To me this video is interesting because it shows a marked contrast between how Christianity initially spread slowly and organically through free association and how Islam initially spread rapidly in one solid block through conquest and compulsion.
Get Rid of Alcoholism Once and For All
I rarely remember my dreams.
Gorgeous on the other hand is constantly telling me about all the crazy stuff that she remembers dreaming. Now we’re not the type of folks who put too much stock in our dreams. But since I hardly ever remember mine, when I do, I notice.
And I had a dream last night.
Now I won’t go into all the silly details, but in my dream I was working in a cell phone store and Mel Gibson came in looking to replace his phone that had been damaged. For me, very weird.
Then this morning I woke up and found that a lady had sent me a message. She had read my post the other day on Mel Gibson’s indiscretion and asked how she could help a friend of hers who struggles with alcoholism. I’m not sure I have any answers for her.
But I do have a story.
My story is fairly personal and I probably wouldn’t consider sharing it this publicly. But I don’t believe much in coincidences so here it is.
I mentioned in the Gibson post that I’ve always been able to do whatever I put my mind to. And it’s true. If I decided to do something, it was as good as done (the fact that I rarely actually exercised that determined decision making notwithstanding.) The first time I actually decidedly put my mind to something that didn’t “just happen” for me was getting a grip on my drinking.
As a Naval Flight Officer I was living the Top Gun life. I would tell people that I was like Goose. But I lived.
And alcohol was a big part of that life. But eventually I realized that somehow it had taken control of my life.
I tried doing everything I knew to get a grip on my problem. Since I’d always been able to do what I put my mind to, my approach basically boiled down to buckling down and trying harder. And nothing worked.
Now I’d grown up going to church. For me it was pretty much a social thing. But over the years I’d run across some pretty hypocritical religious people who’d turned me completely off to the whole church scene.
You know the type. They are quick to tell you “what you need to do” and maybe whip out a verse from the Bible to prove their point. All the while their own lives are really messed up. I so hate that phrase, “What you need to do.” I wasn’t interested in religious answers to my problem.
But I did have a friend who was different. Kent was a follower of Jesus. He sure wasn’t perfect, but he was honest about his own struggles. He was never pushy about his beliefs. He didn’t tell the rest of us what we needed to do.
At the same time he never backed away from a discussion about what he believed if someone else brought it up. He wouldn’t get defensive. But he always seemed to stand firm while being willing to let others express their beliefs. He had the ability to respectfully disagree with folks. In the testosterone driven type-A environment we were in that was an unusual trait.
I watched Kent for two years. I figured that hypocrisy had to be in there somewhere.
It wasn’t. He was the real deal.
One day he invited me to a retreat his church was having. Now I’d turned down several invitations to go to church with him. I wasn’t interested in religion. But this time I figured it might do me good to hang out with these folks. All I was thinking was that they didn’t drink so at least I would be dry for a weekend for once.
When I got there it was freaky. It was like my buddy had told the various speakers everything about me. The things they were saying were so totally addressing me directly that it blew me away.
Now I knew Kent well enough that I knew there was no way he’d pass along the stuff I’d shared with him. Besides, some of the stuff I hadn’t even shared with him so I knew there was no way the speakers could know it. But there they were addressing those very things just the same.
Long story short that weekend I accepted the sacrifice Jesus made for my own screw ups and asked him to help me with my problems rather than try to overcome them on my own.
The craving for alcohol seemed to go away.
Two weeks later I moved out of state for a job change. My new friends told me that I should find a good church to get involved with because we weren’t meant to follow Jesus on our own.
Well I figured I’d be OK. I had my new Bible, several books on Christian Living, and tons of new music to listen to. I’d be fine on my own. Right.
Did I mention I moved into an apartment right across the street from a liquor store? Dumb.
It wasn’t long before I started drinking again.
Eventually one night I got myself into some trouble. That night I prayed. I knew I’d screwed up (again). I told Jesus that I had gotten myself into that mess, not him. And I was willing to stay there as long as I needed to learn what ever he wanted me to learn. When he was ready he could come and get me.
And he did. The thing I learned was that just accepting Jesus’ payment for my screw ups wasn’t enough. I needed to follow him and his teachings as well.
I knew the first thing I needed to do was find a church to get involved with. My stubborn refusal to do what I knew I was being told to do had gotten me into my mess. Without knowing where to look I found a good church within a week.
I got to know a group of guys who were totally whacked. They truly were a lot of fun. Not at all your stereotypical stuffy church goers.
Since that night I have not once had even the slightest craving for alcohol. And that was over 10 years ago now. My life isn’t perfect by any means. I still screw up (on a pretty regular basis even.) But I promise I enjoy life far more than I ever did before. Not ever drinking again now seems like such a small thing when compared to all the good things I have instead. I can’t imagine ever wanting to go back to what I had before.
You want to get rid of alcoholism once and for all? Then my advice to you is find Jesus.
Be honest. Start where you are. The Bible says
But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.
And if you need to, send me a message from my contact page. I’ll do my best to point you to some resources that can help.
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Mel Gibson Screws Up Big Time
Mel Gibson had a bad day Friday. He was arrested for DUI after getting pulled over for speeding in California. That’s enough to mess up pretty much anyone’s day.
Unfortunately for Mel things got even worse.
Apparently he went on a bit of a tirade yelling and screaming some rather nasty stuff. And as a result people are already beginning to say some pretty nasty things about Mel in response.
Now I am not going to defend any of the things he said in his outbursts because I completely disagree with them. But at the same time I am not going to join the lynching party that is forming up to run him out of town on a rail and string him up either.
I’ve had my own battles with alcohol and I appreciate some of what he’s going through.
Most folks screw up like Mel did and they end up hurting their families (Mel’s been married for over 25 years to the same woman and has 7 kids, something unusual in Hollywood, eh?) and the other people around them. It is embarrassing at the very least and hard to face people afterwards. And even while it is going on a part of your brain is telling you that what is happening is “very bad” because it knows there are going to be lawyers, and courts and all sorts of complications coming down the pike as a result. But in the case of a celebrity of Mel’s visibility the effect is magnified unimaginably because the whole world is now completely aware of his complete lapse in judgment.
People are asking how could he be so outrageous toward others?
Well when you struggle with something like alcohol addiction it truly is a war. There are battles going on and you feel totally horrible when you loose a fight. For someone who is as driven to excel as Mel must be to be as successful in his career as he’s been it must be infuriating to lose a battle.
I imagine he was incredibly angry at himself knowing that he’d lost a battle, mostly by doing something that he knew he shouldn’t but did anyway. And since his judgment was impaired by the alcohol that anger came out aimed at what ever target presented itself in his mind. It is ironic that someone who is as skilled at manipulating his emotions as an actor of Mel’s stature stumbles at the very point of controlling his emotions.
Again, I am not offering excuses for his behavior. I am only giving you some perspective from someone who’s had a similar struggle.
I was one of those people that could do whatever I decided to put my mind to. Drinking was the first thing I ever encountered that I couldn’t overcome or control simply by willpower and intention. Actually it completely defeated me. I really was a drunk at one point in my life.
And believe me I tried to beat it. I went to AA and I took some other drastic steps that folks said would help.
But they didn’t. I was effectively enslaved to the overpowering pull of drinking. AA does a lot of good for a lot of folks. I’m not knocking it. But it didn’t work for me. One of the things they teach is that you can’t overcome your addiction without the help of a “higher power.”
That part made sense because I knew I couldn’t beat it on my own. The thing that didn’t make sense to me was that they said anything could be your higher power, a chair, a white board, or a potted plant. Well that just seemed silly. I couldn’t see how some petunia was going to help me with my drinking problem.
Eventually I met a guy who introduced me to Jesus. As I learned more about Jesus I began to realize that He was a higher power that really could overcome my problem. I read statements Jesus made like this
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors,
and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”
I knew I was a total captive to alcohol and I needed to be released. And Jesus did free me from my enslavement to alcohol. For me the craving has been completely removed. There is no longer any struggle there. And I promise it was through no effort of my own.
And there is one other area I disagree with AA. They say “once a drunk, always a drunk.” I understand where they are coming from and it makes sense. But there is one exception that I can find. And that is folks who have become followers of Jesus. They truly can become former drunks like me. The Bible says
Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
The passage talks about our sins, including my drunkenness, in the past tense. “And that is what some of you were.” I was a drunk. Now I am free of alcohol.
Does that mean I could never go back to that place I was before? I suspect I could. I recognize that I still have that potential inside me. Just because I’ve won that battle doesn’t mean that the enemy of my soul has given up and isn’t still trying to destroy me. We all have the ability to screw up big time if ever let our guard down.
And that’s why I’m going to cut Mel Gibson some slack.
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How to Get Rid of Stress
I’m a little stressed.
I’m getting on a plane in a touch over 24 hours and I have about three days worth of things to do before I can go. I’ve been scrambling furiously to catch up, but I didn’t budget my time all that well. Now I am paying the price for my mistake by shorting sleep and taking on way too much stress. I’m trying to make up the difference with massive coffee consumption.
Paul wrote some good advice to people like me in a letter we have in the Bible that he wrote to some friends. I like the way The Message puts it
Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
I have to ask myself if I really believe that. Do I really believe that God will take care of my business if I allow myself to stop worrying and ask for His help?
I mean my religious, Christian side would give that advice to anyone else I found in my spot, right? So if I know how to get rid of worry, why do I still keep it all?
Because if I truly believed what Paul had to say I wouldn’t feel this overpowering need to be in control of everything all the time and then get stressed out when things didn’t go the way I wanted them to.
Maybe it would help to listen to some of what Jesus said when he gave his famous Sermon on the Mount.
“So I tell you, don’t worry about everyday life–whether you have enough food, drink, and clothes. Doesn’t life consist of more than food and clothing? Look at the birds. They don’t need to plant or harvest or put food in barns because your heavenly Father feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than they are. Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? Of course not.
“And why worry about your clothes? Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he more surely care for you? You have so little faith!
“So don’t worry about having enough food or drink or clothing. Why be like the pagans who are so deeply concerned about these things? Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs, and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.
“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
You know, my faith may be pretty stinking puny, and I probably stress because I am not really willing to let go of my control and trust what God says. But I do feel better for having read those words this morning.
For now, it’s time to go to work.
Here’s to hoping your day just got a little less stressful too.
Enjoy!
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Christians Mixing with Pornographers
How do you treat people who are different than you?
There was a time, before I started following Jesus, that I thought all Christians were unthinking whack-jobs filled with hatred. There’s a lot of evidence out there to support that viewpoint.
For example, when I was in Pensacola, a lot of us flight students would go hang out at an Irish pub on Friday nights. (Apparently it’s still there.) Like clockwork we could count on a small church crowd on the corner across the street. They’d be waving signs and yelling through a bullhorn about how all of us were going to hell simply because we were going into the pub. I remember they had a tendency to point out specific people through via their bullhorn hoping for some attention.
I wanted to go over and ask them if they realized no one was listening. And explain that all their shouting and sign waving was a huge turn off for me. I got the feeling that they were trying to convince me to come around to their way of seeing things but their approach was having the totally opposite effect. If I had to be like them to get to heaven then it didn’t sound like someplace I’d want to hang out anyway.
Eventually I was able to separate the person of Jesus from some of his more inept followers, but I get the feeling that a lot of people look at Christians the way I did, and many Christians give them good reason.
Which brings me to the point of this post. One of the resources I read faithfully as I learn this blogging thing is ProBlogger.net. Darren Rowse posted a great interview today. The title is certainly eye catching. Baptist Minister Interviews Adult Webmaster about Blogging….
I knew Darren was a pastor. I found some of his other blogs a while back via his About Darren page, including LivingRoom, which is about the house church he leads.
What impressed me most about the interview is that it came out of a relationship with this guy that Darren already had. And it came about because the guy apparently first reached out to Darren. (Oh, and I learned a couple more good pointers too.)
More Christians should be like that, spending time and getting to know people who are different and don’t think like they do.
The other thing I saw this week is that a Christian group has created a stir by reaching out to the porn industry. xxxchurch.com recently published a version of the Bible with a cover that says “Jesus Loves Porn Stars”. Apparently some Christians are upset because they feel that this is somehow disrespectful to scripture.
I don’t get it. I don’t have a degree in it or anything, but I have done some pretty serious theology study on my own. And I’m not aware of any theological school of thought that claims the Bible’s cover is divinely inspired. It is the contents that are important, not the packaging.
But then there are way too many Christians who are more concerned with appearances than with substance or reality. Jesus had some pretty harsh things to say about religious people in his day that were overly focused on appearances.
“How terrible it will be for you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! You are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy–full of greed and self-indulgence! Blind Pharisees! First wash the inside of the cup, and then the outside will become clean, too.
“How terrible it will be for you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs–beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity. You try to look like upright people outwardly, but inside your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Christians would do a whole lot better to listen to Jesus and treat people more like Darren and the folks at xxxchurch.com.
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Are People Naturally Good or Evil?
Let’s talk about a core life philosophy question. This question is really the starting point of all religions. Even the passionately non-religious have to answer this question if they are going to be honest about their beliefs.
Are people by nature good, or are they by nature evil?
By that I mean do people have the natural ability in themselves to successfully determine the morally right from the morally wrong and consistently choose to do the right things in their lives?
Humanism is one broad spectrum of philosophy that says people are generally good in that they are quite capable of making right moral choices.
The Fundamentalist preacher on the other hand will tell you that you are a sinner, Jesus wants to save you and you are doomed without his help.
Now my point here is not to start a debate about the finer points of Humanism or Christian Fundamentalism. I’m not an expert on either and may very well be inaccurate in my characterization of one or the other. I ask that you cut me some slack in that department today.
My point is to look at the question at hand, and examine one of the core qualities of people in general.
And I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have my own ideas on the issue. I look at the world around me and I see very little evidence that people are naturally good when left on their own. A quick scan through the news headlines reinforces that view. Or look at just about any toddler. Most of the time one of the first words we ever learn is “Mine!“
But what I’m really interested to see is the evidence on the other side. I looked at it once and came to my own conclusion. But maybe I missed some things. Can anyone show me how I’m mistaken? Are people really good at the core?
Believe it or not, I’m willing to be shown I’m wrong here. Just leave a comment and show me.
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How Do You Relate to God?
I’m having another long discussion with Dan Traube back at my Class Warfare in the Church post. We pretty much disagree (again) but that’s OK. The whole discussion has got me thinking.
How do we relate to God?
Most religions are about connecting people to God. When I think about some of the major religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Shintoism, I see that they are all very different.
Yet they all have one thing in common that I can see. Each of them have some sort of set of rules or guidelines that a person must follow to reach spiritual fulfillment. There are things a person must do and others that they must not do if they are going to “make it” in these religions. Many Christians do the exact same thing.
But Jesus completely tossed out this idea of rule keeping.
The biggest conflicts he had were with the religious leaders. They were the best rule keepers and really didn’t like what Jesus had to say. In fact Jesus made them so angry that they conspired to have him killed to shut him up.
What sorts of things did Jesus say that got the religious leadership so worked up? Here’s one example
I assure you, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.
Jesus said it was a simple
two step process.
- Listen
- Believe
That’s it. According to Jesus, that’s all it takes to be acceptable to God. There’s no special sacrifice required, no long pilgrimage, no heroic deeds or great quest, and no list of rules to follow.
A lot of people don’t like that. They want it to be hard so they feel like they’ve accomplished something when they get there. That’s the only reason I can figure so many Christians have added on such an overwhelming list of rules to the basic things Jesus said.
But the bottom line is that Jesus taught that we don’t relate to God by keeping a list of rules. We relate to him as a person relates to another person, by hanging out with him and having conversation and dialogue.
And by doing that doesn’t mean that we are being disrespectful of God or reducing him to our level of an ordinary person. Just like we can converse with a King or a President and still respect and honor his position, we can relate to God on a personal level through the person of Jesus while still honoring and respecting him.
In one way, rules are easier on our end. With a list of rules we can measure how we are doing and figure out where we stand in our relationship with God. We can feel pretty good when we pretty much are keeping to most of the rules.
Did you know that God does allow for folks to relate to him on the basis of rules? It’s true. The down side is huge, though!
First the standard is absolute perfection in keeping those rules. For your entire life, past, present and future. And it covers both thought and action. If you ever break any of the rules once in the tiniest way then, “buzzzz. You must leave the island.”
There are no second chances and no allowances under the rule system. Either you are perfect or you are out. Oh, and you have to pick the right set of rules, too.
The standard is impossibly high. But you are free to go that way if you like.
OR you can do it Jesus’ way:
Listen and Believe.
It sounds ridiculously simple. What’s the catch?
The catch is that when you choose to do it Jesus’ way, you will find yourself able to follow the rules on an ever improving basis because the change will come from the inside out.
We blow it completely when we try to change from the outside in by forcing ourselves to follow a set of rules to change our behavior. The results from the rules first approach are always far less the results from Jesus’ way.
And that is doubly true when we try to get other people to change by following a list of rules!
So here’s my question:
How do you relate to God?
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Class Warfare in the Church
There seems to be a simmering class warfare between Christians these days.
On one side there are folks who say that God wants you to be rich and healthy. “Come follow Jesus and leave your pain behind!” they shout as they gather followers like a kid hunting Easter eggs. They pull verses out of scripture like Proverbs 10:22
The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it.
The God-wants-you-rich crowd tends to look down on poor people because they believe the poor must be far from God because they don’t have His material blessings.
On the other side are the folks who say that the rich are just greedy and selfish. “Don’t you know?” they holler, “Jesus said it is hard for a rich person to get into heaven. Give all your stuff away and that will prove that you are on the team because God loves the poor.”
So which side’s right?
The short answer, for those of you with short attention spans (and want to skip past a long explanation), is neither extreme is right.
But didn’t Jesus say that stuff about rich people and heaven? Yep. He sure did. But let’s look at the scripture passage in context.
The story that the God-loves-the-poor-and-hates-the-rich crowd clings to so much is actually found three different times in scripture in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is repeated three times so it must be important. Let’s look at the story in the book of Matthew.
Jesus just had an encounter with a rich guy who wanted to know what he needed to do be acceptable to God. He was asking Jesus how he could be good enough to get into heaven on his own merit. At the end of the conversation Jesus tells him to sell everything he had, give to the poor, and then follow after Jesus. The guy wasn’t willing to do that and went away sad.
Apparently he was very rich.
Now let’s pick up the story in Matthew 19:23-26
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is very hard for a rich person to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. I say it again–it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”
The disciples were astounded. “Then who in the world can be saved?” they asked.
Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.”
In each of the three versions of the story Jesus repeats the line about it being hard for a rich person to get into heaven. That makes at least 6 times the bible records Jesus saying it. The idea must be important!
On the surface it sounds a lot like Jesus is firmly in the poor, God-hates-the-rich camp. But that quick superficial look misses Jesus’ point entirely.
The people Jesus was actually speaking to at the time had a slightly twisted view of God. They were at the extreme end of the God-wants-you-rich spectrum. They firmly believed that wealth was proof that people were favored by God. They looked at the whole of scripture through a lens like the example from Proverbs I mentioned. Through out the gospels you see time and time again that the followers of Jesus had that view of God.
Jesus had to do some radical communicating to break through all of their misunderstandings. It wasn’t time for pruning back the branches. He had to cut down the tree all together.
He completely removed financial status from equation as far as what it took to please God. His point was not that being rich is bad in God’s eyes. His point was that being rich (or being poor) was totally irrelevant and completely missed what was important.
What God wants is for people to put Him first. The rich guy Jesus was talking to right before that story wanted to keep all his stuff ahead of God. Jesus said that didn’t cut it. Jesus was crystal clear throughout his teaching: God first. Everything else comes after that.
When he was asked what the single most important thing was for people to do, Jesus could have answered, “Sell all your stuff, give the money to the poor and become poor yourself.”
But he didn’t.
Instead he answered, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.”
That’s it.
You do that, Jesus said, and love other people as much as you love yourself, then you are covered. Everything else is secondary.
All the junk that Christians bicker over is incredibly petty. Rich or Poor? Makes no difference. Christians need to get over themselves, their need to be right, and get out of God’s way.
The bottom line is simple. Do you love God? Do you love others?
Where do you stand?
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Evidence I’m Getting Older #458
Summer is no longer my favorite time of the year.
When I was growing up I couldn’t wait for summer every year. Since I was an only child and we lived in the country outside a (very) small town, my childhood was a very Calvinistic experience. Well, without the intellectual stuffed tiger sidekick, but I was allowed to run amok on my own. Yes, it was a different world then. We often didn’t lock our doors at night either.
But I digress.
I would endure the final few sweltering days of the school year with as much patience as I could muster. Our school building had been dedicated by Eleanor Roosevelt and didn’t have air conditioning. But I could deal with it because I knew it meant summer with all its adventure was right around the corner. I’m sure it didn’t help my grade point average at all to be taking finals with my brain frying from the heat but somehow I muddled through.
These days it seems I have to endure much more than a few sweltering days. There are vast stretches of the year of what I call Summer. I broaden the scope out a bit beyond the calendar season.
My definition of Summer is any day the temperature gets above 75F (24C). I figure my definition on the fact that we keep our air conditioner set at 74 in the summer and if it gets above that we have to close the windows. I know it’s not at all scientific. But it works for me.
Down here in the Southeast we not only have the heat, we get the humidity smothering us like a wet wool blanket. There’s nothing quite like breaking a sweat just walking the 35 feet across the parking lot to your car. I suppose that part’s not so bad though because you know when you get there you are going to climb into a blast furnace. And it will take approximately 18 minutes before there is any noticeable temperature difference in the flow coming out of the a/c vents.
If you’re trip happens to be over 45 minutes long the interior might actually get cool enough for you to stop sweating. But the a/c probably won’t be able to dry out your shirt until after the sun goes down. By that time you’re bound to notice some interesting smells are following you around.
It must be a sign of aging. Something I so looked forward to when I was a kid now fills me with a sense of dismay.
Thank God for air conditioning!
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What is a Christian?
I came across this question this afternoon, “In your own words, what is a Christian?â€
Below is how I answered the question. What do you think?
I see a Christian as a follower of Jesus Christ. He is a person who has given up trying to “get right†with God, realizing that no matter what he does it will never be enough to reach the perfect standard that a holy and perfect God requires. Instead the Christian has brokenly accepted Jesus’ payment for all his wrongs and has submitted his will to the authority of Christ.
As a result the Christian experiences new life through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who is transforming him into the image of Christ. The natural result of this transformation is that the Christian grows in spiritual maturity, has an ever increasing desire to serve people, and to influence the world around him for the cause of Christ.
