Words Less Spoken

It was inevitable sitting in the barber’s chair yesterday with CNN on the TV that the subject of politics would come up. I’m passionate about politics and love a good discussion, but I don’t even try with some people. My barber’s a nice guy I’ve known for years, but he’s a local pastor too, so I don’t go there with him if I can help it.

It was easy to find common ground on our hope that Hillary is soundly defeated. The Clinton’s have been the favored whipping post of the right for years. I, however, wouldn’t have a problem voting for Bill over John McCain any day. I liked Bill. We all made money when he was in the White House. The Republicans passed more of the conservative agenda under his watch than they have under W. I have some ingrained reticence about Hillary in the White House. My wife doesn’t want any woman as President, but I would vote for any other qualified woman with no reservations. So it was easy to talk about our problems with Hillary.

To my surprise my barber said that he thought the Democrats should keep their eye on Obama because he was “one to watch,” as opposed to voting for Hillary. I thought, “Wow, maybe he’s developing an open mind. Maybe Obama’s connecting with more people than I realize.” Then he said that no matter how he felt about McCain at the end of the day he had to vote pro-life and could never vote for anybody that wants to support gays and lesbians. That pissed me off.

I told him that my oldest would be 18 in twelve more years. If McCain had one or even two terms in office, it was very likely that we’d still be embroiled in a war in Iraq and Iran by that time, and I don’t want my boys going over to get killed in a war that is pointless. His reply was, “Now, now, brother. You know the Word says not to worry about tomorrow and things that our out of your control.” What the hell?!  “I can do something about it. I can vote!” I snapped back. That ended of our discussion of politics.

This whole conversation underlies an observation of mine regarding the pro-life Christian right. They are not pro-life. They are anti-abortion, and there is a big difference. Don’t the lives of our servicemen and women count for something? Don’t the lives of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan count for something? What happened to being pro-life? The logic is baffling. You’ll vote for candidates who oppose abortion but support the death penalty and protracted senseless war?  I just don’t get it. Furthermore, what about the lives of gays and lesbians? Should we discard them from society because we don’t understand or approve of their behavior?

I think abortion is horrible. I would hope that the number of abortions would be reduced dramatically, but I believe that it should be safe and legal. Being anti-abortion is not pro-life. What about the life of a young girl whose future is about to be forfeited? the life of a girl who is raped by her father? the life of a baby whose mother cannot possibly care for it?

I think it’s past time we move beyond single issue politics or, to borrow from Obama, red vs. blue, left vs. right, and black vs. white politics. I think it’s past time for all of us to be pro-life in every sense of the word and stop allowing politicians and pundits to pigeon hole us into ideological boxes and political camps.

Maybe you were one of those snobby rich kids that had everything they ever wanted growing up, or maybe you were the kid who saved up every dollar and bought your own pair of designer jeans twice a year and took exquisite care of them. I was neither. I had nice things but Levi’s were the extent of my brand loyalties. Aside from the trendy things we all focus on as teenagers, there are a myriad of other mundane everyday things in our adolescent lives that we use because they are available to us. Toothpaste, ketchup, shaving cream, etc.

When you leave home for the first time, whether for college, marriage, or the working world, you are suddenly faced with more choices than you ever thought possible. You take for granted all the common utilitarian things your parents provided for you. Do you remember the first time you went out to buy toothpaste for yourself? What do you get? Do you buy what your mom had always bought for you? Do you stretch your rebellious wings in protest and go for something new? As simple and foolish as it sounds, it is a microcosm of the process we go through into adulthood. How much do we cling to? How far do we run away?

I still remember vividly walking into my first dorm room at La Tech and finding a nicely packaged shoe-sized box on my bed. Inside were Edge shaving cream, Coast soap, Crest toothpaste and several other necessities and loads of marketing flyers and coupons. Thirteen years later I’m still using those same brands. I did not consciously choose to try something different. Had I wandered down to Wal-Mart after running out of whatever I brought from home, I very well may have bought Aquafresh toothpaste because I had used it all my life, but I was given the opportunity to consider an alternative.

My trips down to the food court and cafeteria in the student center were just as life-altering. They had Bullseye BBQ sauce and Log Cabin syrup. I never had that before, and I really liked them. We always used Kraft BBQ sauce and Blackburn syrup at home. I don’t know how many kids ask their parents to try a different BBQ sauce. You just use what you have, what you’re comfortable with. To this day I still buy those brand at the grocery store. It was a conscious minute rebellious stand on my part. “This is different. I am on my own.”

The religions we grow up with are not all that different than the foods and everyday items we are comfortable with from our childhood. We all know (and you may have been) one of teens who ran away from the church of your childhood as fast and hard as you could the moment you were out the door. I wasn’t. I went deeper. I changed schools, switched my major to religion, married my high school sweetheart, and began pastoring churches by my sophomore year in college.

[Can we take an aside for just a moment and address something here? Who the hell lets a 19 year old kid pastor a church? For crying out loud, I don't care how mature or intelligent you are. It borders on child abuse. I know now that I was no where near mentally and emotionally mature enough to be in that situation. There is a lot to be said for the Methodist system that requires training, accountability, and assignment. This Baptist free-for-all independent streak can be detremental to the emotional well being of all concerned. Okay, just had to get that off my chest.]

It was later after several years of pastoral ministry, graduating college, and lots of life experiences that I began to move away from the comfortable religion of my childhood and seriously question the tenets and methods intensively. Once I stopped going to church every Sunday, it became easier to think clearly. While we may enjoy the fellowship and worship, there is an enormous amount of direct and indirect conditioning taking place. Whenever you remove yourself from that environment and begin to think independently, you may come up with different answers than those you were taught in Sunday School.

I don’t know which label is most appropriate to describe my theological quandry. It’s like trying to hit a moving target because I’m in a constant state of evolution. Maybe I’m a very liberal Christian, but there’s more that I disagree with in the church than I agree with, so it seems disingenuous to consider myself a Christian. I personally feel somewhere in the middle of agnosticism and atheism. My simple understanding of those terms is that one says we can’t know whether or not God is and the other says he is not.

I don’t really know whether God exists or not. If there is a God, he cannot possibly be anything like the Judeo-Christian version we’ve all been brought up to believe in. I’m much more inclined to believe in a unifying field or consciousness than a divine deity. Science and theoretical physics have given me answers to who we are, how we came to be, and what we’re doing here more than any sermon I’ve ever heard. It’s not really important to me which label fits me best, but I’ve felt more and more pressure to have a “coming out.”

I have no desire to diminish the faith of others or make a spectacle of myself. I just don’t believe the same way anymore. There are reasons why I turn down invitations to preach, why I don’t read the Bible the same way as others expect me to, why I don’t care about going to church, etc. I think it’s only a matter of time before family members, friends, or peers force the issue. I’d rather avoid the shock waves and the fallout, because I know that people get angry, they get hurt, they feel the need to put your name on the prayer list. I’m not interested. I may be called an atheist, an agnostic, or a liberal, but I’m happiest just being me. In fact I’m happier being me than I have ever been in my entire life, and for the first time in my entire life I chose to be me.

The highest form of human intelligence is to observe yourself without judgement.
~ J. Krishnamurti

This quote resonated strongly with me when I read it recently. I realize that it is a very Buddhist statement that can apply to ‘emptying your mind,’ enlightenment, higher states of consciousness, etc., but it says something more to me. Much of my life has been consumed by judgement from the church, my family, my peers, but mostly myself. I have been my own worst critic without a doubt, and it was only made worse by neurotic guilt over ’sin’ and the desire to be accepted by God. For a time I found a tremendous source of release in embracing the grace of God, discovering that I was already accepted based upon the sacrificial atoning death of Christ on the cross. While that brought more peace than I had known up to that point, all of my failures and shortcomings continued to plague me because although they were forgiven, they remained a disappointment to God and ultimately myself. I could not live up to the ridiculous standard I set for myself, a standard I never expected of anyone else.

 Only in these later years when I took the blasphemous step of concluding that hell and sin are the constructs of a religious system and not reality, did I begin to find the kind of freedom that the church had been selling for years. (see To Sin or Not to Sin, Is It Even Possible?) Ironically, I was listening to a Michael Tolcher song this morning, “Sooner or Later,” which talks about all of the rules we are given as kids. We grow up only to discover that the grown ups didn’t know what they were talking about anymore than we do now.

Somethings you have to learn them all on your own
You can’t rely on anybody else
Or the point of view of a source unknown
If it feels good and sounds nice
Then it’s your choice don’t doubt yourself
Don’t even think twice

I know that the Christians reading this would say it sounds like hedonism, a “if it feels good, do it” mentality, but I’ve come to believe that each of us have an internal compass pointing us in the direction that we were meant to go. No amount of religious browbeating can deter you from who you are. In the end it is more important to be accepted by yourself than by others. Again, many Christians I know would say that my conscience has been “seared by a hot iron,” that I’ve lost spiritual sensitivity to conviction and to God Himself. Honestly, I disagree. I’ve never felt more connected to the divine source than I do right now.

There is something to be said for clearing your mind, living in the present moment, and just being, especially in this crazy rat race we live in, but there is even more to be said for clearing your soul of a lifetime of religious clutter. While it may be impossible to observe yourself with absolutely no judgement, I know that I have much less of it now. While it may be regarded as the “highest form of human intelligence,” I believe it is the highest form of human freedom to live at peace with yourself and with others.

Do you ever stop and think about how politically incorrect our childhood’s were? It was nothing to see your favorite Saturday morning cartoon character smoking a cigarette. How many of our teachers played hangman on the chalkboard to teach spelling to their classes? Hangman, for crying out loud! Have you ever stopped to think about that? I realize that I grew up in the deep south and racism wasn’t always subtle, but it’s astonishing to think that for years children were taught to spell using a game that demonstrates how thousands of people in the South were terrorized and summarily executed for being black. It seemed innocent at the time when we were kids. Never in a million years did I consciously associate the game with death nor racism, but we now live in a time that the mere mention of the word ‘noose’ is enough to have TV pundits fired even without any intent of malice or prejudice.

My wife was playing the game with my six year old the other day, never thinking the first thing about it. She was just doing what we all did as kids, playing a stick-figure game on paper. I pointed out to her what the game was demonstrating, and all of a sudden it didn’t look so innocent anymore. I don’t think it would warp my son’s psyche, because it didn’t mine either, but we live in a time in which we at least need to be considerate of how our words and actions will be perceived by others irregardless of our intent.

As dramatic as this video is, it actually happened to me in a much smaller plane minus the wingtip scraping the runway. A couple years ago, shortly after receiving my private pilot’s license I flew a Cessna Skyhawk 172sp from Central Louisiana into a smaller airport on the west side of Houston. There was a strong gusting crosswind coming out of the west and the only available runway ran north/south. As hard as it is to imagine in Houston, the landscape west of the airfield was barren into the distance, no trees, no buildings, which only made the winds that much stronger.

I was set up for a northbound crosswind landing, coming in banked to the left to compensate. Moments before touchdown a sudden gust blew from the west and pushed the plane sideways across the runway and within seconds I was looking down at the grass just a few feet in the air. Already in a steep bank to the left with no way to get the plane back over the runway, I hit full throttle and instinctively raised the flaps to go around and try again, only I raised ALL the flaps by mistake rather than gradually taking them up. Instantly I was not only being pushed further away from the field over the grass, but I also lost lift from being impulsive and a newbie. I immediately put most of the flaps back in. Luckily, they had not fully retracted before I realized my mistake.

Once I managed to regain lift, I kept a steep crosswind correction as I climbed out for a go around. Making the pattern was even difficult due to the ridiculous winds, but I came around for another try. Remembering my trainer’s repetitive warnings, I remembered to ‘land it like a jet,’ use less flaps and come in faster. This time I lined up a little to the left of center on approach, using only 10 degrees on flaps and 10 knots faster. I also kept a harder crosswind correction coming down. We were being tossed around pretty good, but I made my mind up that no matter what we were landing this time. True to crosswind-landing form, we landed on just the left rear wheel then eased over onto both wheels as we slowed down. Nose wheel down, braking hard, yoke all the way left.. we stopped.

I was shaking, but surprisingly my passengers (my aunt and cousin) seemed to be relatively unphased. Aside from taking up too much flaps too quickly, I think I did it by the book or at least the book my trainer gave me. LOL. It was scary but amazing how so much of your training kicks in right when needed most. Thanks, Ryan.