Archive for the Category ◊ Ideas I came up with totally on my own ◊

26 Jan 2010 My Three-letter Worldview: Part 1

Ayn Rand, as she often does in my opinion, puts it best . . . most succinctly.

“Existence exists.”

It is a reformulation of Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am,” but it is somehow more complete, less problematic, more . . . satisfying.

“Existence exists.” It is one statement that brooks no counter-argument, for to even make a counter-argument presumes the statement itself. To argue with this simple statement is to concede the argument before it begins.

How do I know existence exists? The answer is, “if it doesn’t, how are you even asking that question?”

Existence, then, is not an assertion, a theory, a postulation, an argument. It is a fact.

From this indisputable fact of existence flows another – Identity. If you refuse to acknowledge that existence exists, then there is no point in . . . well . . . anything. But if you acknowledge that fact, then you have to acknowledge this: something exists. Something is allowing you to even have these thoughts . . . to even read this blog.

That ”something” is identity. At this moment, you are reading something I have written. It is the first you’ve read it – the first time it has entered your mind. But it entered mine first, because I wrote it. That, in and of itself, is a demonstration that I am not you, and you are not me. We are separate individuals, rather than a great, amorphous It.

You may think this is self-obvious . . . and indeed you are right! But just being self-obvious is not enough. It has to be considered, because it is the basis for everything else.

How do I, as a believer in Christ, reconcile my worldview with that of a rabid athiest like Ayn Rand?

Easily, in fact . . . because God did it first.

In Genesis, God asserts that humanity is created in His image. Entire volumes have been written around the question, “What did He mean by that?”

Here’s what I think:

There is one time in Scripture where God is asked to identify Himself, and complies with the request. In the single instance we have of God telling us who He is, His answer is three letters. “I Am.”

I believe that is the image in which we are created. How could you possibly capture the concepts of existence and identity?? “I am” proclaims existence, while “I Am” identifies that which exists.

As I said before, Ayn Rand didn’t come up with this idea on her own . . . she merely distilled what was much, much older.

God says, “I Am” . . . and because I am created in His image, I am, too!

Existence exists. . . . I exist!

What does that mean?? . . . That’s what Part 2 is all about. Stay tuned.

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02 Feb 2009 When “Real” isn’t Good Enough

It was, for me, the best part of the Presidential inauguration two short weeks ago. The speech was decent, the poetry atrocious, but the music . . . oh, the music . . .

As a violinist myself, I have for most of my life looked up to Itzak Perlmann as the unmatched master of my craft. Yo Yo Ma enjoys similar status atop the world of the cellist. I’m not as familiar with Anthony McGill or Gabriella Montero, who joined them on clarinet and piano, respectively, for a rendition of John Williams’ “Air and Simple Gifts.”

I remember discussing the piece afterward with my wife – a professional violin teacher and freelance performer. We wondered if they were using special carbon fiber instruments that are better able to hold a pitch – or if not, how they managed to play in such bitter cold.

Well, as the world now knows, they didn’t. Or rather, they did, but that wasn’t what the rest of the world heard. We heard a prerecorded version created a week before, comfortably indoors.

To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement. I’ve performed in the bitter cold myself, when the wind was whipping around and trying to take the music off the stand in front of me, and when my fingers were so cold that they didn’t want to work properly. Their music, while gorgeous, wasn’t difficult at all to play – particularly for musicians who are undisputedly the best in the world at what they do.

But they faked it anyway.

Then yesterday, I watched the Super Bowl between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals – two teams I care very little about. Though it was a pretty exciting game, I was more interested in watching the commercials and sharing the time with my wife’s family. The one highlight, for me, was Jennifer Hudson’s national anthem. Her stirring rendition was made all the more moving given the fact that it was her first time back singing in the national spotlight since the tragedy she suffered back in October with the brutal triple-murder of her mother, brother and nephew.

Except that it wasn’t. Like Perlman, Ma and their colleagues, she had recorded the anthem in advance. It was beautiful, to be sure, but the fact that it wasn’t HER . . . or rather, that it was her voice at another place and time . . . stole something from the moment.

These instances were both accompanied by breathless exclamations of: “My goodness . . . we couldn’t have had them perform live! Can you imagine? . . . something might have gone wrong!”

“Why is this such a big deal?” you might ask. “It was their instruments! It was her voice!” And you’re right. It’s not like this is Milli Vanilli, whose 1990 Grammy Award for best new artist was revoked when it was discovered that their talent was for lip-synching, rather than actual singing.

It’s not the same thing, but it’s part of the same problem.

The Wikipedia entry for Milli Vanilli says:

[Milli Vanilli producer Frank] Farian chose to feature vocals by Charles Shaw, John Davis, Brad Howell, and twin sisters Jodie and Linda Rocco; however, he felt that those singers lacked a marketable image. Thus, Farian recruited [Fab] Morvan and [Rob] Pilatus, two younger and more photogenic model/dancers he found in a Berlin dance club, to front the act.

Farian’s mindset, and that of the folks who produced the inauguration and the national anthem, seems to be symptomatic of a larger ailment that plagues our culture in this era of technological and philosophical advancement.

I’m as geeky as the next guy when it comes to the technological conveniences of 21st century America. I have an iPhone, a Facebook account and (obviously) a blog. I use all three of them with gusto.

But the problem arises when we allow these technologies to serve as a substitute for reality . . . a surrogate for what IS.

This mentality has permeated every area of our world. Our entertainment industry has been overrun by those who insist on having one more plastic surgery . . . on losing five more pounds . . . on looking like concentration camp victims in real life, simply because “the camera adds ten pounds.”

Reality isn’t good enough.

In the world of medicine, the reality of how our bodies feel and behave is subjugated to “the labs” . . . the all-important diagnostic tests that may or may not be accurate, may or may not be reliable, may or may not yield any valuable information about what ails us.

Then these often questionable test results are used to justify pumping us full of made-up substances designed to treat made-up problems that are more often than not mere symptoms of the very real problems that plague us. These underlying problems are largely due to the choices we make in our lifestyles and our diets . . . but a pharmaceutical company can’t make money by pressuring doctors to prescribe organic vegetables or grass-fed meat. Sit-ups don’t come in pill form.

So they give us cholesterol and blood pressure meds instead.

Reality isn’t good enough.

Speaking of food, how about that breakfast you had this morning? I’m betting that for most people across the country, it went something like this:

  • Two eggs, bought from your local supermarket and produced by pen-raised hens who have lived on genetically-modified corn their entire lives, rather than the grass, grubs and other things their stomachs are actually capable of digesting.
  • Two strips of bacon, preserved and colored by nitrates and nitrites, which form nitrosamines (a carcinogen) once they get into your body.
  • A bowl of cereal comprised of what was - at one point, perhaps - fairly healthy wheat or oats, but has been processed and manipulated so much that all the good stuff has been cooked, pressed, ground, fried or leeched out of it. Then, of course, in order to make the stuff palatable, they have to add high fructose corn syrup, or at least (if you’re lucky) sugar, which has of course been similarly processed.
  • A glass of “fruit beverage” that roughly resembles grape juice, well-laced with high fructose corn syrup, of course, because our American palates have been conditioned to think that the fructose in actual fruit isn’t sweet enough.
  • If you’re the really conscientious type, you may have had an apple, which probably found its way to your table from an orchard that was covered in toxic chemicals to keep the bugs off. Because unlike those of us who actually EAT such things, insects are smart enough to realize that poisons are very specifically and efficiently designed to make things dead.
  • Perhaps you topped all this off with a pancake or two . . . which probably came from a box, doused in syrup that alleges to be “maple,” but is actually mostly high fructose corn syrup. You may have even added a dollop of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter (TM).”

Because reality isn’t good enough.

Before you think that I’ve suddenly decided to go out and join my local chapter of the Sierra Club, those folks could use a healthy dose of reality too. They are, after all, the ones who have perpetuated the myth of man-made climate change (by a variety of different names) for decades now, based on climate models that even John Theon, a former NASA executive who was responsible for all weather and climate research in the agency, says are completely unreliable.

Reality, after all, isn’t good enough.

This is true even in the way we relate to each other. I think about my coworkers, for example. I spend a minimum of 40 hours a week cooped up in a small aisle of cubicles with about half a dozen other people, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t really know most of them. We talk, certainly, about the weather, about our mortgage and rent payments, about our pets and our phones, our weekends and sports teams – all the safe topics. But just watch what happens when anyone brings up something REAL . . . even something only superficially real like politics. Oh my gosh! We can’t have that! People might, well, take it personally, or get offended, or by golly, we might not agree!

Every once in a while I’ll get a glimpse of who the people I work with really ARE . . . like the time a coworker and I travelled to Japan together on business, or the time four of us went to give a presentation in Fort Hood, Texas. On such occasions, people tend to open up a bit more . . . to reveal a bit more of themselves.

And I have to tell you . . . as it turns out, I really like the folks I work with! I wish I could see more of that side of them, more often.

But I can’t, because reality isn’t good enough.

This is often true, even in our very closest relationships.

Phones, email, text messaging, instant messages and Facebook are all great tools for keeping in touch with one another . . . but too often we use them to substitute for actual relating. I enjoy reading the status updates my friends post on Facebook, but that’s not the same as going to dinner with them and sitting down for a good conversation. Unfortunately, I happen to live in an area, Washington D.C., where most folks place a lot more value on “doing” than they do on “relating” . . . and as a result people are more often than not too busy to have dinner, or coffee, or hang out for an evening or a weekend.

So we settle for checking up on each other on Facebook.

Because reality isn’t good enough.

Alas, this has even become true of our most important relationship . . . our relationship with Father.

I am reminded of an article I read early last year, by Darrin Hufford over at Free Believers. Hufford’s provocative article calls the average “relationship with God” a “spiritual porn addiction.”

Talk about reality not being good enough! As a former porn addict myself, I can attest quite vividly to the allure of the fake reality that pornography offers. Hufford goes further, though. He points out that the spiritual “high” we get from those “mountaintop experiences” at religious conferences, worship services, etc. are much the same thing. I’ve been to those conferences. I’ve had those experiences. I’ve loved every minute of them . . . they are, after all, exhilarating. The term “spirtual high” is fitting . . . it’s one of the most moving and uplifting things I’ve ever experienced.

The problem is that we idealize those experiences . . . and we condemn ourselves for the “low patches” that we feel between them. We come up with an endless stream of ideas for bottling up that feeling . . . you know, that feeling . . . the one you get when you’ve just finished a group conversation with God, and you know, beyond all doubt, that he was an active participant in the conversation?

But those experiences are not the same as the day to day work of living in the world He placed us in. Even Peter felt the allure of the “mountain top experience” of Christ’s transfiguration, and wanted to do something to permanentize it . . . to institutionalize it . . .

Hufford extends the analogy into the average church service, saying:

The majority of our Christian lives were spent watching the Christian play at church, we have grown accustomed to sitting through the show and demanding to be entertained. Every spiritual facet of the “personal relationship with God” has been caked with makeup, airbrushed, pumped with steroids, injected with botox, sprayed with perfume and stuffed with implants. In the end, we’re left with a “Glam Shot” perception of “relationship” that is about as real as a fifty dollar blow-up doll. It’s perfect for the theater, but when it comes to a real, one-on-one relationship, it’s just impossible.

There’s nothing wrong with mountain top experiences . . . nothing wrong with the incredible spiritual experiences that come with dedicating an entire day, or an entire weekend, to seeking God. The problem, as Hufford points out, is when we come to expect that those mountaintops define what a healthy relationship with God is. The problem, he very vividly says, is this:

The addiction to these spiritually accentuated concepts is almost identical to an addiction to pornography – some people can’t get aroused without it.

Why? Because reality – the reality of a God who is just as present in the depressing, or disappointing, or boring moments of life – just isn’t good enough.

Author:  |  Category: Ideas I came up with totally on my own, Ideas I stole from somebody else, but improved on, Posts you wouldn't watch if they were on TV, Things most people won't understand at all, Things that will convince you I'm a Democrat, Things that will convince you I'm a godless heathen, Things that will convince you I'm a Republican, Things that will get me excommunicated, Things that will piss somebody off  | 3 Comments
04 Nov 2008 Predictions . . .

This afternoon, millions of Americans turn out to cast their ballots and determine who will lead this country for the next four years. I have strong feelings about this election, and cast my vote for my candidate of choice this morning at around 8:45. I have, however kept those views off the pages of this blog because I do not want this to become a political platform, or a forum for airing partisan talking points.

However, I am writing today because I am troubled by the fact that a great many people on both sides seem to misunderstand the point of this election – along with, in fact, the entire election process.

Today, we are presented with two candidates who have diametrically opposing views on nature of economics, the proper road to national security, and the role of government in our lives. Millions of us have gone or will go to the polls to vote for the candidate who, we believe, has the greatest potential of advancing views that roughly resemble our own on these and other topics.

We will NOT go to the polls to cast a personal slight on those friends and acquaintances of ours who happen to disagree with us – or with our candidate. We will NOT be voting to undermine society as we know it, regardless of what those on the other side think. We will NOT be voting to enslave, silence, or otherwise disenfranchise those who disagree with us.

In short, THIS IS NOT PERSONAL. You who read this – each of you – have people you love and care about, who will vote in a way you believe to be foolish and misguided. Get over it. Love and care about them anyway.

For a bit of perspective, consider a few election predictions of mine. On this Election Day 2008, I predict:

1. A man who has made politics his life mission will become the new President-elect with something roughly approximating 50% of the popular vote.

2. Approximately 50% of the country will also vote against him.

3. He will give a gracious victory speech congratulating his opponent on a well-run race, and reiterating many of the things he has promised us during the course of this campaign. Parts of his speech will even be sincere.
4. Some of the things he has promised will be accomplished in the next four years. Some will not.

5. We will be told by the losing side that operatives on the winning side committed fraud in various locations throughout the country. They will be right in some instances and wrong in others.

6. We will be told by pundits in the news media and the political elite that this result was inevitable from day one of the campaign, and that they saw it coming the entire time. These assertions will contradict other, equally emphatic statements they made in recent months.

7. We will be told by other pundits that this election is a disaster for the losing party, and the country as a whole. They will be wrong in both cases.

8. The party that loses will regroup, blame their loss on poor marketing and messaging, and come back in four years with a candidate who may not look like the one running today, but who sounds awfully familiar.

9. The party that wins with the support of roughly half the voting public will proclaim a mandate, and will hold the election results up as proof that the American people are completely in support of their policies.

10. Those policies will necessitate more government spending than the winning candidate promised during the campaign, and he will try to get his hands on more of your money than he promised during the campaign, in order to pay for them.

11. Over the next four years, the government, as a whole, will get bigger.

12. Over the next four years, many new laws will be made. You will approve of some, and disapprove of others.

13. Two years from now, you will still believe that Congress as a whole is a bunch of corrupt criminals, but that your individual congressman is not all that bad, if not a pretty decent guy or gal.

14. Two years from now, the new President will NOT have abolished the opposition party, shut down the free press or abolished freedom of speech, expression or assembly. Millions of Americans will respond to this lack of oppression by going to the polls again and voting for their Congressman and/or Senator. Millions more will vote for some other guy who wants to be a Congressman and/or Senator. Still more millions will respond by doing nothing at all.

15. Some of your friends who voted for the other guy will accuse you of being an idiot, and will claim that you are part of everything that is wrong with this country. They will mostly be mistaken.

16. On Wednesday morning, the sun will rise. It will do so in the east.

These are my election predections, and they hold true whether the vote I cast earlier today was for the winner or the loser. So go exercise your right to vote – or, for that matter, exercise your right to go on about your day and stay as far away from the polls as you choose.

Whatever your choice, though, realize that the people next to you are just muddling through this journey we call “life,” in the best way they can – making choices just as you are – with an eye toward what they think is best for themselves, and occassionally what they think is best for you as well. Are there people who are trying to subvert this election and cheat their party’s way into power? Probably, and they probably exist on both sides. But elections in this country have been stolen before – even at the Presidential level – more than a few times. And guess what? Even with this flawed system, dependent on millions of flawed people, we Americans still live in one of the freest, most prosperous nations history has ever known.

Regardless of who wins tomorrow, that is not likely to change during the course of – or as a result of – his administration.

So vote, or don’t vote, as you see fit.

But in the meantime, Chill out.

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05 Jul 2008 On Consistency

I am finding that the various streams of my life seem to run in some similar directions. I don’t go to church. I don’t like doctors, I don’t like public education, and I don’t like government entitlement programs (or think very highly of governments in general). I work in an industry (Strategic Communications) where most of the jobs are government ones, yet I am employed as a private consultant.

I don’t identify with either of this country’s major political parties (or any of its minor ones, for that matter). I received both my Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from very small, private schools, neither of which could truly be called “institutions” in the truest sense of the word, given that both were less than ten years old at the time.

In short, I don’t really fit. Those of you who know me or are accustomed to reading this blog will hardly be surprised by that, but it is still jarring to admit sometimes, given how much of my life I used to spend trying to do just that.

I think that all of this comes down to the fact that I value consistency far too much to be as inconsistent as is required to truly “belong” to any of these institutions. I live a fairly consistent life – and I strive to be more consistent than I am.

I think the problem with much of our world today is that people don’t value consistency nearly enough. Our most prominent government leaders certainly do not. The two major Presidential candidates’ reactions to the recent Supreme Court decision in the case of D.C. vs. Heller are very instructive in this regard. Readers of this blog may have very strong feelings about politics in general, and about the issue of gun control in particular, but the simple fact is that however you feel, you can learn a great deal about both candidates by how they reacted to this touchstone decision. John McCain’s statement praises the decision as “recogniz[ing] that gun ownership is a fundamental right — sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly.”

McCain calls these rights – speech and assembly – sacred . . . despite the fact that he spearheaded the campaign finance reform effort that severely curtails these same two rights . . . the freedom to use one’s money to promote the speech one agrees with, and the freedom of political parties – private organizations – to use their money to convince others to “assemble” with them.

Obama, on the other hand, begins his reaction to Heller by saying, “I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms . . .” The same Obama with a history of opposition to such an individual right.

Of course, the fact that our nation’s – or any nation’s – politicians are prone to inconsistency should come as no great surprise to anyone who is paying attention.

One might expect better of our nation’s spiritual leaders. But if one did, one would be mistaken.

Take, for example, Josh Harris, the senior pastor of Covenant Life Church, and a leader in Sovereign Grace Ministries. In a post on his blog, Harris quotes my old pastor, Mark Dever, who takes issue with the assertion that the church is responsible for social justice – claiming that while individuals can and should practice social justice, the church has no business doing so, and should instead focus on evangelism.

I happen to disagree with this premise, and I personally think he is creating a false dichotomy or two – but that’s not my point in bringing it up. A commenter on Harris’ blog says it perfectly,

If we say we will only do good to those immediately around us or in the church, then we relegate the role of all social welfare to the government, which most of us do not want to do. If we get involved in “civilian affairs” then we can easily compromise our faith. Added to this, many churches say they are against para-church ministries, but they also don’t want their own churches to have ministries (as you state above). So what happens when I have someone who needs somewhere to stay?

Whatever the answer, we as the church can’t have it both ways. We can’t say neither the government, the church, nor parachurch organizations are allowed to do social justice.

The position Dever and Harris (and most ultra-conservative spiritual leaders, in fact) advocate is untenable. It is religious NIMBYism. “Someone should be doing social justice, just not MY organization.”

But the leaders of the evangelical left are no better. Take Jim Wallis, the leader of Sojourner Ministries, who commented on a recent dust-up between Barack Obama and Dr. James Dobson by accusing Dobson of engaging in “attacking discourse,” saying that such language should have no place in politics.

Again, you may agree or disagree with Wallis, but it seems that he himself does not fully agree with his own statement, having used the same sort of “attacking discourse” himself.

I was asked once, recently, what I would say to those who find certain beliefs and positions “too extreme.” What I would say is that extremism is nothing more than a product of consistency in a belief system.

There are, of course, good and bad belief systems – Osama Bin Laden has a fairly consistent one, for example – so a philosophy’s consistency cannot be used as the sole judge of its merit. But I think its inconsistency can.

No human being can live 100% consistently – it’s part of what makes us human . . . but the inconsistencies should be acknowledged as either human failures or conscious concessions to practicality, rather than core tenets of our beliefs, as they appear to be in the cases of Barack Obama, John McCain, Josh Harris and Jim Wallis.

As Ayn Rand would say, if you come upon two concepts that seem to be equally valid and are yet contradictory, you’d better check your premises.

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17 Mar 2008 A Crisis of Fact

Five months.

It has been five months since I last posted anything here. Last fall, the last few times I posted, I apologized for the scarcity of posts. This time I won’t, because I’m not sorry at all. I quite simply had nothing to say.

You see, for most of the last five months I’ve been going through what I’ve referred to in conversations with my wife as a bout of “low grade depression.” What exactly that means, I’m not sure, but I had to give it a name in order to talk about it. Mostly it has manifested itself in an inability, much of the time, to access the deep places of my heart in any expressible way.

Much of this feeling I’ve been talking about relates to what God has been doing in my heart over the last few years – moving me away from convention and “normalcy,” out into the fringes of His body. Some would say I have left it all together, but that is not the case.

This is not, however, going to be another post where I talk of the disappointment and hurt I have felt at the hands of the “normal” church. This crisis has been of a related, but different nature.

In figuring out where I stand in my relationship with Christ, one thing that has come to consume my thoughts of late is the question of where I stand in relationship with Scripture.

I named this post long before I wrote it – long before, in fact, I had any idea what exactly it would say. You see, we often refer to these moments where we are questioning much of what we believe . . . much of what we have believed all our lives . . . as a “Crisis of Faith.”

My faith, though, is not something that is in crisis. This is a crisis of a different sort. It is a crisis of fact.

. . . as in, I am constantly wanting more of them. More facts, more knowledge, more information.

In this case, I want more information about this thing, this book – or collection of books, to be more accurate – that we call “The Bible.”

You see, there are some things about it that just have not made sense to me. I grew up believing something very close to the story that God planted the exact words in the heads of those who penned the original Scriptures, that they wrote them down infallibly, and that those words have been passed on to us completely untarnished.

I do not believe that anymore. My first step away from that belief came with the realization that Scripture itself may claim to be inspired, but its myriad of scribes, copyists and translators do not. Thus I came to believe that Scripture is infallible in its original form, but that minor errors have been introduced in its copying and translation.

Then I began to wonder about that word “inspired.” Scripture claims to be “inspired,” but what does that really mean? Does that truly mean that every word – even in its original form – was absolutely infallible? The word, in Greek, literally means, “God-breathed.” The meaning of that term, in turn, is somewhat of a mystery.

Then I began to study more about what has become one of my passions – one that I have written about here before, as well as on my wife’s blog – the historical context of Scripture. I began to realize that there are little things that just don’t seem to fit. One minor example is found in the story surrounding the birth of Christ. Luke relates that the census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem was undertaken when Cyreneus was governor of the Roman province of Syria. Then, Luke says, after Jesus was born, King Herod – fearing for his throne – killed all children in Bethlehem below the age of two.

The only problem with this is that other contemporary historical sources reveal that Cyreneus did not become governor of Syria until after Herod’s death. Furthermore, the entire purpose of a census such as the one recorded here (and mentioned in those same historical writings) was to survey the population of a province like Judea as it transitioned from a semi-autonomous kingship to direct Roman rule . . . something that happened not only after, but because of Herod’s death. Furthermore, there is no chance that the mistake was in the other historical sources, for history has carried down to us exactly when Cyreneus was governor, as well as the names and dates of his predecessors and successors in that position.

In other words, Luke – writing roughly eighty years after the death of Christ, got some of his facts wrong.

In any other historical book, this would be no big deal . . . but discovering this about Scripture left me in somewhat of a quandry. After all, if mistakes exist in little things, why not in bigger ones? And if they exist in bigger ones, then how can we be sure that we have a true picture of what God wanted for us when He gave us the Scripture in the first place?

It makes perfect sense to me that Scripture might not mean everything we think it means. After all, my whole life I have had scriptures spouted at me to justify things like male headship, the duty of tithing, the primacy of the local church fellowship, even the biblical basis of the Republican party . . . all positions I no longer believe.

It is a big step, though, to realize that Scripture might not even necessarily mean everything it was meant to mean.

There has always, in my moving away from the various positions mentioned above, been a small kernel of doubt in my mind about certain things. After all, it says “Wives, submit to your husbands.” Taken completely separate from the surrounding historical context, and even the surrounding verses, that seems to be a pretty straight-forward command. However, it never sat well with what I know to be true of my Savior – the fact that He looks on all of His chosen equally . . . and that He promises, among other things, to be the sole mediator and spiritual authority in their lives.

Whenever I raised these issues to those who still believed as I once did, the question was always the same: “Don’t you think that God is capable of preserving in Scripture an accurate record of what He wants from us?”

This question has always presented a challenge to me. I felt trapped by it. On the one hand I could answer “yes,” and admit that my admittedly more “nuanced” reading of Scripture – together with the belief that God doesn’t necessarily have the same message for all people at all times – is wrong. On the other hand, I could say “no,” and deny the sovereignty of God to manipulate the laws of science and nature to miraculously preserve his written will.

I am willing to do neither. To do the latter would be to deny that God is who He is. To do the former would be to call Him a living contradiction.

This morning, I realized that there is a third option to this struggle I have been waging in my mind for the last several months.

You see, the question itself: “Don’t you think that God is capable of preserving in Scripture an accurate record of what He wants from us?” makes an incredibly deep-seated assumption . . . it assumes that’s what He intended for Scripture in the first place.

I have struggled for so long wondering how I can believe God incapable of miraculously preserving some sort of guideline for his people . . . I’ve never considered that the flawed, incomplete, sometimes incomprehensible story we have of God’s interaction with mankind may be exactly what He intended us to have.

After all, God’s language has been that of riddles for as long as He has interacted with humanity. From his claims on the life of Isaac to his curse of a fruitless fig tree, the simple fact is that God sometimes just does not do what is expected of him. We expect Him to give us a rulebook to live by, so when He gives us something else, we see it as a rulebook anyway. We expect Him to tell us what He wants us to do . . . so when He tells us how He wants us to love, we try to turn THAT into something we’re supposed to “do” as well . . .

He spoke in riddles, even to his closest friends and followers. They rarely made sense of what he meant – and he usually did his best to keep it that way.

What if that’s exactly what He continues to do, to this day?

What if the book we call “Bible” is another grand riddle? What if He’s being deliberately vague, and throwing in a couple seeming contradictions just to make us engage in some introspective head-scratching? Isn’t that just like him? Isn’t it just like a loving Father, when his child asks a question to which he might very easily give a straightforward answer, to instead say, “Why don’t you go do some reading, thinking, or research on that and figure that one out on your own?”

I know my own father did that many times – and I know that I’m better off for having learned how to think for myself.

Maybe Scripture is intended not to tell us what to do or think, but to teach us to think for ourselves, and to live in the shadow of our God as best we can. Maybe we are all suffering from a crisis of fact . . . and are trying to compensate by creating new “facts” – new religious commandments, traditions and “to-do lists” where none existed before.

But aren’t the folks who perverted the Jewish faith in the same way the very ones that He whipped out of the temple courtyard? Aren’t they the same ones he called “beautiful tombs, full of dead men’s bones?” Didn’t he roundly criticize and condemn the people who tried to turn the Scriptures into more than they were intended to be?

. . . and didn’t they kill Him for it?

I don’t want to follow in their footsteps. I don’t want to try to invent some new set of commandments because I can’t accept that the words He left us just aren’t enough to tell me what to do with myself at each and every fork in the road.

I want to think for myself . . . to take what He’s given me and use it to continue onward as I believe He would have me do.

And honestly, I don’t think He ever intended otherwise.

Author:  |  Category: Ideas I came up with totally on my own, Things most people won't understand at all, Things that will convince you I'm a godless heathen, Things that will get me excommunicated, Things that will piss somebody off  | 6 Comments
07 Aug 2007 Nothing Personal

I have tried, over the past week, to generate a few different posts on a few different topics, but found that I couldn’t bring myself to write them. I think, in looking back, that the reason for this grew out of the fact that they were all sort of interconnected in a way I hadn’t quite grasped yet.

I think I’ve got it now, so I’m going to give this a try.

Last week, a tragedy occurred. A poorly-maintained, heavily-traveled transportation artery constructed more than forty years ago failed due to neglect, and people died.

About 100 of them.

No, I’m not talking about the I-35W bridge in Minnesota. The cost of that catastrophe, in lives, at least, was thankfully much smaller than it might have been.

The same day, however, on the other side of the world, a train wreck in the Democratic Republic of the Congo took a far higher toll.

Also last week, as I noted in my last post, a religious talk show host made and defended statements linking the Emergent church movement with terrorists from al Qaeda.

Over the weekend, the Democratic leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives, which took power early this year after capitalizing on unethical and morally questionable tactics employed by the former Republican majority, violated the House rules they themselves had established, changed the total of a razor-thin vote after the Chair had gavelled it closed, and expunged the old total from the record, literally stealing the vote on national television. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was heard on camera responding to protests against the violations of parliamentary procedure with, “We control this house, not the parliamentarians.”

This week, one of my favorite bloggers, “Naked Pastor,” was viciously attacked on a popular “Christian” blog, where the author and several commenters cast brutal personal insults and aspersions masquerading as critiques of his blog’s content.

What on earth, you may ask, do any of these events have in common?

Perhaps it is the ease with which communications are conducted electronically. Perhaps it is the breadth of information that is easily available, allowing anybody who desires to become an intellectual. Perhaps it is the fact that government interventions and intrusions have eliminated the necessity for people to just grow up and be adults.

Perhaps it is all of these, and more, but it seems to me as though we have entered an age where we interact with numbers, figures, statistics, information and data, and forget that we live out our stories here on earth interacting with other people.

The news media has had a field day with the I-35W bridge collapse, giving it nearly wall-to-wall coverage ever since it occurred. In all the talk of recriminations, blame and fallout, the one thing I have yet to see is an ounce of sorrow over the lives lost.

“If it bleeds, it leads,” according to the common news media slogan . . . but that doesn’t mean they treat it as the human tragedy it is.

Still, since it is, after all, an American tragedy, at least it gets some recognition. The same day, virtually the same event in a country on the other side of the world received nary a breath of coverage, despite the far higher loss of life.

I asked my wife why she thought this might be, and her response was very telling. She said, “We care about the tragedy in Minnesota because that could have been us.”

That’s just it. We don’t care about the people who have lost loved ones. We don’t care about the lives lost. We care because it could have been us. Those of us in the Washington D.C. area care because we’re in the process of getting a new Woodrow Wilson bridge due to unsafe conditions on the old span similar to those that cause the I-35W collapse. Our emotions are not filled with sorrow, but with relief.

We don’t care about the train in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, because that could not have been us.

In my last post I talked about Frank Pastore’s article excoriating the emergent church movement. I’m not going to rehash my previous words here, but it seems to me that this is the opposite extreme of the very same phenomenon that I talked about relating to the transportation tragedies in Minnesota and Africa. In Pastore’s case, it’s dehumanizing by taking things too personally.

Whoever you are, whatever you believe on any give subject, right now, I want you to think of the single issue you care most about in all the world. It can be a political issue, a philosophical issue, a religious issue, or your favorite color for all I care. I want you to think of a person with whom you have often and/or emphatically disagreed with on that topic. I want you to repeat after me. “Just because they disagree with me doesn’t make them stupid.”

I myself have fallen into this trap more than once – the trap of believing that disagreement with my staked-out position on some political, theological or philosophical issue is an indication that the one doing the disagreeing is less “enlightened” or “informed” than I.

That may well be true – but it may well not be. Very intelligent people are capable of coming to very different conclusions on the very same issue. Assuming that one who disagrees with our chosen beliefs is “stupid” is to assert that we know all there is to know on that subject . . . to assume that it is even possible to know all there is, on this or any subject. It is the height of arrogance.

It is this same arrogance that has led the political leaders in this country – both Republican and Democrat – to forget why they are there. In the case of our nation’s leadership, they have dehumanized the very people who put them in leadership in the first place, by treating power as an end in and of itself, rather than as a means to the end of leading this country well. When former House Speakers Newt Gingrich and Tom Foley, whose political views are as opposite as they come, can agree with one another that you’re doing something wrong . . . odds are pretty good that you’re probably doing something wrong.

In the case of the transportation accidents, we have dehumanized the victims. In Pastore’s article, he dehumanized a group of believers. Congress dehumanized those they’re supposed to work for.

In the final example I listed, though, a group of people did their best to deliberately and viciously dehumanize a single person who had done nothing to them . . . and in the process dehumanized only themselves. Many of the commenters chose to attack him simply based on the vague and provocative descriptions provided in the blog post itself, and the author of the post felt it necessary to filter out comments supportive of the attacked pastor, and then defend herself against his supporters in a second post.

Naked Pastor’s response is one more example of why I like him so much – it is full of the very same grace and kindness that his attackers chose to eschew. He doesn’t become defensive or take the bait of their vitriol. Instead he says,

To my sister Ingrid and Slicers. Thanks for the review of my blog. I’m truly honored that my blog even got noticed, nevermind a mention! A couple of things:

Your filters only block words, not pictures. The word “naked” in nakedpastor, a blog where I try to bare my soul and not much else, is what’s being blocked. You probably couldn’t get The Naked Archeologist either, and he just shows ruins and pots. I consider what I show on my site to be artistic and tasteful. We disagree there. I just wanted to correct you on why my site is blocked by porn filters.

Ingrid: I’m surprised you didn’t mention my cartoons! Come on – admit it – you HAD to like some of them. You could’ve written some of them yourself. That’s okay though – you were critiquing one aspect of my blog. But from my artistic style and taste to conclude that my site is “theoretically supposed to be a pastor’s blog” is quite a leap. There’s nothing theoretical about it. It IS a pastor’s blog, no matter how different in taste and expression he is from your image of what a pastor is or looks like. That’s okay too though. I don’t expect full endorsement from everyone.

This is just a slice of who I am. If you read through my site you might discover that we are, after all, brothers and sisters with the same Lord. You would “meet” some people from my church who I consider heroes of the faith – of the Hebrews 11 caliber! It interests me that some of you are so quick to call names like “pervert” and question my call as a pastor or even a Christian. But that’s okay too. I suspend judgment and hope that we can cross kinder paths in the future.

Lord haste the day when we will all finally stand naked before you!

david (aka “nakedpastor”)

Even in the midst of personal attack, he treats his attackers as human beings, with different tastes, opinions and beliefs – and that’s exactly what they are.

All of this talk about “dehumanizing” begs the question, “what does it mean to be human?”

I think, as I write this, that we have to return to the creation story to answer that.

Genesis 1 doesn’t tell us very much at all about humanity, other than that it was created. Neither does much of Genesis 2. Verse 15 tells us where God placed his first human. Verses 16-17 tell us of God’s first interactions with his first human.

Not until verse 18 do we learn anything at all about this creature Scripture calls “man.”

What, then, is the very first thing we learn about man? It is the simple fact that “it is not good for the man to be alone.”

There it is. The very basis of what humanity is. We were created for relationship. When we eschew relationship, we dehumanize ourselves and those around us. The more we pursue genuine, open, honest relationship, the more we are being what we were intended to be.

But instead of relating to . . . and grieving with . . . sufferers, we sigh in relief that it is not our own suffering. Instead of engaging in dialogue with others who do not believe as we do, we think them simple-minded or immature. Instead of serving one another we seek as much power as we can, and instead of being kind in our differences we are cruel.

What a fallen and broken race is this humanity! Where we are intended to nourish one another emotionally, instead we feed on each other, engaging in emotional cannibalism, and very accurately say, “it’s nothing personal.”

Indeed it isn’t. That’s the problem.

Author:  |  Category: Ideas I came up with totally on my own, Things most people will disagree with, Things most people would agree with if they really thought about it, Things that will convince you I'm a Democrat, Things that will piss somebody off  | One Comment
08 Jun 2007 Created for Life; Created for Choice

One of the mysteries that will probably forever occupy the human mind is the question, “Why are we here?”

For a believer, this means asking the question, “Why were we created?”

Theologians have been coming up with any number of answers for as long as there has been theology – and probably longer.

If we take things back to the very beginning, however, we find something very interesting. It seems God indicated the answer when He first created us.

Genesis 2, the second telling of the creation story, reveals four characteristics of the first being created in God’s image – four things, it would seem, for which he was created.

1) He was created to cultivate life.

2) He was created to do God’s will.

3) He was created to make choices.

4) He was created to engage in relationships.

In Genesis 2:15 – even before He communicates his first command to Adam, God places him in Eden . . . but not just at random, or merely to allow him an idyllic setting in which to live and thrive. The verse says Adam was placed in the garden “to cultivate it and keep it.”

He was placed there to perpetuate the gift of Life that God had bestowed upon the living things of earth. That, it seems, is man’s first purpose.

Then, in Verses 16-17, God gives Adam his first command: “Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

It is interesting to me that God did not merely give Adam some arbitrary command and then leave him in the dark about why he was to follow it. Too often, I think, we attribute this sort of detachment to God – that he gives us inexplicable commands that are difficult to follow, for no other reason than to see us fail.

That, though, is not the picture in this passage at all. It is a picture of action and reaction – of cause and consequence. The knowledge of good and evil is something not native to humanity in its unfallen state. We were created, originally, to be truly innocent.

God’s command here was not difficult, nor was it unclear. For a God who reformed theologians will assure us is utterly and completely sovereign, it was only barely even a command.

It seems to have been more of a warning. “If you do this, it will have consequences . . . so don’t.”

But then our Sovereign God gave them a choice.

God reinforces this notion of choice in verse 19. He brings all his other creation to Adam, and sits back to watch.

What does Adam do? He names them . . . names them in the truest sense that anything has ever been named. Think, for a moment, of the significance of this. When parents name their children, they are given a title by which they will be called, barring certain cultural exceptions, for the rest of their lives. This is significant, but not nearly so significant as Adam’s action in the garden. He did not just name the rest of God’s created beings – he defined them . . . and what Adam put into words, God made into truth.

Adam made a choice. He didn’t even have to be told to make that choice. He merely had to be given the opportunity. Once the opportunity was there, the act of choosing simply came naturally.

Finally, Adam was created for relationship. Too many people seem to treat particularly the physical aspects of a husband-wife relationship as something “dirty” or distasteful. But here Adam is defining the origins of the sexual relationship before the fall, and in a context completely devoid of the guilt and shame that paralyzes even many Christian marriage relationships today.

We were created, in our naked and unfallen form, to celebrate and cultivate life, to hear God’s voice and hearken to it, to make choices, and to engage in relationship with one another.

And it is to these purposes that we have been redeemed.

UPDATE:

In rereading this post, it seems to me that I have left something out. I noted that God seems to have created us with an innate need for relationship, but there are actually two facets to this, of which I noted only one. I noted that we were created to engage in relationship – and focused on the marriage/sexual aspect of Adam’s relationship with his wife.

But there is another piece – the simple observation that, at the start of his life, Adam was lonely. Those of us who choose to walk this life outside of traditional churches are all too often keenly aware of the feeling that must have confronted Adam – the feeling that there is nobody else like us in all the world. I know that I felt it at the start of my journey out of the institutional church.

It might seem like a truism, but to me, the key to a good relationship is to be . . . well . . . relational. Too many so-called relationships – be they marriages, friendships, or church fellowships, aren’t really relationships at all. They are people engaging in what they believe to be a duty, simply for duty’s sake.

That’s not relational living . . . and it’s certainly not the picture we see here in Genesis. None of these four purposes I’ve outlined here were cast as duties . . . not even the command not to eat of the “forbidden fruit.” Even that is worded as a protective measure for the safety of God’s cherished one.

Certainly, none of the others are outlined as duties, but how often do we hear the “leave and cleave” concept framed as precisely that?? How often are we told that engaging in fellowship with other believers is yet another “duty”?

I don’t know about you, but to me, the joy of my relationship with my wife is far more rewarding than any sense of “duty fulfilled could ever be, and the time I share with my fellow believers – not listening to a sermon, engaging in corporate singing, or sharing in a church potluck, but simply sitting around and sharing life with one another – is such a joy that I can’t even begin to express it in mere words.

Perhaps that’s because it’s what I was created for . . .

Author:  |  Category: Ideas I came up with totally on my own, Things most people will disagree with  | 2 Comments
18 May 2007 The Trap of the Certain

Well, I’m back – back from a week in California with my family and several close friends, and back from two weeks in Indiana on a work-related trip.

It’s been a very insightful three weeks. I feel as though I’m bursting at the seams with topics to write about, but I seem to be having trouble getting them all out at the moment.

There is one story I want to share, though, about a topic near and dear to . . . well . . . everyone. I want to talk today about sacred cows.

There I was, sitting at a table full of my colleagues. There were perhaps a dozen of us, of different backgrounds, genders, ages, races and worldviews.

Eventually, the conversation turned to politics. I happen to have very strong political views on certain subjects, and I jumped into the conversation with gusto. The conversation included a couple of liberals, a couple of conservatives, a moderate or two, and at least one libertarian. The topics included foreign and domestic, intricately detailed and utterly simplistic.

What seemed to me to be uniform, though, among all of us there, was the complete and total certainty of our positions, and the way we defended them without thought for whether those with different views had a point.

While I try, in every conversation, to attempt to see what I can learn from and about the other person or people involved, I found myself falling into this trap as well. My views came to the surface, and I defended them with an instinct honed by four years of college debate.

Why is it that I am so quick to defend beliefs that might well be indefensible? Why is it that I find myself listening only with the design of formulating a coherent rebuttal to what is being said?

Then again, isn’t this what we are taught to do as Christians? Aren’t we taught by each pastor under whose tutelage we sit, that what we are hearing is literally, “the gospel truth,” and that part of our Christian duty is to be able to readily defend our theological positions?

We have, it seems, turned Christ’s inclusive invitation into an exclusive club – we have turned relationship with Him, into a debate against those who are without Him.

What, exactly, do we hope to gain in this?

I remember, a few years back, being over at a freind’s house playing a strategy game, when a knock came at the door. When we opened it, there stood two Jehovah’s Witnesses earnestly desiring to tell us about their faith.

My two friends immediately began hurling challenges at them, “don’t you know that . . . ,” “but the Bible says that . . . ,” “How would you respond to . . . ,”

I stood back in discomfort. All I wanted to do was hear what they as individuals, rather than their religion as a whole, believed . . . but I was not to get the opportunity. Eventually, they uncomfortably excused themselves and fled, realizing that they were playing to a hostile crowd.

Why is it that when we – not just Christians, or those of any particular culture, religion or politics, but we as people – suddenly become a hostile crowd when confronted by anybody who does not think exactly as we do? My wife and I have experienced this even among dear friends who, not hearing what we have to say, hear only the buzzwords that raise red flags with them, and immediately turn hostile.

Why is it that words like “postmodern” or “agnostic” or “liberal” do that to so many of my dearest friends? Why is it that they feel an immediate need to condemn me for asking the type of questions I ask in this blog?

If Christ is indeed “the truth” as He claims to be in John 14, will not that truth stand up to questions and doubts?

If all the elements of what we believe are indeed the truth and will stand as such on their own merit, why do we feel such a need to attack the doubters and questioners?

And if some elements of what we believe are not truth, why do we believe them?

This is not the way of Christ, who Himself demonstrated love to doubters like Thomas, and spent hours in deep and heartfelt conversation with questioners like Nicodemus.

Why then do we feel like we must berate and belittle them, where He did not?

Author:  |  Category: Ideas I came up with totally on my own, Things most people will disagree with, Things that will piss somebody off  | One Comment
01 May 2007 The Market-Driven Church

I just got through reading a very moving story posted at “We are in Jesus.” It’s a post on how we believers tend to market our churches, rather than sharing our God with those who do not know Him. It’s a story of believers who had an opportunity to offer new life to someone hurting, and who could only offer a new “program.” This story brought tears to my eyes, because I’ve been there. I’ve been the one who participated in the church Bible Clubs and Vacation Bible Schools, and who, at the end of the program, could not say to those wonderful, hurting children in the worst parts of our town, “I’ll see you soon . . .” because our program had no follow-through . . . no way to go back and continue being a part of those young lives who so desperately needed someone to reach out to them.

Instead, all I had to offer was, “come to our church on Sunday.”

I remember one young boy in particular, Jose. He was a regular attender at the Vacation Bible Schools we held each summer several blocks from our church in the very worst neighborhood in our Sacramento suburb. His older brother was a local gang member, and they often used Jose as a courier for drug deals and other gang matters. He was, if I recall correctly, about nine years old.

I remember the look on his face the day his older brother tried to come and talk him out of hanging out with us in the park. I remember how he stood up for himself, and told his brother that he was going to stay.

I remember talking with Jose, after one of the messages. I remember the tears in his eyes as he talked about wanting something more. He didn’t know how to express it, but the conflict was plain in his eyes between the part of him that wanted to gain status in his older brother’s eyes, and the part that wanted to continue in relationship with us and the God we tried to introduce him to.

I remember asking the leaders of the event what we could offer him in the future.

I remember being told to let him know that we’d love to see him in church on Sunday.

It was, after all, right up the road. But how could any of us, who took Saturday off from our nice, middle-class life to come and spend time with the kids who had nothing, ever comprehend the pressures that held him there, that kept him from walking those ten blocks the next day. He was nine years old, for crying out loud! We didn’t even offer to come pick him up (I say “we,” even though I was only 14 or 15 at the time and didn’t have a car or a license to use one.) We just expected him to “show up,” simply because we said it was the right thing to do.

I and my church failed Jose. We failed him not because we didn’t tell him of Christ, but because we didn’t care enough to show him what a Christ-filled life should be like. We cared more about getting him to church . . . the “right place” to teach him such things.

As I have reiterated many, many times, I have a number of dear friends who have found wonderful church families inside a “normal,” organized, institutional church. That is the path they have chosen, and it is their choice to make. I rejoice with them in what they have found on that journey.

However, it seems like we often miss the point of that path. We forget that, while churches can be valuable tools for aiding in one’s search for Christ, it is He who is the point . . . any time we fail to demonstrate that, we fail Him.

I failed Him, with Jose, and each time I think about that day in the park, I wish I could find Jose today, a decade or so later, and beg his forgiveness for not offering more.

Let us always remember that the trappings of religion we adopt, be they churches, or traditions, or practices, or habits, or behaviors, are only a means to Christ.

He is the point.

Author:  |  Category: Ideas I came up with totally on my own, Things most people would agree with if they really thought about it, Things that will piss somebody off  | 2 Comments
24 Apr 2007 My Journey out of Church and into the Body of Christ (5)

So where do I find myself at present . . . ?

Recently, my wife and I have both been challenged by dear friends who are concerned about our decision not to remain within the framework of an institutional, organized church. Given how much these friends mean to us, these conversations have touched off a great deal of study, prayer, discovery and contemplation . . . as well as prompting the creation of this blog.

We have become involved with a network of wonderful people in this area, who are facing a similar journey to ours. These people were introduced to us through the writings and podcasts of Wayne Jacobsen, and we had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Jacobsen and several new friends in March of this year at the home of some local friends of his who have now become good friends of ours as well. What impressed both of us was how little Wayne seemed interested in leading and controlling the conversation we were having. Each person in the room had a story to tell, and all of us learned and grew from the experience . . . but nobody was responsible for leading or directing the discussion. It was completely organic, completely real . . . and completely independent of any “local church.” Jacobsen lives in California, far away from us here in Virginia, but the other people in that room have, in the last two months, become a very large and important part of our lives.

My wife and I came away more refreshed than either of us have been by an ordinary church service for a long, long time. We felt like we had seen God working in the minds and hearts of the people in that room, and that He had worked in our minds and hearts as well . . . showing us more of Himself. We have gotten together with some of the people in that room, as well as some of their friends who are in similar situations, a total of four times. We hope for many more such gatherings, as each one brings a renewed sense of joy, fellowship, and gratitude for our Father’s working in our lives.

I have had well-meaning friends tell me that this experience runs completely contrary to Scripture. I disagree. While I am certainly glad that many people are able to find spiritual nourishment and fellowship inside conventional churches, I find nothing in scripture that indicates that this is the only way God will ever use to build up the people He has redeemed.

I will address some of the most common objections I have received in regards to this statement in future posts. I considered putting them here, but I don’t think this series is the place for them. This is a story, not an apologetic. All I will say about them for now is that, after a lot of soul-searching, prayer, study and agonizing, I have come to a place where I don’t think I can, in good conscience, attend a conventional church at this point in my life. If I did so, it would be because I was once again bowing to external pressure from others, conforming to the person they want me to be. It would not be because I believe that’s where I need to be to engage in a meaningful relationship with God, or with other members of His Body.

Where, then, do I go from here?

I don’t know . . . and oddly enough for someone with as many “control-freak” characteristics as I have, I like it that way. God has made life an adventure – a mystery with new surprises and unforseen twists. One exciting thing I have been discovering even in the past few weeks is that, when one is living outside the boundaries of a conventional church, the opportunities to speak truth into the lives of others, and have them speak truth into my life, are vastly increased.

There are, it seems, a lot of us asking these questions. When I first began examining my beliefs about church, I thought I was alone – or at the very least, that Heidi had been through these questions before. At the time, though, I wasn’t sure I wanted to end up in the same place she had. She had seen and been through a lot more than I had, at the time, and I thought perhaps it was because of this that she had ended up where she had. Time and experience, though, led me on a very different path, to the same place she had reached – a place outside the walls of any church building.

What I discovered, though, is that far from finding ourselves defenseless outside these walls, and open to spiritual attack in ways that “normal Christians” aren’t (something each of us heard from our skeptical pastors, church leaders and friends) we are finding other people with similar questions and similar experiences, who have arrived at similar answers.
We are also finding that we can experience all of the same benefits that a conventional church offers – the study of scripture, the fellowship, the opportunities to serve and bless each other, the joy of participating in “Body Life” – without the shame, fear, and debasement that is popular in many local assemblies.

For some of us, this is our first experience with the easy yoke, the light burden, and the rest for our souls that Christ offers in Matthew 11.

Where do I go from here? I don’t know . . . but for the first time, I do not fear to find out what comes next.

. . . I am excited by it.

Back to Part 4

Author:  |  Category: Ideas I came up with totally on my own, Things most people will disagree with, Things that will convince you I'm a godless heathen, Things that will get me excommunicated, Things that will piss somebody off  | 5 Comments
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