I went solo camping last fall, had a few sips by the fire before I went to bed, and woke up with a nasty headache. I don’t remember drinking that much, but 55-year-olds don’t process alcohol like we used to.

As I drove home feeling like garbage, and angry, I decided to take a year off. I’m now into month #7 of no booze, and from time to time will be blogging about some of the things that have come up in this journey.

One of the most recent is freedom; not freedom from alcohol, but the feeling of freedom, i.e., believing that I’m unencumbered by boundaries, limits, and expectations that make my life seem like a prison.

That’s how I felt when I first married. When the kids came along, the walls grew higher, and closer. For me, the rigors and requirements of good, healthy relationships have always been difficult. There’s nothing wrong with marriage and parenting, just something wrong with the way I go about it.

As I get older, it’s gotten worse, and doesn’t look to be getting any better. If I want any quality of life in my 70’s+, I’ll have to exercise and pay homage to so many other health related boundaries, feeling less free than I ever have.

I didn’t feel any lack of freedom as a child, or a teenager, or a young adult. Even in my years of ministry leadership, a chapter that was full of requirements and heavy, heavy expectations, I felt like the world was open for business; no limits to what I could achieve, experience, learn, gain. Back then, when I looked out at the horizon, it was full of hope.

I rarely drank.

Regardless of how it happened, or the many contributing cosmic perpetrations, this loss of freedom is one of the biggest losses I’ve suffered as an adult. It’s heartbreaking, now in my face since the rum’s gone.

If you’re a moderate-to-heavy drinker, you know how it feels to cozy up to a few fingers of quality bourbon at the end of a hard day. For those of us who are struggling to feel free, nothing hits the spot like this. It’s fast, easy, simple, and a staple of American culture. Few will judge you.

It works.

Illusion Lament

Alcohol doesn’t make you free, it only makes you feel free and, honestly, that’s all I care about these days. It doesn’t matter how many boundaries hover over me, I just want to feel like I’m the one in charge, that I can do whatever I want.

Let’s be honest; nobody’s free. The only reason young folk feel more freedom than us geriatrics is because they’re more suckers for the illusion of freedom than we are. But I’m jealous. They live happy while I drown myself in whatever I can get my hands on because reality is too painful.

Our bodies run the show. They tell us when to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, et-al. They must be fed, clothed, and sheltered while in a constant state of decay, moving closer to the day when they will turn themselves off.

The corporate requirements of society and humanity’s frailty leave us constantly bumping into the fences required to keep us from imploding. If we decide instead to live alone in a desert cave, we’ll only be trading one set of boundaries for another.

We are chained to the laws of physics and nature, living with a vast expanse between our desire to move/explore/witness/experience and our ability to do so.

Etc., etc.

So excuse us when we run to booze, sex, achievement, things we can’t afford, crime, etc. because we’re desperate to feel free. The sheer volume of these pursuits is a testament to humanity’s desire here, something we have in common with all other humans, dead, alive, and yet to be born.

Free Moods

I’ve given up on the one place where I feel the most free. Now I have to go find it somewhere else.

Where? No idea.

But, for now, I have one observation.

When I’m in a good mood, I’m not worried much about freedom. In general, a good mood frees the bearer from worry, want, whatever. Freedom might be an illusion of sorts, but mood isn’t. It’s real. A good one affects everything, just as a bad one does.

So, in this interim space, I’ve decided to focus on all things mood related.

But there are a litany of internal/external mood affecters. Good moods are a complicated proposition. Are you hangry? Out of shape? Spoiled? Burned out? Rested? Mature? Hard working? Lazy? Addicted to things that make a good mood impossible? Mature? Do you have hope? Good friendships? Enough?

For me, the first order of business is the physical care of my mind. If I don’t eat right, exercise, and get enough sell, it doesn’t work as it should, and struggles to find anything to be happy about. For my mind to be in a good mood, it requires – guess what – boundaries, routine, discipline.

I’m in a no-man’s land of sorts, seeking more freedom by giving it up.

Boundaries and routine have always been my nemeses. They didn’t bother me when I was a pilot; if you don’t stick to the rules you don’t get to play. In the life I’m living now, however, the rewards/consequences aren’t as tangible, so it’s much more difficult to submit. In the coming months, I’ll be rethinking all of that.

The second order of business is the emotional care of my mind. Thoughts are like food, it turns out, and my diet is less than healthy. Judging others, refusing to forgive/reconcile, bingeing TV shows that glorify judging others and refusing to forgive/reconcile, and constantly gluing my face to a screen aren’t helping anything.

I didn’t so heartily engage these when I was a kid, arguably one of the most free-wheeling times of my life.

For now, I’m free to pursue and develop close friendships, experience the outdoors, be generous, thankful, peaceful, kind, and, because of my faith, hopeful. I’m free to let my body off its chain to do whatever it wants to, but that results in a kind of un-freedom that’s much more unpleasant than the un-freedom that comes from pursuing good things.

It’s possible that I’ll exercise the freedom to drink at some point after this booze-free year, but if I haven’t found a way to experience freedom – illusion or not – in healthy ways, on a regular basis, I might go another year.

Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

There is no room for miracles in our grown up, contemporary expression of humanity. If something can’t be replicated in a lab or quantified and observed by scientific methods, it’s not real.

It’s OK to consider the vastness of the universe and ruminate on the existence of aliens, but not God.

Nevermind the fact that what we don’t know vastly outstrips what we do know, and that it’ll always be that way, or that we can’t replicate the tiniest of insects. We have an expert grasp of how this world works, thank you very much, just like we had 2,000 years ago when the Romans built the Coliseum, or 2,000 years before that.

We will not tolerate the nonsense of God taking on the form of a human, redefining 1st century Judaism and far beyond, dying for it, then rising from the dead.

In the last 10 years especially, there’s been a push to re-write the Jesus narrative, making him a normal guy, an average 1st century Jewish man who merely had good things to say. He wasn’t the promised savior of Israel and certainly wasn’t God in the flesh.

But there are few things to consider before we decide that this whole resurrection thing never happened.

First, prior to Jesus, there aren’t any stories that come close to a deity taking on human flesh, befriending the losers/rejects/unpowerful, proclaiming unconditional forgiveness, dying at the hands of his own people, then rising from the dead.

Second, nobody saw the body. Nowhere in our collection of ancient documents is there an eyewitness to Jesus’ corpse.

Third, consider the Old Testament texts that allegedly fortell the advent, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus, especially the one about his mom:

Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel ~ Isaiah 7:14

Last, and most importantly, if there’s a God who interacts with us on any level, how can we expect Him to make sense? His grasp of the universe is just a bit higher than ours; by definition, some crazy shit would have to go down. Call it miraculous if you want, but expect some events that don’t jive with our “expert” grasp of reality.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. ~ Hamlet 1:5

I could go for days about all the reasons why I don’t have much of a problem with this aspect of Christian faith, but it’s still something I choose to believe. Nobody can prove it, or remove all the reasons why we shouldn’t believe. You can’t blame anybody for not agree with us Christians on this one.

And with so many of us showing up on social media peddling conspiracy theories, national division, political idolatry, and other versions of religious insanity, who could blame non-Christians for taking a hard pass here. They don’t trust us, go figure, why would they trust something that’s so difficult to believe?

If you’re in that camp, if you have a hard time with this particular aspect of alleged Christian history, I get it. Totally. I have a hard time believing it too. But I’ll ask you this morning to reconsider, momentarily. When we’re done, you can flush all of this if you want to, just hang with me for a quick minute.

The best place to start is to put ourselves in the place of Jesus’ disciples, hunkered down in a secluded room, hiding from the authorities who condemned their leader to death, convinced that they were next.

When Jesus began his ministry, the first thing he did was round up a bunch of losers, rejects, traitors, and prostitutes and elevate them to the front row of whatever it was that God was up to. That’s one of the reasons the religious leaders couldn’t stand him; he was too popular with all of the wrong people.

The losers loved him, most of them believed that he was the promised Messiah, God in the flesh, savior of Israel.

Now, he’s not just dead, but was nearly eviscerated by the Roman “Scourge” and hung up to naked to die. They watched the whole thing. From their perspective, Jesus went quickly from king of the universe to another meaningless Roman murder. They didn’t just lose their friend, they probably felt a little duped.

It’s interesting to note that, while the men huddled together, trying to figure out how to get out of Jerusalem alive, the women decided to take a very public stroll and visit Jesus’ tomb.

They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day riseagain.’ ~ Luke 24:1-7

Imagine what it was like for these devout Jewish people to believe they were a part of God’s narrative, just like the heroes of old, then have that – all of it – stripped away by a pagan political force. Then, the God of Israel walks through a wall, mocking their unbelief (and ours), teaching them a few very important last things before making an even more dramatic/miraculous departure.

If you went through all of that – not just the resurrection part, but meeting Jesus for the first time, watching him heal sick people and square off with deadly politics/culture, walking with him, coming to believe that he actually is God made flesh – how would this final encounter affect you?

I’m tempted to start preaching about all of the ways that the resurrection should impact the way we think about our world, but I don’t want to distract you from encountering what’s most important about Easter. If this happened, it changes everything.

What does it hurt to take 15 minutes and believe? You don’t have to abandon reason, you just have to abandon the idea that humanity has this world all figured out. You don’t have to become a crazy religious person. You don’t have to move to Africa, or quit your job and go do something that sounds more spiritual.

15 minutes. That’s all I’m asking. When you’re done, you can return all of this to the “never happened,” and/or “nice story, but” file. I certainly wouldn’t blame you.

A few years ago, I listened as a friend unpacked what he believed should be our church’s stance towards same-sex marriage. “God’s intent is ‘one man, one woman,’ he explained. I sat in a horrifed/overwhelmed silence, too chicken to say anything as he talked about how Gay folk can stay married but shouldn’t have sex.

No doubt the Bible has some difficult things to say in this arena, so for many, to be evangelical is to be anti-gay marriage. Most churches have gone so far as to publish their stance and the relevant scriptures on a website, or somewhere else that’s easily accessible to new/would-be members.

For some, this is the litmus test for a good church.

The story of how this has become the biggest deal for us is a complicated one. Regardless, it’s part of our identity, our duty to humanity. We are bible-believers, Jesus-followers, and staunch opposers to the growing popularity of Gay marriage.

For evangelicals especially, this is a bit silly because the bible much more clearly condemns another kind of marriage. If we were consistent – if we truly believed that our job is to condemn all the things the bible condemns – we would go to war with this as well, but we don’t. We know these people. Our churches are full of them. They’re our friends.

Some of them are us.

I choose not to pass judgment on whether or not God’s OK with gay marriage. If I do, I have to pass judgment on this other kind of marriage as well. I don’t want to do that, neither do my evangelical comrades, thank God.

The Bible and Remarriage

Long ago, because of the teachings of Jesus and Paul in the New Testament, it was a sin to divorce. We were jerks about this to be sure, and learned – much later unfortunately – to embrace the love and compassion of God and apply it to people who want to try again. Today, in most cases, it’s OK to remarry and I’m in full agreement. Continue reading Some Christians Believe: No Gay Marriage