God Wants Something Much Deeper Than Obedience: Something Many Religious People Will Never Manage

In the years I’ve spent pastoring/mentoring, I’ve grown tired of trying to convince people that God doesn’t hate them because they don’t follow the rules as they should.

It’s an epidemic of sorts.  In our culture, when someone gets religion, it’s as if a spirit comes down from heaven, like a dove softly landing on their shoulder, and whispers until they die:

“More than anything else, get your shit together.”

Some people manage to improve their behavior to a degree, but nobody can do it completely, and many are driven to anxiety by their newfound awareness of personal faults and failures.  Ever wonder why religious people can be so cranky?  And when the greatest fruit of your religion is self-loathing, you’re now open to all manner of activities, agendas, and campaigns that God would never endorse.

At best, the gospel of shit management will never do anything more than turn well-meaning religious people into something nobody else wants to be. Continue reading God Wants Something Much Deeper Than Obedience: Something Many Religious People Will Never Manage

Checked Out Dad Syndrome: How and Why I’m Trying Hard to Avoid It

It’s Sunday, 6:00 AM, post-Hamilton midnight bedtime.  I’m tired.  I haven’t been spending much time with kids.  And they’re showing it.

Lot’s of mouthy, disrespectful, anxious-type behavior.

If I can manage to engage – connect in a way that’s meaningful for them, they’ll settle down, today at least.

I don’t want to.  Hanging out with kids is boring, and when I’m tired, boring is depressing.

But alas, I can at least cognitively assent to the fact that my kids’ mental and emotional health rests on whether or not they’re getting enough time with me.  And if I’m not at least functional in the way I engage them, they’ll unravel.  They get anxious, struggle at school, struggle with self control.

In short, they become “bad” kids.

So we punish them, which works until they become teenagers.  Then they pay us back with interest. Continue reading Checked Out Dad Syndrome: How and Why I’m Trying Hard to Avoid It

An Open Letter to My Black Friends About My Own Racism

At some point in my life, I drank the Kool Aide, and grew up with the belief that “there must be something wrong with black people.”  When I see a black person, or a large group of black people, something in my soul whispers things about them simply because of the color of their skin.

I’ve also bought in to the popular belief that our system is on your side, and that if things aren’t working out for your people, it’s because you just can’t get your act together.

My camp has tried to call it different names – “implicit bias,” “prejudice,” etc.  Best to call it what it is.

Racism.

I’m sure you’ve noticed, and been victim of it on multiple occasions.

I’ve repented before God and now I’m taking my repentance to you. I ask for your forgiveness, and I pledge to continue my journey of personal emancipation from this unholy spirit.

There’s some freedom that’s come out of this – and it’s changing my life.  I realize that you and I are the same – It’s like breathing fresh air.  I’m also free to reconsider typically white narratives about you so that I might have my reality reoriented to something closer to the truth.

I’ve done my homework, and it’s left me angry.  Our system is skewed against you.  It isn’t fair.  Some of you will rise above it, and my people – white evangelicals especially – will cry out with righteous indignation, “see – the problem is with blacks, not with the system.” Continue reading An Open Letter to My Black Friends About My Own Racism