Posts Tagged ‘God’

I woke up this morning with a word. Well, actually, a complete sentence and an unsettled feeling. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading about rams, canals,goats and horns, that I woke up with my heart racing, my blood pumping and a word: Amazon is the Anti-Christ.

Crazy, huh?

Now for you scientific folks who look to Stephen Hawking for the definitive word on God, you might want to hang tight. I’m not a linear thinker. I’m the sort that has to go around my elbow to get to my mouth but, eventually, I get there.

Like a lot of you, I’ve been thinking a lot about this notion that somehow or another after all that bloodshed, we’ve brought freedom to Iraq. Media has such a nifty way of tying everything up and bundling it off. We say things like “War Over” or “Troops Come Home” and the bulk of Americans go hop-skipping along, off to do their part for freedom’s sake — shopping.

Remember way back when, back when Destre, Carson and Grant’s daddy was an Army Ranger and not a tombstone in Arlington, when we were told the best thing we could do on behalf of our country was to get back to our normal routine of shopping?

We walked away, confused, with a shake of our heads and muttering “numbskull” and “dip-sh*t” and for about six weeks we collectively grieved.

But then oh-what’s his face came out with that patriotic Red, White and Blue song of his about putting a “boot up you arse” and everybody started making trash heaps out of all their Dixie Chick CDs, stomping on them with boots and running over them with John Deere tractors.

Nobody ever hears from the Dixie Chicks anymore. We taught those girls not to mess with the good ole U.S. of A, didn’t we? 

We like the mythology of war  — this notion that America represents the collective conscience of the world and that anytime we do something in the name of Democracy it’s for your own good, even when that something means blood runs in your streets and shopping for a loaf of bread is a matter of life and death.

We really hate thinking about the reality of war. Nothing is more unsettling to us than to be out in public, say like at the shopping mall over Labor Day weekend and seeing a young man with a titantium rod for a leg. If it weren’t for that distant look in his eyes, you might think he’d injured it in a car wreck. But that looking-off-over-yonder gaze, well, everybody knows what that means — Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  P.T.S.D.

There’s a bunch of Americans who don’t believe in P.T.S.D.  They think it’s just one more way to bilk the American taxpayer because, yeah, that’s the first thing on the mind of a boy or girl who has just seen their buddies blown to Kingdom Come– How can I spend the rest of my life living on the public dole?

Exhale.

I have to do that a lot, otherwise, my heart starts racing again like it was when I woke with a start this morning thinking that Amazon is the Anti-Christ.

I did a brief little poll yesterday. I asked people if they read or cared about the book reviews on Amazon. Collectively everybody said that yeah, they read them and yeah, they mattered. One fellow even said when he didn’t pay attention to the reviews and bought the book anyway, he was usually sorry he had.

Now I know when I asked that question folks were probably thinking that the reason I asked it is because I care about who is reading my reviews over at Amazon and if the reviews are hurting or helping the sales of my books.

But I wasn’t thinking that at all.

I was thinking about freedom and what it means when we as a nation go put our boot up the arse of another nation in order that they, too, can have a democracy like us, so that everyone in their country can be reading Jonathan Franzen’s latest epic. Because it seems to me, in my convoluted way of thinking about these matters, that freedom has nothing to do with the individual or his or her pursuit of happiness. It’s all about product placement.   

It’s all about Wall Street.

We tell ourseleves that we are a free nation but then we folo our peeps to see what the next hot item is so that we can all collectively run out enmasse to buy it. We wouldn’t want to be left out. That would be weird. To not own one of what everybody else owns.

Because shopping is the one true thing that binds us together. Not God. But Amazon.

Men and women have fought and died on battlefields all over the world so that you and I can can have freedom. (It occurs to me that the people who actually practice freedom are those who volunteer to protect it, given that only one-half of one percent of the nation’s population serves in the military. The cost of bearing the burden of democracy – government by majority rule – falls on the shoulders of a minority.)

These few suffer and die for the collective good of us all, for freedom’s sake.

Freedom to read what everyone tells us to read. Freedom to listen to the same damn Lady Gaga song that everyone else in the nation is listening to. Freedom to wear the same Nikes and North Face that everyone else is wearing. Freedom to live in the gated community where everybody else we want to emulate lives. Freedom to attend the same church that all the other people just like us attends. Freedom to watch Eat, Pray and Love, because, Lord knows, watching somebody else do it is so much easier than praciticing it ourselves.

I was just thinking that freedom ain’t what it used to be, back before Wall Street figured out that technology is a great way to manipulate the masses without us even being aware of it.

See?

Amazon really is the Anti-Christ.

God does not love America.

If that offends you, you have a problem.

God does not love Israel.

Israel as a nation is a construct of the Truman Administration and some legal wrangling within the United Nations.

I know we have been taught — truly indoctrinated — to think otherwise. I get it. It’s a hard truth to realize that as a nation God is no more devoted to us than he is to Afghanistan or Iraq, Iran or North Korea.  It’s like learning that your mama loves your brother as much as she loves you. It’s disappointing to not be the favorite.

But when it comes to nation-building, God does not play favorites.

I understand how we got to this place — the place where we believe that we are God’s BFF.

We packed up our wooden trunks, left Granny and the chickens behind, because it was obvious to us, if not to our neighbors, that Europe was morally and religiously corrupt. We were going to be a better people than they were. We were going to go all out for God. We were going to worship him in a way that was denied us in Europe. We were going to create the pure society. We’d teach the world what being sold out to God really looked like. Oh. Yeah, we’d teach the world to sing, too.

So across the seas we came, puking and dying along the way. That’s how we roll. Us Americans. We’ll die for anything. It’s the living for something we struggle with.

We came with the intent of establishing the first true faith-based community of like-minded believers. No matter that in our pursuit of being God’s BFF, we had to slaughter folks and steal territory. For you, God, anything.

But, shocking as it may seem now, establishing a pure society is hard to do when you’re working with people. Especially people who aren’t all that like-minded. It was an awful choice to make but in our blinded pursuit of being God’s BFF, we were willing to hang our own, unless they conformed.

That’s the toll exacted of a nation-building people. We have to be willing to turn on our own if we ever want to prove our worthiness as God’s BFF.

But the thing we keep missing, over and over and over again, is that God never asked us to prove our worthiness to him.

He sent Jesus for that purpose.

God is not into nation-building.

God does not love America.

In fact, scriptures are replete with story after story of man being asked repeatedly to pledge allegiance to someone other than God and those who were considered God’s BFF were the ones who resolutely refused to.

God is a jealous God. We know that.

If our allegiance to a personality or to the message of another flawed human being is such that we take offense at any criticism of that personality or that message , then, Huston, we got a problem.

God said: You shall not have any gods before me. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

God does not love America.

He loves the people of America. The people of Iraq, Iran, North Korea, South Korea, China, all of Europe and South America. Every unknown tribe of every unknown nation. God loves them all. “For God so loved the WORLD, that he gave his only begotten son, so that whosoever believes in him will not perish but will have everlasting life.”

It’s not about us.  

We are not God’s BFF, folks.

God does not love America.

I’ve been a church-goer long enough to know that nothing gets people riled up quicker than talk about styles of worship. I once attended a church where, I kid you not, we sang Victory in Jesus every Sunday. Every Sunday. We sang it so much the kids and I made up hand motions just to give it a bit of diversity.

I can’t say for 100 percent sure but I think the first song I ever learned was Jesus Loves Me. The next one was Goodnight Irene. I remember that because it was the first 45 I owned. I’d listen to it over and over again on the plastic record player Mama and Daddy bought me. I still know the lyrics to that song.

God gave me a strong voice.  It is this one here, behind the keyboard. I can sing but not so anyone would want to hear me. I do better in a choir, preferably one loud enough that it drowns out my voice.

Still, on any given Sunday, you can find me making a joyful noise unto the Lord. I enjoy praise and worship – humble as it may be in a Nazarene church. I like all sorts of styles of worship. I like formal choirs and fancy organ music. I like banjos and mandolins and guitar pickers, too.

I love me a little Matt Redmond or Andrew Peterson from time to time. I can worship to Kate Campbell, Gillian Welch or Jennifer Knapp. I’ve wept over Elvis Costello songs and drank coffee with him the next morning. Okay. Well he was sitting at the table next to mine. We weren’t actually talking. We were just drinking coffee. Him at his table. Me at mine. I have interviewed Michael W. Smith and I’ve been onstage with the Newsboys. My taste in music is so messed up, I can worship to a Grayson Capps tune or The Wiyos as easily as I can to Third Day or Casting Crowns.

But, despite all that, I have come to the point in life where I can no longer abide tunes that propogate a military mentality. Go ahead. Call me ugly names. If this makes me a Pacifist, well, buddy, let me quote you William Stafford — Every war has two losers.

Our worship team has recently introduced the congregation to a new song, which it turns out isn’t really that new, but did I mention I attend a Nazarene church? I like the tune of the song. I like the drum beat. I just cannot abide those lyrics:

My voice is the sound of a thousand bells
Hear me nations, hear Israel
My song is the water of the purest well
Hear me heaven, fear me hell
My dance carries thunder from the throne of Yah
Look at me, and know He is GOD!

Let our praises rise like a weapon in Your hand
Let our praises rise O God
Let our praises rise like a weapon in Your hand
Let our praises rise O God

I don’t want my praise to be a weapon in God’s hand. I, personally, don’t care much for the image of G.I. God. That’s not to say that I don’t understand the power of praise — I do.

Madeline L’Engle tells a story in Irrational Season of the boy who, while praying, says to God, “And God bless yourself.”  Her point being that while all praise begins with God, it is only made complete when we offer up praise to God. Or as the old hymn says, “Oh, how I love Jesus because he first loved me.”

When my children were small I taught them the tune that everyone learns in VBS — I’m in the Lord’s Army. But that was some 10 years post-Vietnam and long before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve heard one too many sorrowful tale from a grieving war widow or held the hand of too many dying veterans. Maybe I’m just tired of all this talk about the glories of war, and how successful we’ve been. Perhaps, I’m just jaded, but I honestly do not see how when you add up the number of lives & limbs & livelihoods lost, you could consider war a success.

Ever.

But then, maybe I’m just a cranky Jesus Freak. I don’t own a Rosary, much less a set of love beads,  but I think it’s high time the church shed itself of its nationalistic and militaristic rhetoric. If that means singing Jesus Loves Me every Sunday, I think we could come up with some hand motions that don’t involve the use of weapons, don’t you?

Dear Ms. Anne:

You don’t know me, so please excuse the intrusion. I hope you won’t think this too forward but I read about your recent remarks about quitting Christianity:

Forget the week. It’s been one of those years. I am not going into all that but suffice it to say it’s just been one of those years.

Take Monday morning for example.

I was up at 5 a.m. for a pre-scheduled interview with the 700 Club Interactive. I needed to be dressed and ready to Skype in by 7:45.  Only we’d had a thunderstorm the night before. We rarely get thunderstorms here. Not at all like my childhood in Georgia, where I’d stand screaming at the window until Mama hollered at me to get away from the window.

So of course, the internet at the house was out.

Completely not working.

Add to that equation the fact that the dog bit off the end of my nose 10 days ago, making me look like Shriek instead of Cindy Crawford.

And the fact that the Hacker from Hell pursued me until my friend Hugh, (I love this man), was forced to completely move my site to a new server, leaving me without a workable site for 24 hours.

So there I was at 7 a.m. running around trying to find someplace I could Skype in.

I called a friend. She didn’t answer.

I thought of Starbucks but figured, no, too noisy at that time in the a.m.

I drove up the Oxford Suites. One of  the gals the desk told me that their service was for paying customers only. The other one was more merciful. She suggested I find a corner table in the sunroom off the kitchen and Skype in from there.

And so I did.

With the TV blaring and a couple drinking coffee at the other end of the room as Gordon and Terri prayed out loud. In Mississippi seeing people pray in a public place isn’t unusual. In Oregon they will throw your butt in jail for praying in a public square.

Now the good folks at the 700 Club had done their homework, which is more than I can say for about 80 percent of the other news anchors who interview me. They had actually read the book.

And kudos for them for having me on.

I know some of you were, well, shocked.

Whatever the typical 700 Club guest is, you didn’t figure me to be that.

But, lo and behold, we all have stereotypes that need to be challenged,  I reckon.

I am glad Gordon asked the tough questions.

That’s exactly the point behind the sorts of books I write.

If all we ever do is listen to or read people we agree with, we imprison ourselves. We shut ourselves off from each other, comfortably isolated in our own mental cells, surrounded by people who all wear the same bright orange. Or blue. Or red.

You can watch the interview by clicking here.

I’ve heard they condensed it. I don’t know. I can’t bear to watch myself with my Shriek nose.

But please feel free to come back and discuss the interview here and to share the link on your own blog or with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.

Thanks y’all.