Ken Metzler — A Tribute to the Unsung Heroes

In the world of sports there are the stars and then there are the role players. The stars get the attention, the glory, while the role players work quietly behind the scenes, and yet would Michael Jordan be famous without his supporting cast?

This past week one of those supporting cast men died after becoming infected by Covid-19, having succumbed on Tuesday of this past week, on the same day as another regular during my growing up days, Lenore Miller, 89, who loved to use testimony time at church to sing, and passed after becoming ill of the same disease.

John Kenneth Metzler, 82, better known as just “Ken,” had been in poor health for the past decade and really seemed to be living on borrowed time as it was. He was born in 1938, February 15, in Lancaster County, the faithful husband to his wife of 60 years, Arlene, and proceeded in death by his daughter Brenda.

I almost didn’t write anything about Ken. I mean, the Mennonite denomination is my past and Ken was simply Ken. A deacon in the church. But an awkward and common man. He ran a muffler shop for years, lived in a little ranch house beside it, drove a Chrysler minivan for years (completely practical like him) and spoke with his totally unsophisticated dutchified drawl.

Not really the kind who gets invited to speak in front of the crowds nor mentioned as someone noteworthy, and yet someone always willing to serve.

I’ll admit, as a teenage punk, who knew nothing and prioritized ‘coolness’ over substance of character, Ken was annoying for his self-effacing style. He would literally apologize for himself while sharing a devotional, for his lack of education and many shortcomings.

He also held some odd views, like the time he confessed to enjoying the comics page and acted as if it was some sort of terrible transgression. He would also, while teaching youth Sunday school, ask questions that would be more suitable for kindergarten students, which would leave everyone confused thinking he was asking rhetorically and him frustrated (or “fuss-trated” in his persistent Lancaster dialect) thinking we weren’t paying attention.

But in the end?

Ken was a man with a golden heart, who became more and more endearing as I matured and, despite his slightly stooped posture, had all the true qualities of a hero.

There are plenty of flashy Mennonites, big fish in their small ponds, who act as “missionaries” or “evangelists” and are roundly praised for their efforts. Many of them have the perfect hair, the superior intelligence, the pedigree and popular families. They travel to the exotic places, some have the academic credentials too, they have the wealth (or access to resources) and reputation for their wonderfulness.

Ken had none of that pomp and pizzazz. He wouldn’t want it even if he were capable. Instead he, slow and steady, like the persistent tortoise compared to the haire of children’s book fame, he worked mostly unrecognized for the good of others. If it was to cut someone a break on a repair bill at his shop or consistently running the canned goods distribution, you would hardly have noticed his contribution.

When crowns in heaven are distributed, I believe there will be many surprises. But it will not be a surprise to me if Ken received a reward bigger than that of the known names. No, he did not lead the church outreach, but he supported it wholeheartedly, and remained long after the charismatic movers and shakers chased after that next new and exciting project. He stayed, stayed true to his commitments, and is a hero in a world full of vain and self-serving ‘good’ men.

Ken also died as he lived. He could have, given his poor physical health, cowered in fear and never left his home. Nobody would have criticized him for doing this, he was clearly in that most at risk category and could not be faulted for hiding out the pandemic. But then why miss out on life when you already know that your days are numbered? He got out instead, remained a part of the community, and that is a choice that I respect—even recommend.

Ken’s death was not a big surprise to me. My initial reaction when I heard he had been at church when a visiting chorus was there, basically a Covid super-spreader event, was to think, “oh, Ken,” and question the wisdom.

But, on second thought, Ken made the right and heroic choice. Ken knew that risk of death isn’t a reason to stop living. He had been on death’s door before and made a deliberate choice.

Ken, unlike many in this age, understood life is difficult and every day is a gift. He may have lived a year or two more, possibly, but was not long for this world by any reasonable assessment. Sure, he likely suffered, he spent his last days alone because of nonsense policies created by administrators, but he was a man who never had it easy and lived a life of faith and sacrifice.

Real heroes don’t wear capes or live in the pages of comic books, most of them do not die in some grand saving-the-world deed, many of them pass unnoticed. They quietly play their role, in the background, until it is time to go home.

Finding the True Legacy of American Slavery

As a child, because of my father’s work in construction, my family would travel. My mother, someone as inquisitive and interested in learning as I am, would take us children to the various historic sites and museums near the areas we visited. A significant part of our time in the South was spent surveying Civil War battlefields, exploring plantation homes built in the Antebellum era, and pondering it all from the perspective of a proud Yankee.

At the time the devastation and destruction of the war were justified by the righteousness of the victors. Slavery was an affront to the notion that “all men are created equal” and thus this institution of human ownership remains an indelible stain on that founding ideal of this nation. This perspective made Abraham Lincoln a heroic figure, it made the Union soldiers honorable men, the North was morally superior to the South and that was that.

However, that was actually simplistic.

First, many of the casualties of war are innocent, the wrongs of our enemies not justify our own, and the reasons for a conflict are far more complex than the victor’s narrative, Second, slavery had been an institution since the beginning of human history and a subject of debate for the founders who ultimately decided that the constitutional federation of independent states against the British colonial power required some compromise. Third, the aggression of the North may have resulted in emancipation for slaves in the South, yet it did not improve the conditions of those treated like rented mules in Northern industries and mines nor did come without a cost. Furthermore, both sides in the Civil War relied on conscripts (poor men forced to risk life and limb to further the agenda of the powerful) and in the North disenfranchised whites (mostly Irish immigrants) rioted in New York City against the draft and taking their anger out on black city residents.

The human and economic costs of the Civil War were staggering. It is estimated that 620,000 men died in combat or from disease related to the horrid conditions and that’s not to mention the many more ‘casualties’ who returned physically or psychologically maimed. The direct impact was full 1.5 times the GDP of the time, for comparison, the 2017 GDP distributed per capita (19,485,400/325.7×1.5) is $89,739.33, and the indirect costs were far far greater. The total economic price tag of the conflict is conservatively estimated to be 10,360 million in 1860 dollars or an incomprehensible 315 billion dollars in today’s money and at a time when the US population (and GDP) was a fraction of today’s. Every man, woman, and child in the South lost the equivalent of $11,456 during the war and continued to lose long after the war due to the destruction—the vast majority of them never owned a slave.

Poor whites in America, especially in the South, had the double whammy (or maybe triple whammy?) of being forced to fight on behalf of the rich, of working for very little compensation themselves and then still being called privileged by their actually privileged counterparts. It wasn’t the moralizing Northern abolitionists who freed the slaves nor the Southern slave owners who felt the greatest pain of the brutal conflict. The people who paid the real price were the working class, they were the ones who lost the most in the war, a war over an institution no fault of their own, and are now held as responsible as the slave owners themselves. It is a path to resentment. People who feel powerless often take their feelings out on those with less power than they do. Sadly black Americans have historically been the recipients of this frustration while the true beneficiaries of their exploitation are never held accountable.

Slavery, at its peak, only accounted for a fraction of the nation’s GDP:

In the 1850s, the zenith of the cotton economy, it came to between 1 and 1.5 percent of the nation’s GDP, not a trivial sum. By this period, however, the United States was already the second-largest economy in the world and was investing every year between 13 and 15 percent of GDP in new capital. Even if the entire “slave surplus” were saved (which it wasn’t, because there were mansions to build and ball gowns to buy), it would have made a respectable contribution to growth, but it just wasn’t large enough to be the basis of an empire. (“Was America Built By Slaves?“)

As the quote above suggests, most of that gain likely went to the slave owners themselves, spent on their lavish lifestyles then, on those plantation mansions that still exist in the South, and was not invested back into the economy in general. A significant portion of that wealth evaporated as a result of the war and emancipation. The value of a slave went from being $12,500 to $205,000 (in 2016 dollars) to effectively zero. So, in other words, if the 1860 census were correct that there were 3,953,761 slaves and the average price was around $800 in their dollars (or around $140,000 in our own) then slave owners lost around 554 billion dollars. Slaves, on the other hand, gained something priceless, that being their own freedom, and yet the cost of slavery to black Americans is truly incalculable.

The Incalculable Cost of Slavery…

The cost of slavery to black Americans is incalculable and not in terms of economic impact. It is incalculable because of the lasting social consequences that can’t be assigned a number value. The suffering of black Americans did not end with the Civil War, they faced the lingering resentment of their white neighbors, all forms of discrimination, intimidation tactics and terrorism. Even with Constitutional amendments prohibiting slavery, recognizing their citizenship and granting voting rights, conditions did not improve dramatically for black Americans in the “Jim Crow” South. It took a further effort in the 1960s, the civil rights movement, to finally see some of these Constitutional rights fully realized and not before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was murdered by an assassin’s bullet.

But, perhaps worse than the lynchings and segregation, one time events that can be adjudicated or something that can be addressed through legislation, is the immeasurable impact on the dignity of those who know that their ancestors were once treated as property and sub-human. I can’t really imagine how it would feel to have my own race being counted as 3/5ths of a person in my own country’s founding documents. There is no way to compensate for that psychologically and especially not when the widespread mistreatment was still in full force a mere generation ago. In such a context, it would be hard not to see any misfortune or measurable difference in outcome as somehow related to prior generations being robbed of their dignity and right to self-determination.

However, making matters astronomically worse is the fact that even many of those claiming to want to help often treat black people as their lessor and do more harm than good in their efforts to restore. A prime example of this is the so-called “War on Poverty” and how since then black marriage rates have plummeted and out-of-wedlock births skyrocketed. First, intact families are a greater predictor of future success than race. Second, making a person dependent on government handouts does nothing to restore their human dignity and, in fact, keeps them trapped. The welfare state has more or less enslaved the black community (and many others) to politicians who stoke fear of losing ‘benefits’ as a means to gain votes and maintain their own power.

Affirmative action programs do nothing to help confidence. No, if anything, they only further reinforce feelings of inferiority and, worse, feeds a notion that black accomplishments may deserve an asterisk. I can recall very well the conversation I had with a young man in the Midwest whom I confronted over his racism. He made no apologies, he embraced the description and then blamed his own lack of success in college on his not being given the same opportunities as minorities. Whether true in his case or not, it takes an extra dose of grace for a poor white person to not feel slighted and very easy to take out the frustration on the beneficiaries. I’ve had to fight this myself as someone who never finished college for mostly for financial reasons.

A few years ago I had hope, with the election of Barack Obama, that this would heal some of the wounds, bolster feelings of self-worth, and help us turn the page as a nation. Sadly, it has seemed to do the opposite. My opposition to increased government spending, as a lifelong conservative who doesn’t see more government control as the solution to every problem, was characterized in terms of race as was any opposition to his policies. Rather than be seized upon a moment of reconciliation, Obama’s race was used as political leverage, as a means to ostracized political opponents and advance a leftist policy agenda. The specter of racism is used to control, both to frighten some voters and also to smear others.

A decade ago I had believed that we were on our way to colorblind society, one like that Dr. King had envisioned where people would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. Today I’m not even sure that is possible, the current political establishment benefits too much from identity politics and tribalism to allow that kind of society to form. It is hard not to feel cynical in a time when white vs black narratives dominate the headlines. And, while I believe this too shall pass, that the current racial tensions are an aftershock rather than a repeat of the past, there is also the reality that slavery is an unpayable debt.

The Unpayable Debt…

Some have suggested an idea of paying reparations to the descendants of slaves to right this historic wrong and would finally, once and for all, reconcile the injustice. There are those who have gone as far as to suggest a number, between $5.9 and 14 trillion dollars, as being suitable compensation or at least as a “meaningful” symbolic gesture and something that could improve race relations.

Those selling the idea of reparations say is that this is similar to payments made by Germany to those who suffered through the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis.

However, those promoting the idea fail to mention the significant differences. The first difference being there are actual Holocaust survivors still alive today to receive the compensation for their loss, but there is not one former slave or slave owner still alive. A second big difference is that the abuses against the Jews in Germany were perpetrated directly by the government itself, whereas slavery was a private institution that existed long before the United States was a nation and was eventually ended by the government and at a very great cost. Hitler’s Germany didn’t stop themselves, the government stole directly from people and sent millions to slave labor camps or gas chambers to be killed—it was literal genocide.

But the bigger problem with reparations is who pays, who gets paid and how much?

It is not justice to make one generation pay for the sins of another. There are many in the United States who did not benefit from slave ownership. My own ancestors, for instance, did not own any slaves and the own possible way they might have benefitted is in slightly cheaper cotton. However, I didn’t receive any inheritance of money nor of cotton clothes from my grandparents. In other words, my savings is my own, from my own work, do I owe anyone (besides my cousin who just helped install flooring in my rental and the bank) nor do I feel any guilt for anything I’ve done. So why should the innocent be forced to pay any more than another person should be forced to work? Do two wrongs make a right? It would only be right to target those who actually did benefit directly from slavery and the complexities of that would be enormous. Would we go after the descendants of European and African slave traders as well?

And then there is the matter of determining who gets paid what. The reparations advocates come up with their dollar figure based on a calculation of hours worked, wages at the time, and interest that would be accrued. But that’s not how things really work. Again, the wages of my grandfathers and great-grandfathers were spent in their generation, dispersed into the economy, and there is nothing left for me. The reality is that the modern ancestors of slaves benefit from the economy in the same way that we all do, thus paying them with interest would not make any sense and especially when that money would be taken from their innocent fellow citizens. Then there’s the reality that not all American black people are ancestors of slaves, some of them are recent immigrants from Africa, some have mixed ancestry and others may actually be the ancestors of black slave owners. Yes, there were slave-owning black people in the American South—should their ancestors pay or be paid?

So, what do we do, start compensating based in DNA tests, as in, “You’re 1/5th black and thus entitled to X…”?

Do we prorate based on how much someone benefited from affirmative action?

Will multi-millionaires, those who obviously have done well, be paid?

Do we deduct welfare payments, etc?

Grading everyone based on their ancestors reinforces all the wrong ideas. It is measuring a person’s worth based on their ancestors rather than their own individual merits and exactly the thing we should be getting away from. Besides that, it is severely undervaluing the worth of a US citizenship, there are people fighting for the opportunity to be here, and our economy is much better here than it is in Africa. Yes, certainly a black person born into an urban environment may face unique difficulties. But then there are many immigrants who come here with nothing, who settle in the same neighborhoods and do advance. And where does it end, do we owe the followers of Joseph Smith for the systematic oppression of them and their religion? Do we owe the Republican party for the attacks against them by the KKK and lynchings of party members? It is just not a good direction to go, it is divisive, it will hurt the wrong people, and we are already deep in debt as a nation. Why should our grandchildren (black, white and other) pay interest to the Federal Reserve and other wealthy people for what is only a symbolic gesture and, if we are honest, won’t remove the stain of the past anyway?

The truth is that money won’t change anything as far as the past. Sure, I’m guessing many who would receive reparations like the idea, who wouldn’t take a windfall? But the reality is that all the compensation in the world cannot erase the legacy of slavery and all the wrong people would end up paying the price. A professional sports contract doesn’t make anyone forget injustice, many lottery winners often end up as poor as they were before, and money can’t be used to solve the problems created by money, to begin with. There are times when a financial settlement is the answer, when both parties directly involved (the aggrieved and the accused) are properly adjudicated. But billing the current generation for the sins of the past, especially without due process, is theft no better than slavery at worse and mere revenge at best.

The true legacy of slavery is that some are owed a debt that cannot be paid.

Wake Up, the Matrix isn’t Real!

A matrix, according to Merriam Webster, is “something within or from which something else originates, develops, or takes form.” And we do live in a matrix where our ideas about race, history, advantage and disadvantage matter more than the actual facts. In other words, the matrix is the way we individually or collectively interpret the facts and use them to form our ideas. Our thought matrix, our assumptions based on our own interpretation of facts, plays a significant role in our outcomes. Overcoming the mental processes that keep us bound is key to success in life.

The other week I was driving to a job site and notice some nice new houses with their well-manicured lawns, spiffy two-car garages, and paved drives. I was overcome momentarily with a tinge of envy, a little regret, and mostly befuddlement at how some people could afford such things. The question immediately came to mind, “What did I do wrong?” I thought of my life, my disadvantages, the opportunities missed, and all those things that held me back from reaching my full potential. However, before I went too far along in that thought process, another question countered the first, “What did I do right?” My mind went first to all the thing I did right, but then to all my advantages compared to most people in the world and the things I did not choose.

Did I do anything right, say compared to that Haitian man I saw in Port Au Prince hauling a car body on his back or a woman born in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, etc?

Our mental construct, our prejudices, and preconceived ideas, a product of our culture and choices, can make a real difference in our outcomes. Sure, positive thinking cannot change the circumstances of where we are born, a good attitude does not mean that there will be fewer obstacles to our success in life, yet why not make the best of the opportunity we are given and live in gratitude for what we do have rather than envy of others or frustration because of what we lack?

Part of the problem is that there is a system of control, it helps to create our expectations, it feeds our insecurities and can keep us bound. The real systemic oppression is the idea that politics (or more money in our hands and power over others) is the answer to our problems. Money can’t fix what it created, money itself binds us to the system and the things that money buys rarely deliver the happiness that we think they will. Again, look into lottery winners, many people end up as unhappy as they were before their winnings and some worse off. So why do we measure success in terms of things that will not and cannot make us happy?

What we really need to do is reorient ourselves. We must reject the unhelpful categories and classifications that keep us bound and change the way we think. Grievance culture, tribal score keeping and trying to rank people by their outward appearance is a backward-facing, small-minded and, frankly, racist orientation. There is no group guilt for slavery any more than there is for inner-city crime, we need to stop seeing people as white, black, orange or whatever, building our own identities around those superficial things, and aim for something greater—aim for the future that we want, yet hasn’t fully arrived, where all people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

It Is Time to Think and Act Differently…

If I had my own life to do over I may have dithered less (convinced that higher education was the key to success in life because of what my teachers told me) and started driving truck earlier. It was my own pride (and anxieties) that kept me from taking the better options available to me and I suspect there are many who, like me, prevent their own success because of their aim. And I’m not at all saying that we should sell ourselves short or settle for less than our abilities can afford us. However, many do set themselves up for failure because they keep waiting for the big break, the breakthrough when everything they dream of finally comes to them and refuse to take full advantage of the actual opportunities they have.

Another thing I would do differently is stop worrying that other people had it in for me and believing that I was helpless when the reality was that I was unwilling to make the right sacrifices. Part of my difficulty in life was due to my refusal to act differently or accept that my own behavior was part of the problem. Sure, there is something to be said for authenticity and being true to ourselves, but sometimes overcoming requires us to act differently and accept what is truly reality over our own individual construct. To find success in the religious context where I was born I would need to accept their rules and my fighting with that reality, my “kicking against the pricks” or resisting the flow rather than harnessing it, had some undesirable consequences.

Cutting to the chase, we have agency and we do not. There are well-worn paths to success with risks worth taking, call them cultural conventions, and then there are the low-probability high-risk paths that lead many to ruin. For example, finding a profession like teaching, law enforcement, construction or accounting (as opposed to seeking to be a career actor, model, musician or professional athlete) is more likely to produce desirable results for most people. Feeding our insecurities, dwelling on slights (real or perceived), demanding others conform to our wishes or that they respect us for who we are, expecting too much, is a path to long-term disappointment.

Overcoming the matrix means we need to stop seeing things in black and white terms. Sure, things like “black culture” or “white privilege” do exist in some form, at very least as a construct in our minds, but they really are only terms that obscure a far more complex picture and keep us trapped in the problem rather than working towards the solution. The reality is not as simple as the narratives pushed by academics and advocacy groups. There is no one group with all the advantages nor another with all the disadvantages. There is a reason why the suicide rates for middle-aged white people have skyrocketed while black rates have declined and are considerably lower—something (like connections and community) that might be missed in the commonly touted measures of success?

Recently I read the story of a naval aviator, an officer name Thomas J Hudner Jr, who was awarded a Medal of Honor for his actions in the Korean War. His act? He intentionally crash-landed his Corsair to protect and attempt to rescue a comrade, Ensign Jesse L. Brown, whose airplane had been hit by ground fire and was behind enemy lines. Brown, who happened to be the first black naval aviator, did not survive despite the efforts of Hudner, however, what does survive is an example of brotherly love that transcends artificial racial divides and presents a reality worth building upon. That is the legacy that, if built upon, will free us all from the sins of the past.

Loving dangerously, that is my idea of real success in life.

It is also neat, in these hyper-partisan times, to see George Bush Jr and Michelle Obama share some moments of common humanity together and continue this friendly exchange even at his father’s funeral. That is the symbolism that matters, that is the positive interaction we should aim for and the kind that can make a real difference in the world. If we love all people rather than prefer only those who look or act like us and orient ourselves to the hope of a better future rather than cling to our past and present suffering, we may well have a chance to build a better identity for ourselves as a nation. We may not be able to choose our inheritance, but we can work to create a better legacy for the next generation.

We, like Bush and Obama, have far too much in common to be at odds with each other.

Those who have faced hardship past or present should be heard and forgiven of their current insecurities. Those who have been indifferent to the suffering of others, out of ignorance or hardness of heart, should also be forgiven. And those two groups are all of us and have nothing to do with race. We are all victims, enslaved to a past that we didn’t create for ourselves, and all guilty of perpetuating the legacy to some degree. We can’t know what a person has been through by how they look on the outside and therefore we should love all people as we wish to be loved rather than by what we think they deserve. It is time to be courageously human, committed to true Christian love, rather than tribal, fearful and small.

From Hero To Heel To Healed—Fragments From An Estranged Relationship

It has been well over a year now since I’ve left the conservative Mennonite culture. I wrote about my grievances in the time leading up to and after my departure. My life has gone in a direction that I never expected. I did my best to bury the hurts, forgive at some level, and move on.

However, it seems recently some of those hurts have come bubbling back up through the rubble of hopes that were hastily bulldozed over them and have become a risk to the flower beds that I’ve planted to keep that part of my life contained in the past. There is a lingering question of how to forgive those who never admit (or even realize) that they had any responsibility to me whatsoever and have likely moved on without a second thought about their own decisions.

Before my Chrismation, I did reach out to the Mennonite leader, the father of the impossibility, and offered my forgiveness and confessed some faults. It was at least a token of forgiveness that was necessary for me to transition. But forgiveness is not as easy as saying the words and, as an Orthodox friend recently told me, it is a process. Sometimes it is a process that takes years of letting go of the lingering hurts. We are not robots, the emotional wounds we have as the result of the abandonment or abuses of others are real, and broken relationships that continue to be broken make healing more difficult. Show me a person who can forgive in a moment and I’ll show you someone who has never lost anything of real value to them.

Anyhow, because it has become impossible for me to write about anything else, it is time to clear these things out of my mind and give room for other things. There is something about sharing thoughts here, to know that my suffering was not in vain and can possibly be of some benefit to those who have experienced similar things, that seems to help the healing process. Yes, we will always bear the scars, we cannot erase the past through forgiveness, and no amount of sharing about something will undo what was done. But hopefully, in sharing some of these stories, this will help remove some of that shame and feelings of the experience being a total waste.

“God, give me an opportunity to be a hero…”

Someday, after my final repose, inscribed on my gravestone there should be the words: “He prayed strange prayers and received stranger answers that were even stranger.”

This is a story of one of those answered prayers.

It was so terribly frustrating for me to be a Mennonite man, now somehow into his thirties not knowing how he got there and unmarried—despite a strong desire for a wife and children.

It was not the stigma of singleness (in a religious culture that prefers the married) that bothered me. No, it was more the lack of opportunity to be the “knight in shining armor” and valued by a woman. I longed to be the protector and provider. And, since I was confident that a God-fearing woman who saw my heart would give me a chance to further prove my courage, character, and conviction to her, I prayed: “God give me the opportunity to be a hero…”

It was shortly after praying that prayer that there was this “progressive supper” activity for the youth. We were to be divided up into small groups of four or five and then sent on our way to various homes to eat the different courses of a meal. That evening the ‘impossibility’ (the young woman that most embodied my own Mennonite ideals) was there along with her sister. So, wanting a chance to prove myself and to be paired with her, I prayed: “Please, God, you know my heart, let me be in the right place at the right time.”

Well, this is where things got a bit weird. The youth leader assigned the impossibility along with her sister to a group that did not include me. I accepted this fate and thanked God anyway. But that’s when the leader, for reasons that were never explained, stopped, said “no” and then proceeded to reassign the sisters—putting them together with me and two other youth. My resigned thanks became a “Hallelujah!” (still silent) as I began to imagine the pleasant conversations we would have that evening. I also began telling myself to remain calm, to just be myself, and enjoy the time together with them without having any expectations beyond that.

“Everyone remain calm!”

Foreshadowing is only supposed to happen in movies. However, en route to our first stop the sister of the impossibility informed us that she was sensitive to having sweets on an empty stomach. Well, guess what? Lo and behold, by some terrible coincidence, it was dessert first. At our first stop of the evening, we had a rich and sugary treat, that soon followed by another drive to our next stop and the next part of our meal…or at least that was the plan.

Well, the sister of the sensitive stomach was right, the combination of dessert with some slightly aggressive driving on bumpy back roads (it wasn’t me driving) proved too much for her to endure. She gave only a whisper of a warning before the entire contents of her stomach were unceremoniously and forcefully expelled. There was vomit everywhere in the back of the truck when we finally got stopped. It was distributed across the back seat and covered her clothing too. It was definitely not a pleasant sight to take in and especially not for those who had been planning to eat.

My first words, as the human contents of burst out the doors of the truck, were an attempt to maintain some order and (to the later amusement of some of the passengers) I exclaimed: “Everyone, remain calm!” We now had a crisis on our hands and the two other passengers—now fighting with their own sensitivity issues—were ill-equipped to manage this sort of event. So it was up to me to formulate a plan that would both maintain some dignity for this young woman and also spare the others as much as possible.

I decided, after contemplating our various options, that we would all drive together to the next stop (a few miles further down the road) and then go our separate ways from there.

So, we collected ourselves, got back in the truck, and finally to a place where we could do some cleaning up. The other two, dry heaving themselves, split as soon as we arrived. The two sisters were busy with the mess, I figured would appreciate their privacy in this, so I offered to run the necessary supplies they would need from the house and let them to themselves. Glad to be of assistance, I made a couple trips with towels, buckets of water, and whatever else they requested.

“You would make a great husband…”

In all this, I had to reconsider my own prayers. Perhaps I should have been more careful about what I prayed? Maybe it was a little selfish of me to pray that I could be the hero? It really was not my intention to have someone else suffer so I could be heroic to them. (So, sister of the impossibility, if you ever read this blog, I’m sorry if my answer to prayer came about as a result of something bad happening to you—that certainly was not the plan.)

Then again, how was it my fault?

My mind did it’s usual overanalysis as I scurried between house and disaster area trying to be helpful.

My contemplation was interrupted, on one on of my trips with supplies, when the impossibility turns to me and words come from her mouth that I never expected to hear directly from her mouth. With sincerity in her voice, she says: “You will make a great husband for someone someday.”

Oh my!

This compliment nearly caused me to run around the house screaming praises to God. However, I didn’t think that would be the right response, so I opted instead to remain calm, smile, and say a humble “thank you” rather run around dancing with all my might like King David seeing the return of the Ark of the Covenant.

I also noted very carefully exactly what she had said. She had said “husband for someone” and probably included that “someone” as to create some distance and keep the compliment from being a brazen indication of her own personal interest in me. And, yet, while it meant nothing besides what she said, I could not help but see this endorsement of my “great” potential as being only a good thing as far as my further hopes regarding her. I rejoiced for having been given the rare opportunity to demonstrate an ability to serve and to be recognized as being husband material by my secret crush.

“It is an impossibility…”

They had always presented themselves as if they were a Thomas Kincaid painting and something out of reach for me. But, boosted by a spiritual growth spurt, I began to think that my own ideal was in alignment with the one they represented and that gave me the confidence to dream. Still, there were some big obstacles to overcome, most of them related my age and their status as top-tier conservative Mennonites. I had been in the lower caste my entire life. Could a man change his stars?

For the first time in my life, taking the advice of an eccentric friend, I decided to write a father. As advised, I wrote merely to tell him of my admiration for his family and his daughter in particular. Of course, being the nice guy that he is, he wrote back and thanked me. But then he implied that his daughter was somehow out of my league. It sparked some indignation and my response I made it clear and said, in paraphrase: “Not that she shouldn’t be interested in me.” I mean, what had I done so horribly wrong that I wasn’t in the same class as him or his family?

I never asked for permission to ask her. However, he did grant me permission in a subsequent email. But then he added, in yet another message, that “it was an impossibility” that I would date his daughter. That’s a pretty hard hit for a guy to take. However, in a few days, I was reminded of how my latest journey of faith had begun and that it started with believing what Jesus said about all things being possible with faith. How could he, a mere man, make this bold declaration that went directly in opposition to what we could know from Scripture? I decided to believe what God said over his word.

It was from this point on that his daughter became the “impossibility” and, after praying that the impossible be made possible, I was bound by faith to follow through. At this point, those who would try to discourage the pursuit only further fueled the fire. I was not chasing after something rational or that I understood. Faith had to be going beyond what was possible for me or what’s the point? If everything can be explained by science or reason, why not apply Occam’s razor and dispose of any additional spiritual explanation of life?

No, faith required the pursuit of the impossible. My very salvation depended on the impossible being possible—that being a flawed and frail human, like me, made righteous before a perfect God. If I couldn’t be loved by the daughter of a good Mennonite man, how could I ever stand a chance before God? If faith couldn’t overcome all of our differences, which weren’t actually that big when it comes down to it, then how could faith overcome sin and death? I had no choice to believe. To not believe was spiritual death.

So I prayed, with as much faith as I could ever have, “God, I would crawl through a wilderness of broken glass to be made right, make the impossible possible,” and committed wholly to doing my part in faith. On that same day an hour or so later, I tore my ACL. It was some of the most excruciating physical pain I’ve ever experienced and yet nothing near the emotional agony that I would experience. I’ve been changed over the past few years, changed in ways that cannot be undone, and changed in ways that I could not have expected. I did my part for God even if others didn’t do their part for me.

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me.”

I had read the story of Billy Graham and heard some other notable Christian leaders who had their hearts broken by young women who couldn’t see the potential in them. I also considered how Jesus died betrayed, stripped naked, and in a completely undignified manner, after praying, even pleading “until his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22:39-44), that God takes the “cup” of suffering from him. I prayed and cried at night begging God: “Please God, please, I’m not strong enough, I can’t be like Jesus, I’m too weak!”

Night after night, I tossed and turned with anxiety and fear. What if my faith proves to be in vain? What if the impossible is truly impossible and my dreams of overcoming my own shortcomings to find the abundant life a lie? Perhaps my whole enterprise of faith was nothing more than an evolutionary coping mechanism to keep me going on despite the obvious? How will I live when my final hopes to have a place amongst my own Mennonite people proves, once again, to be a delusion? I desperately implored God to spare me the pain of another rejection and write for me a story of triumph against the odds instead. I promised I would tell the amazing story to the world when it was all over and use it to strengthen the faith of those who are in the Mennonite church.

I wanted to be a hero in the way of David. The man is known for his bravery in combat against the giant and loved by his people. His heroism was something that women literally sang and danced in the streets to celebrate. He was courageous and charismatic in a way that even made a king jealous and yet was righteous in God’s eyes. David only ever suffered as a result of his own sin, but was still regarded as a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam 13:14) and outlived those who opposed him. That is the hero story that we love and not that story of fading into irrelevance, as someone who didn’t have quite what it took and, while always chasing a mirage in hopes of finally seeing their destiny emerge, would never amount to anything in the end

I believe that Jesus, as a human being like us, would have rather had David’s life than face rejection, betrayal, and abandonment of even his most faithful followers. He prayed alone in Gethsemane, even his closest companions could not comprehend the burden on his heart and be there for him in his hour of need. The heroism of Jesus was the kind that should be terrifying to anyone. He was the rightful king of his people, killed in the most gruesome, torturous, and mocking way possible. Those who should’ve recognized him only saw him as a threat to their religious culture and many treat him with contempt to this very day. How awful it would be to be on that cross in agony both physical and emotional, enough to make a righteous man cry out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I felt so weak. It is one thing to die and be recognized as a hero—It is quite another to rejected and alone. At least Jesus had someone to mourn him as he hung on the cross and understanding that his pain would result in a victory over death, but what would I have?

How would I endure to the end if my rationality would win the day and my fears of my irredeemable inadequacy realized?

A sunny day before the storm…

A few weeks prior I had taken advantage of a unique opportunity to talk to the impossibility where there would be nobody watching us. As one who fought a long battle with social anxieties, I needed to remove anything that would make things potentially more awkward, I found out (from her) that she would be cleaning the church that afternoon and decided this would likely be the best chance I would have. Still, when I finally pulled up to the carport I was already shaking like a leaf and praying that it would all go well. I peered through the door hoping that I would not startle her. I saw her in the sanctuary sweeping, she turned, I waved, her face lit up with a smile and she came to the door.

After that sunny afternoon, I had to work hard to quell the idea that her father was wrong and remind myself that there would likely be some adversity yet to come. Things went so much better than I had anticipated. I mean she had a big smile on her face, she stepped closer rather than away when I expressed my hopes that we could get to know each other better and even gave me her phone number when I asked. For a couple hours, I was on cloud nine and eagerly imagining all those things that I would tell her in that first conversation. She had told me that she was quite busy and then assured me that we would talk on an upcoming mission trip. In the next couple of weeks, I was excited while simultaneously still worried and trying to reign in my anticipation of the things to come.

The trip was an absolute disaster for me. She totally ignored me on the entire bus trip out and then carefully avoided me when we finally arrived. I was already exhausted by day two or three, I could not wait any longer, and decided to break the silence and asked if we would talk as she had promised. She assured me that we could. We arranged to leave dinner a bit early that night and talk things over. So we set off on a stroll that evening where she confidently expressed her plans for life (in contrast to what she had assumed my dreams were) and where I sputtered desperately trying to gain some traction in the conversation and could find none. It was surreal, to say the least, I was at once enraptured by having her full attention and then also extremely unsettled by my inability to articulate anything on my heart.

Her words would echo in my ears for the weeks that followed. They were an inescapable reality and the very thing that I had worked so hard to overcome. She wiped away any sense of accomplishment I had with eight words:

“You are thirty years old living in Milton.”

Those words, meant as a gentle explanation, confirmed my worse fears. I was stuck in an impossible situation. Her ambitions mirrored my own, but I had long lacked many of the abilities she seemed to possess in spades, and that’s what had attracted me to her in the first place. I had pictured us as a composite—two different types of material bonded together (in faith) and stronger together. But she saw things differently, she saw me as someone content to be mediocre in Milton, a liability as far as her own grand plans, and I lacked any words to answer her misconceptions about me.

She certainly didn’t mean her words to be hurtful and I didn’t take them as offensive. She had simply assumed that this simple life in a small town, without adventure, was what I had intended. What she didn’t know is how much her own ideals were my own nor how I had struggled to overcome feelings of failure despite having my own house, a decent job, etc. Her words hit like a ton of bricks because they were true and reflected an inescapable reality of my life. I never lacked for a heart. But, despite my strong desire to be on the field of play contributing in a meaningful way, I was always seemed stuck watching from the sidelines—lacking the natural size, coordination or talent to be successful.

I had made my leap in faith, I reached out for the impossibility, for the Mennonite ideal that had eluded me in so many ways over the years, and there was nobody reaching back. I fought a new war with doubt. Maybe I was doomed to fail no matter what I did? Perhaps my higher ideals were only ever a delusion and even the best Mennonite girls were as carnal as anyone, preferring athletic and arrogant men? Could it be my prayers for the impossible to be made possible, a hope against hope, was nothing but a mind trick I played on myself to hold off the obvious?

We had to draw our conversation to a close. She was being eaten alive by mosquitos and it would’ve been unmerciful to extend our time together by a minute longer. So, having lost the debate before it even started, not knowing how to end this walk together, I offered to pray with her and she agreed. I prayed. It was my last hope in an increasingly hopeless situation. And then something happened that made things go from bad to worse. A group of guys came around the corner (probably looking for her as clueless teenage guys do) and now my secret of a year or more was out. I didn’t want to face them and their judgments. I had wanted something extraordinary and the same old answer I always got.

Everyone knew now and those hopes of a final victory over the odds faded into the night sky along with my intelligible thoughts. Overhead the lightning flashed, there were things going on under the surface, but for the moment my mind was eerily silent as I wandered off into the wilderness.

“Once I swore that I would die for you…”

It almost seems a miracle that I was found so quickly of all the many places that I could’ve been. Two men, both who have earned my respect over the years as true friends, drove out from the reservation, headed right in the direction that I had ended up going and found me curled up on a bench. It had been my intention to spend the night there. I had no other plans.

When they arrived and hoisted me into the truck. The calm broke. Both the surface calm that covered the broiling of my subconscious mind and also of the skies overhead. At nearly the same time that they got me into the truck, the rains started pouring down and so did my tears. All of those hopes over the years that ended in dismal failure came flooding back. Instead of being strong in faith as I should’ve been, I panicked. I wanted to die, I wanted to be left alone to wither and die in the wilderness.

I stare into this mirror
So tired of this life
If only you would speak to me
Or cared if I’m alive
Once I swore I would die for you
But I never meant like this
I never meant like this
No I never meant like this

It had been rough for me over the past few years, the solitary life of a truck driver was not a good fit for my temperament, but I had overcome my depression related to the death of Saniyah, and had finally turned a corner spiritually that enabled me to dream big again. That all came crashing down again. Fear had won the day, I was stuck in a nightmare and there was no escape—I had done everything I could do to believe and failed miserably again.

Worse, this time, unlike other times, I had left myself no safety net, no plan ‘B’ or escape hatch. I lept and grasped nothing but empty space.

It is one thing to die and be recognized as a hero. It is entirely another thing to have made a complete fool of yourself, to have finally put all your faith in a God of the impossible, and to end up with nothing besides a deepening shame. Mentally I folded under the pressure, which only made me blame myself all the more, and I panicked.

She did what was predictable. The impossibility, the one who was able to clean up her sister’s vomit and run fearlessly to the edge of a cliff, now recoiled at my sight. She drew back in fear and who could blame her? I both pitied her and desperately wanted to explain everything that had led me to asking her and a chance for redemption. I wrote a long letter, fourteen pages long, spent months writing and refining it, but I never sent it because she would probably never read or understand it if she did.

“With God all things are possible.”

The road out of despair was paved with Adderall and writing my thoughts here and elsewhere. After weeks of seesawing, one day suicidal and the next determined to live in faith, I decided it was time to address one of those things that had always seemed to get in the way of my success and that being my difficulties focusing. A friend of mine, studying neuroscience, said that I was definitely suffering from attention-deficit disorder and highly recommended a particular amphetamine.

So, out of options, I gave it a try and it was absolutely amazing. Not only could I focus, but the entire world seemed more brightly colored and sharp. My social anxieties vanished, I could carry a conversation with people I had avoided before, I was more driven in general, and even wrote a book about faith while on the prescription. It was a miracle to me. The day after starting the drug I woke up early on a Sunday morning and thought to myself, “Wow, this is what it must feel like to be Betty Miller!”

I was feeling so good, after weeks of turmoil, that suddenly I wondered why I would even care about the impossibly? I mean, life was great without her…And then I turned to see it staring me in the face, something I hadn’t noticed before on the calendar, the words: “With faith all things are possible.” It sobered me. I was reminded again of the commitment of faith I had made to God in prayer and rebuked myself for being so easily manipulated by my feelings. I had to follow through or I was unfaithful.

Alas, it seems all good things come to an end, at least as far as those artificial means go, and the side-effects of my stimulant (that somehow doubled as a mood stabilizer) began to outweigh the benefits. I had difficulty sleeping and began to have this weird fixation with numbers that was suggestive of an induced schizophrenia. So I quit. However, while my positivity did drop off, mostly back to my old baseline, the drug acted like a kickstart to get me going again and, for the most part, the new equilibrium remained.

It was in the time after, months after the whole ordeal of the trip and aftermath, that I was finally able to have a short (but normal) conversation with the impossibility. It was great because it was progress in a relationship that had become estranged. But it also left me feeling down because she would be soon leaving for a long time and might very well spend enough time with some other guy to get over that initial threshold. Love, despite my own difficulties finding it, is not that complicated—we don’t fall in love with strangers or those who we hold at arm’s length.

I was melancholy that evening, brooding over the possibility that the very brief conversation we had in the kitchen might be our last, when she (the impossibility) passes by holding a paper. For reasons I’ll never comprehend, one of the other young people in the room, right at the moment she is near me, asks what is on the paper. Without a pause the answer came, she spoke the theme of my pursuit of the impossibility, “With God all things are possible.”

“If you go, take me with you…”

Time had passed. I was back driving truck again and would soon be starting a new job that would get me off the road. She had returned from her world travels and again I was contemplating my best approach.

My feelings were now mixed. There was someone else who had come into my life in the interim, it was someone who had become very precious to me, and it was almost unbearable to think about walking away from her. She was a little lost sheep when I had found her, someone even more alone in the world than a lonely truck driver, and it seemed wrong that I would abandon her—even for a life with my Mennonite ideal.

There seemed to be no good answer to the dilemma. Yes, I had carefully explained my own situation to this precious person, my bhest, that it was impossible for me to marry her and the impossibility one of those reasons. But it still seemed extremely cruel that I would there for her every day for a year, pull her out of the pit of despair, and then leave her to fend for herself again. I mean, how unfair would that be? I cared too much about her to let that happen yet couldn’t imagine any woman (Mennonite or otherwise) allowing me to maintain that kind of relationship.

There was never a need for me to cross that bridge.

It was the Facebook status update that I had dreaded for so long. There she was, the impossibility, with that prototypical Mennonite guy and the kind I couldn’t compete with—athletic, adventurous and having the right religious pedigree. They had met on the missionary/Bible school/Mennonite matchmaking circuit. And, since dating is now equivalent to engaged in this culture, I knew the pursuit of impossibly within the Mennonite world was over.

I tried hard to hold off the downward plunge.

The tears would fall once again.

My faith, as a Mennonite, really did die that night, along with my will to live, and there’s only one reason that I’m still here today. That reason being that my bhest never let go. I asked her if she would be okay if I went away, obviously implying my self-inflicted death, and bhest had the only answer that ended my ideation. She said, “If you go, take me with you.” And I decided right then and there that I would continue on if only for her good. It was one thing to kill my own hopes, but I couldn’t kill that little hope that I saw grow in my bhest and it was that seed of faith that I left in her that had now become my own salvation.

My last Sunday as a Mennonite…

I had long become disillusioned with my religious upbringing over the unquestioning devotion to a fundamentalist theological perspective adopted only a century ago and yet continued to hold on to an Anabaptist reformer’s hope. The father of the impossibly was one of those that I had counted on to see this shift and help restore some of that unwavering commitment to Christ and the Holy Spirit. But it was now clear that his calculator weighed more heavily in his decisions than a faith that allowed for the mysterious.

My experience over the past couple of years was that straw that broke the camel’s back. It was supposed to be the triumph of faith in a Mennonite context and ended up only revealed a deeper carnality in even the best of my religious peers that was only different from the world in how it was dressed. It was too much for me to take. I couldn’t continue with them anymore. However, I decided to be strong, to go one more Sunday and leave with whatever dignity I had left.

So I went that one last time, I sat in the back and the only place where I knew I could best avoid the discomfort of holding back my emotions while trying to small talk. And I did manage to keep my composure for the length of the service and also for the gab period afterward. The impossibility may or may not have been there amongst the crowd, it no longer mattered. The building was now cleared out besides my mom (who was the librarian) and John, a truly humble man, a good listener, and the most recently ordained.

My mom, knowing how difficult it had been for me over the past couple of years, told me how proud she was of me and, in the nearly empty church, I fell apart. I sobbed. I had tried. I had invested all my hopes within the Mennonite denomination and fought long and hard for a place there. That was over now, it had become unbearable to remain anymore. The impossibility had been that last-ditch effort to restore something that had been lost over the years.

She confessed that she could not love me the way that I wanted to be loved. It had now become impossible for me to live as they wanted me to live, as a beggar in a land of plenty, as one whittling away his hopes in a religious culture that offered mostly platitudes and hardly any real-world solutions. It was time to give them what they wanted and be on my way to something else. I’ve had nobody question that decision or ask me to remain with them—which confirmed all my reasons for the divorce.

May I have my closure now?

I’m in a better place than I was while still trying to make things work in a place where I didn’t belong anymore and time will heal. That said, that doesn’t mean that I don’t struggle with the things that transpired over the years. I’m not sure what forgiveness looks like in a case like this? Do I owe anything more than letting them live their lives in peace? Have I said enough now?

Still healing is difficult and forgiveness a process that is especially hard when those who hurt you make no acknowledgment of any failure on their part. It is not easy walking away from the identity that was everything to you. I’ve struggled a little lately with some leftover emotions, a wish for some kind of closure with the impossibility and want of a way to finally bury it all forever.

The good news is that there’s finally someone who sees me as their hero and someone that they can love like that. In fact, I’m preparing for another trip to the other side of the world to be with my precious bhest once again. While I was praying for the impossible to be made possible my bhest prayed that her bhest would not be taken from her. Her prayers were answered. And perhaps my impossible has been made possible in a way that I could never have expected?

To be continued…

Salvation from the Dark Cave — 5 Parallels Between the Rescue in Thailand and Spiritual Transformation

When I first heard the news about the Wild Boars, a youth soccer team, having gone missing in Thailand, I assumed these twelve boys along with their young coach were hopelessly lost in the flooded cave system and probably already dead or likely would be before anyone reached them. It had been over a week since they had disappeared and there seemed to be little hope of finding them alive.

For that reason, I was very happy to read the news of their being discovered by two British divers who were aiding the rescue efforts. Somehow, despite their ordeal of having to flee deeper into the cave to avoid the rising flood waters and having been trapped in the pitch blackness without food or light for over a week, these players and their coach were still alive. And what a great relief it must’ve been for them to see a person from the outside emerge from those murky waters that had entombed them.

However, that moment of joy was soon replaced by a new fear when considering the perilous journey they now had to face in order to make their escape. The divers who found them were some of the best in the world and many of these boys didn’t even know how to swim—let alone swim in conditions that experts described as extremely dangerous and conditions that tragically did cost one of their rescuers his life.

The question became one of could these boys be saved without a miracle?

This World Is A Dark Cave

We, unlike those boys who had been outside the cave, have never been beyond this world. While we can imagine that there could be something beyond, we are truly bound by what we can touch, taste, see or perceive in our minds. For many reality only extends as far as they are able to fathom. And yet science has discovered spectrums of light beyond our vision and philosophy has long challenged us to go beyond even ourselves, our rational minds, in our thinking.

Greek philosopher Plato imagined a scenario, the Allegory of the Cave, in which we were all born bound in a cave where most are chained where they can only see a shadow of greater reality projected onto the wall in front of them and some of these life-long prisoners are eventually freed. Those freed, we discover, have great difficulty explaining this greater perspective to those still bound. This scenario is pretty much describing our own perception of reality in a nutshell.

Some desire to look beyond the shadows and find a measure of freedom. However, there are many others who are content to live with the shadows and in denial. They are bound by religion, ensnared by the entertainment industry, distracted the pursuit of wealth, blinded by the daily grind or unable to see for any number of reasons and never realize that they are in a cave and chained to a wall and only seeing shadows of something greater.

There are also those who have realized they are trapped in a cave and yet also see the waters, have probed the escape routes from this reality and have understood the true impossibility of their predicament. They have lost hope. They are depressed and living in despair because they know that they are trapped and there’s nothing they can do about it.

Jesus Emerged From the Murky Waters

Those Thai boys and their coach had to know that they were doomed without divine intervention or outside help. During the rainy season (that started early and caught them by surprise) lasts into October and they only had supplies for an afternoon. The coach seems to have did his best to look after the boys, withholding rations from himself to give them a better chance of survival, and yet what he could provide was never going to save them from death in the darkness.

Even a strong swimmer had no chance to escape the under water labyrinth that separated them from the outside world. To find another path or dig their way out was impossible given their lack of necessary tools and provisions. Their resources (besides the water they could lick off the walls) were already exhausted. Even their oxygen supply was starting to dwindle and would disappear long before the flood waters would recede. They only had their prayers and hope for a rescue mission to hold back despair—without a savior were doomed.

That is essentially the story for all of humanity and the background for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are born, our forefathers having wandered deep into a cave of sin and our escape from this blocked by the waters of death. This whole world, the entire universe, in fact, is bound by physics to eventually run out of energy and our descendants, no matter how technologically advanced, will not escape that. This is a reality that can cause an intelligent forward-thinking person to wonder what is the point of living if death is all the future holds.

Drawing by Manatsawin Mungsungnoen

If one can imagine how welcomed a sight those British cave divers were for the boys and coach trapped in complete darkness and facing imminent death, then they can also imagine the feeling of elation that the disciples of Jesus felt having seen him after his emergence from the murky waters of death—His resurrected body, their resurrected hopes, and proof positive of his claim that there is eternal life for those who follow after Him.

We Must Take the Plunge of Faith

The happiness about those lost being found was soon replaced with a big question about how to get them from the cave to freedom. How could this half starved group of youngsters and their coach (who was even worse for the wear after selflessly giving his rations to the boys) get out of their subterranean prison?

Many options were discussed and ruled out one by one. There simply was not enough time for other solutions when oxygen levels began to drop, with the fullness of the monsoon season about to begin, and the consensus became clear: They would need to dive out like their saviors or die in the cave. This was something that had been impossible for them before, it was something extremely dangerous even for a veteran cave diver, and would be absolutely terrifying for someone claustrophobic. None of them were swimmers, let alone in any physical condition to match the world class athletes who found them, and I’m sure their fears could keep them paralyzed.

Where does one find the faith to do the impossible?

That was my question a few years ago.

You jump in, that’s how…

We Cannot Save Ourselves

The truth is, while we must take the plunge under the murky waters and swim for all we are worth, the journey out of the cave is not one we are able to do on our own strength. Like the rescue in Thailand took the coordinated effort of many men and women, we cannot possibly complete our journey to freedom without a community or the help of others. Rather we need to partake of the provisions left for us by those who have followed after Christ. We need to firmly grasp the guiding rope of the written and spoken tradition that the Church (2 Thessalonians 2:15) has left for us. And must also submit to those ordained to lead us to safety and who are responsible for leading us to salvation:

Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you. (Hebrews 13:17 NIV)

We live in an age where purported authorities are questioned, and rightly, for their abuses. There are many self-proclaimed (and self-promoting) religious experts who claim to have spiritual knowledge and have yet to truly take the plunge of faith themselves. These false teachers. They are ordained only by themselves, by their own arrogance, and are whom Jesus describes as being blind guides. You can know them by their fruits:

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. (Matthew 7:15‭-‬20 NIV)

Be sure that those who lead you have a true connection to the world beyond. Do they shine a light that pushes back against the darkness? Do they bring you nourishment and spiritual air? For those trapped in the cave in Thailand, it is clear who came from the outside and why they are there. The rescuers come with provisions, they administered first aid to those in need and built the trust of the boys to follow their lead and instructions.

These teachers, without a doubt, played a critical role in the salvation of those trapped in the cave and we too need those who have experience beyond our own to provide calm and guide us through the fog, currents, and confusion of life.

We Must Die to Save Others

As I entered the church building on Sunday the final act of the rescue mission started. The Gospel text was, interestingly enough, about some friends of a paralytic and their faith that carried him to Jesus:

Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” (Matthew 9:1‭-‬2 NIV)

The account goes on with Jesus first addressing the naysayers and critics for their evil thoughts before going on to fully heal this man. But this detail about Jesus seeing the faith of these men is something I had missed before. It was their carrying him, like the divers leading the boys out of the hopeless depths, that led to this man being forgiven and freed from his paralysis. It is our job to carry each other back to Christ and that is the purpose of a Christian community and the Church. It is our faith that leads to the healing of others.

Like these men carrying their friend or the “buddy system” of experienced divers leading the young boys through the darkness to the light, we too must serve a role in the salvation of others. The Christian mission is to participate in the salvation of others in much the same way as those, who came from around the world and volunteered to risk their own lives—not for financial gain, not for their own biological children and not compelled by force. They simply saw a need, a desperate need, and became the solution.

Sgt Major Saman Kunan

Many have sacrificed time and volunteered their talents to aid in the search and rescue effort in Thailand. But one man, Sgt Major Saman Kunan, a retired Thai Navy diver, gave his own life so those boys could be saved. This hero, after delivering oxygen canisters needed for the daring escape, ran out of oxygen himself and perished.

And that is the responsibility of all Christians. We are to find lost sheep, feed them, heal their wounds, lead them out of harm’s way, and even give our lives for them. We are to be Christ in every sense of the word and that means dying to ourselves and saving the lost from their dark cave.

We need to be faithful to those who are lost without a hope.

Conscience or Compromise? The Courage of Desmond Doss…

There is a movie out about an unlikely war hero. The man, Desmond Doss, was a Christian conscientious objector (or a conscientious cooperator according to his own description) who joined the army to save lives rather than take them.

Doss refused to pick up a rifle in training and for disobedience to orders to do so he was court-martialed. But he stood his ground, he was allowed to go into combat without a weapon, and went unarmed as a medic. His courageous effort to save lives earned him presidential honor.

Doss, unlike many in the church today, was unwilling to compromise for sake of convenience. Many have compromised valuing their own temporal comfort over full obedience to the one who has control over eternity. Many have compromised, voting for ‘the lessor of two evils’ and political expedience rather than take a courageous stand against the evil of both sides.

#1) The Apostate Church Does Not Overcome Evil With Good.

Jesus said…

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:38-48)

It is amazing to me that many claim to love Jesus and yet find all kinds of ways to make the plain teachings above not apply to their own situation. They misuse other parts of Scripture to water down the words of Jesus and faithless hypothetical “what if” reasoning to justify around what is clearly stated. I guess for them Biblical literalism only applies when it has no real practical value or real life consequences—like the creation narrative in the book of Genesis?

But, when Paul echoes Jesus and says we should “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21) I am doubtful that he is saying that we should do the same things evil people are doing while slapping a religious justification on it. He’s actually telling us to be radically different, that we should care for our enemies as we would our own, and trust God will do justice.

Those in the apostate church do not trust God and therefore take matters into their own hands that are not assigned to them. This is the beginning of their road to compromise, it is negotiating a deal with Devil to secure a temporal gain and exactly the temptation Jesus resisted when offered worldly power.

#2) The Apostate Church Is Focused On Judgement of Others Rather Than Self-examination.

Jesus said…

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit? The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brotherʼs eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brotherʼs eye.” (Luke 6:37-42)

If we ever could fully comprehend God’s perfection (and our own unworthiness by comparison) we would likely never judge anyone again. Instead we would spend our days prostrate in prayer and thanking God for the amazing grace that saved a wretch like us. Unfortunately we do not understand God’s grace and therefore struggle with smugness, sanctimony and self-righteous feelings.

We also tend to judge ourselves differently than we do others. There is a tendency to justify our own behavior based in circumstances while treating the sins of others as a character flaw and an inexcusable choice for evil. This tendency is called fundamental attribution error and the very opposite of what Jesus taught us to do.

We should never excuse our own compromise and then simultaneously pray “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” as Jesus did. It is our job to show grace and in our doing so we are living in obedience to God who will show us grace. Those in the apostate church do opposite of this and are harsh to outsiders while forgiving their own or themselves.

#3) The Apostate Church Demonizes Opposition Rather Than Love As Christ Loved.

The apostate church has compromised and have broke spiritually blind despite their arrogance. They therefore cannot love as Jesus did and do not understand this:

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devilʼs schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:11-12)

A Christian should not be involved in the politics of those who demonize their opposition. Some of the claims from this past election remind me the blood libel used to slander the Jews and create an irrational hatred of that whole people group. When we turn other people into demons we justify our own unthinkable acts and often become as terrible as those we demonize.

Our flight is in a spiritual realm “not against flesh and blood” but the apostate church spiritualizes their own worldly perspective and demonizes those whom they are commanded to love. Furthermore, our judgement again should be turned inward and towards our own, as Paul explains:

“I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. ‘Expel the wicked person from among you.'” (1 Corinthians 5:9-13)

Even in churches where political involvement is discouraged Paul’s words (above) are ignored and the judgement focused on those outside. But we are told it is not our job to judge those outside our group—those outside are for God to judge. Instead we are not to be associated with those who claim to be Christian yet live unrepentant in their immorality.

This in–group favoritism is common in the world, it is expressed in various forms of tribalism where people only see the faults of those outside their tribe, it is also a common feature of the apostate church, but it is the antithesis of what Jesus taught. We must not associate ourselves with those who claim to be Christian and yet live in unrepentant sin.

#4) The Apostate Church Is Focused On the Worldly Kingdom.

Jesus said…

“My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” (John 18:36)

The idea that a person must vote as a Christian duty is absurd. Certainly there is a case for using the means we have influence the world in a positive direction and voting could be a means for doing that. However, there is also a case for abstaining from politics and following after the example of Jesus who refused worldly power offered to him by Satan:

“The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.'” (Luke 4:5-7)

Many seem to be willing to make a deal with the devil for much less than what was promised to Jesus. Offer them a few Supreme Court Justices with assurances of their religious freedom and they’ll turn out in droves. Never mind whether or not the one promising the world to us will deliver on their end of the bargain.

Have we forgotten that true men of faith would rather be in prison or a martyr than make the smallest comprise for worldly gain?

How has the church become so blinded by worldly political ambition?

It is disturbing to me is how some who profess Christ are actually shamelessly celebrating the election of a vulgar and unrepentant man as if it is a spiritual triumph. It makes a mockery of our faith when we compromise out of fear, it is a spiritual poverty and should be repented rather than celebrated.

Our lack of trust in God will make us losers even when we think we have won. The ends do not justify the means. We need less cowardly people who compromise for sake of temporal worldly gain—and more who make a courageous stand like Desmond Doss.

	David on The Dilemma of a Colorful…
	Joel on Fundamentalist Anti-fragility…
	Dana on Fundamentalist Anti-fragility…
	Joel on My First Two Weeks Of Fat…
	Carolyn Horst on My First Two Weeks Of Fat…

Irregular Ideation

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." Albert Einstein

hero

Ken Metzler — A Tribute to the Unsung Heroes

Finding the True Legacy of American Slavery

From Hero To Heel To Healed—Fragments From An Estranged Relationship

Salvation from the Dark Cave — 5 Parallels Between the Rescue in Thailand and Spiritual Transformation

Conscience or Compromise? The Courage of Desmond Doss…