What is real?

May 27, 2012

Well, here we are again. My “one time only” speaking engagement is now a trilogy.

The first couple of messages I gave were very enjoyable. I considered them unique, and a little scary. I certainly didn’t expect to be back for a third time but now instead of being scared I am filled with an overwhelming joy to share my walk in faith with you.

It is even more joyful that it is Pentecost. I have to admit that when I found out it was Pentecost I had to look it up to see what it means. It is a celebration of the Holy Spirit (the comforter, the advocate) that Jesus promised us being sent down to the world.

When Bradley announced to the congregation that I would be speaking and sharing my journey as I try to understand all I can about my life, it inspired me to write this message of my discoveries and disappointments.

The title of the message, “What is real?” is perhaps a little misleading. When my wife asked what I would talk about I told her the title and she immediately began shaking her head. She was afraid that I was going to come up here and tell people what to believe. She said that I needed to continue sharing my own story and stay away from giving spiritual advice.

At the time I came up with the title I didn’t have a clear focus except that I wanted to talk about how to figure out if a thing, an idea or a truth is real. In retrospect, I am glad I chose the title because it took on a life of its own and has become a vehicle for me to share the ways I try to figure out what IS real in my own life.

Just like my other two messages this one began innocently enough. Just like the last one the spark came when I was tucking Sam, my 7 year old, into bed. He was extremely upset that it was bedtime and he wanted to keep playing “Need for Speed” on the PlayStation. I told him, “Now is the time for bed. You will have a hundred more years to play video games.”

Sam looked at me funny and asked, “So I can still play video games when I am 107 years old?”

Then he asked me how old the oldest person that ever lived was. I didn’t know the answer so I went over to his bookshelf and pulled out this huge leather-bound family Bible that had been given to me and my wife when we got married. This upcoming Friday is our sixteenth anniversary and I realized the bible had probably not been opened since our wedding day.

I started by trying to figure out how old Methuselah had been, but Sam soon got bored and went to sleep. I took the bible upstairs and found some amazing things I’d never seen before.

In the back of the Bible, like many heirloom bibles there are a number of references. Maps (which I recognized from my childhood because I would stare at them in my bible during endless Baptist sermons) and there were also a number of reference sections that contained glossaries, verse references, commonly asked questions and a commentary that was meant for people who were new to the Bible about how to read and study it.

When I began reading that part I noticed the author said that it is a great error for people to pick one Bible verse and build a belief system around it. He said that in order to truly understand what is being said it must be taken in context of the surrounding text, the speaker, the time and the location.

A small light bulb came on in my head as I began to think about how a wonderful, personal revelatory experience I had a few years back, and the joy it brought me, had slowly faded due to my discouragement in trying to figure out what specific passages meant. I realized that in order to find out “What is real” I needed to take these troublesome passages and use all the tools I have available to my mind to truly understand what the Scriptures are trying to say.

Pentecost is much more than a celebration. It is a promise that Jesus made that although he is gone he would send us a guide to help us understand what we need to understand about the Father’s love. The Holy Spirit doesn’t act with written words or spoken sounds. The Holy Spirit is your indwelling guide, your blazing star, that lights up the darkness and gives you the answer to life’s hardest questions when you let go and have faith.

Before I go on, though, I want to tell you about my experience in 2009 on my first Juarez trip that changed the way I thought about the world completely.

I wrote this story on my Facebook page during a somewhat heated discussion about hell with some of my more fundamentalist friends. One thing I have learned in the past few years is that no matter what seems real to me I don’t have the right to force it on someone else. In fact, I don’t think anyone can force their personal experience on someone else precisely because it is a PERSONAL experience. So here it is:

I met God and I wasn't even looking for him.

In 2009 I was standing on what used to be the city dump in what was termed "The Most Dangerous City in the World".

For more than a year an average of 7-10 people were murdered in that city every single day.

I wasn't even looking for God.

In fact, I wasn't looking for anything.

I was caught in a moment of what is called 'Flow' by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.

I was mixing dirt and cement with a shovel.

I was perfectly at peace. No worries about work or bills or where my next meal would come from.

I stopped and looked around. The place was full of unspeakable beauty even in the worst conditions imaginable.

I looked at the fence.

I looked at the Border Patrol truck sitting on the hill on the other side of the fence.

I saw the breeze blow a little bit of dirt through the fence from "America" into "Mexico".

Then I saw the breeze blow a little bit of dirt through the fence the other way.

I asked the question in my mind, "Who gets to decide the ownership of that dust?

Who decided that the fence was in that specific place and not six inches one way or six inches the other?

Not really expecting an answer my eyes drifted to the right to a mountain on the other side of the fence.

On top of that mountain there was the statue of a man looking out over the land.

The mountain was high enough that from his perspective he could see what was on both sides of the fence.

His hands were raised up and he just stood there like, "Look at me!"

It was just a statue of a man.

Then, without even thinking about it, or even WANTING it, I had the answer to a question I had never even asked.

On one level, the statue was there to inspire people because it was on top of the mountain.

At any given time two million people, no matter which side of the fence they happened to be on, could see the statue.

All they had to do was just look up.

Here's what: The statue wasn't saying, "Look at me!" It was saying, "I AM".

The statue was there for everybody.

Even the Mexicans.

Even the Border Patrol guy.

Even the cartels that murdered innocents.

First it was like a punch in the gut.

Everything I ever thought about people, politics, geography, religion... All that stuff that was my reality, that I held dear, that defined "me" was a lie.

Here's the part that's tough to swallow.

I wasn't close enough to the statue to see who it was supposed to be.

It didn't matter.

It could have been Jesus, Buddha, Muhammed, Mithras or even Spiderman.

It wasn't the statue that mattered. What mattered is that it was there and everyone could see it.

It was like looking at the sun.

The sun comes up whether you like it or not.

The sun is irresistible.

Even if you believe the sun doesn't exist you can't refuse to see what it lights up.

Even if you believe the sun doesn't exist you can't refuse its warmth.

The sun IS.

The statue IS.

God IS.

I realized at that moment that LOVE was universal.

Love is irresistible.

Even if you hate me, you can't stop me from loving you.

More importantly that statue was there on that mountain before I got there.

The sun came up before I was born and will continue to rise every day after I'm dead.

Why is it so easy to say you can't resist gravity because it acts universally but you can refuse the universal love of the father?

The punch in the gut turned to a peace that I can't ever adequately describe.

It said, "You know what? I've got this. I made this place and everyone in it. You don't need to worry about it because I AM bigger than you."

It said, "You mix that cement and let me sort the rest out."

If there is good stuff going on around you it's not necessary to read the newspaper to know the good news.

If you look in the world at people who seem to be the most worried about your eternal soul you are bound to see someone waving a sign that reads JOHN 3:16.

You might also see them holding a sign that says, "GOD HATES FAGS!”

Six words. "For GOD so LOVED the WORLD.."

That statue wasn't there for America.

Or Mexico.

Or Christians.

Or Murderers.

It was just there.

How much LOVE would it take for you to go to someone who hates you and hand them your baby son and say, "I love you so much I'm giving you my only baby to prove it."

How much LOVE would it take for you to give that person your baby KNOWING in advance that they would murder him.

I can't comprehend any LOVE that is bigger than what I have for my sons.

My brain cannot understand how much LOVE I would have for someone to give them my child, much less knowing in advance what would happen.

Can you LOVE that much?

Does that person's hate outweigh the LOVE that would have to exist in order to allow such a terrible thing to happen.

Not just murdered.

To be ridiculed, spit on, stabbed, whipped and nailed to a piece of wood for hours while people laughed at him.

If I can't even comprehend how much LOVE that is, then there is no way I can say NO to it. There is no way I can say it’s only for one select group of people and not others.

It doesn't matter how you spin it, how many books are written about it, how many people twist it and use it to condemn innocents that have never seen that statue to eternal burning hellfire.

You cannot refuse gravity, that's easy.

How can you refuse that kind of Love?

You can't.

Take the three important words out. GOD. LOVED. WORLD.

To every person that ever has, or ever will, tell me that I cannot refuse the fires of HELL I say you cannot refuse the fire of I AM.

Anyway. That's my story.

If it makes you feel good I am glad.

If it makes you mad I am sorry.

In my story, in the story that I was not only told, but saw, heard, felt and smelled, both of us are going to Heaven.

It’s an offer made by a loving Father to all his Children.

You know what? I went to that building site for three days, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday NOBODY was murdered in that city. The first time in over a year.

This is the meaning of Pentecost. This is Jesus’ promise fulfilled. He gave us a comforter, an advocate and a guide so that it’s not necessary for us to rely on anyone else to discern what scripture means.

When I shared that story it didn’t receive as many warm fuzzies as I had expected. Some of my friends thought it was funny how naïve I was. Some of them asked how I could not believe in hell when it was right there in the King James Bible.

And the kicker… the one that makes me laugh every time: If there is no hell, then what is keeping us from just killing people and stealing and doing whatever we want?

That is one I can answer. Firstly, if the threat of hell is all that’s keeping you from doing those things then you have some major issues to deal with. Secondly, the threat of hell has never stopped a killer or a thief in history.

That lead me to come up with some more zingers that sound more like church billboards (the kind Bradley hates) than philosophy.

The angel of the lord didn’t say to Mary, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”

John 3:16 doesn’t say, “For God so loved the evangelical Christians…”

It kind of still blows my mind that when Jesus was alive there was not one single Christian on the face of the earth. Who did he die for?

When He said that He didn’t come to destroy the world but to save it who is he talking about?

When he talks about the shepherd that had 99 sheep that were behaving, but one that wandered off and became lost, and the shepherd went off after the one sheep so that not even one would be lost… who is the lost sheep?

This is where the parable that was read earlier comes up. It’s not so much about the father welcoming the lost brother back into the fold, it’s about the jealous brother who believes he has toiled his entire life and gets jealous to see his brother welcomed so warmly.

I think it’s this point, and not the threat of hell, that has evangelical Christianity so worked up. It’s not the thought that they must bring everyone to Jesus before the clock runs out, it’s that they can’t accept that the least of us will be rewarded as much as them.

I do not have a grudge against evangelicals. I don’t even know if my lack of belief in hell is accurate. All I know is that what I believe wasn’t something I read, or heard. It was something I felt. What I believe is that I should not have fear.

I am also saying one translation of scripture is more correct than another. I have found that Young’s Literal Translation, which was a translation from original greek directly into English, speaks to me vividly.

The verse that this church has made its mission around, the inspiration for Love Wins, reads this way in Young’s:

1 John 4:18

¹⁸fear is not in the love, but the perfect love doth cast out the fear, because the fear hath punishment, and he who is fearing hath not been made perfect in the love;

So this is where it all came together for me. This is how I figured out for myself the answer to the question “What is real?”

A couple of simple promises.

An overwhelming personal experience.

An almost unquenchable thirst to track these troublesome scriptures down to their oldest sources and find out how they were meant to be taken.

1 – For GOD so LOVED the WORLD

2 – JESUS came to SAVE the WORLD, so that not even one sheep would be lost.

3 – FEAR is NOT in the LOVE. Perfect Love doth cast out the fear.

The answer was obvious. Two words. The answer to every theological question I’ve ever asked.

What is the truth?

I AM.