James Thorpe

Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. is rolling over in his grave. After God Himself, Dr. King seems one of the most often misquoted, misunderstood, and misapplied men of faith in the United States. Consider:

To celebrate his legacy, a parade was held in a major city under the theme of “All Races, All Genders, All Religions…” etc. Now Dr. King did believe in equality under the law, but that’s very different from uniformity or universal tolerance. Dr. King was not a gay-rights advocate, nor did he advocate any religion outside of Christianity. Let’s examine his “I have a dream” speech:

“I have a dream…that one day…all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics…will sing…’Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’ ” These excerpts do not point to universalism, Hinduism, dualism, Islam, or any other religious distinction outside of those who follow Jesus. And Dr. King wasn’t a feminist; neither was his wife. Where did the parade organizers get the phrase ‘all religions’ and ‘all genders’ unless they have an agenda?

The truth matters. Dr. King stood for equality of legal and political opportunity and the protection of rights. He did not stand for letting everyone do what they like and calling it fine. He did not stand for the removal of moral standards or the sentiment “why can’t we all just get along”. He advocated character above all else as the standard of evaluation for an individual, character as measured by God’s word, not human relativism. He stood for absolute truth, for discrimination. Yes, I said it. Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. based the standards of his life on discrimination.

He knew no one could live by all perspectives, so he chose one – he chose to believe in God and follow the Bible. He had to discriminate against other possible worldviews and reject their assertions of truth completely in order to follow Christ.

He also discriminated against various methods of protest and political change. While some advocated violence, he believed in suffering rather than inflicting suffering. Some advocated reverse discrimination, and still do using his name and reputation; Dr. King’s speech does not favor “Black Power” or any other group having oppressive power over another. He was against slavery in every form, no matter the master. Where was this message in the parade? Oh, yeah, it won’t sell. Somehow, I don’t think the good doctor would be impressed. Some of his followers have misinterpreted, misapplied, and misused his message to bring about the opposite of what he intended…sort of like Jesus and some of His followers.

The Bible says that God is not mocked; we will reap what we sow. We cannot be hypocrites, for Christ or Dr. King, without serious consequences. The truth sets us free; twisting the truth makes us prisoners, and we know where Christ and Dr. King stand on that one. See Isaiah 61:1-3 and the “I have a dream” speech. Read what they actually said. You might get freed.

In the Gospels, Jesus awakes from sleep to rescue his disciples by calming a violent storm with a few words: “Peace! Be still.” His disciples, awestruck, ask “Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?”

The wind and the sea have often been described in feminine terms. Positively speaking, these two elements reflect the graceful undulations of the female form, her ability to gently caress, the calming, soothing quality of the mother’s voice, and the playfulness, deep beauty, and mystery of a woman.

Negatively, both elements reflect the sudden, sometimes violent changes in women’s emotions, the destructive power of an angry woman, the complex and sometimes confused insides of a woman’s mind, and her rebellious, insubordinate, uncontrollable side.

Now, if the God of all Creation can calm a storm of wind and water with words, what effect can His words have on the emotional storms that plague us all, particularly women? Can all the loneliness, despair, guilt, fear, doubt, worry, self-loathing, depression, anxiety and self-destruction that all women endure be calmed by the words of the Master of wind and sea? Just imagine His voice: strong, authoritative, calm, confident, full of love and mercy…

“Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”

“Cast your cares upon Me, for I care for you.”

“I will never leave you, nor forsake you.”

“Nothing can separate you from my love.”

“I will supply all your needs according to My riches and glory.”

“Trust Me with all your heart, and do not lean on your understanding. Acknowledge Me in all your ways, and I will direct your paths. ”

All women, and all the men and children who love them, can join the awe of the disciples, saying:

“Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey HIM?”

Even my wind and sea…

Among my Christian brothers and sisters, I have noticed a disturbing trend. Christians seem to be very juvenile and immature in our methods of handling conflict, especially with each other. I’m talking about churches, Christian schools, and other explicitly Christian organizations in which we display blatant anti-Christian behavior when people don’t behave as we expect. We take the Holy Spirit’s role as convictor because God isn’t acting quickly enough for our tastes. Here are some popular attempted solutions:

First, we try to gently correct in love…we say to ourselves, while we actually condescend, trying to make the other person in our image instead of learning God’s purposes for them in the organization, and in our own lives.

Next, we ignore them, or try to hide them away where they can’t be a public relations headache, and make sure the “important” patrons don’t go their way.

If we feel too threatened, we might find an excuse to fire them, persecute them, or exclude them. If not this brave, we might just speak ill of them when in conversation with others, planting seeds of discord that grow into resentment.

Above all, we don’t go to the person to learn their story, and we don’t put ourselves in conflict’s way. Oh, no, we don’t fight…and we don’t say we’re sorry for what we do instead. We accuse, we stew, we complain, and we whine, and then we manipulate, cause suffering, and avoid responsibility. God is not pleased.

Now, I have to say that I am as guilty of these things as anybody. I have witnessed myself, my family, and my friends suffer betrayal, dishonesty and deception, exclusion, and condescension at the hands of their Christian friends, family, and coworkers. I have also witnessed myself, my family, and my friends commit the same sins toward others. How grieved God’s heart must be.

But fear not, true believers: there is hope.

We must place God’s approval higher on our priority list than the approval of men, even financially supportive men. At its root, the fear of offending patrons is rooted in a lack of faith in God’s promise to provide. We believe that if the human source of provision packs up and leaves, offended and frustrated, that God can’t or won’t provide a replacement source of provision.

Fear is also at the root of our pathetic passive-aggression when faced with potential conflict with a colleague or fellow-believer. We seem to value the shallow pleasantries of casual relationships over the messy, ugly, difficult, beautiful authenticity of doing life together. If we really valued an authentic Christ-centered community, we would call each other out when we observe a behavior uncharacteristic of Christ. If we do what Christ did, and speak the truth in love, we have nothing to fear.

Even with fears, we can still follow Christ’s example by honestly admitting our fears to ourselves and then making decisions based on God’s word. Our decisions should be led by the Spirit, not by the flesh’s feelings, wants, insecurities, and fears. When we wrong, we ask for forgiveness. When others wrong, we forgive. We must be prepared to do both on a regular basis. We must ask, seeking the truth, not accuse and assume we already know all we need to know. We msut allow ourselves to be corrected before we seek to correct others. Christ Himself came to serve, not to be served. Christ is calling us…out.

Recently, I spent some time in Colorado’s eastern mountains, some of the 14ers. The view was amazing. I also spent some time on Turkey Mountain, a local mountain-biking and hiking mound on the west side of the Arkansas River here in Tulsa, OK. Sitting high above the objects moving at the speed of life gives me a perspective on time, rhythm, and lifestyle that I lose so easily when I go back down to living altitudes. I think most people lose it there, and forget that such a perspective even exists. Lemme ‘splain.

Day-to-day activities tend to be urgent, in the sense that they must be done by a certain time to be effective: brushing teeth, folding laundry, changing oil, picking up the kids, etc. The American middle class lifestyle of the world has many more urgent tasks that make us feel so busy: checking email, charging batteries, updating our status and software, and checking out the latest…whatever is new today. We become slaves to the tyranny of the urgent (some genius that isn’t me came up with this phrase), and forget how important our decisions are. We matter, our thoughts, words, and actions matter, and that means our perspective matters. Our perspective keeps our attention in one place in spite of what goes on around us, and if we can keep it on Christ, eternity, His Kingdom and His Righteousness, on relationships and Who God is, all meaning changes. 

In Christ, each person matters. Every interaction is an opportunity to encourage, heal, and bless instead of an interruption of my plans, an inconvenient, irritating requirement to get what I want and move on. Time in line is time to slow down and think; getting sick is time to refocus and learn to receive help, a time to learn thankfulness and graciousness. Limits become opportunities for spiritual growth instead of oppressive restrictions to getting more done. In Christ, tasks are just as important as our reason for doing them because our character is what’s at stake.

“If Satan can’t keep you from God, he’ll keep you busy.” (Again, another genius that isn’t me.) Satan knows we lose track of the truth when we are focused right in front of our selves, so he makes “more” look attractive, hoping we will try to fit the modern mold of too busy, stressed, always on the move, multitasking, and never really engaging face-to-face. That lifestyle and perspective isn’t God’s idea. We remember this when we get away, especially in a lonely, wild place, and that’s why those places are so rare in the urban middle class technology-driven lifestyle. No, subdivision developers aren’t demons in disguise, but God didn’t intend life to be convenient, stressed, and so fast. “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” He says. That requires time, focus, and going slowly.

We can’t afford to keep going so fast; we’ll crash. Guaranteed. That’s where we turn to medications and such to keep us going in spite of God’s warnings to just stop for bit.

Make room to listen, to slow down, to sit, to think, to listen…Life always makes more sense after I get away…with God.

Ben Vereen did a song-and-dance on The Muppet Show years ago, called “Mr. Cellophane”, which described a man who was never noticed, always ignored and seen through, like a transparent piece of plastic wrap.

I have heard from several Christian sources the idea that as we walk closer with Jesus, we become invisible; we disappear and fade into the background. Now, in one sense, the sinful self inside of us should be shrinking daily, as we put self to death and take up our cross with Christ. Also, as Christ becomes more important to us, as we surrender more to Him, our life reflects Him to the extent that we want what He wants, do what He did, and like what He likes. He shines through us in that our lives would not be what they are apart from Him. And we should not be seeking attention for ourselves, to pride ourselves, or to glorify ourselves. That is sinful, and no one admires it. In all these ways, Christians should be deferring to the Lordship of Christ; our self should “disappear” next to Him.

However, the idea that good Christians should be like good umpires (never noticed because we never call attention to things and never interrupt the flow of life for others) is preposterous. Lemme ’splain.  Christ constantly interrupted the flow of life and thought for everyone He met. Our lives should be so noticeably different from the world that we attract great attention, scrutiny, persecution, admiration, and confusion. We should be the example of unwavering faith that keeps the atheist awake at night, the undeserved kindness that thaws the militant pagan, the joyful courage that makes the insecure believe in hope, and the one problem that thwarts the plans of the wicked. Christians should be the most difficult, undeniable, confusing, inspiring, and frustrating issue on the mind of the world at any given time, just like our Master was when He walked among us.

Creation screams the glory of God; every sunset, leaf, bacteria, and galaxy reflects His nature in many ways. My world of influence should reflect God the same way: all success, confidence, and joy should be unexplainable apart from His presence in my life. Cellophane? Please…more like dynamite and a beautiful woman and the smell of homemade food and a fast car revving its engine all at the same time. We should be hard to miss, like salt and light in a tasteless darkened world, a city on a hill. Didn’t Somebody already say that? We haven’t been treating Him like…cellophane, have we?

I was listening to Steven Curtis Chapman’s song, “Free” from his album, Signs of Life, and it struck me that prisons hinder criminals’ exposure to positive influences. Sounds like a “duh” kind of thought, but lemme ‘splain.

First, to clarify, a jail (gaol for the old English) is for temporary storage of accused awaiting trial, bail, or claim by parents. I have no problem with this; it seems necessary to any kind of justice system, and I see no Biblical admonition against it. Prison, however, is a place to live out an extended sentence after a trial and conviction, and it immerses criminals in a predominantly criminal culture. How do we expect any of them to want to live differently, or try to live differently if they spend decades learning to survive among lawless, ruthless, truthless peers? It’s the same problem we see in junior high school, only with more lethal experience behind the motives.

Now, my problem with this concept is that it doesn’t help the criminal, and it drains resources away from the society it is supposed to help. Prison keeps the convicted from interacting with the rest of us, but I don’t think that’s the best way to solve either problem. For one thing, God’s plan for Israel (see Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in the Old Testament) had no such concept. God’s idea was to impose physical punishment immediately upon conviction, and then it was all done. No prison, no life sentence, no death row, no community resources used to maintain the life of an unrepentant rule-breaker. No fears of the convicted breaking out, no prison riots, no prison culture, and no prison facilities.

The flipside of this system is that the death penalty was used for many more crimes than our system, and therefore acted as a deterrent in many more instances, decreasing the motivation for violent crime considerably. Those who lived after receiving punishment by the law were easier to accept back into the community because they hadn’t been convicted of something heinous (they’d be dead if they had) and their punishment was a highly visible matter of public memory. No one had any reason to hold their crime against them any more, and if the criminal was ever tempted to break the rules again, they had their physical pain to remind them of what happened the last time. Psychologically and societally, this system has much to offer both the criminal who wants to change and the criminal who doesn’t, which has a direct benefit to the community, as well.

If such a system were instituted, I’m sure lawyers would still have a place, appeals would still tie up the courts, and we would all make jokes about the ridiculous aspects that run counter to real justice. But it would be a grand improvement in many ways: more efficient, swifter, cheaper, easier to operate, and more opportunities for law-breakers to be influenced by law-keepers and the right lifestyle. I’m not running for any office associated with our justice system, but if I were…