Up from Gehenna

Dramatic title for a post, I know but hey...it's been a very interesting few months. And by that, I mean I would like to take a moment to explain some of the reasons for the paucity of offerings during the life of this 'blog'.

Of course, being the verbose guy I am, sharing the story of my last six months simply must be a multi-part series (illustrated, of course) but it's my hope that in the end, we can laugh, cry and lay a few pernicious heresies to a permanent and far overdue rest.

Consider yourself invited now; I'll start putting things up as quickly as my twin one-year-olds will allow. See you soon!

The Bases

Hi Again All,

This should be a quick post to introduce my new blog roll, or as I've affectionately termed it, The Bases. These are the sites I normally hit first thing when opening up my browser. Most of those listed have been kind enough to not only allow my comments to be posted at their sites but they have also been actively encouraging me to undertake this particular endeavor. Some have a directly shared history with me as fellow escapees from a particular church brand while others share my sensibilities (or even just my sense of humor). All are worth your time. Enjoy!

Answers for Stacey

I thought I would reply to commenter Stacey's questions in the comments section, but I noticed my answer began to run long. So, a new post is born.

Her Comment: Wow! What a powerful dream. Seems as though your eyes opened and your friend D...well I think she understood and decided that she was not ready. Its much easier to act as if you dont know and its also easier to do the wrong thing.

I have a question did you have this dream after you started really reading the word on a regular basis? Did you and D stop talking all together after this and if so why do you think that is?

Thanks again for sharing your life with me. And thanks for those encouraging words. I look forward to talking with you about yours and my journey.

Talk to you soon.

Stace

My answer (writ long):

Again, thank you for the comment Stacey. As for your questions:

Yes, this particular dream came well after I began completely immersing myself in God's word. I was pretty disciplined at the time keeping not only my morning devotional and prayer time, but also listening to an audio Bible playing almost constantly while I was working (plus online sermons - OnePlace.org is a great place to spend an hour or three). And this was not the only dream I had during this time, nor was it even the most vivid; I'll start introducing those as I'm directed over the next few weeks.

As for talking to D__, there were a few conversations afterward, but they were strained; not so much conversations as they were chats about the weather. I think she had 'mentored' me as far as she knew how, and now I was entering into new territory for her. Plus I think my descent into joblessness and homelessness (with a wife & two kids, no less) confirmed her dream for her; as far as she was concerned, I think her assessment of my situation showed I was "outside God's will and plan for my life" and so I was being justly punished by my deteriorating financial status. The church we attended together sure equated riches with righteousness. So, if I was on my way down Skid Row, guess what that made me in the eyes of the Church...?

Dreams: The Gathering - Part 3:End

I sat across the dining room table from D__ as the twilight deepened into a gloom. She said nothing but looked straight ahead, not at me, as if observing the minute shifts in the wall paper pattern. I excused myself to go soak in the tub, telling her I feared the onset of fever. Indeed, as I soaked in the tepid bath my fever rose to 105 degrees. When I came out, D__ was gone and she never returned to my house again. I understand she achieved some measure of status in our old church, but I am unable to confirm it. As for myself, I could scarcely look at my pastor without superimposing the vision of him covered in his own blood and proclaiming it Christ’s. After only sporadic attendance thereafter, I left for good in late summer 2006.

Footnotes:
1. As I was reading Isaiah for Isaiah 29 spoken to me above, I came across Isaiah 6, and in particular Isaiah 6:8-10 (NIV):

8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
9 He said, "Go and tell this people: " 'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.'
10 Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. [a] Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed."

I immediately flashed back to this moment in my mind. Oh, if only J__ would turn and be healed!

Dreams: The Gathering - Part 2

To tell this one properly, I have to give a brief history and share someone else’s dream for a moment. In the fall of 2005, my world fell apart. I was buried beneath an avalanche of personal and professional failure that culminated in homelessness for me and my family. But just before this, when the unraveling was beginning to pick up steam, I got a visit from the one friend who had remained faithful through everything. Her name was D__, and she had been for some time a spiritual mentor for me. A graduate of ITC in Atlanta, her knowledge of scripture seemed so much greater than my own and her own testimony was full of the redeeming power of an active, sustaining God. She was my friend and on this night she sought to lend me her support by sharing a dream she had been given the night before.

She stopped in on her way to church (it was a Wednesday night) hoping I would go with her. Unfortunately, I had been feeling physically out of sync for most of that day, plagued by a sore throat and dull headache. She asked how my prospects for a job looked and I chuckled at the irony. My career was so shot as that point, I couldn’t buy a gig.

“Well, what are you going to do?” she asked. “I mean, you got to get up and stop feeling sorry for yourself and get a job.” Then she half-quoted Paul, “if a man doesn’t work, he should not eat…” I had no answer for her aside from a shrug of the shoulders. D__ sat quiet for a moment, then continued, “Look, one of the reasons I came here is that God gave me a vision last night to share with you. In the vision, I had come to the house, just like right now only the whole house was a mess. Papers and trash were everywhere; the whole house was a wreck. I tried to help you but you just wouldn’t listen to me so finally I just threw up my hands in frustration and stomped out of here. But as I got to my car, I went to turn the ignition key but my hands felt wet. I looked down at my hands and they were covered with blood, human blood. I said ‘Oh God what is this? What is this!?’ And He said to me ‘his blood is on your hands.’ So K__ I’m here to tell you, to warn you, you got to get up out of this ‘cause I can’t have your blood on my hands.”

When she finished I said nothing, but I knew that her dream was not a warning for me (at least not in the way she thought). If anything, I felt the beginning of a divide between us because I too had been given a remarkable dream the night before. My dream absolutely contradicted everything that she had just said.

“That’s interesting,” I began. “I too, had a dream of blood last night. Let me tell you what God showed me: I’m in the middle of a huge procession. It’s a queue for a ‘Christian Leadership Seminar’ being given by J__ (a very prominent and influential Mega Pastor), and there are tens of thousands of us all pouring into the stadium. We’re all wearing the most amazing, resplendent white flowing robes and clutching Bibles and hymnals. The excitement and anticipation are incredible; this is manifesting itself in spontaneous outbursts of singing starting within pockets of related worship groups. These songs then roll and wash over the entire throng until suddenly a new group begins a new song starting the process all over again. And so it goes…”

“The stadium itself is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. More of a classic Greek Amphitheatre than the sports stadiums we enjoy now, the entire thing is carved out of an enormous mountain of solid black Onyx. The polish and shine of this translucent gem cut into seats, stairwells, tunnels and the stage is breathtaking. And there on the stage stands J__; tall, regal, imposing, he seems to be silently directing the masses that have gathered as they walk towards the seats and file into the varied rows according to number. Down the stairwells, into the rows, singing praises and worshiping aloud as we all search for our proper seats, the congregation gathers. But as I’m entering a new row of seats for the third time, I notice something. No one is taking a seat. The worship groups continue to walk around, but no one stops to take a seat. I say something to the lady in front of me but find myself as dismissed and ultimately ignored as the child pointing out the naked emperor.”

“At this point the whole dream shifts because from behind me, I can feel The Presence. I turn around and sure enough, up on the stage behind J__ stands the very presence of the Lord. He is here in the midst of this gathering, but no one seems to notice. As I try to get others to see Him I get out of line. I’m begging, pleading, ‘look, look…up on the stage...HE is here!’ But no one wants to listen, they only sing louder in an attempt to drown me out. And now, because I have stepped out of line from where I was, no one wants to admit me back into the line at any point. So I turn and head for the stage. He is here and I’m not going to let anyone or anything keep me from Him. I clamber over the carved rows of seats, dive into the orchestra pit and finally reach the stage. I pause for a moment to say something to J__, but I see close up he is trying to ignore me too. The profuse sweat dripping from his brow shows the effort it takes him to remain oblivious. So I walk past him and cautiously make my approach toward the overwhelming presence of God.”

“A clear voice says to me, ’come and stand by my side.’ Then as I get to a certain point and stop it says again, ‘turn around.’ I turn, facing J__’s back and the crowd and I feel the Lord’s great hand settle on my shoulder. His right hand…Then He says, ‘tell me what you see.’ The first thing I notice is the difference in point of view. From the stadium floor it looked as though J__ had the Lord behind him. But from where I stood now, it was much more obvious that J__ had turned his back to God. ‘To the folks out there, J__ looks as if he has your backing and blessing for this assembly, but I can see now he does not know you and does not want to know you.’ ¹ The voice said, ’very good. What else do you see?’”

“I looked out at the moving crowd shuffling this way and that, their songs now competing with one another as if volume and ecstatic fervor were synonymous with holiness; individuals and small groups broke off from larger ones, rejoined the line with other groups and individuals, each driven by a ‘new’ interpretation or worship style. Some broke out in cacophonous tongues; others began to exhibit almost pagan ritual when engaging in their ‘new’ worship groups, but all began to recede away from the stage. At one point it was decided by some that scaling the back wall of the stadium was desirable, as if height now equaled holiness. But these were committing a grievous error as another property of the onyx was revealed."

"Onyx, while beautiful, can be quite sharp if sheared in just the right way. It has been used by indigenous peoples for millennia as knives and arrowheads. The back walls of the stadiums were roughly hewn to give a textural counterpoint to the smooth exactitude of the carved seats. As Pastors and other group leaders scrambled backward to scale- those ebon walls, they found to their dismay and my horror that the handholds and footholds they sought to grasp were sharp, crude knife blades. Cries of shock and pain began to punctuate the singing, as blood began to flow freely on the rough rock wall. The Pastors and leaders tried to cover their self-mutilation as a sign of greater holiness, exhorting the followers to copy their gruesome lead. At that point, I noticed my own pastor climbing the wall. His robes were tattered and spotted with blood, but he had managed to climb higher than the others and was nearing the top. As He reached up to grab the ledge itself, he cut his hand to nearly the bone on its razor-like edge. A huge gout of arterial spray shot straight up and over him spattering himself and those below him with gore. As he finally slid over the precipice, he stood and looked down at his tattered body and spurting, mortal wounds then raised his hands over his head and shouted, ‘Behold! I am anointed with the blood of the Lamb!’ I looked down at the floor weeping, unable to take the sight any longer.”

“I told the Lord all that I saw, and I could hear the wellspring of deep sadness in the voice as He said, ‘you see clearly.’ As I woke up I heard:

"These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.”

Dreams: The Gathering - Part 1

I don’t know if you’ve noticed the quote to the right (underneath the ‘toony self-portrait) but I’ve put it there for a reason. I’ve been internally debating and externally praying about it for some time, but I think it’s time I opened up a little. I am a vivid, lucid dreamer.

I dream in all five senses, which can be pure pleasure when dreaming of running through fields of lavender on a warm, sunny day but quite another thing when dreaming of a battlefield. Sometimes I have been blessed with a third-person dream; think of it as walking somnambulistically in another person’s moccasins. But of late (and by ‘of late’ I mean the last five years or so) much of my dreaming has been in the service of opening up scripture or giving me understanding that has been later confirmed for me as I study the scripture. And that’s why I have the quote from Jeremiah there. I’d like to take a moment to share one of my dreams with you, and if it’s just a dream it’s just a dream…but…

Before I share this particular dream however, let me make one thing absolutely and perfectly clear: I am in NO WAY making a claim to a ‘prophetic’ ministry. Unlike others who so eagerly rush to crown themselves with a plethora of meaningless titles in great demonstration of their own self-sanctification, I take the varied biblical admonitions against such self-aggrandizement VERY seriously. I’m simply offering to share what I’ve seen…and what I’ve been shown.

Hitting the Mark

I showed the above illustration to a friend during his visit to my home over the July fourth weekend. After he complimented me on it, he asked me what type of article it was an illustration for.

“I want to use it to talk about Sin,” I answered. I proceeded to explain the article I had in mind dealt with the Hebrew concept of Cheit where the idea of sin is illustrated by an archer just missing the mark. This idea is used when the bible refers to the sin of King Saul. He was anointed by God through Samuel to be the first King of Israel. Saul was literally God’s chosen man for just such a role, but as his story plays out during the course of 1 Samuel, he loses his kingdom, his family and ultimately he commits suicide on the battlefield rather than face humiliation at the hands of his enemies. I continued, saying I thought this idea explains the trajectory of certain high profile ministers and churches. In discussions with former members of such congregations I have often heard the phrase, “He didn’t start out like that,” or “something changed in his message once the church got to a certain size” or even “I know he’s anointed, but somehow he just lost his way.” I felt this was an important point that like an archer about to miss the mark these men might be yet called to repentance.

“Unless they’re hitting the mark they’re actually aiming at,” my friend said flatly. It was at this moment the fact that I was talking to a successful Prosecuting Attorney landed on me like a sumo wrestler. He explained, “I know that you’d like to think that they revere God and His word as you do, that they want to serve Christ as you do and that maybe they’ve just been swayed from trying to live a righteous life by various temptations, but they have a new chance to repent every day and there’s no shortage of people like you who call them to repentance. But do they? Ask yourself that question: do they ever repent? At some point, you’ve got to look at where they are now along with where they want to go in the future with their ministries and assess if these are the works and goals of someone who hasn’t kept good form as they draw their bow or if they are deliberately lining up completely different targets of wealth, fame and power and hitting them bull’s-eye.”

I had to admit, he was right. I’ve wanted to believe that these men and women who twist scripture to achieve all-too earthly ends had somehow simply lost their theological footing, that maybe they had their affections turned to acquiring lucre as their ministries grew, particularly since I sat under just such a pastor in just such a church. But to view my old pastor the way my friend did would mean I have to admit I’d been had. I’d have to admit that my emotions had been played upon and I had been taken in by smooth talk and deft parsing of various scriptures to satisfy my own itching ears rather than edify my soul. I’d have to admit that I was a mark. And so I was.

So, thank you J. for the best critique I’ve received in a long time. You’ve helped me realize that I can’t play “nice” with such folks any more than a hammer can gently coerce a nail.