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Craig Detweiler

Freedom

and

Responsibility

How did the culture war begin? Was there a clear winner? Or did it devolve into a long, costly stalemate? What can we learn from the battle? Perhaps we are not as polarized as we presume. Political parties and pundits strive to distinguish themselves from the competition in the starkest possible terms. We use rhetoric to rail against one another while our core positions may involve only a slight divergence. We may be hardly separated rather than deeply divided. Can we move from an adolescent mind-set, shouting across the religious and political divide, into something more thoughtful, productive, and mature?

As a witness to the sixties and seventies, I’ve seen how destructive we can be—even toward ourselves. I’ve also lived through the comparative comfort of the Reagan era in the eighties. He turned back the clock to a prosperous vision of America before the social upheavals of the sixties. Can we uphold the vigorous freedom of the sixties alongside the rigorous responsibility of the fifties?

A purple state of mind pushes past the either/or squabbles of an earlier era. It adopts a both/and approach to following God and interacting with the world. It builds bridges rather than burning them. It seeks common ground rather than points of division. A purple state of mind attains maturity by knowing when and where to apply biblical truths to our blind spots.

John: I think this should be a candid discussion.

Craig: I want it to be first and foremost an honest conversation. Straightforward. Tell the truth. Nothing held back.

Were you alive when President John F. Kennedy was shot? While the world wailed, I was warm in my mother’s womb. She was in the doctor’s office, awaiting a checkup on my status. I was born two months after Kennedy was assassinated. I arrived after the initial shockwave, the outpouring of grief, and the confusion as to why such tragedy happens. But we all continue to wrestle with the conflicts that erupted in the wake of Kennedy’s death.

I entered a world on fire. Throughout my childhood, there were riots in the streets, protests on campuses, scenes from Vietnam in the news. My parents attempted to shield me from much of the conflict, turning me on to Mr. Rogers rather than Walter Cronkite. Yet the palpable conflicts over civil rights, free speech, and the war draft spilled into newspapers, televisions, and casual conversations. The struggle for civil rights was more than a century in the making. Leaders like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were as patient as possible, given their long walk to freedom. Yet the positive steps created by the Civil Rights Act still moved too slowly for those trapped in the inner city. Riots in Watts and Detroit set cities ablaze. The mistakes of the Vietnam War constitute their own painful book. As images of the war filtered into our living rooms, resentment toward our leaders grew. Chaos reigned among protestors inside and outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

I knew my dad hated the protestors, but I didn’t know why. Something about their appearance bugged him. It may have been their long hair, their scanty clothes, and their flagrant disregard of authority. The hippies seemed equally frustrated by people like my father. They were complaining about the man, the system, anyone over 30. Why were the protestors so angry? What was all the shouting about? A generation gap emerged over the war in Vietnam. The students were ostensibly resisting the draft. They did not want to serve in an endless, misguided war in Southeast Asia.

Behind the political policies were distinct lifestyle choices. The hippies were celebrating free love, plentiful drugs, and raucous rock music. My father was wondering what happened to hard work, paying taxes, and civic responsibility. Teenagers embraced freedom while adults trumpeted responsibility. These dueling notions of the American identity exploded into a full-blown culture war that has been raging ever since. Reporter Ronald Brownstein calls this second civil war “the great sorting out.”

A purple state of mind appreciates the competing ideals that launched the culture war. It recognizes the patriotism that resides behind both visions. It remembers how much capital was created by responsible citizenship in the fifties. It also celebrates the ingenuity unleashed in the freedom-loving sixties. We learned valuable lessons from both eras. A purple state of mind borrows from both, combining freedom and responsibility.

The Fifties Versus the Sixties

I have lived my entire life in the shadow of the 1960s. I’ve heard the stirring speeches of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. I’ve mourned the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in Dion’s song, “Abraham, Martin, and John.” I’ve been taken to the Vietnam War in Apocalypse Now. How many television specials have I seen that retrace the upheavals of 1968? Rolling Stone magazine commemorates Woodstock or the Summer of Love every single year! Was it the best of times or the worst of times? Forty years on, we’re still locked in an adolescent debate. We see it in the childish name-calling of Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter on the right or MoveOn.org and Daily Kos on the left.

Every American presidential election since the sixties has essentially been a referendum on that painful era. There were no clear winners in Vietnam. Like Rambo, we’re still fighting. It is a dark era in American history most of us would rather not review (even though we must learn those lessons so we stop repeating them). The fissure generated in Vietnam lies behind our conflicted feelings over the war in Iraq. We can’t talk rationally as a nation about important issues because of deep-seated, unresolved family dynamics. If you prefer the comparative calm of the fifties, then you know how to vote. If you uphold the progressive hopes of the sixties, then it is clear which candidate represents you. The only problem with this pattern is that many of us missed the fifties and the sixties. We’re ready to move on, to live in this moment, to meet today’s challenges rather than to relive yesterday’s news.

Living with this conflict is comparable to listening to our parents argue. We’ve heard all the lines, all the rhetoric, and all the old grudges. We can recite them from memory, and we’ve been exhausted by the gridlock. We haven’t bothered to speak up because we know our parents were too busy arguing to listen. The shouting match showed no signs of abating, so we let the circus pass us by. Instead of joining the conversation, we elected to start our own companies, clubs, and churches. The creative brain drain from civic activities has been well documented. Those who were turned off by the partisan rancor eventually turned off the pundits on TV. We are on the Internet instead, arguing about the minutia that remains distinctly ours—music, movies, television, shopping. We don’t want to be superficial. But with no creative political options, we opt out. If we hope to engage the next generation in public life, then this culture war, rooted in bitter recriminations, must stop. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we must call a cease-fire.

Those of us who’ve inherited this war have seen enough casualties. John Marks and I were born at the end of the baby boom and the beginning of Generation X. We understand the majority position and empathize with the minorities who’ve been sidelined by the sheer size of the opposition. Consider this book an effort to bridge the generation gap. I’m here to help those over fifty understand what is coming. I stand between the baby boomers and their children, brokering a truce. As a professor, I’ve invested heavily in Generation Y, hoping that they will enact enough changes to make room for my children—Generation Z!

Seeking Wisdom

Seek wisdom, not knowledge.

Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future.

Native American PROVERB

I recount our recent history in an effort to fill in gaps in our understanding. We must comprehend where we’ve been if we hope to figure out where we’re going. I’ve seen the abuses of power represented by Watergate. The special prosecutor’s hearings interrupted hours of my favorite TV cartoons. (Did you realize that Hillary Clinton was part of the legal team investigating Nixon’s White House? Republicans have struggled with her for a looooong time!) I watched Nixon’s sad wave goodbye on the White House lawn. I also understand the faith embodied by the first “born again” president, Jimmy Carter. His Southern Baptist beliefs led him to broker peace in the Middle East. Yet I also endured the 444 days of the Iranian hostage crisis that accompanied his peaceful negotiations. After such international embarrassment, Americans desperately wanted to return to the fifties era of strength and power. Ronald Reagan played the part of forceful leader resisting the Soviet Union. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism was a victory for freedom around the world.

Unresolved tensions about Vietnam, drugs, and the sixties fueled the vitriol hurled at the Clintons and the Bushes. Bill Clinton strapped on the mantle of President Kennedy, declaring himself “A Man from Hope.” His appearance playing saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show sent a clear signal that he embraced civil rights. As “entertainer in chief,” Clinton demonstrated a mastery of the electronic medium. His obfuscations about inhaling marijuana and dalliances with White House intern Monica Lewinsky also sparked latent fears of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. (Did you realize that Monica’s famous blue dress was found in her mother’s apartment—in the Watergate complex?) To his detractors, Clinton represented too much freedom and not enough presidential responsibility. The impeachment proceedings against him were a recapitulation and payback for the embarrassment borne by the Nixon administration.

George W. Bush represented a return to the fifties. He may have engaged in alcohol abuse or cocaine use, but Bush confessed his sins and seemed genuinely contrite. He experienced the dangers of too much personal freedom and welcomed the responsibility he found in his newfound faith. While Clinton parsed verbs, Bush offered plain-spoken surety. He distanced himself from his patrician upbringing, adopting a Texas rancher lifestyle as a populist alternative. To those tired of Clinton’s libertinism and excess, Bush offered a down-home throwback: cowboy boots and pickup trucks.

Yet all the tough talk in the world seemed insufficient in dealing with a nearly unseen enemy. How could a band of terrorists bring down the World Trade Center? They used our strengths against us, hijacking our own planes. They crashed into our most impressive symbols of financial prowess and military might. September 11, 2001, humbled and angered us. We marched into the Middle East with unprecedented firepower. Afghanistan fell almost without resistance. We submitted Iraq to “shock and awe.” Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda proved they could not only run but also hide. We attacked nations, but our enemies were individuals. American technology ended up undermined by insurgents with homemade bombs. We terrorized others with torture at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. We operated like a powerful empire but proved incapable of ferreting out an ideology. We desperately need leaders who can protect freedoms while serving as responsible world citizens. Such nuance has been lost in our prolonged and pointless culture war.

The next generation admires the civic responsibility of the fifties and the progressive art and music of the sixties. They have embraced a both/and view but have been alienated by either/or debates. A purple state of mind embraces freedom and responsibility. It takes the best of history but leaves the worst excesses (on both sides) behind. It blows away the purple haze hanging over our past. This chapter highlights key moments that got us into this mess. It will offer tangible proposals for moving on with maturity.

Nixon Versus Kennedy

For almost 50 years, we have been sorting out the choices represented by the first televised presidential debate, Republican Richard M. Nixon versus Democrat John F. Kennedy. On September 26, 1960, Vice President Nixon and Senator Kennedy squared off under the moderation of ABC’s Howard K. Smith. Over 80 million viewers tuned into the debate, which pitted Nixon’s experience (eight years as Eisenhower’s vice-president) against Kennedy’s comparative youth (one term as a U.S. senator). Both candidates offered hawkish opposition to the Communist threat represented by the Soviet Union. They debated issues of national debt, farm subsidies, welfare, and health care that continue to be unresolved. They drew distinctions about the role of government to stimulate economic growth. But Nixon and Kennedy diverged most significantly in style rather than substance.

Kennedy arrived at the debates looking tan, rested, and energetic. Nixon looked haggard, having recently fought off the flu. He refused to don makeup, figuring his forceful words would rule the day. Those who listened to the debate on the radio found Nixon the victor. Yet those watching the debate on tiny black-and-white televisions saw something else. They saw Nixon sweat while Kennedy smiled. Although Nixon was only five years older than Kennedy, his demeanor seemed comparatively ancient in outlook and energy. Nixon’s noticeable five-o’clock shadow didn’t help either.

Nixon learned the connections between style and substance too late in the campaign. Makeup covered his beard in three subsequent television debates. But Kennedy gained just enough confidence and votes to capture the closest general election of the twentieth century. Just one-tenth of 1 percent of votes separated Kennedy from Nixon. Americans have remained almost equally divided ever since.

The legacy of John F. Kennedy remains remarkably hopeful and progressive. Consider the optimism behind his war on poverty. Having watched the Russians beat Americans into orbit, Kennedy redefined the terms of the space race. How much chutzpah did it take to engage in a race to the moon? His version of American government looks almost absurdly hopeful in hindsight.

When Richard Nixon campaigned for president in 1968 (and for reelection in 1972), he promised an alternative to the vexing Vietnam War. Nixon expanded the Cold War efforts to include Cambodia and Laos. He presented a stronger America that refused to be intimidated. At the same time, Nixon engaged in a remarkable array of diplomatic missions to China and the Soviet Union. He met his adversaries face-to-face, winning surprising concessions and forging unexpected alliances.

Behind their policies, presidents Kennedy and Nixon represented divergent attitudes toward profound social change within America. The Kennedy years brought glamour to the White House. Entertainers like Marilyn Monroe sang sultry birthday greetings to President Kennedy. An air of celebration could also be read as a reign of permissiveness. A Democratic administration presided over the explosion of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Progressive politics coincided with experimentation and unrest. The Nixon presidency offered a return to law and order. Freedom took a backseat to responsibility. In 1971, President Nixon identified drug abuse as public enemy number one in the United States. He created the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (it became the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973). We’ve been fighting America’s longest war, the war on drugs, ever since.

Purple Haze

Jimi Hendrix’ song “Purple Haze” epitomizes the fuzzy grasp of reality that accompanied drug experimentation in the sixties. The title allegedly arose from a powerful batch of LSD served to Hendrix by Owsley Stanley. Some have also attributed it to a strain of purple marijuana. Hendrix said the inspiration arrived in a dream. Whatever the derivation, “Purple Haze” is rooted in altered states of consciousness. Released in 1967, “Purple Haze” served as the psychedelic anthem for San Francisco’s summer of love. The key to the song’s eerie sound is harmonic dissonance. Jimi’s guitar is tuned in B-flat, while Noel Redding’s bass plays E octaves. Such discordant sounds matched the era perfectly. A clash of cultures resulted in something jarring and new. Jimi didn’t just play rock music, he offered the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Consider the transcendent promises contained in his phrase, “’Scuse me while I kiss the sky.” Some heard it as a sexual provocation, a pledge to kiss a guy. But the sound made it clear that his sights were set in the great beyond. At his seminal appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival, Jimi transported the crowd to a higher state of consciousness. He demonstrated the otherworldly power of raw feedback, playing his guitar behind, above, and beyond himself. Hendrix stepped into the role of sexual shaman, licking, caressing, and stroking guttural sounds from his Stratocaster. In setting his guitar on fire during “Wild Thing,” Hendrix offered his gifts to the rock gods. It is an incantation, sacrificing his most precious possessions to the altar of altered states.

Unfortunately, Jimi’s life ended up in a similar state of self-immolation, falling to pieces just as suddenly and tragically. The Experience Music Project in Seattle serves as a permanent archive for all things Hendrix. EMP founder Paul Allen spent part of his Microsoft millions acquiring Hendrix memorabilia, bringing it back to Jimi’s hometown of Seattle. It is a memorial to a musical messiah. The hall dedicated to Jimi is fittingly called “Sky Church.”

To others, “Purple Haze” demonstrated a world utterly adrift. The idyllic visions of Woodstock were undercut by the horrific murder at Altamont. With Hell’s Angels serving as security, 1969’s other free concert (at Altamont Speedway in Northern California) ended in death rather than musical bliss. Every time Rolling Stone magazine presents another rosy retrospective of the sixties, I wonder why it refuses to acknowledge the dark side of psychedelia. How can it hold up Hendrix, Joplin, and Jim Morrison as departed saints, when they are also exhibits A, B, and C in the perils of drug abuse? They were amazing and stupid at the same time. Great talents squandered by excess. So when parents who lived through the worst of the sixties attempt to spare their children the same amount of destructive experimentation, I applaud. “Just say no” arose from painful, lived experience. It may have been simplistic, but it was preferable to self-destruction.

Recent films like Drugstore Cowboy, Trainspotting, and Requiem for a Dream capture both the allure and the demolition of drugs. They provide an audio-visual approximation of a drug trip. Their images are intoxicating and attractive—the ultimate music videos. Yet their message is clear: Despite the attraction, do not be deceived—drugs will kill you. They serve as cautionary tales for a stylish era. Today’s students have largely learned from the painful past. Rates of teenage pregnancies, drug use, and violence have hit 40-year lows. The parents from a turbulent era raised remarkably respectful, well-behaved kids. Demographers Neil Howe and William Strauss noted the surprising generational shift:

Boomers started out as the objects of loosening child standards in an era of conformist adults. Millennials are starting out as the objects of tightening child standards in an era of non-conformists adults. By the time the last Millennials come of age, they could become…the cleanest-cut young adults in living memory.

To a large degree, Generation Y has embraced the family values of the 1950s. But its rebellion remains wrapped in the profane packages of the 1960s.

Consider the violent, R-rated film Fight Club (1999). It is a scathing critique of consumer culture and middle-class values. We follow Jack, the bored protagonist, on a brutal slide into an underworld of macho self-abuse. Jack longs for genuine feeling, even if he must shed blood to achieve it. So while Jack may be a mild-mannered bureaucrat by day, he rallies his friends for bare-knuckled bar fights at night. Fight Club unleashes the fragile postmodern male id with frightening results. What begins as an invigorating alternative devolves into Project Mayhem, a prescient precursor to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Schizophrenia leads to destructive nihilism.

This is contrasted by the diagnosis offered by the toughest puncher in the club, Tyler Durden. He summarizes the isolation of a generation raised in affluence rather than upheaval:

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy s— we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war…our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very p— off.

When I showed Fight Club to a class of undergraduate students, they nodded in recognition. They connected with Tyler’s frustration. During a class discussion afterward, a student announced, “We’re rebels.” When I asked what they were rebelling against, he said, “Our parents.” is all sounded more than vaguely familiar, so I pushed further. “What does that look like?” The students answered, “We don’t want to be like our parents. Drinking. Doing drugs. Getting lots of divorces…we’re rebels!” e most rebellious behavior imaginable? Abstinence!

While baby boomers harrumph about presidential candidates’ ancient drug use, their children are begging for them to grow up. Parents complain to MTV about Britney Spears’ kiss with Madonna. Switchboards light up from viewers shocked by Janet Jackson’s nipple slip during the Super Bowl halftime show. Yet the next generation lets out a collective yawn. They’ve already seen it, done it, or dismissed it. They identify with the band Weezer, which recorded a song titled “Tired of Sex.” They are ready to move on, past the provocation to more substantive issues. Rivers Cuomo of Weezer asks, “Oh, why can’t I be making love come true?”

A New Conversation

Craig: My introduction to what it meant to follow Jesus was to be a laughingstock. It meant bad hair, bad makeup, and bad TV. Is this what I signed up for? This whole tension of red state and blue state, this is the tension that I live with—how do I own my own people who so make me cringe on a regular basis? This nomenclature of left and right, red and blue is not helpful right now.

John: It’s not meant to be helpful. It’s meant to do exactly what it does. I’m not happy with what people on the traditional left, or Democrats, say is their worldview. I honestly don’t know if they have one. I’m as weary as anybody in this country of the politically correct dialogue, which basically says, “I’m a victim and you’re not. No, I’m a victim and you’re not.” It’s useless. It’s done. It’s dead. Postmodernism is dead. All those answers on the secular side are basically dead.

John Marks and I stand between generations. We are old enough to understand the boomers’ intra-generational issues, yet we’re still young enough to identify with the discontent of those who followed. We embarked on a purple state of mind because we’re desperate for a new paradigm, hungering for a different set of talking points. We each risked alienating our constituencies. Coming from evangelical Christianity, I am part of the fifties tribe, which is struggling to protect home and hearth. As a journalist, John Marks identifies with the political left and their tattered ideals. We both find ourselves embarrassed by those we represent. I ask how God’s people could have turned Jesus into a hater. John questions why allegedly free-thinking people are so close-minded when it comes to religion. A purple state of mind tries the patience of both sides. It runs the risk of disloyalty for the sake of a larger goal.

We must put the past behind us. We can no longer afford to be divided over issues of sexuality and drug use when global crises demand our attention. To lead the world, we must get past our adolescent fixation on who did what to whom. The rumor mills that trumped up charges against the Clintons in Whitewater or George W. Bush with evasion of the Vietnam War have done nothing but distract us. How much negative energy has been expended on investigations that went nowhere? We’ve been busy digging up dirt when we should have been building roads and schools. We tore down a government in Iraq rather than solidifying our own ability to lead by example. Shame on us for obsessing over the past instead of investing in the future. No wonder voters in 2008 longed for change.

The Gospel According to Austin Powers

Our desperate need for freedom and responsibility rests in the seemingly contradictory letters of the apostle Paul. He applied his godly advice in a unique way for the audience he was addressing. To Corinthian Christians navigating a libertine culture, he preached caution. Corinth was noted for temples dedicated to Apollo and Aphrodite. Worship at these temples often included sex with temple prostitutes. They were thought to serve as conduits for the divine. An intimate sexual encounter on temple grounds was comparable to an experience with the gods. So imagine how confused early Corinthian Christians may have been about what constituted proper worship of Christ. Their understanding of Christian freedom knew no bounds. Paul urged the Corinthian church to exercise spiritual discipline, to get their house in order. He insisted they “flee from sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:18). To those who claimed, “Everything is permissible,” Paul responded with a chastening, “Everything is not beneficial” (1 Corinthians 10:23).

In Corinth, even eating meat could involve idolatrous activity. The local cults of Apollo and Aphrodite controlled so much of the public consciousness and economy that new believers were encouraged to examine the sources of their food supply. Food sacrificed to idols may not be contaminated physically, but Paul challenged the Corinthian to demonstrate sensitivity toward those who may have confused or conflated eating with idolatry. Paul urges the Corinthian believers to take responsibility for their Christian brothers and sisters. To a chaotic church, he preaches order, propriety, and maturity.

Yet to the uptight church in Galatia, Paul preaches freedom. The new believers clung too closely to their Jewish roots. Perhaps out of fear of persecution, the local church leaders insisted that new Christians adopt the rigorous (old) rules of Hebraic law. Gentile converts were expected to get circumcised according to Jewish ritual. Paul considers such attempts to bind people to ancient purity laws as a threat to the gospel of grace. He insists, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). He begged the Galatian Christians to loosen up, to relax their standards in the name of Christ.

Was Paul contradicting himself? By no means! In each letter, he concludes with an appeal to love. To the legally minded Galatians, Paul summarizes the law in a single command, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Galatians 5:14). To the battling Corinthians who confused sex with love, Paul spells out the attitudes and actions that constitute love. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud” (1 Corinthians 13:4). He preaches freedom to Galatia and responsibility to Corinth because they each need to apply the message in a unique way.

Unfortunately, we often fail to identify our particular blind spots. Legalistic churches will often reiterate the call to purity given to the Corinthians. Lax churches will return to Paul’s letter to the Galatians to justify more license. Those who need freedom cling to responsibility. Christians who need to learn responsibility insist upon the freedom Paul grants to Galatia. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery urges us toward maturity. In the comedic conclusion, Austin gets the drop on a surprised Dr. Evil. But Evil remains unflappable and punches Austin’s buttons: “We’re not so different, you and I. However, isn’t it ironic that the very things that you stand for—free love, swinging parties—are all now, in the nineties, considered to be evil?” Austin retorts, “No, man, what we swingers were rebelling against is uptight squares like you whose bag was money and world domination. We were innocent, man. If we’d known the consequences of our sexual liberation we would have done things differently, but the spirit would have remained the same. It’s freedom, baby, yeah!” Austin Powers connects wisdom, experience, and the spirit all in one interrelated package. Dr. Evil offers a challenge: “Face it—freedom failed.” With the sounds of the sixties anthem “What the World Needs Now Is Love” playing in the background, Austin concludes, “No man, freedom didn’t fail. Right now we’ve got freedom and responsibility. It’s a very groovy time.” Even sassy movie stars can capture profound truths.

It is not freedom versus responsibility. It is not the law and order of the Republican Party or the liberal policies of the Democratic Party. We need a strong military to defend our freedoms. We need unregulated markets to encourage innovation. We need social agencies to check our greed and support “the least of these.” We must find freedom and responsibility between the parties. We must learn to listen to Paul’s competing calls. Christian maturity incorporates the whole of scripture and applies it to an integrated life. We must be aware of our history. We must recognize how we’ve become so divided. We must grow up as a nation, moving on to freedom and responsibility rather than dragging each other into ancient history. The radical claims of Paul continue to challenge us. Libertines may need to give up some freedoms for the health of others. Conservatives may need to unwind enough for the Spirit to enter in.

Adolescence is an experiment in self-governance. It is about identifying your own strengths and weaknesses, learning to moderate. Sometimes we fall on our faces from too much excess. At other times, we shrink back from opportunities we should have seized. Highly responsible people may sprint to early success and wake up 20 years later, wondering what all the compliance wrought. They will long for freedom. Those raised in a borderless environment will have to find a roadmap that shows where the blind curves and dangerous precipices are located. Maturity arises when those maps have been internalized, when familiarity with biblical wisdom coincides with personal experience. We appreciate the gift of freedom, but we also recognize when enough is enough. Only with our house in order can we begin to focus outwardly. We do not merely play thought police, checking and correcting others. Rather, we take on the deeper challenge of walking beside others, inviting them to join us on the journey. It’s a very groovy time.

He loves me.

He loves me not.

He loves me.

He loves me not.

Daisy-Petal Christianity

THE LITTLE GIRL STANDS in the backyard chanting as she plucks petals one by one from the daisy and drops them to the ground. At game’s end, the last petal tells all: whether or not the person desired returns the affection.

Of course no one takes it seriously, and if children don’t get the answer they desire, they take another daisy and start again. It doesn’t take long even for children to realize that flowers weren’t designed to tell romantic fortunes. Why should they link their hearts’ desires to the fickleness of chance?

Why indeed! But it is a lesson far easier learned in romance than in more spiritual pursuits. For long after we’ve put away our daisies, many of us continue to play the game with God. This time we don’t pluck flower petals but probe through our circumstances trying to figure out exactly how God feels about us.

I got a raise. He loves me.

I didn’t get the promotion I wanted; I lost my job altogether. He loves me not!

Something in the Bible inspired me today. He loves me!

My child is seriously ill. He loves me not!

I gave money to someone in need. He loves me!

I let my anger get the best of me. He loves me not!

Something for which I prayed actually happened. He loves me!

I stretched the truth to get myself out of a tight spot.

He loves me not!

A friend called me unexpectedly to encourage me. He loves me!

My car needs a new transmission. He loves me not!

A PERILOUS TIGHTROPE

I have played that game most of my life, trying to sort out in any given moment how God might feel about me personally. I grew up learning that he is a God of love, and for the most part I believed it to be true. In good times, nothing is easier to believe. On days when my family is healthy and our relationships a joy, when my ministry thrives and both income and opportunity increase, when we have plenty of time to enjoy our friends and are not burdened with need, who wouldn’t be certain of God’s love?

But that certainty erodes when those times of bliss are interrupted with more troublesome events. A childhood condition that provided no end of embarrassment.

The day one of my friends in high school died of a brain tumor even as we prayed earnestly for his healing. When I wasn’t selected for a job I wanted in college because someone had lied about me.

The night my house was robbed. When I was severely burned in a kitchen accident. When I watched my father-in-law and my brother both die with debilitating illnesses even though they sought God earnestly for healing. When colleagues in ministry lied to me and spread false stories about me to win the support of others. When I didn’t know from where my next paycheck would come. When I saw my wife crushed by circumstances that I couldn’t get God to change, no matter how hard I tried. When doors of opportunity that appeared certain to open would suddenly slam shut like a windblown door. Then I wondered how God really felt about me. I couldn’t understand how a God who loved me either would allow such things into my life or wouldn’t fix them immediately so that I or people I loved wouldn’t have to endure such pain. He loves me not! Or so I thought on those days. My disappointment with God could easily turn two directions.

Often in my pain and frustration, when I felt as if I had done enough to deserve better, I would rail at God like the Job of old, accusing him of being either unfair or unloving.

In more honest moments, however, I was well aware of the temptations and failures that could exclude me from his care. I would come out of those times committed to trying harder to live the life I thought would merit his love. I lived for thirty-four years as a believer on this perilous tightrope. Even when there was no crisis hanging over my head, I was always wary of the next one God might drop on me at any second if I couldn’t stay on his good side. In some ways I had become like the schizophrenic child of an abusive father, never certain what God I’d meet on any given day—the one who wanted to scoop me up in his arms with laughter, or the one who would ignore me or punish me for reasons I could never understand. Only in the last twelve years have I discovered that my methods of discerning God’s love were as flawed as pulling petals from a daisy. I haven’t been the same since.

CONVINCING EVIDENCE

What about you?

Have you ever felt tossed back and forth by circumstances, occasionally certain but mostly uncertain about how the Creator of the universe feels about you? Or perhaps you’ve never even known how much God loves you.

In a Bible study recently, I met a forty-year-old woman who was active in her fellowship but admitted to a small group of us that she had never been certain that God loved her. She seemed to want to tell me more but finally only asked me to pray for her. As I did, asking God to reveal just how much he loved her, an image came to mind. I saw a figure I knew to be Jesus walking through a meadow hand in hand with a little girl about five years old. Somehow I knew this woman was that little girl. I prayed that he would help her discover a childlikeness of spirit that would allow her to skip through the meadows with him. When I finished praying I looked up at her eyes, brimming with tears.

“Did you say ‘meadow’?” she asked.

I nodded, thinking it odd she had focused on that word. Immediately she began to cry. When she was able to speak, she said, “I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell you. When I was five years old I was molested in a meadow by an older boy. Whenever I think about God, I think about that horrible event and I wonder why, if he loved me so much, he didn’t stop that from happening.”

She’s not alone. Many people carry scars and disappointments that appear to be convincing evidence that the God of love does not exist or, if he does, he maintains a safe distance from them and leaves them to the whim of other people’s sins. I don’t have a stock answer for moments like that, as if any could be effective in the midst of such pain. I told her that evidently

God wanted her to know he had been there with her, and although he didn’t act in the only way she could understand true love to act, he loved her nonetheless. He wanted to walk her through that defiled meadow and redeem it in her life.

He wanted to give her a measure of joy in the face of the most traumatic event of her life and turn what had destroyed her ability to trust into a stepping-stone toward grace. I know that can sound almost trite in the face of such incredible pain, but the process has begun for her. Eight months later I received an excited e-mail from her telling me in 270-point type, “I get it!” Does that mean she understands why it happened to her? Of course not. Nothing could explain that. But it does mean that God’s love was big enough to contain that horrible event and walk her out of it. It is my hope these words will encourage that process in you as well.

PERCEPTION VERSUS REALITY

Truly God has never acted toward us in any way other than with a depth of love that defies human understanding. I know it may not look like that at times. When he seems to callously disregard our most noble prayers, our trust in him can be easily shattered and we wonder if he cares for us. We can even come up with a list of our own failures that seemingly justify God’s indifference and beckon us into a dark whirlpool of selfloathing.

When we’re playing the he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not game, the evidence against God can appear overwhelming. For reasons we will probe throughout these pages, God does not often do the things we think his love would compel him to do for us. He often seems to stand by with indifference while we suffer. How often does he seem to disappoint our most noble expectations? But perception is not necessarily reality. If we define God only in our limited interpretation of our own circumstances, we will never discover who he really is. He has provided a far better way.

Our daisy-petal approach to Christianity can be swallowed up by the undeniable proof of his love for us on the cross of Calvary. That’s the side of the cross that has all but been ignored in recent decades. We did not see what really happened there between the Father and his Son that opened the door to his love so vast and so certain that it cannot be challenged even by our darkest days.

Through that door we can really know who God is and embrace a relationship with him that our deepest hearts have hungered to experience. That is where we’ll begin, because it is only in the context of the relationship God desires with us that we can discover the full glory of his love.

He does love you more deeply than you’ve ever imagined; he has done so throughout your entire life. Once you embrace that truth, your troubles will never again drive you to question God’s affection for you or whether you’ve done enough to merit it. Instead of fearing he has turned his back on you, you will be able to trust his love at the moments you need him most. You will even see how that love can flow out of you in the strangest ways to touch a world starved for it.

Learning to trust him like that is not something any of us can resolve in an instant; it’s something we’ll grow to discover for the whole of our lives. God knows how difficult it is for us to accept his love, and he teaches us with more patience than we’ve ever known. Through every circum-

stance and in the most surprising ways, he makes his love known to us in ways we can understand. So perhaps it’s time to toss your daisies aside and discover that it is not the fear of losing God’s love that will keep you on his path, but the simple joy of living in it every day.

On the day you discover that, you will truly begin to live!

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

—1 John 3:1

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For Your Personal Journey

How often do you find yourself doubting God’s love for you? When do you question his love the most? How certain are you that God loves you as deeply as he does anyone else in the world? When difficulties arise, do you find yourself doubting God’s love for you or trying to be more righteous so he’ll like you more? Ask God in the days ahead to reveal the depths of his love for you.

For Group Discussion

1. Share an experience you went through in which you really doubted if God cared about you.

2. How do you feel about it now? If you’re still unsure, what might you ask God to do to change your perception of that event?

3. If you look back now and know that God loved you even if you didn’t recognize it at the time, what did you learn in the process?

4. How can we encourage one another to be certain, instead of doubtful, about God’s love?

Stranger and Stranger Still

At that moment he was the last person I wanted to see. My day had been bad enough already; now I was certain it was about to get worse. Yet there he was. A moment before he had poked his head into the cafeteria, walked over to the beverage station, and poured himself some fruit juice. I thought about ducking under the table but quickly realized I was too old for that. Maybe he wouldn’t see me back in the corner. I looked down and covered my face with my hands.

Out of the cracks between my fingers, I could see he had turned, leaned back against the counter, and took a drink while surveying the room. Then he squinted toward me as he realized he wasn’t alone and with a surprised look he started toward me. Of all nights, why here? Why now?

N

It had been our worst day ever in a long and torturous battle. Since three o’clock that afternoon, when the asthma made its first attempt that day to strangle Andrea, our twelve-year-old daughter, we had been on guard for her life. First we rushed her to the hospital watching her struggle for every breath. Then we watched as the doctors and nurses battled with her asthma for the use of her lungs.

I admit I do not deal with this well, although you’d think I would with all the practice I’ve had. My wife and I have watched our daughter suffer all of her life, never certain when a sudden, life-threatening attack would send us scurrying to the hospital.

It makes me so angry to watch her suffer; no matter how much we’ve prayed for her and had others do the same, the asthma continues to get worse.

A couple of hours before, the medication had finally kicked in and she began to breathe more easily. My wife headed home to get some much-needed sleep and relieve her parents, who’d come to be with our other daughter. I stayed the night. Andrea finally fell asleep and I found my way to the cafeteria for something to drink and a quiet place to read. I was too wired to sleep.

Grateful to find the place deserted, I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down in the shadows of a distant corner. I was so angry I couldn’t even think straight. What have I done so wrong that my daughter must suffer like this? Why does God ignore my desperate pleas for her healing? Other parents gripe about playing taxicab for all their children’s activities; I don’t even know if Andrea will survive her next asthma attack, and I worry that the steroids she’s on will stunt her growth.

Somewhere in the middle of a good wallow in my anger, he poked his head into my private sanctuary. Now he was walking over to my table and I honestly thought about punching him in the mouth if he dared to open it. Deep down, though, I knew I wouldn’t. I’m violent only on the inside, not on the outside where anyone else can see it.

I’ve never met anyone more frustrating than John. I was so excited when we first met, and honestly I’ve never met anyone as wise as he. But he’s brought me nothing but grief. Since he’s come into my life, I’ve lost my lifelong dream job, been ostracized from the church I’d helped to start fifteen years before, and even found my marriage in rougher waters than I’d ever known.

To understand just how frustrated I am, you would have to come back with me to the day I first met John. As incredible as the beginning was, it doesn’t compare to all we’ve been through since.

My wife and I celebrated our seventeenth wedding anniversary by taking a three-day trip to Pismo Beach on the central California coast. On our way home on Saturday, we stopped in downtown San Luis Obispo for lunch and shopping. Its revitalized downtown is a major draw for the area and on this sunny April day the streets were jammed.

After lunch we split up since our preferred browsing places are quite different. I went to loiter in the bookstores while she trolled the clothing stores and gift shops. Finishing before our scheduled rendezvous time, I had perched myself against the wall of a store while enjoying a chocolate ice cream cone.

I couldn’t help but notice the heated argument going on a few feet up the street in front of The Gap. Four college-aged students and two middle-aged men were holding bright blue handbills and gesturing wildly. I had seen the handbills earlier, tucked under windshield wipers and lying scattered in the gutter. It was an invitation to a play about the flames of hell that was being produced at a local church.

“Who’d want to go to this second-rate production?”

“I’ll never set foot in a church again!”

“The only thing I learned in church was how to feel guilty!”

“Been there, done that, got the scars, and ain’t going back!”

In the few moments since I had begun eavesdropping, I think every one of them threw in a comment. Another would jump in as if he was going to burst from the pressure if he couldn’t add their own venom. “Where do these arrogant people get off thinking they can judge me?”

N

“I’d like to know what Jesus would think if he walked into one of these churches today!”

“I don’t think he’d go.”

“And if he did, he’d probably fall asleep.”

Laughter drowned him out.

“Or maybe he’d die laughing.”

“Or crying,” another voice offered, which caused everyone to pause and think a moment.

“Do you think he’d wear a suit?”

“Only to hide the whip he’d sneak in to do a little housecleaning.”

The increasing volume drew the attention of those passing by. Their pace would slow as they were drawn into the commotion. Some drawn by the passion and intrigued by the assault on something as sacred as religion joined in like puppies at the food bowl. Still others hung around on the fringes to listen. Some even asked me what was going on.

Then a full-fledged argument developed as some of the newcomers challenged the antichurch cynics. Accusations volleyed quickly in the crowd. Most of them I had heard before: complaints about extravagant facilities, hypocrites, boring sermons, always asking for money, and burnout from too many meetings. Those who sought to defend the church had to admit some of these weaknesses but tried to point out many good things churches have done.

That’s when I noticed him. He could have been anywhere from late thirties to early fifties. It was difficult to tell. He was short, perhaps only five foot four with dark, wavy hair and an unkempt beard. Both were peppered with streaks of gray. Wearing a faded green sweatshirt, jeans, and running shoes, he had a rugged look that made me wonder if he was a holdover from the rebellious sixties—except that he wasn’t shuffling by aimlessly.

In fact, what had caught my eye was the determined purpose of his gait, moving directly toward the growing debate. His face was as intense as a German shepherd when it’s pursuing an unfamiliar sound in the night. He seemed to melt into the crowd and then emerged in the center of it, surveying the more vocal ones. When his eyes turned in my direction, I was captured by their intensity. They were deep—and alive! I was riveted. He seemed to know something no one else did.

By this time the debate had turned hostile. Those who had attacked the church had turned their anger toward Jesus himself, mocking him as an impostor. As intended, that only made the churchgoers in the group more livid. “Wait until you have to look in his face as you sink into hell!” one said. I thought the combatants were going to start swinging at one another when the stranger floated his question into the crowd.

“You really have no idea what Jesus was like, do you?”

The words slipped off the man’s lips as gently as the breeze wafted through the trees overhead. They were in stark contrast to the heated argument that swirled around him. They were so softly spoken that I read them on his lips more than heard them. But their impact was not lost on the crowd. The noisy clamor subsided quickly as tension-filled faces gave way to puzzled expressions. Who said that? was the unspoken question that filled the eyes of their surprised faces as they scanned the others around them.

I chuckled under my breath because no one was looking at the man who had just spoken. For one thing, he was so short that it was easy to pass over him. But, intrigued by his demeanor, I had been watching him and the crowd for the last few moments.

As people were glancing around, he spoke again into the stunned silence. “Do you have any idea what he was like?” This time all eyes turned downward toward the voice and were surprised to see the man who’d spoken.

“What do you know about it, old man?” one of them finally asked, his mockery dripping off each word until the disapproving gaze of the crowd silenced him. He laughed it off and looked away, embarrassed, grateful that their eyes had swung back to the stranger. But the stranger was in no hurry to speak. The resulting silence hung in the air, far beyond the point of awkwardness. A few nervous glances and shrugs shot through the crowd, but no one spoke and no one left. During this time the man scanned the crowd pausing to hold each person’s gaze for a brief second. When he caught my eye, everything inside seemed to melt. I looked away instantly. After a few moments I glanced back, hoping he was no longer looking in my direction.

N

After what seemed an insufferably long time, he spoke again. His first words were whispered directly to the man who had threatened the others with hell. “You really have no idea what motivates you, do you?” His tone was one of sorrow, and his words sounded like an invitation. There was not a trace of anger in them. Embarrassed, the man threw his hands up and rolled his eyes as if he didn’t understand the question.

The stranger let him twist in the gaze of the crowd briefly, then, looking around the circle, he began to speak again, his words flowing softly. “He was nothing special to look at. He could walk down this street today and not one of you would even notice him. In fact, he had the kind of face you would shy away from, certain he wouldn’t fit in with your crowd. “But he was as gentle a man as one would ever know. He could silence detractors without ever raising his voice. He never bullied, never drew attention to himself, nor did he ever pretend to like what vexed his soul. He was real, to the very core.

“And at the core of that being was love.” The stranger paused and shook his head. “Wow! Did he love!” His eyes looked far past the crowd now, seeming to peer across the depths of time and space. “We didn’t even know what love was, until we saw it in him. It was everyone, too, even those who hated him. He still cared for them, hoping somehow they would find a way out of their self-inflicted souls to recognize who stood among them.

“And with all that love, he was completely honest. Yet even when his actions or words exposed people’s darkest motives, they didn’t feel shamed. They felt safe, really safe with him. His words conveyed not even a hint of judgment, simply an entreaty to come to God. There was no one you would trust more quickly with your deepest secrets. If someone was going to catch you at your worst moment, you’d want it to be him.

“He wasted no time mocking others, nor their religious trappings.” He glanced at those who had just done so. “If he had something to say to them, he’d say it and move on and you would know you’d been loved more than ever before.” Here the man stopped, his eyes closed and mouth clenched as if choking back tears that would melt him in an instant if he gave in to them.

“I’m not talking about mamby-pamby sentimentalism, either. He loved, really loved. It didn’t matter if you were Pharisee or prostitute, disciple or blind beggar, Jew, Samaritan, or Gentile. His love held itself out for any to embrace. Most did, too, when they saw him. Though so few ended up following him, for the few moments his presence passed by them, they tasted a freshness and power they could never deny even years later. Somehow he seemed to know everything about them but loved them deeply all the same.”

He paused and scanned the crowd. In the last couple of moments perhaps as many as thirty more people had stopped to listen, their gaze firmly on the man and their mouths agape in bewilderment. I can record his words here but am bereft of an adequate description of their impact.

No one within earshot could deny their power or their authenticity. They rang from the very depths of his soul. “And when he hung there from that filthy cross”—the man’s eyes looked up into the trees that towered over us—“that love still poured down-—on mocker and disillusioned friend alike.

As he approached the dark chamber of death, wearied of the torture and feeling separated from his Father, he continued to drink from the cup that would finally consume our self-will and shame. There was no finer moment in all of human history. His anguish became the conduit for his life to be shared with us. This was no madman. This was God’s Son, poured out to the last breath, to open full and free access for you to his Father.”

As he spoke further, I was struck by the intimacy of his words. He talked like someone who had been with him. In fact, I remember thinking, This man is exactly how I would picture John the Disciple to be.

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than he stopped midsentence. Turning to his right, his eyes seemed to seek something in the crowd. Suddenly his eyes locked on mine. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and my body quivered with a wave of chills. He held my gaze for a moment; then a brief but certain smile spread over his lips as he winked and nodded at me.

N

At least that’s the way I remember it now. I was shocked at the time. Is he acknowledging my thought? That would be silly. Even if he were John, he wouldn’t be a mind reader. What am I thinking? How could he be a two-thousand-year-old disciple?

It’s just not possible.

As he turned away, I glanced behind me to see if anyone else could have been the target of his gaze. It didn’t look that way, and no one around me seemed to take notice of his wink and smile. I was stunned, feeling as if I’d just been hit in the head with an errant football. Electricity raked over my body as questions raced through my mind. I had to find out more about this stranger.

The crowd was swelling in size as more and more people poked their heads in, trying to figure out what was going on. Even the stranger seemed to grow increasingly uncomfortable with the spectacle the scene was quickly becoming.

“If I were you,” he said with a wink and a smile as his eyes swept over those who’d started the discussion, “I would waste far less time ragging on religion and find out just how much Jesus wants to be your friend without any strings attached.

He will care for you and, if given a chance, will become more real to you than your best friend. You will cherish him more than anything else you desire. He will give you a purpose and a fullness of life that will carry you through every stress and pain and will change you from the inside to show you what true freedom and joy really are.”

With that he turned and made his way through the crowd in the opposite direction from where I was standing. No one moved or said anything for a moment, unsure just how to end the confrontation and break up.

I tried to move through the crowd so that I could talk to this man personally. Could he really have been John? If not, who was he? How did he know the things he seemed to speak about so confidently?

It was difficult to navigate through the pack of people and keep my eye on John. I pushed my way through just in time to see him turn down a gap between two buildings. He was headed up Bubble Gum Alley, a forty-yard stretch of brick wall that joined the shopping district with a parking lot behind. It had gotten its name from the thousands of chewed-up wads of gum that had been affixed to the wall during the years. The array of colors made for an impressive if somewhat grotesque sight.

He was only fifteen feet in front of me when he went out of sight. I was relieved to know I’d at least get a chance to talk with him, for no one else had pursued him. I rounded the corner, prepared to call out for him to stop, but instead stopped instantly upon looking down the alley.

It was empty. I turned back to the street confused. Had he really turned in there? I looked both directions up the sidewalk but didn’t see any green sweatshirts like the one he was wearing.

No, he did go in there. I was certain of it. But he could not have covered the forty yards in the three seconds it had taken me to get to the alley.

My heart began to race. Fearful I would miss him. In a panic I finally ran down the alley past the brightly colored wads of gum. There was no doorway or nook where he could have gone. At the end I burst into the parking lot, scanning every direction at once.

Nothing.

A few people were getting out of their cars, but no sign of the stranger.

Confused, I ran back up the alley and into the street, surveying quickly for any green sweatshirts, all the time praying that I could find him again. I looked in nearby store windows and at passing cars, but to no avail. He was gone. I could have kicked myself for not having followed him more closely.

I finally sat down on a bench, a bit disoriented by the whole experience. I massaged my bowed forehead, trying to pull together a cohesive thought. I could hardly finish a sentence in my mind before another thought would intrude. Who was he, and what happened to him? His words had touched the deepest hungers of my heart and the thought of his wink at me still gave me the shivers.

I knew I’d never see him again and wrote off the whole morning as one of those inexplicable events in life that would never make any sense.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Waiting Invocation

In east- central Kentucky, where I grew up, yard sales were spiritual affairs. People laid the holiest parts of their pasts on the altar: china patterns in small, paltry sets, for which incompleteness was a mark of shame (the marriage clearly hadn’t lasted long enough for the set to be finished); self- help books (not deemed subversive until after they’d spent at least two weeks on the best- seller list); wine and cordial sets (reason for purging them: self- explanatory). On the first Saturday in July 1982, when my grandmother

Mimi’s new street held its annual Public Cleansing of the Sinful, the Embarrassing, the Tacky, and the Used- Up (officially known as the Town- Wide Community Yard Sale), Momma and Aunt Kit turned Mimi’s front yard into a veritable mecca of the Bluegrass. Their own daddy had passed away some ten years before, and Mimi had finally remarried. Her new husband’s house was smaller, so lots of old had to pass away, for pennies on the dollar, before the new could come. My sister, cousins, and I sat on the edge of the driveway, in awe of Momma and Kit. Wearing their signature yard sale day uniforms— Bermudas over bathing suits and halos of giant aluminum rollers— they gave off an aura that made piles of warped Tupperware seem magnetic. No other yard on the block was doing as much business. But it wasn’t our mothers’ entrepreneurship that had us concerned. All up and down the block, kids our age were cashing in on the yard sales, too. Each time a grown- up entered a driveway, she had to practically trip over a teetering, scrap- wood refreshment “stand” staffed by some barefoot child who looked like a pitiful, melting toad out in the sun. A pitiful, melting, moneymaking little toad. My sister and I knew we could do better. Meg and I took a few of Mimi’s empty moving cartons from the garage and set to work on our own stand. We set it up right at the driveway’s edge— almost in the road— where it couldn’t be missed. And sure enough, no one passing by missed a glance at what we were offering, spelled out in blood- red tempera paint:

Baptisms: 25 Cents.

And below it, in tiny print:

But if you do not have any money, it is free.

Lesson 1

Kindness

ACID- WASHED SAMARITANS

For a true Kentucky girl, it is possible to baptize out the sin, but not the Blue. And for that reason, no worse punishment can be devised for her than imprisonment in a televisionless guest bedroom in the middle of March Madness. Cold- turkey withdrawal from basketball is the most cruel and unusual penance that can be inflicted upon anyone in the Bluegrass. Age doesn’t matter, we’re all like those crack cocaine babies— addicted from the first jump ball. In fact, when I was a kid, Wildcat basketball was the only such addiction respected— no, encouraged— by the Southern Baptist Church, where being in attendance at services was held in greater esteem than being in God’s graces. If your house burned to the ground on a Saturday, well, you’d better get your rear end in the pew on Sunday morning and thank the Lord for sparing your life. Your wife died? Sorry, but you’d best show up immediately and let the Women’s League fuss over you, or else they’d take offense. But if it was Sunday and the Game was on, well, that was different. God made the Wildcats, and the Wildcats glorified Him through their goal- shattering, soul- shattering play. If your church held a Kentucky Wildcat basketball player— current or former— on its membership roll, and you managed to secure his autographed jersey for your trophy case (typically signed with the citation to the athlete’s favorite Bible verse), then you had officially acquired the Holy Grail of missions tools. Who knew how many stadiumfuls of souls that jersey might draw to the Lord’s side?

And yet my mother refused to respect the almighty force of Kentucky Basketball. It was for that reason that I silently prayed for her soul, even as I wrote in my Bible notebook and cursed her name during that one afternoon of cruelest isolation. I was almost nine years old and I was in trouble. But more than that, I was worried. I really hoped God would forgive my mother for making me miss the game. It only made me madder when I saw my little sister, out like a light on the guest twin bed next to mine. This was the one talent that always made me jealous of Meg— she could escape into sleep from anything, anytime, anywhere, and it took her less than a minute. A punishment like the guest- room prison didn’t have to be a punishment for her. She didn’t have to endure the slow burn of sunlight lowering slat- by- slat through the mini blinds and rusty bike wheels going on a last ride for the evening. Most maddening of all, she didn’t have to trudge through some dumb paperback from the preteen section of the Tucker’s Mill Elementary library (hand- chosen by Momma, who taught sixth grade at the time). I hated preteen books. As I noted in my Bible notebook, if Jesus could read one, He would proclaim that “thou art the most asinine things ever written.” They certainly weren’t made for girls like me who understood the meaning of asinine (which was taught to me by my father, by way of one of his sermons).

All the girls in those books knew how to do was sit around and whine about how ugly and fat they were and how nobody liked them. I had the good sense to know that I was beautiful even without a bra (and in the church, I was even holy- royal). Still, were I to grow up to be such a whiner, Momma would have no one but herself and Judy Blume to thank.

So, partly out of frustration with Ramona Forever, and partly because I was tired of taking my punishment alone, I threw the book against the far wall, right above Meg’s head. With a groan, she half opened one eye. Her round face was puffy with sleep and red on one side; the word shepherd from the embroidery on her pillowcase had embedded itself into her cheek. “You woke me up, you . . . you . . . booger!” Meg shouted, still drugged in sleep. (I made note of the hesitation in her speech, the self- correction her bleary mind had made before she settled on what put- down name she was going to call me. This was a cautious, practiced art in Baptist childhood— would- be “cursing” had to be manipulated so that it wouldn’t burn Jesus’s ears, but would still offend your target to the maximum extent possible. Meg had mostly learned the art from our neighbor kid Joey Stinson, a true master. Just weeks before she and I landed in that guest room, Meg had come home in frantic tears from the Stinsons’ backyard. She’d finally admitted, after Momma calmed her down, that “Joey called me a

mitch!”) I was usually ready to counter booger with something related to diarrhea (putting my holy dignity aside by necessity, in emergency circumstances), but I knew that in this case, starting a fight might result in an extended sentence. If we could just stay quiet— please, Lord— we might be released in time to see the last quarter of the game.

“You know what’s a worse name than booger?” I asked, eyes wide as I could make them. “Beazus. A girl in that book Momma made me read is really named Beazus. Can you believe that? I don’t know if her parents are crazy Pentecostals or what.”

It worked. Meg fell back on the bed and laughed. Thank goodness she was only six, and I had two and a half years of cleverness on her. Normally, Meg never joked about names. She thought her own first name, Margaret, was an old- lady name, and she was correct. My mother and father named us Elizabeth and Margaret because they wanted us to sound dignified when we were older. Momma always told us it was our Christian duty to live up to those names. And on that March Sunday in 1986, I was convinced I was doing a good job of that, despite the misunderstandings of my elders. Elizabeth was the name of the most dignified movie star ever to walk the earth, and I was convinced I was following in her footsteps. True, my parents couldn’t afford to make me one of the Kentucky “horse kids,” so any hopes of National Velvet II were out of the question. But to my credit, I took ballet and could do one- handed cartwheels, and my mother painted my nails with real woman’s polish (not the kiddy Tinkerbell brand that Meg could drink without dying).

I was certain it was only by God’s graces that Meg still had years of growing up to do, because as a six- year- old Meg was not dignified. Ever since the first traces of spring warmth appeared that March, she’d taken to wearing an old pair of our neighbor Teddy Frank’s swimming trunks as regular shorts. She just wore them day after day until Sunday morning, when Momma had to take them off with Meg kicking and screaming. Often I wondered just how the same sanctified, holy- born DNA could flow through her veins as mine. But once in a great while, Meg had a thought of pure theological genius. And there in the guest room, in our darkest hour of faith, one of those inspired questions hit her: “If Jesus is going to punish us anyway, why does Momma get to do it, too?” Meg asked. She walked her feet up the wall and picked her nose— the yogi- style meditative pose of the Christian child of the South. “I don’t know,” I told her. “I think it’s because she knows

He really won’t do anything to us, because He knows we weren’t wrong. But I prayed to Him that I was sorry, just in case.” “Me, too. But I was falling asleep and I don’t know if I got it in time to count.” I turned over and stared out the window, out to the sidewalk where the Stinson kids were coming home from the new indoor pool at the Catholic rec center. Mrs. Stinson had a popped pool fl oat in one hand and was dragging one of her kids by the other. The kid was squalling up a storm, rubbing a rear end that had been recently slapped. I let out a little giggle, the kind you always giggled as a child whenever you saw another child get spanked in public. You didn’t know where such a laugh came from or what ungodly force put it there at that time, but it came up anyway like a big embarrassing burp and was tough to swallow back.

I stared at that poor, persecuted Stinson child, and I thought about how Momma had dragged me home by the arm like that, just that morning. I thought about how I would have preferred a spanking to the jail sentence. I thought, deep in that still- undeveloped part of my little heart that was born to question older people, about whether or not I deserved punishment at all. For as my Bible notebook would proclaim, and as I would tell the Lord face- to- face if I had the chance, Mrs. Mounts was the one who really started it. Mrs. Joetta Mounts had taken over teaching both my Sunday School class and my GA group in January. GA stands for “Girls in Action,” and in the Southern Baptist Church it can best be described as Girl Scouts Gone Holy. A girl was eligible to start attending GA troop meetings when she began the first grade. The goal of the program was to instill the Southern Baptist Convention’s focus on world missions in the population of six- year- old girls, and let them grow in Christ’s charity from there. We earned a badge for each level of missions study we completed, up through the sixth grade, and these were displayed on a pageant- style sash worn each year at a recognition program. When a girl became a teenager, she was eligible to promote into the Acteens program (Eagle Scouts at the Seraphim Level). You did not get cookies to sell in the GAs, but one year I remember sampling the putrid porridge of the pagan Shuma- something tribe of Liberia. The Mounts GA group met in a little room in the back of the church that had a crooked rainbow painted on the wall, and a scary- looking Noah with a great big head and feet that looked like mashed potatoes. Week after week, we sat there and listened to fat Mrs. Mounts tell us how much we were helping the missions effort when we dressed up like Ethiopians and sang in front of the church. I felt like I was lying when I nodded, as if I believed Mrs. Mounts, but to question what she said aloud might be sassing, and I didn’t know which was the worse sin, lying or back talk. (When there were two sins at once, though, I thought it was written in the Word that the older person got to pick which one counted, so I didn’t talk back.)

At the time, Meg was not really old enough to be in GAs. She had an off- birthday and was too young to be in the big girl class by a weekend, but she was too old to be put in the baby nursery. Mrs. Mounts just let her sit and color at first, but she took the coloring book away when Meg started giving all the Bible people red eyes. (Meg wasn’t that old at the time, but she was smart enough to make the connection between superpowers and laser eyes. If the Lord could turn water into wine, by gosh, Meg knew He was entitled to laser eyes, too, and she aimed to give them to Him.) But after the coloring book was snatched, Meg just had to sit and be quiet like the rest of us.

She still managed the occasional brush with holysuperheroism, mostly when prayer circle time rolled around. Prayer circle always turned into sort of a contest by the end, where everyone competed to see who was in most need of divine help. Someone would start the bidding by asking for prayers for their momma’s bad headaches or their grandpa’s arthritis— a solid effort, but worth only a “that’s too bad” from Mrs. Mounts, at most. Someone else usually one- upped this by asking for prayers for their teenage cousin who got drunk on

Saturday night— again, a good effort, and sometimes rewarded by Mrs. Mounts making notes in her own personal prayer booklet, which looked a little like a meter maid’s notepad. It was then, when all eyes searched the room for a last- minute sniper of a bid, that Meg would make her move, simply and matter- of- factly: “Our Mimi is in a coma. That means she is part alive and sick and part dead.” It always came out sounding like a plea and a challenge rolled into one. And just how are you going to pray away that combo, lady? Mrs. Mounts never had an answer. Neither did any of our Sunday School teachers, or Daddy for that matter, when I’d ask him directly how we could force God’s hand in the matter. He said that we just had to pray about it. That that was what Great and Almighty Prayer was for. When he said this, it made me think of prayer as something more like a limp- wristed weakling, without laser eyes, and without even the upper- body strength to lift my feeble grandmother on into heaven. It scared me a little to think that this was my father’s hero.

The GA term ran from January to March, during the second half of Sunday services. At that last meeting of the year, that morning, Mrs. Mounts had promised us a movie and treats. Now, anyone who ever attended church as a child knows that any treat you were promised by a church leader would inevitably be a big disappointment. That is, unless you were a kid from the Shawneetown Mission next door and you only had rocks to play with. And if you felt even a teensy bit let down inside when you got the treat, you were supposed to feel ashamed for not being grateful that you were not a Shawneetown kid with only rocks to play with. Take Mrs. Mounts’s movie, for example. Right as I laid myself fl at- out on the cool classroom linoleum and watched her start to fumble with the VCR, I prayed with all my heart that it would be E.T. Deep down, though, I knew I had to prepare fake joy for the grainy David and Goliath cartoon it would, and did, turn out to be. And Lord, even though I knew being ungrateful was a sin, I just couldn’t repent fast enough for that treat. It was what it always was— purple- colored water with no sugar and a cup of peanuts with no salt. Like I said, I had no call to be surprised. My father has always maintained that the treats Southern Baptists give out at church are tied right to the heart of the religion. And the religion, he says, is all about trapdoors. “There are people in our church who think the earth is covered in trapdoors,” he told me once after a particularly heartwrenching choir party in which we were actually given milk and slices of wheat bread, “and each of those doors is baited with the sweetest things in life. They think once you reach out and try to take those good things off the door, Satan pushes a button somewhere and you go straight to the bottom.” “So Mrs. Mounts thinks there are trapdoors in the Sunday School room?” I asked him. “Mrs. Mounts thinks that if she puts sugar in your Kool- Aid, in two weeks you’ll be on crack cocaine.” “But can’t people just take the good thing off the trapdoor when they see it,” I wondered, “and not just stand there on it and wait to fall?” “Well, no,” he said. “The Southern Baptist philosophy rests largely on the principle that all God’s glorious, perfect children are also dumb as dirt.” Lying there on that church room floor, with the little brown flecks in the linoleum that made the tiles look like vomit, I thought about how dumb as dirt Mrs. Mounts’s cartoon movie was. But then, like a miracle, the real Savior intervened. It amazed me that a blessing could be disguised as Meg. She had been sawing logs over in the corner since the birth of David, and suddenly she was whispering in my ear. “I have a stomachache, Sissy. I’m not making it up, I promise.” I noticed that Meg had little flecks of crayon wax pressed

into her cheek, where it had lain against the floor.

“Okay, let’s go.” I sighed, pretending it was a chore to take her to the bathroom, because it usually was. Momma would never let us go to the bathroom alone, and sometimes, in restaurants, Meg would work herself into having to go just to see what the inside of a different bathroom looked like. That day, though, I was secretly relieved to get out of Mrs. Mounts’s “treat” of a movie. We walked up to Mrs. Mounts, who was asleep herself in a big rocking chair. I could see the reflection of the movie dancing across her big, frog- eyed glasses. The armbands of her short- sleeved knit shirt were squeezing the fat on the tops of her arms so tight that it looked painful. I wondered how she stayed asleep for the squeezing, but for some reason I was afraid to reach out and wake her up. Meg was not. “Good Lord!” Mrs. Mounts jumped, forgetting that she had said Good Lord. “I am afraid you caught me resting my eyes.” “Meg has a tummyache. Can I take her, ma’am?” I said as charmingly as possible. Mrs. Mounts just nodded and turned back to the movie, as if she was worried she might have missed something important.

We tiptoed out the door in our sock feet and then broke into a run as soon as we were in the mile- long hallway, and not just because Meg had to go. Something about a church hallway when no one was there to watch, shush, or boss us made it the free-est- feeling place in the world. Meg ran into the stall and left the door standing open, and I flopped down on that couch that was in the church ladies’ bathroom— as it is in all Baptist church ladies’ bathrooms— for Jesus- only- knows why. (I later concluded that the reason was obvious— Baptist churches don’t have confessionals, and the gossip has to be relayed somewhere.) Meg was moaning and making some awful noises, so I got down and dug in the big cardboard box full of castaway clothes that sat in the corner of the restroom. The GA Castaway Clothes Box was put there by Mrs. Mounts, and she said we were to fill it with old clothes for kids who “cannot afford them.” When the box was full, she was going to ship it away to the missionaries’ kids in Africa. I thought I might find something to wrap around my head and make Meg laugh. Instead, holy of holies, I found myself a miracle.

There, on top of the box, sat a pair of acid- washed Guess blue jeans, just like my cousin Suzanne in junior high had, and just like the pair I had begged Momma for in the middle of Value City the week before. She had said we could not afford them.

I felt the adrenaline— or was it pure, unadulterated Holy Spirit?—course through my body as I lifted the jeans from the box. Like a voice from above, Momma’s very words echoed through my head as I read the words Mrs. Mounts had printed on the side of the box— clothes, for children of missionaries of the word, who CANNOT AFFORD THEM.

Now, if anyone appreciated the sacrifice of the Baptist foreign missionaries, it was me. But the only missionary’s kid I’d ever met at the time was Micah Nichols, the fat- brat son of my daddy’s friend from seminary. I had to sit by Micah when my parents had the Nicholses over for supper one night, while Micah just bragged on and on about how the Southern Baptists paid for his family’s huge house down in Africa, and how they had a maid and could spend their money on whatever they wanted. He also said he didn’t have to go to school because his momma taught him at home, and the two of them just played all day with his millions of toys that were taken as “castaways” from sucker GAs like me. When I heard Meg groan again from the stall, right like a voice from the beyond, it reminded me of how Micah had laughed at her for saying the blessing with her eyes open, when she was just a toddler. Right then, I decided I could not let any of the spoiled missionary girls who Micah played with in Africa get their grubby little hands on a pair of brand- new acidwashed Guess jeans. God did not want the bratty little children to be blessed at all, and He was telling me, personally. If there was any doubt in my heart as to what I should do, it was erased when, through the large crack in the bathroom door that led out into the hallway, I spotted the glowing edge of the church trophy case, full of all the marvelous instruments of ministry. Mrs. Mounts herself had told me that when God called you to be a missionary to the downtrodden, one of the ways you knew it was Him was that He gave you special tools to minister. Now, fancy clothes may not seem like a very religious tool, but any child who grew up in east-central Kentucky and ever flipped on Channel Three would tell you differently. At age eight, I was convinced that the TV minister lady on Channel Three was the most famous and best lady missionary in the world. And as far as I was concerned, anyone could see it was all because of her beautiful clothes. Every Sunday night, I tuned in anxiously to see children line up all around her to feel of her furs and play with her fancy beads while she ministered the Word. My mother always said she was nothing but tacky trash and made me turn the channel, but sometimes I would sneak and watch because I was fascinated with the TV lady. I thought her huge, white poofy hair made her head look surrounded in light, like the picture of the angel on the King’s Way Baptist nursery wall. I could not imagine a more wonderful life than to look so glamorous, and to be a TV- star servant to the Lord at the same time. I told this to Mrs. Mounts once and she said, “Now, Emy, remember that Lottie Moon was a wonderful missionary as well, and she got by with next to no clothing or food.” (I wanted to tell Mrs. Mounts that Lottie Moon was no kind of missionary anymore because, as we learned in GAs, she was dead of starvation in China. But I bit my tongue.) I had never been so sure of anything in my life as I was that those jeans could give me the wonder- working power. I could just see my ministry— little poor, pitiful girls in my class at school like Pepsi Moffett would be drawn in by that triangle label on my back pocket.

“Where did you get Guess jeans?” Pepsi would say. “They were a blessing from the Lord,” I would say. “You, child, will be blessed, too, if you will come to church on Sunday.”

I lifted those beautiful, almost- white blue jeans from the box. For just a second, I felt a little twinge like I might be doing something wrong, but I decided it must be the Devil trying to talk me down from goodness. After all, I reasoned, if the TV lady was dressing fancy against the will of God, some- thing really awful would have happened to her and her clothes by then. Then (as if I needed the Lord’s additional confirmation) another amazing thing happened. I saw a ball