“We’re not worthy, We’re not worthy… We’re scum! We SUCK!” from the movie Wayne’s World

So one of the coolest things about playing Runescape has been that I have been able to share my faith with at least 4 people in the past few months.  Sarah and I are admins in a “clan” of a few hundred people that all keep in contact via some online forums I made for them.  This inevitably leads to some spiritual conversations and I’ve had the priviledge of being able to share what God has done in my life and what my relationship with Christ means to me…. and how they can have that for themselves if they should choose to do so.

I honestly feel unworthy to be loved by God the way I feel I am… I am such a screw up.  But I can’t express how honored I feel to be able to share His love and His grace with others that don’t know Him.  Below is a copy of the latest letter I sent out to two of the guys that I was talking to.  Please be praying that God works in their hearts and that they at least stop to think about it all.  And one of them has found my xanga site before… so if he reads this… YEAH I’M TALKIN BOUT YOU PUNK!

Hey guys,

After we talked in the chatroom about our beliefs so briefly… we said that I’d PM you my background and what my beliefs are as well as why I think so…  So I guess this is it.   I know this is going to be long.  So take some time to read this when you can and I will even provide some links that are worth checkin out….

I want to start by relaying a bit of a story… I have been going through a book the past couple weeks by a guy named Donald Miller.  He is a Christian, but he wrote a book called “Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality.”  His honesty…. his openness… his ability to script out so beautifully what I’ve wanted to say for years… has me hooked.  I’d love to repeat part of that here to start this off if you don’t mind the read:

———————-
  Each year at Reed they have a festival called Ren Fayre.  They shut down the campus so students can party.  Security keeps the authorities away, and everybody gets pretty drunk and high, and some people get naked. Friday night is mostly about getting drunk, and Saturday night is about getting high.  The school brings in White Bird, a medical unit that specializes in treating bad drug trips.  The students create special lounges with black lights and television screens to enhance kids’ mushroom trips.
  Some of the Christian students in our little group decided this was a pretty good place to come out of the closet, letting everybody know there were a few Christians on campus.  Tony the Beat Poet and I were sitting around in my room one afternoon talking about what to do, how to explain who we were to a group of students who, in the past, had expressed hostility toward Christians.  Like our friends, we felt like Ren Fayre was the time to do this.  I said we should build a confession booth in the middle of campus and paint a sign on it that said “Confess your sins.” I said this because I knew a lot of people would be sinning, and Christian spirituality begins by confessing our sins and repenting.  I also said it as a joke.  But Tony thought it was brilliant.  He sat there on my couch with his mind in the clouds, and he was scaring the crap out of me because, for a second, then for a minute, I actually believed he wanted to do it.
  “Tony,” I said very gently.
  “What?” he said, with a blank stare at the opposite wall.
  “We are not going to do this,” I told him. He moved his gazed down the wall and directly into my eyes.  A smile came across his face.
  “Oh we are, Don.  We certainly are. We are going to build a confession booth!”

  We met in Commons – Penny, Nadine, Mitch, Iven, Tony, and I.  Tony said I had an idea.  They looked at me.  I told them that Tony was lying and I didn’t have an idea at all.  They looked at Tony.  Tony gave me a dirty look and told me to tell them the idea.  I told them I had a stupid idea that we couldn’t do without getting attacked.  They leaned in.  I told them that we should build a confession booth in the middle of campus and paint a sign on it that read “Confess your sins.”  Penny put her hands over her mouth.  Nadine smiled.  Iven laughed.  Mitch started drawing the designs for the booth on a napkin.  Tony nodded his head.  I wet my pants.
  “They may very well burn it down,” Nadine said.
  “I will build a trapdoor,” Mitch said with his finger in the air.
  “I like it, Don.” Iven patted me on the back.
  “I don’t want anything to do with it,” Penny said.
  “Neither do I,” I told her.
  “Okay, you guys.” Tony gathered everybody’s attention. “Here’s the catch.” He leaned in a little and collected his thoughts.  “We are not actually going to accept confessions.” We all looked at him in confusion.  He continued, “We are going to confess to them.  We are going to confess that, as followers of Jesus, we have not been very loving; we have been bitter; and for that we are sorry.  We will apologize for the Crusades, we will apologize for the televangelists, we will apologize for neglecting the poor and the lonely, we will ask them to forgive us, and we will tell them that in our selfishness, we have misrepresented Jesus on this campus.  We will tell people who come into the booth that Jesus loves them.”
  All of us sat there in silence because it was obvious that something beautiful and true had hit the table with a thud.  We all thought it was a great idea, and we could see it in each others’ eyes.  It would feel so good to apologize, to apologize for the Crusades, for Columbus and the genocide he committed in the Bahamas in the name of God, apologize for the missionaries who landed in Mexico and came up through the West slaughtering Indians in the name of Christ.  I wanted so desperately to apologize for the many ways I had misrepresented the Lord.  I could feel that I had betrayed th Lord by judgin, by not being willing to love the people He had loved and only giving lip service to issues of human rights.
  For so much of my life I had been defending Christianity because I thought to admit that we had done any wrong was to discredit the religious system as a whole, but it isn’t a religious system, it is people following Christ; and the important thing to do, the right thing to do, was to apologize for getting in the way of Jesus.

————-(Skip a few pages…. get to the actual event)————-

  I was going to tell Tony that I didn’t want to do it when he opened the curtain and said we had our first customer.
  “What’s up, man?” Duder sat himself on the chair with a smile on his face.  He told me my pipe smelled good.
  “Thanks,” I said.  I asked him his name, and he said his name was Jake.  I shook his hand because I didn’t know what to do, really.
  “So what is this?  I’m supposed to tell you all of the juicy gossip I did at Ren Fayre, right?” Jake said.
  “No.”
  “Okay, then what? What’s the game?” He asked.
  “Not really a game.  More of a confession thing.”
  “You want me to confess my sins, right?”
  “No, that’s not what we’re doing, really.”
  “What’s the deal, man? What’s with the monk outfit?”
  “Well, we are, well, a group of Christians here on campus, you know.”
  “I see. Strange place for Christians, but I am listening.”
  “Thanks,” I told him.  He was being very patient and gracious. “Anyway, there is this group of us, just a few of us who were thinking about the way Christians have sort of wronged people over time.  You know, the Crusades, all that stuff. . .”
  “Well, I doubt you personally were involved in any of that, man.”
  “No, I wasn’t,” I told him.  “But the thing is, we are followers of Jesus.  We believe that He is God and all, and He represented certain ideas that we have sort of not done a good job at representing.  He has asked us to represent Him well, but it can be very hard.”
  “I see,” Jake said.
  “So there is this group of uson campus who wanted to confess to you.”
  “You are confessing to me!” Jake said with a laugh.
  “Yeah. We are confessing to you.  I mean, I am confessing to you.”
  “You’re serious.”  His laugh turned to something of a straight face.
  I told him I was.  He looked at me and told me I didn’t have to.  I told him I did, and I felt very strongly in that moment that I was supposed to tell Jake that I was sorry about everything.
  “What are you confessing?” he asked.
  I shook my head and looked at the ground.  “Everything,” I told him.
  “Explain,” he said.
  “There’s a lot. I will keep it short,” I started. “Jesus said to feed the poor and to heal the sick.  I have never done very much about that.  Jesus said to love those who persecute me.  I tend to lash out, especially if I feel threatened, you know, if my ego gets threatened.  Jesus did not mix His spirituality with politics.  I grew up doing that.  it got in the way of the central message of Christ.  I know that was wrong, and I know that a lot of people will not listen to the words of Christ because people like me, who know Him, carry our own agendas into the conversation rather that just relaying the message Christ wanted to get across.  There’s a lot more, you know.”
  “It’s all right, man,” Jake said, very tenderly.  His eyes were starting to water.
  “Well,” I said, clearing my throat, “I am sorry for all of that.”
  “I forgive you,” Jake said.  And he meant it.
  “Thanks,” I told him.
  He sat there and looked at the floor, then into the fire of a candle. “It’s really cool what you guys are doing,” he said.  “A lot of people need to hear this.”
  “Have we hurt a lot of people?” I asked him.
  “You haven’t hurt me.  I just think it isn’t very popular to be a Christian, you know.  Especially at a place like this.  I don’t think too many people have been hurt.  Most people jsut have a strong reaction to what they see on television.  All those well-dressed preachers supporting the Republicans.”
  “That’s not the whole picture,” I said.  “That’s just television.  I have friends who are giving their lives to feed the poor and defend the defenseless.  They are doing it for Christ.”
  “You really believe in Jesus, don’t you?” he asked me.
  “Yes, I think I do.  Most often I do.  I have doubts at times, but mostly I believe in Him.  It’s like there issomething in me that causes me to believe, and I can’t explain it.”
  “You said earlier that there was a central message of Christ.  I don’t really want to become a Christian, you know, but what is that message?”
  “The message is that man sinned against God and God gave the world over to man, and that if somebody wanted to be rescued out of that, if somebody for instance finds it all very empty, that Christ will rescue them if they want; that if they as forgiveness for being a part of that rebellion then God will forgive them.”
  “What is the deal with the cross?” Jake asked.
  “God says the wages of sin is death,” I told him.  “And Jesus died so that none of us would have to.  If we have faith in that then we are Christians.”
  “That is why people wear crosses?”
  “I guess.  I think it is sort of fashionable. Some people believe that if they have a cross around their neck or tattooed on them or something, it has some sort of mystical power.”
  “Do you believe that?” Jake asked.
  “No,” I answered. I told him that I thought mystical power came through faith in Jesus.
  “What do you believe about God?” I asked him.
  “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t believe for a long time, you know.  The science of it is so sketchy.  I guess I believe in God though.  I believe somebody is responsible for all of this, this world we live in.  It is all very confusing.”
  “Jake, if you want to know God, you can.  I am just saying if you ever want to call on Jesus, He will be there.”
  “Thanks man.  I believe that you mean that.” His eyes were watering again.  “This is cool what you guys are doing,” he repeated.  “I am going to tell my friends about this.”
  “I don’t know whether to thank you for that or not,” I laughed. “I have to sit here and confess all my crap.”
  He looked at me very seriously.  “It’s worth it,” he said.  He shook my hand and when he left the booth there was somebody else ready to get in.  It went like that for a couple of hours.  I talked to about thirty people, and Tony took confessions on a picnic table outside the booth.  Many people wanted to hug when we were done.  All of the people who visited the booth were grateful and gracious.  I was being changed throughout the process.  I went in with doubts and came out believing so strongly in Jesus I was ready to die and be with Him.  I think that was the beginning of change for a lot of us.
———————-

I want to clear the air.  I want to state that the above story is very much my experience in life… Whatever conceptions you have of Christianity… whatever experiences you have had with Christians for good or bad…. realize that they are due to humans being what we are…. human.  Christians ARE called to represent Christ to the world… but as Don says in the story above…. all too often we are guilty of bringing our own agendas and getting in the way of the central message of Christ…. our most important calling in this life.

I’d love to say I’m guilt free here… I’d love to say that I’m a shining example of all that a Christian should be…. is called to be… but I fail as miserably as the next guy… so I will do my best to present my story here and then give you the message that God desires for Christians to convey…. and nothing more.  If you have questions, by all means I will do my best to answer them.  If you disagree, by all means let me know as I am wiling to hear your backgrounds and viewpoints as much as I wish to share mine.

I’m not here for an argument… I just want to state my business and will gladly answer questions and hear you out…. but this isn’t about who is right or who is wrong.  Part of this is due to our conversation the other night… but part of this is due to a compelling desire I have to share what I know.  What I believe is truth that God wants you to hear.  What I believe may change not only your life… but your eternity.

First off, my background.  I was born into a middle class family in Ohio.  I went through the public school system and I did rather well for myself… Straight “A” student and the like… my home life wasn’t perfect.  My dad was and still is an alcoholic.  My mother finally left him when I was 12.  Rather… after numerous accounts of physical and emotional abuse, the police told him it was time to go… She filed for divorce after 15 years of marriage and there I was as a 12 year old boy… the “man of the house” amidst my two sisters and my mother.  There are many accounts…. many memories… that I don’t often visit; don’t often like to relive, of those days.  Despite my father being removed from the house, the restraining order, the divorce, he still managed to come around and kick in the front door, give my mother stitches, and plead to us kids that it was all her fault.  Needless to say none of this helped my conception of “God” being described to me as “Our Father.”

When I was little I went to church with my Grandparents.  It was an old Catholic church in downtown East Toledo that has since been closed due to lack of funds and members.  I went because I thought it was the “right thing” to do.  I had a very brief understanding of God and thought that he lived in that relic filled building decorated with statues and a lot of candles that cost $1.00 each to light.  My grandpa would often pay the dollar so we could light a candle, but for us it was all just fun playing with fire.  For my Grandpa and other Catholics, I guess it was a time they would pray for something; loved ones, safety, financial concerns… Then we’d shake the hand of the priest on the way out and I’d never get anything more out of it than knowing that the number of ceiling tiles in that room was the same as it was the previous week.  They hadn’t changed.  Not much in that church ever did really.

When I was in second grade, I went to a gathering of kids at a local neighbor’s house on Tuesdays after school.  They were an old Polish couple that had a spunky poodle for a pet.  The group was called the “Good News Club.”  I honestly have no idea how I started going to this thing or why my mother let me!  She was not religious at all as far as I knew… but this old couple, whom I won’t try to spell their name here for the knowledge that I’ll brutally slaughter it, would take in about 10 or so kids and would bust out different visuals of what Christianity was.  We had books, stories, crafts, and the ever popular flannelgraph (felt cut-outs that stuck on a board).  Every week they’d explain that Jesus loves us and we’d always pray at the end.  If anyone wanted to accept the sacrifice that Christ made for them on the cross at that point… they could.  I did.  Why?  It felt like the right thing to do, I guess.  But I meant it.

Life went on pretty uneventful…. until about my Freshman year in High-School.  Within a week or two, I found out my parents were getting divorced which totally crushed me, despite the abuse at home, I found out my girlfriend of a year had been cheating on me for four months, and I hit a wall socially that I saw no relief from.  I was in some advanced courses that, no exaggeration, had me doing homework every night from 3pm to about 1am.  I had no time for sports, activities, friends, or life in general.  Not having friends at that point really hurt.  My life collapsed around me and I didn’t know where to turn.

I found myself in my room with a knife on my arm…. seriously thinking.  Now I look back on it and laugh at the obsurdity of it all…. my parents were better off apart…. my g/f was a jerk who didn’t love me anyway… besides I was twelve!  And schoolwork may have had me busy… but it wasn’t that big of a deal… I ended up dropping the course anyway half way through the year due to frustration with the time committments and I still left it with straight A’s.  But for that moment… for that week… my world hit a wall.  I thought, “Is it worth it?  I could end all the pain right here…..” then I thought some more “or…. I could check out that Jesus thing I remember hearing about.”

My best friend since third grade was named Luke.  We had grown up together and I had started going to his church with him when I was about 7 or 8… It was a Christian church and up until then it was nothing more than a fun time with kids my age.  But all of a sudden these teachings of Jesus loving me… of Jesus sacrificing himself on the cross to forgive me of my sins…. of knowing that there was more to life than this… all came back to me.  I decided to check out Christianity for real.

The next few years were a whirlwind.  Luke and I both cleaned up our acts… our mouths… our lives… we started listening to the stuff we were hearing at church and that we read in the Bible… and we started to take it seriously.  I started to form a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  I started to experience REAL peace…. love…. freedom that I had never known.  Forgiveness was more than a word… it was an experience.

It was shortly after those few years that I started to question my beliefs again… Why was I so into it?  Was it because it was all I had ever known?  Does this stuff really hold water?  What about other religions?  So I started my quest.  I started to learn about Budhism, Mormonism, Taoism, Islam, Jewish beliefs, Agnosticism, etc…  And the more I dug… the more I realized Christianity was different.  The more I looked, the more I realized what I was into was the real deal.  Even when I set out to find truth in other subjects, I came back empty handed.

Shortly after that experience I decided that I wanted to go into ministry full time for a living.  I realized that this life is but a scratch on an eternal timeline.  So if God is going to give me an eternity in heaven… how can I NOT devote my few years here on this earth to doing His will and telling others about the truth I had found and the relationship I had with Him?

So now, what is that truth?  What is so great about Christianity?  What is different from th rest of the world’s religions?  Let me start off with another, smaller, snippet of “Blue Like Jazz” to preface my comments here:

———————-
  In a recent radio interview I was sternly asked by the host, who did not consider himself a Christian, to defend Christianity.  I told him that I couldn’t do it, and moreover, that I didn’t want to defend the term.  He asked me if I was a Christian, and I told him yes.  “Then why don’t you want to defend Christianity?” he asked, confused.  I told him I no longer knew what the term meant.  Of the hundreds of thousands of people listening to his show that day, some of them had terrible experiences with Christianity; they may have been yelled at by a teacher in a Christian school, abused by a minister, or browbeaten by a Christian parent.  To them, the term Christianity meant something that no Christian I know would defend.  By fortifying the term, I am only making them more and more angry.  I won’t do it.  Stop ten people on the street and ask them what they think of when they hear the word Christianity, and they will give you ten different answers.  how can I defend a term that means ten different things to ten different people?  I told the radio show host that I would rather talk about Jesus and how I came to believe that Jesus exists and that he likes me.  The host looked back at me with tears in his eyes.  When we were done, he asked me if we could go get lunch together.  He told me how much he didn’t like Christianity but how he had always wanted to believe that Jesus was the Son of God.
———————-

The story of Christ is a love story.  You know that annoying guy at sporting events that holds up the “John 3:16” sign?  Well… despite his best effort to deliver a message… or to be trendy… whatever his motives may be, that verse is a good summary of the Christian message.  It reads, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, and whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but will have everlasting life.”

Let’s back up a step or two…. In the beginning was Adam and Eve.  They ate from that apple like the animation that is shown on the intro to Desperate Housewives…. It was the only thing God asked them to not do and they did it.  This type of action is now commonly called “sin.”

Sidenote:  “Sin” was a term used in the middle-ages when archers would shoot at a target and miss the bulls-eye.  The spotter would yell back “Sin” meaning they missed their target.

So man sinned.  Christians believe that God is perfect.  God is the epitomy of all that is Holy and right in the world… thus He cannot associate with anything less than perfection.  When man sinned, it broke their bond.  The Bible says they were thrown from the Garden of Eden and were now an inately sinful creature.  Human nature is now to be selfish… to lie… to cheat… to steal… to better ourselves at the expense of others.  Survival of the fittest, no?  We all have a sense of what is right and what is wrong… but we don’t always take the high road.  We have free will.  And because we aren’t 100% perfect… there is a gap that will forever separate us from God.  Enter Jesus.  God had ways of having people attone for sins… they could sacrifice animals to shed blood for their wrong-doings and God would forgive them.  But then God changed it up….. and prophecies that were written hundreds of years prior (like in the Bible’s book of Isaiah) came true word for word in the person of Jesus Christ.  He was the final sacrifice for your sins.

He lived on the earth for 33 years and was crucified though he did nothing to merit such a penalty.  His teachings were clear.  He was the Son of God.  A lot of religions say Jesus was just a prophet or a good man… but they say he was not the Son of God.  If they claim this… then they are contradicting themselves!  How could a prophet or a good man say he was the Son of God if he wasn’t?  That’d make him a liar… which would then make him a false prophet and a bad man!  But I digress… He performed many miracles and brought the dead to life… made the blind see again… made the lame walk again…. cured leprosy… insane miracles that could ONLY come from God.  And as it was in God’s plan, he laid down his life for the sins of the world.

So what makes Christianity unique?  All other religions are based on works.  Do this, do that, do this, and be a good person… you’ll make it to heaven then.  If your GOOD DEEDS outweigh your BAD DEEDS then you’ll make it to heaven.  Where do you draw the line?  How good is good enough?  How high is that bar?  Jesus made it clear… it’s called perfection.  If you don’t hit that mark, you will not go to heaven.

I know I’m not perfect.  Are you?  Heh… Thankfully God also differentiates on one other point…. Christianity isn’t about deeds… or good works… It’s about GRACE.  It’s not do, do, do… it’s already DONE.

The core message of Christianity is this:  If you believe that Christ was indeed God in the flesh and that he died on the cross for your sins, and you accept that in your heart… and ask him into your life… You will have eternal life in Heaven with God.  Christ takes that penalty that was due to you upon himself and you are now seen as perfect in God’s eyes.  Even your future sins are forgiven… and you will start to develop a relationship with God on a personal level…. The creator of the UNIVERSE wants to know you…. pretty cool, eh?

Christianity is a choice.  It’s a choice to accept God’s gift or not.  If you don’t… I personally don’t believe you will ever do enough “good works” to get to heaven…. Yeah, you may not have killed anybody and you’re basically a good person… but the Bible says that even our best deeds are like filthy rags to God.  How can you measure up?  I know I can’t…. so I have chosen to accept Christ’s offer to do it for me.  He is my Savior.  All we have to do is ask.

Man… imagine this story from God’s perspective though.  You make creation…. you make man… and you give them free will so they will either choose to love you or choose to walk away.  They choose to walk away.  Abandonment.  Heartache.  You devise a plan to save them… to make them right with you again… You send your only Son to be tortured, spit on, beaten, and killed for their sins.  Some accept that and get to know you personally and love you…. others walk away still…. choosing rather to spend eternity not knowing you, than to humble themselves enough to admit they need help, and they’ll never know the full extent of the love you have for them.  It’s sad really…. but for me, I’ve got that love…. that relationship…My life has been changed, my personality has been changed for the better, and I’m willing to spend the rest of my life helping others at least know they have the option.

I’m not here to force you either way, rather to present you with your choice.  God is real.  God wants to know you personally…. God has a gift waiting for you to accept…. The rest is up to you.

That’s it.  Those are my beliefs and my background in the super condensed version.  Don’t even ask about the long version.   I said I would have links to check out… Here are two sermons, each about 25 min or so that were given recently at the church I work at.  Even if you totally disagree with what I just wrote, these are an interesting listening experience.  One is about the history of the Bible, the other is from a series we did called “Life’s Toughest Questions” where we answered “Why does God allow suffering?” “Where will I go when I die?” and this one, “Aren’t all religions basically the same?”

The Bible 101 – 10/16/05
http://aroundthecreek.com/portals/0/messages/101605.mp3

Aren’t All Religions Basically The Same? – 10/9/05
http://aroundthecreek.com/portals/0/messages/100905.mp3

Further info can be found at our website:  http://www.aroundthecreek.com.  I also can recommend a few good books if you are ineterested in various subjects…. One of which was written by a journalist who set out to prove Christianity was fake… and in the end only ended up proving it true… That one always cracks me up.  Just let me know if you are interested in anything or have any questions.

If you actually read all this…. Thanks for your time and I hope this is helpful in some small way… even if it doesn’t ever set in for another 30 years….   I just know that this life is short.  It’s only so long before you wrap yourself around a tree or you feel a lump on your neck, ya know?  And having that eternal security and reassurance is a great thing to have…. If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t let my head hit that pillow tonight without at least seriously thinking about what you will choose to believe.  According to Christian beliefs at least, it is your eternity at stake… I know… heavy stuff.  Worth a thought or two.