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.