Legalism: Logic Found When Skinny-Dipping

I was supposed to write another chapter for the book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I wrote this following essay. It is actually an adaptation of something that I had previously posted here. It is not as complete a chapter as Donald Miller would have written but he still thinks it’s pretty cool. He wants to include it in the revised addition.

Christian legalism is one of those weird things. Everyone has their own idea of what it looks like. At one time I thought it looked a lot like a policeman. Now I think it looks a lot more like a normal person. A “non-policeman.” I think it looks like a really generic looking guy. Maybe like Nicholas Cage. He’d get lost in crowd if he weren’t so terribly famous.
Or maybe it would look a lot more like me.
Not that I am saying that I am generic looking, and maybe I am, but the point is to say that I tend to be fairly legalistic and I haven’t always known about it. Let me explain:
When I was young I hung out a lot with a kid who looked a lot like Sideshow Bob. We were best friends for years. He would spend the night at my house quite a lot. One night on such an occasion we were told to go to bed and we walked into the bathroom to brush our teeth. We looked at each other, and then we walked out. In that moment we had communicated, by just looking at one another, that we did not want to brush our teeth. It was a waste of time to brush so we were simply going to go to bed. We were pretty proud of ourselves in that moment. We felt like we were such great friends that we had become telepathic, but we were not actually telepathic. We were legalistic kids. To the modern mind not brushing ones teeth sounds more anarchist than legalistic but I have to insist – we were legalistic kids.
It was the combination of summer camp and youth group that did it to us. I loved summer camp and youth group, honestly I did, but I think it was at these places that I got something terribly wrong and so did my Sideshow Bob friend. What I mean is, we learned some incredible truths about God but it seems we also picked up some extra baggage along the way. We started learning some rules in which we were told we should live by. See, we saw people who loved God, cool people, college-age people who we wanted to be like. Those people told us some things about what we should be doing. The things they told us were good things, like going to church, and reading our Bibles. They also told us not to do bad things like watch bad movies and swear. I honestly believe that the things I learned at summer camp and youth group were some of the best things I have learned. I learned a lot of good things beside what to do and what not to so. But something got tweaked. Something that was true became somewhat not so true.
Here are the things that got tweaked that maybe shouldn’t have. First: People told me how often I should go to church. As a kid I had been going to church each every Sunday for a while so I felt fairly accomplished in my young faith, as if I had done something great. It also reinforced my belief that people who did not go to church we not quite as good as me.
And yet another thing that I was told was how much of the Bible I should be reading daily. Most people told me I was to read the Bible for a certain amount of time ranging from somewhere between 15 minutes to a half an hour. Other people told me it was a certain amount of the Bible. A chapter from the Old Testament, a chapter from the New Testament, and another chapter from wherever as long as it was in the Bible. This did not make me feel very accomplished in my faith. I couldn’t seem to do it. Sure I would try to read as much as people told me to but I always failed. I felt bad and honestly, though I wouldn’t have admitted it, I felt like God loved me less.
So, you see what I mean. Tweaked.

Sideshow and me eventually learned the joys of cussing each other out and stuff. But it isn’t really how you’d picture it. See, we were both remembered that one of the bad things was swearing, but escaping from that truth was just pure bliss. A different group of Christian, college-age, guys who we thought were cool started to cuss at each other as a joke. Since joke cussing is a joke and not actually cussing then we decided it was alright to do. However, I remember not feeling that it was alright and wondering when God would start to throw things at me.
But we would cuss anyway and the way we would cuss was funny. My legalistic Sideshow Bob friend and I would walk home from school cussing each other out stringing swear word together so that they didn’t make much sense. This would make us laugh like hyenas. Sideshow would laugh so hard at me when I cussed that he wouldn’t even be able to stand up. I would try and keep a straight face while forming my mouth around words I wasn’t used to saying. The words would come out as nonsense and Sideshow would pee his pants. I always admired him for that. I admired that he laughed harder than me. We would swear like this so often that I got to the point where I would fake laugh a bit just to keep the game going because, it feels good to make someone laugh so hard that they just pee everywhere. I’m pretty sure nothing else is better for one’s confidence levels.

I don’t think I heard about legalism much when I was growing up. I don’t think it was talked about really. Not as a sin that people struggle with anyway. My friend Jordon Presley used to tell me that it bothered him when pastors confessed insignificant things from the stage while they were preaching. I had no idea what he was talking about. He had to explain.
“If they are going to confess something it should be legitimate.” Jordon would say, but he would say it nicely and kind of laugh as he said it. “You can’t tell people that everybody sins and then illustrate it by confessing that you sometimes break the speed limit. I’m sorry Pastor, but I know that you have done worse things than that.” Jordon’s last name is not actually Presley. Jordon got told he looked like Elvis quite often. Mostly it happened on airplanes. I always thought that was strange because Jordon is Korean and I don’t think Elvis was. Still, I like to call Jordon by the last name Presley. Also, I can never pronounce his real last name.
I agreed with Jordon that people should be real enough to share their mistakes. People should be able to be real in church. I think it would be fairly beautiful if someone stood up in church a told everyone who was there that they were legalistic. Like they were confessing or something. They would say that they had been moral and good and followed all the biblical codes and ethics and laws. They would say that they had been bent on doing things right. They had done it right for so long that they felt like they were able to do it on their own. But they only felt that way for a while. The person who had stood up would say that once they had gotten to the height of this legalism, they realized that they had been riding on pride, superficiality, the neglect of mercy, and ignorance of the grace of God to get there. And that person would start to cry a little and tell everybody that they couldn’t actually do it. They would tell everybody through their sobs that they had found they needed God and that they couldn’t do it on their own. They could not be good enough. I think if that happened it would be fairly beautiful.
But that doesn’t really happen. People don’t often tell other people that they are legalistic even though the Bible says we are. Maybe it’s because nobody really wants to be a Pharisee because Pharisees are bad guys in the Bible. Jesus always would call them robbers and vipers and other names that most Christians don’t want to be called, especially by Jesus. I think that’s why you don’t see people standing up on the stage at church and confessing that they are legalistic. It’s because they don’t want to be like the Pharisees.

A writer I like named Philip Yancey and says that he identifies with the Pharisees. He says he identifies with them more than any other people group from the gospels. He wonders if the message of Jesus would have meant anything to him if he had lived back then as a Pharisee. Philip Yancey says that the legalists who lived when Jesus did found Jesus shocking and revolting. He says the friends of Jesus were the social outcasts and not the more pious types. I like that Philip Yancey says that he identifies with the people group who are known for being the Bible’s legalists.
In a class that Philip Yancey was teaching they started talking about how the church had created a barrier that made people that weren’t Christians feel uncomfortable. But the class discussion went in a new direction as people who had survived Christian colleges and fundamentalist churches began to swap war stories. Philip Yancey tells about he shared about his own experiences at Christian college. The college banned such things as beards, mustaches, and hair below the ears of the male students – though each day the students walked past a large painting of college’s founder and apparently the college founder was breaking all three of the rules.
Philip Yancey says that everybody was laughing and having a good time and all except one guy. Apparently, this one guy was pretty obviously upset, getting red and fidgeting and stuff. “I feel like walking out of this place,” the angry guy finally said. “You criticize others for being Pharisees. I’ll tell you who the real Pharisees are. They’re you.” That when he pointed at Philip Yancey. “You find a group to look down on,” the guy went on to say, “and you talk about them behind their backs. That’s what a Pharisee does. You’re all Pharisees.”
I wonder if Philip Yancey started identifies with the Pharisees because the angry guy pointed at him called him a Pharisee or if he identified with them before that. Philip Yancey says that he felt embarrassed. He also says that Jesus hung out with sinners and not legalistic people. Jesus made sinners comfortable and legalists uncomfortable. Maybe the prostitutes, tax collectors, and other people who got called sinners, maybe they liked Jesus so much because they understood that they were wrong and that God’s forgiveness looked pretty appealing. And maybe the Pharisees felt threatened by Jesus because they were trying so hard to be good that they actually lost sight of the reason to be good. Instead they became proud and self-righteous, leaving nothing left for grace. This is what I had done when I was growing up. Of course I never said it that way, and perhaps I did not even understand I was doing it. But I was trying so hard to do it right. I tried so hard to do all the right things and to do nothing wrong that I started to believe that it was up to me. God’s love became something that I had to earn and I didn’t want to be around him if I couldn’t earn it.

I used to really admire the legalism of my Sideshow Bob friend. I admired it and I hated it. I hated it when he was driving. If the speed limit was 20 mph, he went just a hair under, so not to break the law. I mean he was 16 years old. He was supposed to be getting speeding tickets until they revoked his license. But I also appreciated Legalistic Sideshow Bob and his legalism because he was doing what he thought was right no matter what. He was intensely doing something he believed and it did not matter what people thought about him. Sill, I think it is beautiful.
When we were in high school four of us guys went out to the lake one night. My legalistic Sideshow Bob friend, me, and two other guys who weren’t legalistic, all went. It must have been about two o’clock in the morning and we were jumping off the dock, naked, into what was really more of a pond than a lake, except my legalistic buddy didn’t jump in. For one thing he couldn’t swim but usually he splashed around in the shallows. I remember being so confused and then I saw that he was crying. Crying usually stops such fun being that crying means that someone probably stepped on a broken beer bottle or something.
“I hate this,” said my legalistic friend through his tears. “I hate that I have to – that when we try and – I hate . . .” he couldn’t even say it. Honestly, I had no idea what he was talking about, but one of the more sensitive guys who was there went over and put his hand on my crying Sideshow Bob’s shoulder. Eventually I understood it. As we left my legalistic friend explained to us, the best he could, because he was still choked up, that he was pretty much hating himself at that moment because we were all having such a good time and he was afraid that his legalism was going to ruin it for us. See, the park we were in was closed after sunset, so we really weren’t allowed to be there and it was just destroying my buddy because he was there and, it was after sunset. We were breaking the rules.
I don’t think I will ever forget that seeing my friend crying like that. He tried to go against his legalistic nature and it just destroyed him. The guy couldn’t have fun the rest of the night.

Legalistic Sideshow Bob and I are still great friends but he isn’t legalist anymore and come to think of it he doesn’t look like Sideshow Bob anymore either. I am grateful for his sake. Being legalistic is bad and so is looking like Sideshow Bob. I’m not nearly as legalistic either. Now, we are both getting to taste freedom and grace and it is beautiful. My friend is an even more amazing guy because of this new existence he has found. Simply everybody wants to be friends with this guy. I’m kind the same. But something in me misses the legalism. I am the most relaxed about the rules as I have ever been. I don’t walk out of my way to use the crosswalk and I know that God loves me even if I don’t read my Bible every day. But somehow I look back at who my legalistic friend I were and I see a savage desire to do what is right. It’s that desire that is attractive to me. Sometime I wonder if I have lost that desire in my pursuit of grace. Sure, I want to do good and to be good, I want it really quite badly, but “I want to really bad” just isn’t driving me like legalism drove me and my friend earlier in life. My own past legalism and even my present legalism isn’t impressive to me and I am sure that my friends past legalism isn’t attractive to himself but I am just attracted to the degree of desire. If I could just have that desire but somehow not have legalism then I wouldn’t have to be sickened by my own selfishness so often.
The interesting thing about my not-legalistic-doesn’t-look-like-Sideshow-Bob friend as opposed to me is he does even better at “doing good” now that he is not legalistic. In his freedom, he is awesome at loving people and it is because of a new “savage desire.” Somewhere along the line, he got this crazy desire to love and it comes to him naturally. This new desire that my friend has gained daunts me. It challenges me to love people like he does but I am afraid to try, I am afraid to fail, I am afraid of what people might think. I am stuck not wanting to challenge myself, always defending myself with the argument that if I challenge myself I’ll just fall back into that legalism. Legalism isn’t a concrete idea that is popular to subscribe to or that is easily identified. It’ll sneak up on you. Maybe that’s because people don’t spend a lot of time talking about it. It might be the sinful thing that is talked about less than adultery and pornography. But I think I can avoid it.
God is pretty clear that he loves me not because I try and get it right. He loves me because he created me for love. His love is right here among us. I don’t know what to do with a love like that.

This I Believe

I was assigned to write a "this I believe" statement. I had a hard time with the assignment but once I remembered my brother and how much cooler he is than me I had a hard time keeping it within the 500 word limit.

I believe that my brother is cooler than me. And I believe that he always will be.

It’s odd because my brother is younger than me. He always has been and he always will be. And my brother is shorter than me too. Again, he always has been and we are both pretty sure he always will be. Also, my brother is going bald faster than me. I know that really anything could happen from this point onward but at the rate we’re going, my brother will end up as Patrick Stewart and I’ll look more like a young Bruce Willis.

That said one may find themselves asking why it is I believe my brother is cooler than me. It’s a legitimate question. I have to reply by saying that it took more than a single moment of enlightenment to figure out how much cooler my brother is than myself.

During my first few years of college, I started to tell people that if they liked me at all they would love my brother. Honestly, I don’t know why I first said it but it became a kind of catch phrase for me. My friends must have thought it somewhat peculiar, or perhaps they just thought I was attempting to be clever – and maybe I was. But more often than not I found myself attempting to explaining the statement, maybe not so much because of my friend’s curiosity as me wanting to just tell someone about how much cooler my brother is than me.

“My brother runs faster than me, draws better than me, plays guitar better than me, and grows a beard far better than me,” I would begin just to name a few. I’d tell them about my brother’s beard, how it grew to his chest before he shaved it into the biggest Fu Manchu you’d ever seen. I might tell them about how he nearly always answers me by saying “perhaps”, mimicking BBC character Hercules Perot and how that would inevitably cause me to sing a song by Cake (“Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps”). I’d tell them about how he owns a batman costume and then about how he plans to work as doctor in Africa. I’d tell them that he runs marathons for fun, and that he has climbed all these mountains, and that he has swam across the deepest bluest seas, and walked on the moon, and . . . . And after I had said all that I would realize that I had gotten getting carried away with myself.

Again, I believe that my brother is cooler than me and that he always will be. I may have believed it as a joke at first: to embarrass him? Perhaps. But I have to say, that I believe it now because it is true. I began tell people about my brother’s coolness – I saw the evidence – and I was convinced. He may not be taller and he may not have as much hair but he can still be cooler than his older brother.

N. T. & Church

This past May I wrote and posted a few entries about the church. Recently, I have been reading “Simply Christian,” a book by N. T. Wright, and yeah, he wrote about the church too – surprisingly enough. I really thought what he wrote was fairly brilliant and much better than what I wrote. It’s just so fantastic that I thought I would share it.

“I use the word ‘church’ here with a somewhat heavy heart. I know that for many of my readers that very word will carry the overtones of large, dark buildings, pompous religious pronouncements, false solemnity, and rank hypocrisy. But there is not easy alternative. I, too, feel the weight of that negative image. I battle with it professionally all the time.

“But there is another side to it, a side which shows all the signs of the wind and fire . . . . For many, ‘church’ means just the opposite of that negative image. It’s a place of welcome and laughter, of healing and hope, of friends and family and justice and new life. It’s where the homeless drop in for a bowl of soup and the elderly stop by for a chat. It’s where one group is working to help drug addicts and another is campaigning for global justice. It’s where you’ll find people learning to pray, coming to faith, struggling with temptation, finding new purpose, and getting in touch with a new power to carry that purpose out. It’s where people bring their own small faith and discover, in getting together with others to worship the one true God, that the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. No church is like this all the time. But a remarkable number of churches are partly like that for quite a lot of the time.

“Nor must we forget that it was the church in South Africa which worked and prayed and suffered and struggled so that, when a major change happened and apartheid was overthrown and a new freedom came to that land, it came without the massive bloodshed we were all expecting. It was the church which stayed alive at the heart of the old Communist eastern Europe, and which at the end, with processions of candles and crosses, made it clear that enough and enough. It is the church which, despite all its follies and failings, is there when it counts in hospitals, schools, prisons, and many other places. I would rather rehabilitate the word ‘church’ than beat about the bush with long-winded phrases like ‘the family of God’s people’ or ‘all those who believe in and follow Jesus’ or ‘the company of those who, in the power of the Spirit, are bringing God’s new creation to birth.’ But I mean all those things when I say ‘church.’”

Real, Live, Spaceships

W. W. N. T. D.

I’ve been reading the book Simply Christian by N.T. Wright. While it would be fairly great to really dig into a book by N.T. Wright, I just wanted to point out a sentence or two for the moment. I was out at a coffee place last night when I read this. I have to say I laughed out loud, which is a bit unusual when reading Wright. Maybe not. Maybe some would say ol’ N.T. is hilarious enough to host a talk show.

But this is what I read: “Watching Richter play the piano or Tiger Woods hit a golf ball doesn’t inspire me to go out and copy them. It makes me realize that I can’t come close and never will.”

I don’t know who Richter is but it really doesn’t matter too much when you put it in the context that our friend Mr. Wright is talking about here. He’s talking about how disheartened a person could get by observing the example of Jesus. Jesus demonstrated what a life of complete love and devotion to God and to other people would look like, but N.T. Wright makes the point of saying that our primary need as a part of humanity is not to see this exemplary life so that we could try and copy it. It’s about “the finding, the saving, the giving of new life – in Jesus.”

So, there is a certain comfort in knowing that “I can’t come close and never will.” But I am not about to start a bracelet campaign or anything like that . . . I. C. C. C. A. N. W. W. W. .J. D.

Duplex

I have just moved. Last month actually. I moved from a one hundred year old house in Kansas City which I shared with four other people to the upstairs of a duplex in small town Washington state – Ellensburg, where I went to college. The duplex I moved into was built in the fifties or something like that. It appears to have the original carpet. It has carpet in the kitchen too but thankfully not in the bathroom. It has those huge windows that stretch from floor to ceiling in the living room. Every afternoon the sun pours in making everything very hot. I don’t mind though. I like to stand in front of these huge windows, often with a drink in hand, my whole self plainly visible to anyone who may pass by. When I hold a drink in my hand I feel like I am a very powerful person. I don’t know why but when I do this I like to pretend I am a CEO of a hugely successful company surveying his empire or that I am the commander of a large fleet of ships, maybe they are spaceships, I don’t know but I can observe my battalion from where I stand on the bridge. This is my domain. This is my new house . . . duplex I mean.

Thoughts About The Church: Post 4

I am finding that the solution is to find Jesus in his many disguises as strangers, as the poor, the hungry, the prisoners, the sick, the enslaved and the marginalized of the world.

“I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.” (Matthew 25:45 The Message)

(Chapters 12 and 13 of Philip Yancey’s book, “The Jesus I Never Knew” inspired these last few posts. Most of these thoughts are echoes of what he wrote there.)

Thoughts About The Church: Post 3

In times of presidential campaigning, such as now, I often fall for a certain candidate. I find myself asking questions such as; “Which candidate is ‘God’s man’ for the White House?” Yancey replies; “I have difficulty imagining [God] pondering whether Tiberius, Octavious, or Julius Caesar was ‘God’s man’ for the empire. The politics of Rome were virtually irrelevant to the kingdom of God.”

Thoughts About The Church: Post 2

Why are the words “evangelical” and “religious right” interchangeable? Why is “evangelical” defined as “someone who supports family values and opposed homosexual rights and abortion”? These are questions that Yancey poses in a book he wrote over ten years ago called, “The Jesus I Never Knew”. It is disconcerting to me that one can ask these questions ten years ago and that they are still pertinent today. The gospel of Jesus did not look like this. I guess I just don't think that the church (myself included) should be known for simply passing laws to enforce morality. I acknowledge that passing laws is good and necessary and anarchy is bad and all - it’s just that there has to be a better way. I have to believe it is better that we the church devote ourselves to something that actually solves the problem of the human condition instead of simply making that condition illegal. “We must continually ask ourselves: Is our first aim to change our government or to see lives in and out of government changed for Christ?” (Yancey)

Thoughts About The Church: Post 1

Over the next few days I intend to post several short writing that were inspired by Derek Webb, the documentary Jesus Camp, and Philip Yancey. The following is the first of those posts.

So I purchased the newest Derek Webb album recently. Nothing stirs me up about the state of the Church in America like Derek Webb. Sometimes when I look around at the Church, Christ’s bride, I want to avert my eyes. I watched the documentary Jesus Camp recently and you know, the church featured in Lees Summit, MO (a suburb of Kansas City, where I live) wasn’t really so disturbing to me when compared to the clips of Ted Haggard. I don’t think it would have even mattered if the scandal involving Haggard had been uncovered or not, red flags went up for me when he spoke.

It was Jesus’ intent to depart, to ascend, from the beginning in order to carry on his work in the bodies of his disciples and the body of his church, which is the new body of Christ. As St. Augustine said, “You ascended from before our eyes, and we turned back grieving, only to find you in our hears.” It is beautiful language that conveys the truth of the church being where Christ lives. It is God’s plan to extend the healing, grace, the message of God’s love, that Christ brought to a few, through the church. But Philip Yancey makes a profound observation, “Living two millennia after the disciples, I look back and marvel at how little difference the church has made in such a world.” Yancey also comments on how he finds it much easier to believe that Christ incarnated as God into Jesus of Nazareth than in the people who attend American churches.

I see such an emphasis on politics in the evangelical church. I hear voices like Ted Haggard who say, “If the Evangelicals vote, they determine the election” (from “Jesus Camp). Yancey says it better than I can; “Political movements risk pulling onto themselves the mantel of power that smothers love. From Jesus I learned that, whatever activism I get involved in, it must not drive out love and humility, not otherwise I betray the kingdom of heaven.” The truth of this statement resonates in my heart. As Right and Left struggle to gain power, love is lost. The power of God’s kingdom is much more like a force that goes unnoticed. It works from within.

I'm sorry Dr. Dobson

Yesterday, I received the weekly newsletter that I subscribe to from Sojourners in my inbox. The title was Dr. Dobson, Let’s Have a Real Debate Instantly, my interests were stirred. I am sorry to say that they were stirred but they were nonetheless. It’s just that I have learned some things about Dr. James Dobson in the last year or so that caused me to be a bit leary or aprehensive of him, so I was interested in this curious title. See I grew up with Dobson and the ever-present Focus on the Family (his organization) in my own family probably sense the womb. He was the guy on the radio whose show always seemed to be on, no matter when we were driving. It was either Dobson or oldies when in the car. Also, my parents got his newsletters, his magazine, Focus on the Family radio theater and Focus on the Family movies. I recall all of it being great stuff and believing Dr. Dobson to be one of the most valued Evangelical leaders of this day in age. First Billy Graham, then Dr. James Dobson. If one of those guys died I knew we would be in trouble. But I moved out of my Focus on the Family saturated home and I started to see Dobson’s face show up in places I wasn’t as familiar with. Political places. I started to hear his name slandered by gay people I met and democrats in the media. And I wasn’t all that surprised that he was being slandered either. I wouldn’t be very happy with Dr. Dobson if I was gay or if I were democrat for that matter. I guess I started to disagree with Dobson a bit too, probably about the time I started to learn more about what “Right Wing Evangelical” meant. So, upon reading his name in a liberal Christian publication I became quite curious and I am I am sorry to say that I was courious in a gossipy way. I feel badly about it because I knew I was about to find some ammunition that I could use against the man who was the background music to much of my evangelical childhood and for some reason. I guess felt like I needed some.

The Sojourners newsletter begins with a quote about impeaching our president, in typical Sojourners fashion, then proceeds with the story I was eager to read; “Last week, James Dobson and a number of other Religious Right leaders wrote a letter to the National Association of Evangelicals, claiming that work on climate change was a distraction from ‘the great moral issues of our time.’” And terrible of me though it was, I found there my own justification to slander Dr. Dobson.

I read on to find that Jim Wallis, who is the Sojourners guy, Brian McLaren, another guy who write for Sojourners quite a bit, and a bunch of others are inviting Dobson to debate the question, “What are the great moral issues of out time for evangelical Christians?” This debate sounded pretty good to me as I read it for the first time, but the shenanigans of my brain did not last much longer. I began to wonder why I was encouraged to find that Liberal Evangelicals are now strong enough to engage the Religious Right? I began to wonder, “Oh my God, what is happening?” I began to see this debate as a further struggle for more power or a struggle to be seen as more powerful in this culture in order to make more progress for whichever cause it is that the side is fighting for. But what good is more power? Do we really think God views one side as more powerful than the other? This is nothing but divisiveness extending itself further into Evangelicalism.

I have been reading a book, slowly, that I have read before, and as a result it has been featured a few other times in this “Grace to Upend” blog. It’s a book by Donald Miller called “Searching For God Knows What”. I want to include a few passages from that book that spoke directly to me about this issue.

“Paul loved the people he had previously hated; he began to take the message of forgiveness to Jews and to Gentiles, to male and to female, to pagans and prostitutes. At no point does he waste his time lobbying government for a moral agenda. Nobody in Scripture who knew Jesus wasted their time with any of this; they built the church, they loved people.”

“Morality in this way, can be a circus act, giving a person a feeling of superiority.”

“I think most Christians . . . want to love people and obey God but feel they have to wage a culture war. But this isn’t the case at all. Remember, we are not elbowing for power in the lifeboat.”

I spoke with my Dad on the phone last night. My Dad is a fairly brilliant man, so I thought I would talk to him a bit about this complicated issue. He told me right away who he agreed with; not Dobson and not Sojourners, but he agreed with Donald Miller. He also told that he admires James Dobson for some of the tremendous work he has done but when it comes to Dobson’s political agenda I guess my Dad would call him a bit of a clanging gong. I told my Dad I was angry at the whole situation and he me that I should not judge Dobson for his political agenda or judge Wallis and the rest of Sojourners for that matter. It makes sense really. As a judge of Dobson or of Wallis I accomplish nothing. I ended being just like them in that I am choosing sides. Apparently my Dad used to keep up with the Christian politics and used to act on some strong opinions, but he doesn’t anymore and hasn’t done so for a while. He doesn’t know the reason he stopped, he just stopped doing it and he tries to do what our friend Donald Miller talks about, build the church, love people. The rest is just noise.

Like I said my Dad is pretty brilliant. Maybe wise is a better choice of words. Either way, I think I am going to align myself with my Dad’s thinking on this one. I am going to listen to Miller as he points to Scripture and asks me what I find in the person of Jesus. Love Dr. Dobson, love Sojourners, build the church, love people.

The search again

Firstly, I fail. It’s pretty simple really. I ended one of my more recent posts like this: “Here’s to future posts.” I wrote it with the hopes of posting more often. That was November 20th and I have yet to really post anything at all really. I guess there is just too much pressure and thus I am left postless. That is really about all I have to say about that. I just wanted to remove the expectation of posts occurring here often.

I have read Searching For God Knows What before. It’s not hard reading. No offence Mr. Donald Miller but what you write is not hard to read. I know some authors put a lot of effort into making their writing impossible to comprehend by blanketing it in difficult language and grammar. I understand that there is some pride in doing so. It is obvious that one is more intelligent than another when said “Another” has to read “One’s” sentences several time before being able to understand what the heck they are trying to get across. That being said maybe my writing could cause me to be classified as intelligent, because yeah, my sentences don’t always make sense.

Regardless, I am reading the book again because, difficult writing or not, there are great portions of this book that I can’t seem to wrap my soul around. Soul and not brain. I got my brain around it just fine when I read the book the first time but I never actually acted it out. Let me share a portion to explain:

“I know there are people who have actually gone from misery to happiness, but they didn’t do it by walking through three steps; they did it because they had a certain set of parents and heard a certain song and knew somebody who had a certain experience and saw some movie, read some book, had something happen to them like a car wreck or a trip to Seattle. Then they called on God, and a week later read something in a magazine or met a girl in Wichita, and when all this happened they had an epiphany, and somebody may have helped them fulfill what this epiphany made them feel, and several years later they rationalized this mystic experience with three steps, then they told the three steps to us in a book. I’m not saying they weren’t trying to be helpful; I bring this up only because life is complex, and the idea that you can break it down or fix it in a few steps is rather silly.
“The truth is there are a million steps, and we don’t even know what the steps are, and worse, at any given moment we may not be willing or even able to take them; and still worse, they are different for you and me and they are always changing. I have come to believe the sooner we find this truth beautiful, the sooner we will fall in love with the God who keeps shaking thing up, keeps changing the path, keeps rocking the boat to test our faith in Him, teaching us to not rely on easy answers, bullet points, magic mantras, or genies in lamps, but rather in His guidance, His existence, His mercy, and His Love.” (from pages 14-15)

My friend Don is saying that life isn’t a formula and it’s not a storybook and it is not a Google search. Sure, I understand that in my head, but I can’t seem to stop living life like I can control God.