously from the Spirit of the Word to fit our cultural and socioeconomic needs and preferences.
• I’m sickened by the fact that the amount that Christians in America spend in a year on ice cream could eradicate hunger in the entire world. Replace ice cream with dog food, boob jobs, Viagra, North Face, create-your-own category. We spend money wildly and selfishly chasing the American dream of instant, self-fulfilling, glamorous gratification while our "neighbor" in our own country and especially the world over are literally starving to death.
• I’m certain that there are things that I do and beliefs that I hold that annoy, irritate, and bother others and I’m also sure that I’ve been pretty tacky and judgmental (mainly in the name of humor) in the above bullet points, but therein lies my point about contemporary evangelicals – we should be more tolerant. I’m not saying change our standards, but it's more important to get people into the Kingdom instead of converting them to our culture and our politics.

* Please add your confessions or challenge me on mine. Would love to hear from you.