Moving toward -- ?

In an early chapter of his book The Way of the Wild Heart, John Eldredge describes several ways that men react to their fathers. One sample, which closely correlates to mine, was the following: "An evil man. May God deliver me from his legacy."

At a 12-Step recovery meeting I attended earlier tonight, I realized something: I've spent much of the past four decades running from my father. (Never mind that he's been dead for over 15 years.)

In retrospect, that started early. He derided Martin Luther King Jr. because of his commitment to the Christian faith; I became not only a Christian myself but also an admirer of King and supporter of his attitude of nonviolence. He resented the white race; meanwhile, most of my friends are -- and almost all of my dating partners have been -- white. He wanted me to study engineering; when that didn't work out I turned to writing, which displeased him.

But even my conversion, nearly 30 years ago, and subsequent discipleship were driven in large part by not wanting to be like him. I received Christ as Savior and LORD the day after he informed my brother and me that my mother had threatened to leave -- and I knew why. Just over four years later, when she made good on that threat and I moved out with her, I went into counseling and entered 12-step recovery because of a specific situation that showed me that, even though I was a believer, I had not changed sufficiently to be able to live effectively on life's terms. (The Program, based on Alcoholics Anonymous, has actually helped me to be a better Christian.)

Basically, I understood how not to live. But -- what's the alternative?

I think that illustrates one of the problems with the way Christianity is "sold" in this country -- primarily as a way to avoid eternal punishment. While that is certainly a fringe benefit of "salvation," I'm no longer convinced that doing so represents God's intent. He created ancient Israel to separate a people for Himself to live by His law in order to glorify Himself and bless the rest of the world; He sent his Son Jesus for the same ultimate purpose. In other words, His intention was always positive.

That's the challenge that I -- and every serious Christian -- face. When Paul instructs believers to "crucify the flesh," he was referring to the process of suffocation that eventually brought death to a physical body. That said, the "flesh" has to be replaced with something else rather than just killed. Which is why spiritual discipline is so important.

I'm not sure what that means exactly in my present state. I know only that a "negative" view won't help me personally, let alone help to establish the Kingdom of God as far as I have influence. May I -- and we -- live more positively.

Misguided activism

This month marks the 25th anniversary of a pivotal moment that helped to determine my views on activism. More accurately, it showed me how not to go about it.

On Easter Sunday 1984 two groups of pro-labor activists -- the lay Network to Save the Mon/Ohio Valley and the Denominational Ministry Strategy, comprising pastors -- disrupted the later service at Shadyside Presbyterian Church, a prominent congregation I had joined just weeks before. When I arrived there a little late a tall, heavyset man dressed in flannel shirt, workboots and jeans was shouting at the congregation amid the singing. The offficiating pastor allowed him to deliver his message, which was full of invective toward members of the congregation who were involved in upper management of steel companies that were shutting down operations, putting many of those men out of work. Many of us greeted them afterwards, a close woman friend taking me by the elbow as we made our way forward.

That wasn't the end of it, however. Over the next couple of years the groups, among other things, placed dead fish in safe deposit boxes in certain bank branches, insulted the pastor the church later called (as if he had anything to do with it) and bombed with skunk oil attendees of a post-Christmas pageant reception in the fellowship hall. I'm sure that, to many of my church fellow members, it felt like a constant siege. The activists were certainly committed to the cause -- one of the Lutheran pastors affiliated with the DMS, who ended up going to jail, had his ministerial credentials revoked.

But the groups' ultimate demand, to take the church's entire endowment, then about $6 million, showed their real colors. The message: "You owe us." In other words, they cared only about getting what they wanted no matter how it affected other people -- just what they were accusing the execs of. Well, they didn't get a penny from the church and the effort eventually petered out largely because of justifiably bad press.

Since then I've witnessed other similar demonstrations, specifically the anti-abortion Operation Rescue in 1988 during which two people I personally know were arrested for blockading abortion clinics. Civil-rights marches were still also taking place for reasons I don't even remember right now. And so on, and so on ...

Amazingly, all these groups claimed the "nonviolent" mantra of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom I've studied for years. I saw immediately, however, that there was no connection between them.

King would never had insulted the other side, much as he personally would have liked to, because he knew full well that the opposition was trying to draw him into a tit-for-tat that would have sabotaged any moral authority he had. He also even invited his enemies to join them, witness conversations he had with jailers in Birmingham, Ala. who were complaining about the very same "system" that had imprisoned him.

That spirit of gentle confrontation didn't exist in the Network/DMS; their goal from the start was to humiliate the "enemy." Instead, the campaign against SPC became the church's finest hour, as its leadership consistently conducted itself with grace and humility. Indeed, I'm sure that some of the people reading this have all but forgotten about those demonstrations.

And that's the point. There's a way to confront perceived injustices -- with communication and relationship, not just making demands.

'Gay marriage' -- what's really behind it

If you haven't heard, two more states -- Iowa and Vermont -- have this month legalized same-gender matrimony. And unlike the last few years, it hasn't caused much of a stir among Christians (at least from what I've seen). Which is probably a good thing.

I say this not because I support "gay marriage" (I certainly don't) but because perhaps we need to rethink the whole marriage enterprise.

The problem, since the last few hundred years, is the way marriage is conducted in Western culture. How are partners chosen? Really, primarily based on physical attraction in the hope that the inside matches the outside; even in evangelical churches, where we should know better, we routinely engage in what I refer to as "spiritualized lust." This being the case, it was only a matter of time before persons similarly attracted to the same gender demanded the same rights. You may notice that even the way the issue is framed focuses on the sexual -- "gay marriage," as if marriage is primarily about sex.

When people "fall in love," they put on blinders as to the faults of the partner, as though pure, overwhelming passion is the only thing that matters. And while I know from personal experience even as a single man just how intoxicating romance can be, at some point it does wear off. With such a poor foundation you either have to find ways to continue to "pump it up" -- which can lead to affairs and/or pornography -- or else split with the partner because "the magic is gone." (That's one reason why divorce is so prevalent even in the church.) Such same-gender relationships by definition fit into this category.

Moreover, David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values, who describes himself as a "liberal Democrat," considers same-gender matrimony a bad idea -- but for a surprisingly different reason than normally argued. In an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times, he mentioned that he had spent a year studying marriage and wrote in response, "Among us humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition. It is primarily a license to have children." Blankenhorn believes that "For healthy development, what a child needs more than anything else is the mother and father who together made the child, who love the child and love each other."

For that reason, marriage in Eastern culture even today is never left to the persons involved -- they are arranged, usually by parents, to strengthen families and communities. And romantic love has little or nothing to do with it. (And those unions last.)

I know what you're thinking: Doesn't the Bible strictly forbid homosexual marriage? Not really -- just homosexual conduct, as marriage between "one man and one woman" is considered propositional truth that doesn't require defending. And that's fine with me.

I've heard some apologists for same-gender marriage say "Can people help whom they love?" That's not the point, because, as I said earlier, that kind of "love" is often blind. I'd like to be married someday and I will probably do so in the traditional way, but I will make that decision not so much on how she makes me feel but on issues of character and maturity. If enough people did that, "gay marriage" will be exposed as the oxymoron that it is.

And if that be true ...

Yesterday in church, my pastor made a reference to black swans in Australia. Up until the the time that Westerners set foot on that island in the 1700s it was assumed that swans were by definition white, so finding black swans caused zoologists to rethink everything they had previously believed about the species. He was making the point that the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which most of the church celebrated yesterday (Orthodox Christians will do so next week) "changed everything."

I agree, but I don't think much of the church understands that. And I think that's because we haven't fully grasped the implications of the astonishing miracle that He nevertheless prophesied when He was here on earth.

I say that because of the way the "gospel" has often been preached in this country. Too often it's a reference to "fire insurance" -- that "accepting Jesus Christ as 'personal savior'" (a phrase I now know is nowhere found in the Scriptures) is primarily a way to avoid eternal judgment. I would go so far to say that He didn't necessarily need to die for that to happen.

Part of that, of course, has to do with His use of the phrase "born again" in John 3 in his conversation with the esteemed Pharisee Nicodemus; we've constructed an entire theology around that phrase. (I did use it for a time after I became a Christian but never really liked it.) However, when He used it He wasn't necessarily talking about the afterlife; rather, His focus was on what God was doing on the here and now.

You see, while God sent Jesus to earth to pay for the sin of mankind, His greater redemptive purpose was to separate a people for Himself that would live by alternative, Kingdom values and thus glorify Him. After all, that's why he brought ancient Israel into existence (but it got so caught up in the minutiae of the Law that it generally forgot the One Who gave it and its ultimate function).

So, what does that have to do with the truth of the resurrection? I'm convinced that, if we understood its ramifications, Christians would avoid much of the behavior we engage in now. We wouldn't have all these independent megachurches, especially in the suburbs, to preach a Jesus more concerned with our "felt needs" and escaping the hard truth about our sin, both personal and corporate. We wouldn't have to address our divisions of color, culture and class because, in the Kingdom, they wouldn't exist. We wouldn't worry about maintaining our traditions, which would be lost in the light of the Son. We wouldn't need to impose our "morality" on others; our lives would suffice to show the world, "You guys have missed the boat." (Persecution will come only then, but so what?)

Most importantly, we wouldn't say "Thus saith the LORD" unless we know full well He did. And we would remember something that I first heard in a 12-Step recovery program in 1983, "The first thing you need to know about God is that you ain't!"

In short, we need to regain a sense of humility, that we exist for Him and not He for us. Because people have risen from the dead only by His hand, He alone holds the key to life. And also life the way it should be.

The 'teddy bear' gives up -- for now

Yesterday I made a decision. I'm suspending my six-year search for a spouse, at least for the time being.

This is not to say that I've given up on marriage, even at my advanced age (48 next week) because I still believe I have something to offer a woman. But I was reminded earlier this week why I don't see myself doing things in the normal way. So I won't be going on any Internet introduction sites or approaching a woman I'm attracted to but don't know.

What happened? Well, I took a Facebook quiz, "What do people think of you at first sight?" -- and came up with a shocking answer, "You are cute," complete with a photo of a kitten with its head cocked to the side, indicating vulnerability. That may not sound like much until you consider my relationship history.

Weeks after I entered the fifth grade in a Christian academy in suburban Pittsburgh, a first-grade girl, apparently starved for attention, became very attached to me and treated me like a teddy bear (and never having experienced that, I didn't know how to respond). And she was not the last one to do that -- over the years dozens of women, mostly younger, have similarly demonstrated that they felt extremely, extremely safe around me. Cheerleaders fawned over me as an eighth-grade basketball player; during my senior year as an otherwise unpopular member of the high school band I won a school instrumental award and the first people who gave me a standing O were younger majorettes; once while having dinner in Pitt's dining hall during my junior year a freshman woman I had not previously met invited herself to sit with me. I've got stories galore about those kind of experiences.

Yet all that attention has rarely translated into dates -- it's almost as though I'm not a normal guy supposed to be attracted to women. One other woman I met during my immediate post-college days in the mid-1980s who would sleep with someone else at the drop of a hat loved curling up with me but said that she would slap me if I "tried anything." Even to this day women I'm friendly with display some surprise when I ask them out -- even as an escort for just one evening.

So what do I plan to do? Well, nothing, and that's the point. I think there's a message in it for me -- that, even with my frustration, I'm still obligated to treat women as princesses. After all, they are created by God in his image and not my toys to be thrown away when I'm done with them. I could be actually ahead of the game when it comes to marriage, which does require warmth, tenderness and communication -- all of which I do well.

'Liberty' run amok

Today, the city of Pittsburgh said goodbye to three policemen who were shot to death Saturday morning by a 22-year old gunman.

Taking place on Tuesday will be a "Tax Day Tea Party," a protest to be held here -- and, I'm sure, around the nation -- and sanctioned by the national Libertarian Party against "inefficient government."

The two are related.

For Richard Poplawski, now in custody for their murders, subscribed to a similar anti-government ideology based more on fear and resentment than on any historical perspective.

Well, perhaps that's not entirely true, because American political culture from the start was informed in large part by contempt for the English crown courtesy of immigrants from Northern Ireland -- known popularly as the "Scots-Irish" -- beginning in the 17th Century. Individualists to the core and quite militant, they have always maintained at least a suspicion toward any authority, whether economic, political or social, that doesn't answer to them. That has historically caused problems for the efforts to maintain a sense of justice, especially toward those whose rights have been abridged by law or custom.

Let's take the Civil War, which we often teach was fought to end slavery especially in the South. However, in the section of the country known as Appalachia, where many of the Scots-Irish settled and still live, slavery was non-existent and in fact resisted to a point where the state of North Carolina was considering seceding from the Confederacy over it and what is now West Virginia actually did so. Yet, the South had no shortage of soldiers because, according to that narrative, the real issue was "sovereignty" and the enemy was in Washington, D.C. (Try finding a statue of or streets or buildings named for Abraham Lincoln in the South, even today.)

The civil-rights movement similarly faced resistance, particularly because of the "sovereignty" issue; it turned bloody because Southerners, again, felt it was their sacred duty to fight the central government, which they considered the instigator. Some conservatives even tried to link Martin Luther King Jr. to Communists (a ridiculous charge on its face but understandable given that culture).

You see, in that atmosphere the pursuit of "liberty" at the expense of justice -- which is occasionally secured only by changing laws and customs and in which the "state" is often involved -- can lead to the kind of carnage we witnessed in Pittsburgh on Saturday. It is no accident that the Poplawski's victims were police; after all, they were agents of the "state" (in this case, the city of Pittsburgh), which in his view sought to curtail constitutional liberties almost by definition. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Poplawski subscribed to right-wing "conspiracy theories" and was an ardent opponent of President Barack Obama, whom he felt would eventually abridge his interpretation of the Second Amendment.

That's the connection to the "Tax Day Tea Party." Government, of course, runs primarily on taxes, and what better way to limit government by, in the words of anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, "starving the beast" of revenue? It's come to the point where many libertarian-oriented conservatives consider taxation "theft" and others insist that we can't "tax ourselves into prosperity." That argument falls short, however, when you consider that libertarian economic policies over the last three decades have led directly to the mess we experience today. Hate to disappoint, but government intervention is, for all practical purposes, necessary at this point.

It's easy to talk about "rights," important as they are; it's something else to talk about responsibility to society and one's fellow man. At some point we need to consider if our shortsighted focus on our own has actually sabotaged the rights of others. Thanks to Poplawski, three men have been deprived of their right to life, and if this "tea party" has any effect the government will be deprived of its obligation to restrain evil and administer justice. And without justice, no amount of "liberty" will make this a sane place to live.

A message to my conservative friends

Those of you who subscribe to a conservative ideological agenda and have tangled with me over the years probably consider me unnecessarily argumentative and unwilling to back down. I'm sure you look at me funny and think, "How can someone who calls himself a Christian believe what he does? Doesn't he believe in Christian unity? Doesn't he understand that we're only fighting for Biblical values?"

Well, there's a specific reason why I get in people's faces. Aside from my basic disagreements with the conservative agenda, mentioned elsewhere on this blog, there's another issue: My upbringing -- more specifically, my earthly father.

You see, I was raised by a man with no real moral center and who believed that life was about meeting his needs, refusing to deal with folks wouldn't feed his ego and convinced he was always right. Deeply resentful toward people whom he feel wronged him, he subscribed to the wisdom of the world, that you should make as much money as you can as soon as you can regardless of any calling or spiritual commitment and whom you hurt in the process -- in short, he was, in practice, a Marxist who subscribed to the Machiavellian principle "the ends justify the means." When I first heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a pre-teen it was certainly a distinctive message from what I was hearing at home. And when I did respond just before graduating from high school nearly 30 years ago, it was for that reason: I wanted something different from what I realized was the nonsense I grew up with.

Less than a year later I saw my first deviation -- the following January, while a student at Georgia Tech, in an independent evangelical church in an Atlanta suburb I attended with other students. The pastor before then had been recuperating from major surgery and had been out of the pulpit for several months; when he returned he started preaching conservative politics from the pulpit, especially against the Soviet Union, and punctuating each point with Hebrews 12:29, "[F]or our 'God is a consuming fire.'" At that time the church publicized an anti-Equal Rights Amendment rally (I was an ERA supporter) and improperly endorsed then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan (consider when this was and who was in office at the time). My spirit became uneasy because this didn't sound like the Christ I had pledged to follow, but it would take just one visit to a downtown church just off campus, where I ended up staying, to understand just what the problem was.

You see, there was no love in the first church -- for Christ, people or God's creation. It was all about fear about losing privileges, power, position -- the very opposite of Jesus' good news to me. And looking back now, the second church was warm and nurturing, while the first church was kind of cold. Just like my household.

Dad also had considerable racial resentment as well; I can't tell you how many times he used to refer to the "white man" -- of course, in a negative fashion -- which also began to turn me off. Granted, there were historical injustices perpetrated on African-Americans and I would later learn the specifics; however, growing up I had become an admirer of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- whom Dad didn't care for -- who decided to choose a different path, and I later became an early advocate of racial reconciliation in the evangelical church. (Oh, those two churches in Atlanta were white.)

That said, I would eventually learn that the ideological right has had its own issues with race and racism that it has never faced. In an interview with the New Yorker, Pat Buchanan, than an aide to President Nixon (whose whole political career was based on resentment), related a 1971 memo in which he recommended, among other things, that "bumper stickers calling for black Presidential and especially Vice-Presidential candidates should be spread out in the ghettoes of the country ... We should do what is within our power to have a black nominated for Number Two, at least at the Democratic National Convention" because doing so could help to "cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half."

Reagan, however, would bring that to a whole new level, as he would ride some of those anti-black resentments all the way to the White House. Indifferent to the civil-rights movement and dismissive of King, during his 1976 campaign he referred to "welfare queens driving Cadillacs" and kicked off his 1980 campaign in Neshoba County, Miss., near where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964, stating that he favored "states' rights" (read: "I would have opposed desegregation"). In fact, his "big government" shtick actually had a racist tinge to it, as guess who was perceived as benefiting from it? That pandering to racists might explain his endorsement from a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia, saying that "the Republican platform could have been written by a Klansman." That's why I'm not a Republican.

But I digress. Anyway, in August of 1983 Mom, fed up with Dad's tyranny and fatigued by fruitless attempts to change the situation, decided to leave the marriage. Dad tried desperately to get her back but wouldn't change his outlook or way of dealing with things, so Mom filed for divorce, which was finalized in January of 1985. (She would later marry a more solid, stable man I referred to in another entry.) But even then he refused to humble himself and admit his failings; he remained resentful toward her to his death in 1993 from complications of his alcoholism.

What's the conservative analogy? Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

According to David Brock's book "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative," conservative activists went so far as to file suit in Federal court in Little Rock, Ark. in 1992 to have Clinton removed from the ballot -- because they knew he would probably win. And all during his presidency the political right, especially its media, hounded him, sabotaging his program and spreading unsubstantiated rumors about his corruption. Eight years later, after having failed to knock off Bill, they decided they needed to sabotage his wife, Sen. Hillary, then the junior U.S. senator from New York, on her road to the White House; a number of folks I talked to said that they would cross over to the Democratic primary to support Obama to keep her out. It never occurred to them that Obama would himself become a viable candidate.

There's a saying, however, that "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Two years ago the Washington Times published a story with the false assertion that Obama had attended a radical Muslim seminary in Indonesia, and a number of people also filed suit to have Obama removed because of questions about his citizenship -- again, because they knew he could win. It was the political equivalent of getting back at a rival for "stealing his girl" -- never mind that she willingly left with him.

And there's still considerable resentment over Obama's victory -- I chided a man at dinner a couple of months ago for blaming the media for trashing vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin during the campaign; he became angry when I told him that she didn't need their help. There's also a Facebook group called "Nobama in '12" -- they're not even going to give him a chance?

One more personal note: Just weeks before my parents split I read the wedding announcement of a woman I had desired in high school. That situation, of which I'll spare you the details, was quite acrimonious to say the least, and for quite some time I blamed her for that.

But after Mom left the LORD spoke to me, saying, "Consider your part." You see, He showed me that the dynamics between her and me were similar to my parents' marriage, which I already knew why had failed. Also reeling from the trauma of flunking out of school for the second time, I went into counseling, began attending 12-step recovery programs and fell in with a group of people who helped me get back on my feet. After years of healing I extended her an olive branch and we later apologized to each other; we're still in touch even though we'll never be close friends. (I can honestly say I harbor no bitterness toward her today.)

You see, it was through that experience that God revealed to me the depth of my sin. Because I had already believed in Jesus Christ I knew intellectually that it was already forgiven; that said, sin was still affecting my life in ways I wasn't aware of at the time. Because I've worked through all that in my own life, I see that in others.

My situation reminds me of a rumor I heard about one of my favorite music groups -- I don't know for sure this is true, so I won't identify it -- that had fired a talented newer member for being high on stage. Members of this band, like many others, had previously abused drugs and alcohol but eventually came to their senses and were not about to tolerate something like that again in their presence. In the same way, having dealt with my own issues, I recognize hatred, resentment and bigotry when I see it. So if you want to be that way ... don't do it around me.