A note from Chaplain Mike:
We will be running some posts from the iMonk archives that deal with the subject of depression. This classic post that Michael Spencer wrote in 2004 tells the intimate story of a father’s depression and a boy who finally understands.

When I was twelve years old, my father bought a small aluminum boat, just enough for two people to use for fishing in the local lakes. He put it in our backyard. It had a tiny motor that sat in our shed. He bought the boat so we could go fishing together, father and son. It was his dream, a father’s dream that I can now relate to as I share ball games and movies with my own son.

The boat never took us fishing. In fact, it never got in the water. It remains there in the back yard, photographed by my memory, waiting for a fishing trip that would never happen. In my tendency to personify objects in my world, I picture that boat as eager and expectant, then confused, and eventually depressed. Its purpose- its joy?- was not to be fulfilled.

At age twelve, I was about as interested in my father’s dream of fishing together as the fish were in getting hooked, cleaned and fried. I resisted my father’s overtures with a quiet, but persistent force. I was always busy. There was always something else to do. I wasn’t interested in being outside. My friends wanted me to play. Mostly, I wasn’t interested because my dad was interested, and I was at war with my dad. Not a physical battle, but a back and forth emotional war that had been going on as long as I could remember, and now that my dad wanted something from me, I was in a position to frustrate him. I felt the power, and I used it to disappoint his dream.

My father had never been like other fathers I knew. By the time I was a teenager, he was unable to work, but before that he’d done all sorts of things: worked as a flunky at car lots, made tools at a tool and die company, made change at a car wash, ran errands at local automobile race tracks, worked in the oil fields, rented boats at a lake, janitored. While he was unable to work, he was able to get out and do things he liked to do: fish, hunt squirrels, pick up pecans, hunt arrowheads, go to ball games and races.

My father was a collection of contradictions and mysteries. He was deeply and genuinely religious, but the entire time I knew my dad, I can never remember him in church more than a handful of times. He was divorced (I never knew why), and his chosen church- the Southern Baptists- ranked divorce just above treason and murder on the sin scale, so it was easy to not be present. He loved the Bible, and despised most church people as hypocrites.

He was from the woods and mountains of eastern Kentucky, but all my life we lived in cities, and he hated the city. We lived in Kentucky, and he wanted to live in Wisconsin. He was sociable and funny, the life of any gathering of family or friends, but he feared and loathed almost any other kind of gathering. He loved baseball, but wouldn’t let me join Little League. He had an eighth grade education, and was determined I would graduate from college. He wanted me to be a dentist, and never once took me to one.

He was afraid of everything. The weather terrified him to the point of hysteria. Government paperwork terrorized him. Travel was so frightening to him that I never went on a school trip if he had any say in it. Fear dominated my father’s life like no one I’ve ever met, then or now. As real as it was in my childhood experiences with dad, I couldn’t help but sense it hadn’t always been this way. I knew enough about his life to know he’d once been as wild and fearless as other boys, but somewhere along the way, something else entered the picture, changing my father from a man like other men into someone assualted, subdued and captured.

I would always compare my dad to other fathers or to my uncles, and something wasn’t right. He was older than anyone else’s dad. They ran businesses, took their boys to Little League, built tree houses and worked at factories. I understood my friend’s dads. I understood the men at church. I didn’t understand my father. He was unlike them all, different, unpredictable, like he was broken far under the surface.

It made me angry that my father was like this. Sometimes I was embarrassed. Sometimes I was humiliated. Mostly, I was just ticked off, and thought about running away, or at least spending all my time hiding somewhere he couldn’t find me. Over the years, I know I was ashamed that dad was my father, and I acted it out to him and to others. Being asked about my father by anyone else was an excuse to lie or change the subject.

Dad wasn’t without good qualities. He was very funny, warm and sociable to his friends and neighbors. He loved those who were close to him. He loved his grown children, and their children. He was broken-hearted he saw them so seldom. He had a generous and encouraging side, but it seemed to never appear for long before vanishing under the other, darker side. My father knew trees like a botanist. He was sober and dependable as a friend and a helper. He was a great partner for watching classic tv shows. He could make people feel at ease, and he was very smart. I’m convinced he knew a million dirty jokes. Though he wasn’t much of a reader, he could sing, calculate and “cypher.” He could teach squirrels to climb up his pants and eat out of his pocket.

Once dad told me about all the books he read as a young man. Zane Grey. Tarzan. There wasn’t a book in the house now. He helped start a church in Wisconsin. He worked in factories and on airplane engines. At one time, he was a skilled tool maker making great money. What had happened? How did that normal man disappear, and this person take his place?

When I was thirteen, I came home from school and was sitting on the front porch, waiting for dad to return home and let me in. He drove an old, green, 1954 Chevrolet on his daily outings. Before much time had passed, I saw the old car come up the road. But then a funny thing happened. The car drove right past the house, and dad never looked at me. Not a wave, not a glance. He drove on to the end of the block, and turned right. Heading toward the hospital.

The boat in the backyard didn’t know it at the time, but its fate was sealed.

Health problems were always part of dad’s life. He complained of dizziness and chest pains to the point I wearied of what I thought, stupidly, was just whining for attention. I, of course, was never privy to just what was going on, and I wonder how much he understood his own problems. Now our family was going to become dominated by health concerns, hospitalizations, medical bills and medications. Dad was having the first of two heart attacks that would render him helpless against the onslaught of depression.

I’ve often wondered how dad’s heart problems would have been treated today. It was the late sixties, and dad stayed in the hospital for a couple of weeks. There was no surgery, as one might expect today. No miracle drugs. I would visit him in ICU, and he was glad to see me, of course. I was afraid he might die, and felt guilty that I’d wished that many, many times. He came home, and soon was sitting in a chair in the front room. He had survived a major heart attack. We were all happy. Right?

Dad grew stronger, but something bigger than the heart attack took over. Something worse than all his previous helath problems. He wouldn’t leave the house. He wouldn’t leave the chair. He sat in the chair with his hand over his face. He wept. Mom would plead with him, but to no avail. It didn’t stop. It wasn’t a bad day. It was like a living grief, a stuck record, an endless punishment. It lasted for weeks, months and then, years. Depression overwhelmed my father.

I didn’t understand. And no one could explain what was happening in a way a teenage boy could understand, though they tried, I’m sure.

Soon my dad’s oldest son, a doctor, came down to try and help. It was the first time I heard the word “depression.” I’d heard my parents always talk about “nervous breakdowns,” which I couldn’t find in any science book. But I had no idea what “depression” meant, other than the fact that dad was depressed, and it was clearly awful. I’d never seen or heard of depression. No one else had a depressed parent. Why did I?

At some point, dad went to the hospital. The psych ward in Louisville General. (He may have gone several times. I’m unsure.) Dad’s absence was always a good thing. Mom would take me out to restaurants, something dad wouldn’t ever do. We would be happy, and feel guilty about it. There was no dark, mysterious “depression” controlling our family. I didn’t have to keep my friends out of the house. Still, I didn’t understand. I did hope my dad would come back better. Doctors and hospitals made people better. I didn’t understand how elusive an opponent depression can be, resisting and defeating every effort to cure it.

I would see the boat in the backyard every day, and I began to feel badly about how I had responded to my dad’s attempts to be a regular father and son. I mowed around it, and wished it could go in the water, and that dad could teach me to use the motor. A day at the lake with my father really would be a nice way to spend some time after all.

Dad returned from the hospital, and while things may have gotten better, it wasn’t for long. Dad was still depressed. His thoughts, feelings and behaviors were the same. He talked about his stay in the hospital in hellish terms. He looked terrorized by his stay. I still remember his descriptions of the other patients. Apparently, in the days before today’s cushy psychiatric facilities, my father was part of a ward of people we would call “insane.” He received electric shock treatments. I’ve learned far too much about those. I hope they helped, because I’m afraid to think what they did if they didn’t.

Now we entered into years that were almost unbearably bad most of the time. Dad would be depressed, or he would be angry or just lost. He projected his anger out at everyone: his doctor, his children, his family, God, city people, Republicans, the neighbors. There was never any predicting what direction my father’s depression would go, only that we would certainly be the recepients of his anger.

Because I was naively analytic and stupidly verbal as a young man, I tried to convince my father everything was his fault, and could be easily fixed. It didn’t help that I became a professing Christian at age 15, and became even more aware that my father was not in church, but was sitting home cursing out the world. We argued constantly, over everything that teens and parents argue about, and then about a hundred things that were uniquely issues dad and I cooked up to fight over. Poor mom. I cannot describe the vehemence of these arguments. Surely I pushed dad to the brink of more heart problems many times, but I couldn’t see it at the time. Mom would beg us to stop. We would just get tired and quit.

I was bitterly angry that my father had ruined his part in my life and had turned our home into a horror story. First, by just being old and contrary. Then by refusing to let me be a normal kid. Then by falling apart and becoming a depressed invalid.

And then, there was one break in the darkness. I began preaching at age sixteen. Even as a young man, I remember coming home and telling dad I was “called” to be a preacher. He was moved. I couldn’t appreciate then how much he had prayed for me, and how he lived hoping my life would be useful to God in ways his had never been. All I knew was there was finally some tenderness between us. Some definable love and forgiveness.

The fighting did not stop. My understanding of depression did not increase. But Dad, slowly, began to go out again, drinking coffee with other men. On a few occasions, dad even came to hear me preach. In all my life, I believe my father heard me preach five times. Once he drove me to a small church where I was supplying, and on the way back, gently tried to tell me my sermon wasn’t very good, which I suspected, but didn’t want to acknowledge. He began to show me kindness, and by God’s grace alone, I started to receive it.

A gentleness began to enter our lives as I started to realize my father was a sick person. He’d said this many, many times, and I didn’t accept it, because it was too complicated and I was too afraid of something that couldn’t be fixed as easily as a flat tire. But as I got older, it made more and more sense. I started to notice my father in new ways, and to listen to him more closely. I could see that my father didn’t want to be this way. He was covered in a darkness that clung to him like a wet blanket. He fought against it, but couldn’t toss it away. It had, inexplicably, become part of him. He would have to live with it.

I had to live with it as well. I had to accept who my father was, and how depression had made him, and me, what we were. In my Christian journey, I was frequently confronted with my duty and need to forgive others as God had forgiven me. I never contemplated this truth without thinking of my father, and how I had denied him forgiveness for this thing that had taken so much of our family’s joy away. I needed to forgive him, because he wasn’t responsible for depression. I needed to forgive the depression more than my father. I needed to forgive myself for how I had reacted to this unwelcome visitor.

It’s funny how God works. I took a job at a local grocery store, and how I spent the money I earned became a major war zone with dad. My first paycheck turned into new clothes, and dad- who had lived through the Great Depression- was outraged that I hadn’t put all the money in the bank or paid for the family groceries. But later, I spent a good bit of my paycheck on a citizen’s band radio for my 65 Chevy. I cannot describe my father’s reaction, but it was explosive.

So it is divinely ironic that within a few weeks, my father began buying CB radios. He was fascinated by the hobby. Soon we had a base station in the house, radios in all the cars and were joining CB clubs in the area. My father loved the ability of radio users to make small talk with one another anonymously. What medications, hospitals and therapy couldn’t do, CB radio did. My father came out of his depression by talking on the CB radio. My father became “Two Bits,” and Two Bits wasn’t depressed.

Dad and I loved this hobby. I could talk to him from wherever I was, and it was actually an honor to be the son of the now famous “Two Bits.” As my interest in the hobby waned, dad’s interest increased. In the years to come, he would buy bigger and bigger radios, making friends with people all over the area, the nation and even the world. Radio brought him a magnificent amount of joy.

Dad sold the boat. We didn’t speak of the lost dreams of years ago or the bitterness that had passed. I tried to never think of those days, but I cannot help but think of them more and more as the years go on. I want my children to know about that boat. I cannot touch it, but I can feel its presence and its loss. It is real, because the love my father had for me in that boat is real.

After I married, and became a man, dad and I became friends again. We stopped fighting and enjoyed one another. He was proud of me. He helped me, and listened to me. He loved my wife and our kids. Depression never vanished, and dad’s basic personality never changed. We accepted that this was the life we had shared. Depression had taken away more than I could ever calculate, but I was determined to not spend any more time staring into the void.

Depression is now a reality I face every day in my ministry with students. I know all about it. I have my own thoughts and theories about its origins and power. I believe in the mystery of its genetic and biochemical origins. I also believe we contribute to it by our own thoughts, choices and actions. It is complex, resisting simple treatments in some cases, surrendering to the mildest of medications in others.

We were not so fortunate. Depression invaded our lives when it was a monster of unknown origin or power. I now recognize that dad was depressed before his heart attack, but succumbed to a powerful depression in its aftermath. He did not understand depression, and the chemical miracles were not available or effective.

I believe that our world is a fallen and ruined world, not so much in nature, where the glory of God shines through, but in human beings, whose brokenness takes thousands of different forms and reveals the tragedy of the wreckage that began in Eden and continues in our lives. In this ruined world, depression is a result of sin. Sin as it wrecked our minds, chemistries and emotions. Sin as our thoughts became attracted to darkness rather than light. Sin as we cower in fear rather than trust a trustworthy God who we cannot see thorugh the darkness, and from whom we run away when we do glimpse him. I am so glad that this God doesn’t count on us to find him, but has found us all along, and never lets us go. As the scripture says, “Where shall I go from your Spirit?…even the darkness is as light to you.”

Nothing I believe about depression makes depressed persons into “sinners” on some special level. Like all of us, they are broken. Like all of us, God gives grace that we can accept or reject. Like all of us, they are loved by God and have the possibility of hope, and even healing. Like all of us, they are gathered together in the wounds of Christ, and raised in his resurrection.

I have compassion for my depressed friends. In my own struggle with depression, I’ve benefited from the lessons of my father’s life. There are moments when I have found myself in the chair, hands over my face, weeping. I’ve gotten up, and decided to live. For myself, my wife, my kids, and my father. I will not go into the same night if I can help it.

I believe that fathers are put in this world to write life, goodness and wisdom into the hearts of their children. The best fathers have written boldly, deeply and legibly; they have written lessons that last a lifetime. Other fathers write painful or erring lessons, putting into their children not a path to love and joy, but a downhill slide to emptiness and desperation.

My father left many empty places in my life where he should have written his own unique imprint and example. I am acutely aware of these empty, fatherless places, and the legacy I have inherited because of them. It was my father’s depression, and his fearful, unpredictable actions and inactions, that left me with an abiding sense that I do not belong or deserve to belong in the society of normal, happy people. It was that depression that left me doubting my masculinity, and afraid to do a hundred things that boys and men ought to do to know who they really are in the world. Today, when you see me helping to coach our school baseball team, make no mistake about it: I am out there making up for those days my dad wouldn’t take me to join Little League.

It was my father’s depression that left me with vacant places where unconditional acceptance and fatherly delight ought to be. It was his fear of death that infected my mind from the time I was small, so that every suddenly ringing phone or unexpected noise can terrify me. In the place of the imprint of the father, I have written many stupid and evil legacies of my own. In my worst moments, I see my father’s depression and darkness in myself. I was so certain that I was doomed to live in illness and depression, sin’s false promises of joy looked convincingly attractive. In my own despairing, angry and confused words, I’ve heard the echo of my father’s cries.

The imprint of an earthly father is a treasure. Thankfully, the imprint of the heavenly father is a gift of grace that comes to the fatherless and the empty. Where my father did not and could not affect my heart, because depression wouldn’t allow it, God, and his manifold gifts of love have penetrated into the empty places and brought life, love and hope. In a hundred different ways, experiences and relationships, God has been a father to me in those places that my father left vacant.

I also know what my father would have done if he had not been depressed, and what I would do if I had the opportunity to do it all again. Of course, those times are past, and realities are real. Still, it comforts me greatly to know what could been and should have been. My father was not evil, but sick. Our home was not cursed, but coping with an illness that none of us really understood. The boat may have never seen the water, but the love represented in that boat is as real as ever, and more precious with time.

I know life will hold experiences where depression will inevitably return and demand its place in my life and family. I intend to resist, but I will also be realistic. There is no outrunning our fallenness, and no ultimate healing of our brokeness until heaven. There will be depressing days and seasons, but I am determined that the lessons of my father’s life will not be wasted. I believe he is waiting for me, cheering me on in the darkest of times. He made it home, and we will as well.

In fact, I am fairly certain that heaven contains a lake, where my father is waiting for me in a small boat. And I will not miss that afternoon of fishing. I promise.

Today’s post is by Chaplain Mike.

Tim Hansel was a strong, risk-taking, all-out-effort kind of guy. He climbed mountains and led wilderness expeditions. One day, on the way back to camp after climbing on the Palisade Glacier with friends, his foot slipped and he fell a long distance down into a crevasse, landing directly on his back on the ice. Amazingly, not only did he survive, but he soon arose and climbed out with his buddy, who was sure he had just witnessed his friend’s death. Together, they completed the hike back to camp.

Hansel reported that he became quite sore and that he had this funny sense of feeling shorter than before. With medication, he was able to sleep that night and, although he had a bad headache the next morning, he completed the eight-mile hike back to his car and drove home. He decided not to tell his wife about the fall. She soon found out anyway. The next night his body came out of shock and he awoke sweating profusely, delirious, in agonizing pain.

Doctors eventually told him that he would have to learn to live with that pain. The fractures and crushed discs in his back had caused traumatic, deteriorating arthritis. There was also massive soft tissue damage—the ligaments, tendons and muscles in his back were injured beyond possibility of repair.

Hansel chose to accept the pain as aggressively as possible. He kept working at his wilderness and mountaineering camp. He kept on jogging, climbing and playing tennis. But the intense pain also persisted, and he went through seasons where he became tentative, backing off from life, riding an emotional roller coaster and fighting the urge to give up.

Finally, Tim Hansel saw a doctor who put it all in perspective for him. “Son, listen to me carefully,” he said. “The damage has been done. The worst is over. You will have to live with pain, but that’s a small price to pay for life. My recommendation is that you live your life as fully and richly as possible. Bite the bullet and live to be a hundred. As far as I can tell, you can do whatever the pain will allow you to do.”

One of the greatest lessons that this courageous man learned during this process was that he had the ability to choose joy, even in the midst of his unfortunate and painful circumstances.

This, says Tim Hansel, is in contrast to “happiness,” which, you will note, comes from the same root as the word happening. Whether or not we feel happy depends on what happens to us. It is circumstantial. Of course there is nothing wrong with happiness! We all rightly enjoy when things are going well in our lives and circumstances.

But what about when they are not? People like Tim Hansel, who live in chronic pain, and others in a thousand different difficult life situations struggle with feeling happy.

Hansel encourages us, alternatively, to remember that we are privileged to be able to choose joy. We might say this about the difference between the two:

Whereas happiness may be a fleeting feeling, a mood that changes with the winds of circumstance, joy is an attitude, a posture, a position we take. Joy involves believing with a tenacious confidence that God is in control of life, though the immediate evidence might suggest otherwise.

Henri Nouwen offers this affirming, complementary opinion: a joyful heart is one in which something new is always being born, even when sadness and death are all around.

Choosing joy doesn’t mean putting on an artificial smile or acting with superficial hilarity when we don’t feel like it. Rather, we have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. This means:

• We determine to face life with optimism, courage and perseverance because we truly believe that God is here,
  
• We are convinced that there are unseen benefits in every experience,
  
• We believe that good will ultimately triumph,
  
• And we cling tenaciously to the truth that nothing that happens, no matter how painful or mysterious, can ever separate us from God’s love.

I love the title of the book Tim Hansel wrote about his experiences and what he learned. He called it, You Gotta Keep Dancin’.

Choose joy. Life may try to drown the music, but the heart that clings to joy will always find a way to hear it and dance.

Last year, here in Indianapolis, a four-year-old was taken by emergency personnel to the hospital with a gunshot wound. At first, it was not clear what had happened. The family told police the child had shot himself. The police weren’t sure that the preschooler was strong enough to have pulled the trigger of the suspected weapon by himself, and so they wondered if someone else had done it, perhaps a family member.

It turned out the family was correct. The little boy lived in a home with other relatives, at least one of whom had several guns. This uncle left one of his pistols on a bedside table and the child discovered it there. The preschooler picked up, played with it, and shot himself in the hand. Fortunately, his injuries were not life-threatening, though he did nearly sever one of his fingers. All in all, the whole family was lucky, including the little boy’s two siblings, neither of whom were hurt.

In evangelicalism, pastors too often play the part of the preschooler with the pistol.

The Bible is a powerful, explosive tool. When its power is used with wisdom and love, it brings healing, comfort, direction, and salvation. It forms people and congregations into the image of Christ. When its power is used recklessly and without discernment, the Bible can hurt, divide, and destroy. You can blow your own hand off, or someone else’s head.
At about the same time I read the account of that little boy, a friend told me a sad story about her small-town church, an established, independent Bible-believing congregation that has long prided itself for standing on the Scriptures and not the doctrines of men. They have a young pastor who has been with them only a few years. A while ago, he came to the “Biblical conviction” that they were not running their congregation according to what the Bible teaches about church polity.

At the time, they had a joint board of elders and deacons, which included women deaconesses as well. The board made decisions together as leaders of the church. The pastor did a study and concluded that elders alone should rule the church, that deacons should not be included in the decision-making process, and that in any case, women should not be allowed a vote as leaders on church matters. So, he put the congregation through an extended process to change this, and ultimately got his way through a congregational vote to alter the bylaws.

My friend was one of a vocal minority who spoke against this, and the pastor let her know that her lack of support had been noted. She didn’t tell me much about how others felt, or whether this situation threatened to divide the church. However, it was clear that she was troubled and concerned about the health of the church.

And then she told me the kicker—while all this was going on, the pastor has been actively pursuing a position in another congregation. He will be leaving soon, right after taking my friend’s church through this controversial process and forcing a change in the way they’ve done things for years.

I was reminded of the preschooler and the pistol. Here is a pastor who believes in the Bible, but does not appreciate its power, nor comprehend its wise use. His reckless application of God’s Word has wounded rather than healed God’s people. Now he’s going to walk away and leave it to someone else to stop the bleeding and clean up the mess.

Let me be clear—this is not about criticizing the decision this church made. People of faith can differ on church polity and women in leadership and a thousand other matters, and have for centuries.

No, my complaint is about a minister who does not understand Biblical priorities, who showed his lack of wisdom in elevating a matter of minor significance in the church so that it became a leading issue that now threatens to divide them.

The evangelical world has an authority problem. Protestants subscribe to Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”) as our source of authority for faith and practice, but we have far too little appreciation for proper interpretation and wise application of the Bible’s teaching. And too many churches and pastors, especially in the nondenominational or independent Christian world have little or no guidance in the process. The pastor or a small group of leaders, with the explosive power of the Bible in their hands, can easily use it to wound others and harm the church.

This raises several questions:

• In an “autonomous” congregation, which eschews “tradition,” what theologically sound and historically proven practices are there to provide perspective, structure, and guidance to a pastor and members of the congregation?

• In a small-town congregation, what pastoral mentor or overseer is available to tell a young minister, “Look, you may think you’ve discovered something in the Bible, but with regard to scriptural priorities, this is way down the list of things for a minister in your setting and situation to be concerned about.”

• In a nondenominational congregation, what experience or counsel from the larger community of faith is available to help them work through an issue that other churches have dealt with already?

“Scripture Alone” does not mean “My Bible and Me Alone.” Scripture is meant to be studied, interpreted, and applied within a community of faith that honors and respects history and tradition, the larger Body of Christ, and the wise counsel of respected spiritual overseers.

Instead, we have too many maverick ministers recklessly taking what they find on the bedside table and firing into the crowd that gathers at the church.

Chaplain Mike presents this original story, based on real events.

Lee was a writer and photographer, the kind of person who drew strength and energy from being alone and working on her arts. She and Frank had been married twenty-four years; it was a second marriage for both of them, each having divorced from unhappy first unions. Neither had brought children to the marriage and, after a few tearful arguments early in their life together, the subject of having kids never came up again.

Frank worked hard, long hours, and provided well for them, freeing Lee to pursue her artistic interests. Then, unexpectedly, a few years before retirement, he was diagnosed with cancer and almost before you knew it, Frank was bedbound and his free-spirited wife lost her liberty. She attended to his needs night and day, feeding him, helping him to the toilet, passing his medicines, and getting him up in the recliner where he watched TV, increasingly distant and dependent. At first she got out for an hour or two here and there, but Lee could see that those opportunities were diminishing; she became more and more afraid to leave Frank alone for fear he would awaken confused and fall out of bed.

And so Lee became despondent. Frank’s constant demands kept her from pursuing the solitude and creative work she needed to refuel her spirit. They had no family to help them, and couldn’t really afford paid caregivers. Lee discovered she had few human supports on which to lean, and she felt alone, helpless and hopeless.

But a new sense of spiritual hunger also grew in Lee. She began reading the Bible and thinking about church. She got some counsel from a friend, who answered some of her questions about what kind of church to look for, and who also encouraged her with the thought that being part of a church family might provide some help with Frank.

As Lee thought about this, she remembered that there was a new, large congregation a few blocks away, on the edge of her neighborhood. You could almost see it from her house. She decided to phone.

“Jericho Community Church,” the receptionist answered. “How may I direct your call?”

“I’m not sure who to talk to,” said Lee. “I live in the neighborhood and I’m wondering if you have anyone who could help me by coming to my house for a few hours to sit with my husband who has cancer.” And she told her story.

The receptionist transferred her to the Outreach Office. “Are you a member of our church?” the woman there asked her. When Lee said no, she offered to send an evangelistic team over to the house to talk with her and Frank. “But that’s not really what I’m interested in,” Lee protested. “Right now, I’m homebound because of my husband’s illness. I hope to visit your church soon, but what I really need at the moment is a volunteer who can help me by coming to sit with my husband for an hour or two a week. Can you help?”

Again she was put on hold and transferred, this time to the Small Groups Office. “Are you in one of our Care Groups?” she was asked. “We care for our members through a network of small home groups. If you come to church this Sunday, we could hook you up with one of our Care Group leaders and maybe you could find a group to be part of.” And once more Lee tried in vain to communicate her need. She finally hung up the phone with a sigh.

She moved to the front window and looked out, wondering where to turn next. As she watched, two men crossed the street and walked down the sidewalk opposite her house. For a moment, they glanced up and saw her lonely figure through the darkened glass. Then, redirecting their eyes, they walked on.

Lee watched until they reached the end of her street, and turned to walk south, to the church at the edge of her neighborhood.

One of the realities of being a semi-regular correspondent with an audience returning day after day looking for something new from your pen is the fact that you will be writing during all the various states of the human experience. Christian writing on the internet has the tendency to sound as if it is always coming from the warm glow of the study, with drippings of devotional gold appearing on the page after hours of prayer and meditation. I’d judge that to be, almost universally, a myth, and I’m not much on mythologies in my Christianity.

There are times that one may be writing out of boredom, other times out of emptiness or despair, and even holding onto the crumbling edge between faith and unbelief. There will be times I will write from a season of joyful usefulness and other times I am writing in the slop of my own sinful pigpen.

That would be today. Reporting live and in person from a week that contained some of my biggest sinful binges this year, I’m Michael Spencer. Your Internet Monk. (Two hours from any priest to confess me and the Baptists will just tell me to take two church services and I’ll feel better next week.)

When I tell anyone that I have shocking sins, they are generally shocked. I am the one who is supposed to speak about shocking sins, but whose sins shouldn’t be shock-worthy. The implication is, of course, that the audience actually has a list of “shocking” sins- running a drug cartel, frequenting prostitutes, rooting for the Yankess- that come to mind when I say my sins are shocking. If I said, “I was a rotten husband,” they would sigh with relief. Thank God. Nothing serious.

I was a rotten human being for most of last week. I was also sick. Probably with H1N1. I just dealt with it, but the day I was most miserable was also the day my wife needed me to be the most attuned to her needs and helpful to her.

Calvinists love to preach that we are dead in trespasses and sins, and that’s a true and important component of the Gospel. What is unfortunate is that rather than letting the metaphor be, well….metaphorical, i.e. the life of God is not in us, well meaning enthusiasts try to make being dead the only significant fact in human experience. As is so often the case these days among the theological class, the failure to let all the Biblical images and metaphors live together without having a “there can be only one” party has serious pragmatic results.

The Bible uses disease and sickness as metaphors for sin from cover to cover. (In fact, given its prescientific interpretation of illness, sin is often seen as the cause of illness.) Sinners are sick. Fallen humans are diseased.

What’s interesting about this is that when we say someone is “sick,” we are often eliciting compassion and understanding. Rarely are we saying that a person is responsible for themselves and what they do in the same way they would be if they are healthy. Sickness is….an excuse.

Of course, metaphors have a focus and that is true with saying we are diseased and Christ is the great Physician who “comes to heal the sick, not the healthy.” Sin as sickness is one of the ways we understand what is happening in Jesus’ healings and miracles. Isaiah said that we are healed by his sufferings. All our diseases were placed on him says the prophet and the Gospel.

I’m glad about what I come to know about Jesus’ attitude toward me as a sick person. In a 1983 column, Dr. John Piper explored the sickness metaphor as an image of the community of Jesus. About Jesus as the great Doctor and ourselves as patients he said

Christ is walking among us. Not because we are so much fun to be with but because he loves to make house calls on patients who glory in his medical expertise. He is not partial to the healthy. But he has a special fondness for the homeliest, weakest, sickliest patients whose eyes sparkle when he enters the room….What a motley sanatorium we are! Paralyzed, clubfooted, humpbacked, pockfaced, nearsighted, cancer-eaten! But there is life at Bethlehem! The Doctor’s here! He’ll touch any sore without a flinch. And O, how it soothes. He spends time. He talks. He looks you in the eye. He takes your elbow when you rise. He asks how Jake is doing. He promises he’ll be back. And he comes!

Actual, physical illness amplifies the greatness of God’s compassion, and it also illuminates my wretched sinful condition. In illness, my sinfulness takes on cartoonishly monstrous dimensions. I become the Godzilla of sin.

By mid-week, I was miserable, feverish and feeling as if I’d been hit by a bus. These are the flu symptoms I recognize from the few times I’ve had the flu.

My first- sinful- thought is that I cannot miss work. I’ve never missed a class for being sick in 18 years. I’ve never missed a day of work for being sick, including being in my room to meet families on Family Day….when I had Chicken Pox. (I covered them in make up.) I’m feeding my idol of being essential, irreplaceable and absolutely necessary.

See. Shocking. It’s Halloween.

Mid week my wife needs me to be in charge of matters on an important day. I’m willing, but now that I’m sick, I’m doing everything with the attitude of a captured and tortured prisoner of war. Nothing is too small for me to immediately think of myself as the only person of worth on the planet. When she needs me to be attentive and sensitive, I am…..to me and the flu. Of course, I season this with some classic verbal idiocy, whining and pouting so that my sin isn’t just ordinary, but especially cruel.

I’m almost worse than useless for the situation we have to deal with that day and I make the whole matter far more stressful for her. Of course, all I can think about is the flu that seems to be settling into my chest.

And then, as my final performance, I come home and go to bed…..in order to get up the next morning and act as if the whole focus can now be off her and on me and the flu.

The next day, I’m supposed to help get the house ready for visitors if I feel better. I can barely make it to work, and when I come home, I crash again, offering no help. My flu eventually causes a change of venues for the visitors- my daughter’s home- and I am left alone to recover. I’m dimly aware that it must be hard to like me when I’m sick and as I start to feel better my suspicions increase that my wife, who has treated me as any sick husband should be treated and with more kindness, probably should have smothered me and blamed the swine flu. No jury in my county would convict her.

Sin and sickness. Sinners and sick persons. Jesus loves us as both. That’s more than I can comprehend. Because in my illness I am short-sighted, self-consumed, uncaring toward others, hyper-sensitive, dictatorial and immaturely manipulative. Once I’m over it, I want to put all my rotten behavior in the “Well, I was sick” file, but even I can’t entirely buy it.

I’m just a sick, rotten, selfish jerk. With a lot of repenting to do and a lot of sin to confess.

Sometimes, really, the Gospel seems too good.

But then, when I’m not sick, I’m still a sinner. I live in ways contrived to excuse my sin, avoid the truth and keep up a religiously acceptable front.

It takes the swine flu to show me, and remind me, that with just a small push, I’m very comfortable living in the mud.

Gracious God, our sins are too heavy to carry, too real to hide, and too deep to undo. Forgive what our lips tremble to name, what our hearts can no longer bear, and what has become for us a consuming fire of judgment. Set us free from a past that we cannot change; open to us a future in which we can be changed; and grant us grace to grow more and more in your likeness and image, through Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Amen.

A wonderful picture of the Father’s grace toward us. If you have been told that God is not like this, remember that in Jesus he is more like this than you could ever imagine.

Let go forever of the scolding, punishing God who demands perfection. Embrace the Father who blesses us and delights in us because of his over-flowing love.

Our school has a student work program, and one of the most popular jobs is working on the yard crew. Our boys love to work with the tractors, mowers and weed-eaters.

Especially weed-eaters. It’s a certain sign of spring when I hear the yard crew outside the window of my house, and I can hear the sound of 4 or 5 weed-eater motors revving up like NASCAR racers waiting the start of the race.

There’s nothing quite as empowering to a middle school boy as to be given a weed-eater of his very own. Armed with the machine, safety glasses and an orientation, they come marching across the campus taking on weeds and untrimmed grass like Sherman’s march to the sea.

If there was ever any tentativeness in these weed-eating workers, it all vanishes when they get their first taste of the power of the weed-eater. With a squeeze of the trigger, the power to eliminate weeds replaces the fear of what might happen in using such a dangerous device. Lazy middle school boys are transformed into the scourge of weeds and untidy lawns everywhere.

There is, unfortunately, a not so charming side effect of this transformation. In the ensuing attack on weeds and sidewalk scruffiness of all kinds, most of the other flora and fauna of the campus is put at some risk from overenthusiastic weed warriors.

So in addition to a tidy campus and well attended faculty and staff lawns, there are frequent attacks on flower beds, gardens and much loved decorative hedges and bushes. Small fences are no obstacle to a boy convinced that some stray sprig of wayward grass is attempting to survive the Day of the Weed-eater.

Flowers and other decorative plants are at real risk when the power of a gang of boys go out into the neighborhood to do good. They are armed and dangerous. The neighborhood will be improved.

With time and guidance, these eager young naturalists will learn to wield the power of the weed-eater with more patient and judgement. They will become dependable servants of the cause of an attractive campus. But there will be those first few forays into battle, and the results are predictably predictable.

So as I get older, I see many of my zealous brothers and sisters armed with the Bible, heading out into the church to do what they believe is a good work of killing weeds.

The results are predictably predictable.

Be less enthralled with your ability to trim the grass brothers, friends. Be less certain that you are qualified to tell the difference between a weed and a flower that has yet to bloom. Learn to use your power equipment carefully. You can do a lot of damage. All does not depend on you cutting down every unknown and out of place plant. You are not saving us from the arrival of the jungle. You are making things look better. It is an important job, but not to be taken overly seriously.

You can hurt someone with that weed-eater. it can tear up a tree or even a nice porch. It can mess you up. It has great potential for good, but it can cut down a garden in a matter of seconds. Learn to tell the difference. Be less fascinated by all that power and more committed to having the eye and heart of a cultivator.

There is a battle with weeds to be fought. Cut them down as needed. But be cautious, not self-righteous. You cannot make every edge straight. Most weeds will grow back. A weed-eater isn’t the right tool for every job.

It was the Pharisees that Jesus criticized for their weed-eater mentality. They were obsessed with separation. They were tithing their spices. They were experts in staying on the case until the weeds were revealed.

Jesus wants us to be gardeners, but we do have to deal with weeds. Did any gardener ever say “Let the weeds grow” except for Jesus?

Some of us have set our sights (sites) on being full-time weed eaters and we’re having a very good time. The body of Christ needs a few. But only a few. And be careful, please. Very careful.

There are other ways to pull weeds of course. Not nearly as much fun, but I have to wonder what Jesus would think of today’s “Sons of Thunder” and their weed-eating zeal.

Whoever is not against us is for us. Who said that? Someone trying to keep the weed-eating crew useful, and not a dangerous nuisance.

Pastor Matt Chandler gave this illustration during his sermon at a recent Desiring God conference. I think this illustration powerfully communicates the difference between moralism and the Christian gospel.

During my freshman year of college, I sat next to a 26-year-old single mother trying to get her degree. We began a dialogue about the grace and mercy of Christ in the cross. Some other guys and I would go over and babysit her child and try to talk with her. A friend of mine was in a band playing in the area and we invited her to hear him. She agreed. She thought it would be a concert. I knew better. It was shady and she agreed to come.

The minister got up and said, “Today I want to talk to you about sex.” And I immediately thought, Uh oh. He took a red rose, smelled it, showed how pretty it was. Then, threw it out in the crowd and told them to smell the rose. “I want you to smell it and touch it and feel the texture in it.” (There were about 1000 people there.) He then began one of the worst, most horrific handlings of what sex is and isn’t that I ever sat through. It was fear-mongering at its best.

I’m thinking, with Kim beside me, What are you doing? As he wrapped up, he asked, “Where’s my rose?”

Some kid brought the rose back and it was broken. The petals were broken. And he lifts it up. And his big crescendo is to lift up that broken rose and say, “Now who would want this?”

Anger welled up within me and I wanted to say, “JESUS WANTS THE ROSE! That’s the point of the gospel! That Jesus wants the rose. That he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

In my classes, when you get it right- just right- I say “That’s What I’m Talkin’ About!”

That’s what he’s talkin’ about.

Chandler’s podcasted sermons will do you a world of good. Catholics: I bought your gear, you can have Chandler for free. Don’t miss him

Let me describe the essence of Christmas holidays in our house:

“It was there, so I ate it.” (Or in the case of egg nog, “It was there, so I drank it….and bought more….and drank it.”)

Anyone else feelin’ me on this one?

You’re standing in the kitchen eating a cookie. You aren’t hungry. You don’t need it. You really don’t even want it. You don’t like the taste of the cookie for cryin’ out loud!

But it was there, so you ate it.

Make fun of Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven” thing all you want, but at least the idea is to have a purpose, as opposed to being ruled over by boredom and the need to chew on something.

Paul may be a deep theologian, but he could use some vivid descriptions when he wanted to. Like “Their God is their belly.”

(Anyone else hearing that line in a Scottish accent? Sorta rhyming with “babies?”)

Here’s your choice: The Trinitarian God of the Bible or your belly. Father, Son and Holy Spirit in eternal, dynamic, loving relationship with one another and the world….or your stomach. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of Scripture, the God of Isaiah and Revelation and Daniel….or your appetites.

But you see…it was there, so I ate it.

What’s “there?” “There” is “available to the senses.” “There” is “present now to satisfy me now.” “There” is real, not imaginary.

It was “There,” so I ate it. It didn’t even take a snake to talk me into it.

Actually, to tell the truth, a lot of us spend our lives looking for whatever is “there” so we can “eat it.” It’s so much easier than the risks of walking a different path. It’s so much more familiar and predictable and secure than the risks of faith. It’s safe, and the “belly” says “This is what you want. Trust me on that one.”

We’re a collection of appetites, and none of them- not security, food, sex, significance, glory, safety, money, pleasure, amusement- are God. None of them are reliable guides to the way of a disciple of Jesus.

Paul says to the Philippians, follow my example. Not your appetite.

Follow the way that I have pointed out to you over and over again with tears.

Look at the way you are living, and measure it against those who place no value on Christ, have no time for Christ and are walking away from Christ and his Kingdom. Aside from your rhetoric and the more obvious, easier choices….is there that much of a difference?

Look at where you appetites are taking you. Look at what they are telling you. Look at what thy are doing to you.

Instead of living like the citizen of the Kingdom of God; instead of living a life that is a sign and foretaste of the resurrection, you are living in such a small, appetite dominated circle that “It was there, so I ate it” can describe vast tracts of your life.

Of course, we swim in the waters of a culture that says follow your appetites; make them your gods. What better to trust than all your own “want tos.”

I’m not talking about “wretched urgency” here. I’m talking about vast tracts of life spent in front of a game, or porn, or food, or doing nothing. Just lots of nothing.

I’m not suggesting Paul was enemy of a nap, a game or a cookie. I am suggesting that when a nap or a cookie or another hour of video games or another movie are taking on unquestioned authority for how you spend large portions of your life, then we should hear Paul again:

Your appetite is not God.

“It was there, so I ate it” is not the life Jesus has given me to live.

It’s another life entirely. A sad, small life that trades the glory of Christ for a bowl of soup….or a cookie.

This post is inspired by a FoxNews piece updating the situation of disgraced megachurch pastor Ted Haggard. Haggard was a major leader in evangelicalism until he was brought down by evidence of sexual sin and drug use.

Dear Ted,

May I call you Ted? Not “Pastor Ted,” “Reverend Haggard” or any other ministerial name.

You may not feel like it, but you’re at a good place. Finally. It’s taken a while, but you’ve made it to the place where the Gospel of Jesus has its power. On the verge of the fourth Sunday of the season of waiting, you’ve made it to the place where all that can happen now is for a savior to be born to a virgin. Your savior, no less. Yours and all the other losers.

Yes Ted, honesty, your best gift now has arrived.

“Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard says in a new documentary that he still struggles with his sexuality yet is committed to his marriage for the sake of his children.”

Struggles. YES!

“He now sells insurance and, in the documentary, says he isn’t successful. ” At this stage in my life, I am a loser,” he says.”

Loser. YES!

Ted, I hope I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but all those years that you lived in the center of the evangelical circus, all those years you covered up your struggles and desires, all those years you were taught to lie, deny, obfuscate and yammer on and on with various high-octane versions of the evangelical revival story (complete with band and movie clips), you were far, far away from the truth.

You were living a lie and you were teaching a lie.

And some of the things you’ve said since your fall? How you were fixed with a few sessions of counseling? Not good, Ted. Not good. A very bad place. Avoid it.

Now, Ted, now…now you are starting to see the light. You can say “I was abused as a second grader.” “I struggle…..I’m a loser.” This is major progress.

My recommendation is to find a good group somewhere that will understand how you feel and what you’ve experienced. You see, the evangelical version of that you can say you strugglED and you WERE a loser, but now everything is all right because you prayed a prayer, got saved and got called to preach. You know that’s not true- you’re not all right. You’re a walking wreck and lying about it has just made things worse.

What you hid, denied and buried rose up out of the dark place where you stuffed it and took over your life. I know that feeling very well. You’re suddenly a person without integrity. The truth isn’t in you. You’ve lived a lie and now the truth is going to have its day.

So here you are selling insurance. I suggest you stay right there, or someplace similar, for a very long time.

I suggest you find some other “losers” and compare notes.

I’d like to affirm your instinct that just any place in evangelicalism probably won’t do right now. Some evangelicals will be good companions, but most won’t. You understand this, but let’s explain this to those still fascinated by the coffee bar in the common area.

Ted, gentle readers, is now living proof that “it” doesn’t work the way “it” is supposed to work. Ted is now a living demonstration that, darn it, we aren’t fixable. A good church with a kickin’ band? Great shoes and suits? Sermons researched by assistants and delivered with the proper film clips and jokes? Nope. Tear filled illustrations? Prayer groups? Sermon series on mp3? Book? Seventeen verses of the latest “I love you Jesus” song? A big smile?

All worthless for real sinners like Ted and yours truly.

No Ted, it’s resurrection or nothing. It’s Jesus does the whole deal or there is no deal.

I see that hand. What? Can’t we have transformation and victory now?

Transformation….yes. Transformed from lying to telling the truth. Transformed from this religious act to honest confession of sin. Transformed from this celebrity saint to this loser on his knees at the table of the Lord. “Even the dogs get the crumbs.” Yes, transformed so that the Gospel’s diagnosis and truth make sense in the deep, dark places of your life.

But fixed? Cured? “Victorious?” “Your Best Life Now?” No. The deepest disease of the soul isn’t sexual sin or meth or lying. The deepest sin of the soul is prideful autonomy, the very thing evangelicals demand in their celebrities. There’s only one cure: dying and rising. Until then, believe the Gospel with an open heart, and walk in the power of the Spirit- who keeps you on your knees depending on Jesus- until Jesus finishes the job.

By all means, Ted, find a community. Find a church that gives you the Gospel over and over and over again. A church that has no time for the evangelical circus.

But know that the community of “strugglers” and “losers” centered around the Gospel and the Table aren’t going to be there behind most church signs. Still, don’t give up. Jesus wasn’t lying about his church. It’s on earth, but you have to be willing to touch the leper, embrace the adulteress, include the sexual struggler, love the loser. You have to see the ugly, the broken, the lonely, last, least and lost to see that community.

And you have to see Jesus in the simple Gospel proclaimed, in the bread and the wine. In the things that don’t make megachurches anymore. In fact, you may be surprised where you find that community, Ted. Jesus is famously unconcerned with the kind of people he calls his friends. I hope you’re learning that.

You’ve been given a great gift in your honest struggle and confession of being a loser. You’re on the way. You’re on the road. Don’t whine about it. Don’t make the mistake of seeing the broad evangelical Disneyland as your destination. You’re at that point where George Bailey stood on the bridge. You can despair….and jump. Or you can know that God has sent his hope, love and good news to you in a barn, where shepherds worship in tearful silence; where a man receives a gift he never created; where a virgin says yes even to the unthinkable that grace can do the impossible.

Go there, Ted. Find that place. Go as a struggler, a loser, one with nothing. Go and know that this, and all it means and will ever mean, is for you. For you….a savior. A savior of strugglers, losers and worse.

your friend and fellow loser,

Michael