Christianity in North America

Never Give Up

Standard

I don’t always write my posts and upload them in “real time.” Last week, for instance, “Welcome to Jerkville, Population Me” was written and posted a few days before it actually appeared. WordPress allows me to post in advance, and while I don’t always use that feature, if I find downtime in my schedule, I may write a post and have it load at a future date. (I’m doing that with this post, too.)

The “Jerkville” post had already been uploaded when I received a subject-less e-mail. At first I thought it was spam (always include a subject, folks), so I let it sit while I attended to other work.

When I eventually opened that e-mail, it contained a sad story of dire need by a stranger who was reaching out to me for help. Winston Churchill said it...Always skeptical, I verified the e-mailer’s story with some third-parties. Once verified, I called every resource I knew to find a way to help. I talked with many charitable organizations, dropped e-mails to large churches in the area of this person in need, spoke on the phone with probably two dozen people, but I still have not found help.

I remember reading a story on the Web about a woman who suffered a stroke (or some other vascular accident) while online, but was able to type out a request for help. A doctor, fortuitously online in this chat room, engaged her. He was able to call an EMT to her place. She lived because of that help.

About five years ago, I decided to join an online forum on a well-known Christian site. Within a few weeks, I got sucked into a vicious conversation about singleness and money. One poster on the forum was a single guy who didn’t make much money, but wanted to get married. Several commenters continued to beat this guy up about how no Christian woman in her right mind would want to marry a guy who barely made more than the minimum wage. I could not believe the nasty things said to this poor man by supposed brothers and sisters in Christ (though I sure can now). The guy tried to defend himself, and I came to his defense several times. His posts seemed to get more frantic with time, and his online assailants just would not ease up.

Eventually, after about a week or so of this, he left a cryptic message. A few hours later, he wrote in that forum that he was committing suicide.

I came to his posted confession later that evening. Horrified, I spent hours trying to contact the forum Webmaster and the company that ran the forum. Eventually, I got patched into a hotline and directed people to the post. The response? “Sorry sir, there’s nothing we can do.”

I have no idea if that man killed himself. (He never posted again, though his assailants did. But not once did they comment on what had happened in that forum.) All I know is that no one else seemed to care. He was just some quasi-anonymous soul. Just another person. There are six-point-something billion of us on the planet, give or take a few.

It’s the “give or take a few” people out there whom I grieve for.

In talking about the plight of my e-mailer with various charities and churches, you could hear the flatness coming through the handset speaker. Just another person in need. One more family looking for a handout. I spoke with a pastor of a church in that e-mailer’s area and he said, “You gotta understand. Everyone’s poor down here.”

I spoke with a few benevolence ministries housed in suburban megachurches in the region of that person in need. They all understood the need because they’d heard it a thousand times before. But they said they couldn’t help. You could almost see the heads hanging low on the other end of the phone.

The charities, too, had people answering the phone with voices marinated in weariness. “If we help in that way, sir, we’ll set a precedent and 1,500 people will be lined up here tomorrow asking for the same thing,” one broken charity coordinator said with a sigh.

My copy of Lloyd-Jones’s Spiritual Depression, Its Causes and Its Cure stared back at me from my bookshelf, and I felt so sorry for everyone involved: the person in need, the charities, the churches, and even myself. Those people who face that kind of bottomless need…well, I don’t know how they drag themselves into work everyday. Knock out one tough case and two spring up in its place, a perpetual hydra of people saying, “Can you help me? Please, you’re my last hope.”

Compassion fatigue.

I haven’t heard back from some of the resources I contacted. The optimist in me says I will, but the typical Dan suspects the worst. “The poor will always be with you,” the Lord said. I think that’s one of the saddest set of words spoken in the Bible.

Here’s some words with more hope:

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
—Galatians 6:9-10

To the charity worker who lives every day knowing that the need is always greater than the resources, I say this: “Never give up.”

To the church minister who goes out every day into yet another home filled with more need than a dozen churches could manage, I say this: “Never give up.”

To other Christian bloggers out there who also receive needy e-mails, and who struggle immensely with that responsibility laid in their laps for no other reason than that they write Christ-filled words of light in a dark world, I say this: “Never give up.”

To you, if you’re a person in a crushing situation, a well of despair, that threatens to drown you and every person you hold dear, I say this: “Never give up.”

The great revivalist Leonard Ravenhill once said, “The only time you can really say that ‘Christ is all I need’ is when Christ is all you have.”

No matter who you are, no matter how tired, broken, or weary, no matter how empty your pantry, know this: when Christ is all you have, you have the greatest blessing of all.

If nothing else, take away another thought from Ravenhill: “We must do what we can do for God before He will give us the power to do what we can’t do.”

So please, please, please don’t ever give up.

The Cash Value of a Man

Standard

A woman only has worth if she’s young and beautiful.

Does anyone reading this believe that statement?

Tuesday night, my wife and I were driving home from a surprise birthday party for a long-time friend, when I made the mistake of turning on a Christian radio station. Yes, I said mistake.

Now most of you readers know that I don’t like to name names when it comes to Christian nuttiness. I tend to avoid pointing fingers at individuals or ministries, preferring to go with the understanding that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

I’m not going to let this one slide though.

The Family Life program was on, featuring a speaker who preached on real manhood, claiming that clueless men are proliferating at an exponential rate. In trying (pathetically and eisegetically, if you ask me) to preach on the husband and wife section of Ephesians 5, he noted that “to nourish and cherish a wife means…money.”

Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t see money mentioned at all in Ephesians 5. I do see a man called to love his wife unconditionally just as Christ loved the Church. The astute will notice that this call to unconditional love of one’s wife flies in the very face of the worldly statement that opened this post. Christians men are to love their wives, even when that fleeting beauty fades and age envelops like a wrinkled cloak.

Can we all agree on that?

As if the ridiculously eisegeted comment about money wasn’t enough, the same preacher (a noted “expert” on biblically-based sex roles) dropped this bomb:

If a man wants his wife to respect him more, he should make more money.

O.M.G.

Can I tell you what the world says about the worth of a man? It’s this:

A man only has worth if he is powerful and wealthy.

Does anyone besides me see that this preacher is just mimicking what the world says? We don’t accept that opening statement about a woman’s worth, yet we’re preaching that the respect due a man is directly tied to how much moolah he brings home? In cash we trust?So a Christian man should love his wife unconditionally, but a Christian woman should only respect her husband if he’s bringing home more and more cash?

By this standard, the apostles—at least the married ones—were damnable failures who deserved being nitpicked to death because their wives didn’t have a revolving account at Saks. And let’s not get into that poor carpenter, Joseph, and the miserable father he was for not ensuring Mary and Jesus a gilded, palatial estate overlooking the Jordan.

So much for seeking first the Kingdom! Better seek that fat pay raise or work two jobs, even if your kids never see you.

Who gave this “preacher” a microphone? Shame on Family Life!

Do I believe a man should provide for his family? Yes, I absolutely do. But what message are we sending when we Christians simply roll over and ape the world’s hellish message about a man’s worth?

For all our talk of conforming to biblical standards, we don’t. The Bible tells us that most people worked a farm. In fact, the entire household worked the farm. Distinctions between what men and women did for work didn’t really exist on a macro level. Yes, men did most of the brute strength farm work, while women did things like threshing (still a tough job), but they co-labored.

If we take a look at early America, often held up as Camelot by some Evangelicals, again, you see the same picture of farming and co-laboring, especially in the middle classes on the edge of the frontier. It was only after industrialization hit this country (and that only after a hundred years of factories and reforms) that we started seeing this sort of naïve ideal that a man can’t simply do a man’s work, he’s got to do his wife’s work, too. He better darned well do his work better than the guy next door, as well, because not everyone can have the good jobs. (Some guy’s gotta draw the short employment straw. Guess short straw’s wife won’t have much reason to respect him, now will she? I bet that’s a chilly bed!)

I’ve got to also wonder about a preacher who’s giving a message that the way to a wife’s respect is by making more money. A preacher. Think about that. Think about all the guys out there in the ministry who are making a pittance. I guess the only way those poor ministers are going to keep bringing home more bacon is if they start drinking the Church Growth Movement kool-aid! Butts in seats! Butts in seats! (And a mixed metaphor, too!)

Anyone out there besides me feel like crying?

Oops, can’t do that. Not manly enough.

Welcome to Jerkville, Population Me

Standard

All I wanted to do was to take my family out for dinner. That’s how these things start.

It was a bad week for allergies here. My wife takes a particular medication for them, and we tried OTC solutions to no avail. We would have to bite the bullet because the longer her allergies persisted, the greater the likelihood she’d wind up with a sinus or ear infection. (With it being ragweed season, just about everyone we know is suffering to some extent.)

I priced the medicine last month: $65 for one month. So I swallowed hard and walked into the pharmacy only to have them hand me the pills and say, “$88.99.”

“Excuse me?” I said, my heart suddenly pounding. “Last month they were $65!”

“That was last month,” the woman said.

Kiss dinner out goodbye.

The drive home was a case of the grumblies. And trust me, I can grumble with the best of them.

By the time I’d gotten home, though, I’d found a solution. I’d received a $25 gift certificate to my son’s favorite restaurant a couple weeks ago. We would just spend that gift certificate. Problem solved.

Or maybe not…

Our church sponsors an appreciation picnic for all the church volunteers. As part of the worship team, I qualify, so my family had fun being served by the elders and pastor. A nice time.

Someone arranged a puzzle game at the picnic that required people to match some visual presentations of objects with well-known phrases. A boy I’ll call Nate came running up to me, saying, “Dan, I want to be on your team. Can I be on your team, please?”

I told him it wasn’t really a team event. Since the first person to complete the puzzle won, working as a team defeated the whole idea. I couldn’t help him and still win.

“But I want to win,” he said. “I’ll be on your team. You and I are a team.”

“I don’t know that I’ll win, Nate,” I said. “A lot of people are playing.”

“I really want to win, Dan. I know you’ll win.”

While I appreciated his faith in me, what could I do? I thought if I just ignored him a little, he’d forget about the whole thing. That failed miserably. I then tried convincing him of the truth that neither of us would win if we tried to solve the puzzle together. He’d wind up losing anyway.

“Why don’t you try doing the puzzle yourself,” I said.

“But I want to win,” he replied, already looking crushed.

Now the thing you need to know about Nate is that he doesn’t have a dad. He’s got some other siblings, too, and his mom’s had some tough times. I’ve tried to be there for them as much as I can, but I never feel as if I’ve done enough.

“You’ll win, Dan,” he said as the game was starting. “I’ll be on your team.”

About five minutes later, I raised my hand. “Done.” The gamekeeper checked my answers and handed me the $25 restaurant gift certificate.

“We won, Dan,” Nate yelled. “We won!”

He went over to the gamekeeper, his round face beaming, and asked, “What did I win?”

“Nate, honey,” she said in as comforting a voice as she could muster,”I think someone else won. I don’t have any other prizes.”

“But I’m on Dan’s team. Don’t I get anything?” You could wring the angst out of his words.

I can’t stand to see kids crushed. Even though I know life runs roughshod over us all, there’s something about the pain that kids feel that turns me to mush.

I called his slumped-shouldered self over.

“Hey, we’ll take your family out and we’ll all eat together, ” I said. “How does that sound?”

If Van Gogh had dabbled with florescent oils, he could not have painted a brighter countenance than the one that shone on the face of that kid.

End flashback.

Holding that bottle of pills that cost me 40 percent more than I’d anticipated, that bottle of pills I knew cost about $1.50 to produce, that bottle of pills that wiped out my dinner plans and the hope that I had to be alone with my family that evening, I stared at the gift certificate and said to myself, How would Nate know if I spent this right now? He’s a kid. He’s probably already forgotten what I said.

So I seethed. I thought about all the times that I’d canceled my plans so that someone else could benefit. I considered that other families go on vacation all the time, but we didn’t because we were always saving our money to help someone else. Someone who can’t pay her electric bills. Someone who can’t pay for his medicine. Someone who can’t pay the mortgage this month. Always some sick, elderly, homeless, fatherless someone needing something else.

And what about all those people who go away to their vacation homes or who have season passes to amusement parks? Those people with kids who never seem to disappoint them because they don’t have to say no when little Johnny or Janie says, “Dad, let’s go to Disneyworld!” What’s their deal? They get to do all these fabulous things while we never do. Why, again, don’t we?

Then that awfulness rises up inside me. I wish they’d all go away, every last one of them. Those that have and those that have not. Lemme have my stuff. Even if it’s not much, I want it to be mine and not someone else’s. And I hope all those folks who seem to always have money to burn likewise burn in hell for it.

It’s all too easy to hate, isn’t it?

The thing about being an S.O.B. is that it runs to the core of who one is. Welcome to Jerkville, population me.

I looked at that gift certificate in my hand, then tucked it back in the drawer for a time when Nate and his family could enjoy it with us. We ate a frozen pizza that night.If not me, then who?

And when I think

Of God, His son not sparing,

Sent Him to die,

I scarce can take it in

That on the cross,

My burden gladly bearing,

He bled and died

To take away my sin.

Who am I? Who are you? Do we realize what we’ve been given?

I know I don’t always get it. These days, it’s hard to see what the future holds, so I want to hang on to my little kingdom more tightly than ever. I don’t want to receive e-mails from people telling me that they’re about to go down unless someone, anyone helps—only to look around and see me, alone, standing in the on-deck circle. Me. You know, the one with the supposed home-run swing for the little girl dying of leukemia, or the old lady who needs someone to look after her because her mind is slowly fading along with her carpeting.

Here’s a depressing truth: I’m not the only one populating Jerkville. It’s not God’s ideal resort location, but it sure seems that a lot of people cool their heels there. Sadly, some never wise up enough to catch the Gospel Train out of town. Worse, some permanent residents consider themselves future inhabitants of heaven. I pray they’re not disappointed.

When I think of what Christ did for me, how can I say no to the Christ who shows up in need on my doorstep, to the Christ in the neighbors who lost a child and need someone to grieve with them, to the Christ in the little boy without a dad who wants to win this time because he’s lost so many times before? I may not have the perfect solution to their needs, but I’ll at least try to help because I have been given so much.

God help me, I’m slowly leaving Jerkville. There’s no life there and never has been.

I hope I’m not the only one getting out of town.