I will stand up for my beliefs, I will die for them, but I will not kill for them.

When the US invasion of Iraq commenced, I was a Junior in high school. I spent my lunch period, as well as my teacher’s aide period, watching CNN’s coverage of the “Shock and Awe” bombing of Iraq with friends. We cheered as the bombs rained down on Baghdad. As patriots, we were proud to see the dominance of the US displayed to the world as bomb after bomb destroyed communities, military targets, and utilities.

I now regret those cheers.

There are many veterans in my family history. Both of my grandfather’s served in WWII, one in Korea. My uncle was awarded a bronze star for heroism. I also have other relatives who have given their lives, blood, sweat and tears in the name of our country. My dad attended a military college and was prevented from joining the military because of health problems. I have been raised to be “proud to be an American” and to “support our troops.” I respect the sacrifices of our ancestors. I respect their bravery to do what was seen as right. I enjoy and value the rights I have as an US citizen and I have to recognize that these pleasures came with the sacrifice of lives and scars that will never heal. These men stood up for what they believed was right, I have to value that and now I have to follow in that tradition and stand for what I believe is right.

I will stand up for my beliefs, I may even die for them, but I will not kill for them.

Today, August 6, is the anniversary of the dropping of THE bomb on Hiroshima. I now realize that the shock and awe bombing I was cheering for on the news was done for a very similar purpose as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Admittedly, the bombing of Baghdad was nowhere near as catastrophic as those of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. However they share a common purpose. Lives were lost to prove US dominance. Lives were lost to shock and awe the world to the point of fearing the US military structure. Lives were lost in order that more patriotism would be bred among US citizens. Among other warmongers I criticized the American citizens who protested the invasion, and now I wish I had been on their side. How is any of this done in the love of God?

–

I was outside of church one day when I overheard a couple of men complaining about the pastor’s prayer. I heard one ask, “I can’t believe she’s bringing up such controversial issues in the prayer.” The other responded, “She should just leave that alone.” They were both referring to the part of the pastor’s prayer in which she asked for an end to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and all wars. More “controversially,” she prayed both for the protection of our troops and the Iraqi troops.

“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. ” (Matthew 5:44-5, NRSV)

Why has the church fallen so out of line with the teachings of Christ’s love?

–

Read the following pieces and see if they speak to you the way they have to me:

• Blessing the Bombs by George Zabelka : George Zabelka was the Catholic priest who blessed the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
• “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy : This is a poem in which Hardy ponders the ways in which war changes everything
• You often hear the end of the following chapter from Isaiah read at Christmas, but I am not as familiar with the earlier parts of the chapter. It makes a difference when we think about where our priorities should be set and who we should trust as our protector and leader.

^{Isa 9:2}

The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness–

on them light has shined.

^{Isa 9:3} You have multiplied the nation,

you have increased its joy;

they rejoice before you

as with joy at the harvest,

as people exult when dividing plunder.

^{Isa 9:4} For the yoke of their burden,

and the bar across their shoulders,

the rod of their oppressor,

you have broken as on the day of Midian.

^{Isa 9:5} For all the boots of the tramping warriors

and all the garments rolled in blood

shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

^{Isa 9:6} For a child has been born for us,

a son given to us;

authority rests upon his shoulders;

and he is named

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

^{Isa 9:7} His authority shall grow continually,

and there shall be endless peace

for the throne of David and his kingdom.

He will establish and uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

from this time onward and forevermore.

The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

• “If you enroll as one of God’s people, heaven is your country and God is your lawgiver.” -St. Clement of Alexandria

—

As Christians we have to give loyalty to the Kingdom over nation, and God’s love over all else. We must value all human life and recognize that the lives of our soldiers are not more valuable in God’s eyes that those of our enemies. I will not tell anyone how they should think about war and to reconcile those thoughts to Christianity. I hope you will read the above links in their entirety and pray over them.

As for myself, I have been entirely unable to justify war under any circumstance. I do not believe that it is the calling of any Christian to take part in any war. I will not kill for any reason. When Peter defends the innocent Christ by cutting off the ear of one of his aggressors. Christ disarms him and heals the injured man and thereby disarms all Christians. I believe the church has been wrong in condoning any war in the past. I am not judging any of the decisions made by Christians in the past, but I am refusing to believe that any war has ever been or ever will be fought as in Christs love.

In His Peace,

Nate

A Reconciliation

I have promised several people that I would create a new post soon. I had something on my mind and I have been working through those thoughts for a week now. I am finding it hard to articulate those ideas. I cannot find a place to start and once I try to start something, I have more to say than I can fit into a post of a reasonable length. I have decided to divide these thoughts up and come up with a series of posts themed “reconciliation.” This will deal with reconciliations I am forced to make in my own faith journey as well as reconciliations that I believe to be necessary as the body of Christ moves forward.

Please keep checking back.

Why Can’t I Get My Homework Done?

The scorching daylight heat has given way a moonlit, muggy night, but at least it is tolerable. It is finally cool enough to spend some time in the quiet outside. I organize my things together and make a place to sit on the front porch, not really a front porch, a modest stoop. I sit on the front steps, blocking the narrow path in their center that leads between the various living and dead potted plants that my mother has. The brick steps are not comfortable, but there aren’t many other options here.

My Latin Textbook serves a dual purpose tonight. It makes a great table to place my tobacco on and tamp my pipe. The tobacco is a dark cavendish that I haven’t tried before, I just picked up an ounce from the tobacco shop last week on a whim. As I light my pipe I notice the “heat” lightning to the south—the quick bright flashes illuminate the sky above the trees. There is only one star visible tonight. My pipe is simple, made of burl wood in Italy. I am always pleased by the glowing embers in the bowl. This tobacco is very good—mild with a little bit of spice. The aroma is marvelous sweet poison. I cool my mouth with a sip of chilled wine.

My mind is heavy tonight. That is why I have come out here to smoke and study and concentrate. Life inside is hectic. The ongoing drama that I find myself caught up in distracts me from my work. I realized today that I really need to make more time to study my Latin, so that is what I am doing now.

“Àmo, amáre, amávi, amátum – To love, like,” I say aloud as I read my vocabulary list. “To love, like—I wonder, I wonder how my friend is doing now.” I think back to one of my best friends who was recently dumped by a girl that he was in love with. I called him today, twice, but he never answered his phone. He seems terribly depressed and I can’t seem to rouse him out of it. Just a week before she told him that it was over, he had started looking at engagement rings. He is inconsolable. To me he is like a brother, a faithful friend who has always provided the emotional encouragement that I needed in trying times. It is times like this that I am tortured by my natural empathy. To see his pain and to feel helpless in alleviating it, I feel like I am failing him. My chest feels labored as I think about the pain that he is going through, my heart aches with his.

The lightning in the distance has become more frequent and I notice that my pipe has gone out. I search for another match, and finding one stuck it several times against the box—it doesn’t light and I curse the cheap matches that my father buys. The bowl of my pipe now glowing again, I return my attention to my Latin homework.

“Cógito, cogitáre, cogitávi, cogitátatum – To think, ponder, consider, plan.” As soon as I mutter these words, my mind again spirals into distraction. How many people, for how many centuries have sat beneath this same sky and pondered? How many plans had been made that did not pan out? My friend had plans; he had plans to marry this girl. He thought she was “the one.” Of course I find such a notion preposterous; I don’t believe in “the one.” To me there cannot be only one person on this earth that you are compatible with. With six billion inhabitants, surely you can find more than one person on this earth to be with. Besides, relationships are about what you put into them, they take work and commitment, precisely the two things that I don’t have time for. What was he thinking? He didn’t have time for them either. He needs to be concentrating on school. I do wish he would call me back, his last post on his blog sounded kind of grim and I’m getting concerned about him.

I now find myself pacing around my driveway puffing on my pipe. Now that I am away from my house I notice the large, bright orange moon. I couldn’t see it from the steps. As a child orange moons scared me. When I would go to my grandmother’s church, her pastor preached on no other subject but the apocalypse. His stories of the apocalypse were frightening to me. I would never be able to sleep on nights when the moon was orange. I would go to bed fearing that it would turn to blood red while I was asleep. I may have thought myself a Christian, but I didn’t want to live through the apocalypse. Eventually I overcame this fear after I had lived through several harvest moons.

At this point I have given up on studying. Even studying out here I find distractions. I gather my things and go inside. I pour a second glass of wine, leaving just enough wine in the bottle for my brother, and I go to my room.

My friend seems to be doing better, at least according to his Facebook profile. I put a note on his profile that as long as he’s doing better he doesn’t have to return my calls; I’ll talk to him later.

I think that I will give up on doing my Latin tonight.

My Hands

My hands are soft.

I look at them while I sit in church and guilt washes over me. My hands are as soft as they were when I was a small child. I am then ashamed to exchange my hand with anyone in the church. I try to compensate for my soft hands by looking everyone straight in the eye and ensuring that I give them a firm and purposeful handshake. I try to divert their attention to the weather conditions or some other inane distraction. I thank god that friendship time during the service is short and my encounters are brief. Hopefully the other worshipers will not notice that my hands are so soft or they will at least not think on it long. I will only have to shake their hands once more before they leave the church, and then I am pretty much home free until the next service.

My hands are large and proportional to the size of my oversized body. My hands are not particularly weak, but also not particularly strong. My fingers are not thin, in fact they probably have a bit more fat on them than the average fingers, but they are not pudgy.

As a baby, a family prayer had likely been said over my hands—a lyric prayer that my grandfather had written when he first became a father. This prayer included a wish that my hands would be led to do righteous things. One line in particular still strikes me, “May they never learn the art to fight, but humbly fold in prayer each night.” This prayer was said over my tiny hands in my infancy, and was the first consideration of their importance.

When I was in elementary school we were always lined up in alphabetical order so that I walked in line between the same two children every day. When our line would stop in the cafeteria, the boy in front of me would always ask if he could look at my hands. The boy was from the Sea Islands where we lived. He had grown up in one of the poorest communities on the eastern coast. His father was likely a hard laborer as most of my classmates’ parents were. The community was full of shrimpers and farmers, as well as maintenance men and construction workers that worked on the nearby seaside resorts. Reluctantly I would hold my hands up and he would run his fingers over my palms. He always seemed engrossed by them and would end up turning them over and touching them. He would then tell me that I had the softest hands of anyone that he had ever known. He wanted to know what it was that I did to get them that soft. He wanted to have soft hands like mine. I would say simply, “I wash them.” I often found this to be a creepy experience, but since I have always found it difficult to make friends, I let him repeat this ritual every day that year.

In the years since, people have occasionally remarked that my hands were very soft, and that despite my size, I had a very gentle touch. I have never thought much of it.

Last night, however, I stood up and joined hands in prayer with several guys I was meeting with. I was standing between a guy that I am good friends with and a guy that I’ve never met before and I joined hands with both of them. When our hands first clasped, the gentleman that I had never met before remarked to the room at large that I had very soft hands and that I must use lotion in order to keep them that soft. I smiled and likely blushed after this attention had been turned towards me. I had been found out.

No, I do not own a bottle of lotion and I have never been remotely interested in making or keeping my hands soft. I wash them with the frequency that one should and I use generic brand antibacterial soap that does not have any hand-softening qualities that I know of. There is only one reason my hands stay so soft. They do not work.

When I was growing up on the coast I shook hands with shrimpers and farmers at church. Their hands were usually covered in calluses and their grips were sometimes so firm that it hurt my hands. These men worked difficult jobs and their hands revealed the years of abuse that they had been put through. My hands are just as soft now as they were then. They had no marks or calluses, or any other proof that they had done anyone much good.

The hands of my Christ were not soft. His hands were likely carved by the years that he spent in his youth working as a carpenter. His hands had known work. His hands also suffered the most famous wounds of sacrifice that any hands have ever suffered. My hands are not like his.

I can never hope to have hands that will heal with a simple touch. My hands will never be pierced by the nails of crucifixion, and they will not raise the dead to life.

I am not in the best of health; I don’t know how helpful I would be doing ministries that require hard labor. However I do know that my hands are capable of cooking large amounts of food to feed God’s people. I do know that my hands are capable of patting a friend on the back or holding the hand of a bereaved family member. My hands are capable of picking up a pen and writing a note to a friend who needs encouragement. My hands can fold in prayer each night. I only need to learn to do more with my hands. I must do more with my hands in order to further the kingdom of my God and King.

My hands are weak, but His are strong. May his hands guide me.

Nate

My Patron Saint

 

My childhood experience in a Southern Baptist Church was practically devoid of knowledge of the saints. My only childhood memory of the saints is that we would sing a hymn in church about the saints marching somewhere.

 

In recent years I have taken up a fascination with the traditions of the Catholic Church. However, being a college student with much assigned reading I have had little time to read on the subject. I don’t have a patron saint.

 

On the wall of my room I have the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi framed where I can see it every day. I love the selflessness and the inspiration in this prayer. St. Francis, through this prayer teaches me how to pray not only to defer my prayer to the greater being of God, but also to make an introspective analysis of my own life. I recite this prayer when I need to back off and be understanding of people. This introspective prayer has become a wonderful, transforming part of my life. It usually goes like this:

 

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.” I am not often peaceful. What can I do to make the world a more peaceful place? “Where there is hatred, let me sow love.” I am rarely the purveyor of love. Why don’t I love more freely? “Where there is injury, pardon.” Here I am reminded that I should forgive. Mercy shall be shown to him who show’s mercy. Why haven’t I forgiven my brother or my friend? “Where there is doubt, faith.” I have my faith, but my skepticism may turn others from the faith. I should be building and reinforcing the faith of others. “Where there is despair, hope.” Again I often find myself despairing and not spreading the seeds of hope. I must find something to hope for. “Where there is darkness, light.” Sometimes I feel like I am lost in the dark. Why do I not concentrate on the light? “Where there is sadness, joy.” How often do I find myself spreading the contagious sadness of my life instead of the outrageous joy of God? “O, Devine Master, grand that I may not seek to be consoled as to console, to be loved as to love, for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” I am not the center of the world. I must reach out. If I do not feel loved enough, I must reach out and love. I must pardon my brother. I must love my enemy. I must do my part to make this world a more peaceful place. Then in my meditation on this saint’s prayer I find myself led. I understand what it is God wants me to do to be an instrument of His peace and to sow love, pardon, faith, hope, light, joy, and to listen, console and understand.

 

I guess that for now St. Francis of Assisi is my patron saint, but that is for now. I also love the intellect and insight of St. Thomas Aquinas. Not to mention all of the good Christian saints that I have personally known that will never make it into a church canon.

Drunken Spirituality

The cashier takes my money and I proceed down the line where a nice gentleman fastens a bright orange bracelet around my left wrist. He steps aside so that I can pass through the gate. While waiting for my friend to follow through the gate I look forward to the littered street. Throngs of people, in various degrees of sobriety, dressed in their green apparel and funny hats are moving up and down the streets. I have arrived. I am twenty-one years old and I have made it to my first St. Patrick’s Day at Five Points.

The streets were so crowded that it was difficult to move. The headlining band of the day had already begun playing and the ID checkpoint had run out of “over 21” bracelets. Vendors on each side of the street sold everything from green shirts to green beer. The fountain propelled green water high into the air while inebriated people stood around it in awe.

I finally found my other friends and we crowded in as close to the main stage as we could. A man to my right was holding up the stack of ten or so beer cups that he had accumulated during his day of drinking. To my left a girl who had obviously had far too much was passed out on the ground attended by paramedics.

The concert was good, several thousand drunks doing their best to hoist each other up and surf over the crowd. As the concert got a little more interesting, a couple of my friends and I set out in search for our St. Patrick’s Day green beer. We made our way to a bar down the street and waited twenty minutes for our beer. It wasn’t green, but after waiting twenty minutes in a crowded and noisy room I was willing to take whatever kind of beer they gave me. Then we returned to the concert which had become a little more animated: several thousand inebriates jumping up and down screaming off-key the wrong words to a song they didn’t know. I observe from a distance as I sip on my beer.

The conclusion of the concert brought an end to the day’s official events. The streets began to empty as the festival-goers moved from the streets into the bars hosting the “after-parties.” A friend and I decide to take a walk down the main strip. I had exhausted my first cup of beer and found a vendor where I purchased a premium beer at a cheap price. As we rounded a corner I immediately spotted a group of friends, or perhaps a circle of friends. They were literally were a group forming a circle in the middle of the road and I found out why as I approached. One of them was very drunk and the purpose of the circle was to keep him from getting to the passing crowd and making a fool of himself.

My very intoxicated friend was standing in the middle of the circle, completely still with his eyes rolled into the back of his head. As we approached his eyes rolled forward, and somehow, even in his state, he recognized us. He came towards us hugging and praising us with sheer excitement. He told us how much he loved us and how he couldn’t live without us–his friends. My natural response to the situation was to pull out my camera and take some video clips of the spectacle that we were making in the middle of the street.

The inebriate went around the circle hugging us in turn. We watched and we laughed and I recorded as much as I could on video. One of the group, the most sizable of us, led our friend out by holding him by the shirt collar. As we made our way out of the festival he kept making attempts to hug each and everyone he passed. Oh, how I laughed, but at the same time stood in awe, oddly inspired by the ordeal.

“Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane… There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Often we find ourselves, as Christians, criticizing the debauchery that takes place at these events. We look upon people like my friend and many others there, with scorn. I felt that I was having an odd experience as I looked upon this scene with an odd sort of appreciation and inspiration. My friend stood there in his honest form. There were no inhibitions left. He wasn’t lying about anything. He didn’t care what other people thought of him.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not advocating that we take church trips to our local bars and drink the evening away so that we can discover who we are. I do not advocate that getting drunk will bring you closer to God. (Well I guess that depends on how much you drink, I am sure that if you drink too much you will meet God face to face but you may not like what he has to say.) I do wish that most people felt the freedom in churches to lose these inhibitions. I wish that we could all feel that free to be who we really are. When most of us go to church we do not mention the lives that we live outside of church. Occasionally we have testimony hour and we reveal to the congregation our lesser embarrassing moments, only giving vague details.

What I wish is that our churches were so filled with the intoxicating love and grace of God that people who come into church would feel a similar way that they may feel when entering into a bar. There is no need to pretend to be anything. There is no need to put on spiritual make-up or camouflage. Many people that frequent bars do so to ‘get away’ from the burdens of life outside of its doors. They drink alcohol and join with this community because they are not ashamed of the people they are. In a bar the lowest rise and the highest fall, here we are all riff-raff.

Sadly this is not what people often experience at church. Burdened by the weight of the world they enter the doors of their local church. They do not have the nicest clothes, the only suit they own was purchased ten years ago for their great aunt’s funeral and it seems to have shrunk. When they enter the church they may be “welcomed” by the church greeters and approached during the ‘friendship time’ of the service. Everyone seems nice, but they don’t seem to genuinely care. Some churches have “welcome centers,” reminiscent of a booth at the state fair, where ushers are on hand to distribute literature about the programs and classes the church has to offer. Friendly voices welcome them to the church, but castigating stares look down upon them in their ill-fitting suits. They can sense the insincerity that we have. The music may be lively and the church may be trying to reach out to “this generation” with videos, lights, drums, and guitar. The pastor may wear a Hawaiian shirt and speak in modern-day slang. Still they do not feel comfortable. They leave with the same, if not more burdens than they came with.

“God Himself, like a shrewd taverner, has come to us first, to seduce us from the path of worldly duty, to know the sweetness of his love.” –Simon Tugwell

God’s love and grace should be like intoxicating liquor. It should take hold of us, drive out our inhibitions and free us to let our soul stand stark naked in front of our living God. It should lighten our hearts and remove from our eyes the eyeglasses that we use to scrutinize and criticize others. Suddenly, intoxicated by this love, we love everyone and all of life becomes a celebration. We enter a state of grace and wish never to live again in the sobriety that once was our lives before Christ. We enter into communion with God and look forward to that day when, at the wedding feast in heaven, we will join him in celebration and drink of new wine forever.

“The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarfull of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two hundred proof grace—of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly.” –Robert Farrar Capon

The importance that the church needs to understand is this: as the church, we are intended to be the purveyors of this intoxicating love of Christ. It does not matter whether your church is traditional, with liturgy and old hymns and stained glass windows, or modern with rock music, modern architecture and all of the latest fads. What matters is this authentic intoxication of love. The church filled to overflowing with the love of God will reach out with sincerity and love to their neighbors. They will be brutally honest with themselves as only a person under the influence of grace can be. They will not pass judgment on their fellow man, because here, in church, we are all God’s riff-raff.

School is Over…. For the semester.

I know that I have very few readers, and what few I have, I am sure have given up on me. This semester has been a drain on me and I have had little time to think about doing a post. I have about 4 drafts of different posts that I am working on, but none of them are finished yet. I will post soon, hopefully now that I have a little more time I can work on them.

Thanks for reading.

Nate

Rustic Saints

The blade of the plow cuts into the earth, reforming it into miniature mountain ranges. The sunlight glistens from the sweat-slicked back of a small brown mule as he plods monotonously forward. He is followed by worn and beaten man covered in earth save for the white lines that run down his face where streams of sweat have washed the soil from his brow. Here, where life is slowed and the pace is peaceful, where livelihood is life itself. To be close to nature, the farmer is covered in earth.

The farmer is close to the earth; he witnesses the seed as it germinates and waits for it to grow. He looks to the sky in a prayer for rain and is grateful for every drop. Every morning he rises to the pre-dawn light and begins again the unfinished work that he has inherited from his fathers. At the conclusion of the day his work, still unfinished, must wait until the next morning’s light. The farmer accepts that in this life his work will never end and resigns himself to living one day at a time.

Both of my grandfathers were farmers. I treasure the memories of staying on their farms. There is something humbling in being able to stop running and slow down, to watch the sky in the anticipation of rain. As a young boy I enjoyed rambling about in the seemingly endless woods or sitting on the front porch staring at the beautiful sky that rose from the edges of the fields.

I would sit on the front porch with my grandfather and he would tell stories, wonderful treasures of oral history and folklore. Sitting at his feet, enthralled by his many tales, I learned of his past, the farm, his brothers, and his planes in World War II. From the front porch I would be able to observe the wonders of creation: the sky over the fields always provided the most beautiful sunrises or sunsets, the trees surrounding the house were always filled with songbirds, and elegant flowers bloomed from the bushes. There was such an abundance of greenery in the garden around the house that the morning light entering the windows had a greenish hue. All of this is cherished memory locked in the pages of the past.

My grandfathers taught me these things if they taught me nothing else: There is nothing wrong with having nothing, what is important is to learn to appreciate God and his work. I learned that there is nothing wrong with being poor and nothing wrong with weakness, for every man has his flaws. One of the most important things that I learned from my mother’s father was the ability to laugh at myself. It is honorable to be so comfortable with your weaknesses that you can joke about them. Any man who cannot laugh at himself has no place to laugh at anyone else. I learned to accept that life isn’t about getting ahead of others; it is not about living in prosperity, it is about learning to be with God and appreciate his blessings.

We prayed and we revered God’s creation as something sacred. There was always wonder in the world. The sun rising on the fields was a beauty that we looked forward to in the mornings. I also learned to appreciate the beauty of the mountains. However, these are large things that many people find to marvel at. People go on vacation to marvel at the sunrise on a beach or to be captivated by the view from a mountain peak. More importantly, my grandparents taught me the beauty of the ordinary. To some, a bird singing in a tree is beautiful; my grandmother taught me to appreciate the different songs of individual birds. These are things so simple, but I can see the signature of a creator in every one of them.

Today as I am in pursuit of ‘higher’ education, I find myself losing the wonder that I once had for the ordinary. There is now an explanation for everything: the stars shine because they are burning spheres of gas millions of miles away… the ivy twines because the laws of phototropism and geotropism demand that the plant climb up, away from gravity and toward the sun in order to expose the most leaves to the sunlight and aid in photosynthesis to create food…the sky is so blue because the gases in the atmosphere reflect the blue rays of light that bounce off of the earth’s abundant oceans. As a child an explanation such as, “Because God made the stars to shine, because God made the ivy twine, because God made the sky so blue” sufficed to answer my questions.

It is the simple wonder instilled in me as a child that makes me appreciate the wonders of God. The truths that were taught to me as a child by my parents and grandparents are not diluted by the facts I am learning about in my science classes. I now look at the stars and I can’t help finding myself in awe. How amazing it is that God can create countless burning spheres of gas in such an expansive universe that the light I see today is actually billions of years old. How amazing that God can engineer a plant so that the seed that grows roots that move toward gravity and stems that grow away from gravity. Furthermore a plant that grows around something so that it can climb higher towards the light and maximize its benefits from the sun. How amazing it is that oceans are so expansive and that water in small amounts seems clear, but when put with countless other molecules it is blue, and then the water reflects the sunlight onto the atmosphere to provide us with a blue sky. I have not even mentioned the wonders of DNA, the human brain, the microscopic world, or the other marvels that I have not yet found.

In my mother’s family: I am thankful that God can take a man with a fifth-grade education and allow him to create poetry that speaks directly to my heart. My grandfather was a rustic poet and his words are still a comfort to me and a tribute to God though he has passed away. I am thankful for a grandmother who loved birds and animals and children and blessed me with a love of music and plants.

In my father’s family: I am thankful that God took a man out of the fields to fight and be brave in combat in the defense of freedom. I am thankful that through this man I learned the virtues of duty, faithfulness, and mercy. Also I am thankful for a grandmother that can teach me to look at things not just as they are, but to question and explore the world around me.

I also thank God for my parents: For father who is kind, gentle and loving, who teaches me a love for people and their lives. He also fuels my passion for theology and history and science. For a mother who is caring, who took me to the beach to collect sea creatures to learn of God’s wonders of the ocean and who strengthens my passion for literature and poetry.

Thanks to these rustic saints, who were close to earth and close to God, I have learned to look for God’s signature in all of his creation. God is an artist that signs every piece of his artwork; you need only to look and find it.

In Awe,

Nate Sloan

The God of No I-Told-You-So’s

        I have grown up in the fundamentalist south. I have attended a couple of “those” revivals at churches I have visited; those revivals similar to those you see in the movies. The pastor is standing before the congregation practically yelling at the top of his lungs. He is red in the face, the veins protruding from his brow as he lifts a handkerchief to dab the beads of sweat from his heated face. He is preaching the old “fire and brimstone.” He moves back and forth on the stage, breathing heavily and speaking loudly. He speaks loudly so as to make sure that those poor wretched sinners in the back pew of the church will not miss his message: the message that God’s wrath is in store for them unless they repent of their evil ways.

        I have sat through these services as a child. I watched as people came down the aisle crying. Children were scared to death. They had gotten the message, the message that a wrathful and vengeful God will rain down mercilessly on them unless they go forward and change from their evil ways. They feared being cast into a never-ending pit of fire. The pastor has convinced them that they are unworthy and that God will surely punish them for the evil things that they do. However, I always wondered, what are they unworthy of? The answer to this question seems to have been neglected in this message of fire and brimstone. The pastor, in his convulsions and outrageously uproarious sermon has seemed to neglect informing his congregation exactly what it is that they are unworthy of.

        I have found that answer to be: they are unworthy of God’s Love. They are unworthy of it not because they are vile creatures. They are unworthy of it because they are imperfect. They are, in fact, sinners, they have sinned and they have “missed the mark.”

        I have sat through some services and wondered whether or not the God that was being proclaimed from the pulpit was the same God that I was reading about in my pew Bible. The idea of God that I am receiving in my ears is not compatible with the God that I am reading with my eyes and know in my heart. The pastor is telling me of a wrathful God that is prepared to exact vengeance for every wrong. God seems to be looking for me to slip up. Now that I am here in church I have come before the altar, and there, staring down at me with blood-shot eyes, is a “messenger” from God. His message from God reads “I told you so, now you have to pay.”

Below is an excerpt from one of my favorite songs: “I So Hate Consequences” by Reliant K

 

When I got tired of running from you
I stopped right there to catch my breath
There your words they caught my ears
You said, “I miss you son. Come home”
And my sins, they watched me leave
And in my heart I so believed
The love you felt for me was mine
The love I’d wished for all this time
And when the doors were closed
I heard no I told you so’s
I said the words I knew you knew
Oh God, Oh God I needed you
God all this time I needed you, I needed you.

I cannot say how many times this part of the song has moved me to tears. “And when the doors were closed I heard no I told you so’s.” My perception of God is not of a vengeful, wrathful God.

“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” (1 John 4:16-18, NRSV)

Here is where someone counters my argument with numerous verses from the Old Testament that tell of the wrath of God. To that person I ask, what about Christ? What about the fact that this God has exacted his revenge and punishment on his beloved Son? The Son of Almighty God has spilled his blood for you and your bill is paid in full! Christ came to free us from the old perception of God and introduce us to the Father.

When we spend all of this time in flight from God, fearful of the price that we must pay for each and every one of our transgressions, we are missing out on God’s promise of a bountiful and fulfilling love relationship. God is not waiting for you to come to him so that he can punish you or say “I told you so.” He is painfully watching you wander farther and farther away from him. God pursues you so that he can show you his love, but you keep running. God only wants you to stop running from him. He has already forgiven your transgressions. He loves you (yes, imperfect you) because you are his child. Forgiveness is yours; you need only to stop running and turn around and take one step toward your Father. God will run to you with his arms wide open and embrace you in his loving arms.

It is only in this true love from the Father that you can truly understand how unworthy you are. It is only through this Christian love that a person can truly be humbled. When we live under the love of a compassionate Father, only then can we understand what it means to be unworthy. However, the important thing to remember is that we are loved by God even though we are unworthy.

“God loves us because of who God is, not because of who we are.”
-Brennan Manning

God’s Unworthy Beloved,

Nate Sloan

Finding God at Lizards Thicket

My Spiritual Re-Discovery

 

Lately I have been very busy and I have not been able to get started on writing on this blog like I had planned to. I am constantly coming up with new topics that I want to write about, but this one hit me today as the topic that I thought would be good to start with. I want my readers to understand where I come from and where I am now. This may help you to understand some of my perspectives later.

 

I was born in Charleston, SC. My father is a Southern Baptist minister. I was dedicated in the oldest Southern Baptist Church, First Baptist Charleston. This was my initiation into “religious” life. My father moved around from church to church throughout my childhood.

I was schooled in the Christian laws, and taught everything that we must do to be a “good” Christian. There seemed to me a prescribed formula. You had only to believe to be saved. However once saved, one must follow all of these rules and regulations to truly be walking with Christ. I accepted these ideas easily, as most children do. They were presented to me as truths by people in authority: my Sunday school teachers, youth ministers, the teachers at the Christian school I attended, and my father.

At the age of 10 I was “saved.” This made me a Christian; I was now a member of the church and could participate in communion. I could quote bible verses and I was well versed in many areas of Christian knowledge. Various different people influenced me. I borrowed prejudices from these different people. There was little toleration for those outside of the Baptist faith. These outsiders, as I perceived them at a young age, were groups that I shouldn’t be associating with, they had fallen out of God’s grace. (Note: When I discuss the prejudices of my influences I am not speaking of my parents. My parents did there best to keep me from developing prejudices.)

            I grew to be a rather unpleasant person. I was always right, especially regarding my views on religion or politics. I was so convinced of this fact that I was intolerant of any other faith or belief. After all if I was right, then why do I need to question whether others were right? I still don’t know whether or not I believed this because of my personality or because of my adolescence. I do know that I was very wrong and lost several friends along the way. I only saw two different sides, black and white or right and wrong. There were no moderate positions to be held. You either agreed with me or you were wrong.

            Just before I started high school my family moved to a new church. I began to question what I believed. I began to search for something new. I needed new answers to the questions about my faith. The answers I had been given previously I could no longer accept. However I didn’t know where to look for these answers.

            I feared the idea of breaking away from the faith that I had been raised in, but it just didn’t fit me anymore.  I lived in the fear that if I questioned the ideas that I was learning in my Sunday school class that I would be condemned to hell. I felt that I must take the bible literally. I learned that it would take faith to follow the law of Christ. I was following the “law” as I had been taught. I had become bound by this law and I would find myself falling into depression when I failed to live up to the standards that were set for me.

            By my freshman year in college I was edging closer and closer toward atheism. I think that most people, thrown into a place like college are inclined toward atheism. How could a good God allow a child to be put through the education system, and then allow him to have to experience college?  Furthermore to be bombarded with all kinds of new ideas that challenged everything that you had been taught. I was falling farther and farther away from my childhood faith.

            I was blessed however with good friends. I had several good Christian friends that stood by me regardless of how terrible I treated them.

            In the fall of 2006 a great thing happened to me. I had breakfast at with a pastor at the church that I worked at. We met at Lizards Thicket, a local chain of restaurants that serve wonderful country food. Sitting there over corned beef hash, grits and eggs, the pastor did little other than listening to my grievances and my story about the pains that I had experienced being a pastor’s son. He listened very well and gave me several good words of encouragement. He spoke so caringly and listened so intently. I came away from that breakfast feeling better about myself. I had not answered a single question about my personal faith, but I had vented my frustrations with the faith I had been taught as a child and was a little more relaxed with my exploration and search for God. Through this pastor I had experienced the grace of God.

Over several months I began to read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart. This book changed my perception of what it means to be a Man of God. Eldredge does a superb job at illustrating for us a picture of what God created men to be. I will likely elaborate on this book and what it has meant to me on a later post.

Starting in the spring 2006 semester I began to question my faith more than I ever had before. Every Tuesday and Thursday I had a wonderful professor in my Religion class. He challenged my faith every class period. I loved it. I put my parents through hell. I challenged every conventional idea about my faith that I had ever had. About half-way through that semester I had come about as close to atheism as I had ever been. This class gave me a wonderful background. By challenging my faith I came to better understand my faith. The search for God was still on, but I had taken another important step toward freedom in Christ.

Over the summer I set up a lunch with my religion professor (also an Episcopal Priest). We met at Lizards Thicket and must have chatted for an hour and a half. At the conclusion of our lunch he said to me, “you aren’t looking for a new faith, you are looking for an identity.” It was then that I realized that in my mind my faith had become Baptist instead of Christian. I was searching for satisfaction in a new denomination instead of searching for Christ.

            This was an epiphany for me. This was when I first discovered what had been missing in my childhood faith. I was not angry at God; I was frustrated with my tradition. This is when I first realized that breaking out of my tradition was the only option I had. I had allowed my anger at my tradition to stand in the way of my faith and my relationship with God. I needed to find God first, and then find the community in which I would be able to love, worship, and share God.

            In the following months I struggled with my relationship with God. I saw such a difference between the God that I understood from the bible and the God that I learned about in the churches I had attended as a child. I had spent more time concentrating on the tangible objects of this world, the things that I can see and touch, that I had little room for thinking about my relationship to the unseen things outside of this world. I am still struggling, but I am learning. So far I have learned the following: I am a sinner, I am unworthy of God grace, but he still gifts it to me. God loves me in a way that I cannot possibly understand. I have been freed from the strict laws of the church and been reunited with the love and grace of God. I have found Faith.

Feel free to comment.

Nate Sloan