Category Archives: repentance

a Penn State of mind.

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The Penn State Scandal.

Doesn’t this all feel so episodic?  The media dishes these dirty stories out like an American soap opera – quick & ruthless.  The roving eye of justice has once again settled on the next big celebrity.  As a society we’re not quite so interested in the injustice of young boys being molested as we are in who got fired, how and why.  If America lay dying in a hospital room, her IV would be connected to a poisonous concoction of celebrity blood and Reachemol.

It’s almost as if we are all walking in a haze and occasionally slapped back into reality by our own missteps.  Even then, we were more concerned with the legal or moral aspect of Joe Paterno’s obligations than that he was just plain obligated.

I can’t help but wonder how many other staff of Jerry Sandusky‘s organization or Penn State knew of these heinous acts.  Am I to believe that only 3 men were cognizant of Sandusky’s crimes?  America is in a “soul-searching” mode now.  The basic question is, “How could evil be so institutionalized?”  Why didn’t someone speak up before?

I was sitting at a Caribou Coffee to study recently when, in an unexpected way, my blood began to boil.  I had forgotten to bring my headphones and was at the mercy of the banter surrounding me.  I couldn’t help overhearing the two men sitting right next to me.  As I was sitting down, they touched on Penn State but spent the majority of 20 minutes degrading women with stereotypes and tales of debauchery.

They were older, looking to be in their late 40′s and late 50′s.  I can’t remember another time recently where I felt such righteous indignation toward others.  Perhaps it was a combination of my own story and that I work with children which served to stoke my anger toward two strangers.  They traded rants and raves of sexual misadventures and derogatory assumptions of manhood.  While I never heard them say anything explicitly illegal, I recognized something innate to the human soul.

It was sitting beside these two men that I found the answer to the question, “How can men have turned a blind eye to the rape of young boys?”

It’s because Penn State is more than a state university.  It’s a state of being.  It’s that place where secrets are locked away, quiet whispers are indigenous and furtive glances betray guilt.  If you’ve ever watched the show COPS you have seen someone handcuffed and yelling, “What did I do?”  That’s the state of mind that Penn State represents.  It’s where you’re so drunk or high that you don’t know you’re handcuffed to begin with.  The Penn State mind is institutional because it’s innate in human nature.

I won’t say that these two men at Caribou were guilty of something illegal or that they would be quiet if confronted with the horror’s of Jerry Sandusky.  I will say that they, along with the rest of us, can be far more interested in image management and ‘reputation relief’ than the rescue and redemption of young boys or a lost generation at that.  The Penn State of mind manifest.

Somewhere, a guilty coach is breathing a sigh of relief.  On November 5th, JoePa was sacrificed on the altar of “justice”.  The unknown deviant can stay hidden.  We demand the blood of giants for our sense of justice when the simple fact is, it’s the blood of our sons and daughters that are being sacrificed.  The Penn State of mind persists.  We have been shocked back to reality for a moment but will we slowly roll back into our slumber?

I recently heard the angelic voice of Sandra McCracken singing a hymn titled “Justice Will Roll Down.”  Here are the lyrics to that hymn.  Here is to the truth that justice isn’t institutional but it’s personified in the person of Jesus Christ:

Oh my love, you have grown so cold

To the world outside, to the house next door

She who has been loved much, has so much to give

Mercy is the fragrance, of the broken

Justice will roll down, oh justice will roll down

From high upon those mountains with a mighty river sound

It will roll down

It will roll down

Oh my child, I will be your light

In your secret pain, in the dark of night

No enemy, no conqueror, will steal your life from me

I am your salvation, and your victory.

Soon oh soon, when the trumpet sounds

every knee shall bend, every heart will pound

I have made a new world, where the servant is the King

oppression will be over, and the slave set free

love sick_an elementary curriculum_part two.

By Posted in future, goals, hope, love, repentance, submission Tagged , , , , , , 4 Comments

Thank you to the incomparable Iris Hartness for writing this lesson!  Please note the Creative Commons License at the bottom.


1 John 1:5-2:2

The key to forgiveness?  Confession! Continue reading →

backroom theology.

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I remember the first time I made a living wage from vocational ministry.  It was actually an internship in Knoxville, TN.  Ironically, most internships do not normally pay for all the blood, sweat and tears required for the role but this one did.  Regardless, it was all I had time for and I wasn’t earning money any other way.

I think because I loved it so much, it was really just the beginning of a path that would lead me to other ministries and inevitably a higher income.  Now this doesn’t mean that I was getting rich.  I went on to live with church members, in their basements, spare rooms and rental properties.

What this did, however, was provide the space and time necessary to truly reflect on why I’m doing what I’m doing and how to do it better.  For that, I’ll be forever grateful.  Eventually, my wife and I were able to purchase our own home with all the pride and accoutrement to accompany it.

Now I had the space and place to retreat into my own creativity and theological reflection.  With an office to accompany this productivity, I might as well have been in the NY Financial District staring down the charging bull and ready to take on the world.  I was a professional.

Unfortunately, instead of climbing the ladder into more ministerial prestige and honor, I pretty much flung myself off the ladder and landed with a loud thud in the dirt below.  Because of many poor choices, my grip had slipped and the world I knew came crashing down around me.  Crumpled and wounded, without a job and not even yet prodigal because there wasn’t any money to spend, I was desperate to reestablish my worth as a man and husband.  In just a few months, we were back in the spare bedroom of a family member.

No office, no private space for creativity or reflection and most importantly, no paycheck.

What’s a seriously wounded person, in need of healing but still thriving for expression to do?  I think it’s in times like these that we can finally realize God’s presence, both manifest and surreal.  At least, that’s what happened to me.  I imagine the Father to be like that in Rembrandt’s “Prodigal Son”.  The painting reveals the father’s face but not the son’s, who has buried his shamefully.  Yet, a close look at the face of the father reveals a slight mischief in his crooked smile, a knowing of what has been and what is to come.

For me, what was to come was the backroom of a major retail giant.  I gained employment and even attained a fancy title, ‘Backroom Logistics’.  In reality, it was the loading dock and storeroom for everything from towels to cereal to yoga mats.  My office now had 30 foot ceilings, industrial fans and little laser guns to scan bar codes.

To top it all off, if was open all night long.  You might call that 3rd shift…I called it office hours.  Neat right?  I mean the prestige of it all was off the charts.  It was in this dimly lit space that God decided to make regular appointments with me.

While climbing up ladders, scanning a box, bringing that box down and repeating the process, a rhythm developed that not enabled me to do this quickly but gladly.  I remember one time being in the narrow space of the storeroom aisles, reflecting on all the places I had been and all the things I had done.

The enemy named ‘pity’ had been creeping slowly and steadily into my thoughts.  I was feeling claustrophobic by all this cardboard.  This was my office.  Suddenly and without warning, the voice of the Father spoke over my pity, his arms wrapped around me and as deep calls to deep I heard these words, “I still love you and I’ve still called you.”

Tears welled up and I had to stop moving.  Shame was overcome with grace and affirmation, not at the hands of flesh but by that of God’s Spirit.  I was reminded after years of professionalism and prestige that God was far more interested in the shape of my heart than the shape of my office.  My audience was no longer dressed fancy and didn’t show up to hear my eloquent speaking.  In fact, we all wore the same uniform of red and khaki.

Yet, I sensed purpose on the horizon.  Over time, slowly and steadily, I regained worth as a man and husband, not so much from what I did but from who I belonged to.  This backroom with it’s dust, machinery and cursing co-workers became my sanctuary.  The corporate ladder I had climbed was replaced by a literal ladder.

It was my new pulpit.  I had been called to bear witness of Christ to those who wouldn’t dare darken the doors of a church building.  So after all this, can I ask you a simple question?

Where are you today?  In that space you call ‘intimate’ where only you and God co-habitate, what is the Father speaking?  Wherever your “backroom” is, I urge you to listen and be amazed at the rhythm of grace flowing from our loving Creator.  Your worth as a person doesn’t come from what you do, it comes from who you call Father and your Father in turn call’s you “Loved.”

This post originally appeared on Jonathan Martin’s blog.

don’t make me angry.

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The Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962). Cover art b...

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I have a counselor and mentor who spent a lot of time working in a maximum security prison as well as treatment facilities for sex offenders.  Almost two years ago now, he once asked me, “Do you know what the common theme is for all the inmates I’ve worked with?  Guys in prison for pedophilia, rape and other sexual deviance’s?”  I thought for a few seconds about what it might be.

My first thought was that these guys all had daddy issues.  They must have grown up in dysfunctional homes, been exposed to abuse themselves, emasculated by a distorted gender identity or some other term from the DSM IV and then never appropriately coped.

What the counselor said next took me by surprise.  He said, “Anger.  They are all very angry and don’t know how to deal with it.”

Now, he wasn’t for one second saying that anger was a justifiable excuse for the atrocities that imprisoned these men.  He was, however, saying that anger became a framework for expressing all the crap that had built up over time.  Was anger in and of itself the culprit?  Hardly.  Was it always the healthiest expression?  Nope.  Then this counselor/mentor, with his Charles Xavier-like mental probe, poked my heart and asked, “How’s your anger?”

My mouth was frozen and I started to numb a little.  I literally felt the weight of the past bearing down on my chest.  Have you ever been in those situations?  Where the air in the room suddenly gets hot and thick.  I know for a fact that God uses men and women like this to call a ‘time-out’, where all the other stuff you’re doing, working on, creating suddenly becomes distant and less important.  I wanted to get out of there and fast.  Here’s why…

I’m not a crier.  It’s not how I typically navigate my emotions.  Frustration for me doesn’t lead to tears or a pouting lip.  That’s not to say I haven’t in the past but as I’ve changed over the years, crying is less and less of an emotional response for me.  If you do see me cry it’s usually from one of two things: 1) I’ve just watched the closing scene of Braveheart (it get’s me every time) or 2) because I’m hurting pretty deeply.  Since I don’t cry easily it leaves me with another emotional response that does come easy: anger.

Not just angry in a loud annoying way but in an intentionally mean way.  Almost like the “where is this coming from” kind of way.  It really does make me think of when Ted Cassidy narrated the opening scene of the TV version Incredible Hulk.  David Banner would say “Mr. McGee, don’t make me angry.  You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”  That is me!  You seriously would not, will not like me when I’m angry, specifically in my self-righteous exertion to be right all the time.  It takes so much energy to be right all the time, doesn’t it?

So is anger wrong then?  Of course not!  There is legitimate anger at the injustices of the world.  That dead Somali children are lining the refugee trail to Kenya enrages me.  That almost 1 million people die every year from Malaria is heart breaking.  This is where we hear the Psalmist most acutely, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?”  However, the expression of anger that I’ve struggled with over the years and discuss in this blog is at the opposite end of the spectrum.

It’s the kind of anger that doesn’t produce the righteousness of God.  Thinking of my past and perhaps that of the inmates my counselor mentioned, I discern one summation: that hurt begets hurt and what I do with that hurt is what defines the outcome.  My challenge is to surrender the need to be right, the need to be justified, the need to hurt another just to make myself feel better.  Want to strip the Incredible Hulk of his power?  Ask yourself, “Why am I hurting…?”

Let me finish with this true story: A few years ago we built our first house in Cleveland, TN.  A proud moment for a young newlywed couple.  In this new neighborhood were more empty lots, including the two on either side of ours.  One Sunday, coming home from church I found two guys randomly mowing my grass.  Looking at my yard, I realized they had driven their truck through our front lawn to drop off cinder blocks in the next lot.

Not only had they damaged my fresh grass, they were trying to cover it up!  I proceeded to stop and ask one of them what was going on and who they work for.  Through broken English, I got a sarcastic response and that’s all it took to set me off.  The green monster had awoke.  I proceeded to curse, yell, threaten deportation and other very non-Christ-like things.  I was on the border of calling the police and having a heart attack at the same time.  It was a bad day.

What’s funny is that here we are a few years later and lo-and-behold, the lot next to ours is under construction.  Mowing my grass yesterday, I watched as one of the workers drove his Bobcat through my yard.  The green monster was itching,clawing and growling to come out…but I remembered something called mercy.  I remembered that I had surrendered my right to hurt another just to feel better.  I remembered that it’s only grass.

I once told a cabin full of boys on the first day of camp, “You don’t want to see me angry.”  One of the bolder campers immediately spoke up and said, “Yeah, he turns into a big hairy butt!”  Thank you, Jeremiah.  It’s still true.

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if i’ve ever known mercy.

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I had gone four months without a paycheck and my pride was no longer calling the shots. I was in a position where I couldn’t blame the economy, the president or fate. In the words of Led Zeppelin, it was “nobody’s fault but mine.” I had lost my job because of selfish, poor choices but at this point, more than my job was on the line…my marriage was at stake.

In the not too distant past, in what feels like another life, I betrayed the trust of many people, most importantly so the trust of my wife. Honestly, I don’t expect ever getting over the infinite ache of hurting my best friend like that. Somewhere between the borders of anxiety and regret, guilt had possessed both my piety andIf pride.

In rebuilding our lives, I just wanted a job that brought a sense of esteem and purpose but that would not be for some time. Thankfully, God had plans for my heart long before He had plans for my wallet.

I landed two interviews, one at Caribou Coffee and the other at Target. Caribou never called back, but Target did and I landed a position working in their backroom, pulling and stocking merchandise. I vividly remember leaving the drug test place, driving back to my brother’s house where we were staying at the time and being overcome with emotion.

I wept for the rest of the ride as I realized that I was starting over, literally earning a little more than minimum wage.  I was crying from my self-pity as reality shook me out of the disillusionment I had been trapped in.  I pulled into the driveway as the song, “Take My Hand and Walk” by The Kry played on the radio.  It felt like concrete gripped my hands and feet…I didn’t want to go inside.

Amy was anxiously waiting for me at the top of the stairs interested in our financial future.  The pain of my previous decisions were still fresh and she was very sensitive still to my every word and action.  I walked up the steps, looked at her and could barely get the words out through my tears…”I got the job.”  Now here is where my wife is the most amazing, phenomenal woman to grace this broken life.  Here is where I, as a man, humbled, shattered, bruised from self-inflicted wounds and having wounded her deserved nothing.  But this was her gift…she reached out, embracing me deeply, leaned into me and whispered, “I’m proud of you.”

If ever in my life I have known mercy, it was here in this moment.  Two years later, this gift of mercy remains the greatest tool of leadership she has employed in our marriage.

A quick Google search on ‘leadership tools’ is a recipe for information overload.  The very word ‘tool’, in the context of leadership, can hint at Machiavellian power struggles, just another manipulative accessory for climbing a ladder.  I would hesitate to use this utilitarian word, ‘tool’, if it wasn’t for its perfect definition – something (as an instrument or apparatus) used in performing an operation or necessary in the practice of a vocation or profession.  Even for more abstract enterprises, like “leadership” or “marriage”, there is a gamut of tools for success.

From psychology to technology you will find top 10 “tools” proclaimed everywhere in this digital frontier.  Things like vision, mission, personality type, coaching, empowering, social platform, etc.  These are all fine and can serve leaders well whether sacred or secular.  However, the ‘tool’ I am espousing, when employed faithfully, can keep you out of the rat race or the Machiavellian camp and settled peacefully in the, ummm…Jesus camp.

From this story, you probably already know the ‘tool’ I’m espousing is mercy.  What better way to shun manipulative tendencies than to surrender one’s pride and offer something far less lucrative like mercy?  What better way to laugh with those who laugh and cry with those who cry than through the lens of mercy?

Finally, and most importantly, what better way to use mercy as a tool for leadership than to remember a time where you were granted mercy yourself.  If I’m anything at all today, as a leader or as a husband, it’s because I was given the unmerited mercy, grace and favor of my Savior and my wife.

May you too one day know the triumph of mercy over judgement.

sharing a congressman’s scandal.

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Anthony Weiner is not alone.  He is joined by the ranks of millions who too suffer from some form of displaced passion.  His passion was supposed to be for his wife and his job as a legislator.  The public good was his professed vocation.  Somewhere in the mire of all the politics I believe in his true and good intentions.  He started on the right foot and toward the right goal.  Even now, those same intentions have led him somewhere for rehabilitation.  He is on a long, hard road but he doesn’t walk by himself.  I share his scandal.  I know what it’s like to stand before strangers, confessing my deepest and darkest behaviors, thoughts and misdeeds.  I also know what it’s like to be granted unmerited mercy and grace.  For these reasons and these reasons alone, I mourn for the congressman.

Anthony Weiner is a sick man…and he’s not the only one.  I don’t chalk our sickness up to mere sexual perversion either.  To pervert something is to lead astray, misdirect, replace inappropriately, falsely misconstrue.  It is to lead something or someone to a less, excellent state.  The congressman traded his calling for momentary pleasure.  Anthony Weiner is sick because he’s not healthy, well or whole.  His wholeness won’t come from a program or even escaping to the wilderness for a season.  There are doctors he could meet: psychological, physical and sexual in practice.  These doctors study in palliative methods for the good congressman.  Their medical degrees are greatly beneficial but in the case of this congressman (and my case) they fall shy.  “There [never] was even an allegation that Weiner had a physical relationship with any of the women with whom he maintained virtual relationships. That made his case a departure from the norm, a sex scandal without sex, a phenomenon of the age of Facebook, Twitter and other social media.”  His scandal is our scandal.  The battle for our fidelity now rages in a new digital frontier.  Battle lines are drawn.

If Anthony Weiner needs help, then we all do.  There is another Physician who declares profound truth and I share His words here: It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  Perhaps in this wilderness that Anthony Weiner finds himself in, a voice will be more clarion than ever before.  A voice of healing extending from a seat of mercy.  May our prayer for this congressman and surely ourselves be that of healing, mercy and hope.  What would be more scandalous than the best TMZ has to offer?  The scandal of the Cross, which says you and I are more than the sum of our failures and fears.  Whether Congressman Weiner chooses to resign his seat or not, then so be it.  I pray his wilderness experience will yield two things.  One, is fresh insight into how he wandered in the first place.  The second, that he (and we) will hear the voice of our Lord calling out, not for the righteous but for the sinner, the sick and the lost.