The day(s) before love comes to town

Among the many great friends I met during the little more than two years I lived in North Carolina were Bill and Ted.* Both were (and I assume still are, we've only been a few months since we moved   back to Georgia) active not only in the church, but in the community as well. From civic organizations and charity work to adopting two incredible little boys from foster care, fostering another little boy the same age as my son to doing untold hours of work on the children's room at the church we attended. Basically they took my "40 Good Deeds for Lent" and do that every day.

*Not their real names. I didn't ask if I could write publicly about them, hence the name changes. 

That's not to say they are perfect. Ted, after all, is an Appalachian State grad.

They also happen to be gay and were married in New York last fall. And the state I previously called home just passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between one man and one woman. Presumably, this is to protect the biblical sanctity of marriage. 

If you want to believe in that, by all means, I have no issue with that. But I have an issue when you take your religious beliefs and codify them into law for people who may not believe the same as you do.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that all my North Carolina friends who publicly stated their position on the amendment were in favor of equality. 

We're One, But We're Not The Same

Normally this is a place for me to write (hopefully) humorously about whatever tickles my fancy. This is not one of those times. It won’t hurt my feelings if you choose to skip it. However, you’ve already clicked, on here, so you might as well stick around.

 Every four years, delegates from the United Methodist Church gather for their quadrennial convention to reexamine the church’s Book of Discipline which contains the laws and doctrines of the worldwide denomination totaling roughly 9.5 million people. Proposals are submitted, debated and voted on, because if a popular vote is good enough for American Idol to pick its winner by, it’s certainly good enough for a church seeking to interpret the word of God.

This year, a couple of votes were particularly disheartening to me. First was the statement “We stand united in declaring our faith that God’s grace is available to all –– that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus” which sought to be added to the preamble Social Principles section of the aforementioned Book of Discipline. This is essentially restating Romans 8:38-39 in which Paul writes ““For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This didn’t seem all that controversial to me. While I subscribe to the belief that the Bible, Paul’s letters included, need to be interpreted through the prism of the time, culture and intended recipients of the writings, nothing in this statement seems to be specific to a certain culture that would prevent it from being a larger truth applied to humanity. And yet the motion only carried by a 532 to 414 vote. Assuming the General Conference delegates are a representative sample of the larger church as a whole (something I haven’t tried to verify), when I’m in church on Sunday and look at the five people to my right and five to my left, there’s a good chance four of them will believe there is something that can separate those in the service from God’s love.

I have no problem if that’s someone’s belief. I’ll freely admit I don’t have all or even most of the answers. There are times I’m not even sure I have any answers. But I find it strange that someone who professes to be a Christian and a United Methodist would be opposed to including one of the prevailing belief’s of the founder of the Methodist movement into the Book of Discipline. I find it even more disturbing that 40 percent of the church believes this. If I had to guess, I’d say that 40 percent were thinking of one issue when they voted.

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The second issue arising from the General Conference I’m struggling with is the church’s inconsistency when it comes to implementing biblical teaching in regards to homosexuality and divorce. As I mentioned earlier, I believe the bible should be read through the lenses of the time, place and culture it was written. Even more so with the writings of Paul, who believed Jesus would return in his lifetime. When Paul said “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” in Ephesians 1:2, I think he was just giving a greeting to the church. I’m not sure he expected it to be studied 2,000 years later. Sometimes a greeting is just a greeting.

The Rev. Adam Hamilton co-sponsored an amendment to the Book of Discipline that essentially says “hey, the United Methodist Church is struggling with this issue. Some feel strongly homosexuality is a sin while others see the biblical statements about homosexuality in the same way they view statements about polygamy, slavery, ect . We’re going to agree to disagree on this issue in love.” While you can argue the statement goes too far in accepting homosexuals or, in my case, it doesn’t go far enough; it resonated with me as an accurate description of the current state of the view of homosexuality in the United Methodist Church.

Shortly after settling on a church in North Carolina, this issue came to the forefront as a gay couple was accepted as members of the church. People left the church, stopped donating money and did all they could to force the pastor out. Even if you accept that homosexuality is a sin, to leave a church because sinners were accepted as members seems like you’re missing the point of what a church is for.

So the United Methodist Church’s stance on homosexuality is that it’s a sin and incompatible with Christian teaching. Jesus was silent on the issue, but for the sake of moving forward, we’ll go with that, acknowledging that some may disagree with the church’s stance. Jesus, however, was not silent on divorce. In fact, he was pretty clear on it. From Matthew 19:3-9

 3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

I’m not a biblical scholar and despite being an ordained minister (thank you internet), I don’t have a background in theology. But that seems like a pretty clear teaching of Jesus. So let’s go look at what the United Methodist Church says on divorce.

God's plan is for lifelong, faithful marriage. The church must be on the forefront of premarital and postmarital counseling in order to create and preserve strong marriages. However, when a married couple is estranged beyond reconciliation, even after thoughtful consideration and counsel, divorce is a regrettable alternative in the midst of brokenness. We grieve over the devastating emotional, spiritual, and economic consequences of divorce for all involved and are concerned about high divorce rates.

It’s possible to view the scripture’s messages on homosexuality as timeless law while Jesus’ teaching as simply a teaching  for those in that time, culture and custom, much like the church views Jesus’ teaching on slavery today. It doesn’t make much sense to me to view these two issues in that light, but apparently to the United Methodist Church, it does.  

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As I mentioned earlier, I’m far from a biblical scholar or theologian. However, I do think I have a decent grasp on what the whole Christianity thing is supposed to be about. I’m pretty sure we’re just supposed to be excellent to each other and love God. Instead, the church I grew up in is voting on if we can be separated from the love of an all-loving God or how certain acts don’t line up with our incomplete understanding of who God is. As U2’s Bono wrote, “We're one, but we're not the same. We get to carry each other.” If the church is willing to do that, it’ll be fine. If not, the church is in trouble.

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

This may be a bit deeper and heavier and longer than I like to write on here, but on the plus side, it’s free, so you’re only out the bit of time you’d have spent goofing off somewhere else.

I may have missed the point. I may be totally off base. I really have no idea. I’ve got a vague notion of what I was trying to accomplish and what impact I wanted it to have, but for the life of me, two weeks after Easter and the 40 (well, 47) day period before it known as Lent have passed and I still don’t know if totally botched it, hit the nail on the head, or somewhere in between. But before we can get to that, let’s go back to the beginning.

I’m not very good with Lent. I get the basic premise is to spend the 40 days before Easter giving up something you like/love/enjoy and that, in doing so, it’s supposed to remind you of God’s sacrifice or Jesus being tempted in the desert or maybe the Jews wondering the desert for 40 years because Moses wanted to take the scenic route. I’m not really sure. I know it’s not in the bible but we do it because everyone else does it. But that never really helped me. I gave up caffeine one time and for a while, it was tough, but then I got used to it. I didn’t feel any spiritually more in tune with what Easter was all about. The hardest part was going to a Braves’ game against the Cubs on the Saturday night before Easter and not having a Coke at the game. (We did stop just after midnight on our way home and I got a Mountain Dew or Cherry Coke or something caffeinated.)

So this year, I decided to take the Monty Python approach and try something completely different. The idea came from a tweet from a Jewish sportswriter and journalism teacher named Jeff Pearlman.* Pearlman wrote that he and his kids were doing a good deed a week for a year after he got the idea from a man doing good deeds in honor of his dying father. I simply adopted the idea for Lent and decided that I, along with my three-year old son, would do something to make someone else’s day better.  

*Sports fans, Braves’ fans in particular, may remember him as the author of the article in which John Rocker reaffirmed every stereotype of the dumb jock.

Where I run into questions regarding doing it correctly or not is here. I only had two ground rules for our good deeds. First, they needed to be something that could be an immediate impact. Not so much for me, but the idea of delayed gratification isn’t exactly a strong suit of most three-year olds. Paying for the order of the car behind you at the drive-thru is certainly something that would improve someone’s day, but that impact is lost on small children. The second ground rule is that we didn’t do anything quote spiritual unquote**. In fact, other than a few times when I mentioned what we were doing was for Lent, we pretty much left all aspects of Christianity out of it. 

**One day we were out to lunch with my wife before we’d done anything nice yet and she suggested we have our son go up to the woman at the next table and tell her Jesus loves her. I talked her out of this because not knowing her beliefs, sending a small child to tell her that could seem manipulative or really not something that would make her day better. That and the fact no one wants to be disturbed during lunch.

We did things such as donating clothes to Goodwill (Day 1), or giving a woman a flower outside of the grocery store (Day 3). We colored a picture of a firefighter and brought it to one of the stations to tell them thank you for what they do (Day 6) and we donated one of his favorite stuffed animals to the Police Department to use when they interact with children (Day 13). We had an elderly couple stop while we were picking up trash at our neighborhood entrance to tell us thank you (Day 14). We colored pictures for an anonymous patient in Hospice care (Day 17).

We stopped to tell the guy cleaning the windows outside the store to “have a nice day” (Day 24) and we told the groundskeepers at the park thank you for keeping the park clean for us to play (Day 28). We (well, he) helped me “take care of a little baby” (Day 30) and colored a picture and helped me write a letter to a friend from North Carolina who is serving abroad (Day 37). Somewhere in there we went to Georgia Southern to give students a high five because, hey, who doesn’t like a high five? We even went beyond 40 days because, as I re-learned, Lent is 40 days if you don’t count Sundays, but I couldn’t figure out how to explain to a 3-year old that we didn’t have to do something good today just because it was Sunday.

So now that it’s over and I’ve had a chance to reflect on it, what did I learn? Well, I learned it’s hard to come up with 47 unique ideas of how to make someone’s day when you’re also trying to have ideas that a young child can also grasp and see the immediate impacts.

More interestingly, to me anyway, is the question of doing good works without an accompanying message of faith and its true impact. Faith, without works, are dead. But are works, with the absence of overt faith, equally dead? Is making someone’s day a little better enough? Did an absence of an evangelistic message defeat the greater purpose? Did the lack of any actual greater purpose minimize the spiritual impact? Do any of those questions really matter?

While people like the Rich Young Ruler came to Jesus asking about how to receive eternal life, many others came to him*** asking for physical needs to be met, be it curing a blind man or healing a leper or something as trivial as running out of wine at a wedding. And while there was clearly an aspect of faith in coming to Jesus for help, there were also the physical needs that seemed to be the most pressing concern.  I imagine that the paralytic lowered through the roof to Jesus was probably devastated when Jesus saw him and then said “Son, your sins are forgiven.” My guess is that’s not what he was wanting at that moment.

***Jesus supports proper grammar and, therefore, the proper capitalization of pronouns.

Ultimately, I can't get too worried about the eternal ramifications of our little adventure. It’s a fun thought experiment, but one that in the end can’t be determined in this life. Our motives were to spread a little joy and make someone’s day a little better in our own little way. Some days went better than others, but overall, I think we achieved what we were going for. And if my son one day realizes that being a Christian means more than seeing a need and responding “I’ll pray for you,” then even better. For now, I’ll be happy knowing at least 47 people had one day made a little better by our efforts.

Ice Cube, Mecca and Barbecue (alternatively, My Observations from The Masters)

Sunday at Augusta. If you’re a golf fan, those words are magical (though I wonder how much of that feeling of wonderment comes from CBS’ constant chugging of The Masters Kool-Aid and abandonment of any journalist integrity regarding the event.) Nevertheless, I got to spend Easter Sunday at the Mecca of golf. I tried to work in a Passover reference, but couldn’t make it work.

Forget the flowers, look at us.

This was not my first time going to the Masters, but it was my first time going for the final round. We got there just as the gates opened at 8 a.m. to put our chairs at the 18^th green where we hoped to see the newest Masters champion claim his title*. The good news is we did get our chairs there. The bad news is by sitting there we pretty much just got to see the back of a lot of people’s heads who, in turn, also saw the back of other people’s heads. Well, that and owing to a playoff, the title was actually claimed on the 10^th green. If only I’d had the foresight to not only put my chair at the 10^th green, but then leave it there fully expecting a second playoff hole. Had that been the case, I’d have been golden.

*You can set your chair in a spot and leave and it’ll still be there, undisturbed, when you get back.

Listening to people around me throughout the day as we walked around, Sunday was actually a kind of boring day for a final round. Sure, there was Louis Oosthuizen’s double eagle on the second hole (which I missed) as well as Bo Van Pelt’s hole in one on the 16^th (which I also missed, though only because the wife wanted to stop by the bathroom on our way to watch that hole.)

Proof that I was at least at The Masters
(Or really good at Photoshop)

I did, however, get to see Adam Scott’s hole in one, so if you had “know someone who saw a hole in one at The Masters” on your bucket list, you can now check that off.  Some unsolicited advice for those people: you should probably add yourself to some of your bucket list items rather than living vicariously through other people. That was really cool to see. My wife, however, was off following Phil Mickelson around the course, so she missed it. So really, I have no witnesses I could call to verify that I actually saw it. You’re going to have to take my word for it.  

As you would expect, we walked around the course, marveling at how pristine the grass was and bemoaning the fact the azaleas had already bloomed. We talked to a woman from Oregon who paid $900 for one day for her ticket (we paid $125 for two tickets). I cursed the concession stand for running out of barbecue sandwiches late in the afternoon. I may or may not have walked outside the designated walkway for a step or two to say I walked on the Masters playing surface.  We ran in to some fellow Georgia Southern graduates who were taking commemorative photos in front of the clubhouse (they and press members were the only ones allowed with cameras.)  

As for the drama playing out on the course, for the last two hours of the tournament, we sat at the 18^th green and watched the top of the flag blow in the wind. That’s basically all we could see of the green from our seats. So instead, we cheered every time they changed the giant scoreboard updating us as to not only what happened at 18, but also throughout the rest of the course. We only found out that Bubba Watson had won when the scoreboard was updated, which was probably a good three or four minutes after everyone watching at home knew.

As Ice Cube said, "Today I didn't even have to use my A.K.. I got to say it was a good day. 

The Power of Cookies

The little guy and I went for a cookie today. In and of itself, this isn't anything special. I'm sure Subway sells thousands of cookies daily and I'm willing to bet a fair number of them are sold to a dad and his son. 

I got one too.

But today was special because I wanted it to be special. After spending a little more than an hour at the playground (mostly in the field next to the playground playing soccer), I asked the little guy if he wanted a treat, which I didn't tell him what it was. Like any kid, he was excited and intrigued. 


I can't say I'd have done it were it not for a tweet from someone who is quickly becoming one of my favorites, Jeff Pearlman. (you may remember him as the guy whose idea I modified for our "Good Deed a Day for Lent" efforts. Anyway, he tweeted the other day "Friend of a friend had a funeral today. 38. volunteer firefighter. headaches 10 days ago - brain cancer. Hug your kids, skip work, live!" Granted, being unemployed, it's easy to skip work, even if, as the saying goes, the problem with being unemployed is as soon as you wake up, you're on the job.


 I've read far too many "live for today. God hasn't promised you tomorrow," sayings. I can't say why this particular one struck me, other than the personal nature of it. Something's different when there's an actual person tied to the circumstances. So hug your kids. Tell your significant other you love them. Skip work and spend all day on your roof playing the tuba or whatever bucket list item you've been putting off.  And if that item is "send money to that unemployed guy who rarely blogs," you should really get on that.