The Rest of the Old Old Story

Someone has to say what’s true. Today, I want to point you to two blogs doing just that.

One is mine. I started addressing all the nonsense that people say about Christian history. It’s high time that the truth got more play than rumors and falsehood.

Christian History Blog

That blog also has all the new pages that are put up at my Christian History for Everyman site.

The other one is from J. Lee Grady, who writes way more than his share of powerful, timely posts. All of us who are committed, believing Jesus followers should read his blog, pray for him, and recommend his blog to others.

J. Lee Grady: The Ominous Handwriting on America’s Wall

You may notice that I don’t write or recommend much in the way of "God is judging such and such" blogs. J. Lee Grady is not overboard, a kook, a conspiracy theorist, nor even particularly right wing. He’s just an honest, godly man, of which there are far too few nowadays.

This is a defense of Rose Creek Village … sort of.

It’s not about Rose Creek Village. It’s about you.

I’ve heard, recently, several people complain about some friends of mine—leaders at Rose Creek Village—who are intimidating. I agree they’re intimidating; that’s not just the opinion of the complainers. Pushy is probably a fair description, too. The complainers definitely felt pushed around by my friends, and I am certain that at least a few times those feelings were legitimate.

Of course, these are my friends, so it was self-evident to the complainers, while they were complaining, that however my friends treated them, they would have treated me the same way, at least in the early days of our community. So, more than once recently, I was told, "Well, that doesn’t happen to you, of course. You always spoke up." That’s always followed by some statement about how I don’t let myself get pushed around.

Worse, that’s always said as though it’s some sort of excuse for others. They’re not like me. Indeed, they cannot be. Apparently, I must be bold by nature. My personality innately stands up to others and refuses to be intimidated.

Laughable.

There were very few children more timid than me. I was pushed around by everyone. I stood up for next to nothing. I did homework once for a kid in 9th grade, much bigger than me, because he asked me and I was scared of him. Afterward, he taunted me publicly for doing it. I never did anything about it, and until this day I’ve never even told anyone that it happened. (And now I’m writing it on the internet; go figure.) In fact, it didn’t much matter to me that he taunted me in class, since I was neither friend nor acquaintance of most of the kids in the class. All my friends were from the street I lived on, not from the school.

I never went to a school dance, not even Homecoming or the Prom. I was 21 before I was brave enough to ask a girl out on a date, and I never had an official girlfriend until my wife-to-be when I was 25.

It wasn’t until I met her that I first worked up the courage to return a fast food meal that wasn’t made right. Telling a waiter or waitress in a real restaurant that my meal wasn’t right would have to wait till I was in the my 40′s, and I’m pretty certain I’ve only done that once in my life despite the fact that incorrect meals have happened to me a lot more than that. I was in my mid-30′s when I began to work on looking at strangers in the eye if I crossed paths with them in a store.

Yeah, I was painfully shy and embarrassingly timid.

In other words, standing up to other people does not come naturally for me. It is very easy for me to let people intimidate me. I prefer that to confrontation, even if that confrontation is telling a merchant that they got my order wrong. (To this day, that’s still true. I’d rather pay money I don’t owe than have a confrontation about money. You’d love doing business with me.)

But I’m not allowed to live like that in the church!

Since the day I became a Christian I have believed in God. (Some Christians only believe in God in theory, not in practice.) God is greater than dictators, kings, and especially than leaders of Christian churches, whether real ones or self-serving ones.

Early on at Rose Creek Village (actually before it was called Rose Creek Village) I had my first run in with leadership. They wanted me to be baptized, and I didn’t believe I needed to be baptized by this church. I had been baptized before, understanding what it was, and thus I had been baptized both into Christ and into the body of Christ. There was no need for me to be baptized by Rose Creek Village.

The head elder, Noah, overrode the others and said, "Maybe he’s right. Let’s leave this in the hands of God."

(Over the next few months, the leaders won that one. The story is too long to tell here, and I don’t have answers for all the theology, but God convinced me that they were right, and I was baptized.)

A few months later, a couple leading men came up with a whole morass of rules for the house I was living in. I didn’t like it, but I decided not to say anything. I would wait for God to provide some examples of whether these rules were a good or bad idea.

But one of the other men spoke up. It turns out I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like it, so I felt free to talk. We debated the rules, though I was left as the only spokesman for the anti-rule group. Eventually, a person who’d been around a lot longer than me said that I was taking the gift of God—their rules—and throwing it on the ground. I couldn’t take the conflict, and I just turned and walked out. I went for a drive for an hour or so and just prayed.

When I got back, everyone had decided to put the rules on hold. I think they were concerned that they’d hurt me.

I want to point out here before I tell any more stories, the issue wasn’t just that they felt they’d hurt me. God is in control of my life, and God is in control of the church. God will always show the willing and malleable where to take a stand. If I’m part of the church, then God will ensure that where he makes me stand, he will make the church stand as well. What he’s saying to one, he will say to all.

How could it be otherwise?

A few months after that, it was Noah who laid a bunch of rules on that very same house. Again, I opted not to say anything and to wait and see what would happen.

My wife, who’s a lot braver than I am, wasn’t so willing to sit back and wait.

No problem. I’m the head of my wife. I told her to just give it time. I specifically told her not to say anything to Noah.

So the next morning I walked onto the porch and my wife was giving Noah a piece of her mind. I was surprised, somewhat upset with her, and somewhat afraid of the situation. I was not prepared for this confrontation.

Noah looked at me. He was clearly angry. He asked, "Do you feel the same way your wife does?"

"Yes," I said.

"Great," he replied. "You make me feel like some kind of cult leader ordering people around. I can’t believe you didn’t say anything!"

I gave some feeble excuse, and he stormed back to his room. (Apparently, God was overriding my husbandly authority. Some day we can do a blog on realms of authority and talk about why I was the one who was out of line.)

There was a gathering that morning (the rough equivalent of a church service), and we had the gathering outside. We sang a couple songs, and then Noah stood up.

He said. "God has shown me that his people are to be free. They are to be ruled by God, and not by rules. I repent for trying to put rules on the people of God."

He then gave public thanks to God, crossed the circle, and kissed both my wife and I on the foreheads.

We’d been part of Rose Creek Village less than a year. We had no position. We were just some of the new people.

I’ll tell you one more story, also from the early days here in Tennessee. All of this would have taken place in 1996 and 1997.

Originally the house I was living in had 7 bedrooms. We had added a couple rooms in the basement, and we had an RV or two outside, so there were five or six families living out of the house. In 1997 (I think), we built an 8-bedroom, 4-and-1/2-bath addition onto the house. It was three stories tall, and the bottom story became a dining hall. Between all those bedrooms, some additional RV’s, and a cabin we built outside, at one point around 100 people were eating in the 900-square-foot room.

The room wasn’t carpeted at that point, and with all those people, many of them children, it could get very loud. Noah and another brother were having trouble handling the noise, and so they were making extreme efforts to get everyone to be less noisy. I’m pretty sure that most people felt like the biggest disturbance of the peace was not the noise but Noah’s and this other brother’s complaints about the noise.

Once again, I took it upon myself to talk to Noah about it. I never wondered why someone less shy hadn’t already gone to him. I knew from the talk around the house that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. The question to me, though, was not whether people were doing what they should be doing. The question to me was whether I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.

So I talked to him, and he got mad. There was nothing to do but have a heated discussion with him.

I hate discussions like that, especially with someone a lot braver than I am, so it was easy for me to keep one ear tuned to God. My prayer to him was pretty simple: "How do I get out of this conflict as fast as possible without having to back down?"

I felt like I wasn’t allowed to back down. It was Noah who had taught us that peace comes from God, not from outward quiet.

But reminding him of that wasn’t helping.

Finally, God dropped something to say into my spirit. I said it, and Noah stopped talking and looked at me. Then he hung his head and said, "You’re trying to help, and I’m talking to you like this."

(In Noah’s defense, due to the subject of this post, I am leaving out all the parts where I was in the wrong. He had to talk to me about skipping gatherings, complaining about church activities, exploding on a brother in a situation where I was completely wrong, and other things that I’m sure I’ve forgotten. However, this blog’s about talking when needed, not about my numerous faults.)

How many people would just have judged the rules that were handed down in my first story above? How many people would have let those first rules happen, then let Noah’s rules happen, then let the situation in the dining room remain unchanged, full of pressure and complaints about leadership?

How many would later have walked away from the church saying, "You wouldn’t believe the terrible things that happened! There were all these rules! And then there was complete chaos in the dining room, and the leaders were upset and making it worse. Everyone knew and agreed with me that the chaos was all the leaders’ fault, but do you think they changed?"

The real question, however, does not concern how many but concerns only one.

You.

Would you have just let those things happen? Would you have been wondering about whether those rules were the will of God, and would you have taken it upon yourself to speak up for God if you felt no one else was?

Or would you just walk away later and talk about all those terrible people and the terrible things they did?

There are reasons that you are not allowed to remain a coward, making excuses for not doing the will of God.

Let me tell you one more story.

When I was a very new Christian, attending an Assembly of God church down in Florida in 1982, a very excited evangelist came to town. His name was Danny Duvall, and if anyone ever inspired me to a Christian walk that was both practical and zealous, Danny Duvall did.

He didn’t just preach about being zealous for Jesus, he took us out and showed us how to do it. He took us door to door in town passing out flyers for the revival he was preaching. He also took us to the tourist section of town to witness.

I was terrified. Remember, I didn’t talk to strangers. I didn’t even ask girls out on dates until shortly before this time. Stopping people to talk about Jesus when all they wanted was a good time at the bars along the beach … that was not my idea of something pleasant.

Fortunately, I was with a friend that I knew had no problem talking to strangers. Before we were Christians, he had been a real ladies’ man, chatting up any girl he ran across and every bit as comfortable with men as he was with women.

Danny Duvall explained that the technique was simple. He didn’t bother with smooth approaches. He just picked a person, then told them he wanted to talk to them about Jesus.

I was curious to see whether this would prove effective. Danny sent me off with by brave friend and with another young man who’d been in the church much longer than us. If this blunt method of Danny Duvall’s worked when they tried it. After that I would do it, too, even if it terrified me.

As we walked to the tourist section the young man from the church asked, "Who’s going to go first?"

"Not me!" my brave friend said.

I stared at him. What did he mean he wouldn’t do it?

The young man from the church echoed my friend’s sentiment. Then they made it clear that if it boiled down to one of them being the first to dip their toes in the water, then we might as well head back to the car.

I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do but to volunteer. God sent us out there. We weren’t street witnessing because we thought it was fun!

God made sure the experience would set a pattern for the rest of my life.

The first people to come along were two guys who were everything I wasn’t. They were big, their demeanor made it clear they were tough, and they were at home in the party scene.

I stepped in front of them.

"Can I share Jesus with you?"

The bigger of the two made a face that indicated utter disgust. He raised his hands, sidled around me on the sidewalk, then rushed off with his friend laughing.

I promised myself I would never use the word "share" in public again.

I was utterly dejected, but I was going to give it one more shot without using "share."

The next guy was a shorter, slightly chubby and much more cheery looking young man. I worked up a more masculine demeanor, stood up straight, deepened my voice, and said, "Can we talk to you about Jesus?"

"Sure!" the guy said. He seemed thrilled to talk to us.

He didn’t wait for us to begin the conversation. He explained quickly that he was a "disciple" of Richard Bach.

Have you heard of Richard Bach? People who have read a lot and are at least my age are probably aware of the book Jonathon Livingston Seagull. In 29 years of telling this story, which happened in August of 1982, I’ve never met anyone who has read his other book, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.

I had, however.

I had devoured it. I loved Richard Bach.

Illusions had completely reinterpreted Jesus, and Bach made a lot of claims about what the Gospels say that just aren’t true. Because Richard Bach had been central to my own thinking as a teenager, I was aware of both his claims and the verses that contradicted those claims despite having only been a Christian for a month.

We talked with the charming young man on the sidewalk for two hours. We were there so long that the police eventually came by and ran us off.

I knew that God had sent that young man along. I also knew why God hadn’t sent him first. The first two guys, representing everything I had been scared of and intimidated by as a school boy, were sent by God, too. He wanted effort from me.

The other two guys? I don’t know what happened to the young man from the church, but I know my friend fell away.

God’s will is dependent on you.

God’s will, in the long run, is going to happen anyway. You, however, will never see it unless you participate in making it happen. It can go on all around you, so that there’s no direction you can look in which God’s will is not happening, and you will not see it if you’re not participating in it.

God doesn’t give his gifts to the lazy.

Nor to the cowardly.

In my day, I was a full-fledged coward. Cowards, however, are the first people listed among those who will be throw into the lake of fire. They are ahead of the unbelieving and the abominable (Revelation 21:8).

I’m not really interested in having my part in the lake of fire, so turning away from my innate cowardice has been a priority in my life for 30 years.

It needs to be a priority in yours. If you can’t speak up, the problem’s not the nature you were born with.

It’s the belief, work, and effort you’ve lived without.

Last night I made it back to the Bible study I visited a few weeks ago. There, I heard a term that captured my attention.

Bold humility.

I didn’t need an explanation. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

I also knew what a difficult target that is to hit.

So many times I’ve thought, “I wish I would have said something. I wish I would have stood up for what I believe because God cares about that issue.”

On those occasions, I might have been humble, but I wasn’t bold.

On other occasions, I have spoken up. “This is the will of God, and this is what the Scriptures say about it.” Yet it was the wrong place, the wrong time, or there was simply no care, love, or regard for people in my statement. My mouth spoke the words of God, but my timing and attitude spoke only for the accuser of the brethren.

On those occasions, I was bold, but I certainly wasn’t humble.

Worse, I can’t just judge by people’s reactions. Just because I made everyone angry or made a situation awkward, that doesn’t mean I missed the mark. Jesus once got everyone so upset that they tried to throw him off a cliff. In fact, the cumulative result of his message was that the chosen people of God crucified him with vindictive joy.

As a result, sometimes when I’m feeling very humble, wanting to repent, and certain that I’ve gone way further than I should have because everyone is mad at me—sometimes when I feel that way, I’m not being humble; I’m being carnal and cowardly.

It’s important to have the ability to still yourself, wait for your emotions to settle, and get in the presence of God. It’s important to have people you trust to bounce things off of. And finally, it’s important to trust God to work things out in his time.

Bold humility.

None of us are a good judge of what that looks like. As in all things, there is a righteousness that is from God, and there is a righteousness that is from ourselves. As in all things, the child of God is proven to be so by being led by the Spirit of God, not by figuring things out on his own. We hear the Word of God, we believe it, we do it, and we let ourselves be judged by God.

A friend once told me that God is a good Father, and a good Father takes responsibility for correcting his children. He doesn’t write them a rule book, then wait around for them to follow it. He is intimately involved in his children’s lives, correcting or guiding them when they deviate, and taking it upon himself to make sure his children know how it is that they ought to be living.

So I—and we—keep shooting at the target, apologizing when I’ve gone too far, steeling myself for the future when I’ve not gone far enough, and trusting God and the kind rebukes of those I trust to prove safe guidance in the long run.

A friend of mine, Patrick Beard of Indigenous Outreach International, asked me about Psalm 45:10-11, which I mentioned in my book on the Council of Nicea. I love that passage, and I want to share my answer to him with you.

So, here’s the email:

Ps. 45:10-11 is for me a more emotional version of “There is no one who has given up relatives and lands for my sake who shall not receive a hundredfold in this life and in the age to come, life everlasting” (loosely quoted, I didn’t look that up).

Psalm 45:10-11 is a more positive side of “If you love father and mother more than me, you are not worthy of me.”

Those quotes from Jesus are important (of course). We must put him first, or we are not worthy of him. Even better, if we forsake everything for him, we will receive a hundredfold in this life.

But Psalm 45:10-11 is the best of all. Forget your own people and your father’s house—leave them behind to come be in Jesus’ house—and the King will greatly desire your beauty.

The picture is a feminine one, of course, addressed to daughters, and I am not a daughter. The church is a bride; I am not a bride.

Nonetheless, this represents the call of Christ to me. Leave everything behind, and enter his household, and he will not only reward you and find you worthy, he will greatly desire your beauty.

Maybe this passage, to me, is like John 15 from Christ’s lips: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Continue in my love. If you keep my commandments, you shall continue in my love.” And, “You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.”

Somehow, the picture from Psalm 45:10-11 drove that home for me. It’s an incredible thought to me that the King might not only be pleased with me, but that he would count me a friend (greatly desire my beauty).

In 1 Chronicles 27, there is a list of all sorts of officers that served King David. The office I want is found in v. 33 and held by Hushai the Archite.

I got an email from a friend. He was trying to post something like it as a comment on my leukemia blog, but computer problems prevented it. I’m glad. His "comment" captures the imagination, stirs the heart, and thrills the spirit. I got his permission to print it here.

So, from Jeremiah Briggs:

The dragonfly story brought tears to my eyes (linked from my leukemia blog).

I wish, oh, how I wish people could see the scriptures in the light of a loving Creator who is trying deserately to redeem His creation from the darkness of self-ruin. The God of heaven and earth desires relationship over rules. How many there are, who see the Bible as a self-help book and not a wonderful book about a mystical realm with an all-powerful and wise King and his quest to redeem his subjects from the tyranny of a usurper!

It’s full of art, music, and poetry and with mythological creatures that are more real than we are. It is like Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide; it’s very dangerous in the hands of the wrong people.

The people who wrote it didn’t take a Christian writer’s seminar. They simply had an encounter with the One who loves them. The outcome of their writing is a picture painted in the heart of the reader that is unique to that person. It is like reading Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and then seeing the movie. Somehow the screen version lacks the ability to match the image that the writer has created in each one of us.

Perhaps thats why I’ve never tried to illustrate Tom Bombadil; I don’t think I can for one, and two, I don’t want to disturb the image in the hearts of others.

Though I’ve attempted numerous times to do illustrations from the Biblical narrative, my art is never from a literal perspective, which I find distastful because most attempts I’ve personally viewed are a very weak cup of coffee at best and at worst… well, I’ll avoid being disreapectful to those who have labored so hard to capture the unimaginable.

Michael the archangel throws down the devil
by Jeremiah Briggs, used with permission

It’s like they are trying to catch the wind. I make only a feeble attempt to interpret the image which is within me. For as the author said, "We must have eyes to see and ears to hear." Our hearts and spirits say "amen" to the message and perceive the image it renders.

I’ve tried many times to do an image based on the scripture, "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the LORD … " I think, after reading your post and the dragonfly post, I may have the composition I’m wanting, but as usual it, like others in the past, will reflect the Hidden Realm where what we see and what is really there are two entirely different things.

Last night I went to a Bible study. Most of the people I’d never talked to before. The topic was faith and works. Everyone agreed with me.

It wasn’t a dream.

I couldn’t believe it was happening. I’m somewhat scared to mention that they were all Baptists because maybe their church isn’t supposed to find out! I’d hate to expose them!

They were Bible believers, only they were reading and talking about the parts people really don’t want to discuss. Here’s some things they said:

• People get offended and don’t even want to discuss whether Genesis 1 might not be literal, but they’re constantly explaining Jesus’ words away by interpreting them figuratively. (“He really didn’t mean that.”)
• When Jesus said we need to cut things off if they cause us to sin, or when he said to forsake all our possessions, those are the places we need a more literal interpretation.
• “Faith alone” is the ultimate American doctrine, but as far as I can tell, the only place it occurs in the Bible is James 2:24, where it says “not by faith alone.”

At one point, I said to them, “So, you’ve already embraced the modern heresy that James meant what he said, and tonight we’re just working on reconciling all the things the Bible says about faith and works?”

They all nodded like that was a perfectly normal thing to hear at a Bible study, especially one consisting mostly of Baptists.

Now, keep in mind that my blood cell counts are half what they’re supposed to be. They’re so low that I’m going in to get two pints of blood at the hospital in 40 minutes. I can’t rule out the possibility that I hallucinated all this.

Gideon went along, though, and my wife seems to know I went to a Bible study.

By the way, beyond finding fellow heretics, I found men that deeply loved God, and in the midst of all the discussion of faith and works was a humble pursuit of how to better please God through faith and an exuberant praise for the mercy and power of the Lord Jesus.

It was so good that it’s just hard to believe it even happened.

The Impossible Part

I mentioned that my blood counts are low enough to need a transfusion. Sitting up for an hour and a half, unless I’m in a recliner, is exhausting. I walk around really, really slow so that I don’t get light-headed and my forearms and legs don’t burn from the effort.

Last night, though, I participated in robust, excited conversation for two hours, and when I was done I was full of energy. I had more energy than before I went in.

I’m the one living in this body. I can tell you that’s simply impossible. Mere enjoyment could never produce that.

Now impossible I don’t have any problems believing. Things just work right when God’s presence comes. I remember a diabetic missionary who used to remark that whenever we came to visit him he never needed insulin. He would check his sugar levels, and they were always good, even when we visited for several days.

I walked out of that Bible study wondering if I still really needed the transfusion.

(Um, this morning, it feels like I need a transfusion, though I still feel better than I did yesterday.)

Ok, gotta go.

This post won’t go up until July 9. By then I should be in the hospital, just finishing chemo, with no bone marrow and no immune system, and starting a 4-6 week recovery.

My 50th birthday is July 11. Happy birthday!

Tonight, though, June 29, I’m sitting in an RV, and except for the miracle of modern medicine, I’d be dying very rapidly. I may still die, I suppose, though I believe God has told me that’s not the end of this leukemia path for me.

Still, I think about death and eternal life. Even though I know it’s happened to thousands and millions of people, it still amazes me how our lives can go on and on for decades, seemingly so stable and normal, and then death quite suddenly shoves its way in.

So now I have this dread disease. Cancer.gov refers to it as “highly responsive, but usually fatal.” The time frame is usually under two years. At that point, you’re cured or dead.

I don’t want to die.

I don’t mean die on this earth. Everyone’s going to physically die. No sense worrying about that.

I mean I don’t want death to be the end. I want to live forever. The thought of disappearing into blackness is scary to me, and that thought, on occasions in my life, even as a Christian, has really shaken me.

And now, here I am, with a lot of reasons to think about death, and God is so close.

Today, it’s no problem to picture disappearing into the light of God because I’m already there. Today, it’s no problem believing Jesus’ promise of eternal life.

In fact, today, it’s no problem believing that the issue of life after death won’t be an issue for me for at least 20 years or so, even though doctors are going to wipe out my bone marrow and immune system next week.

Why should I be so unworried? Why should this time be the time for me to have the most peace I’ve ever had?

For the same reason those Vietnam POW’s gave thanks to God when they were released.

Because God is real, and his Gospel is real.

And so I sit thankful. I have been given this incredible peace, and such a wonderful opportunity to talk about it.

All because God thinks I can handle having leukemia dumped on me.

I feel honored, and I feel humbled.

I remember making rank once in the military after I refused to study for my test, choosing instead to devote myself to the study of God’s Word. The test scores required to make rank that cycle were lower than any before or after for several years.

I cried on my bed when I was told.

The rank didn’t matter that much to me, but that God would give me such a gift was overwhelming.

You can pray for me. You can think I’m strong. You can think I’m a good Christian, but I’m really not a very good Christian. I can give you lists of people who have lived lives of constant self-denial, while I’ve spent too much time in restaurants, occasionally failed to “get around” to giving, and simply indulged at times when I should have denied myself.

Can I really claim to have “buffeted” my body as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 9:27?

I doubt it, unless you apply the modern term “buffet,” as in a really indulgent restaurant, to the verse, which really isn’t a very funny joke.

People like Mother Theresa cause my conscience to be stricken. Amy Carmichael once wrote a book called If. I couldn’t read it. I’m in the church now, which has done some very positive work on my weak will, so now I can at least read it. Though it convicts me, I can see where God has moved me forward in things that book talks about.

I’ve traveled, and I’ve met foreign missionaries who have hung out all night in jungles being eaten by mosquitoes, then swam a dangerous river towing bible wrapped in plastic, all to bring the Gospel to those who don’t have it. Me? I’m a self-indulgent, wealthy American. Such men make me wonder whether I qualify as a Christian.

May God have mercy on me.

Only I don’t have to say “may.” God has already had mercy on me. He’s let me feel the process of dying, and he’s held my hand and told me he’s with me.

If leukemia kills me, the only thing that will matter is the terrible hurt that will cause my family. May God allow me to teach my children to trust God the way that he is teaching me to trust him. There is nothing like walking in the Spirit.

For me, though, all I can think is the wonderful kindness of being shown eternal life by God because leukemia is destroying my blood.

Why is this happening to me? Why is God allowing me, of all people, to bear this, to experience such wonderful assurances? Why is he choosing me, of all people, to get to carry this disease and talk about the power of Jesus Christ, who never leaves us nor forsakes us?

I do know why. I’m not a very good Christian, but I am a Christian. I am a man of faith, and I have chose to learn from Jesus.

It’s far better to be a lousy disciple than a non-disciple.

Don’t fool yourself, though. To get the blessings, you do have to make a choice to enroll in his school, to choose his ways, and to give up what you want.

Yeah, I know. It’s a terrible price. Your dreams of being a pilot, your college, your exercise, your business, and even your parents, siblings, wife, and children, all don’t mean much to him except as they are put in his service.

Of course, he made them all. I suppose that gives him a right to them.

Personally, it’s a price that today I regret less than ever.

Note: This post ignores all the questions about what the body of Christ is. This applies whether you’re including everyone who claims to be Christian and all churches that claim to be churches or not.

Further note: While most of the details of this post are still accurate, I actually have Blastic Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell Neoplasm (that link’s to my explanation of the disease), a particularly rare and aggressive lymphoma.

I’ve got a larger army of immune cells than you do. In fact, I probably have almost double the amount of those microscopic disease-destroying cells than you do.

And my cells are bigger than your cells.

What an army!

They’re killing me.

Those large cells are useless against the viruses they’re supposed to be fighting. They look impressive, so large and out in such intimidating numbers. But they have a couple of big problems.

They’re from the wrong source. My lymphocytes, the virus-fighting cells of the immune system, are all clones of one another. They did not come from the proper source, being made anew by my bone marrow. They have gotten their DNA–their programming and their growth–from one rogue cell, and they just march on … unchanged and unchanging.

They’re useless against the real enemies. Because they’re abnormal, they can’t recognize or kill viruses. They just tour my blood stream, looking impressive.

They’re crowding out everything else. These cells don’t like other cells being around. Neutrophils are smaller cells that fight bacteria. My blood has antibodies to destroy neutrophils. Apparently, only viruses are the real enemy now, and my white blood cell army only pretends to fight those.

Platelets are blood cells that thicken blood and join together to stop bleeding. My blood has antibodies that kill platelets. But what’s probably worst of all, that army of massive, mutant lymphocytes is crowding out the only cells that can really give life: the red blood cells. I have only 70% as many as I had 9 months ago when I was healthy.

The Body of Christ

This post isn’t about me. My problems are sent from God to open doors for ministry and to help me live by the only real life there is, that spiritual life from God which is fed to us by the blood of Jesus Christ.

But there are so many accurate analogies between my body and the body of Christ that it’s not funny. In fact, it’s scary.

Currently, the body of Christ has lots of people running around defending it. They’re large, and they are numerous. Their targets include works in any form as part of the Gospel, anything that doesn’t come from the Bible (and, in fact, anything which doesn’t come from their interpretation of the Bible), evolution and anything else they don’t agree with from science (like the earth going around the sun?), and homosexual marriage among non-Christians.

Their power is to defend a system that provides weekly speeches by professionals, a mix of professional and amateur musicians to lead singing, and a school with a few teaching positions for particularly gifted laymen. By and large, though, it’s a very small percentage of Christians that have an active role, or even an opportunity for an active role, in the system we have today.

So why does a system that is so clearly unscriptural and ineffective survive and thrive from year to year, decade to decade, and generation to generation?

Because the multitude of giant but mutant defenders of the faith are too busy opposing the works that Paul said Christians must maintain (Tit. 3:8), that Jesus died for (Tit. 2:13-14), and that James said are required for salvation (Jam. 2:14-26) to take on the real enemies of the faith.

In the meantime, the voices of true defenders of the faith are drowned out by the multitude of shouts of the cloned mutant giants. With warnings and threats, they have raised up an army of passive, ignorant, and superstitious Christians functioning as antibodies to drive out all other disease-fighting parts of the body of Christ.

The ability to fight invaders, the ability to stop the bleeding, the recognition of the real enemies, and, above all, the flow of life from the real blood of Christ are stifled.

We’re killing ourselves, led by the multitude of cloned mutant giants.

A Brief Addition on the Blood of Christ

The real blood of Christ is life-giving!

Let me tell you about the incredible difference between having life-giving red blood cells coursing through your veins and having those same cells crowded out by mutant, giant, cloned, and ineffective white blood cells, possessing no life in themselves.

In 2006, I ran a 31-mile course on a small mountain near Huntsville, AL. One of the loops, which we ran (well, mostly walked; it was littered with big rocks covered by leaves) 3 times, had a steep hill at the end of it. I ran up it the first time, but by the 3rd time around, I was happy to walk the quarter-mile or so, breathing hard at the top, loving the feel of the mountain air, and feeling alive with the trees around me.

When I got home my legs were so sore that I stopped in front of the porch to plan how to get up the two steps so I could go in the house.

But I was charged with energy; thrilled with my success; delighted with life.

I’m living in an RV right now, and without running any miles, some days I breathe hard after I climb its two steps to get inside. My legs aren’t sore, so I don’t have to plan how to climb those steps. My energy wanes regularly, and I’m thrilled with life only because I choose to be.

Friends, that’s what traditional Christianity is doing to you!!!

Can you understand that’s why John says that if you don’t keep Christ’s commands, you don’t know God?! (1 Jn. 2:3-4).

John was angry at "those who are trying to seduce you" (1 Jn. 2:27) because they were robbing the people of God of life. They were teaching the people of God to fight the wrong things.

Seeing the Problem

You can’t see my disease. If you walked in my office to see me doing barbell rows (yeah, I keep a barbell in my office) or to see me on the floor doing twists to keep my back from going out, you would think I was a normal, healthy individual.

Well, okay, you probably wouldn’t think I was normal.

It’s not until you ask me to function that you’d see something was wrong. I wouldn’t be able to keep up with you in a soccer game. If we work on a carpentry project all morning, it wouldn’t take long for you to notice that I’m resting a lot and that I don’t look right.

It’s starting to show in other ways, too. I’m growing my third plum-covered bump on my torso as of yesterday. That’s the product of my body attacking itself, my immune system doing damage to perfectly good tissue.

Are you catching the analogy?

Have you seen the plum-colored bumps on the body of Christ? Have you seen those clusters of damaged people, beat up and rejected by an immune system run wild and led by the cloned mutant giants?

The mutant giants want you to pay attention to all the good flesh. The parts of the body they have not yet damaged.

That’s as stupid as my pointing out that I can still walk many miles as long as I don’t get too fast while ignoring the massive drop in energy and endurance I’ve experienced. That’s as stupid as my ignoring an inch-and-a-half wide raised purple bump on my back and the two that have come after it. (I have to be honest and admit I ignored the bumps for weeks until the drop in energy became obvious and a friend ordered me to go to the doctor.)

Leukemia’s an excellent picture of what’s happening to the body of Christ.

Correcting the Problem

Thank you to the West Clinic in Corinth, MS and to the men and women who have devoted their lives to healing people like me.

But who’s devoted their life to healing the body of Christ? And are they gathered together in one clinic, reviewing each other’s work, and helping each other to work toward one common goal? Do they know what that goal is?

The people who are fighting Leukemia are studying. They’re researching. They’re learning all the time. They’re looking at the problem and discussing it.

But before they ever began, they made sure they knew how a healthy body is supposed to work, at least as well as humanly possible. They went to college, and they got in a degree in some medical field.

But Christians can’t just go to college. Too many Bible colleges have studied the modern body, riddled with diseases. They don’t know what a healthy body is like.

Am I being judgmental?

I don’t think so. I think it’s bizarre that we would read that the early Christians devoted themselves every day to the apostles teaching, to the breaking of bread and to fellowship, and that we would ignore the fact that we don’t even encourage daily fellowship.

I think it’s bizarre that the book of Acts would say that the early Christians had all things in common, and that we would claim that was only in Jerusalem without doing any research to see if that’s so.

I think it’s bizarre that the earliest church manual in existence says we ought to seek out the faces of the saints every day and be prepared to share everything with them, and we would act like tithing (Of all the laws that we could drag into the church from the Old Testament, why that one?) at a weekly speech to support a professional staff and a building is the same thing. Good grief, that’s morally reprehensible.

I think it’s bizarre that Justin in the mid-2nd century could talk about living familiarly with one another and Tertullian in the early-3rd century could talk about sharing everything except our wives, and that we would ignore what was obviously the normal Christian life of the 1st and 2nd centuries.

We’re diseased, friends!

No wonder we marvel at John’s statement that those who are born of God do not sin. We rightly point out that the Greek of that verse means something to the effect of “continually sin,” but that doesn’t change the fact that, really, we don’t understand the grace that takes away sin’s power any more than I can understand the endurance that would have allowed me to run the 10K I was scheduled to run with my secretary.

Help! Is there a doctor in the house?

As I write this on June 25, I only have a preliminary diagnosis from my family doctor of Leukemia. It’s Saturday, and I have an appointment with the cancer center in Corinth, MS on Monday to confirm the diagnosis and find out more.

I’m scheduling this post for June 28 so that my appointment would be passed and I’d know I really have Leukemia (June 27 note: I do). If they say I don’t, then I won’t let this run, and I have to admit, I’ll be really disappointed.

Here’s why.

First, when you’re a Christian and the purpose of your body is to glorify God, then there is really no difference between a clean bill of health and a diagnosis of leukemia. God is simply giving you the tools you need to do what you’re supposed to do with your body.

How could having leukemia be a good tool? In a myriad of ways.

The Pros and Cons of Contracting Leukemia as a Christian

I was weighing the pros and cons of having leukemia, and there some pretty significant pros:

• The Scriptures say that Wisdom is the principle thing. Therefore, it says that "in all your getting, get understanding" (Prov. 4:7). Along those lines, the Psalmist prays, "Teach us to number our days, so that we may obtain a heart of wisdom" (Ps. 90:12). Leukemia is a quick way to number my days!
• There’s people to see and talk to that I would never be able to talk to otherwise.
• It should be easier to display faith in Christ to these people because they’re going to be expecting me to think something bad is happening to me.
• In general, any statements that I make that God can be trusted in every situation will carry more authority than they would if everything was going well for me.
• Living and dying are in the hands of our Father in heaven. Saints don’t die because they have leukemia. Saints die because it’s the will of God for them (Is. 57:1-2; Ps. 116:15).
• I have a friend with cancer, and now I get to go through this with her … consoling others with the consolation I’ve received and all that.

The cons?

• Distress on my family
• I can barely exercise at all (I think God told me he didn’t like my obsession with exercise anyway)
• There’s a real danger of focus on self: self-pity, loving the attention, or taking over conversations by bringing up leukemia

As you can see, the pros outweigh the cons by a lot except perhaps the distress on my family. But they’re trusting God really well, which is awesome.

So I’m excited to enter this new phase in my life.

Divine Healing

I believe in divine healing. I’ve seen it happen.

Unless God really speaks to you that I’m wrong, please don’t pray for me to be healed and possibly ruin this new ministry God has called me to.

You can pray for me to be healed in his time. I don’t think I’m supposed to die.

What God’s Been Saying to Me

If you’ve been reading my blog, then you know that I don’t write that God told me this or God told me that. I’ve heard God speak clearly in terms I felt comfortable repeating to others, but not often.

Except this week. From the day last week when I finally became convinced that there’s something badly wrong with my health and yesterday when the doctor told me a stress test was unnecessary because he could see the enlarged, abnormal lymphocytes in my blood smear (along with anemia and low platelets)—between then and now, I believe God has spoken several things to me pretty clearly:

• I’m not going to die (real soon, anyway)
• This is supposed to be happening to me
• My attitude toward exercise has always been too positive
• I’m supposed to eat healthy and heartily because my nutrition is more important than weight loss. (This was obviously correct now that I know the problem’s leukemia, but the direction from God came before I knew.)
• If I want to lose weight, I’m allowed to exercise better self-control in the evening, but otherwise no dieting for weight loss.

I guess I’ve put myself and my Christianity on the spot here, huh? If I’m dead in a few months, whether from leukemia or from a car wreck, I’ll just be one more false prophet. I didn’t know what else to do but be honest and let you judge the success I’m experiencing following Christ.

By the way, I gave my brothers and sisters in the church an opportunity to tell me they didn’t bear witness to the things I think I heard from God. If they told me they disagreed, I wouldn’t have posted this.

So I guess it’s we and our Christianity that are on the spot.

The Grace of God and His Gifts

My family’s doing really well with all this. My attitude’s not just good, I’m thrilled! That’s purely the grace of God, and I want to give thanks.

By the way, don’t be jealous that it’s not you who gets to have leukemia and the ministry that goes with it. We each have our own gift, and yours matters as much as mine. I’m just expressing my zeal and gratefulness for the gift God has given me.

And perhaps correcting the mistaken impression that it’s not a gift.

By the way, I found out a friend of mine has a blog, and the first post I saw from him—just tonight!—is a writing by someone else who found their cancer to be a gift and a calling.

Today I got an email from someone that left no return address. It was about gnosticism, a deviation from early Christianity that is enjoying a bit of a revival today, but not in its original form. (Click the link to read more about gnosticism in a new window.) Gnosticism molded itself to the intellectual/spiritual atmosphere of the Roman empire, and it has molded itself to the same atmosphere in America today.

As a result, those who are trying to revive gnosticism pass themselves off as enlightened and open-minded.

But they’re not enlightened or open-minded. They’re just wrong.

There are some things that are just true. History is not what you make it to be. History is what it is, and you are either learning it accurately or you’re fooling yourself.

This person wrote me and said:

If you base your information about gnosticism from a book by a person who called them heretics your information is going to be wrong.

Is that true?

That sounds plausible, maybe even apparently true, but on what basis should it be true? If I learn about a religion, and I decide that religion is wrong, then that means everything I learned about it is false? How is that logical?

When I was a young Christian, I loved reading “cult” books. I especially like Walter Martin, and he especially liked to take apart Jehovah’s Witness and Mormon doctrine. He most definitely called them heretics.

As a result, I heard Jehovah’s Witnesses, whom I talked to somewhat regularly, warn me that Walter Martin’s portrayal of them was inaccurate.

But you know what I found? The more I talked to Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, the more I saw that Walter Martin was right on the money about them. He had done his homework. Everything he told me panned out.

Now, it’s true that his speech was inflammatory. It’s true that he put emphasis on the more embarrassing things, while both groups tended to avoid talking about those things.

That’s normal, but it doesn’t make what he said inaccurate.

Most of what I learned about gnosticism was learned from Irenaeus’ very long book, Against Heresies, written around A.D. 185. I’ve read it twice, and I’ve referred to it often, so I’m very familiar with it.

Later, though, I got my hands on copies of gnostic writings. (Well, not my hands actually because I found them all on the internet.) The Gospel of Mary Magdalene and The Apocryphon of John are a couple I read.

Those both jived completely with what Irenaeus said about gnosticism. And although Irenaeus spent most of his time on the Valentinians, the group with which he was most familiar, he was careful to say that gnostic teachers were always inventing new doctrines, so what he was saying wouldn’t apply in every detail to all gnostic groups.

Every one of them generates something new, day by day, according to his ability, for no one is deemed "perfect," who does not develop among them some mighty fictions. (Against Heresies I:18:1)

The point is to find out what is true. I took the time to verify that what Irenaeus said is true.

The real point in writing him off as a heretic hunter is to avoid what’s true. The person who wrote me accuses me of being wrong because I lean on Irenaeus, but my concern is truth, so I have done the work to have a solid basis for what I say. Supporters of gnosticism write Irenaeus off because they don’t like what he says, not because they’ve taken the time to determine whether it’s accurate.

When it comes to history and religion, what’s true remains true no matter what you wish were true.