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macadamianutz
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Name: Lisa
Birthday: 12/30/1960
Gender: Female
Interests: Father, Spirit, Son. Praise and worship. My fellow man. Raising daughters. Alternative health.
Expertise: Distinguishing subtle flavours in single origin dark chocolate.
Message: message me
Member Since:
3/12/2006
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| The closest I've come to entertaining thoughts of suicide was just before my divorce, in the summer of 1999. I had four sad little girls at home who needed me to be a safe port in the storm. I would sometimes cry at night in the bathtub, but then I realized two of the girls could hear me from their bedroom ... so I started taking long drives when my grief threatened to overwhelm.
One beautifully clear night I was driving along the highway, sobbing so grievously I couldn't see the road at all. I remember not caring if my car crossed the centre line. "At least," I carelessly reasoned, "the pain will stop." A fleeting vision of my daughters' faces flashed through my mind and somehow I managed to steer my car to a nearby beach. I parked and, still crying so hard I could hardly catch my breath, wailed in desperation to a dark, star-studded sky, "Help me! I can't ... bear ... this!"
Suddenly my car was filled with an amazing, soul-stunning, heart-flooding peace. I stopped crying instantly. You know how hard that is, when you are at the point where your breathing is ragged and torn, chest heaving with broken spasms? But I stopped, instantly. Not another tear fell. That was when I encountered a presence whom I know now must have been Jesus ... no other being could have transformed my pain so beautifully, permeated my soul with such unshakable calm, or filled me with such deep hope. I drove home later that night knowing beyond a doubt that I was going to be alright. And although my marriage did fall apart, fragmenting lives and breaking hearts, I had met the One who restores and renews. But my journey was just beginning ...
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I stumbled across this letter today, written by Doug Perry - and it made me cry. In a deep, convicted sort of way. :)
Dear Members of the World,
I'm just a guy, nobody really. Son of a preacher and missionary. Years and years of Vacation Bible Schools, summer camps, youth ski trips, puppet shows, revivals, choir trips - you name it. Even went to a Christian college and got a degree in religion. I ended up in the business world, but I spent two decades tithing, sitting on committees, teaching Sunday School, going to seminars and conferences, etc. I even met my wife in the singles class at church. I'm not a bad guy, I've been mostly behaving myself and everybody seems to like me. I do some good stuff here and there.
But lately I've been trying to understand Jesus more and stuff I never noticed before has really started to bug me. I've been taking a look around and I'm having a hard time making sense of what it is we've built here. So, it just seemed like, whether anybody else says it or not, I need to take responsibility for the part I played and say what I have to say. Here we go ... I know you think that Christians are a big bunch of hypocrites. We say we're more "religious" and we're going to heaven and you're not, and then we drive our big shiny cars with little fishies on the trunk and cut you off in traffic as we race by the homeless guy on the corner. We average just 2% of our money to church and charity, despite that we say the Bible is the word of God and it says we're supposed to give everything. On average, we buy just as many big screen TVs and bass boats and fur coats and makeup and baseball cards and online porn as anybody else. Maybe more. You've seen leader after leader end up in jail or court or a sex scandal of one sort or another. Well ... you're right. We're guilty of all of it. We've done it all. And, I'm really sorry. You see our cheesy TV shows and slick guys begging for money and you get that there's something seriously sneaky and wrong here. A high-pressure call for money so they can stay on the air? Were we supposed to use Jesus as just another form of entertainment? Who do we think we're kidding? Where's Jesus in all this? Aren't we supposed to rely on him? Isn't He going to meet our needs if we're inside His will? What happened to sacrifice and suffering and helping the poor? I'm just sick about this. I mean, the church leaders, they're not all bad guys, there are lots and lots of really hard-working well-meaning folks who love and care and are meeting real needs in the community. Some of them understand and love Jesus - but I'm just real sure those pastors don't drive Bentley's, have multi-million dollar homes and their own lear jets! I mean, what "god" are we worshipping? Money? Ego? Power? You see our massive shiny new buildings all over the place. Heck, maybe we even kicked you out of your house so we could expand our parking lots. You can't figure out why we need four different Christian churches on four corners of the same intersection. We've got playgrounds and bowling alleys and basketball leagues. We've got Starbucks coffee in the sanctuary. We've got orchestras and giant chandeliers and fountains out front. We've got bookstores full of "jesus junk" with every imaginable style and flavor of religious knick-knack. But where's Jesus? Is this what HE wanted? Oh, sure, there are good folks all over and not every church is such a mess, but Christians are the ones that say we're supposed to be "One Body." So even the good ones are guilty of not putting a stop to it sooner. We were supposed to keep each other in line and not tolerate factions and dissensions and greed and idolatry and all this other bad stuff. Man, we really blew it! We've got 33,000 denominations and most of them won't talk to the other ones. We lose over $5 million a day to fraud from "trusted" people inside the church! We spend 95% of all our money on our own comforts and programs and happy family fun time shows and we let 250 MILLION Christians in other countries live on the very edge of starvation. Not to mention the billion or so that have never even once heard of Jesus - or the homeless guy downtown we almost ran over when we cut you off. We're as guilty as we can be. All of us. Nobody is exempt. We should have put a stop to it a lot sooner. But I can't apologize on behalf of anyone else. This is about me. I know that you might have gone to church as a kid and stopped going as soon as you could. I know that you might even have been abused by somebody in the church! Maybe we got you all fired up and then just let you drift off like we didn't really care. Maybe you just don't fit our "profile." You might have piercings and purple hair or tattoos or been in jail -- and somewhere inside you just know that even if you wanted to go to church one Sunday, it would not go well. I'm sorry for that. Jesus loves you. He always hung out with the most unexpected people. He had the biggest heart for the folks everybody else tried to ignore. What have we done? We've told you to put on a sweater and some loafers or you can't go to heaven. I just want to throw up. Look, I know you're mad. And you have a right to be. We've done you wrong for a LONG time now. There's some things about Jesus that people need to hear, but we've buried a beautiful masterpiece under hundreds of layers of soft pink latex paint. If you have a Bible handy, look up Matthew 23. (If you don't, you can look it up here - www.BibleGateway.com .) Find it? Read it carefully, the Pharisees were the "religious" people of the day, the leaders of the faith. In this chapter Jesus SEVEN times says how pitiful and wretched and cursed they are for what they're doing to the people they're supposed to be leading. He even calls them "white washed tombs of dead mens bones" and a "brood of vipers"! I don't have time here, but read it and see if we're not doing EVERY single one of those things. Jesus can't possibly be happy about what we've done to you. Sure, we like to kid ourselves and pretend everything is OK - but it's not. We're hated. Now, please understand, Jesus was hated, too. But that was because he said hard things and sometimes people don't like hearing the Truth. And he promised we would be hated if we were like him. But that's not why we're hated at the moment. We're hated right now because we're a giant pack of lying hypocrites that say one thing and do something else altogether. If we were hated because we were like Jesus, that would be one thing, but that's not it at all. You see right through our happy music and fluffy services and you can tell there's something desperately wrong here. We're no different than anybody else - except that we say we're better than you. It was never supposed to be like this. Jesus asked us to care for the widows and orphans, to feed the hungry, care for the sick, visit those in prison, reach the lost. He wanted us to love our enemies and pray for them. He cared about human justice and suffering, the lost and lonely. But I don't think He would have marched on a picket line - He had His mind on much bigger problems. He wanted us to focus on the eternal things, not the everyday. He never once said to go into all the world and build big buildings and divide up into factions and buy Bentleys. Just the opposite! I get that you're mad at us and I think you have a right to be, but please understand, you're mad at what we've made under our own power, you're mad at "Churchianity." That's different than Christ and what He wanted. Don't be mad at Jesus! This mess wasn't His idea! Look, I'm really sorry. I accept responsibility for my part in having hurt you. But I'm committing to you all, dear Members of the World, that I'm not going to do it any more. Not a single penny more. I'm not going to put my faith in "Churchianity" or any leader or program or TV show -- but in Christ Jesus and His salvation. That's when I was set free and began to see that God wants and expects more of us than this. And I'm not helping anybody that's not fully committed to the same thing. It took centuries to build this monster, so it's not like it's going to just turn around overnight. But the times are changing and we're way overdue for something new. Big bad things are happening - like the tsunami in Asia - and I think more are coming. I don't want any more time to go by without having said this. I'm sorry for all the time and money I've wasted. But Jesus saves. Really. The church itself isn't even the point. Jesus is the real deal. He lived and He died for my sins and He rose again. He is who He said He was and He cares about me - and you. He's our only hope. We need places you can go that will only teach Jesus and will not be swayed or tempted or distracted by anything else. God willing, that's coming. Please don't think all Christians are just posers. Some of them really mean it when they say they belong to Christ. The problem is mostly in the West where we're all comfy and complacent and seem to like it that way. The Christians in China and other places are deadly serious. There's no room for anything but Jesus when you're on the run from the government. They are dying every day for their faith and doing crazy hard things because they're absolutely committed to Christ. These are martyrs. People willing to crucify little pieces of themselves every day to be more like Christ. People willing to set aside everything they want to do what Christ wants. People willing to rot in prison or take a beating or die if that's what it's going to take. People that act in pure love and never back down. I'm not worthy to tie their shoes. And there are some like that here, too, and I hope we can get a lot more people to start living that way. It's way overdue. If you're talking to someone and they tell you they're a Christian, ask them if they're the kind of Christian that really means it all the time or the kind that just means it on Sunday. The Bible says we'll know them by their "fruits" - by the faith and purity and love in their deeds and words. When you find one that proves Christ is in them by how much they love you, ask them to tell you all about Jesus. If you know one of those fearless martyrs that speaks nothing but pure, clean, hard Truth - ask lots of questions. Truth is a lot more rare than you would think. But don't settle for soft, fluffy and comfortable anymore - that's not in the Bible. As for me and my house, we're really sorry. From now on, we're going to serve the Lord, not "Churchianity." We're going to try to call together as many of those martyrs as we can and start doing what Christ wanted. If I run into you someday, please give me a chance to shake your hand and apologize in person. I'm going to try harder from now on, I promise. I think there are lots of others feeling the same way, so don't be surprised if you start hearing stuff like this more often. Thanks for your time. I hope it helps. Doug Perry - Liberty, Missouri, USA
www.FellowshipOfTheMartyrs.com
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C.S. Lewis understood hell not as a place where God locks people out of heaven but as a dungeon that we lock ourselves into. With this perspective, we gain new insight when we look at the parable of Lazarus the beggar, or hear the brilliant words with which Jesus reassured Peter that "the gates of hell will not prevail against you." Gates are not offensive weapons. Gates are defensive - walls and fences we build to keep people out. God is not saying the gates of hell will not prevail as they come at us. He is saying that as we storm the gates of hell, they will not prevail as we crash through them with grace.
Perhaps there is no more dangerous place for a Christian to be than in safety and comfort, detached from the suffering of others. Every time we lock someone out, we lock ourselves in. Just as we are building walls to keep people out of our comfortable, insulated existence, we are trapping ourselves in a hell of isolation, loneliness, and fear. We have 'gated communities' and fences around our suburban homes. We place barbed wire around our buildings and churches, put bars in our windows. The more walls and fences we have, the closer we are to hell. We, like the rich man, find ourselves locked into our gated homes and far from the tears of Lazarus outside, far from the tears of God.
Let's pray that God would give us the strength to storm the gates of hell and tear down the walls we have created between us and those whose suffering would disrupt our comfort. May we become familiar with the suffering of the poor outside our gates, know their names and taste the salt in their tears. Then when the Lazaruses of our world - the baby refugees, the mentally ill wanderers, the homeless outcasts - are seated next to God, we can say, "We're with them."
The gates of the kingdom will forever be open:
"And in the New Jerusalem, the great city of God, on no day will its gates ever be shut." Rev.21:25
Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw, Jesus for President
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| The book I am reading (Prayer by Richard Foster) describes a way to advance the Kingdom in a small but tenacious manner. It's called 'The Little Way of Therese of Lisieux'. This is something we can all aspire to in our everyday lives.
Therese explains her 'Little Way' as deceptively simple. It is, in short, to seek out the menial job, to welcome unjust criticism, to befriend those who annoy us, to help those who are ungrateful. For her part, Therese was convinced that these 'trifles' pleased Jesus more than the great deeds of recognized holiness. The beauty of the Little Way is how utterly available it is to everyone. All can undertake this ministry of small things. Almost daily we can give smiling service to nagging co-workers, listen attentively to silly bores, express little kindnesses without making a fuss.
We may think these trivial activities are hardly worth mentioning. That, of course, is precisely their value. They are unrecognized conquests over selfishness. We will never receive a 'thank you' for these invisible victories in ordinary life.
So, let's find that person who irritates us most, and like Therese, "set ourselves to treat them as if we loved them best of all." Mother Teresa understood this concept, stating, "We can do no great things, only small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it." :)
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So many people have been wounded by churches who teach two main things:
1) God loves you and He's gonna send you to hell
2) Sex is bad and nasty and dirty and you should save it for the one you love
How does one sort through this kind of teaching? Most of the time these churches have a long list of behaviours which are acceptable to God (along with a longer list of sins which will send you to hell). If one does manage to escape this environment (at the risk of alienating oneself from family and friends) it is often with such a conflicted view of God that we just turn their backs on the relationship altogether. How does one reconcile love and judgement, purity and filth, obedience and condemnation, when all of these concepts are twisted together into a deeply embedded belief system?
My heart breaks to see people 'missing' God - mistaking, misinterpreting, misunderstanding Him. Sometimes, in their confusion, they begin 'dissing' God - dismissing, disavowing, disowning Him. Satan does indeed infiltrate the church - his attention is always directed toward subverting the light of truth. Jesus had a word of caution for leaders - "but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."
I only wish I could tell these wounded souls that it's not GOD who is inconsistent. That's not His nature. The church has always been under attack; the church is made up of people, and people can be misled. We can't put our faith in an institution, or in a group of people. Sad, but true. When our faith is invested in the humaneness of humanity ... it's pretty shaky ground. We'll be disappointed, or worse - deeply wounded. Instead, let us consider the One who is set apart ... holy ... the only One who will not disappoint, who does not change, the One who is truth and life.
My prayer is that all who have turned away will seek Jesus, one on One. Give Him your pain, your bitterness, your disappointment, your emptiness. Allow Him to speak truth where there are lies, to speak life where there is death, to bring restoration where there is hopelessness.
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