Coming Out Party/Homecoming Party Manifesto

I’m outing myself. 

I am a Christian.

This is ‘Old News’ to a lot of you.

Some of you now automatically hate me, thinking that I am a hateful person. Those who know me from work, please remember how I interacted with you. I am flawed. But am I hateful?

 I believe that Christ died for my (and your) sin, and conferred to each of us (who are willing to accept it) His righteousness.

As a Christian, I do my best to show you the love you deserve as a person. However, I cannot say that all choices are good choices and I may advise changes. You, of course, are allowed (in fact, expected) to give me feedback as well.

If you do choose Jesus’ salvation, He will start a conversation with you, personally, about what needs to change for you to become a healthier person, spiritually and physically.

As it is written: “There is now no condemnation for those who follow Christ.” If you are a follower, you know you are a sinner, but not condemned. You are free to heal and grow.

The above is the first Bible reference that I’ve used here; most people have been beaten about the head with other Bible verses, and I want to avoid that.

God loves you.

That, in a nutshell, is my manifesto.

As best as I can, as an imperfect person, I love you, too.

God hates sin. God will ask you to give up sin.

That doesn’t mean you have to toe the mark, first, to be accepted, because He already loves you. What it does mean is, if you accept this love, you are also allowing yourself to accept His help in getting you clean. He wants the best for you.

The best comparison I can come up with is this: say you have a friend or family member who is hooked on heroin or meth, and this addiction has seriously messed up their life. You, with the help of others, want to do an intervention. Your friend can still walk away and let themselves continue to spiral downward, even to the point of death. Or they can accept the assistance, and then get on with the program of getting clean and healthy.

That is what coming to Jesus is all about: being welcomed into the family, then getting healthy. He gives us the choice; He does not force us to choose the way He thinks is best. After all, a choice coerced is not a choice.

Another story: this from Jesus, paraphrased by yours truly:

A man had two sons. The older did everything right (you might know an older brother or sister like this), and stood to inherit his share. The younger had stars in his eyes and asked to have his share of his father’s inheritance now, so he could live life on his own terms.

You get the picture? Dad, know-it-all perfect Big Brother, and Little Brother who wants to be out from under Big Brother’s disapproving eye.

Well, Little Brother converts his cattle to cash, spends like a sailor on shore leave, buying drinks for his bar buddies, and such. Predictably, he runs out of cash, and since he has not properly learned a high-paying trade, he has to take the lowest of the low poor-paying jobs out there in order to get even a bit of something to eat (all of his bar-buddy friends having dropped him, since he’s not buying drinks for them anymore, y’see).

One day, while throwing out the trash and picking through it to find something remotely edible, he has a thought: “My dad’s hired hands live far better than this. I’ll go home and ask to be a hired hand. At least I’ll have three hots and a cot. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Little Brother hitches a ride with a trucker headed the right way (Eddie Rabbit’s “Drivin’ My Life Away!” pouring out of the truck’s radio), and gets dropped off in town. He starts the long walk toward home, and says to himself, “I’ll tell my dad that I’ve sinned against him and God both, and I’ll throw myself on his mercy and ask to be allowed to be, not a son, but a hired hand.”

But when he turns in at the lane to the ranch, his dad, who has been watching in the evenings for his son’s return, jumps out of the rocker and hoofs it down to where his second son is walking, and grabs him in a big daddy hug.

Younger Son kind of pushes him away and says his bit: “Dad, I’ve sinned against you and God. I don’t deserve to be your son, but can I, may I, be a hired hand?”

“None of that talk! Let’s get you cleaned up!" replies Dad, "Looks like you have more road on you that anything else! What you been doin', sloppin' hogs?” And his father walks him up to the house and the cook (who used to dote on him when he was a boy) exclaims, “You’re back! But, my goodness! Let’s clean you up! I want to see your handsome face without all that dirt on it! When you’re done I’m gonna make you your favorite meal!”

And Dad says, “Think bigger than that, Gertie! We’re gonna have us a barbecue! Have Lonnie find us a prime beeve to kill and prep for ribs and steaks and such, and get that pit hot for the roastin’! Can you make up a gallon or so of that sauce I like?” “Goodness, yes!" Gertie replies, "I’ll have it ready before that pit is hot and Lonnie is done with that beeve!”

So Little Brother gets a steaming hot bath (the first in many weeks), and when he’s toweled down a bit and shaved and other whatnot, his dad takes him into his own room, and pulls out HIS best shirt, HIS best suit, HIS best bolo tie, HIS best watch on a chain with the family signet on the other end, and the finest set of boots He has in HIS closet.

The Little Brother looks into the mirror, and sees a changed man, and doesn’t quite believe that it’s himself.

Dad asks, “Feeling better now, Son?”

The young man stands there speechless, but with a puzzled smile on his face.

“Is this how you see me, Dad?”

“This is how I’ve always seen you, Son.”

Side by side they leave the Father’s rooms and head back to the kitchen, and out to the back yard to a trestle table full of good things, including tea, lemonade, coleslaw, Texas potato salad, and sourdough bread, with space left over for the hot food take up station when it’s ready. Those not directly helping with setting up the party are saying things to the Little Brother like, “We’ve missed you! We’re so glad you’re back!”

About sundown the Dutch oven full of baked beans, a platter of short ribs, another of steaks, and another of shredded brisket (and of course Gert’s barbecue sauce) are brought out to the table. Father says the blessing and people line up to load up their plates. Somewhere there’s a fiddler playing ‘Saturday Waltz’ from Copeland’s ‘Rodeo’.

Just as the party is hitting its stride, Big Brother comes in, dusty from working the back forty.

“What’s all this?” he asks. Father answers, “Your brother’s back! We’re celebrating! Get yourself cleaned up and join us!”

“What do you mean, ‘my brother’s back!’? The son that took his inheritance and spent it on a riotous life? YOUR money?! And you’re throwing a party for HIM?! I’ve done EVERYTHING you’ve asked of me. You’ve never even let me take a goat from the herd so I could party with MY friends! This makes NO sense!”

His father replied, “My Son, you have been good and faithful, it’s true. Everything I have will be yours when you inherit. But your Little Brother! He was lost to the world, but now he is back home! Join me, join us, in the celebration of the fact your Little Brother was lost, but now has been found!”

But Big Brother, dignity insulted, would not join in.

The fiddler moved on to “Hoedown!” and those who’d finished their strawberry-rhubarb pie moved to the dancing area and started polka-ing and two-stepping.

And a great time was had by (almost!) all.

There’s the story (the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 15).

So many of us are the Little Brother in the story above, and so many ‘Proper Christians’ are the Big Brother, missing the point of love and forgiveness that the Father extended to his lost son. Remember, please, the Lost Son didn’t get cleaned up before he went back home; that happened afterward. Remember, also, that when the Father saw him coming home, he met his son half-way, and they walked in together.

Doubtless we Younger Brothers have faults and habits that need to be fixed. They will be fixed in time. The big thing, the important thing, is that our homecoming happened. And there was MUCH rejoicing!

And doubtless the unforgiving self-righteous Older Brother will continue to self-righteously proclaim their view from their moral high-ground. They will cut off their nose to spite their face, and stand in the path to block those who see the need to come home by saying: “You’re not clean enough!” forgetting that NO ONE is clean enough.

We all have sin in our lives, sin that makes us sick, sin that insists the best way to care for ourselves is to act a certain way, do certain things, live a certain life in order to be accepted by someone. Let me personalize this: I have sin in my life; I act in a certain way to be accepted, do some things, avoid other things, all to be able to fit into my community, my workplace, or even my church. Ultimately, instead of getting the help I need to be better, I cover up my sin in order to fit in.

Or, I cover up my affiliation with an institution that has gotten (some of it well-deserved, but not all of it) criticism as being unfriendly at best, hateful at worst.

For better or worse, I am uncovering that affiliation.

If you wish to unfriend me, I understand. For as long as I am alive, I’ll still be here. My door will always be open.

In any case have a good life.

God has done all the truly hard stuff, all we need to do, all I needed to do, is decide to walk through the door He has opened into a richer life.

Come home, be forgiven, and get cleaned up. The party is starting soon! :)

 

Yes, You CAN!

"I Was Wrong."

Wow!

Two whole months!

I'm sorry folks. I have no excuse, except that I am having a hard time fitting all my "not day job" stuff around my new schedule. Which, oddly, (or perhaps not so oddly) is not a day schedule but a night (graveyard) schedule.

Why? It seemed a good idea at the time.

And I'm going to 'wimp out' a little here. I don't usually steal from myself this way for this blog. The original intention was the other way around. Nor do I usually put forth an overtly Christian message here. What follows just seemed to need to be said.

Take it with a grain of salt, or an entire salt lick, if you like.

Dear C___,

We met a few times (very few) a long time ago, when you and your sister were quite young. This is by way of introduction.

You say that God hates you, listing all of your problems. I understand how you feel. For years I was sure God hated me, too.

And I had plenty of evidence. I'll skip my early life and pick up when I was about eighteen, when my mom divorced my step-dad. I was mad as hell. That I didn't fly totally off the handle and do something stupid that night (get roaring drunk, etc.) was amazing.

A few years later I married a wonderful woman (whom you've also met). Within months she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Then, a year after that, my Mom died of a heart attack.

That's when I became very angry at God, and was convinced that He hated me. So I hated Him right back. For ten, fifteen, nearly twenty years I've been angry at God for giving my wife cancer, and for killing my Mom. I still have the habit, and I fight it every day.

Now I don't tell you this to try to "one-up" you. Rather, I want to let you know I thought I had reason to think the way I did.

And now I need to tell you this: I was wrong.

My mom died from her own life-style, which included smoking a pack of Winstons a day, until she had her own cancer. She tried quitting, but never quite managed to. My wife's cancer was due to some environmental factor we still don't know about. My mom's divorce was because she was one of two people couldn't really find that spot where they were hitched together like a team of horses pulling the cart of marriage in the same direction.

More than that, I was wrong because God never gives us more than we can handle, at least if we have His help. He wants us to ... Well, I was going to say "Call on Him in times of trouble." That is true, He does. But He would rather we be listening to Him before then, and avoid some of the problems in the first place. I could give you some examples of them, but why bore you, you've undoubtedly heard it before.

In the case of my wife's cancer, I can truly say, there is nothing we could have done to avoid it. That's when we needed to "get through it."

My wife trusted God much more than I did. She did have her scared, and sometimes angry moments. I just have trouble remembering them.

Whereas I walked through my life back then with a chip on my shoulder the size of the General Sherman redwood. I still have that habit. My wife can tell you about that. She is usually too kind to do so unless there's a lesson to be learned. I hate to say that I can be a very good bad example.

God is in control. By that statement you might assume He wanted you to break your wrist, or to hurt yourself snowboarding, or to have the other problems in your life. He does allow these things. He expects you to learn something. What is He wanting you to learn?

Remember something about that: God had the people of Israel wander in the desert for forty (40!) years before entering the promised land, because of their lack of desire to learn and understand. This for a trip that could take a determined person on foot as little as forty DAYS! Is it any wonder that we sometimes seem stuck in the same spot? I've sometimes said to myself: What am I supposed to learn with this uncomfortable situation? Let me learn it quickly, so I can move on to something else! Sometimes, I even do.

C____, I may have gotten off track a bit, but my point is, God does love you. He wants you to learn from what has happened in your life. I want you to understand this: God did not spare His own Son, but placed Him in the path of our punishment for sin. That punishment is the eternal death. Please don't misunderstand, it's not eternal nothingness, which is bad enough, but the punishment that a just and angry God is reserving for His rebellious angels. You don't want to be there. The only way to avoid it is by accepting the gift of God's Son, the price He paid for your sin on the cross.

If he was just another man on a cross, there would be no point. But to prove that he was who he said he was, God raised him from the dead three days later.

If that hadn't happened, this whole Christianity business would never have gotten off the ground. We could well be sacrificing bulls to Zeus, or grain to Demeter. That this Christianity thing DID take off, says something.

It says there's something real about it. Nothing would change eleven scared men hiding out from what they thought was an eventual and certain doom into eleven men willing to face physical torture, persecution and death than an absolute certainty that this Jesus character was alive again. If you know of anything, please tell me.

Well, I've rambled on far too long, so I'll close.

Take Care of that Wrist and
God Bless,

Dana H.

That's it. I guess you could call it my testimony. Compared to some I've heard, I wish it was better, but, it is what it is.

Perhaps it also lets you inside this madman's head a little.

The theme of this blog is: "Yes You Can."

Whatever you do, you can get through your life, even if you do need help sometimes.

Yes, you can!

HOW WELL THEY KNOW ME!

The same email came from two different directions and into my inbox on the same day:


Today Is National Mental Health day!

You can do your bit by remembering to send an email to an unstable friend.

(Well...my job's done!)

Some days, it's not even worth chewing through the restraints

How well they know me!

And, as I like to say, a little insanity can be a healthy thing. IF it can make you smile somewhere along the way.

And a good suggestion from my wife, a very wise woman, is to sing songs of praise, even when you don't feel like singing anything. It's easy to sing praises when we feel on top of everything. But the time we need to sing praises and be in our Father's arms is when everything is on top of us.

And I may have just offended some of you.

Those of you who don't have some sort of relationship with Creator God just now felt slapped in the face. I'm sorry, as it was NOT my intention to offend. But, part of this blog is to tell you what works for me. If you don't have such a relationship it may not work for you. The odd thing is, though, God meets us where we are, He comes more than half-way: He comes all the way. If you start to sing praises (or, if you feel like you can't sing, merely speaking will do), even if you don't feel like it, He will come to you. You may find that it is an experience you want to repeat.

Despite what you may have heard, God is not willing that any be apart from Him, but He is also respectful enough of our feelings that He will not force His presence on us if we do not want him around. And even Christians push Him away. Or put Him in a box they take out on Sunday.

Hence, my depression cycle: I did that very thing.

My wife is wise. She told me that even if I only sang that simple children's song we are teaching our little one, it would be enough to start the process:

Jesus loves me, this I know

For the Bible tells me so

Little ones to Him belong;

We are weak, but He is strong!

Yes, Jesus loves me,

Yes, Jesus loves me,

Yes, Jesus loves me,

The Bible tells me so!

It's not so much a 'Belief' as it is a 'trust'. If you need verses to back up the song, here are two:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." - John's Gospel 3:16-17 New International Version (NIV)

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" - Paul's letter to the Romans 8:1 (NIV)

Christianity is not so much a system of rules (though many think it is) as it a relationship with someone who has an interest with you. It is true that if you live by the 'rules' of Christianity you will generally be considered a 'good person'. Remember, though, that's what the Pharisees thought they were doing, and along the way they lost the love for God, and missed experiencing the love of God.

Anyway, I've wandered a bit. The idea is to find that smile that belongs to you. Even more, to find that joy that belongs to you.

God Bless, and,

Yes, You Can!