Coffee & Theology

Caffeinated Chronicles: Part 2 – From Cheerios to Crawfish: Navigating Childhood Adventures on the Path to Revelation!

In the last post I spoke about the beginning of my journey. My time in Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky was incredibly important for my early development. My sister was born, and my life was just beginning.

We lived at the top of the mountain in rural Kentucky for roughly 5 years. My dad was the pastor at the small Baptist church there until I was around 6 years old. A couple of things took place then that caused us to move on from Kentucky.

First my parents had some major conflicts with church members. I really don’t know what all of it was about, but I remember my mom saying something about us taking the vacuum from the church to use in our home. I’m sure there were much deeper issues, but I was much too young to remember anything about it.

The other major thing was that my dad wanted to go back to school. He had decided he was going to begin studies at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. I believe he was going to be attending seminary there, but I don’t actually remember what his course of study was.

What I do remember is the day we moved. I was sitting at breakfast eating Cheerios on a sunny morning in 1995. After breakfast, we cleaned up and got in the moving truck that my parents had rented. We stopped at the bank where my parents closed their account and drove the roughly 5 hours to our new home in Greer, South Carolina. That night, we set up our tv on the floor and slept in sleeping bags on the floor.

We had moved to a trailer park. My parents had agreed to purchase a mobile home from another family. It was at the end of a long gravel road, one of two in the trailer park. It was surrounded on two sides by woods and there was a field between the two roads. Technically there was a playground, but it was most often overgrown with rusty equipment, so we neighborhood kids didn’t play there very often. There was also a pond, though it was often covered in algae and wasn’t great for fishing.

The entrance to the trailer park where we lived for seven years

But we didn’t notice any of that. To us, my brother, sister, and I, it was our own little world. There was only one road in and out of the trailer park, and the rest of the park was surrounded by woods or fences. This made it an ideal place for kids to wander freely and get into mischief.

One of our first days there my brother disappeared. My parents looked for him for a long time, worried that he had gotten lost in this new place. It turned out that he had discovered a path that led deep into the woods behind our trailer. We spent many, many days wandering those woods after that. We got to know the woods very well, discovering treehouses that had been built by former inhabitants and a stream where we would catch crawfish.

We also bonded with the neighborhood kids. There were twins, a boy and a girl, that we became particularly close with. There was a mean girl who lived on the other road of the trailer park. We often avoided her, but sometimes she would lead her friends to our dominion and we would all play together. It was with her that I experienced my first kiss, hiding under a play shelter in our front lawn. She tasted like Froot Loops.

The only remaining part of the trailer we lived in as of summer 2020: the concrete front porch

My parents, being the Fundamentalist Baptists that they were, didn’t trust the public school system. As a result, my brother, sister, and I were homeschooled. I remember sitting with my mom and fighting with her about doing my daily work. Occasionally I just wouldn’t do it, and I hoped she wouldn’t notice. It never worked.

My mom didn’t work because she had health problems. Like, serious, constant health problems. She said that her health issues started as a result of having had measles as a child. She had kidney disease, and she was on the transplant list. We often accompanied her to dialysis and would sit in the waiting room doing our homework or reading books or being bored for long, long hours that felt like they would never end.

Her health problems put her in the hospital multiple times. In fact, my brother, sister, and I sometimes remember how old we were when certain life events took place by figuring out what our mom was in the hospital for at the time. Her health difficulties did have an upside, however. It meant we got to take occasional trips to Charleston, the beautiful seaside town with palm trees and beaches. We would often go there because my mom was seeing doctors at the Medical University of South Carolina. In between her appointments, we would go to the beach or go see the historical sites. I love Charleston to this day.

My dad, on the other hand, had to work. He attended classes at Bob Jones for maybe one year before he couldn’t afford to continue. He never achieved his degree. The rest of the time he worked at Toys R Us. I cannot even begin to describe how magical it was to have my dad work at a toy store when I was a kid. He got a 10% discount on everything and we would often just go browse the store or spend time there while he was working. My brother and I loved playing the Nintendo 64 demos in the electronics section. Sometimes we would even accompany him for entire shifts. My friends were all jealous.

The building that used to be the Toys R Us where my dad worked

I was around 9 years old when the Pokemon craze hit. And I’ll tell you: it hit hard. I remember watching the television show and just waiting for the first video games to come out. It was incredibly exciting when I opened the Blue Gameboy game box and extracted my very own copy of Pokemon Blue. I have incredibly fond memories of wasting hours playing that game. And don’t even get me started on the trading cards! My dad’s work had a Pokemon Trading Card League at least one Saturday morning every month where my brother and I would go play the card game and trade cards with other kids.

Yeah, having a dad who worked at Toys R Us was the best.

I’m aware that this is all background and is short on the church and theological background that shaped my life. That will require a blog post of its own. Maybe several. Trust me, you will want to follow the strange, bizarre journey that is my church experience in South Carolina. It’s a thing to behold.

My son Elijah discovering one of the great joys of our childhood: picking blackberries in the woods behind our trailer

But for now, as I wrap up this chapter of my early years, I want to thank you for joining me on this nostalgic journey down memory lane. Each moment, whether spent in the woods behind our trailer or exploring the aisles of Toys R Us, has played a part in shaping who I am today.

In my next post, I’ll delve into the complexities of my church experience in South Carolina. From fundamentalist Baptist teachings to unexpected twists and turns, it’s a tale that’s as intriguing as it is enlightening.

Until then, be blessed, and stay tuned for more tales from my past.

Caffeinated Chronicles: Part 1 – From Goat Encounters to Sunday Sermons: My Wild Theological Journey Begins!

This is the first post in sharing about my life and theological journey. Believe me when I say it’s wild ride. I’ll plan on posting a series about the different places I lived and church and life experiences I had.

I’ve known about Jesus since I was born. Seriously. I’m not even joking.

Ok, perhaps I’m exaggerating a small amount. But only a little.

I was born in the Year of Our Lord 1989. March 21, 1989, in fact. My 35th birthday is just a few days from now. This time of year always causes me to stop and reflect. Reflection and introspection are going to be a common theme throughout this blog. It’s just kind of what I do. And it drives my wife crazy sometimes.

Now, where were we? Oh, yes. March 21, 1989. I am the second child of three, which means I’m also the middle child. My older brother is almost exactly two years older than I am, having been born in March of 1987. Don’t tell him I wrote about him, please.

I was born in a place called Clifton Forge, in the US state of Virginia. I have no memories of this place, but I have been through town a few times in later life. It’s a cute town, and that’s about all I can say about it. You see, I spent quite a bit of time moving when I was young. I lived in Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. It’s in Kentucky that I have my earliest memories.

My dad went to college to be a school teacher, but he also went to seminary and was ordained as a pastor in the Baptist church. We moved to Kentucky when I was between 2 and 3 years old. My dad had accepted a job as a pastor at a small, independent Baptist church at the top of a mountain in a very rural area. I remember driving with my parents around the mountain roads, watching coal trucks zooming down the perilous curves, mere inches from a drop to their doom.

Our church in Kentucky. The church was the bottom level, and the top level was our home. Taken in 2020.

Many of my earliest memories also involve going to church. In fact, we lived in a small, two bedroom condominium that was positioned on top of the church itself. Every Sunday we would go downstairs to the church and go to a small side room for Sunday school and then into the main auditorium for the service itself, where my dad would lead the songs and preach.

I don’t remember a lot about the church. I remember that my mom taught Sunday school. I remember getting in trouble in church during the service and being dragged out by my mom, screaming, “No! No! I’ll be good! I promise!” I can still remember the feeling of her slapping my butt after we were a safe distance away. Now you understand why I was screaming.

It was also during this time that I remember hearing the message of (Independant, Fundamentalist Baptist) Christianity for the first time. When I say Baptist, people conjur up all kinds of images, many of which involve Southern Baptist churches or other more mainstream Evangelical churches. Trust me when I say that, while we shared similar theological views with these churches, we were far to the right of them. In fact, most people can’t even comprehend what I mean when I talk about it. It sounds like a cult. And that’s probably not a completely inaccurate description.

Basically, I was taught that everyone is a sinner. Adam and Eve (because we had an incredibly strict, literal interpretation of the Genesis story) ate the fruit in the Garden of Eden and thereby passed sin down throughout all humanity, where it spread like a sickness. As a result, God is angry.

Like super, super, inconsolably angry.

He (in this denomination, God is exclusively male) was angry at each of us even before we were born, because of this doctrine of Original Sin. As a result, we are all destined for eternal punishment in the undying fires of hell. You might think that this doctrine is a bit much to be teaching children, but it is at a young age that we begin hearing about this hellfire and God’s anger and sin.

Therefore, we are all in need of a savior. Thankfully, God gave us a way out and sent his son, Jesus to die for us and be resurrected. He was a perfect sacrifice because he never did any bad stuff. All we have to do is ask Jesus to save us and take away our sins and then we are saved and we go to heaven when we die instead of hell.

Sounds simple, right?

In theory, it is simple. But this doctrine of eternal torment in hell terrified me. And I don’t mean it just kind of scared me. It kept me awake some nights, worrying that I was going to die and go to hell. And so I did the natural thing. I asked Jesus to save me so I didn’t have to go to hell when I died.

But that didn’t end my fear. But that’s a story for another post.

Needless to say, church was an incredibly important part of my life during our time in Kentucky. Our lives were dominated by it. This domination continued throughout my childhood and adolescence and into my early adulthood.

My family at a friend’s graduation. I was probably 6 at this time.

But I still hold my time in Kentucky in a special place in my heart. It wasn’t all spankings and fear of hellfire. As it was a rural area, I was allowed to play outside on my own from a very young age. There was nowhere I could really go and get lost. I spent hours and hours in the church parking lot after a rain, pretending that I was a sailor and playing with a plastic boat in the streams of water that would be left rushing down the mountain.

My family in Kentucky. L to R: David, me, Marjorie, Rebecca, David Andrew

Our neighbors had goats, and they would often escape the fence and make their way into our church parking lot. They would do what goats often do, eat things and poop. I remember finding innumerable goat pellets left behind after they had attacked our parking lot. They looked like chocolate ball cereal. And yes, before you have to ask, I played with them. I did have the good sense not to eat them though, even though I often wondered if they actually tasted like chocolate cereal. I still have no idea.

It was also in Kentucky that my sister was born. I was five years old at the time. We had to drive several hours to Lexington, where my sister was born in a hospital. A favorite story my family liked to tell as I was growing up was that one of the nurses at the hospital told my dad that he had plenty of time before my sister would be born. He took my brother and me to Wendy’s to get some lunch.

The hospital where my sister was born, taken in 2020.

Upon our return to the hospital, a nurse chased us down, yelling at my dad, “Where were you?! While you were gone, your wife gave birth to your daughter!” My mom never, ever let my dad forget that one.

But overall, my memories of our time in Kentucky are positive ones. It was a beautiful place, with kind people. It was also a beautiful introduction to what it means to be human, and my first experiences of being independent, playing in our mountainside parking lot.

Anyway, I’ll plan to continue this history of my life and the development of my theology in my next post. Next up: moving to South Carolina, and my earliest memories of feeling inadequate both at church and in my life. It’s a wild trip.

As I reflect on the wild ride of my early years and the beginning of my theological journey, I’m reminded of the power of storytelling and shared experiences. I hope that my tales of goat encounters, Sunday sermons, and childhood fears have resonated with you in some way. But this is just the beginning of our journey together. I invite you to join me as we continue to explore the twists and turns of life and faith. Share your thoughts, memories, and reflections in the comments below—I’d love to hear from you! And if you don’t want to miss out on the next installment of my story, be sure to subscribe to my blog for updates delivered straight to your inbox. Until next time, keep exploring, keep questioning, and keep seeking truth.

Don’t Have Sex

**This is a repost from my other website: givenscalais.org

Much of my life has been spent worrying about the things that Christian’s don’t do.

Seriously.

From my youngest days I remember hearing sermons about all the things we shouldn’t be doing if we wanted to prove that we’re saved (or something like that). They would often say something along the lines of, “Once you’re saved you can’t lose your salvation… But, if you do these certain things it should make you question whether you were ever saved in the first place.” And so I was told:

“Don’t play the lottery.”

“Don’t smoke.”

“Don’t drink alcohol.”

“Don’t hang out with those types of people (unless your purpose is to evangelize them).”

“Don’t play cards.”

“Don’t befriend Catholics.”

“Don’t play Pokémon (seriously. This caused tension at my church. I loved Pokémon).”

“Don’t listen to rock music.”

“Don’t say bad words.”

And then the biggest don’ts of all:

“Don’t have sex.”

“Don’t think sexual thoughts.”

And especially:

“Don’t ever, ever, ever, ever, even think about, ever, ever being gay.”

This is not a comprehensive list.

And so, you can see, I was often left feeling inadequate. I would do something I wasn’t supposed to do, and then I would feel incredibly guilty and like I must not really be saved because I kept making mistakes. After all, if I were really saved, they told me, I would be able to stop doing all these things by the Power of the Holy Spirit™. And yet the Power of the Holy Spirit™ didn’t seem to be helping me. So therefore, I must not be saved and must not be able to access the Power of the Holy Spirit™.

And so, I asked Jesus to save me again. And again. And again. And again.

And again.

I could go on for many pages about the things that I heard that caused me to question my salvation. But I won’t.

This has caused a significant amount of psychological trauma for me. I’m not going to pull and punches here. What I experienced was spiritual abuse. It was a manipulation tactic for getting me to behave a certain way that was in line with the way that our leaders wanted. They said it was clearly what the Bible teaches. But I’ve read the Bible.

Spoiler alert: it’s a lot less clear and obvious than I was led to believe.

In fact, it’s quite messy and contradictory. It took me years to recognize that openly. But now that I’ve acknowledged it, I’m strangely ok with not having all the answers that I was supposed to have.

So rather than pretending to have all the answers and relying on the Power of the Holy Spirit™ to follow all the rules, why don’t we focus on what really matters, what almost all Christians will agree is the central point of the Bible: the life of Jesus Christ?

Jesus had rules too. And his are just as hard to follow:

“Love God with all your heart and soul.”

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

And that’s it. Those are the rules. Rather than listing a bunch of don’ts, Jesus’ rules are stated positively, telling us what we should do. What if we focused on what we need to do rather than making a list of rules of things that we shouldn’t do if we’re really Christian? What if, before we did something we asked ourselves, “Is this thing loving to God?” or “Is this thing loving to my neighbor?”? How would our lives and our faith and our hearts be different if we lived this way?

Would we love the poor (another command from the Bible)?

Would we welcome the immigrant (also a command from the Bible)?

Would we care for the earth (one of the first commands in the Bible)?

Yes. Yes, we would.

We readily admit that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day misrepresented the Law as a burden to be caried and a list of rules to follow.

And yet, we’ve replaced this burden with another burden of our own creation. Jesus specifically called out the Pharisees for this exact thing, and I believe this same thing applies to many teachers and preachers today, “Jesus replied: You teachers are also in for trouble! You load people down with heavy burdens, but you won’t lift a finger to help them carry the loads” (Luke 11:46, Contemporary English Version).

Jesus came to set us free from this burden, so that we can live a positive life, a life of doing, a life of loving God and loving our neighbor.

So let us live lives characterized by what we do instead of what we don’t do. Let our lives be a positive shining example of the love of God, a love that transcends everything, a love that will leave the 99 sheep in search of the 1 that is missing. That is the God I serve.

Thank God for Antidepressants (Seriously)

**This is a repost from my other website: givenscalais.org

Hey, everyone!

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. I’ve started to write a few things, but they’ve never really been the right thing to write, so I guess I’ll write something that feels right.

In all seriousness, life here has been hectic. The holidays were of course crazy. We even got to share in two different Christmases. So we moved from one thing to another, with only a little time to catch our breath in between. Not to mention that the boys didn’t have school for a couple of weeks. So, yeah, it’s been pretty hectic.

But now the New Year is here, the Christmas lights are all taken down and the gym memberships so many people purchased are going unused. The holiday season is over. This time of year always has me reflecting, so I’ll share some more personal insights with you than I normally would here.

Depression. Depression is one of those words we hear a lot but don’t want to apply to ourselves. At least, that’s the case for me. I remember hearing the word depression a lot growing up, but in the church I was raised in, depression was viewed as a sin problem. If you’re truly saved and trusting God, depression is something you should never deal with. If you are feeling depression, then you’re not really trusting God/you’re walking in sin/you may have a habitual sin problem that means you may not really be saved/you’re going to hell. Perhaps I’m slightly exaggerating in my adult mind, but this is how it was received in my youthful brain, and I suspect the same is true for many people who grew up alongside me.

As a result of this view of depression and, by extension, other mental health issues, many people in certain church circles never seek help. They believe that they need to trust God more and repent of their sins and the deep feeling of sadness they have will be magically lifted. That’s what I believed.

You see, for most of my life, I mean even back in my earliest memories, I had a melancholy feeling. I never quite knew what to call it, so I made up a name. I called it my “inner darkness.” It was a feeling that even in what should have been the happiest times of my life (my marriage, the births of my sons, etc.) would creep up on me and cause me to feel like life is meaningless and that I am completely worthless and I don’t deserve anything. Sometimes it hit me the worst on beautiful sunny days where I should have been happy and enjoying life.

I’ve mentioned some of my journey of deconstruction and reconstruction of my faith. I was always skeptical of therapy and medication, thinking that I didn’t need any of that because I never had suicidal thoughts or suffered from what people think of as stereotypical depression. I always tried to portray myself as a happy person. I remember a girl in high school telling me, “I can’t imagine you ever being sad.” This outer appearance and the stupid sarcastic humour that I always use in conversation were/are used to cover up the deep anxiety I have that people will never accept or love me, and that people don’t like me or want me around.

It wasn’t until I was about 30 years old that I took a chance and started to see a therapist. My darkness closed in on me to the point where I thought I would be crippled and unable to carry out a normal life for fear of the constant judgment of others. Talking with the therapist helped. It was an excellent step in helping me work through some of the religious trauma I had experienced in the past.

Then my parents died. 2020 happened, and I was in deep depression for much of the year. The following year, I decided it was time to talk to someone about it again. I reached out to my doctor and he suggested at least trying an antidepressant. He prescribed one initially that I had a pretty severe reaction to that ended up with me having a concussion after passing out on the stairs of our house at 5:00 am. That’s a story for another time. Then he cautiously started me on a low dose of Lexipro. After ensuring that I tolerated it well, he increased the dosage. I waited a few weeks to see whether it would help.

And it did help. It helped a lot. The black cloud I had felt, my “inner darkness,” lifted. It was as if I was truly seeing the world for the first time. I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. I can’t say my anxiety and depression are gone, but they only very seldom rise to the surface now. I don’t have extreme anxiety every time I have to speak in front of a group of people or meet new people. I don’t stay up at night wondering what people are thinking about me. Truly, I sleep much, much better these days. I can’t believe I spent so much of my life shrouded in darkness, thinking that if I just prayed enough it would go away. I mean it when I say, “Thank God for Lexipro!”

Mental health is no joke. I told this long story to say that I still believe in prayer. I believe that a closer relationship with God is something to strive for. But it is incredibly dangerous to blame people’s mental health issues on themselves. Did not God give humans the ability to create drugs to treat issues like this? Please, if you are fighting against depression or a dark cloud hanging over you find help. You don’t have to suffer and blame yourself for your depression. Medication may not be the solution for everyone, and it’s only a part

of my own mental health regime. But if you’re reading this and need help, please, please go find it. Don’t become another casualty of something that is completely treatable like depression.

This new beginning with therapy and antidepressants has allowed me to serve in my current capacity in France without constant anxiety or fear. It has allowed me to be supportive to people who need me without being sidetracked by my own depression. I still have times when I get depressed, don’t get me wrong, but those days are now few and far between compared to how things were a few years ago.

God wants your best life for you. Maybe part of God’s plan for your life is to find mental health support from people who care. Don’t wait. Find the help you need. Please, reach out to me if I can help you in any way.

That is all for the moment.

Beauty in Dark Places

**This is a repost from my other website: givenscalais.org

(This post was written by Joseph)

“They’re saying that mom doesn’t have much time left” is what my sister told me over the phone, while I was still in training for my new job.

My heart immediately sank. “Well, S^#%,” I replied (I almost never swear). I tried to talk myself into believing that she was going to be okay, that the doctors were wrong again. After all, we’d been told that same thing by doctors numerous times over the years, and somehow she had always pulled through. Sadly, the doctors were right this time. That is how my 2020, the worst year of my life, began.

Our final picture together

My mom passed away on February 8 that year. She had developed pneumonia, and her body wasn’t strong enough to fight it off. At least I got to see her when she was somewhat aware before she passed. “I’m so happy to see you!” was the last thing she said to me. My kids got to be present and say goodbye. Thankfully, covid hadn’t spread through the country yet, so my whole family got to be there as she took her last breaths. My heart was broken.

But that’s not all. Shortly before this time, my dad had begun having symptoms. He’d had an MRI, and the doctors had found a lesion in his brain. He had been supposed to have an biopsy, but my mom’s passing put a delay on that. The moment my mom passed, my dad nearly passed out and had to be wheeled to the emergency room. His new scan showed that the lesion had nearly doubled in size. His biopsy was scheduled for the following week. My dad at my sister’s wedding in 2018

That next week, after his surgery, my brother put the doctor on the phone as he told us the news. It was worse than we could possibly have imagined. My dad had developed a brain tumor called glioblastoma, the same tumor that had taken the life of John McCain. It is the most aggressive form of brain cancer, and almost no one survives more than a year after their diagnosis. Shortly thereafter, my family went to visit my dad while he was recovering in the hospital. He wasn’t himself at all. He was angry. He was swearing (something I’d almost never heard him do). He was a very different man than the person I remembered growing up with.

But that’s not all. During our visit, we were asked to go to the apartment that my dad shared with my brother and get a few things. As we approached the building, we saw several fire trucks spraying water onto a burning building. I was in disbelief. Rachel told me that it was my brother’s building, but I didn’t want to believe it, so I got out of the car and started walking. I told some bystanders which building I was looking for, and they told me that it was the one that was on fire. I called my brother and dad and told them what had happened. As you can imagine, they were shocked.

To top everything off, some looters broke into the building after the fire was put out and it was being patrolled by security. They took everything. They even stole my mom’s ashes. We were truly devastated.

Finally, my dad’s cancer progressed much faster than we could have imagined, and he passed away after a short battle, in a beautiful hospice center, on June 18th, the day after his 62nd birthday.

You can probably see why I think of 2020 as the worst year of my life. Nothing seemed to go well that year. Everyone says that 2020 was the worst, and I’m somewhat resentful of that fact to this day, because I suspect my 2020 was worse than almost everyone else’s. Most people were upset that they couldn’t go out to eat. For me, both my parents died and my brother’s apartment burned down and my mom’s ashes were stolen. I’m pretty sure I win.

I write this not to sound angry—although I was very angry at the time. I still haven’t fully recovered from that year, and I probably never will. I write it to mention that beauty emerged even from the worst moments of my life, from unexpected places.

We moved a lot when I was a child. We lived in at least 5 different states. My work gave me four weeks off after my dad died, and my sister and I were able to take a trip to visit many of the places we’d lived as children. We visited the college where our parents met. We visited the places that we lived in South Carolina and the place where she was born in Kentucky. We traveled to Florida to see the house my grandma lived in and that we visited many times as children. I think of that trip as almost a sacred pilgrimage of remembrance for my sister and me. It was a wonderful time spent together, grieving and trying to see the beauty in our circumstances.

What have I learned? I don’t exactly know. Or I guess what I mean is I can’t quite put it into words. It would be easy to spout clichés like “Life is short” or “Hug your loved ones because you never know when they’ll be gone.” Those are both true, but they don’t do a good job of expressing the deeper meanings. I have found beauty in sadness. I have known what it means to be crushed. It would be easy to say that I can see God’s purpose in this, but I don’t really think that way anymore. The truth is, bad things happen. Crappy, awful, heart-rending things happen. There are times that you will want to just lie on the floor and curse God and humanity with the loudest voice you can muster. There will be times when you, like I have a tendency to do, hold your feelings inside, believing you can’t let anyone else see you cry because that would mean you’re not strong enough. Trust me, I’m not strong enough.

What I’m saying is, keep your eyes open for the beauty that surrounds you, even in your darkest times. The way community comes together to surround you in your times of deepest grief, the way the sun sparkles on the mountains of Kentucky when it sets, the voice of your children as they cry and grieve the loss of someone who they knew loved them for who they are. Look for God in the empty spaces, in the darkness. God is there in those beautiful times, and he is trying to speak to you. If nothing else, let the dark times mold you into a more compassionate person, appreciating things that you now take for granted and reaching out to others experiencing darkness with a sympathy that only you can have because of what you have been through.

As I enter into the second anniversary of the darkest point in my life, I will make a decision to love those who feel unloved, and to understand those who feel like no one understands. Maybe that’s where the true beauty of suffering can be found.

Forgive the extra long post today. I hope that peace and blessings follow you wherever you are. You are loved beyond measure. Never forget to seek out the beautiful things in the darkness.

Judging the Judges

**This is a repost from my other website: givenscalais.org

Matthew 23:23-24 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!”

We grew up in a denomination that placed a lot of emphasis on acting a certain way, talking a certain way, and carrying out certain activities. As we have talked about in a previous post, there was a sense of those who were “in” and those who were “out.” If we did certain things, we were told that we may not truly be saved, that God was angry at us.

In the above passage, Jesus is calling out the religious leaders of his day for going through all the motions of their religion while neglecting its most important features. This ties in well with what we have been learning as a family from Micah 6:8, which in its context tells us that God does not want us to simply conform to a particular set of religious rules, but that God’s desire is for us to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

Jesus tells us that even if we live perfectly according to the expectations that are placed on us by our churches, but we are not acting justly or showing mercy, we have completely missed the point. Jesus even refers to these things as the “weightier matters” of the law! The Pharisees were guilty of living out the letter of the law, but ignoring its heart. Micah tells us in chapter 6 that God has no desire for our sacrifices or our songs and hymns. What God has wanted from the beginning is that we act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

This is a point that is missed by much of the church over its history. The church is known for its rules and expectations. People from outside the church know Christians as the people who oppose homosexuality, who don’t swear, who are prudish about matters of sex. Christians are known as the ones who are constantly in judgment of the way that people live.

I can’t help but wonder what Christians’ image in the world would be if we paid attention to what Jesus calls the “weightier matters” of justice and mercy. What if we were characterized by the love and compassion that we showed to those in need? What if we were known for advocating for criminal justice reform and ending the prison industrial complex that commits egregious injustices every day? What if we took Micah’s words seriously and were understood to be a people that did justice, loved mercy, and walked humbly with God?

I ask these questions not to try to make anyone feel guilty. I am guilty myself of thinking I’m better than other people because I do or don’t do certain things. What I want is to look inside myself and find places where I can make room for God to do his Kingdom building work in my heart so that I can show justice and mercy to others. Would you pray with us that we as a church will rise to this challenge; that we will move to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God? Will you pray with us that when Jesus looks at us he will not call us hypocrites, but that we will live out the words of Micah and of Jesus? If everyone did these things, I believe the whole world would come to Jesus.

A Very Caffeinated Spirituality

Why did I choose to title my blog “Coffee and Theology”? To be honest, I initially thought of calling it “Caffeinated Theology,” but I realized I couldn’t spell caffeinated very well, and that people who were searching for it may not be able to either.

So what’s so caffeinated about my spirituality?

When I say caffeinated spirituality I mean it both literally and metaphorically. It’s literal in the sense that I love coffee. I am constantly caffeinated. My wife jokes that my blood is two thirds coffee. She might not be wrong. In fact, my mom was raised in Brazil, the child of American missionaries. She loved coffee and began letting me drink it when I was too young to remember.

Since that time, I’ve grown to love coffee in all of its forms. I make coffee every day for my family. I’ve spent perhaps way too much on coffee apparatuses and coffee beans. I’ve attempted roasting coffee, although that experiment was a bit of a disaster. James Hoffman happens to be one of my favorite YouTubers. I drink coffee while meditating on theology.

So, yeah, I love coffee.

That’s the literal meaning.

Speaking metaphorically, I have had to deconstruct much of my fundamentalist Baptist upbringing. Deconstruction is a buzzword among young Christians these days. I understand that, and I normally hate to use buzzwords. However, I can’t think of a better way to express my experience.

However, I chose not to stop at deconstruction, instead clinging stubbornly to the faith I was handed down from my parents (along with my love of coffee, I also inherited my mom’s stubbornness). And so, I began the process of reconstruction.

I, like many people my age–I was born in 1989–was heavily influenced by the writings of Shane Claiborne, having been assigned his book Irresistible Revolution as reading in high school. It’s a long, long story that I’ll save for future posts, but the short version is that that book began my journey into progressive Christianity, and helped me land firmly in the Anabaptist camp.

“Hang on! What’s an Anabaptist?!” I hear you asking.

Again, you’ll need to wait for a future post for an in-depth explanation of that too. For now, what I mean is that I belong to a group of Christians that believes strongly in working toward living out the words of Jesus. We are a peace church and we strongly work toward bringing the justice of God’s Kingdom to life in this world.

Hence, the caffeination.

I believe that my Christian faith should goad me into living a life that is different from the average person and seeks to bring about a positive impact on the world and my community. In my view, faith, like caffeine, is a stimulant. It is a stimulant that causes me to serve the poor and the underserved. It causes me to allow myself to be changed and to learn and grow through my interactions with those same people. It even causes me to love my enemies and pray for the oppressors.

It’s a tall order. Like my morning coffee.