February 26, 1973.
The date my life changed. At least, it’s the date I wrote in the Bible given to me by the man who led me to Christ. I was raised an atheist; my parents had been active in church until their early twenties[?]; legend has it that my Dad even preached a sermon in a church once [can’t imagine it]. Something happened; I don’t know what. My dearly beloved Grandmother called us heathens; I didn’t really know what it meant. It didn’t seem to be something positive. My guess is that my parents’ leaving the church was somehow related to this kind lady that was raised in Norway in a ‘hellfire and damnation’ Lutheran church [I can’t really imagine this either—I’ve visited ‘hellfire and damnation’ churches—they weren’t Lutheran]. Maybe if my grandparents had emigrated to the Deep South…
When I told my parents, the summer after my third year of college, about my new experience of Faith and Grace, I thought they’d at least be interested. They let me know that they never wanted to hear about it again. I honored their request; until my Dad was in a coma on his deathbed. I told him about my relationship with the Creator of the Universe, even though I wasn’t sure he heard anything. My Mom started attending a small Presbyterian Church in the last phase of her life; we joined that church when we realized she was starting to slip away from the “Mom” I knew. She heard about Faith and Grace; I don’t know that she ever really understood. I believe they both understand, now.
In the Apostles’ letters to the churches, in the New Testament, instructions are laid out for Believers, instructions for living a new life—it’s really clear that this behavior is totally voluntary, it isn’t a condition for Salvation—those who have messed up their life at some point in time realize that this drastic change of life makes sense. Those who have messed up their life have discovered that the ‘instructions’ given to us by the world so often lead to despair. I’ve found the greatest examples of Faith in Recovery groups of various types. People who have been broken, and know they are powerless to help themselves.
Christians are the only fishermen in the world who try to clean their catch before it’s in the boat. In spite of the fact that it never works.
Perhaps it’s because there are so many Christians that don’t want their children to follow dangerous paths, that so many Christians grow up with a list of behaviors that are ‘bad’; and their children will be judged to be Bad, if they follow these behaviors. I’m ashamed that there are Believers whose children were raised in the church, baptized in the church; and those Believers say that their children are going to Hell because they don’t follow their parents’ beliefs. My faith in the Creator is larger than that small idea. I’m an example of one who was baptized as an infant in a church, NOT raised in the church, but became a follower of Jesus. As a dear saint in a Lutheran Brethren church once told our pastor, “his parents may not lived up to their part of the bargain; God lived up to His part of the bargain. Marty is here among us.” I came to Faith by acceptance and friendship.
These parents don’t seem to check back with their children as they grow up, to see if they really understand why following Paul’s instructions makes sense. They grow up in a ‘subculture’ that has a really hard time accepting the notion that Christianity isn’t supposed to be a set of rules that are to be followed—this is the problem that the Pharisees [the Religious Right in Israel, First Century] had; overcoming this attitude is what Jesus struggled with; and eventually that attitude got Him killed [His death was His own choice, despite teaching to the contrary].
The Jews didn’t kill Jesus. He was Jewish. For the first decades of that which was called The Way, the followers of Jesus practiced Judaism. It was only when Gentiles began following Jesus in larger numbers that the Jewish leaders of the early church had to decide how ‘Jewish’ one needed to be, in order to follow Jesus [incredible irony]. Jews had strict Codes of behavior to follow, and those Codes were covered over by additional codes that acted as a ‘fence’ around the Laws of Moses—if you learned not to break the ‘fence’ you wouldn’t break the Law. At least, that was the idea. What happened is a huge religious mess. The leaders of the Way had very few Jewish rules for the Gentiles to follow—“You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.” End of instruction.
“I felt a deep disturbance in the Force” in November of last year; and I feared something terrible had happened. Only it wasn’t in a science fiction movie, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
Through some means that I really don’t understand at all, church-going people who deeply desire to follow Christianity elected a President who seems to have made it his life goal to break every one of the rules these friends of mine have taught to their children—thanks to the digital world we live in, there is audio and video evidence to support this accusation—interviews, news reports, magazine articles. All there for anyone to read who will make the time to read. And these people seem oblivious to the evidence; they don’t even want to read the evidence, because P45 has convinced them that it’s all lies and ‘fake news’. P45 has been ‘anointed’ by the son of the Evangelist; other famous evangelists apparently preach to thousands of people each Sunday that P45 is ‘anointed’ by God to lead this country ‘out of sin, and into the light’. Fortunately there are students in seminaries across the country that are willing to stand up to the hypocrisy of their leaders.
P45’s Political Strategist, a man who now sits on the National Security Council, is a White Nationalist who stands with the KKK and White Supremacists throughout the country—again, allegations that are supported by documentation for those who are willing to take the time to read.
This isn’t about Political Parties, it isn’t about Hilary; I was a lifelong Republican until George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lied to Congress and invaded Iraq for a reason they knew didn’t exist. I registered as a Democrat in order to vote for Barack Obama in the Oregon Primary. I learned one evening at my church that the illustration/poster I was creating to commemorate the election of an African-American as the leader of this very racist country, would not be appreciated by my congregation. I found this out in person, when I took my son on a Mission Trip to Mexico. I brought him along so that he could see the Spirit of the Creator at work, in person, among fellow Believers. He’ll never come back to our church again, due to the judgmental attitudes he encountered on that trip.
It’s about Character, and following Jesus. It isn’t about a list of rules.
My life changed forever in 1976 and the years that follow; irrefutable evidence occurred in my life; experiences that happened to me alone. Stuff that I know was True, but can’t use to prove the Truth to anyone else. This is the nature of Truth—it only becomes evidentiary when it is grasped by another person.
I was fortunate in high school—I was taught the concept of Critical Thinking by ‘Captain Bob,’ my Senior English teacher. Today it would probably be called AP English. We wrote papers every week, studying philosophical concepts; their strengths, their weaknesses. I was one of those students who enjoyed the History of Western Civilization in college—the texts, not the boring lectures. Today I study theology; at present I’m reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, a work cut short by his death in one of Hitler’s death camps. It seems appropriate reading today, when our country is being led by an authoritarian government, at war with the Media. The Founding Fathers valued the media of the day, and called it the Fourth Estate. “In 1841, Thomas Carlyle used the term to describe the reporters’ gallery in the English Parliament as a “Fourth Estate more important” than the other three estates represented there. The importance of the press in a representative democracy is twofold: it informs the citizenry and also serves as a feedback loop between the government and voters.” https://www.reference.com/world-view/press-called-fourth-estate-d9eee0cb98632d05
Not so much today. P45 calls the Media the “Enemy of the People”—google the phrase; it’s instructive.
As I begin this 44th year of my new life, I find myself among The Resistance, among Activists. I don’t ‘march,’ due to my neurological condition; I don’t spend a lot of time on my feet, and my ego hasn’t yet accepted the idea of a wheelchair. I type. I schlep video equipment. I publish information on the internet. I support those who march.
And I pray for our government.
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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 