A Splitting Headache

“If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” 1 John 4:20

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. ~John 15:13

 

Devastated.

Things tend to catch up to you after  bit and soon enough I found myself in court on the DUI charge. There’s mandatory jail sentences for that sort of thing unless you are famous and or wealthy in which case the rules don’t always apply the same way as they do to less affluent and well-known folks. So anyway, I got my 10 day jail stint. While I was there my pastor visited and told me that when I got out things might be different at the church. There were some people who were upset about some things. They wanted him to resign as pastor. He told me that he would let the people of the church decide and then he would abide by their wishes.

I was upset. I had known there were some tensions. Some things that didn’t seem right. Still though, I was as yet naïve enough to believe that people in my church were good people. People who loved one another and loved God above all else. This wasn’t the case. I wasn’t able to be there the evening of the meeting in which the decisions were made. Many stood up for the pastor, many made accusations against him. When all was over those who had accused him went through the church building removing items they had given to the church and they left. I really liked these people. I had believed in them. I found out that this was called a church split. I’d never known about such things, but it seemed unbelievable to me and yet there it was before. People who I cared for and loved and respected, just no longer part of my life.

It all seemed so very wrong. So completely against everything I had been learning about Jesus. I found out that this “splitting” stuff can be a regular event in a lot of churches. I learned that the folks who had left had done so in at least three other churches over the years. I didn’t understand, but I knew that if this could happen to them it could happen to me. I purposed that if that ever happened I would just go away. No fighting, no accusing, just disappear.

How is it that people can end up with so much anger and hatred toward those whom they had loved? In time I would come to learn about something known as the “doctrine of the Nicolaitanes.” In the ancient Greek the word Nicolaitanes means to conquer or control the laity or people. It is a doctrine which though not purposely taught it is nevertheless learned or “caught”. It is also something which God hates. In essence it’s the idea that everyone has to live just like “me”. They have to think just like me and act like me. Or else. If such people have enough power they can  exact a heavy toll on others. In fundamental churches you often find them in the background sowing discord among brethren until they have enough support to make their power grab. Absalom, the son of King David was one such man and he ended up causing so much heartache and sorrow.

You will find that I attribute much to the Nicolaitane doctrine. I future posts I will mention it again and again because it is such a pervasive evil. Such a troubling monster when it creeps into peoples lives.

In time I would learn this doctrine well enough that it caused me to suffer much. Caused me create some problems for others, though I can honestly say that I believe with all my heart that I never purposed to draw followers even though there were those who accused me of it. I answered when people called. I did what I believed God wanted and when I thought I had done what God wanted I stopped. I did end up leaving that little church, but I walked away pretty silently except to answer those who called after me and those who accused me behind my back.

But that is another story.

It’s The End of The World as We Know It

A lesson in separation

Proverbs 20:1 Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.

I feel fine.

That’s what I was telling myself when I was really very sick. I just didn’t understand the sickness.

I’m an alcoholic. Alcohol is toxic. I’d been poisoning myself with booze for over a decade and even though I was no longer drinking all that booze had permeated my whole body and soul. Every cell of my body was pickled. My mind was pickled with the sickness. It took at least a year to get to the place where I really felt good. Good in a way I didn’t even recognize anymore.

What I knew was that I couldn’t be around booze anymore. I couldn’t. I’d been so imprisoned by it that even the short time without was such a freedom as unimagined as one could get.

My friends, good people who had for so long been an important part of life even though I’d done a lot to push them away were about to be even more separated from me. I didn’t do it on  purpose, but somehow they just disappeared from my life. Whether it was because I wasn’t going to bars or maybe the cause was that they didn’t want to be around me. I don’t know. I know that for a time, an important time they were gone. When we finally were together again I was free enough of the booze and full of enough “church” that it became a little weird being together.

I approached the pastor of the church one Sunday after the meeting and told him about my alcohol problems and legal issues. I just wanted to know what the bible said about booze. The bible had become something of an inspiration to me.

He gave me some verses to read, but I mainly only remember the ones in the Book of Proverbs about how booze takes control and how one should really avoid, not seek after it, separate from it. I took that to heart and when the time came for me to pay the piper and go to jail for the DUI I had that with me. I’d been sober for a year by then and I was full of God and the Bible. I tried to study with some of the other believers in jail, but even though they were real nice guys, they were different. I was becoming a fundamentalist and they weren’t. The difference was obvious.

One guy who wasn’t a believer told me in a meeting that he’d seen dozens of guys like me and he knew he’d see me again. Its been 17 years and I’ve not yet seen him again.

I’d been separating myself from things that were bad for me. I was discerning things that were not spiritually healthy for me. I didn’t see that in these guys.

Separation. Love not the world, neither things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

Strong words. Bold words. Words not to be taken lightly. But not words to be used to judge others. I was really getting good at using words like these to make judgments about others. I was becoming a bible-thumping, right-wing, ditto-head, fundamentalist Pharisee.

But I was sober. That was good enough. I was being a father. I was trying to learn to be a good Dad and husband. That made me better than I was and better than those who weren’t. All the while pretending not to judge them, I was becoming all that I had once despised.

I was separating and I was becoming isolated from people outside the church. It was the churches fault I don’t think. There were some who warned me, but I didn’t see it because all I could see was that I felt better about myself. That was becoming my god.

The band U2 has a song titled Bad and the Lyrics include these words strung together; dislocation, separation, condemnation, revelation, in temptation, isolation, devastation.

Those words fairly well describe the years of fundamentalism for me. Even though I was freed from the bondage of booze and given strength to overcome my bad choices. My world ended as I knew it. Replaced by something better, but still beggarly…in the end my spiritual life would end up eventually in temptation, isolation and devastion.

But that is another story.

Dirty White Boy

Mark 7:15 There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.

“Hey, Garbage Mouth! Watch your language!”

It was a bit hypocritical for the guy who said it to me to do so, but nevertheless it had enough impact that 23 years later I still remember it. Thing is though, he wasn’t lying. I had a garbage mouth. Every other word out of my mouth was either foul, profane or vulgar. I guess I’d never really thought much about it.

I suppose then that is why the scripture verse above holds meaning for me. So much in life can be overcome with a little work and a little change, but everything can collapse around you in desolation by a word spoken out of place or a deed left undone or worse.

That little Baptist church was in a small town made up of status-conscience, status seeking, somewhat wealthy folks whose idea of fellowship didn’t really include folks from the trailer parks. This church though had a lot of people in it who were not like the townsfolk around them. Of course there were those who struggled with a rich people complex. Trying always to prove how they didn’t think they were better than other, less affluent folks.

I didn’t really notice at first because I was so awed by the experience of being part of a group of people who were “good”. I had a lot to learn. It was a good feeling to sit there with people who I believed were somehow more than me as far as being a christian or even being a decent human being. Something about it all seemed so clean. I was inspired by it all. So I drank it all in, I started reading the bible and praying and I tried to be in church whenever the doors were open.

My life was changing a lot and I was in love with the change. I wanted to share that change with my family and my friends. Strangely though it almost seemed to me that they preferred me the way I had been before. So over time most of my old friends just faded out of my life. I missed them and tried to keep them, but I guess I was trying to be more than they needed me to be or something. My family. I love my family, but I was never very good at showing it. The new Dave was accepted by them and even defended, but I felt kind of estranged when we would all get together for holidays and such.

U2 was right though, separation brings about isolation, temptation and desolation.

I became so enamored with the change in my life that in time it became the yard stick I used to measure not just my life in Christ, but everyone else’s as well. All I wanted was more change. To be more holy, to be more different. To be more separated from the world. I realize now that this had become more important to me than loving God and loving others, more important than the gospel itself. It had become the thing I worshipped.

I wanted to erase the angry, thieving, twisted, profane, dirty little white boy, and draw a new picture. Guess what. You can do it. In many people’s eyes you can be someone else. So much so that when you tell them about your life before they have difficulty believing that you are who you say you were. Of course those who knew you then would have a different take on such a thing. Some will fail to accept that anything has changed, some will embrace the change as inspiring, some will just accept it and some may even hate you or the change for it.

But the things you say and do can and will impact how others view who are and those things which come forth from your mouth are the things for which you will be judged by them and it is that which will defile you in their eyes.

A Symbol of Death and Rebirth

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. Genesis 1:2-3

About now, some might be wondering if this is just another Christian blog trying to indoctrinate people into a religious belief system. That is not my intent. I’m just talking about what happened to me. I’m also not trying to prove a religious belief nor disprove one. I don’t care who’s right or who’s wrong. There’s no fight for me to win. I would like to think that maybe someone might find something in the things I write that will somehow help them along on their journey. I’m hoping that maybe somewhere along the line there’ll be a symbol of the love that Jesus wants me to have one for another and that symbol might help someone escape the bonds of religious bigotry, prejudice and hatred that have so permeated fundamentalism without the fundamentalist even being aware that it’s there.

I’d like to see someone experience a symbolic death and rebirth.

The deacon handed me a blue robe and said, “you can change over there” pointing to a curtained booth. I guess he could tell by my expression that I was a little confused and he said, “This is a Baptist church son. We baptize by immersion here.”

Suddenly I had visions of Hollywood. Old movies with old preachers dunking people under the water in rivers and creeks ponds. Immersion. The word sounds so mechanical. It seems sometimes with fundamental services that the symbol of baptism is just that…mechanical.

That’s how it seemed to me that day. It was just something that I found out God wanted me to do, so I did it. I would learn over the years that it wasn’t such an easy thing for many believers. I would also learn  the symbolism behind water baptism for Baptists as well as other groups.

The symbol it represented as being a likeness to Christ’s death, burial and resurrection and my position as being buried with Him and risen in Him. A symbol of the spiritual circumcision of each newly reborn believer.

There’s also John’s baptism which was a symbol of the Jews repentance toward God.

Some folks believe that baptism is a symbol of the pouring out of God’s Spirit on the believer while still other hold it as a sacrament of salvation.

I have no argument with anyone. For me it was just something I thought God wanted me to do. Anything I learned about it later on only made me religious. Only made me want to prove something to those who disagreed with “the truth”.

So there I was standing in a pool of chest high water behind the stage of the church with a man whom I’d never met and I was supposed to trust him to thrust me under the water and then raise me back up again. I did. Which is surprising since I really didn’t trust anybody to do anything they said they would. As we stood there in the pool, water dripping down my face, I could hear people shouting “amen” and the preacher was saying something which I cannot remember. Suddenly it seemed like I was part of something bigger than me. I felt kind of small and yet content and happy.

As I stood in my curtained cubicle toweling dry and changing back into my clothes I was still trying to catch up with the events of the day and how I got here. I drove home alone and for the first time in my life I felt good about myself for doing something right. At least something I felt was right. I felt a commitment to keep doing it too. I wanted to go to church. I wanted to be part of something more than me. I didn’t think about reading the bible or learning scripture, or anything one might consider religious. It seemed like I had found something that I had been missing my whole life.

I didn’t know it yet, but my life was about to become something completely different than it had ever been. However, that is another story.

This is an independent, fundamental, sin hating, devil fighting, missions minded, soul winning, King James Bible believing, old-fashioned, Baptist Church

 

I was sitting in a church and it wasn’t for a wedding. Lost pretty much describes how I felt. Each person I had met on the way in had given me a warm handshake, a greeting, and a smile, but still…it was church. I sat down in one of the hard wooden pews and tried not to look around too much.

Why was I here? Oh yeah, for my daughter, okay.

Try not to laugh, but I didn’t know there was a Sunday School before church for adults. There I sat in a building with a bunch of Christians trying to seem like I was supposed to be there. I looked around a little and saw people with bibles everywhere. Bible-thumpers. Oh God.

Somebody started teaching a bible study and kept telling folks to turn from one scripture to another. By the time I came close to finding one he would be on a different one. I had no clue where 1 John or Malachi or even Genesis were in the hard, brown, pew-bible I was holding in my fingers and I was getting a little embarrassed at my feeble attempts to find them.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and a soft voice told me, “It’s okay, just listen.” I felt a little calmer than before. Suddenly the bible study was over and children appeared from a stairwell filing up and over to the small stage. A young woman directed them to their places and then they began to recite a bible verse.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

I kept my eyes on my beautiful little girl as she stood so calmly before all the people and so seriously recited the words…and my heart began to break, my eyes filled with tears, from somewhere came a Kleenex. Then it was over and I watched my girl go back down the stairs.

The verse hit me so hard that I wanted to run and shout, but I sat still, with my head down so that no one could see my tears. No one could see the joy mixed with the shame of so many years spent causing heartache. All gone now. I could begin again. I could be someone different and I felt somehow stronger and yet weaker.

Then there was piano music and people shaking hands and I thought it was time to go, but soon learned it had only just begun. Now it was time for church and there was a guest preacher, whose name I do not remember. I do remember his message because I thought sure that someone had told him my life-story and that I was in the building.

When it was almost all over the preacher asked folks to bow their heads and then began to ask people to raise their hands if they needed prayer, or if they knew for sure they’d go to heaven when they died or if they had trusted Christ.

I raised my hand for prayer and heard him say he’d seen my hand and he prayed.

I’d remembered that radio message and I knew I had trusted Jesus and I knew that things had been happening in my life that I couldn’t explain. So I didn’t raise my hand for that, but then he said something I didn’t know. I did not know that a person should be baptized after trusting Christ. The radio message had not mentioned that so when he asked if anyone needed to be baptized I figured that was me and I raised my hand and heard an “I see that hand. Thank you.”

So then he asked the folks who had raised their hands to come to the front. I slid out of my spot and walked forward. I’d been to my daughter’s baptism in the Lutheran church when she was a baby, no problem I could handle that…

I didn’t know about Baptist churches.

But that is another story.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s off to church I go!

 

When last we spoke I’d just won my first battle against an enemy I’d never known was mine. I always thought he was more interested in people who were really evil. I hadn’t considered that it was people who believed in God that were the real reason the devil was kept so busy.

He was so busy trying to screw with them  that he didn’t have much time for folks who were already on his side.

Time for me to fess up here. I hadn’t been the best example of a good, upstanding citizen before my experience with believing in God. I’d been pretty rotten to tell the truth and it was really all I knew.

I am to this day an alcoholic though I have not drank any alcohol since 1995. I suppose I should share that with you. It’s easy to judge people by the things they do or have done in the past. It’s much harder to take a moment and try walking in their shoes, examining their lives and maybe seeing that things are different for them.

For me, it was the same. I was raised in a family in which both of my parents drank too much. Mom quit in 1982, but dad drank till his dying day though for a short time in the 90s he quit and was really happy. He was a different man in that short time. So much easier to be around and get along with than when he was drinking, but sadly those days were short lived.

I started drinking in high school and it wasn’t long till I began developing a problem. You see, I didn’t see a problem with it since everyone that was part of my life drank booze and usually drank too much. In fact, I often said in the years which followed that I didn’t really trust people who didn’t drink. It was just strange to me that someone wouldn’t drink alcohol.

That day on the mountain when I believed God started changing things for me. I started seeing that I needed to stop drinking. I needed to start doing right by my family. It was strange, but sometimes when I would start to do something that I shouldn’t I would hear what people call a conscience telling me it was wrong. See, the thing is, I’d never had much of conscience before. Now I had this sort of quiet voice inside that would just let me know I wasn’t doing right. I didn’t even know why it wasn’t right.

I was driving to my brother-in-law’s house to work on my van one day shortly after my “conversion” and decided to get a case of beer because working on cars and drinking beer just go together. As I pulled into the beer joint I felt the strongest urge yet to  not do this. I just felt I couldn’t do this anymore. So I said to myself that, “this is the last time. After today I’m gonna stop drinking.”

That drinking binge lasted well into the early morning and resulted in my second DUI. As you probably know, DUIs bring a lot of legal problems and other problems. My life was about to get really hard.

The next day I opened the cooler in my van and there was still cold beer from the night before inside. I pulled it out and walked to my neighbor’s house and asked him to take it which he did. I never drank again after that day.

That summer a church bus had been going through the neighborhood taking children to a little Baptist church in a small town not far away. My oldest daughter had been riding that bus which was great because it gave me some time on Sunday morning to not have to take care of her. That’s how I felt about it. Told you I wasn’t nice. But I did want to fix it.

One Saturday the church people came by and told me that my daughter was going to be doing something on stage with other kids the following Sunday. They invited me to come see and so I said I would. I thought that maybe this would be something that would help me show my wife and kids that I cared about them. There was also some pride involved knowing my little five year old girl was doing something in front of others.

Keep in mind that I hadn’t actually told anyone about my day on the mountain believing in God. Why would I? Who would care and why would it be anyone else’s business? I wasn’t afraid or anything, I just never really thought it important.

I woke up Sunday morning and got around and headed off to church. It was a small church hidden off in a small corner of town, but it was pretty as a picture. I parked the car and walked slowly to the door. I’d never been to church before. I didn’t like church because of people I’d known growing up and because of some scandals that had been on television. I didn’t want anything to do with church, but I wanted to be part of my families life and right then there was a little blonde girl waiting for her daddy to come to church. For probably the first time in her young life…I did not let her down.

But that is another story.

Now The Devil Hates Me

 

Does the Devil exist? If so, what’s his freaking problem? lol. Not really funny, but sometimes ya just gotta laugh.

You’ve probably heard it said that we all have our demons. Supposedly these are those things in our lives that we allow to hold us back from being all that we could be. Sometimes those demons can also be the things that drive us to greatness.

I suppose that we could allow the cherubs and angels some room here to be our guardian spirits. The bible says the Devil, the Anointed Cherub drew away a third of the angels in heaven to follow after him. So that leaves two-thirds to guard the rest of us. That sounds like good news.

Well, Angels and Demons weren’t the point of this post so I should move along.

Before my experience hearing about and believing in what God had done for me and everyone else through His son Jesus I really didn’t have much of a problem with the Devil.

I didn’t really think much about him and I suppose that’s probably what he wanted. To walk around behind me watching my life fall apart and laughing, but within a few minutes after believing the good news about Jesus I received my first real experience with the Enemy who had been behind so much of the troubles in my life.

His first reaction to me believing in God’s grace? Doubt. Almost immediately it was like an inaudible voice whispering in my ear. “You didn’t really believe that”, it said. “You don’t really believe that God would do something like that for a loser like you, do you?”

Just then the van I was driving reached the top of Jack’s Mountain outside Belleville, Pa. and I saw something there that changed forever my thoughts about this world. A large white cross mounted to an alter. I‘d seen it many times before as I drove that road almost daily, but now it drew me in like a magnet to steel. I stopped the van, got out and just looked at that cross. I’d never really noticed it much. It was just passing scenery, but today all if a sudden it was different. It symbolized something for me.

I had tasted a spiritual battle between someone who had been invisible, but a part of my life for so long and Someone who had been searching and waiting for me to come to Him. It was incredible. The goosebumps, the hairs standing up on my skin, the moment when the Darkness fled from me as I looked upon that symbol of salvation. A symbol of all that could be good and all that which the Dark had done to try and stop the Light from coming into the hearts of men. Into my heart.

At that moment I knew the Devil was real, more real that I would have thought possible all those years listening to heavy-metal 80s hair bands proclaiming their obedience to this dark creature that wanted to make me doubt. He wasn’t just a marketing gimmick.

I also realized that he probably wasn’t happy with me. I didn’t really care because something had happened to me that day. Something I didn’t understand and didn’t know what to do about, but something which would soon begin altering my world without me even trying.

Of course the Devil wasn’t done, still isn’t.

But that is another story.