The dork in me wanted to type this post in blue, but I'd like to let you know I resisted.
My foray back into the church is already partially documented, somewhere on this blog. It was fairly uneventful, marked mainly by my own insecurities based on where I had spent the previous decade. Things were different in the church when I returned though, for sure. A thing called "contemporary" had invaded churches. People wore jeans-weird. They drank coffee in church-weird. The hymnals were gone-weird. Even more weird to me were the ministers of music-no longer were they decked out in suits and conducting with imaginary wands hymns that included all but the 3rd stanza. What had replaced them were (sometimes) hairy guys wearing "stylish" jeans and playing guitars. I sort of missed the well educated (most of the time) music ministers, and wondered when being able to sort of play the guitar qualified you to be a minister of music. But then I decided that maybe that didn't matter. Maybe. In the end, I was good with most of this, because maybe none of that stuff mattered in the first place. Perhaps?
The first Christian "best seller" I picked up after this re-entry into the Christian atmosphere was a book about a painting and a guy named Elvis. I honestly don't remember much about the book, but I do remember the guy that wrote the book being pretty sure that the church was getting it all wrong. Or that the way we did church was wrong. Or the reasons we did church were wrong. Or maybe it was the fact that we "did" church in the first place that made things wrong.
I don't remember exactly, because I gave the book away. See, it raised a huge stink with some people I knew. I'm sure I totally had something to do with that. I hope to my dear Lord above that I've matured and grown in the past 5ish years. I don't actually remember a whole lot of how or what went down - just that a lot of people didn't like the book and things got a little personal and weird about the book. And me. Because I sort of agreed with the author. About church. Or something.
And I do recall rather vocal Christians making fun of the author. I mean like really rude stuff about his appearance and related stuff. That made me sick. Literally. I'm struggling to think of an instance where it's ever okay to attack someone over... anything, although I'm sure I can think of ten times I've done that, and probably recently.
Anyway.
Right after this whole instance, another book was floating around that everyone called a "must read." I politely refused to read it. I had been down that road before, and I decided to forgo any other dalliances with Christan... literature. I decided to stick with Beth Moore for awhile. I was pretty sure Beth Moore was okay, although she does get in trouble too for not really preaching the Word and/or teaching to men.
Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe once you write a book, people decide that this gives them a free pass to criticize the book, you, your way of life, what kind of spectacles you wear, your faith, and a few other things thrown in for good measure.
I'm pretty sure that's not what this is about, but it still bugs me. A lot.
Anyway. (again)
What I did take away from that Elvis book was that it was okay to acknowledge that you weren't comfortable with the church. I was already feeling that way, but didn't really know what to do about it. It was just nice to see that someone else thought that same thing. It drove me to a study of Acts, and the more I read that, the more I realized that things were, um, not good.
That's the short version of that.
So, I didn't read this other book, which was titled something about blue being like jazz, because I was like, "Um, no thanks."
I didn't think much more about it.
So fast forward 5ish years, to recently, and my friend writes a blog post about this Blue and Jazz book. Basically what my friend said was that years ago he read this Blue book and then wrote a pretty harsh critique about it. Over the years, he felt badly about that critique, so he wrote a retraction. He put it on Twitter, and then the Jazz author read the blog post, and wrote my friend back, saying that it was really kind of my friend to do that.
It was pretty neat to watch. I was impressed by my friend's ability to publicly admit he was wrong, impressed by the graciousness of the author, and then promptly forgot about it.
A couple of days later, I was at my favorite place on earth. Well, sort of. The thrift store. There I found a copy of this Blue book for $1.38. My curiosity was piqued, since I had seen all of this play out just a couple of days before, so I bought it, figuring that if it was a bad book, I could just re-donate it.
And can I say that although I haven't ever written a book (and I'm biting my lip in order to not say "yet" because that seems a little ridiculous) if I did write a book, and it ended up in a thrift store, I would be sad. That's really dumb too, because unless it's like your favorite book ever, who holds on to books for a really long time? Okay fine, I would, but my small, cheap book shelf won't hold too many books, so I'm forced to donate them on a regular basis.
(While I admit that my dream house is a mud hut in Sudan, would it be wrong to wish it had this? Of course, if it did, I'd need a nanny to take care of all my kids so I could just read all the time. And housekeeper so I wouldn't have to clean. And a cook, so I wouldn't have to, you know, cook. I could just read all the time, right there in that chair. This isn't exactly what this post was supposed to be about, now that I think about it...)
But still, my having my feeling hurt by this would be silly. Who cares if your book ends up at the thrift store?
My brain is hard to handle today.
Back to the point. I read the Blue book and it really did make me think. A lot. I liked reading the way he writes, if that makes sense. I appreciated the honesty of how he wrote too. Then the book became sort of an inspiration for me, not for what he said, but how he said it. He was so unapologetic. I apologize too much. (or not enough, depending on the situation) But usually I apologize too much. I'm sure there is some deep seeded, really bad reason I do that. I'm not in the mood to drum up those reasons, but I do realize that it's annoying. Maybe that's why I loved his honesty of writing about his journey. He didn't bathe the story in all these regrets of doubting and testing and trying and searching. He just lays it all out and lets the story do what it's going to do or not going to do to the reader.
That was refreshing.
For me, the apologizer.
I tend to do this especially in my own spiritual journey. I've spent almost as much time getting over the decade of debauchery as I did IN the decade. And there were stages. First the guilt. Then the guilt mixed with apologies. Then the sweeping it under the rug stage. Then back to guilt.
So I like the way this guy just lays it out there. And I think I kept waiting for him to apologize. You know, tell us all he was so sorry for searching and wandering so long. I was wanting him to long for all the days and years he wasted while he was searching.
And he doesn't.
Huh.
It's almost like he told God he was sorry, maybe, and then just accepted the forgiveness and.... moved on?
What a novel concept.
And maybe he didn't, but that's what I pondered.
And it kinda changed the way I thought about my own journey. "Well, that's how I got here and so now I'm here."
The end.
And honestly I thought this guy was like 60. I have no idea why. I knew nothing about him. I thought he was writing all this from some wise place he arrived-maybe like a huge mountain where he looked down and saw the path that took him to God. Maybe that's why he was so okay with it all.
Nope. We're the same age, I recently learned.
That was almost as amazing to me as this guy's story was. Just so simple and clean.
I have no idea if he is sorry about it all. I don't know if he feels badly about anything he did. But that's not the point really. He just kinda continued to encourage me to share me and my store unashamedly. Because maybe when you show guilt about something even thought you don't feel the guilt anymore, it casts a shadow on what you share. I mean, I do feel badly that I grieved my Savior for so long, but we're over that now. And this guy just showed me that the way you approach your story might make a huge difference too. Not proud of what you did, but also feeling the beauty and grace that washed that story from your eternal record.
And I'm not endorsing this book, before anyone gets their Holy underpants in a wad. I'm not going down that road again. A lot of people don't like this book, and seem to need to tell others they didn't like it. Fine. If sharing your unsolicited opinion makes you feel better, have at it. I'm a little tired of hearing about what people don't like or don't agree with, but that's just me. Read the Word and agree with that and be done with it.
This guy also raised money to make his book into a movie. I don't know how I feel about that, since people are dying of hunger and thirst and lack of medical care. But maybe if this movie saves one person, it would be worth it? I don't know. That's not the point either.
I hope I remember what the point was.
