An Insight Into My Journey

Well, it has been a while since I have written anything here. The truth is that I have had several topics fluctuating through my attention span. Many things have happened and the ideas kept passing each other. Time to focus.

So, I turn on some Arcangelo Corelli and start typing.

This entry is a little more personal than most. It was bound to happen. I realize that there was a major event in my life and that it left a lot of people confused. I'd like to take the time to explain my exit from the Southern Baptist Convention and one of its member churches.

This is not just some tirade where I shout about transgressions and dole out accusations. This is where I share my heart about me - because the more I look at things from a distance, the more I realize that I am the one that has changed. It all began with a mysterious book I found over ten years ago and was pushed over the edge by some tumultuous events that will not be played out on AtBiG like they were elsewhere. Those who attended church with me do not need further explanation and those that didn't can read along just as well.

What happened to me is that I had to stop and look at the world around me and discern what was really going on. I had to address truth - within myself and in my surroundings. I changed many of my stances on issues. Maybe that makes me crazy. Maybe it makes me a heretic. But for right now, it makes me sane.

Having seen the Book of Eli recently I can say that there is a line from the movie that hit me like a ton of bricks. Eli is trying to defend the last known copy of the King James Bible (remember, good enough for Jesus and His disciples, good enough for me) from certain destruction. In the process he picks up a companion and explains to her "In all these years I've been carrying it and reading it every day, I got so caught up in keeping it safe that I forgot to live by what I learned from it." That was like a retroactive epiphany that threw me back to the early phases of my transition where I realized that the entirety of the Gospel is "Love God with all you have and love your neighbor as yourself"

I realized that many of my beliefs contradicted that. My neighbors might be homosexual. They may have had a pregnancy terminated. They may be atheists. They may be Muslims. They may be Democrats. They may be geologists that know how old rocks are.

What I was doing was not loving these neighbors. I was defending a book - not following it.

I realized that a church is not a building, not a location and the main goal of a church is not to struggle to keep a roof over the heads of the real church - the people that gather there. Church can happen in a bar (I've seen this myself). It can happen in a mall, around a campfire in the woods, in an Internet forum, even in catacombs - where it spent its infancy. The real church is the community of people and how they follow the book , not how they defend it. (Lower case "c" was intentional in this paragraph. I mean local church).

I learned that church can be manly and that men don't have to settle for singing 15 sappy love songs to a man in the name of worship. In fact, I learned you can have church with no music at all - witnessed it with my own eyes.

I can't see for the life of me how two men in California getting married in the eyes of a secular government can have any bearing on the sanctity of the vows my wife and I took before God. What has a bearing on the sanctity of our vows is how we treat each other and how we honor God by keeping those vows.

I met some Catholics that really love Jesus.

I don't mind if the Earth is billions or even trillions of years old. I can handle that.

I attended a church made up almost exclusively by people whose appearance, wardrobe, tattoos and body piercings made them pariahs in most churches in this area - and I saw how they lived the book instead of defending it.

And seriously, Jesus transformed Galilean water into fine wine so that drunk people could get drunker while celebrating life and the oldest of God's sacraments. I know it is hard to stomach for many but it is in our book. We have to deal with that.

All of this to say that I personally reached a point where something had to change. I could not sit quietly in the same chair I had occupied for so long. I cannot blame a bunch of people in this right now. I am owning the experience and accepting the fact that it is where the journey has taken me.

And I close with the hopes that this may have cleared some of the confusion for those that know me and that those who don't will now know me better.

Just some notes...

A lot of things have passed through the old head lately. Time to listen to the soundtrack to "The Pacific" and process some of it.

I guess every man reaches a point in life where he has to sit down and really contemplate what is important to him and what he really wants out of life. Maybe that is what's happening. In that process, a lot of memories are coming to mind. Some of it is just old fashioned nostalgia and some of it is honest reflection.

I'll start with a candid confession from this old Georgia boy. I'm actually a dual citizen - a naturalized Georgian. I was born into the warm springtime of the Sunshine State in the very shadow of figures known to turn the stomachs of Georgians everywhere. And yes, I'm still a Southerner - I hail from the part of the state that is pronounced "Flar-da", far from the invasive snowbird population.

I used to think of it as "you can't help where mama was sitting when you were born" but the progression of time and the fond memories made with family that still inhabits the area as well as many vacations "back home" have changed my attitude. While I am now firmly planted in the land of the Cherokees, that old Seminole wind still blows through my hair from time to time.

I don't usually eat my grits for breakfast - civilized people know they are meant to be eaten with fried fish - hopefully in the company of 50 or so of your closest relatives. I learned to catch said fish on a majestic plot of water by the name of Orange Lake - planted there by the hand of God and not by some TVA dam. I know a cow bird when I see one. I was an adult before I realized that they actually raise Thoroughbreds in Kentucky. I know that watermelon rinds should be disposed of by tossing them across the fence into the cow pasture. Dirt roads are more durable when made with limestone. Throw in the ubiquitous Spanish moss and white sand and I was blessed to enjoy a Florida that most Disney visitors will never see.

Meanwhile, back upon the red clay...

I can remember the neighborhood boys building huts in the woods and searching for various monsters, warding off some persistent Russians and even a stray Nazi or two. I remember 60,000 screaming fans showing up at one of our backyards to watch us play f0r football championships. There were huge family gatherings for the holidays that weren't spent in Florida - the Christmases when we actually had to wear shirts and long pants.

Rich memories. Happy times. Simple joys.

But people grow and family dynamics change. A farm is sold. An old home is torn down. A beloved school is replaced by a department store. Neighbors move away. Places transform and even seem to disappear at times. Familiar settings can become as foreign as Michigan.....or even France.

But the old things give way to new. This is not always a bad thing. It means that there are new places, new people, new traditions, new memories. My sons are in the process of constructing their own nostalgia and learning the stories they will tell their kids. It is my job to make sure they have good bricks with which to build.

This brings my thoughts back around to the idea of what I want out of life - the adventures, experiences, people and places that will give my sons those bricks that will form the foundation of the nostalgia for my grandchildren. And while neither my children nor grandchildren are likely to ever play on a two-track white sand driveway beneath the live oaks, they will carry memories along that will mean just as much to them.

That is what I want. That is a dream that gives me hope.

Here's your sign.

Well. here we go. Seems like there are rocks being thrown back and forth about the "Pledge of Allegiance" again.

Apparently, someone decided that the "Billy Graham Parkway" in Charlotte was a good place to put up a billboard. I'm unfamiliar with that particular road but I am assuming that it is a major thoroughfare with heavy traffic. Sounds like a good place for an advertising billboard.

And so a private organization practiced one of the grand acts of capitalism and entered into an advertising campaign agreement with the owner of the sign. Money was paid for the right to post the sign and up it went.

Now, before you get upset that the atheist group that sponsored the sign was trying to take a swipe a t minister Graham, these signs went up in several locations in North Carolina. It isn't just this road.

The Pledge has become a major battleground in this culture war that, to quote Marco Ramius, has "no battles, no monuments... only casualties". But the war continues just the same. Now, I have my own take on "Pledge controversy" and the sign shows the problem I have with the Pledge. This is country is neither "One Nation" nor "indivisible". It is 50 nations that have the right, even the responsibility to dissolve their union if it becomes detrimental to the well-being of their people. But no one ever seems to complain about that. They are too busy trying to either drag God into it or extricate Him from it. And it is a sad state on both fronts.

However, in this particular instance, the atheists have done nothing wrong. They broke no laws, trespassed on no other person's property and damaged nothing. But some vandals trespassed on private property and spray painted the name of their deity on a legally placed message that had been properly secured and paid for. The vandals have interfered with capitalist enterprise - they have in effect, broken a few of the 10 Commandments in an attempt to defend the honor of the all-seeing, all-powerful, all knowing God. Covetousness, thievery, and maybe even idolatry.

Idolatry? Yes. You see, in the book of Colossians, Paul tells us that Jesus is the "image of the invisible God". He is the God we see. By stepping in and trying to put a substitute for God on the atheists' sign, they may have placed a god (one of their own creation) above the very Christ they claim to worship and who should be evident through the way they live their lives - like love before vandalism. This is a terrible crime that all Christians should look upon as a moment of shame.

We took our sons to see the new "Karate Kid" movie this week and I heard something in it that I think speaks volumes to this crime. Mr Han is explaining to Dre why the lessons he has been learning are important to Kung Fu. He tells him "Kung Fu lives in everything we do. It lives in how we put on a jacket. It lives in how we treat people. Everything is Kung Fu". The same is supposed to be true of faith in Christ - to paraphrase: Jesus lives in everything we do. He lives in how we react to atheists, in how we love our neighbors, everything is Jesus.

Spray painting "God" on someone's property is not Jesus.