Heresy of the Month

Where Are All The People?

I remember doing that little hand game as a small child, but I could never get it right.  You know the one, right?  You interlock all of your fingers, so that each second knuckle sticks up in a sort of roof.  Then, in a sing-songy voice, you say, “Here is the church…” Lifting your two pinkies from the rest, you continue, “Here is the steeple…”  You then move your two thumbs out 90 degrees, and say, “Open the doors…”  At this point, the observer (usually a parent, because all of your friends have seen this a thousand times, and only your parents are actually patient enough to let food burn on the stove to watch your dumb, little, pre-PowerPoint presentation - they kinda have to…they’re parents) seems to be filled with edge-of-their-seat, goose-bumpy anticipation.  What could possibly come next?  You take a pregnant pause to let the tension percolate.  Then, you release with the big payoff, flipping over your hands, triumphantly declaring, “And Here Are the People!!”  You wiggle your now-upturned fingers for added affect, as if full revival is breaking out in your little hand church.

But not for me.  I would have had my audience eating out of my hands for the whole presentation, if they hadn’t been clenched in church formation.  My lead in was excellent.  I would build and build up to the great payoff which would be….nothing.  I couldn’t figure out how to lock my knuckles correctly.  I had some kind of hand church disability, I think, because it would never work out.  The problem was, I could not get through my thick head that I could not fold my hands in a prayer formation and have people be inside my church.  Every time I did that little game in our house in Iron River, MI, there wouldn’t be people.  I would be disappointed and sad, having let my mom down (everyone else had given up on me as the pastor of my hand church), and she would console me by patiently teaching me, again, how to do it.  By that point, I was so frustrated that I had to set the whole endeavor aside and go play Legos until supper.  I would try again tomorrow.  It finally got to the point where I gave up and made my own version of the game.  Instead of the classic punchline, I would, instead, say, “Where are all the people?”  In that way, I was able to deliver an ending that was even more shocking and gripping than all of those other, finger-people-producing schmucks.  They could keep their little finger revivals.  My way was cooler, more surprising, and it provided social commentary on the decline of Christianity in the West, especially among steepled churches.  I don’t know, though.  In the end, I think my way was much less satisfying overall for myself and my audience.

I should have seen that game as prophetic.  My inability to “do it right” left me feeling like something was wrong with me.  I had some kind of internal flaw that prohibited my ability to accomplish what others of, in my estimation, less social and cognitive prowess could do without much effort.  It was easy for them!  I understood Poe and Shakespeare.  I taught myself multiplication and division, even doing some rudimentary algebra, while my peers were still counting wrong, misspelling simple words, and leaving school after wetting their pants.  Why could I not get that freakin hand church thing right!?!?  My mom was always supportive.  I think she was only teaching me over and over again, because I seemed to have a driving need to conquer it.  Besides, who wants to go to the mom’s prayer group and admit that your kid is the only one who can’t get the church thing right?

“Get the prayer chain fired up, Gladys!!  Jan’s kid either has a demon or he’s one of them “special” kids!!”

This whole thing continued well into adulthood.  I never got the whole church thing right.  Every Sunday, after working extremely hard all week to prepare an awesome sermon and a gathering that would be sincere enough to attract the lightning and thunder Glorious Presence of the Living God, I would find myself asking, “Where are all the people?”  I would joke about it with the few people who showed up.  I would make sure they knew how happy and grateful I was that they made it and just how important and precious they are to me and to God.  I would smile, even though I knew we weren’t going to get paid again this week.  I would make excuses.  I would sincerely ask people what was wrong with me and my vision, submitting myself to them for critique and my vision to them for approval.  I would get on my knees, crying, and beg God to PLEASE bring me some people!  Please!  Pretty Please?!  I would tinker with the format.  I would lament the space and environment.  I would read books on church growth and models for successful church.  I would get therapy and take medication.  I would have my mom get the prayer chain fired up, because Jan’s boy is still demonized and special.  I think my mom was even thinking of opening a healing center called, “The Jan Sergott Center for Mothers of Adult Children Who Don’t Do Church Good (JSCMACWDDCG for short).  Where are all the people?  I just couldn’t get my damn fingers to interlock correctly.

Then, I realized that all of those things I did to cope or change my circumstances were missing the mark.  God showed me that somewhere along the way.  I had to embrace the fact that I am a failed pastor.  However, in embracing that, I also have to die to it.  I cannot carry that as my identity.  What makes me awesome?  OK, so I can’t do the church thing right (though I did finally conquer that hand church thing….4 years ago, I think).  I have no idea how to fix a car, and mechanics look at me with that “prayer-group-Gladys” look of pity, concern, and confusion as to what they should do about me - pat me on the head, feed me a doggy treat, or give me another pill. All I know is that the stupid car doesn’t work, and I want it to work.  I feel like our black lab, Greta, when she was playing with a bunny in the backyard and accidentally killed it.  Apparently a 110 pound dog wrestling with a 4oz rabbit is not a good prospect for the rabbit.  Greta was so sad, as she brought us the contorted carcass of her playmate, set it down at our feet, and looked at us with an expectancy that said, “It’s not working anymore.  Fix it?”  I also suck at plumbing, gardening, home maintenance, general yard work, carpeting, cleaning, and, more than anything, making a living for my family.  What the hell is wrong with me?  I can’t say, “Well, I am just not a gifted provider for my family, so I’m not going to do that.  I also struggle with the brain stem skill of pumping blood, so I’m quitting that as well.”  I used to think I might just be lazy, but I’m not.  I work my tail off at everything I do.  I have been quickly promoted at every job I have held.  I just can’t seem to make money.  All of my peers have always seemed to be doing great, and I just can never seem to make it happen.  Maybe I’m just a late bloomer.  I am almost 41.  Maybe I just need another decade or so to soak up some wisdom.

Recently, I noticed a shift.  Yes, there was a shift in myself, as I have worked very hard on getting healthy and strong.  I wanted to be one of God’s superstars, taking over this world for Jesus!  Now, as long as I’m dwelling with Jesus, I could dig ditches and be happy.  However God wants to use me is fine, and I am very free in that.  If, in this season of my life, God wants me to be a failure pastor, I will be that with boldness and zeal.  I will continue to train, prepare, work, and strive to be the best failure pastor I can be!  That was a big shift in my life, but the biggest shift I noticed came in those around me.  People started looking to me, many of them fellow pastors that I saw as being radically more gifted, intelligent and equipped than I, for counsel, direction, prayer, and hope.  Now, in my poopy moments, I think that maybe they come to me to feel better about themselves and circumstances.  “Man, my life and ministry and family and marriage and finances all suck right now.  I’ll go talk to that “special” guy, Bill.  At least I’m not as bad as he is…”

In reality, this wasn’t the case at all.  After the fall of the economy, people got really messed up.  Bad.  Why?  Because the model of our economy was one of the solid, everlasting Truths of American Life.  It was a holy symbol and a reminder that God is in His Heaven and all is right with the world.  Our confidence started to be shaken during the Vietnam War.  The United States doesn’t ever lose wars.  You can hang your hat on that one.  OK, we lost a war.  But, if we call it a “conflict” rather than a “war”, we are still undefeated.  Well, the one thing we are sure of: No one would DARE attack Americans on U.S. Soil.  Then came 9/11.  The whole of reality was uncertain.  Safety, itself, was questioned.  Well, one thing we can still hang our hat on is the U.S. Economy!  We have American Spirit and American Dreams!  We will continue to make money, because THAT is what we are awesome at doing!  Yes, things are a little more difficult, but the CEOs of Wall Street are Capitalists and True Americans.  Surely, they we steer us back to prosperity, hope, and the fulfillment of dreams!  If things get more difficult, they will sacrifice some of their own gains to help the country push forward.  They are patriots!  Besides, it doesn’t matter who’s in those places of power, the model, the economic machine, never breaks down!

All of a sudden, all of these pastors and leaders are in the same boat as I am.  It turns out that they always were.  I was just the only one dumb enough to always talk openly and freely about my failures.  They would just switch models.  I have seen many pastors get all the books and materials from Willow Creek.  They study them, highlight them, teach them to their leadership teams and staffs, do conferences and seminars to learn them better, and even take pilgrimages with their entire board of directors to Barrington, Illinois (Mecca) to see the Dali Lama of the Higher Way of Churchness that is Willow Creek.  They hope to catch something that sparks the success and power of the Willow Creek Model.  They go racing home, excited to tell their whole church what they have caught in fresh vision, hope, and purpose!  We have to get this model in place today!  Is it too soon for an all-member church meeting?  We’ll give it a year.  We are going to see hearts come alive for Jesus!  Lives will be changed and transformed!  This is it for us!  God led us to this place for sure!  A year later, they have two new members to show for all of their visional renovations.  Unfortunately, a family of five that had been with them for 10 years and 10 major visional renovations, finally got tired and left for a mainline denominational church that just wanted to find Jesus.  So, this church netted −3 people in this year of vision and growth.  “Wait!” shouts the youth minister during the depressing evaluation meeting, “I heard Rob Bell has stepped down as pastor in order to put together new models of church!  He is doing a seminar in a city only 200 miles from here!  It starts tonight!  I have my keys, and we can grab food on the way!”  They argue over who gets “shotgun” as they race to the parking lot with real hope this time.

Willow Creek is not the problem in this hypothetical scenario.  Bill Hybels is an incredible leader, pastor, and visionary.  Their church has been wildly successful.  Many people have come to know Jesus in an authentic and life-changing way through their ministry.  There is a great deal we can all learn from Willow Creek.  Also, I don’t think Rob Bell is actually doing seminars on new models of church.  The problem: Models fail.  Always.  There are people everywhere searching for the perfect program, model, or formula.  The diet industry is worth billions every year, each individual diet guaranteeing immediate and dramatic results.  None of them work, but no one takes advantage of the money back guarantee.  Why?  Because we find it much easier to believe that we are the problem.  The problem couldn’t possibly with the system.  I suck.  The diet is perfect.  This model of church is perfect.  I’m the failure.

Those are all lies that I, and most of the human race, have adopted into our minds and hearts.  As a result, We have lost all sense of innovation.  I have started reading the new Steve Jobs biography.  He was an amazing man.  He had incredible issues and could be a really lousy human being, but he was amazing as an innovator and creator.  Rather than making cookie cutter copies of computer models already in the marketplace, he designed and built technologies that the public was not aware they needed or even wanted!  We need more innovators.  The problem is not with you or with me.  The problem is with our models.  I’m just starting to grapple with this, but I have a tiny suspicion that maybe I’m not defective after all…  Those are just some thoughts from a failed pastor.

A Novel Idea

OK, the title of this post is extremely lame.  I'll give you that.  However, my daughter, Grace, and I have decided to write a novel together!  We are going to take on this challenge  as part of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), celebrated throughout the world in the month of November.  We figure that some people spend time with their kids doing projects, camping, building models, or taking up some kind of crafty hobby.  Grace and I like to golf together in the summer, but it is getting far too cold in Northern Wisconsin to do that.  Not to mention, we are both far too cynical to scrapbook (still working on that in me, but healing only goes so far).  So, what's left?  We will write a novel in a month!

How do we take this on?  Well, we have to write a full first draft of a novel of at least 50,000 words.  The emphasis is on "first draft".  It will be incredibly fun, because we can just go crazy and write.  Grace has a whole journal filled with character sheets and plot ideas.  We've made the decision to have her keep those for future novels of her own.  We want our novel for NaNoWriMo to be "ours", all fresh and brand new.  We will create new characters and see where they go!

Not only will it be fun to spend time with Grace, but she is also an extremely creative and brilliant child.  She has known since the age of 4 that she wants to be an author as an adult.  Both of my other kids have been fairly normal in that department.  Maggie, for example, wants to be a professional roller skater, cheerleader, and brain surgeon, all at the same time.  That is normal kid stuff.  I wanted to be a fighter pilot, astronaut, astronomer, and hitman.  Kids bounce from idea to idea.  Not Grace.  She has always known, and has stated boldly, that this is what she wants for her life.  She has tinkered with fashion design, visual art, acting, and other things, but she has known from the start that those would not rise above the level of hobby.  It will be exciting to see what comes out of that mind, when we sit down to write.  I wish, as an adult, that I would possess her level of focus and drive.

Grace wrote a short story for class this past week.  I think it's really good!  I did not steer it in any way, other than to do a line edit for grammar and punctuation.  I made a couple of small, structural suggestions, but she ignored most of my offerings.  She was bound and determined to write HER story.  So, I got her permission to share it with you.  Remember, as you read it, that she is 12.  It's not that I think my readers would be mean to my daughter.  I think it makes the story all the more remarkable!  When I was 12, my areas of focus were: trying to grow armpit hair (to look more manly in the locker room) and girls.  I wasn't writing stories like this.  So here it is:

♦ The Curse♦

by Grace Sergott

     The man rushed home through the woods, smelling the sickly sweet smell of blood in the air. Then, suddenly, there was an ear-piercing shriek. "It's probably just those kids playing by the mountain again," the man thought lazily to himself, "I'm too tired to check on them now."

     The next day, the same man walked through the dirt and leaves to the place where he heard the screaming. There he saw it - the skull. That was all that was left of the girl now. The man picked up the skull with his bare hands and examined the cold, rock hard surface. On the skull, behind where the right ear had been was a darker, diamond-shaped spot. The man walked over to the place where the other skulls sat in order.

      Yes, this had happened before. Three other times actually. The man placed the skull down and started to walk away. Then he smelled blood in the air. He realized that it was his own blood being drawn out of the heel of his foot, in the same shape as the mark on the skull. The man tried to run, only to realize that he couldn't move anymore. He started fattening and fattening and turning more circular. He slowly started to turn to stone starting from the tips of the toes up. His last thought was, "The Curse." Then he was dead.

      Everyone in town knew what happened. They all wondered, "Who will be the next skull?" Well, now six years have passed since then. Considering that the curse has been happening every 3 years, it means that there has been another skull. In fact, she was my mother, Elsabeth Claranette Miller. The man in the beginning was my grandpa. I don't remember his name anymore.

      My sister and I are named after our mom...in a way. My Grandmother on my dad's side was named Lynn, and my maternal grandmother's name was Belle. Well, my mom wanted something original for our names, so she crossed them. My older sister is Clarabelle Lily Miller, and I am Lynnette Elsabeth Miller. My sister and I share a house. Our dad doesn't live with us anymore. He travels a lot. The curse has killed a lot of the members of my family: Mom, grandpa, and an older brother, whom I never met in person. My mom was a skull, my grandpa was a rock, and my brother was a rock too.

     I wake up in a groggy blur from my early morning nightmares. I thump down the stairs, still all dazed, and start to make breakfast. First the pancakes and the sausage. Now the coffee. Then there is a rustling noise. I glance towards the ceiling. No, not Clara. I look into the hall and let out a breath that I didn't know I was holding. Just the mail. I shuffle over in my furry moccasins and my bathrobe, clutching my coffee mug in my hands. I grab the mail then walk back into the kitchen to sit down and read it. I flip through the assorted papers: Yellow Charlotte News, junk postcards from dad, the x-rays, more stupid postcards from dad...I almost spit out my coffee. The x-rays! (My sister and I had gotten scanned to check if either of us were cursed.)

     Grrr. I promised her that I wouldn't open them without her!  I start up the stairs to wake her up, when I realize that I had a perfectly good baseball bat by the broomstick.(No, I am not planning to hit her with the bat; that would be mean.) I set my coffee down on the hard wooden table and get the bat. I raise the hard metal surface to the ceiling above my head and start hitting the wooden beams with the bat. Thump, thump, thump!!! I only stop, when I hear Clara rustling around in her bed. She comes thundering down the stairs, her black hair looking like a birds nest, her bright blue eyes looking wild. She looks crazy for a second, then, realizing its only me, calms down.

      "What is it?" she demands.

      "X-rays. Couldn't wait any longer." I reply calmly.

      "Oh well then you could of just said so," she mumbles.

     We sit down and start to eat. I take a bite of the sausages, the hot juice from the meat squirting out from under my tongue. I watch as she carefully open the envelope, her hands shaking violently, as she does it. Clara slips the papers out, glances at them, then bursts into tears. I snatch the x-rays from her hands and look at our skulls. Yes, we are both cursed. And, yes, the next skull time is soon. I flip my black hair back into a messy ponytail and look into her blotchy eyes with my piercing blue ones.

     "Cheer up," I say, "it will be all right."

     I say this knowing, deep in my beating heart, that it won't be okay. The rest of the day goes by in a blur. After our dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, we clean up and get ready for bed. Clara, who is still in shock and hasn't said a word since seeing the x-rays, climbs into bed quietly and goes to sleep.

     "Tomorrow is Halloween," I thought to myself.

      I wake up in cold sweat from another nightmare. I get up and do the same routine as every other day. I get the morning paper, make breakfast and coffee, and then wake up Clara. She still isn't talking. The day basically goes the same as the day before, until the evening, when we have trick or treating. In case you're wondering, we decided to trick or treat, because we feel this our last chance together. I tie my red silk cape around my neck and pop in my plastic fangs. To complete my costume, I tie my hair back with a red ribbon. Clara and I are both going as vampires for Halloween. She gracefully walked down the stairs looking like my mirror image. She walks over quietly and ties her hair back just like mine.

     "Things will never be the same, will they?" she asks quietly.

     "No, I don't think so. Let's make this moment last." I respond.

     After walking around in the cold for what seemed like hours, I turn to Clara to ask if she wants to go home. She isn't there. "where could she be?" I think to myself. Then I see her. Walking away from the houses and towards the mountain. I drop my bag of candy and go after her.

      I run frantically through the woods after her. Suddenly I smell the bittersweet, copper smell of blood in the air. A bloodcurdling scream pierces the night. I run faster. I am so close, now, that I can hear the trickling of the water in the creek by the mountain. I see her. There is a mark getting engraved onto the palm of her hand. The mark... Oh no! I need to stop this! I make a split-second decision and run for her. I leap at her and push her into the creek, plummeting into the creek after her. Splash! I grab onto her and start letting the current carry us away.

      We are almost back to the village now, so I climb out with her in my soaking wet arms. I see her open her eyes and gaze blurrily into mine for a second. Then, she is gone. Her whole body disappears.

      "My sister, the last victim of The Curse."  Suddenly an overwhelming sadness overcomes me, as if there is a black hole in my heart vacuuming all of the happiness out of my life. I find a rock and mark the place where she died. I am so cold, drenched from head to toe. All of my efforts were for nothing.

      I took a minute to think of all the fun we had together; sipping hot cocoa by the fire in the middle of winter, having picnics on a bright summer day, jumping in leaf piles, laughing, and playing in the puddles left from the sheets and sheets of rain. Clara always believed that no matter how hard it poured or how bad things would get, it would always get sunny again. I am pretty sure I have found an exception. So much misery. I walk a couple feet, then collapse in sadness and in pain, waiting for my life to make sense again.

                         7 months later.....

     As I walk home along the gravel path, I take a deep breath, smelling the crisp scent of a bright spring day. It is May 1st, what would have been Clara's birthday. I celebrate in my home, by myself, for her. That night when I go to bed, I don't have any nightmares for the first time since Clara death. The next morning, I get up willingly, sensing another beautiful spring day. I walk through the town just desperate to be out of the house for once.

      As I walk home, I catch a flash of black hair running into the woods. Then, as I curiously follow the black silk with my piercing stare, I see that it is a person. The figure turned around to look at me, obviously wanting me to follow, with my same piercing cold-blue stare. I run after the mysterious girl, not even pausing to think that I may just be hallucinating. But something tells me that I'm not. She is real! She turns around to look at me again, this time with loving eyes. The only person who ever looked at me like that, the only person who I so desperately want to be here is...

     "Clara?" I choke out in complete shock.

     The girl nods with tears in her eyes, joyous tears, as she shows me the palm of her hand. There is a diamond-shaped scar there. It is my sister.

          THE END

 

I copied and pasted that exactly as written.  As I was reading it again, I noticed that she also ignored some of my punctuation and grammar corrections.  You know what?  I love that!  She actually argued with me on a few of them.  Her arguments were based on different stands like: "I don't care what the rule is.  I did it for effect!"

She was willing to fight me, so she will do just fine in the future, protecting the integrity of her work from the sometimes-destructive work of publishing editors.

What I love most is that she doesn't care that there are rules.  She will have to submit to some curbing, but I want her to keep that attitude.  She has an innate ability to communicate, and she is reckless and ambitious in that.  It's as if she has nothing to lose.  That makes her dangerous.  She has just enough vocabulary and communication ability to be a threat.  The rest, she is free to make up as she goes.  I love that about my girl!  I wish I had some of that hunger in my belly again.  I do feel like I'm getting that back, but I have been fairly suburban and pedestrian for quite some time, now.  I'm hoping that writing a novel with this little fireball will ignite a new fire in my belly.  After all, I have nothing to lose!

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Please feel free to leave a comment about Grace's story.  She would love that!  I'll have the author, herself, respond to you. :)  Also, tell the community here about some creative dreams you would love to pursue.  What has held you back?

If you are interested in jumping into NaNoWriMo and writing a whole novel in November, you can go to their website and sign up!  It's free!

Finally, NaNoWriMo is an effort of The Office of Letters and Light, a nonprofit organization that taps into the creative writing gifts of youth and adults all over the world.  Click on the link on the right to go to sponsor our novel writing and help kids find the joy of writing!

On Ties, Volleyball, and Postmodernism

Purpose Driven Life is a book that has sold many millions of copies.  It has sold more, I believe, than any other book, apart from the Bible.  People everywhere have made bold claims of the life-changing effects of this book.  It left me a little flat. I'm not saying the book was wrong or sinful, as some ultra-conservatives have claimed.  Whatever.  It is obviously not a tool of the Antichrist.  I just lost interest.

Why is that?  There are a number of reasons, most of which are simply rooted in generational context.  Though simple, context makes all of the difference when it comes to connecting people to the Presence of God in life's realities.

Because the Boomer Generation has been firmly established as the "Authority", a title that generation is reluctant to surrender, the way they communicate and share what they have learned has become the standard.  Whenever something becomes standard, it is a slow, excruciating process to uproot that principle, model, approach, value, etc.

I hate wearing ties and dress clothes.  They are uncomfortable, hot, and lame.  When I am in dress clothes, I feel like I am supposed to be someone else.  I am a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flop guy.  That is me.  Someone, somewhere, a long time ago, who was the Authority of that time, decided that suits and ties for men and dresses for women (along with very uncomfortable shoes) were considered "dress clothes".  I am not familiar with the history of the bearskin-armor-ascot-bowtie-necktie evolutionary chain.  All I know is that suit/tie/dress is still the standard for dress clothes in most businesses and social situations.  Business casual would be a pressed shirt (sometimes sans tie), khakis or pressed slacks, and a non-athletic shoe.  Now that I think about it, most of these standards were not the result of the conscious decision and intentional design of an authority.  People probably wore neckties and were mocked incessantly for years.  That is, until a person perceived as an authority wore one.  Some one that no one would have dared mock.  The identity of that man may even be a mystery.  He may have died, never knowing the impact he had on “professional” fashion.

But, that’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it?  These arbitrary fashions are picked up by perceived authorities, and then fashion becomes standard.  If the person in authority had shown up for some important meeting in shorts and flip-flops, we may be seeing investment bankers in similar attire today.  When you think about it, a piece of cloth tied a certain way and dangling from a person’s neck serves no real purpose.  We perceive that piece of cloth as “professional” and we may encourage the person with statements like, “You really look nice.  Great suit!  Is that tie silk?”  We have been conditioned to perceive ties and suits that way.  It is all arbitrary.  Someone could have just as easily decided to wear an empty egg carton on his head, and then it would be a part of the “professional” dress code of every corporation today.

By way of one more example, my daughter, Grace, is playing middle school volleyball.  One of the popular girls in school is on her team.  That girl showed up for the first game wearing a single, sport compression stocking that covered her whole left leg.  She had colored it green and yellow, the school colors for the district.  Sure enough, half the team showed up with the same exact thing on their left leg.  When, at the next tournament, the popular girl took to the court for the first game, taking the massive fashion risk of switching the stocking to the right leg, sure enough, her little disciples (my daughter’s words, not mine) had all visited the girls locker room to switch stockinged legs before game 2.  It looks silly and stupid.  My daughter said that the girl had not, in fact, told the other girls to wear those.  They just saw the Authority do it, so they did it.

How does all of this relate to Purpose Driven Life?  Well, I’ve been thinking about this, while writing my own book about identity and purpose.  The book is completely Boomer, modernist, linear, and un-relatable to anyone who experiences the world through the lens of postmodernism.  I don’t experience the world as linear at all.  Life is made up of mostly chaotic, random events, which God, in God’s sovereignty, seems to some how bring together into an integrated whole.  Life is more of a mosaic of snapshots that make a full and beautiful reflection of the Divine.  It is hardly ever a step-by-step, cause and effect experience of moving in a straight line from birth to fulfillment of our dreams to death.  Modernism has us draw models and have a clear, dialectic approach to everything.  It does not feel comfort with the tension brought about by mystery, randomness, and the unknown.  Now, I am not saying the book is wrong, or that its author, Rick Warren, is leading people astray.  It is just proof positive that truth is always and at all times contextual.  What Rick Warren is saying about how we are designed for a real and life-affirming purpose and destiny is totally true.  Unfortunately, when presented to people outside of the context of modernism and its intrinsic linear thought patterns, that truth gets lost in translation.

Because the Boomer generation is deeply rooted in enlightenment rationalism, with reason as its ultimate good, as the Authority, they have set the standard of what is accepted in public discourse as being good, true, and right.  Donald Miller, Rob Bell, and other great, postmodern writers have penned books that have communicated incredibly deep truths to my heart.  Their books are not necessarily better.  They just communicate in a way that, I find, hits the target of how I process informational input from my world.  The problem for the Moderns, though, is that their time is up.  They are no longer the authority.  This is now a world of constant, chaotic change.  Global changes no longer take place over decades.  They happen in a day.  Outcomes are no longer predictable, because reality, itself, has shifted to this place of eliminating the usefulness of any attempt at model-making and risk management.  This plunges us right into constant tension and the loss of foundational, dialectical, and reason-based world-views.

  For clarity sake, by a “dialectical imagination”, I am referring to an approach to reality that seeks to find exclusive truth claims and to be right, most likely for the sake of establishing the seeker as an Authority.  It is an either/or approach.  So, in the Modernist mindset, for example, either God is sovereign, or we have free will.  Either the Creation took place over a period of seven, twenty-four hour days 6000 years ago, or the entire Bible is called into question and is wrong.  In every argument, someone is right (usually “me”) and someone is wrong.  That is not by degrees.  That is absolute.  Contradicting realities are either rejected as evil or dismissed as not real.  Global climate change, a very true reality, is treated this way.   

If you are wondering if I’m really onto something or not, think about it a bit.  Who argues the most about being right, where they are willing to unfriend you on Facebook, just for disagreeing with you?  Moderns.  Why?  Because, when you analyze this, they have the most to lose.  As Moderns, their entire worldview is based on being right.  They believe that if they are proven wrong on one tiny part of the structure of their understanding of reality, the whole thing will come down like a house of cards.  We don’t question anything, because we don’t want to tip our tower.  Modernism and postmodernism are not split along generational lines.  I know plenty of people my age and younger who cling to traditional modern ideas and argumentation.  They were simply raised with a very black-and-white, modern understanding of reality.

My mom was such a blessing to me, because she had me reading everything I could get my hands, from a very young age.  She got me my first library card when I was in 2nd grade.  She also taught me to question and doubt everything.  Where did this practice come from?  Who started it?  What are the origins of this belief?  Is it still valid and helpful?  Other than making me become unsatisfied with dress-code standards, I believe that this made me a better person.  I am forever in her debt for raising me to be a postmodern.

This clinging to standard, modern ideals can be clearly seen in the handling of the financial crisis.  Our government is made up almost entirely of Moderns from the Boomer Generation.  One standard belief of Modernism is that of constant, assured progress.  Every generation will be more advanced and more successful than the one before.  We are moving inevitably and in a linear way toward perfection as a human race.  The fact that this whole thing can go another way, plunging us into an insurmountable credit crisis, is not even in their ability to comprehend.  The Standard rules all.  There could be a massive earthquake in the United States, destroying trillions of dollars worth of property.  Then what?  We simply take out another loan?  What if we don’t have the credit to borrow money?  Something like that could end us as a nation.  Yet, our leaders, stuck in their dialectic thinking, believe that things will eventually right themselves, returning us to the prosperity of the 90s.  The economy is fatally flawed, to the point where we may never recover from this.  Still, because of the naive delusion of Modernism, we won’t raise taxes, compromise, or work together to solve this.  It will all be fine.  We still haven’t put the criminal CEOs of the investment banks that caused the recession on trial.  We still have not put regulations in place on Wall Street to prevent further damage.  They should be tried for treason for putting themselves and their own greed above the security of the American People.  People have fallen into despair and have even committed suicide after losing their life savings and homes, needing to start completely over at the age of 58.  There is an incredible surplus of oil in the world right now, yet gas is ridiculously expensive, despite the billions we give to the oil companies each month as subsidies.  They get richer and richer, while the average citizen struggles to afford fuel to take a simple family vacation or even go to work each day.  Why does all of this go on?  Because of the foolish belief that things will necessarily get better.

I question all of this.  I struggle with all of it.  I cannot assimilate a modern, dialectic worldview.  I am not invested in being right.  I just want to make things better.  I want to get closer to what I believe to be true.  I don’t fight with my fellow postmoderns.  I have dialogue, conversation, and find mutual solutions that come out of a give and take from each of our perspectives.  We are much more comfortable having good ideas than making doctrinal statements.  We don’t look for principles.  Rather, we look for pragmatic possibilities.  I think it is time we dethroned the Modernist Boomers, and we get people in place who really understand the realities of a postmodern world.  We need postmodern thinkers, writers, and teachers to help people see reality as a both/and, rather than an either/or.  I am so blessed that God is sovereign, AND I have free will to act within God’s Reality.  Besides, it is all going to work out!

Did you connect with Purpose Driven Life?  How was it helpful?  How was it not very helpful?  How do you find truth, or have truth find you?  I’d love your thoughts!

Life. Ugh.

I wanted to shift gears today and address the issue of dreams.  I'm not talking about a "show-up-in-a-movie-theater-in-your-underwear" kind of dream.  I'm talking about the vision, mission, and destiny of one's life.

My blogging has been sporadic of late, and I have struggled.  Mainly I have struggled to find time.  But that's a poor excuse when you think about it, isn't it?  I find time almost daily to watch some stupid TV series that I have on my DVR and haven't watched in 2 months.  So, I plop down with a pizza and start the marathon.  I find time to be disorganized and chaotic, bouncing from one thing to another.  Apparently, I have tons of time for that!  I don't sleep that much.  I don't DO that much.  Why the hell am I so overwhelmed and busy all the time?  I have a lot of time for stupid, distracting crap, yet I can't finish my new website?  That seems dumb to me.

I can blame my ADHD, but I have been medicated for that since April.  I am very focused and able to concentrate.  So, why have I not been able to just get the book done?

I had a…I don’t know what you’d call it…fight? Battle?  Counseling session?…..anyway, I had one of those with my wife on Saturday.  I no longer have a church office, so I decided to convert our back room into more of an office space for my writing.  I got a cheap, functional desk, and started building it.  Yes, I am the guy who buys that particle board crap from Office Max.  I have a week-long missions conference in Colorado beginning Sunday, so I had decided to not do the writing retreat, that Teresa and I had planned for me.  I told her I changed my mind, wanting to stay home with the kids.  A week and a half after I get back from Colorado, Teresa and I have a pastor’s conference to attend.  That is a lot of time away from my babies.  Teresa leaves this Friday for a worship conference, and she will be back Saturday night, with me leaving Sunday morning.  If I leave town now, I will be like a ship passing in the night with my wife for the next month.  I would see my kids for 10 of the next 30 days.  So, my plan of building a home office was pushed to the forefront.  No time like the present, right?

Teresa has told me time and again that she doesn’t want to hear about any of it.  She wants me to just work and produce.  Hearing about the process just stresses her out, so I should keep it to myself.  That sounds great in theory, but we are going to have to work that out.  I had been thinking about this project for a while, but I wanted to honor her request to keep her blissfully unaware.  The last she had heard from me was that I did not like being in my office at work.  I needed the stimulation.  So, I sat at the local coffee house every day and wrote.  Since we moved out of our building, we have had to move again.  It has been really crazy.  Suddenly, I realized that it was not the people moving around me that helped, though I am very social and enjoy that.  The problem with my church office was that I was always surrounded by telephones, to-do lists, mail that needed answering, bills that needed paying, etc.  With my office gone, I would tell myself in the morning that I was going to the coffee shop to write…as soon as I ran just a couple of church errands.  In doing every one of those errands, I would get stuck in hairballs that caused those few little errands to multiply like my brother’s kids (he’s Catholic, so they have a baby every couple weeks).  I went all of last week intending, with all of my heart, to get to the coffee shop to write.  Never made it.  Not even once.

So, when Teresa walked into the back room to tell me something, she saw me putting together a desk.  In her mind, I was still not writing.  Why the hell had Bill bought a desk?  He never liked working in an office, why was he building one?  Oh, no.  Has he not been taking his meds?  Are they no longer working?  This is scary.  This is past behavior coming to haunt us.  SAVE ME!!  These were the things I saw flashing across her face as the terror claimed her.  She then gave voice to them, and I felt attacked.

To be fair, my ADHD and anxiety/anger issues have caused me to be very compulsive in the past.  For example, because ADHD causes a person to be unable to sort or prioritize items in his or her mind, I would have everything that was in my brain at priority level: “EMERGENCY”.  So, I would have to deal with whatever rose to the top, usually based on imminence, like a bingo ball shooting up through the vacuum tube.  In fact, a bingo ball cage, or lotto cage, where all of those balls are slamming around like atoms in a particle accelerator, is a perfect example of what it felt like to own my brain.  Everything required crisis and pressure to get done.  It was horrible.  We’d be watching TV, I would be eating tons of junk food, getting as fat as a Macy’s balloon, editing the podcast of my sermon from three weeks before with one ear bud in my ear in order to still hear the TV, writing another sermon for the next day, editing the slideshow and video for the morning service, updating the website, and updating my fantasy football teams, all at the same time - at midnight on Saturday night.  A commercial would come on for some kitchen gadget, and Teresa would make an offhand comment, “Wow, that thing is really cool!  We should look at one of those and possibly buy one.”  Like a shot, I was getting my jacket and shoes on and heading to Walmart to buy some $20 piece of garbage that we just saw on TV.  Compulsive.

But it wasn’t just compulsive behavior.  As soon as I started on medication, I stopped doing stuff like that.  You see, it was something I could actually conquer.  Plus, it was filed, immediately, at the same priority level as saving someone from a fire.  It was like scratching an annoying itch.  It was right there.  I could deal with it right now and actually check something off the list.  After all, if we were honest, we both knew I would be winging my sermon and scrambling to have some worship song lyrics up on Sunday morning anyway. 

Then, when I was at Walmart, I would head into the crowded store, suddenly remembering that I had promised to fix that toilet months ago.  Oh, yeah, I think we are out of paper toweling.  I’m getting hungry again, so I’d better get some spray cheese (who doesn’t love spray cheese?).  Batteries for church tomorrow!  Hey, didn’t that DVD we wanted for the kids come out this week?  Oh, yeah, back to the food section for popcorn salt, because they have it on sale this week, and I think we are running low.  Two hours later and $200 poorer, I head for home, stressed about all I have to do for church tomorrow.  Teresa has been asleep since I left.  I try to be quiet, making a ton of racket, as I put the new toilet repair kit under the bathroom sink, right next to the 3 other, dust-covered ones.  I put the popcorn salt next to the 10 other, half-filled ones in the pantry.  I am not sure we needed a whole case of Mac-n-Cheese, but they had a great price.  Huh, no room in the pantry, because of the 25 pound bag of rice I got on sale 3 years ago.  I’ll put it on the counter for now.  I have been promising my wife that I’d fix that toilet for months.  I’ll go get my tools that are spread all over the house, a bucket, a sponge, and I’ll fix it right now.  It won’t take but a minute.  I love my wife so much, and I just want her to be happy.  I wish I didn’t fail so much as a husband… Where is that bucket?  Shit!  Back to Wal-mart at 3am.  Maybe they have those cookies my kids like on sale…  I have to be at church in 5 hours, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep right now anyway.  I would be just laying there, obsessing about all of this crap.  As I grab the keys, I don’t even realize that I didn’t even get the stupid kitchen gadget I went to buy in the first place. 

Honest to God, that is not an exaggeration.  That is how bad it was.  I just thought everyone was like me.  Everyone thought and acted like that.  That delusion was only reinforced at 3am at Walmart.  I would look around while pushing my cart full of the strangest assortment of freaky, unrelated crap (only linked in my own, twisted brain), and I would see the stuff in other people’s carts, while their 3 year old twins tore through the store, exhausted beyond rational thought, trashing the place.  Walmart at 3am: all bets are off.  It is a total freakin circus.  People cruising around on those scooters, knocking down whole displays.  Kids standing in the carts, falling asleep on their feet, and taking a header, as their bodies collapse over the side.  People spending their disability checks on 25 DVDs from the budget bin and a case of Ramen noodles.  I would look in their carts, while they worked to stop their child’s bleeding.  I would shake my head at the weird stuff, and I would judge them for how compulsive and wasteful they were.  I never noticed how well I fit in at Walmart at 3am.  I’m crazy as hell.  So, Teresa was terrified, seeing a desk I hadn’t talked to her about, that I was obsessing and getting compulsive again.  When you read that account of a typical evening, you can understand her fears.  They are justified.

But you know what?  I can’t get my head around any of this.  I don’t know what’s expected of me.  I don’t know where I am headed.  My kids need to be fed.  I have a church that needs spiritual feeding.  I need time with people, but I need to be productive.  As Teresa railed on me, I felt like I was disappointing her again.  I went and made the reservation to go away and write this week (another compulsive act?).

As I was packing to leave, I forgot to pack my Citalopram - my anxiety meds.  I have one of those old person plastic pill reminders.  I load it up at the beginning of the week.  When I did, I forgot to put the med in there.  I have enough pills, that it is hard to notice.  So, without knowing, I had missed 3 days of this med.  As I was sitting and working in this room, I started coming apart.  Fragmenting.  I was starting to be all over the place mentally.  Here I was, taking time away from my kids, and I wasn’t accomplishing anything.  I had always thought that med was simply to take the edge off, so I could work on my ADHD issues without the anger hindering me.  I didn’t realize how much those two were linked.  My mental and emotional self need to be integrated.  That’s why they gave me both.  I also had not really thought it was doing much, other than making sex difficult.  I completely understood my friends who had taken themselves off of it.  You don’t feel like it’s doing anything, so why put more chemicals in your body than you need?  That is, until your spouse is checking you into a residential psyche ward.  I was not intentionally taking myself off of it, but the effect was dramatic.  I started feeling funky.  Then, I was no longer comfortable in my skin.  I wanted out of it.  My body felt like it was breaking out of itself.  I then realized that this was how I had felt for much of my 40 years of life.  I had just forgotten.  Yesterday morning, I discovered that each day was one pill short.  I called Teresa, and she met me halfway between here and home to give me my pills.  I’m solid again.

But here’s the thing: I have all of this going on, no wonder I think I don’t have time to pursue my dream of being a writer and a speaker.  I have gotten a lot healthier, but I have lived with this for 40 years.  These behavioral things have become habits.  Perhaps I didn’t have to go get a desk.  However, perhaps I didn’t need to panic about Teresa’s perception of me and make a reservation out of town to write.  Maybe the desk, which is much cheaper, is a better way to do it.  I don’t know. 

I stumbled upon writing when I picked up my blog again in April.  I am still new at this.  I am not ready to quit my day job.  I feel like I am on to something with writing as God’s plan for my life.  At the same time, it has to all be in God’s timing.  I can’t do a thing to make this happen.  All I can do is continue to work on weeding out old habits and getting healthier.  All this to say, this trip helped me immensely.  I now realize that I need to schedule writing time every day.  I don’t need to keep leaving town.  I need to shut off my phone and stop driving all over, only getting to my dream when I get to it.  Writing thousands of words a day has not been part of my life before.  Now I need to make room for it.  I am learning how to do that.

For those of you who have stuck with me and continue to follow this blog: Thank You.  I want to get better at this.  I want to do a post every day, if I can learn how to do that.  So, I am taking my time up here to write my book.  Even more so, I am using this time to plan my approach to writing and cultivating that gift, while doing my day job better and being a more loving husband and father.  I keep simplifying.  I keep obeying God.  I keep taking my pills.  One day, I’m going to be healed.  I believe that promise from God.  I will be healed.  In the meantime, I have to stop finding excuses and do what I can to keep my dream alive.  Old habits die hard.  But if I am lacking good stories, I can always head to Walmart.

Are you pursuing your dream?  If not, why not?  If so, how are you pursuing your dream?  How do you reconcile the rest of life, needs, fears, old habits, etc. with pursuing your heart’s desire?

Pastoral Compromise in a Traditional World

In case you haven't read past posts, I was at the Blue Ocean Summit last week, a conference for church leaders seeking to recreate and rebuild our understanding of church and faith in order to have more impact on an increasingly secular, liberal culture.  Dave Schmelzer, the pastor of the Greater Boston Vineyard and author of "Not the Religious Type: Confessions of a Turncoat Atheist", hosted the event.  The conference is an incredible, multi-cultural gathering of brilliant minds...and me. 

So, I got angry at Dave a bit.  I even yelled at him for ruining my life.  At his conference every year, I get a taste of what the Church could be, devoid of the trappings of religion.  Then I am faced coming back to Green Bay, which may be the most religious place on earth.

If you live in Green Bay, and you have dinner with your whole family at a certain restaurant on an arbitrary date, like May 13, it is great and wonderful.  Very quickly, a family member will pipe up and say something like, "Let's all meet next year on May 13 at this same restaurant!"  Everyone wholeheartedly agrees, because this one was so wonderful.  Why would we all not want to do it again?

Well, it sounds good at the time.  However, no one foresees the fight over grandpa's inheritance that is coming.  No one sees that cousin Bob is going to cheat on his wife, and she will kick him out.  Bob is a blood relative, and she is not.  However, Bob is kind of a tool, and we love her.  Plus, she has the kids, and we want them to be a part of this family.  Bob plans on bringing his girlfriend, the one he cheated with, to the big, May 13 dinner (which has now been officially named: "The VandenevenHoven Family Extravaganza") ("VFE" for short).  The rest of the family is trying to decide what to do about Bob.  He is, after all, Bob VandenevenHoven.  Can we really exclude him? 

Now, the family has officially set up this gathering as a real thing.  They have named it.  There are obviously some unspoken rules.  They are using bonded set language around it.  It has its first holiday (holy day of obligation) in the books.  Oops!  Joe and Suzy VandenevenHoven have scheduled a vacation for their immediate family for that date, forgetting that VFE was now written in stone.  It is doctrine.  They are now considering cancelling their vacation, because the backlash would be horrendous.  Plus, they will be guilted by the rest of the family, their very blood loyalty questioned.  So, no one dares miss the event, even though it will be painful and awkward.  Sacrifices will be made for it, like unto a god.  The VandenevenHovens have had one dinner together, and it has become a Religion.  Thank God the Packers don't play in May, or this would be a Holy War of clashing religions.  Years pass, and the next generation of VandenevenHovens maintain the May 13 tradition.  Most of them have no idea why they are even doing this every year.  They don't even question it.  If you are a VandenevenHoven, this is what you do.  A great family memory has been institutionalized and destroyed.  It has become a heavy burden.  The only way out is to change your last name.  Your identity.

Green Bay, steeped heavily in blind tradition, is the place of my exile.  I'm not saying it's not this way everywhere.  It absolutely is this way everywhere, and it has been for all time.  This area is just focused and intense in these attitudes.  People who move here don't seem to stay long.  Every family has 365 traditions every year.  For a long time, our church was made up of only transplants to the area.  We did not have a single Green Bay native.  The people who came to us spoke of simply not being able to break in to any of the traditions of the area.  They couldn't make friends, because the people here had every single day booked with something that they have "always done".  Every year, they have 6 family reunions, 6 major birthday celebration, and 6 major holiday vacations.  OH NO!!  It is the number of the Beast, the Antichrist, and his One World Religion!!  OK, that was a little tongue in cheek, but it is ridiculous.  This past week, in my church of well over 100 people, I preached to a church service of 15.  Everyone had vacations, trips, family reunions, weddings, etc.

So, I am struggling.  I want and desire a stage 4, centered set faith.  I am surrounded by Stage 2 and Stage 3 people, who cannot give up their devotion to the Religions that define them.  I come home from the Blue Ocean to try to be upbeat about loving people into the fullness of life that Jesus offers.  They are people who are far too busy with other devotions to care.  I am not talking about the committed and growing people in my church.  I am talking about reaching out to others.  There is no real way to break in.  I am tired of seeing what is possible, and then banging my head against the rock-hard walls of institution.  I feel teased, like a carrot is being dangled in front of me.  At the same time, the Blue Ocean Summit isn't church.  We all went back to our churches of 30, 50, 100, 800, or whatever, and most of us have churches that are painfully homogenous and bounded set.  We all face our exile surrounded by tradition.

I don't want to just rebel against it and be Stage 3.  There is a lot of good in the traditions of the people here.  At the same time, it's not Jesus.  I want Jesus.  I also know that everyone on this planet needs Jesus.  I don't need to sell him to people.  I don't need to defend him.  How can I BE the Church for people?  Can I even do that as a senior pastor?  I can't guilt people into making gathering with the community a priority, because then I am institutionalizing.  I would then be a hypocrite.  I need to be moving people toward center.

As a pastor, I have never felt the need to defend, prove, package, or sell Jesus.  I have felt some pressure to do all of that with Christianity.  I can't do that anymore.  I cannot defend tradition.  I want to capture what is good and fruit bearing from it and reject the rest.  But I need to be moving toward Jesus and leading others toward Jesus.  That is my sole mission, vocation, and call.  If I also, in my current office, have to defend Christianity, then I can't effectively fulfill my destiny.

At the Summit, many people affirmed me for my writing and communication about some deep and difficult issues.  Here, I can only talk about the Packers or the weather, before I start clashing with the deep-seeded religious traditions of the people of this area.  People simply find us to be uncomfortable.  We challenge too much and question too much.  My wife and I are very lonely and feel in exile, as I stated before.  Not only that, but people believe strongly in saving and keeping resources in the family.  This makes sense, when family is religion.  Where our treasure lies, there is our heart.  So, we have very little financial backing for our ministry. We have been continuously investing our own money in the church.  Now, much of this goes hand in hand with having a call to ministry.  I am not complaining about having to invest my own money.  It is, however, a clear sign of a lack of real fruit-bearing.  If we were having impact in people's lives, people would invest their hearts and their treasure in the vision of Adullam.  That is not happening, which makes us question more.

So, there it is.  I came home from a time of freedom, diversity, and affirmation of my gifting and calling, and I faced the opposite on all counts.  I hate religion, but I love Jesus, and I see the Church as the way to Jesus, when it is free of the garbage of the institution.  I am called to lead people to Jesus, but in my current role, I am feeling ineffective.  I don't want to rebel against tradition, but I see it as a distraction from the true Way.  I am questioning everything as a result.

I see pastoring as something akin to being president in a partisan system.  No matter how strong your convictions, everything is compromised to ensure survival.  My friend, Bill Hoard, commented on my last post that I still seem angry at Stage 2 conservatives and fundamentalists.  I am not actually angry.  I have nothing against these people, nor am I trying to convert them.  I am disillusioned with a system that does not allow me to move in my gifts and calling.  I cannot be true to what God wants me to say and do.  If I am truly myself, all of the Stage 2 people get angry and leave.  They are the only ones for whom tithing and financially backing a ministry is a core value.  So, we go broke and cease to exist.  If I toe the line, in order to keep the Stage 2 people happy - I kick out all of the visible sinners in my church, especially homosexual people - then I have all of the money I need, but all of the people who don't know Jesus or are Stage 3 people, rejecting traditional church, all leave.  My church is then not reaching any of the lost.  I have money, but I'm having no impact or forward motion in my mission.  Just as Obama has done nothing but compromise, I feel I have to do the same.  Church is a partisan system.  We can try to be above it, but it is a bit like herding cats.  We have modeled ourselves after government.  The last time we did that was during the Roman Empire, and that didn't turn out too well.  Now we are seeing how constant compromise is making it impossible to move forward in solving the financial crisis of our nation.  Yet, in church, we aren't learning from our government's mistakes.  Church, like government, is a battle of ideologies, the conservatives vs. the progressives. 

There is no way to be above the fray, because both sides want to identify with you as their leader.  Conservatives even imagine they know what I am "really" saying, when I seem to contradict their expectations of me.  That works for a while, until they realize I am not like them at all, and they can no longer write off my contradictions with them.  Then, they speak of the "straw that broke the camel's back", and they leave, telling their next pastor how much I hurt them.  Usually, it involves a bait-and-switch accusation.  I pretended to be conservative, to rope them in, then I showed my true, liberal colors.  Actually, I have always been honest about not agreeing with a conservative, fundamentalist worldview.  They just had their expectations of a pastor that they tried, unsuccessfully, to fit me in.  In essence, they pulled a bait-and-switch on themselves.

Meanwhile, the liberals (stage 3 rebels) just don't want to be tied down by commitment, man.  I mean, Jesus is everywhere, right?  I mean, what is money, really?  Why does the stupid church always talk about money?  Can't we just all get along and go with the Spirit?  This church doesn't have membership, does it?  Because, existentially, I can't really "belong" to anything that is marketed or planned, I can't plan anything that is marketed or requires belonging, and I can't market anything that has a belonging requirement or planning.  I don't really commit, dude.  As soon as you say "commitment", I get a headache.  I'll just be there when I am there.  How's that, dude?  Oh, yeah, and I need you to be available to meet me on a moment's notice, whenever I am sad.  No, I can't contribute financially, because that would be kinda like commitment.  I am a rebel, and I don't do commitment, remember?  But, my friends and I will keep you far too busy to get another job to take care of your family.  How does that sound?

As my identity is becoming more and more defined by Jesus, I am less willing to settle for Stage 2 or Stage 3.  I am also no longer willing, after receiving lots of affirmation and confirmation of my gifts, to play small and accept mediocrity.  I want to change hundreds of thousands of lives.  I have seen, again this year, a glimpse that this is possible.  I just wonder if it's possible with all of us on our own little islands, as pastors almost always are.  I wonder if it's possible to effect such change in my current role as pastor in the first place.  Maybe I'd be more effective doing only what I do best: teaching, speaking, directing conferences and retreats, and writing.  That way, I would never, ever have to defend Christianity again.  We need extreme voices, and God created me to be an extreme guy.  How can I move in that created identity for the Kingdom of God?  Can I do that as pastor of a church?  When even our model churches for Blue Ocean Faith still struggle to get buy in from all of their people, maybe we all need to join together and start travelling, writing, and teaching this vision around the world.  Maybe I'm being dumb, and I just need to pastor my church.  I don't know.  Help me, God, with some clarity.

I blame all of this on that damn Dave Schmelzer. ;)

I Love Mark Driscoll!!

I wrote a post last week about my struggles with a pastor on the West Coast by the name of Mark Driscoll.  He had written a rather bullying and unkind statement about "effeminate" male worship leaders.  To his credit, he has removed the offensive post, and even said he was thankful for the challenge from his elder board to do so.  This was not, remotely, an apology, but it is a step in the right direction.

This is my last post that will even reference Driscoll (unless he pisses me off again), but I want to deal with a few last things.  My post, "On Mark Driscoll and My Own Struggle With Manliness", I was fairly harsh in my critique of this faith leader.  However, that post wasn't really about Mark Driscoll at all.  It was all about me.  I was much more critical of myself in that post than on Driscoll.  It was also an appeal for people with good hearts to help me understand how a "good man" should react to difficult situations, and what the heck a "good man" is in the first place.

I have been angry for my entire life.  It was a crutch and a prop for me for as long as I can remember.  People who know me say that can't be true.  I even had some friends write to me, after that post, to tell me that I was way too critical of myself.  They were worried that I didn't see myself as God sees me.  Really good insight, because that is the crux of the post, but more on that in a minute.  Growing up angry was really difficult.  It really did consume me.  My dad was always angry, and no one messed with him.  If people didn't take him seriously, he yelled.  If they still didn't take him seriously, he beat them.  I remember one time, when my uncle was visiting, my dad and he were at the bar down the street, while the women were making dinner.  I was around 3 at the time.  I was playing quietly in the living room, and the house was fairly docile. 

There was always a sense of relief, when my dad was out of the house.  Things were always extremely tense, when he was there.  Everyone moved very carefully, almost like we didn't want to be noticed by him.  I fractured my neck once, and I could only think of not wanting to scream too loud, because my dad was sleeping one off in the next room.  Crying, I had asked my grandmother to please wake him, because I was scared.  I was 2 at the time.

Back to the day of my uncle's visit, everything was peaceful and wonderful.  Suddenly, the door crashed open, and my dad and uncle ran in and quickly slammed the door behind them.  They both closed all of the curtains in the house, and they were laughing and peeking out the front window toward the road.  Only then did I notice they were both covered in blood.  I was confused.  Was my daddy hurt?  My uncle?  If they were hurt, why were they laughing?  Did they fall down?  What was going on?  I sat there, watching them, silently crying so that my dad wouldn't see it.  He would get angry and call me a sissy or something.  He would tell me that he would really give me something to cry about, and then his belt would come off to be used on me.  I just didn't know what was happening.

They were still watching and laughing.  They were flying on adrenaline and probably some other substances.  They were saying things like:

"That was so cool!"

"I know!!  We really kicked their asses!!  I don't see the cops..."

"They should be coming soon.  An ambulance, too.  I mean, did you see those guys?!?  They had to grab the tongue of the one guy, or he would've choked.  He was just flopping on the floor and twitching.  Man, we really trashed him!!"

"Yeah, Don....hey, do you think we should change clothes quick?  If the cops do come, we don't want to talk to them with all of those guys' blood all over us..."

"You're right..," then, turning away from the window and noticing me for the first time, "Hey, Billy....(then, getting angry), what are you looking at?!?  Play with your fucking toys, and mind your own business!!  Jan!!  Get your kid outta here, and grab me and Eddie a couple beers!!"  They left the room to change.

I remember that as clear as yesterday.  It was obvious to me that he felt guilty and inconvenienced by his son seeing him that way.  There were times, in parenting, that I yelled at my son, saw the tears form in his eyes, and yelled at him more.  My guilt at hurting him did not make me respond with compassion.  It made me angry.  Anger insulated me from having to take responsibility.  It made me strong and powerful - untouchable.  It got to the point that I didn't trust other emotions.  I then simply forgot how to have them.  They had atrophied from lack of use.  When a friend would die of cancer, I would feel sad for a second, and then I would be filled with rage at the unfairness of the death, hatred of cancer, and the loss of another person in my life.  All of the other emotions were weak and inconvenient.  Only anger existed for me, and it was a monster that required constant attention and feeding.

Looking back, I realized that I felt completely unsafe, illegitimate, and out of control.  I had no power at all in my life, and I hated that feeling.  It made me despise myself as insignificant, weak, and illegitimate.  When someone would tell me that I am a failure, I wouldn't be hurt.  That was weakness.  I would be angry, and I would work to prove them wrong as an act of self-vindication and revenge.  My dad had betrayed me and abandoned me.  I was angry.  I attacked life with a vengeance, seeking to prove that I wasn't like my dad.  When I kept failing at that, and was even facing a battery charge for beating my own brother, almost to the point of hospitalization, I was angry enough to call my dad and set up a meeting with him.  I pretended to want to catch up with him, but my real plan - I had actually laid this all out in my mind - was to drive out to meet him and beat him until he was dead or I was satisfied.  Whatever came first.

But then I re-met Jesus.  Or, actually, really met him for the first time.  I knew, instinctually, that Jesus was the only one who could set me free from this monster in me.  I had responded to an altar call at 6 years old in a Vacation Bible School at a local Assembly of God, but that had been all about going to Heaven, rather than Hell, when I died.  This time was different.  I needed a Messiah, a Savior, right now.  Today.  In this life.  I needed someone who could save me from this reality, this monster in me, and, really from myself.  In all my efforts to not be my dad, I was becoming him and worse.  I had built this "not my dad" identity for myself, but I didn't have the tools to actually define me.  I started giving Jesus permission to change my heart, tell me who I am, and rewrite my destiny.  Now, in a real George-W-Bush-going-back-to-Iraq kind of way, I was still trying to will myself to overcome the image of my dad.  I was still grabbing control and fighting anger.

It was only recently, in my 40s, that I have finally begun to learn how to really trust Jesus and let Him have control.  Only then have I felt the anger go away.  It was in that process of healing that I encountered my first real trial since trusting Jesus: Mark Driscoll.  He was acting and speaking in a way that I have been battling in myself my whole life.  Plus, he even physically looks just like my dad did in the 70's, sans the pork-chop sideburns.  Not only was he happily frolicking with the monster I was trying to keep at bay in myself, he was sanctifying it!  He was saying it was holy!  He was saying that this was how God wanted men to act!  Flashbacks to my blood-soaked father, laughing and proud of breaking, oppressing, and dehumanizing another human being filled my mind.  Treating other men like animals by bullying and dominating them, all to feel stronger himself.  Treating women like slaves and subjects under their control, like they were built to obey and serve men.  Something in me snapped.

I realized, in that moment, that God was not going to let me off the hook on this one.  I tried to shove it down.  Swallow it.  But it felt like the monster was back.  I started to ask myself why God created me this way.  I mean, I've had this beast in there for my whole life, as long as I can remember.  If it was all darkness and sin, why would God, who only makes good stuff, build that in me?  Who is God telling me I am?  I have misused my anger in the past, but is the anger, itself, wrong?  Or was it just my methodology that was sinful?  I seemed to only get angry when I saw an injustice.  How could standing up for the victims of bullying and the oppressed be wrong?

Then I read a couple of blogs that I love.  I really love the bloggers.  They are all women.  One, Rachel Held Evans, a superb writer and thinker in every respect, wrote an open letter to Driscoll in her blog.  It was wonderfully written, respectful, and dripping with grace.  The 500+ comments that followed were, in many cases, so filled with venom and misogynistic hate, that she had to close comments on the post.  Most of the negative comments came from men, who were telling her she had no right to call out an important leader like Driscoll.  On "Joy in this Journey", Joy, a brilliant writer with a pastoral calling, wrote a post talking about the Evans post mentioned above.  Again, the men came out with their hate and attack.  On Joy's post, I commented that I needed to call out the "elephant in the room".  The only reason she and Rachel had been attacked for speaking out is because they are women.  There is a blatant sexism that is rampant throughout Evangelicalism.  It was coming out in a way that shocked me.  I said that I have written much more offensive things, and I never get attacked like this.  I was so angry at the injustice I saw, that I needed to write.  I immediately set to work.

In my post, I allowed myself to seek the answers to those questions about anger in me and my identity.  If it's sin, why did God put such a passion in my heart?  Suddenly, I was also feeling a broken-hearted compassion to an even greater level for people who have known they were different and battling with homosexual drives and instincts for as long as they can remember.  If it is sin, why did God create me this way?  That would be really cruel.  I'm not starting a debate on whether there is a "gay gene" in this post, so don't comment on that.  I'm just saying that I now have fresh insight into those feelings.

In the past, I had always fought back my anger, swallowed it, it would inevitably break out, I would then get mad at my own failure, fall into despair, and adopt a self-defeating, fatalistic attitude.  That was always the progression.  This time, I dared to let the monster have some say.  However, I wasn't going to let it become all-consuming.  God may have created me with this anger at injustice, but that didn't mean it should override all other healthy fruit in my life.  I wanted to keep my love, my compassion, my character, and my ability to be very open and vulnerable about my own failings.  I decided, rather than just judging him, to only take on the things in Driscoll that I saw in myself.  I wanted to address those things, and get help in dealing with them.  I could not just pray for him and leave it at that.  God didn't make me that way.  No, if I am the one who is gifted enough, angry enough, and dumb enough to speak out, didn't I have a responsibility to do so?  Isn't it possible that this is the exact reason God put this in me?  Then, it is a gift, and not a scary monster at all.  I can speak with authority and power, without using it as a weapon, sacrificing my grace and compassion, or compromising my identity in Christ.  I hit "publish", and immediately called my spiritual director for an emergency appointment.  Her response, at our meeting, was, "Someone has to stand up to bullies for the sake of the oppressed.  Maybe you are just the guy to do it."

So, now that the dust has settled from the post, and I have taken all of the wonderful comments and advice into account, I have come to some conclusions.  First, I need to not go after the man anymore, and I need to move my focus onto the faulty, evil ideology that is behind all of this.  Our battle is not against flesh and blood, and all that.  It was scary, when I saw that this kind of unhealthy teaching is so widespread in Evangelical Christianity.  The very idea that God wants us all to be beer-drinking, belligerent, oppressive, woman-hating, "manly men" is the worst kind of de-legitimizing crap in the Church today (maybe as bad as Capitalist Consumerism).  It must be destroyed. 

Second, I am going to start to destroy that false ideology, and use my anger in a healthy way, by writing a book about our identity as men and women in following Jesus.  I have already started mapping it out, and I will begin writing this week.  If this is the passion God placed in me, I need to exercise it.  In the book, I will not keep attacking the wrong way.  I will fight it by only focusing on our freedom in allowing Jesus to define us as men and women, equal in authority, power, and love.  That's what I want.  To empower people and set them free with the truth of who they are in Jesus.

Finally, I am going to keep praying for Mark Driscoll.  I love Mark Driscoll as I love myself.  He is me, and I am he.  That guy, underneath his exterior confidence and macho image - then digging past all of the brokenness, insecurity, latent homosexuality, self-loathing, and fear of his own weakness and doubt - is a man who is so incredibly loved and cherished by God, it's unbelievable.  He is powerful in the weakest core of himself, and he doesn't even know that truth.  I will pray for my brother to be set free, as God seeks to set him free (not as I would).  God knows Mark better than even Mark does.  God knows the turmoil in that man, but he sees the treasure, more valuable than rubies, in his heart.  I pray for the opportunity to meet Driscoll one day, not to beat him up, but to hug him, pray with him, weep with him, kiss his cheek, and tell him how loved he is, as only a "real man" can.  I want his ministry to bear healthy fruit (in God's view of health, not mine) and to thrive.  I want Mark Driscoll to go down in history as one of the most compassionate and caring and powerful men of God in history.  I love that man.  I know he, like my daughter Maggie, is one of God's favorites.

May his entire life be built on his identity in Jesus!

The Biblical Myth

What about sticking to what is "biblical"?

Well, let me begin with my own experience.  I grew up, as I have stated before, with an understanding of myself as illegitimate.  I had no solid example of manhood, healthy fathering, or even how a healthy man relates to his world.  I had lots of very strong and capable women around me.  I remember sitting on the floor in the living room, playing with legos or reading, while my mom and grandmother would talk with some visiting aunts in the kitchen.  The men were usually at the bar down the street drinking, so it would be me and the women at home.  It became quite clear to me right away that Polish women not only ran the home, but they ran all of life.  They were utterly in charge of all aspects of life.  They would joke about how they allowed their husbands to believe that they were "king of the castle", but that they would lose that title quickly, if they ever stepped out of line.  I also learned that the majority of Polish women in their 60s were widows, and that was by design.  They would put a pound of butter in every meal.  My grandmother would actually make fried lard sandwiches for her husband on bread with butter melted into it.  He died of a heart attack, seemingly like most of the other Polish men in Chicago, by his mid-50s.  Then the women were free to play bingo, gossip with their friends, and live their lives in peace.  Polish women, I have come to believe, are tanks.  They all have an average lifespan of 243 years.  They also can really whoop a kid with a wooden spoon, when they find him eavesdropping on their conversations.

Now, I am not saying that is all healthy womanhood.  Rather, I am saying that it seems that whatever Jesus does in each person is their definition of healthy womanhood.  What works?  What have you found brings you closer to Jesus?  This is not an exercise in making all truths relative.  It is a universalizing ofwhat I find to be effectively true for me, and forcing that on all other people as true for all, that I find to be distasteful.  In Christianity, people do that all the time.  We try to force others into our little boxes.  We then label it as "biblical", because it works for me, and it's not explicitly prohibited in Scripture.  I say it's all Sacred Cows.

Let me give an example.  Let's say I found a lot of life in journaling in my prayer times.  I find that if I write my prayers out, I put more thought and real feeling into the prayers.  Plus, there is the ascetic value of real cramping and pain in my hand, and that may teach me spiritual discipline.  I find that the only time that works for me is very early in the morning, before my kids wake up.  Otherwise I get distracted.  Besides, I can look back at old prayers to see how far God has matured me.  So, because writing, for me, is a connection to God, and for all of the other reasons listed above, journaling in prayer is a good, fruit-bearing truth for me in my relationship with Jesus.

But then it morphs into something else.  I start seeing the prayer habits of my friends.  My friend, Joe, prays throughout the day, whenever he can grab 10 minutes or so.  Right now, his life is so crazy with family and everything, that he has to just do the best he can.  I start to wonder, since I need that intensive, focused time, based in my personality and worldview, how Joe can have any meaningful relationship with Jesus with 10 minute chunks of prayer.  I start by suggesting, in a loving, brotherly way, that Joe give journaling a try.  After all, it worked for me.  Joe kind of laughs, uncomfortably, and he says that he has done that before, but writing seems to actually distract him from prayer.  He thanks you for the suggestion and moves on.  I, however, can't move on.  This morning you read Psalm 63:1, which says, “O GOD, You are my God; Early I will seek You..."  Hmmm...it sure seems like the Bible is clear.  Prayer belongs in the morning.  How can Joe start his day without Jesus?  His "attempt" at journaling was obviously only half-hearted...maybe even lazy.

This inner dialogue continues, until I am convinced that Joe is in sin for not journaling every morning.  I have ignored the fact that all of his prayer times added up are more than double the amount of time I spend.  I have all kinds of scriptures to back up my stand, forgetting that Joe lives out the Bible every day.  I am critical of Joe's lack of "prayer closet" time, even though his wife wife is very sick, and he has, for months, been the only person to get all four of their kids ready and dropped off at school in the morning.  He has had to make sure his wife's needs are met in the midst of morning chaos, before her home nurse gets there.  He has to get to work and keep earning money, so they don't lose their health insurance.  Joe wants to make sure their kids are loved, so he goes to their school performances, field trips, and special lunches, all causing missed work and loss of pay.  He goes home and replaces the nurse in caring for his wife, cooking the family meal, helping with homework, getting kids and his wife bathed and tucked in bed, only to take advantage of the quiet home by catching up on missed work, when he had to pick up his youngest daughter from school because of illness.  He finally collapses in bed at 1am to sleep for a few blessed hours, before starting it all again.  This is Joe's reality, and I DARE to judge his relationship with Jesus and his prayer life, because I have deemed early morning, journaling prayer to be the "biblical" method of communing with Jesus?!?!

This is a hypothetical.  I didn't actually do this to my friend.  But, this is a painful reality in church culture, and this is how we are Pharisaical in our faith.  We heap more and more guilt and burden on others.  We twist scriptures to sanctify our own prayer life, and then we torture others with this piety.  Jesus has all kinds of grace and love for a guy like Joe.  His prayer life is like the widow's offering.  It may not be much, compared with a spiritual champion, but it is all Joe has.  He gives it all.

We do the same thing with identity.  We have adopted, as a family, the spiritual discipline of simplicity.  This has been an adventure in self-abuse.  Our house is utter chaos.  So, we all sat down and agreed to get rid of 2/3 of everything we own.  Each child has a small crate for memorabilia.  That rock I took from a Mayan temple on the border of Guatemala has found its place in Eli's crate, along with the ticket stub from the last Packer game he and I attended.  I told all three kids that they could only keep the memorabilia that fit in that crate, without having to force the lid onto the top.  Anything that didn't fit (like the chewed piece of gum from a friend of Grace's that moved away 3 years ago and is now growing gills and feet in a very Darwinian act of adaptation), had to be thrown away.  They have a garbage pile, a donation pile, and a keep pile.  The keep pile can be no bigger than either one of the other piles.  Teresa and I are doing the same.  What fun.  There have been times of tears, times of relief, times of feeling really good about having less, and times when each of us has felt really stretched.

As I was going through the girls' bookshelf (both are avid readers, so those shelves are packed tight), I came across a "Bible for Girls and Mommies".  It is actually very pretty, and Maggie loved it when younger.  I paged through it tonight, and I was very disturbed.  Each section began with a principle: "A woman of God is wise"; "A woman of God is peaceful"; "A woman of God is supportive"; "A woman of God is generous"; and many other definitions.  For each principle, there was a Bible story example that drove home the definition.  Now, to be clear, my hope is that my daughters will grow into women who will bear good, healthy fruit for the Kingdom of God.  However, does this kind of limit the defining aspects of a woman of God far too much?  What if a girl makes a mistake and is not generous in a particular moment?  Is that a "Woman of God Fail"?  Does she cease to be a woman of God?  What if she marries a guy who is a total tool, refusing to get a job?  Is she called to be supportive of such a man in this behavior?  If she isn't, is she a bad woman of God?  These are the things that we put on people in their identities.  Sure, it's great for a person to be peaceful, but then, when a woman is passionate and powerful, do we write her off as overly headstrong and, therefore, in sin?

I noticed that there was nothing that said "A woman of God kicks ASS!", or "A woman of God will be a mushroom-cloud-laying nuclear destroyer of any deadbeat MF that messes with her".  That principle could be followed by the story in Judges 4:

⁴ Now Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time [emphasis mine].

⁸ Barak said to her, “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.”

⁹ “Certainly I will go with you,” said Deborah. “But because of the course you are taking, the honor will not be yours, for the LORD will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman.”

¹⁷ Sisera, meanwhile, fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because there was an alliance between Jabin king of Hazor and the family of Heber the Kenite.

 ¹⁸ Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Come, my lord, come right in. Don’t be afraid.” So he entered her tent, and she covered him with a blanket.

 ¹⁹ “I’m thirsty,” he said. “Please give me some water.” She opened a skin of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him up.

 ²⁰ “Stand in the doorway of the tent,” he told her. “If anyone comes by and asks you, ‘Is there a man in here?’ say ‘No.’”

 ²¹ But Jael, Heber’s wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died [emphasis mine].

 ²² Just then Barak came by in pursuit of Sisera, and Jael went out to meet him. “Come,” she said, “I will show you the man you’re looking for.” So he went in with her, and there lay Sisera with the tent peg through his temple—dead.

Are you freaking kidding me?!?  THAT is a woman of God, at least the biblical image of a woman of God.  And you know what?  I could not find that principle or that story anywhere in the "Bible for Little Girls and Mommies".  If I wrote one, I would definitely include that.  That is biblical womanhood, as much as the quiet, modest, and supportive woman.  Jael NAILED HIS HEAD TO THE GROUND WITH A SPIKE!!  Deborah was the head of all of Israel, including her Israelite husband.  Interesting.  I want my daughters hearing these examples, right along with the ones about quiet and peace.  Yes, some women are very quiet and wise, and that is valuable as well.  They are truly women, because that works for them.

Let me put it this way.  If I were to hold up that image, from that little girl's Bible, for my daughter, Maggie, she would eventually realize that she is completely invalidated as a person.  She is a piece of work.  She and I yell every day.  She is never disrespectful to me.  She is just passionate and on fire.  I have never seen a kid who was so dramatic.  She has anger and power.  She is not unhealthy with it, just honest.  If she's pissed, you'll know it.  She will take me on, as big and loud as I am, in a head-to-head battle without fear.  She attacks life with a vengeance.  She would nail a guy's head to the ground with a big tent stake, without an ounce of hesitation.  My daughter also passionately loves Jesus.  I am not going to do anything to temper or squash that fire in her.  I will not de-legitimize that, because she doesn't fit into the Evangelical idea of "the Biblical Woman".  She fits in Jesus' vision of the Biblical woman, and He created her that way for a purpose.  She is uniquely gifted for a destiny that can only to be accomplished by Maggie.  I pray every day for God to build a man who can love her and fight with her.  She's out of control, and she's one of God's favorites.  You can tell that after 5 minutes of knowing her.

Here's the point.  We have to be very careful about what we put on people.  We cannot define people by what works for us, or what fits neatly in our own worldview.  There is no such thing as a set definition of biblical manhood or womanhood.  There is only each person, created uniquely by God, and that person's walk with Jesus.  What works is what works.  That way, Jesus does the defining.  Jesus does the shaping.  Jesus builds the destiny.  Jesus is the only universal truth, and only He can make me into someone who is entirely me.

Masculinity and Discipleship: A History

This whole Driscoll thing got me thinking about masculinity and following Jesus.  As I was responding to a comment on my last post, I found myself getting in touch with some tough issues in myself, and I suddenly had to process them.  If you know me at all, not a single thought goes through my head without thorough processing.  I don't even go to the bathroom without examining my own motives, level of need, social mores involved, environment, and the affect of my own worldview and confirmation bias.  I overdo it a bit.  Most of the time, I just want to shut my brain off and be "normal", but then I would no longer be me.

My entire life, I have struggled with being a man.  Not until very recently, as I have gone through some intense and extensive healing, have I even felt like a man.  I was 39 years old, and I was still thinking of myself as a kid.  I'm not sure if something froze in my development, or if I just have always felt like an impostor.

I actually agree with Driscoll's assertion that men in the Church have been emasculated.  There is no doubt in my mind that this is true, but I see it more as a societal issue than strictly a Church issue.  Men everywhere, both inside and outside the Church, seem to be emasculated.  Stop.  Right there, we run into trouble, and it is a symptom of our emasculation.  What is a real man?  What does one even look like?  That is the core problem that has led to our emasculation as men.  We are not permitted to define that for ourselves.  We have authorities in our lives, from the time that we are very small, attempting to shape us into the image of manhood that they see as valid.  Government, society, church, family, school, friends, employers, spouses, media, and other authorities, all attempt to define us.  So, men are left not really being in partnership with God in finding our true identity and definition of manhood.  It is established independently of us, and we fight to live up to those images and their accompanying expectations.

Now, when I say men have been "emasculated", I am not saying they are "girly".  That is another narrow definition.  This is my main problem with pastors who define manhood and womanhood, and then dare to anoint their definitions as "biblical".  They complain about the lack of manliness in church, but their narrow definitions of that term only serve to further emasculate men.  No, what I mean by emasculation is that, because it is impossible to live up to these images, men are left being nothing at all.  They are kind of a soup of neediness and perpetual boyhood with life-long mommy issues.  They are undefined blobs of gray, because they have no idea what they should be.  That is emasculation.  What they should be, is what they were made by God to be.  Is Forrest Gump less manly than Rocky Balboa?  We will talk more about that in future posts.  Let's look, first, at how I think this phenomenon came to be in the West.

As an amateur historian, I see an historical progression toward this reality, especially in America.  Warning:  This mini-history is not based on any solid research or any educational expertise on my part, save a U.S. History course in my freshman year in college.  It is entirely reductionist, sensationalized, revisionist, and filled with sweeping generalizations.  I am completely biased in my use and abuse of history, because I am merely trying to make a point.  Well, there you have it.  At least I'm in line with most of the history taught in schools. 

Looking back, we hold the image of the rugged, "manly man", beginning with our picture of the pioneers.  However, the vast majority of men who came here were actually either escaping persecution or were bored, bourgeoisie aristocrats looking for new adventures and revenue streams.  Of the aristocrats, most were writers, ministers, artisans, scientists, politicians, and other such educated professionals.  They did not have calloused hands or weathered faces.  At Jamestown, they were so terrible at survival, that they resorted to cannibalizing their dead, in order to stay alive.  They didn't know a thing about farming, building, or hunting.  These skills were taught by First Nations Peoples, who were later paid back with wholesale slaughter and forced relocation.  But, I digress.  My point is, most of these settlers were either desperate and afraid, or rich and pampered.  These were not the Daniel Boone, Marlboro Men that we have spun them into with folk tales and legends.

In the 1930s and 1940s, as we were coming out of the Great Depression and going into World War II, men went from fear to more fear.  Yes, very tough and rugged immigrants came in around the turn of the century to fill factories and city housing, but they were just as fearful about feeding their families as those who were here already.  This is evidenced by the women working long hours in clothing sweatshops, while the men built dangerous high rises and labored in meat packing yards and foundries.  These men were not above "letting their wives work or help raise money".  They were not threatened by not being the sole bread-winner.  They just wanted to stay alive.  It was all about survival.  Then, with the onset of war, the male population of America went from fear of starvation to fear of dying.  Men did not go to war with jaws set, ready to take on the Germans and Japanese.  They went there pissing themselves and died by the tens of thousands.  Watch Saving Private Ryan, a frighteningly realistic film.  There are no heroes.  There are those who were shredded by bullets and explosives, and those who, luckily, were not.  I am not trying to sully the heroic nature of our soldiers.  I am not sure I could have even gotten on the boat to go to the beach.  I would have died of fear on the dock!  What they did was incredibly brave.  Their sacrifice is precious.  I am just saying, as we are one day from the theatrical release of Captain America, that the idea of people being "good at war" and always knowing how to dodge bullets is the stuff of comic books.  In reality, the line between life and death on a battlefield is arbitrary.  Bullets are everywhere.  You either get lucky enough to live to be shot at tomorrow, or you don't.  In those cases, macho man bravado only makes you more likely to get killed.  Many of the ones who lived were the ones smart enough to be afraid.  They were the ones who pretended to be dead, while covering themselves with the corpses of their friends and neighbors.

During that time, women ran the country.  They went to work.  They handled the home.  They built planes, ships, supplies, and ammo for the war effort.  Then, after the war, women did not want to quietly go back to the home.  They loved the freedom and ability to work.  The propaganda machine tried to change culture and de-legitimize the powerful contribution of women.  Shows like "Leave It to Beaver" and others, tried to get people to conform to the projected image of "normal", but this was never normal for the vast majority of the population.  Only the cultural and economic elite were surviving on one income before the war. 

This American Dream, completely fabricated as a fantasy by those who would try to shape culture, became part of the curse of men.  This was the very first time, for example, that the word "Capitalism" became part of the vernacular of American thought.  Our founders, in forming the Constitution, seem to have pictured more of a Socialist Democracy.  In the early 1950s, the tax rates for everyone were up over 50%.  Yet, miraculously, people were, generally, very happy.  Healthcare was provided, the housing market was booming, the auto industry was fighting to keep up with demand, and people were able to work reasonable hours for reasonable pay, while still enjoying life, family, vacations, and the other pleasures that add to the quality of life.  With this talk of Capitalism, people began to question whether the high taxes and social programs were making us more like the dreaded Russians.  There were actual commercials in the 50s that talked about Capitalism as being "ordained by God".  They started teaching Capitalism in schools (except Catholic Schools, who stood against the growing tide of greed).  It was great if you had a car.  Wouldn't it be better if you had two or three?  Work more hours, and work harder.  You deserve it.  It's the people on welfare who don't.  You can show you are better than they are.  You can not just be happy, now you can work to be better.  We shifted from contentment to greed, from "enough" to "more".

So, we became valued, as men, by our ability to produce, earn, and, most importantly, consume.    Our country started borrowing money like never before. The USA was "booming".  We had prestige after World War II, as being the most powerful nation in the world.  With our new Crusade of Capitalism, we now needed to be more than just powerful.  It could no longer be enough to simply have no one in the world dumb enough to ever attack us.  We now had to go and pick fights and spread this new religion of Capitalism.  The concept of Empire, the downfall of Ancient Rome, had found its new home in America.  There were a few bright spots.  Jimmy Carter, in my opinion, possibly the greatest President (and, possibly, also the most despised) of the 20th Century, tried to warn us a number of times where this Capitalism train was taking us.  In 1979, he interrupted prime time television with a speech entitled "A Crisis of Confidence", to warn us of the possibility of future financial collapse.  If you read the speech, you will see that it is eerily prophetic, predicting, in detail, what just happened 2 years ago with our economy.  People complained that he had disrupted their television viewing, and his railing against Capitalism was written off as the Chicken Little-esque, anti-American ravings of a fear monger.  He was a Christian leader, speaking prophetically into a nation headed for disaster.

Men were working harder and harder.  For women, staying home with the children became a symbol of status.  The messages being sent to women were confusing as well, as Feminism was on the rise.  They were being told by the left to be free and go to work, while being told by the right to prove that God rewards Capitalists, so stay home, just to prove you can.  Ugh.  But we'll deal with women later.  Right now I am talking about men. 

The children of the men of the Capitalist (or Boomer) Generation, grew up fatherless.  We watched our fathers reap the fruit of Capitalism: career idolatry, workaholism, alcoholism, drug abuse, clinical depression, exhaustion, absenteeism, adultery, divorce, suicide, rage, domestic violence, gambling addiction, over-extended credit, bankruptcy, unemployment, identity confusion, sexual orientation confusion, greed, hypertension, heart attacks, and miserable lives.  The promises of happiness and freedom, offered by the American Dream, were only for the Wall Street Elite, bought with the blood and sweat of the middle class, to whom that dream was sold.  It is slavery, pure and simple, where the rich slave owners use ideology as chains.  The middle class has adopted the slave mentality.  We beat down one another, when we see someone try to be innovative or go beyond this pathetic existence.  People in my generation, who have inherited the suffering wrought by the Boomers, are still foolish enough to buy the same lie.  This is not about politics.  This is now, again, about survival.  It is about the right to life being, not just about drawing breath in the mechanical process of respiration, but about the quality of life; the good life.

Let's get back to today, and back to me.  I'm going to try to unpack this in the next few posts, but I wanted to set this foundational history in place today.  You see, Jesus did not come to save us from our miserable existence, in order to beam us out of here to somewhere better.  That is all the rhetoric of the American Dream.  We are all so goddamn happy, that we are miserable enough to invent an eschatology, where we all can get the hell out of this hole we're in.  That is not Good News to me.  That is as lame and empty as all of this American Dream talk.  Jesus came to transform this existence - to REDEEM it - so that we can have life to the full.  I am confident that I will see the glory of God in the land of the living!  That is good news!  That is the Gospel!

Following Jesus is about going after the life to the full that He promised.  I want Living Water, not the putrid sludge that I am offered as a slave.  I could get on a boat to storm the beaches for that!  I could give my life, waste everything, forsake all else, for such a vision!  The problem is, when I talk about trading in the American Dream for the Cross, I feel like Jimmy Carter interrupting TV.  But there it is.  Jesus did not come to give us the American Dream.  He has not ordained Capitalism.  In His economy, it is the poor that are favored.  It is the last who are first.  It is widows and orphans that get our attention.

Where have the men gone?  They have been emasculated, not by Feminism or "The Gay Agenda", but by an unreachable, untenable, and unsustainable glorified and romanticized image of the Real, Red-Blooded, Independent, Individual, and Self-Made American Man, Pursuing the American Dream.  What a crock.  I don't care how much you have bought into this.  Do you really think this is what our King envisioned as the fullness of life?  Is this the fruit He wanted men bearing?  I think it is like filthy rags before Him.  And where are the men in the Church?  They already feel enough shame about not living up to this image in the world.  Why, in God's Name, would they go to an authority that has been complicit in not only adopting this image, but Sanctifying it?  No, men stay away from the Church, because survival of the fittest is alive and well in the Church, much more so than in Darwinian Secularism.  The Church has blessed the American Dream as being Holy and Good.  Capitalism is God's Plan in Evangelicalism.  So, in the Church, men face further emasculation.  And pastors who glorify this "manly man" image, while mocking creative and worshipful men as being "limp-wristed", are, themselves, doing irreparable damage.

What does it even mean to be a man who follows Jesus?  How is it different than being a man pursuing the American Dream?  I would love your thoughts on this, and I will talk more about this soon! 

This Wonderful Ordeal - Link to a Great Post

I had a blog post all ready to go for today, but then I came into contact with some of the best writing on following Jesus I have ever read.  I want to point people to that instead, because it is writing I only wish I could accomplish.

Let me set it up this way: I have been talking about the risk and cost involved in following Jesus.  My friend, Jim Lane, the blogger over at This Wonderful Ordeal, has captured a major point in what I have been talking about, but in a clearer and more profound way.  A big cost (and a big risk) of following Jesus is in the area of embracing our emotional selves.  Rules-based Religion tells us that emotions are weak, messy, and not to be trusted.  But we are not talking about religion, are we?  We are talking about following Jesus.  Having a relationship.  I'll let Jim take you the rest of the way.  Make sure you go there, because this is not to be missed.  I'll post tomorrow.

The post is called "Long Lost Life of the Feeler".  Click on the title to go there now, and enjoy!

The Relational Cost of Discipleship

In the last 3 months, I have undergone a 180-degree internal shift.  This is not to say that I once was lost, but now am found.  I was that before.  Rather, I mean that I have had such a foundational shift in me as to be pointed toward health and wholeness, instead of sickness, burnout, and ultimate death.  It has been intense, weird, fun, scary, awkward, powerful, and disorienting at the same time.  I am having to relearn how to relate and to be.  That is also the cost of discipleship.  I mentioned a book in my last post, called Failure of Nerve, and that theory comes into play here as well.  When we think of counting the cost of following Jesus, we don't often put it in the terms of relationships.  As we move into this relationship with Jesus, a living, breathing being, our other relationships take a hit.  What is that about?

Well, let me use the example of my own life.  I have been married for almost 18 years  to the same, beautiful, incredible woman.  She sings and writes music.  She acts and helps direct plays.  She is a fiery, Cuban woman with a tender and loving heart.  I once told her, before we were even dating, that she was a "total woman".  For me, she was the perfect embodiment of womanhood.  She scared the hell out of me.  She was mysterious, powerful, funny, vibrant, attacking, loving, hard as steel, and soft as rain, all at the same time.  Usually when I had dated in the past, the woman I dated had gotten swallowed up by my big, audacious presence.  She would get lost in me.  I married Teresa, because there was no way she would shrink and give up the stage.  She would stand up to me and fight me every time.  So, there was that, and the fact that she had the Latina curves and is extremely hot.  I am human and male, after all.

In our nearly two decades of relating, I have always been "ADHD and Anger Guy".  Now, for the last 3 months, I have been medicated and receiving counseling, spiritual direction, and prayer to deal with the root of the anger and the effects of the ADHD.  This is all brand new.  Whenever a person gets healthier or stronger, they become redefined, as the book I mentioned proposed.  When that happens, there is a shift in the relationships in that person's life.  I have woken up to the fact that living with a person like me, when I was really fully in my dysfunctional heyday, was very much like living with an alcoholic.  Our home had become an alcoholic home.  No booze, but all of the symptoms.  I wish I had known this earlier, so I could have at least enjoyed the buzz, while damaging my family and friends.  Just kidding, but hopefully you get the point.

Everything in an alcoholic home becomes about the alcoholic.  That person is the center of the universe.  Everything in the systemic mechanics of the home becomes about moving around the alcoholic, coping with alcoholic behaviors, and dealing with consequences.  Family members cease to be people, and they become the roles they fill, like cogs in a horrific machine.  They become de-personalized drones, surviving and never thriving.  Teresa had taken care of her alcoholic mother for her teenage years, and now she had just spent the last 17+ years dealing with her angry, impaired husband.  I was just A LOT to deal with.  I have looked back and seen how she has fulfilled her role of cleaning up the damage in my wake.  Sometimes her role was to protect me from unwarranted attacks from others.  Sometimes her role was to get a job and bring in money, to help cover for another of my failed attempts at life.  At other times, her role was to be sicker than me, in order to give me a cause and a purpose.  Then, at the proper time, she would get better.  It has always been about me.  I'm not trying to make it all about me.  My sick self made it so.

Now that things have shifted in me, things have gotten a bit tumultuous in our marriage.  We are not in trouble.  We are not headed toward divorce.  We are two ragamuffins trying to figure this whole thing out.  But, now that I am getting healthier and better defined, what is her role?  There is no role, except that which she makes.  My pursuit of health frees her up to define herself.  That is really scary, though, when she has always been defined by sick loved ones.  There is also a part of her that simply refuses to believe it.  She is still waiting for the other shoe to drop; for me to quit this healing thing, like I have quit everything else.  Then there is my reaction to that.  I usually resent that attitude in her.  At the same time, I understand it.  There has not yet been any strong, visible fruit of my turn or internal change.  There have only been my words of assurance that I am feeling really good. 

"I am comfortable in my skin, for the first time.  I am not stressed or angry.  I am internally more at peace than ever before.  It's different this time!  Believe me!  Stop treating me like a child!" 

But she has heard words from me in the past.  Nothing but words.  Lots and lots of words.  I have made promises.  I have declared from the rooftops.  I have resolved, committed, proclaimed, and swore.  Sometimes I would throw a loud "F-bomb" or a "I'm sick of this SHIT!!", just to show her how truly serious I was this time.  Then, I got to the point where I cussed all the time, because I had run out of sincerity.  The other day, in tears, she accused me of promising to take care of her and to rescue her from her life with her mother.  I had never fulfilled that promise.  Too true.

So, what is the cost of following Jesus in relationships with others?  Again, it will cost us everything.

First, we have to stop making declarations and promises, and actually put action to our love.  I have lost integrity with my wife with my words and promises.  Jesus said, "Don't swear or proclaim.  Just let your "yes" be "yes", and your "no" be "no.""  My wife doesn't need more words.  I don't need to hear myself saying any more words.  I want to puke, every time I hear myself talk now.  My own voice is painful to my ears.  I need to take care of her in action.  In real love, with real movement to it.  My integrity can only be restored through actually bearing fruit.  I need to shut up, and just love her.  Then, the new Bill will still be different, but better.  She's still in love with me, but now it won't be such work to stay that way.  I believe that this holds true for all relationships: with our kids, our parents, our siblings, our friends, our spouses, or whomever.  God is faithful to meet us in this, and when we love with action, people we love will be there as well.

Secondly, we need to re-humanize the people in our lives.  I have realized that my kids have had to move around me their whole lives.  They got so used to it, that my youngest actually cried, when I told them I was going on medication.  She was worried that everything would change, even if things weren't all that great at the moment.  It was what she knew.  She immediately felt a shift, and she was afraid.  She knew how to deal with her "messy Papa", what if she didn't like "healthy Papa" all that much.  I have realized that trying to get healthy is really the best thing I could do for my kids.  Yes, it's disorienting at first, but it's ultimately extremely good.  They already are less defined by who they are in relationship to me.  They are already feeling like they are free and powerful, in and of themselves.  My eldest, Grace, has started her own blog, where she was nervous about expressing herself before.  Did she really even have a voice, or was her dad the only one who got to have one?  Now she is stretching and learning her own voice, like a princess who had been locked in a tower, only to wake up one day in an open, sunny meadow, with no captors around.  The other day, I corrected Maggie for leaving something out (I still have to parent them).  She must have said "Sorry" 5 times, really quickly.  I have never hit my kids, but it was obvious that she was scared to awaken my anger (learned behavior in relation to the alcoholic).  I had to sit down with her and walk her through how we can relate to each other now.  It was like light pouring into a dark, dusty room.  She was so excited, because we had a clear way of relating now.  No surprises.  She wasn't a faceless cog moving around me.  She was free to relate to me as a real person.  Eli always asks a lot of questions.  He asked me a bunch in a row, again, the other day.  He then quickly apologized.  In the past, that would overwhelm my ADHD self with too much stimulus.  I would then snap at him.  I talked with him about how I love his inquisitive, searching self.  I affirmed his desire to know.  WOW!  You would have thought he was a dog let off the leash to run for the first time!  I then spent almost an hour, patiently answering every question that popped in his head.  These are people - beautiful, powerful, valuable, precious people.  They are not that because of you.  They are that, because God declared them so.  Let your loved ones have their voice restored.

Lastly, the cost of following Jesus in relationships requires that we willingly decrease, so that God and Others can increase.  I have had to realize that this world is not one, huge movie, of which I am the star.  There are people all around me with, as I said, a voice, but they also have their own dreams, vision, passion, goals, struggles, values, and destiny.  All of those are at least as valuable and powerful as my own.  I have always hated the song "Wind Beneath My Wings".  Besides not liking adult contemporary music, I hate the lyrics.  Seriously?  This person is incredible, because they are willing to raise you up?  That's their life aspirations and the sum total of their value?  I didn't realize I was doing the same thing to my loved ones.  Not only would I passionately pursue big things, but I would spectacularly crash and burn.  I would rate the quality of my friendships based on how well a person supported and loved me, especially when I failed.  I then transferred that to them, as people.  They were valuable as people, based on whether they had my back.  When they would finally be burned out from trying to relate with me, I would see them as betrayers.  They never really loved me.  Wow, I was so good at that, I had even sold myself!  I really believed the crap that I told myself.  I have now come to the conclusion that it is not, in fact, all about me.  I need to sacrifice and make room for supporting and loving others, like so many did for me.  Insisting that I be the center of the universe is no foundation for a friendship or relationship of any kind.  Why don't I have any friends who stick with me?  Because feeding into the "Bill Persona" is all-encompassing and exhausting.  People need to have their own dreams and visions supported and blessed.  They need to know that you also exist for them, as they do for you.  Rather than burning them out, make it about them!  I have noticed that my conversations with people have changed.  I find myself listening more than ever.  It's actually awkward at first, when I have coffee with an old friend.  There is silence at first, as that person waits to hear me go off about my latest adventures, exploits, and failures.  When I then ask them about them, they hesitantly start talking.  Then they start gaining momentum, realizing that I am genuinely interested in their story.  It's really fun!  I'm really seeing how incredibly beautiful the people in my life really are.  There is room, now, for them to be that!

So, I share all of that, because I know that you aren't as jacked up as I am.  You are not running around trying to heal years of damaged relationships.  You don't have anywhere near as far to go as I do in loving in action, re-humanizing loved ones, and making room for others.  But we all have some work to do in those areas.  So, to encourage you, you can do this.  You can follow Jesus in your relationships.  And don't feel bad for me or pity me.  I am not beyond repair.  I am just learning how to love God and others.  I feel like a toddler, exploring my world and learning how to interact with it.  I am also not wallowing in regret, and neither should you.  Sometimes, at the beginning, I thought that things would have been so much better, if I had learned this as a teenager, rather than at 40.  OK, maybe that's true, as a hypothetical thought experiment.  But, in reality, God has had me on exactly the journey God has had me on.  It is what it is.  But God is faithful.  My life has not been 40 years of destroyed relationships.  God has done a lot through me in that time.  Many hundreds of people credit knowing me as the single factor that helped them grow in faith.  My wife loves me, and we'll figure this out.  We're committed to each other.  My kids are not screwed up.  They love me unconditionally.  I have lots of friends.  I am just learning how to love all of these people better, because they deserve it.  So, it took me 40 years to get to this point, but this is exactly when I was ready to face this.  I wasn't at any previous point.  NOW is exactly when God wanted to get this done.  No regrets.  Only forward motion.  My wife, kids, and friends are brilliant, wonderful, beautiful, precious people, in and of themselves.  I have the rest of my life to discover just how true that is.  Besides, I am still a horny male, and I woke up to find out my wife is even hotter than I previously thought!  Life is good.