My last post, at least for now

When I first started blogging five years ago one of my goals was to share with people what my life looks like as a follower of Jesus. To a certain extent I'm a person who's open and wears my heart on my sleeve. But more and more I'm finding it difficult to share my life online; partly because I'm drawing a blank on what to write about and partly because I really don't want to share what's going on in my life. I've eluded in previous posts that I'm going through a sort of crisis of faith, and as I've thought about how I've been processing this both online and in the real world I felt that it was time to put my blogging on the shelf, at least for now. Until I feel like I've come to some sort of resolution I think there's no point in writing about my faith when I find it suspect in the first place.

Now this doesn't mean that I'm on the road to becoming an agnostic or even an atheist. I've taken an honest look at these worldviews and have found them both to be inadequate. I could take the middle road, like an agnostic would, but the problem there is that the doubter is certain about his or her uncertainty. And the atheist bases his or her belief on so-called evidence in spite of the fact that there is so much in the universe yet to be discovered, and ultimately will be left undiscovered or incomprehensible. We all make leaps of faith; we have to, because if we waited for all the information to come in we could never live in any sort of fashion. I've seen too much in my Christian walk to just out-right dismiss God; there are too many coincidences, too many patterns and yes, I've even witnessed a miracle or two in my time. There has to be something to this Jesus thing.

And yet I also struggle with so many questions, live with so many disappointments & regrets and am waiting for so many prayers to be answered. How accurate is biblical history? Why did God command His people to follow such strange practices and commit such distasteful acts? On the other hand, if the resurrection of Christ didn't happen, as the skeptics suggest, what other explanation is there for the rise of Christianity? Is God really leading my life when I feel like I've reached a dead end? Does God care about the people in my life - my family, my friends, my co-workers and my neighbors? What's the point in prayer when, more often than not, I don't see it making a difference in my world? Sometimes I'm amazed at how God has come through when I've prayed, and yet feel frustrated when so often heaven is, for me at least, silent. Is it enough for me to know that prayer doesn't change things but that it does change me, and so I should pray that others would pray? Can I be the change I want to see in the world, and is it enough of a change to make a real difference?

These questions have brought me to a place where I feel I can't do sermons anymore at Calvary; it's just too hard to preach about things that I honestly don't know if I believe, or even if I ever did. Yet strangely enough I feel like I'm in a place where my life is being refined. I look at the world and see that it is being shaken to its core. Our treasures are slipping away (the world financial meltdown) and our hope is fading (in our governments, public institutions, in technology's promise to make the world a better place). What then is left for the world but Jesus? And as I wrestle with my own crisis I'm seeing that all I'm left with is Jesus. All I know is that in spite of my baggage I find peace when I commune with Jesus in prayer, worship and reading scripture. I'm just having trouble seeing Him work into all the other stuff I'm dealing with. So for now I'm just hanging onto Jesus and enjoying the blessings I do have in my life, like my wife and daughter, and hopefully things will come out in the wash in the end.

So, having said all that and since I won't be writing again for a while, I want to wish my readers well. Thank you for taking the time to read my stuff, whoever and wherever you are. I know it's early, but I also want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in 2012. And maybe sometime in the new year I'll let you know how things turn out for me.

Hendrick

Machine Gun Preacher: Madman or Man of God?

Back in August I was listening to the CBC and I listened to a remarkable story of a man named Sam Childers. His life is a tale of radical change that has brought change to many people's lives. It's a complicated story however that I'm not sure what to make of. I'm not unfamiliar with dramatic conversion stories; you may know them yourself, of how someone who lived a really bad life, became a Christian and now does God's work, right? Childer's story is like that; a guy who was a biker, drug dealer, loved guns, had a stripper for a girlfriend, just an all-around nasty dude. But both of them became Christians, renounced their former lifestyles and got married. But then Childers goes to Africa and encounters a side of life uglier than the one he used to live: the recruitment of child soldiers.

In Sudan he sees how a rebel group (ironically called The Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA) forces children to take up arms to fight in their cause. So Childers builds an orphanage and does what he used to do well in the old days: collect a lot of guns and use them to fight the LRA. Over time he earned the nickname "Machine Gun Preacher". Now this guy is a pastor, who sleeps with his Bible and an AK-47, so you can see how he got this name. The work that he does to help orphans in Sudan by rescuing them from a life of violence and giving them shelter & an education is a great thing. But what troubles me here is not only that he uses violence to liberate these children but that he believes that God actually tells him to do this.

Here's the thing: this guy is doing what no government or NGO dares to do by going into a war zone, hunt down the LRA and free child soldiers. No one but this guy is helping these kids. And he's actually winning this personal war that's he waging. He himself hasn't been killed or wounded (as far as I know, and I don't know if the same can be said about those who are part of his private army). He claims to be a man of God and cites David the warrior king of Israel as an example. And yes, like David of the Old Testament who was granted victory by God, Childers keeps winning the battles he fights. So it's hard to argue against what he's doing, because it seems as if God is on his side fighting a just cause. And yet as a Christian I know (and Childers should also know) that Jesus taught peaceful resistance to evil; Paul the Apostle also wrote that Christians fight a spiritual war with spiritual weapons and do not take up arms against others (2 Corinthians 10:3-4). While Childer's cause seems just it also troubles me in that his example can become a slippery slope. Does this mean that God condones the shooting of abortion doctors? I hardly think so, but you can see where something like Childer's actions can lead to.

Anyhow, I leave it to you my dear readers to wrestle with these questions. Perhaps you would say, "Right on!" when you hear this story as my atheist co-worker said when I told him this story. Maybe you cringe at the thought of yet more violence done in Jesus' name, as just as it appears to be, as I do. If you want to hear Childer's story you can click here to listen to the CBC feature. Check out the trailer of the movie made based on Childer's story and maybe even go see the film, as I plan to do. Maybe we can at least have a better understanding of a guy with an incredible story that begs the question, is Childers a madman or a man of God?



Update: I just came across this news article from the BBC, where President Obama has "... authorized a small number of combat-equipped US forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of (LRA leader) Joseph Kony from the battlefield." Apparently Childers is now getting some outside help from the world's lone superpower. Whether it'll be enough to get him to put away his guns has yet to be seen though...