Stolen or Lost

As often happens, I'm jumping off from something someone said who may actually read this.  If that's you, or you know who it is, please note that I am being careful to divorce the statement from the person.  As I've stated before, I'm dealing with ideas in this blog, which are the things the internet is made of, and not attacking people.  Truthfully, the statement is nothing more than a point of departure that got me thinking.  So I'm thankful for that and move on in the spirit of healthy salonic discussion and the "you" I address below is not that person, but a strawman I've set up for express purposes of tearing down. (that's actually what 'strawman' means, though people rarely use it correctly.)

So what is this now much anticipated statement?  That God wants his church back.  Yeah, that's it.  If you're let down, you obviously don't read this blog much.  At first, my reaction was "Who took it?"  Who could take it?  Is That-Than-Which-Nothing-Greater-Can-Be-Conceived so easily thwarted that anything which is His could be taken, stolen, or lost?

Now, of course, I get the statement.  I know how it was intended: as a clever way to describe a truth.  So no big deal.  But it lingered.  So as I pondered why, I came to see this as a symptom of the very kind of thinking which has led to the problem being addressed in the first place.  That problem is a lack of true relationship, true following of God's Reality.  See, I know several people right now who are on this journey away from the institutionalized church.  They call it different names, but this has been a grand revelation for them.  I'm happy for them and supportive.  I really am, because I am quite frankly tired of being out here in the woods by myself...both metaphorically and physically.  But more importantly, as one who came through this path myself, I get it.  I know the jaw dropping joy and boundless, sometimes sickening freedom of it.  Come on and catch up so we can move on together!  I hope these thoughts help.

But it's important to recognize that this is not a new thing.  It's not a "move of God."  Honestly, you gotta drop that kind of vocabulary altogether, bro.  God doesn't move like that.  Isn't that what you're waking up to?  His work hasn't been constrained to the various human institutions that come and go.  Sure he's moved through them, but not because of any thing they were.  Not because of anything they 'got right'.  To say so is just a deeper layer of the Pharisaical doctrines that Jesus was so against.  They'd taken the truth and twisted it to their own purposes.  Blind guides.

No God only moves one way.  It's the same way he always moves.  It's the way that Jesus came to show us, and the reason so few in his generation got it.  What were they expecting?  A hero.  A Warrior King.  A Righteous Ruler to wield true Divine Authority and set right all that was wrong.  They got this from their scriptures, just like we get our fallacies.

But what was Jesus?  Not that!  He said over and over, the Kingdom of God is not what men think.  It's within.  It's spiritual.  It's unseen.  He didn't overthrow society, he stepped out of it while staying right in it.  He crossed planes and walked right by those who thought they had it figured out.  The ruler who failed; that's him on the surface.  Just another radical who died.

You see where I'm going with this?  But what he did was change people on the inside.  He made them different.  He healed what was broken at the deepest levels.  I'll say it again, God only moves one way.  And that way is the way he's always moved: in the hearts of each individual person.  In those deep places where our own internal eye can barely see.  That's where he does his work.

Everything that occurs on the physical level is just a manifestation of this change.  A projection of a mutlidimensional existence into 3 dimensions.  It all comes from that.  On our own, we can't keep from getting the cart first.

So, remember that while this may be new to you, and the greatest thing ever.  It is...to you.  But you aren't the first, not even the early generation, man.  We had these same 'movements' in the mid '90's.  Right down to the house churches and all, bro.  I'm not saying their bad.  Walk your walk out.  You can't be expected anywhere on the path but where you are.  But realize things are just well in God's Kingdom.  They've never been shaken by winds of change in the world.  No one can take God's church, man.  He can't lose it either.  What was lost is us.  What's coming back is you.  What he's changing is your mind, not the world.  you thought you knew how it worked, but you've learned better now.

Read more old books.  Rome had it.  18th century France had it.  19th century England had it.  Early 20th century Europe had it.  Same abuses, same institutions painted in the fashions of the day.  And the same people realizing what's real and what isn't.  The same people awakening to what you are feeling now.

I know it's tough to shed old habits, and you'll probably get it wrong for many more years.  I'm just a little further down the path myself, so I'll be a different person soon too.  But one thing I can see from my view of the bend that you haven't gotten to yet is the lack of the preachy interaction.  Man, everything you learn isn't a revelation for everyone else.  Heed it.  Share it for sure.  But know, you aren't always gonna be at the head of the charge.  In truth, you never really were.  You just thought so, bro.

Now, jog on up here and let's go further up and further in together!

Roots

I have been reading another George MacDonald book.  Uncle George does not disappoint again.  This one, I've been putting off since it doesn't seem like something I'd like at first blush.  It's called the Vicar's Daughter, and it's described as a Victorian novel.  Hmmm.  Need I say more?

But as usual, when the time is right things fall into place and I went ahead to read it.  Also, per usual, I found that the stereotype of "Victorian" is far from the truth.  Certainly this book was written in the Victorian era.  As such it has a certain defined social code, etc.  But humans are human and I find all the fun, struggles, loves common to all people.  However, literary critic I am not, and so I won't belabor this.

What really has taken me is the thorough similarity of the characters with my own time and viewpoints.  I don't mean this to say I have an old-fashioned mindset.  I'm far from a traditionalist,and am not very sentimental.  But I grew up in a prosperous country on the teeter of decline, in a middle class family, right as the notions of an older generation were passing away from our culture.  I moved naturally from this to a countercultural worldview we call punk.  I grew up into a productive member of society with a family, though not shedding my ideals to do it.  This book focuses on just the same class of people in the same situation.  What I call punk, they call Bohemian, but the description is almost identical...obviously, not the appearance specifically, nor the music, etc.  But the ideals and the manifestations of those ideals are the same, even down to the shockingly reproachful clothes .

But even more than this is the similarity in faith.  While I had known my views were part of an unbroken chain of truth and truth-seekers extending back into prehistory, I had not known that it was so well documented and articulated in such a similar way.

Of course, I should not be surprised.  If Truth is Truth, it ought to manifest itself in very similar ways where conditions are similar.  And that is what I find here.  In fact, I've felt this once before, when reading Augustine.  At that time, I attributed it mostly to an above average translator whom I thought must have been able to make the ancient writing open to modern ears.  But now, I'm reading native English, close enough to my own dialect as to be totally intelligible in the writer's own words.  So I am forced to see what was obscured before.

In fact, the book sits so well with me that I'm finding it nearly a handbook for my place in life right now.  Things I have thought, said, done, wished for, are here presented in very nearly the exact same way more than a hundred years before.

I had previously blogged about uncanny similarities in MacDonald books.  But now I am certain that time has no meaning for those of us who live with eternity in view.  I do not doubt that Uncle George is presently aware of this very blog entry and my connection with his work.  For all I know, he may be communicating to me from his books, or we may share a spirit in some fashion.  Perhaps through the same mechanism, albeit a far more profane version of the connection between John the Baptist and Elijah.  Though this is more likely a metaphorical fancy than actual fact. Nevertheless, I shouldn't be surprised by this kind of connection amongst those who live in Christ.  Aren't we parts of one body?

Anyway, what I'm taking away from this book is uniquely mine, and too much to recount here.  But perhaps the greatest thing is that I now feel certainly confirmed in my brand of faith.  If it has existed for so long in so precisely the same fashion, I can safely put aside doubt.  I had feared it was my own personal religion built of my peculiar brand of rebellion and whimsy, well fortified with bricks of prooftext and the mortar of complex self deceptions.

Now I can safely stand out on it and believe I am not alone and not in error.  There have been, are, and will be those who are made like me, believe like me, and I am confident enough to cast my lot in with them for good or ill.

Thank you George.  And thank you God.  The former for being the instrument and the latter for being the wind that sounds it in answer to my prayers, even across the nonexistent gulfs of time and space.  When I meet you face to face, we will not in any way be meeting for the first time.

Afterburn

My last post was a rant.  I won't apologize for it.  It needed to be said.  But know that nothing on this blog is for show.  I post what I am wrestling with.  And I've continued to think about this.  Many points came out in the last post that I think could bear further explanation...Or rather, I want to talk about my history to help create understanding...see a previous post on that...perhaps then I will make more sense to those who don't get it and those who might think they get it can see how my ideas might differ or align with theirs.  Not that anyone is really reading this anyway, so who cares either way.  (Sidebar: thanks to the fanbase, I know both of you are reading.)

Where to start?  If you say you used to be a Christian, then you never were...or you still are.  It's not the kind of thing that can be undone.  It's not a system of beliefs.  It's not a culture.  It's not a bunch of fables and moralisms.  It's not a vague idea of the cosmic good.  It's not a magic hat that makes life good.  It isn't even to simply follow Jesus' teachings.  If you left it, then you never really understood it or if you really truly had hope in it and left over some disappointment, then you still are a Christian. 

You see, you can call yourself anything.  But when a person truly encounters the living God it changes things.  Things inside are different.  I'm not going to theologize and give you "3 signs you know you're saved" or any nonsense you might have heard before.  When you feel that Love call you and recognize who you are hearing, feeling, whatever, you know it.  There's no going back.  The job of the Church, which is people, not place or organization, is to stand beside you until you do know it.  Period.

I was raised in the typical modern Evangelical church.  I was fortunate to receive a good deal of training in the Bible.  I know it well.  I can argue the apologetics.  I was actually trained in persuading someone with the gospel...Literally, "if they say this, you counter with this."  It wasn't evil.  It was simply schooling in the classic sense.  I studied the arguments of great theologians and could cite the verses they used to answer heresies, etc.  The goal wasn't to brow beat people.  We never did that.  Just a principle that prudent study and in-depth knowledge of the Bible were weapons for life and salvation.  Think Allistair Begg, Bill Bright, Chuck Colson.  It's a whole world that you'd have to be in to understand.  I still have great respect for these people.

But I was also a depressive kid.  Serious for my age, with difficulty understanding the stupid kids around me.  Part of it I now know was due to a rare physical condition that was undiscovered then.  But part is simply my nature.  I began to see the fruitlessness of our shallow cushy lives.  I sank slowly into nihilism.  I knew that in the end, nothing we did mattered.  What would happen would happen.  Bad to good people, good to bad people.  Indifference to most.  Nothing made sense, so there was no meaning.  Read Camus' The Stranger to see what life is like from a purely nihilistic perspective.  It's terrifying.  I lived there.  Too apathetic to kill myself.  Pointless to strive.  Just waiting for something to kill me.  I drove my Jeep without doors and no seatbelts.  I laid on the double yellow lines of a bend in the road just hoping.  I sliced my arms and chest up just to feel anything.  I worked at a nursery and dug my arms into rose bushes, carried cactuses with bare arms so the needles would drive in.  This was a double benefit.  It woke up some sensation in me, and hid the knife slices.  I remember once, hanging from the rafters of the stockroom "to clean them".  I had swung out about 20 feet and dangled there two stories up with a broom in one hand.  I didn't care.  I even almost broke a kids neck for cutting in the lunch line.  I don't mean we got in a fight.  I mean he did it, didn't pay any attention to me, but was standing right in front of me where the line doubled back with back turned.  The adrenlaine flowed, my hands clenched and I was reaching for him when I realized what I was about to do and bolted out of there.    I ran out of the school and shivered in cold sweats for 20 minutes.  I used to smash my head into bathroom mirrors hoping they'd break and bleed my skull.  A school custodian caught me once.  He didn't know whether to pray for me or run me off.  Of course to everyone else, I was the perfect responsible kid.  Few saw it, few knew what to do, and few cared as long as I functioned in some fashion.

Somewhere in there I started having spiritual experiences, which you can read about elsewhere on the internet.  Just google cavvvp...all you'll get is me.  I didn't understand these things and it wrecked me.  I could barely hold together.  But in that world, Jesus found me.  He revealed himself as real in a way that was undeniable.  Either I had experienced what I did, or I was psychotic.

I learned that there were other people like me.  I met a bunch of the craziest punk people you could ever meet because the guitarist at my church also played music there.  In fact, that guitarist had a huge impact on me that I'm sure he doesn't even know.  He was one of the few people in that time who didn't judge.  Didn't put on a face.  He was a former drug addict from a rock band.  His wife was a drug addicted stripper.  He told me once that he'd seen our Elders' record collections, "and man they got all the same stuff we do." said even as they condemned me for being loose and rebellious.  So I began to distinguish the real from the hypocritical.  I saw those punk Christians ostracized when they came around.  I was told by the church next door to ours that "they didn't dispute my salvation, but only associated with churches of like faith and order" when I asked if their kids wanted to come to a party I was having for our kids.

I began to see that so-called Christians were the bulk of the problem!  We were the Pharisees!  So I left mainstream churches and joined the punks.  We packed the house.  Drug addicts, prostitutes, gay, gutter punks, homeless, hippies, new age, transgender, and just plain mentally disturbed.  We even had a church meeting in which we decided that someone was always going to bring a jacket just in case one of the strippers or prostitutes showed up in her work clothes!  I'm not kidding!  The pastor there became a friend and mentor.  He was a wreck of a person.  God love him and so do I.  His warts were apparent and he didn't shy from it. He was saved by grace and openly said what good was in him was from God.  And even now I will stand beside him at the Judgement and claim his as a friend, many of whom are there because of him. 

We invaded dark and sinister places.  We have seen God part crowds in Ybor, open dance floors in clubs.  I once sat in a wiccan coffee house that was run by not the nice kind of wiccan.  I have not experienced more spiritual warfare than in that place.  I could feel the oppression as we prayed for protection of my friends and others in the place...and this wizard was fighting us hard to drive us out and claim these people.  I could see it in his face.  He knew we were opposing him and neither of us said a word or gave an overt sign.  Just sat there silently praying while drinking some cheap brew.

But things change.  People are flawed.  Things run their course.  And this did.  People were lost.  Schisms happened.  Eventually we joined a friend's church.  I hit it off with this pastor who is still my mentor and spiritual director.  But I watched as several iterations of forcing two very different types of people together failed, leaving pain in their wake.  It wasn't for lack of trying.  The "normal" people just weren't comfortable with the grittiness of the others.  They couldn't see us as partners.  We were always projects.  The punks cloistered and refused to integrate because they knew they weren't wanted.  No one likes to be looked at like that, even unintentionally! And emotionally damaged people like many of these can't actually even handle it.  It crushes them, so they drive away good intentions and close the circle even tighter.

Time and time again, I've seen it.  Mainstreamers get some idea that they're edgy or cool and try to step into a world they don't get.  I have seen some notable exceptions.  But they are few and far between.


And not all of this type look weird on the outside.  Many would fit right in.  You eat, shop, and work right beside them.  I've even seen relatively normal people who are starting to discover this real, honest, classless faith continually wounded and turned away by churches.  The churches seek the majority in the "war for souls" and don't have time for the complaints, the dissenters, the ones who fall through the cracks.  Acceptable losses.  I emphatically stand up and defy that mindset.  No, never is one lost, not any are acceptable.  The Good Shepherd leaves the 99 to find the one.  I say the 99 should be looking too!  People will conflict.  But resources are probably there if you'd open your mind to look for them and step aside when it isn't you.  Why not partner instead of compete?  There's churches on every corner and they all act like they're the only one in the wilderness of lost people.  Here's an example of what I mean:

A wiccan couple came in to a mainstream church I worked at and introduced themselves as such.  Now why would they do that?  If they were just checking it out, they would simple come in like anyone else.  No one need know.  The reason they did it is because they were testing.  They wanted something and wanted to see how they were received.  I told people, come get me when they get here.  I'll talk to them.  I know what they believe and can welcome them.  I even pulled a little Paul and cited my qualifications to do so.  Of course, I wasn't worthy to do that.  Instead some "better qualified" pastor talked to them and they never came back.  No doubt he comforts himself that you can't win them all and they just must not have been ready.  Wow!  You sound like me.  I thought you were Evangelical?  If there's a tool in your tool box you have to make use of it!  That's being a good steward, dude!  Leverage everything, remember that sermon?  I even told you I was there so there's no excuse.  You just blew it, they could be going to hell because of it.

Thankfully, I don't believe it is up to us to save anyone.  So I can easily forgive this man and know that God is far greater than our feebleness.  He doesn't depend on us.  He doesn't.  But by the standard you mete, it is meted to you.  This man's own theology condemns him!

So where does this long ramble leave us?  I am a bridge.  I am an interpreter.  I can communicate across boundaries.  This is my gift.  I am pitbull, donkey stubborn and will not back down from what is right.  This is my gift.  I can love and forgive, but will not participate in what is not right.  I speak for my flock of black sheep.  I'm not the shepherd.  That's Jesus.  I'm just a sheepdog, and I'm not alone.  If anyone comes after my sheep, I'll bite.  If anyone inadvertently hurts my sheep, you'll hear me bark.  And if you're sitting out there lost, hurt, fending off the wild beasts, or being pushed around by the prettier sheep, just make what noise you can...I'm coming...and I won't leave until the Shepherd finds you.

A Dream

I once had a dream that Jesus came to me and took me into a room where there was a large round table. On this table, something like a holographic dome appeared in which He showed me every detail of history and how it fit together. He showed me how He had orchestrated the whole of all happenings in the universe. And He showed me how current events were all woven into the plan. I watched as the universe and human existence unfolded before me like a fantastically beautiful symphony of complex interrelations, events rippling and folding into each other. I watched as the symphony passed beyond present time and continued into the ultimate end. I saw how the world and all sufferieng and all joy played together and how it would all unfold in vivid detail.

When it ended I was awed and honored at being shown and understood that even though I couldn't see how things played together from within my life, I now knew specifically how it would go and that it would all be well...better than well actually.

Then Jesus touched my mouth and said that He would erase the details from my mind because it was not for men to know.

When I awoke, I had no memory of the dream at all. I dressed and left for work. On the drive I was listening to the radio when...I know the exact spot it happened...something in a song, just a snatch of it, reminded me of the dream and the whole memory I just described flooded back, minus the details I had been shown. I remember the dream vividly, and I remember the clarity and sense everything made, but I can't in the least remember what specifically I was shown.

So, I know that history is not random. I know that the future is orchestrated and that the universe and our entire existence form a wonderfully beautiful work of art. Best of all, I know it will all end well...This is an unbelievable grace to someone like me who has so much trouble seeing the good in so much bad. And I know that I would not be able to fulfill my portion of that symphony if I knew all the details. So that too is a mercy.