A few years ago, my buddy, Jay, and I were planning to learn bartending and move to Colorado. We would hike and bike and climb and I would learn kayaking and we would drink Fat Tire and get stoned and chase tail…that is the life. After spending three years working at a Christian camp, I almost did not believe in God anymore. The good thing is that God was faithful and continually proved Himself. I told God my plans, basically what I just wrote above, and said if he really had better plans for me then it was up to him. Another one of those foolish prayers that I blurt out about every month or so. With my ADD, I just can’t be content, even though I know I am supposed to be and I am always ready to quit something to start something more exciting…I just get so bored with the status quo that I actually become angry with life, so I pray these prayers and the next thing I know life is radically changed. Almost like God hears my prayers, the evidence is everywhere in my life.
Well, after that prayer, business took off, I got excited about a mission trip, and Linnea came into my life. Next thing I knew, I was bailing on the whole chasing tail thing, you know, God took one thing out of my life at a time, and kept replacing each one with something far better.
Now, four years later, I am sitting in a bungalow, with a fan blasting us, Dave Matthews on Linnea’s computer, brain full of excitement and dreams. On a beach in Thailand, thinking about the near future and our coming trip to the Philippines, then China, then the sweet land of liberty. Thanksgiving and Christmas and friends and seasonal beer at Rock Bottom and the whirlwind begins again, the next step of the journey…an amazing God sized vision. A vision that is being fueled by our leaders, supported and empowered, how cool is that?
Well I started this mindset because I was thinking about my buddy in Colorado. He finally went there by himself, after his own tour last year of Thailand and Cambodia, and I am thinking of him because he believes differently than I do. I think he would call himself an agnostic, and he is my best buddy, we were in first grade together and he even used to cover my paper route for me when my family would go on vacation. In baseball he was a pitcher and struck me out three times on 9 pitches. He ran the Ironman two years ago in Panama City, and we have always just hung out and he believes differently than I do. Is this OK? Not to me, it pisses me off.
Why does this, uh, make me upset? Long story, it gets a little personal…it is one of the things I can’t understand. What is it about the Bible and Jesus that seems so real, but our religion totally screws up? Why are we, as Christians, looked at like we are idiots, hypocrites, and the standard for what we strive for is totally exemplified by Mormons? What is it about our institutional church that turns people away from God? I am pretty sure if I had not been so indoctrinated in the Bible from my first breath, and even more, bathed in prayer my whole life, I sure as heck would not look to the church in my search for ‘Absolute Truth’. But, this is who I am, and I sure wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy the curse of religion of any kind (well, yeah I would, because I haven’t figured out the whole love my enemy thing). I am pretty sure the church as we know it is not the kingdom Jesus was talking about. (when was the last time we rounded up all the poor and lame and actually had a banquet WITH them? We have soup kitchens and we wear rubber gloves and giggle nervously when a schizo tries to talk to us.)
In one of my favorite quotes, just after Ben Franklin’s “Beer is proof that God exists and wants us to be happy”, is Gandhi’s “I would be a Christian except I know too many”. What does this mean? I think it means we are so far from what Jesus died for, our lives simply don’t imitate our Savior’s, and this is why in the west we have the phenomenon of atheism. We preach a God which our lives don’t prove. We as Christians try to be righteous and clean cut, we compete with the Mormons, we pursue big paychecks and successful lives, we build our private towers of Babel, we build our little mini-kingdoms and live in fear.
I am pissed that my best friend is a better man than many pew sitters, that is why he is my buddy, I am pissed that we have hung out for years and he doesn’t believe. To me, this means that my life does not show evidence of God’s existence. My living ‘witness’ sucks and the thing that will be most offensive in this blog won’t be others realizing they also are to blame for the agnosticism of so many, but the ‘really good witnesses’ or the ‘most mature’ among us will be upset because I said “pissed” or criticized mother church’s ineffectiveness, do we think anyone other than our pew mates care about a word like that? This word makes people uncomfortable, but we don’t care about those who don’t believe? We blame them for ignorance or unwillingness to believe? Crap, I should delete this paragraph, but I won’t. I won’t continue the tangent, however, because I need to remember what I was typing about in the first place.
In Rohr’s first chapter of “From Wild Man to Wise Man” he blames religion on the rise of atheism. Makes sense to me. Rohr says “Poor ‘pagan’ India, where they told me the first week, “You will not find any atheists in India, except perhaps among those people taught in religious schools.”
Some more direct quotes:
“There is a better way.”
“For starters, a masculine spirituality would emphasize movement over stillness, action over theory, service to the world over religious discussions, speaking the truth over social niceties and doing justice instead of any ‘self-serving’ charity. Without a complementary masculine, spirituality becomes overly feminine (which is really a false feminine!) and is characterized by too much inwardness, preoccupation with relationships, a morass of unclarified feeling and religion itself as a security blanket. This prevents a journey to anyplace new, and fosters a constant protecting of the old. It is no-risk religion, just the opposite of Abraham, Moses, Paul and Jesus.”
“In my humble masculine opinion I believe much of the modern, sophisticated church is swirling in what I will describe as a kind of “neuter” religion. It is one of the main reasons that doers, movers, shakers and change agents have largely given up on church people and church groups. As one very effective woman said to me, “After a while you get tired of the in-house jargon that seems to go nowhere.” A neuter spirituality is the trap of those with lots of leisure, luxury and self-serving ideas. They have the option not to do, not to change, not to long and thirst for justice. It can take either a liberal or a conservative form, but in either case, it becomes an inoculation against any deep spiritual journey. That’s why I call it “neuter”. It generates no real sexual energy or life.”
Well the whole point of this was to commit to pursuing the walking on water thing that will prove the God we talk about, that I can’t conform to the church or Christianity because it simply is ineffective, basically a lie, and this is an open encouragement to others to pursue the masculine spiritual journey…for men, I mean. Women, I really have no idea, I am trying to figure out what it means to be a man, sorry, but I hope you don’t pursue the masculine journey, it is not attractive. Oh crap, I should erase that one too. Ah, what the heck, I’ll give it a go.
