Wednesday, April 04, 2007
This I believe
The Lenten study series at my church has been on NPR's "This I Believe" series and the accompanying book. Some of us accepted the pastor's challenge to write about what we believe, in 500 words or less. ...
--ER
By The Erudite Redneck
The preacher’s message was so clear I thought I could draw it. So I did.
With a dainty “lady’s” pen and pad from Mama’s purse, a huge black thing with a vicious metal snap and a hard, flat bottom with sharp corners, I drew what I heard the preacher say.
At top: “God,” just the word, with some lines for light rays around it. At bottom: A stick figure of a boy: Me. Between, another stick figure, a cross, for Jesus.
I put the cross there because the preacher said, according to the Old, Old Story, God loved us so much that he put it there: “A Savior came from Glory.”
I looked up and Mama smiled at my handiwork. As a hymn played, I stepped out into the aisle and I walked to the front, and I prayed with the preacher.
This I believe: At that moment, the spirit of Jesus, my friend, helper, Savior in ways even more mysterious to me today than then, at age 8 – his spirit of honesty, openness, willingness, kindness, love and justice -- did, in fact, come into my heart.
Grace, Grace – “marvelous, infinite, matchless grace, freely bestowed” -- found me, in a Southern Baptist church in a small Southern town. In that congregation I first learned my privilege and obligation as a Christian to give grace away as freely as it was given to me.
That was then. Jimmy Carter knows. Bill Moyers knows. I dare say Bill Clinton knows.
The sprit of Jesus saves.
The spirit of Jesus saved me from racism when in my teens, the Ku Klux Klan tried to resurrect. I could not square such rhetoric and meanness with the Gospel as preached at that little church.
The spirit of Jesus saved me from the mood of greed that dominated the 1980s when I was in college, a worldly spirit perfectly depicted in a familiar dorm-room poster of the era: “Poverty Sucks,” it says, over a big photo of a big man, a self-satisfied prig wearing jodhpurs, tweed jacket, sporty cap and riding boots, glass in hand, wine in an ice bucket on the bumper of a gaudy Rolls Royce.
The spirit of Jesus kept me in the 1990s, lingering, loitering it seemed at times, whispering, tickling the ears of my soul, pricking my heart, even as I went my own way in my own prodigality, wasting my substance, living riotously.
Not long ago, the spirit of Jesus wrecked a particularly stubborn cultural vestige of my upbringing, destroying my selfish, unthinking bias against same-sex orientation, as sure as he destroyed the money changers’ tables in the temple.
But, I want to be greedy. I want to waste my substance. I want to think myself better than others, black others, homosexual others, other nations' others, other religions' others. It’s natural.
There is God, me, and the spirit of Jesus, saving me from myself, when I let myself go. It’s supernatural, but really so clear you can draw it.
-30-
--ER
By The Erudite Redneck
The preacher’s message was so clear I thought I could draw it. So I did.
With a dainty “lady’s” pen and pad from Mama’s purse, a huge black thing with a vicious metal snap and a hard, flat bottom with sharp corners, I drew what I heard the preacher say.
At top: “God,” just the word, with some lines for light rays around it. At bottom: A stick figure of a boy: Me. Between, another stick figure, a cross, for Jesus.
I put the cross there because the preacher said, according to the Old, Old Story, God loved us so much that he put it there: “A Savior came from Glory.”
I looked up and Mama smiled at my handiwork. As a hymn played, I stepped out into the aisle and I walked to the front, and I prayed with the preacher.
This I believe: At that moment, the spirit of Jesus, my friend, helper, Savior in ways even more mysterious to me today than then, at age 8 – his spirit of honesty, openness, willingness, kindness, love and justice -- did, in fact, come into my heart.
Grace, Grace – “marvelous, infinite, matchless grace, freely bestowed” -- found me, in a Southern Baptist church in a small Southern town. In that congregation I first learned my privilege and obligation as a Christian to give grace away as freely as it was given to me.
That was then. Jimmy Carter knows. Bill Moyers knows. I dare say Bill Clinton knows.
The sprit of Jesus saves.
The spirit of Jesus saved me from racism when in my teens, the Ku Klux Klan tried to resurrect. I could not square such rhetoric and meanness with the Gospel as preached at that little church.
The spirit of Jesus saved me from the mood of greed that dominated the 1980s when I was in college, a worldly spirit perfectly depicted in a familiar dorm-room poster of the era: “Poverty Sucks,” it says, over a big photo of a big man, a self-satisfied prig wearing jodhpurs, tweed jacket, sporty cap and riding boots, glass in hand, wine in an ice bucket on the bumper of a gaudy Rolls Royce.
The spirit of Jesus kept me in the 1990s, lingering, loitering it seemed at times, whispering, tickling the ears of my soul, pricking my heart, even as I went my own way in my own prodigality, wasting my substance, living riotously.
Not long ago, the spirit of Jesus wrecked a particularly stubborn cultural vestige of my upbringing, destroying my selfish, unthinking bias against same-sex orientation, as sure as he destroyed the money changers’ tables in the temple.
But, I want to be greedy. I want to waste my substance. I want to think myself better than others, black others, homosexual others, other nations' others, other religions' others. It’s natural.
There is God, me, and the spirit of Jesus, saving me from myself, when I let myself go. It’s supernatural, but really so clear you can draw it.
-30-
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What a beautiful, beautiful essay. And a worthy entrant for "This I Believe." Menchen would be proud.
# posted by 
: 4:43 PM
: 4:43 PM
Well, thanks. :-) But if you mean H.L. Mencken, the freethinker, he would probably call me a fool. :-)
Oh, but as a compliment on the writing, I'm flattered.
Mencken was a notorious lover of good writing, and impatient with bad writing. One of his remarks, actually, is my favorite quote about the craft: "People can't write because they can't hink."
Mencken was a notorious lover of good writing, and impatient with bad writing. One of his remarks, actually, is my favorite quote about the craft: "People can't write because they can't hink."
Oh, my. Thanks, Geoff. I am not up up on theologians! :-)
(I *knew* braingirl would know how to spell Mencken! Sorry to doubt ya, amiga ...)
(I *knew* braingirl would know how to spell Mencken! Sorry to doubt ya, amiga ...)
Puzzling. The only thing "fundamentalist" in what I wrote is the setting. Very careful to use the ambigious "spirit of Jesus" to signify that, to be honest, I don't know whether it is the Lord God Almighty himself in the Person of the Son, or Jesus in the squishier and mystical "where two or three of y'all get together, there I am in the midst of you" sense -- but that whichever, the point is, it TOOK that day back in '72, and my God consciousness, in the Judeo-Christian sense, has followed me around like the bowl of Creme of Wheat in that old TV spot ever since.
'Cause this ain't me:
"J. Gresham Machen(1881-1937), U.S. Presbyterian theologian and one of the most eloquent spokesmen for the conservative position in the theological controversies of the 1920s and 1930s. He fought the good fight against the inroads of liberal theology and the hypocrisy of those Presbyterian ministers who vowed on their ordination to uphold the divine authority of the Word of God in Holy Scripture, and then spent the rest of their lives preaching doctrines contrary to the Word of God. ...
"Machen's leading contribution to the conservative cause in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy was his book "Christianity and Liberalism" (1923), which contended that theological liberalism could not call itself Christian in any Biblical or historic sense at all."
Or, it could be that I actually do remain mostly traditional in my theology, just more free-wheeling when it comes to doctrine, and my concept of Grace has expanded to the point where I don't think I have to be right, or that anyone else has to agree with me on anything, to be "right" with God.
'Cause this ain't me:
"J. Gresham Machen(1881-1937), U.S. Presbyterian theologian and one of the most eloquent spokesmen for the conservative position in the theological controversies of the 1920s and 1930s. He fought the good fight against the inroads of liberal theology and the hypocrisy of those Presbyterian ministers who vowed on their ordination to uphold the divine authority of the Word of God in Holy Scripture, and then spent the rest of their lives preaching doctrines contrary to the Word of God. ...
"Machen's leading contribution to the conservative cause in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy was his book "Christianity and Liberalism" (1923), which contended that theological liberalism could not call itself Christian in any Biblical or historic sense at all."
Or, it could be that I actually do remain mostly traditional in my theology, just more free-wheeling when it comes to doctrine, and my concept of Grace has expanded to the point where I don't think I have to be right, or that anyone else has to agree with me on anything, to be "right" with God.
... and, of course, there could've been some kind of anti-conformity thing going on, with the Klan, and a wave of nostalgic neoliberalism in college. And the '90s haunting coulda just bene garden-variety guilt.
But I can't explain the gay thing outside of an epiphany -- and it came the first time I saw the infamous UCC "Bouncer"commercial, which spoke to me 1., because I'd been trying to rethink my thinking on homosexuality for quite a while anyway, and 2., I was a bouncer for a short while, and the spot just grabbed me.
But I can't explain the gay thing outside of an epiphany -- and it came the first time I saw the infamous UCC "Bouncer"commercial, which spoke to me 1., because I'd been trying to rethink my thinking on homosexuality for quite a while anyway, and 2., I was a bouncer for a short while, and the spot just grabbed me.
I meant "J. Gresham Machen". Oops. It was early and I hadn't had enough coffee yet. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
Machen was one of the first important systematic theologians to explicate what became known as the "Princeton theology" which we now call fundamentalism. Go figure.
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Machen was one of the first important systematic theologians to explicate what became known as the "Princeton theology" which we now call fundamentalism. Go figure.
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