This week the Boy Scouts of America voted to no longer exclude Scouts from their ranks “on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.”

In the circles of Christianity that I often frequent, the defining mantra for interaction with the LGBT community is “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”

We talk of how sex outside of marriage violates God’s will as revealed in the Bible, and how God intends marriage to be “one man, one woman, for life.” We are quick to emphasize that we are sinners too, no different from gay people. We often remind each other that while homosexual activity is sinful according to Scripture, so is fornication, divorce and remarriage, pride, anger, greed, and gluttony.

Those on the other side of the issue often accuse the many of our churches of hating both the sin and the sinner. They suggest that our attempts to “hate the sin” are inseparable from our attitude toward “the sinner”. Many within the church maintain that opposition to “the gay agenda” is not personal, but rather is based only on a commitment to Biblical standards of morality and a Biblical definition of marriage.

I sit here with friends that I deeply love and respect on both sides of the issue. As much as I can, I try to really understand the beliefs and experiences that inform our interactions. I know that most of my gay friends do not hate God, and I know that most of my Evangelical friends do not hate gay people.

But hard as I try, I simply cannot wrap my head around the way that many Christians are responding to the inclusion of gay Boy Scouts. It seems to reinforce all the hypocrisy and discrimination that we so strongly deny.

The Huffington Post reports:

“Assemblies of God and many other churches can no longer support groups that are part of an organization allowing members who are openly homosexual.”

“Our family are evangelical Christians,” said Mari LaCom, who attends a congregation of the Evangelical Free Church near Chatsworth, Calif., and expects her son will no longer pursue the rank of Eagle Scout. “This is the reason our church will no longer be chartering our troop or have Scout Sundays.”

According to Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission:

“Frankly, I can’t imagine a Southern Baptist pastor who would continue to allow his church to sponsor a Boy Scout troop under these new rules. I predict there will be a mass exodus of Southern Baptists and other conservative Christians from the Boy Scouts.”

The American Family Association, whose mission statement includes “encouraging Christians to bear witness to the love of Jesus”, responded this way:

[source]

I simply cannot understand how anyone who attempts to live by the teachings of Jesus could think this is an appropriate response to the Boy Scouts’ inclusion of gay members.

Many churches who support the Boy Scouts seem to imagine a moral conundrum, wherein their continued support of the Scouts somehow conflicts with their Biblical belief that homosexuality is a sin. As if the support of an organization that refuses to exclude sinners is somehow an endorsement of sin. But this is an artificial conundrum. The Boy Scouts of America are not promoting, condoning, or endorsing homosexuality. They’ve made this abundantly clear, stating:

“We’re absolutely not telling them you have to endorse homosexuality. You may not deny that membership based on that one characteristic.”

If we disagree with this decision and want to continue to exclude sinners, we must be consistent. We must demand that the Boy Scouts turn away every teenage boy who looks at pornography or sleeps with his girlfriend too. No, this goes far beyond a Biblical standard of sin. This is saying “If you’re gay, I don’t want to be around you. You are not welcome in our church, and we will actively disassociate from those who welcome you.”

My gay friends say that the Evangelical church often doesn’t really differentiate the person from their behavior. They feel judged and condemned based on their orientation, regardless of whether or not they act upon their sexual attractions. They often feel that the church hates who they are.

My church friends say that they really do love the sinner; they just need to hold people to the Biblical standard regardless of orientation. They say that same-sex attraction is not sinful, only acting upon it is. If this is true, then churches should have no problem with continued support of the Boy Scouts. In their statement announcing the inclusion of gay scouts the BSA explicitly clarified this:

“The resolution also reinforces that Scouting is a youth program, and any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting.”

This is where our words meet reality.

The Boy Scouts’ decision isn’t about endorsing sin or about defending Biblical marriage. It’s about whether or not we’re going to draw circles in the sand with “us” on the inside and “them” on the outside. I want out. I can’t keep talking about “loving the sinner” as if I’m not a sinner too, desperately in need of God’s love every day.

So if we’re drawing circles in the sand, you’ll find me on the other side. Maybe that’s where we’ll find Jesus too.

[ image: HuffingtonPost ]

By  then, I was already having doubts.

Sitting across the table from new friends who didn’t see any reason to believe in God, I had tried to explain to them why I did and why it mattered.

But this was the real world, and in the real world “because the Bible says so” doesn’t always carry much weight. After all, if they don’t believe in God why should they believe the Bible He supposedly wrote?

I tried to explain it, but the words felt far away, like they were coming from somebody else. Over plates of hot wings, I tried to piece together a convincing argument. At that point, I wasn’t even trying to convince them; I was trying to convince myself.

_____________________

I was in college, and they say that college is where Christian kids lose their faith. Even Christian college.

Somewhere between the abstract discussions about “best possible worlds” and research papers attempting to resolve “the problem of pain”, we wound up so close to the tapestry that all we could see were individual threads. But individual threads are weak.

I was haunted by fear. My faith was a house of cards, and I knew it was only a matter of time until the day the last support was pulled away and it all collapsed.

_____________________

That day came sunny and unexpected. A casual conversation suddenly grew deep. Words like “predestination” and “election” and “sovereignty” weighed heavy on me, words that often swirled in the air in those days and those places.

“Why does God keep creating people and then not predestining them to salvation?” 

It seems like an abstract, philosophical question now. On that day, it was the last card in the house. And it was slipping.

“We believe that every life is precious. That God knits us together in the womb. And yet, He randomly predestines most to eternal destruction? But why? Why doesn’t He stop creating people that He knows He won’t predestine to salvation?”

The answer was probably something about His ways being higher than our ways. Maybe something about God getting glory from both the people who go to heaven and the people that go to hell.

“But how can I enjoy my salvation, knowing that it’s just the luck of the draw? That I won a divine lottery to keep me out of hell, but that most won’t? How is salvation good if it’s unmerited, arbitrary, random, and most are predestined to destruction?

It’s a heavy question, with many layers. But the answer was quick, and devastating:

“That I was saved and others are not, that there’s nothing I could do to earn it, that there’s no reason why – this just makes my salvation an even more special and precious gift.”

The last card slipped, and the house fell.

_____________________

How could I worship this God? How could I sing of His beauty and love and goodness, if He created people just to kill them to make my salvation seem even better?

This wasn’t love. This was…  This was survivor’s guilt.

If this was God, I wanted nothing to do with Him.

_____________________

Words matter.

Abstract theological conversations are all fun and games until I’m an unwilling agnostic lying in bed praying to a God I don’t believe in anymore while my young wife lies next to me wondering if she’s going to go through life with an atheist for a husband.

Our conversation was a caricature of the theology we hinted at. Even those who share this theology would probably write those words off as a straw man of their beliefs. But they weren’t spoken from a disillusioned critic of the movement; they came from a member of the flagship church. And they wrecked my fragile faith.

I don’t think he realized how much his words mattered that day. They were just sounds filling the sunshined air. He didn’t know they were the last card in the house.

Scripture references and sound logic are dangerous when the God they paint is a monster.

Words about God are heavy. Don’t sling them about carelessly.

_____________________

Eventually I gave up on answers. Whether or not it made sense, I would believe in God. I clawed my way back from agnosticism to faith one day at a time, praying the only thing I could: “Help my unbelief.”

It’s only now that I’m realizing my agnosticism was closer to the truth than I had dreamed. I was right. That god was a monster. I’m so glad I stopped believing in him.

Even more than that, I’m so glad the monster wasn’t real.

What I thought was the end of my faith was really just the beginning.

When I lost that terrible version of God, Jesus found me. And in Jesus, I see God more clearly than ever before.

_____________________

Epilogue:

I heard this sermon from Renovatus a few weeks ago, and I heard myself in Pastor Jonathan Martin’s words. This, this is good news. Listen:

What this text is all about is completion, reconciliation, bringing things full-circle. 

Predestination is a good word. Predestination is a Bible word. We should not give up on it. 

The problem is, people will use this word “predestination”, especially in a place like Romans 8, and this is what they think is going on here: 

They think that this is about how God selects some people in the beginning of time that He wants to have on His dodgeball team, and then He selects the others that He does not like. And then we’re just living out this game of chess that God is playing.

I want to say something very clearly that I know makes some people uncomfortable because it sounds presumptuous for a mere mortal to say this, but I mean it with all of my heart:

If that is who God is, then He is a monster. And I do not want to worship him, and I will not love him.

Is that stark enough for you? I would not worship him, I would not love him, no matter what he did. I would not serve a god like that. 

If that’s who God is, then He is a monster on par with, if not greater than, the Biblical portrait of Satan. And I have no clue why anyone would want to worship a tyrannical, sadistic, monster like that.

Thankfully, that’s not what Paul is doing here. He’s making the fairly simple point that all those who are in Christ, He has predestined to finish the work He started. 

Election is another word that Paul uses that is badly perverted. The word election also means a simple thing… You wanna know what election is about in Scripture? It’s about God choosing some people to show his light and glory through so that everyone else can be drawn to Him. 

It’s not about having some people who are pets and some people who are not pets. It is always about how God chooses some people in a special way to be a light to draw others to Himself. 

These are the elect ones, the called out ones that God is then going to use to bring others to Himself. 

( “Nor Things to Come” – beginning @ 35:26 )

[ image: eglasrud ]

Dear Mr. Abercrombie & Fitch,

Nobody likes you anymore.

You messed up. You said that you only want the cool kids wearing your brand. You don’t want to sell clothes to anybody who doesn’t fit your ideal of sexiness. You said some dumb stuff, and now your image is hurting.

Now there’s a video going around the internet where some dude is giving a bunch of your clothes to homeless people, just to stick it to you and your exclusive ideas of “coolness”. (Just between you and me, I’m appalled at the self-righteousness of that particular video – not to mention the objectification of “the homeless” which is as offensive as anything you’ve ever said. But that’s not what I want to talk about.)

Listen – I think maybe we’re all being a bit hard on you. Not that what you said wasn’t desipicable – it was. But if I’m honest with myself, I’ve thought the same things before. I think many of us have.

You’re holding up a mirror, forcing ourselves to look. And we don’t like what we see.

Like you, I’ve judged people simply by their clothing:

“Look at those nerds! Don’t they know you don’t wear tube socks with dress slacks?”

“Look at those dude-bros! Probably off to pop their collars and chug some beer at the frat!”

“Look at that youth pastor! He thinks he’s relevant just because he has skinny jeans and a soul patch!”

“Look at those hipsters! So obnoxious, with their thrift store clothes and ironic tattoos.”

“Look at that redneck! With his tore-off sleeves and cowboy boots. What a hick!”

As you said, some people are cool and some people are not. All too often, I allow myself to believe this. And with a glace, I judge them.

So while so many people on the internet are raging against your stupidity, I can’t bring myself to point a finger. Because, if I’m honest, I’d have to point at myself too. I’d have to point a finger at the system that I live in, that I support, that often defines me.

Maybe the reason we’re all so angry at you is because you were honest about the premise at the heart of our consumerism.

See, it was never about the clothes. It’s about identity.

Our clothes are so much more than fabric and buttons and zippers and embroidered moose. Our clothes are shells we drape over our fragile insecurities, masks we change and exchange until we find acceptance.

You were selling “cool”, and despite all our protests we want to buy it.

We want to exchange a fistfull of dollars for a lable that says we’re good enough, that we matter, that we’re in. Maybe we don’t want to buy it from you, but it’s what we’re all looking for. In tailored shirts and clever beards and flashy shoes and unique tattoos and perfect jeans and loud motorcycles and big houses and bright TV’s and furniture and watches and jewelry and cars.

If I look better (or even just different) than the hipsters and the nerds and the rednecks and the bros, maybe I can convince myself that I am better than them. That I’m unique. That I’m special.

At the heart of my consumerism is a burning desire to somehow purchase the value I so desperately crave.

For the sake of everyone that has ever felt marginalized, excluded, or uncool, I wish I could make you eat your words. I wish I could denounce you with righteous indignation. For being so insensitive, so discriminatory, so crassly materialistic. But I can’t. Because if I’m willing to look in the mirror you’re holding up, I’m forced to admit to myself that I’m not as different from you as I’d like to think.

But maybe all of us can learn to see each other better. Maybe we can see each other not as mannequins whose only value is derived from the clothes we wear, but as brothers and sisters who are beautiful and valuable and loved no matter what.

Wouldn’t that be “cool”?

related: “The Problem of Evil Is Hanging In Your Closet”

[ image: anfnewsnow ]

Last Thursday I skipped breakfast and had pizza for lunch. I had pizza for supper too, if those stale circles of hard dough anemically sprinkled with cheese and sold shrink-wrapped and frozen can be called “pizza”.

I wish I could say this sort of behavior is abnormal for me. It’s not. My diet all too often resembles that of a foraging goat; I eat everything I can get my hands on (so long as it’s full of protein, carbs, and salt) and wash it down with copious amounts of coffee. For the past ten years or so, this diet has worked fine for me. I’m not one to fix what’s not broken.

One thing about the internet is that there’s always this diet advice floating around, unsolicited, interrupting me when I’m trying to browse my daily stream of deep theology and tired jokes on Twitter. Apparently there’s a thing called a “Paleo Diet”, and because I know nothing about the Paleolithic era (or nutrition) I like to assume that this diet consists of only eating dinosaur burgers. I saw a morsel of diet wisdom last week that said “Don’t eat a meal that has a TV commercial.” Some of my favorite foods ever have commercials, so obviously that’s not a plan I can endorse. People are always talking about “gluten free” meals, and that makes me a little bit sad inside. Gluten is one of my favorite foods.

I like food, a lot, and long after my stomach is full I keep putting food into my mouth-hole because it tastes so delicious on my tongue. Then I get profoundly sleepy and pass out on the couch. The next day I go to the gym and hope that this cycle will result in a relatively healthy, attractive physique.

My wife is much stronger than I am. Not by sheer pounds of force, but by mental fortitude. My daily workout routine is a half-hour of lifting, fifteen minutes of coffee drinking, and fifteen minutes of tanning. Hers is two hours of weights and cardio and abs and hard work. She actually sweats when she works out. But every now and than I forget that her mind is stronger than mine, and attempt to join her in some wild feat of healthiness.

This is how I found myself on a juice cleanse last weekend.

If you’re unfamiliar with a juice cleanse, the idea is that you reset your body systems by drinking only juice for a set period of time (in our case, five days). Your stomach will flush away all the pizza-gremlins that have taken up residence there, and your tongue will forget how heavenly fats and salts and coffee taste and will be reawakened to the natural beauty of plant-flesh. This is the concept.

I began this endeavor Friday morning with a bubbling vat of green slime before me, criminally mislabeled “breakfast”. I gulped it down eagerly, imagining Twilight-worthy abs beginning to form beneath my shirt. I chased it with the blood of a grapefruit and an orange, the Romeo and Juliet of  liquid-based food tragedies. At lunch one of my colleagues piled two hamburgers between slabs of bread and drowned the whole mess in barbecue sauce, and I smugly sipped a few ounces of green slime from a glass jar whilst daydreaming of a beautiful future for my midsection.

The next day, Saturday, I slept all day. At least that’s all I can remember. It was better to be asleep than to face the living nightmare that was a juice cleanse. The green slime was no longer a welcome elixir; its foul stench assaulted my nose and turned my stomach. I slept fitfully Sunday night, and when I tried to stand up in the morning I felt weak. In that moment, something inside me broke.

They had promised me energy. Clarity of mind. Healed emotions. Healthy cravings. They had lied.

I was weak, miserable, depressed. Guilty over my insatiable desire for food. Guilty that I wasn’t having the wonderful results everyone else apparently had.

Curled up in the fetal position on my bed that morning, I began to take stock of my life. Here I was, halfway through a beautiful summer weekend, too weak to get out of bed. All desire for life gone. Absolutely miserable. And all for some vague promises of a “body reset” and “emotional health” and “mental clarity”.

That’s when I made a decision.

If there was such a thing as beauty and happiness in the world, this was not the way to find it. My body and food are soulmates, created for one another. Plant flesh was profoundly overrated.

And so I ate.

Suddenly, the heavens opened and golden sunlight streamed down onto my frail frame, reinvigorating me. My mind cleared, my heart began to beat again. I was more alive than I’d dreamed possible. In that moment, I swore that I’d be more judicious in my pizza/burger endeavors if it meant I’d never have to drink plant-flesh-juice again. I’d even learn to drink more water than coffee, because supposedly that’s a good thing.

And I regret nothing.

In a twisted way, the green slime had the promised effect. I did find mental clarity, happiness, and health. Not in completing the juice diet, but in failing. That’s when I realized how beautiful life and summer and food really are.

It had been there all along, and it only took two days of  The Worst Juice Cleanse Ever for me to realize it.

related: “The Worst Work-Out Plan Ever”

[ image: shutterbean ]

Earlier this week I wrote about how the internet is full of beautiful friends that we’ve never met. Caroline is one of those friends. I love this story, and I think you will too. There’s so much of what she’s written here that resonates with my own heart. It’s about everything good and beautiful in the world – Jesus, a honeymoon, freedom, and the beach. Enjoy!  -Micah

__________________

Those of you that know me know it is rare to see a picture of me engaged in something close to exercise.

I was the secondary school kid who managed to evade inter-form cross country for four out of five years and scheduled her trumpet lessons to coincide with double PE (accidentally on purpose!) And now, if I say the word ‘exercise’ I rapidly feel the need to wash my mouth out with chocolate!

This photo was taken when Paul and I were on honeymoon. So marriage must have changed me… maybe.

The River Daron divides Aberdaron Bay and to get from one side of the beach to the other you have to cross it…. somehow. Paul jumped first, quickly cleared it, and left me behind slightly startled. I felt self-conscious jumping it alone, quietly irritated that he would leave me to fend for myself and just stand back and laugh and take photos. But I quickly realised he was laughing with me, encouraging me to stand on my own two feet, not to be reliant on other people quite so much. (I doubt any of this went on consciously in his head; I’m sure it’s just in his nature to be life giving and provocatively encouraging and that’s probably one of the reasons God gave us each other.)

But now a month has passed and I’m beginning to wonder if this photo was prophetic. It’s rare to catch a photo so well timed and Paul was amazed that he’d managed to take it while I was mid-air.

You see a couple of weeks ago I said to one of my soul friends,

“If I could just turn off the subtitles in my head, I know it would feel like running down the beach with my hands in the air shouting ‘Freedom!!’”

I’ve lived with subtitles in my head for a very long time. In fact I can’t really remember life without them:

“Whatever you do it’s not going to be enough. Whatever you say it’s not going to be quite right. You must get everything right. It’s not ok to feel. Your opinion must be validated by objective evidence. If you enjoy something it must be competing with God therefore you should stop doing it. The bit that’s most significant is the bit you did wrong.”

I know, scary insight into my psyche!  Feels vulnerable to share it but I have a sneaky suspicion I’m not the only one with these kinds of tapes running on continuous play in my head.

Since I’ve been off sick with reactive depression, I’ve had some counselling.  I really need to reframe what has happened to me and how I see the world because the way I’ve been running my life and the subtitles I’ve been living with have quietly been destroying the real me.

Last Monday I had my second counselling session and I realised there’s a great big gap between my subtitles and reality.

My counsellor said to me, “Where is God standing? Where your friends stand or at the opposite end where the subtitles are?”

I replied, “Oh He’s miles away from the subtitles!”

And then I started asking some more questions of myself. What if the biggest thing God is asking me to do is to start behaving like I really believe in who I am, not who I think I should be? What if God is in the realising of my inherent preciousness? What if I stopped ‘trying to please’ God and started living my life and being who I was created to be?

Well, I thought, that would be like running down the beach with my arms in the air shouting “Freedom!”

And the joy that flowed into me at that point was almost tangible. I wanted to sing, dance, write, laugh, grin…

As I woke up the day after my counselling, George Michael’s “Freedom 90” was running through my head. So I put it on in the kitchen and had a secret boogie while I emptied the dishwasher, occasionally throwing my hands in the air (between the stacking of crockery!). And I sang a bit too loudly, “There’s something deep inside of me; there’s someone I forgot to be… today the way I play the game has got to change. Oh yeah…Now I’m gonna get myself happy.”

I know it won’t be as easy as turning the subtitles off on the TV. My subtitles are in large print and bold sometimes. They’re a strong voice and I have a 36 year old habit of listening to them.

And crossing the river was a bit similar. I really didn’t manage it first leap. I had a wet foot and trouser leg for some time that morning because my stretch was not quite long enough for the Daron that day. I had to write this blog in small shifts because right now my body is simply too tired to write in long chunks.

And I know that this is not the end of my freedom fighting; it’s probably just the beginning. I’ve never felt so tired but so alive in all my life.

[ Check out Caroline's blog at In Those Shoes ]

I love the internet.

I know, it’s bad for me.

Staring at a screen all day will prematurely glaze my eyes. Typing too much on my phone will result in gnarled, misshapen thumbs. My attention span is already shot. Eventually the internet will swallow me whole.

The internet is not only ruining my own body and mind, it’s ruining our society too.

Back in my day, kids played outside and got skinned knees. Friends were a thing you had in real life, followers were called “stalkers”, and memes were… I don’t think memes existed back in my day. Get off my lawn.

The point is, the internet has changed us. Often we hear about how it’s changing us for the worse. 

I know this, and yet I don’t care. I love the internet anyway.

Last week there was this article about the internet going around the internet, about a guy named Paul Miller who lived offline for the past year.  If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, you should check it out; it’s called “I’m Still Here”.

Toward the end the author started talking about what the internet really does, how it shapes and connects us. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, especially about the connections. I guess the internet is basically one big pile of connections, all around the world. But lately, they seem a lot more significant.

Because, as Paul Miller wrote in his article, on the other end of the connections are real people. Flesh and blood, typing on laptops and staring at phones.

We are a generation that lives our lives online, with friends we’ve never met who we love with all our hearts. And I’ll fight anybody who says that’s not a beautiful thing. 

A week ago I wrote a story about how I didn’t want to be a “good Christian” anymore. It didn’t write as easy as I had hoped (if you’ve ever written, you know what I mean), and I was up way too late last Sunday night finishing it up. I hit “publish” on it and went to bed and waited to see what would happen. In the seven days since then, I’ve been overwhelmed by the responses to that story.

What was just words on a screen, ones and zeros flying around the internet, became so much more. I soon realized that it wasn’t just my story  - it was your story too. When you told me that, about how my words resonated deep in your own heart, I felt more than ever that the internet is so much more than digital connections. It was almost tangible. Sharing our stories, in fragments and 140 characters, across miles and timezones, we were no longer alone.

Toward the end of that article about the guy who lived offline for a year, he wrote something that stuck with me:

“The internet isn’t an individual pursuit, it’s something we do with each other. The internet is where people are.”

Reading that, I couldn’t help but think of how much Jesus must love the internet. 

Tim Keller once said that Jesus loves cities because He loves people, and cities are full of people. If Jesus loves cities for their people, He must love the internet too. Even more than I do.

Because here we all are. Connected. And sitting behind my laptop writing these words, with my ruined attention span perpetually wandering across Facebook and Twitter, I’m with you. You’re with me, right now. And Jesus is too.

That’s why I love the internet.

[ image: s. kangas ]

“I believe that somewhere, somehow, you’ve heard the music. Distant or close, you’ve heard the song of your belovedness. It’s a song of unrestrained joy, a song of hope and belonging. A song that calls you into the future. Can you even imagine what it would be like to dance the dance of children, the dance before innocence was lost?” – Prototype

I can’t remember now where I first heard of Jonathan Martin.

Looking back, it seems as if he’s always been there. Like Jesus, or Will Smith.

All I know is that sometime last summer, I stumbled across him on Twitter: @RenovatusPastor  - this tall, Pentecostal(?) preacher with Inigo Montoya hair, who kept dropping truth bombs as if there was no tomorrow. Everything he said landed in my heart and exploded with reverberating thunder. It was the Gospel I had always known, but spoken in a way that made it seem a bit more alive, a bit more expansive, a bit more exciting every time I thought about it.

Above the post-apocalyptic landscape of the religious blogosphere, Renovatus Pastor rose as a beacon of beauty and hope, inviting us all to follow him toward Jesus. (He might cringe at this grandiose description, but if you’ve read his stuff I know you’ll agree with me.)

So you can imagine that I was pretty excited to get my hands on a copy of his book. No longer would I have to scroll through my Twitter feed to find his truth bombs – they were all available in convenient book form for less than $15. When Prototype finally showed up in my mailbox yesterday, I started reading almost immediately. With excitement and tired eyes, I flew through the pages – underlining and circling and Tweeting and scrawling “THIS!” and “LOLZ” in the margins. I think I may have even drawn a few smiley faces, but I’m not sure. It’s all rather a blur.

Really, Prototype is like a sermon.

Not a boring, doodle-on-the-bulletin, fall-asleep-in-church sermon. It’s the kind of sermon where it feels like he’s preaching straight to your heart, weaving stories and truth together seamlessly. The kind of sermon where you lose track of time.

I have to admit, I came into Prototype with pretty high expectations (what with Jonathan Martin being like Will Smith and all). The first chapter or two, while solid, didn’t amaze me. There were a lot of paragraphs of “What if…” questions, a phrase that’s become worn with overuse in Christian writing.

But I kept reading. And like a beautiful sermon, or a song, Prototype soon found a rhythm. I started turning the pages faster. On occasion I nearly stood up and shouted “Amen”, as if my living room was suddenly an old-timey revival tent. By the end, when the preacher began the invitation, I wanted to be the first out of my seat and up the aisle. It’s a simple invitation but it tugs at my heart as he repeats it over and over on the last pages of the book – whispering at first, but then shouting (as a good preacher does):

“Come up here… Come up here… Come up here… Can you see that’s where the music’s been headed all along?”

I’m terrible at reviewing books. I have no idea what I’m doing. I know that if I say “This is the best book ever! Everyone should read it!” that will probably make you less likely to read it. Probably the best thing I can do is let the book speak for itself. Look at this. How could you not want to read a book like this?

“This book is not about finding religion. It’s not a self-help manual. I don’t have seven habits or twelve steps to take you anywhere. This is about becoming awake to God. And if we become awake to God, we become awake to everything and everyone around us.” 

A few highlights: The story about the boy on the bike. This is where it starts, and without it the picture of Jonathan riding his bike into church last Sunday doesn’t make any sense. The chapters about “Sacrament” and “Community”. They’re so full of big ideas about how we relate to God and each other, they both deserve their own books. The reference to “Doubting Thomas” and “Wedgie Martin”. That was the first time I wrote “LOLZ” in the margin. Also, the story about finding God at the beach. As a guy who has often found God at the beach, it was all I could do to not take off right then, running toward the East Coast. (I wouldn’t have gotten very far.)

picture via @renovatuselder

Jonathan Martin is a smart guy, with degrees from Pentecostal Theological Seminary and Duke University Divinity School. There’s a lot of theology in this book, but it doesn’t feel like “theology”. It feels like a friend talking to you over coffee, about the God he knows and loves. It’s tangled up with true stories, from Jonathan’s life, from his community, from Renovatus Church. I’ve known a lot of theology that made God seem far away and abstract, hidden behind big words and complex theories. But Prototype is about a God who is near, whispering love to you, inviting you to resurrection.

From the beginning to the end, much of what Jonathan Martin wrote resonated with the things God has been whispering to my heart recently. About freedom. About a God who bleeds. About my identity as Beloved. Reading it today, I felt like I wasn’t alone.

I think I’ll be sitting with this book for a while. Join me?

[ buy Prototype ]

__________________

And now, truth bombs (a.k.a quotes from Prototype) :

Over and over again, I sensed Him reminding me that I was His beloved son – and that He loved me exactly as I was.

If God is love, and perfect love casts out fear, then fear is the opposite of everything that God is.

Scars tell the story of who we really are and where we’ve really come from, even when we refuse to speak the truth with our eyes.

This is what resurrection does to a person – it doesn’t make you “religious,” it makes you attentive to beauty on an unprecedented scale.

The story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is only one story; but it’s such a sweeping story that it’s big enough to fit all of our little stories into it.

If we listen attentively to the Spirit, we hear God singing. If we listen a bit closer, we hear Him weeping.

I’m a boy on a bike, reading about a boy on a bike. Don’t try this at home.

God, sometimes I feel 
like I’m not a good Christian in Your eyes,  
like You’re a Father disappointed in me, 
frustrated, wishing I would do more, be more, 
and I wonder are You proud of me?

Am I a good Christian? 
Do I make You smile?

I don’t want to fail. 
I don’t want to disappoint You. 
and sometimes I feel like I’m 
not as spiritual as I used to be. 
I’m afraid that I’ll slip away from You, 
slowly fade and become lost.

I don’t want this.

Can I stop trying to earn Your love? 
Can I stop trying to be a good Christian?

-  from my journal, 2008

[ continue reading @ A Deeper Story ] 

[ Image: go2grace.org ]

I have a dream.

I’m at a park, or a convention, or at the White House, and he’s there too. I wait around for the chance to talk to him for a moment. When he sees me, I hug him. I tell him that even though I don’t like all his policies and stuff, I love him. I apologize for all the terrible things people say about him all the time. I ask if we can take a picture together, for me to put on Facebook. Then I wake up, disappointed that it was just a dream.

I’ve had this dream half a dozen times in the past two years, but it wasn’t always that way.

When I was in college, I cruised the streets Minneapolis in my beat-up two-door Cavalier with a McCain sticker on the rusted bumper, jamming out to the sweet sounds of Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity. I thought the Tea Party was a great idea. When Obama was elected, we all worried about the fate of America.

To Love My Enemy

I remember those early days of his presidency, listening to the right-wing radio guys every day. Waiting every day to watch Obama screw up. New unemployment numbers. New popularity ratings. New sound bytes. They all confirmed what I believed – that Obama was a terrible President, maybe even evil. That he would fail. Every mistake was a point on our team’s scoreboard, proof that we’d been right about him all along. Vindication.

I stopped listening to talk radio when I left Minneapolis. As those voices faded from my mind, so did my hatred for the President. My active dislike became ambivalence.

Then I met a friend who told me he was praying for Obama. Of course, this was nothing new to me. As a Christian, it was my duty to pray for Obama. For wisdom. For good decisions. For him to somehow not screw up our country too badly.

[This doesn't count.]

I didn’t like this idea at all. I didn’t want to like Obama.

To Love My Neighbor

Hate is not an option for a follower of Jesus. I knew that, but most of my life I allowed myself an exception for liberals, gays, legalists, and immigrants. Slowly, Jesus has been taking those exceptions away from me.

I’ve always respected the President, for the sake of the office if not the man. This was the duty of a good Christian, because of that verse in Romans about how God ordains leaders and all that. But Jesus has been calling me beyond.

“Love your enemy”, He says. Then you wake up one day and your enemy is your friend.

To Love My President

The Bible tells us that love is patient and kind. It does not dishonor others. It looks for the best in a person, not the worst. It doesn’t keep a record of mistakes. It hopes. It endures. It never fails.

When I was under the influence of talk radio, I believed President Obama was cocky, arrogant, narcissistic, hellbent on destroying America. But when I started to love, I saw him as a kind husband and father, a hopeful idealist, a guy I’d love to play basketball with someday.

[I'd totally dunk on him.]

I still disagree with some of his policies, but I’ve become more and more open to understanding them. Rather than caricaturing him and his ideas, I’ve tried to approach them with grace. As a result, I’ve grown in respect not only for our President, but also for my brothers and sisters who voted for him.

To Love My Brother

The Scriptures tell us that, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone… especially those who are in the household of faith. 

I remember when George W. Bush was our President how excited we all were to have a Christian in the White House. But I was hesitant to accept Barack Obama as a fellow believer. Then, as the hate faded away along with the political barriers I had erected in my own heart, I was more willing to listen to his own story:

“I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. I didn’t ‘fall out in church’ as they say, but there was a very strong awakening in me of the importance of these issues in my life. I didn’t want to walk alone on this journey. Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals.” (from Christianity Today)

To Love

Ultimately, my love for Barack Obama does not depend on his job performance, politics, personality, or beliefs. I love him, not because he’s a Christian, but because I am.

As a follower of Jesus, I am called to love my enemy, my neighbor, and my brother. Hard as I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to find somebody that excludes.

I have so far to go, still. Often I find myself mocking, belitting, judging, disrespecting. Dismissing instead of discussing. Ranting instead of praying. But slowly, one person at a time, Jesus has been turning “I Hate You” into “I’m Sorry I Hated You“, and then finally into “I Love You.”

I hope that someday I get the chance to say that to Barack Obama.

[I imagine it will be something like this.]

 [ Images: Heavy, Ed Stetzer, ABC, Political Fiber ]

“Brothers and sisters, you can be free!”

The words came fast and rushed up from inside my heart. I hurried to write them down, driving on the freeway scrawling nearly-unintelligible phrases on the nearest scraps of paper I could find.

That was a month ago. Now I’m sitting here on this cold Wednesday morning when one cup of coffee is not nearly enough, and I have trouble believing my own words.

You can be free.

It’s the hope, I think, that has kept me walking forward. That has driven me to venture outside the safety of my religious comfort zone and wander closer and closer to Jesus.

It’s the promise of the Gospel. But today, it’s hard to grasp.

Recently I’ve taken up flipping through my old journals, reading the stories I wrote as they unfolded years ago. In them, I see a scared, trapped version of myself. Desperately trying to find God, aching to be free.

I want to go back and tell him, tell me, “You can be free!” In my dreams at night, I do. I stop believing the chains and let my heart carry me away.

But the journey to freedom isn’t a moment, it’s a lifetime. One step at a time. And when I’m awake, it’s easy to forget.

So today, I’m going to sip this coffee and whisper to myself again, “You can be free!”

[ Image: TNZA ]