Boots and Bibles

I Forgot Who God Is

I've learned a lot in the last six years since coming to New York. When I look at old journals and blog entries, their naïveté amuses me. In terms of knowledge, wisdom, and good, hard life lessons, I've come a long way by most people's standards.

But there are other things that I've needed to re-learn.

Cornerstone Festival 2008 just ended last Saturday. I can honestly say it was the best one I've ever been to. And it's not just because my favourite bands – including my very favourite, Blaster the Rocketman – were playing, either. In fact, the music this year was secondary to other things happening in my heart. It came from the words people spoke, the prayers people lifted up, and the people I was reunited with themselves.

This week was a reminder to me of something I have not had a firm grasp on for several years now. It reminded me of what God wants, what God has done, how God works through His people. I also felt Him. I wept with Him. I felt Him embracing me and saying that my work is not done, that my calling has never gone away, and that I'm not nearly as alone as I thought I was – and that it wouldn't matter even if I were!

It was a week of re-learning that I must decrease, and He must increase. I also re-learned that God is love, and to be filled with His Spirit will inevitably mean loving kindness, humility and patience – among other things. He re-ignited a passion for His Kingdom. He reminded me what it means to have faith, to pray, to read His word. It shocked me even how far off-kilter I've become towards Him. I feel like the church in Ephesus, finally straggling back to its first love after years of getting caught up in things that involve Him, but yet are not Him.

The main thing I probably forgot about God is that it's all about Him, and not the things that He supports and encourages.

It was a great journey this year, both literally and figuratively. Staying in Pittsburgh with Luke from Red Lipstick Death, going to the prayer meeting at the End, seeing all the old friends from across the country (and globe), meeting great new ones, and then driving back after three-and-a-half hours of sleep. This was a week to remember.

One thing does concern me though, and I ask you all to lift me up in this: right now I feel on fire, spirited, refreshed and renewed, but these are all feelings. I can't live on feelings. I can't stay sustained on emotional highs, regardless of how true and deep their well-spring may come. I know day-to-day life is already coming against me – the Enemy is already coming against me.

When the emotions fade, I don't want to forgot who You are, Father. When the firestorm blows through, I want to be in the midst of it praising You. I don't want to lose this place. I do not want to be left in the dry land with only books and programmes to sustain me. I need You. Now and forever.

I remember who You are now, Father, and what it means to have faith in You, to love You, to hope in You, and to serve You. Let me never forget again.

Viral

I guess we're all still in shock right now
I guess everything will work itself out
Everything's gonna' be okay
Once the bloodstains wash away
Nobody meant to give you hell
Nobody meant to take your mother
Nobody cared that you were broken
Nobody meant to let you suffer

Gary's dead at fourteen
Ice cold and buried, just a dream
The biting virus in his soul
Won the battle, he let go
Now where the sunlight hit his face
There's only cessation and decay
Every moment slipped away
Every daydream dreamt in vain

And every day
I ask myself
How could I have stopped you
But still I wake
heartsick and dazed
Because I can't sleep through another replay

You're killing yourself again.

So many things I should have said
What was it running through your head
That made you throw yourself away
Too many questions,far too late

Nobody meant to give you hell
Nobody meant to take your mother
Nobody cared that you were broken
Nobody meant to let you burn.

And every day
I ask myself
How could I have stopped you
But still I wake
heartsick and dazed
Because I can't sleep through another replay

You're killing yourself again.

Wake me up
I cannot sleep through this again
You look dead long before
The bullet hits the wind

You're killing yourself again.

-"Viral" by Tendril (lyrics slightly modified)

You can't even find the CD that this song came from. For the longest, it seemed like Tendril (by far one of the best bands to ever come from the Dallas/Fort Worth area) simply disappeared. When I bought it some twelve years ago, I hadn't had any friends die of an overdose. No one I knew had gotten killed in a car wreck. No one had been murdered. No one had committed suicide.

Things changed.

I still have Tendril's El Ultimo Supercell. It's so scratched up that I can't even listen to this song on that CD, but I still have every word of the song memorised. I always remember it on 19 May.

I remember how it was sunnier early on in the day, but rain clouds moved in and began to pour over the town I lived in by the end of it. I remember it was a Monday. I remember people asking that morning, "Hey, anyone seen Gary or Angela?"

Matt Graves knocked on my door. It was about 8:30 at night. He stood in the rain, which was unseasonally cool for late-May in Texas, and had a stony, serious look on his face. Matt, being the perenniel jokester, was not wont to wear such an expression. My heart sank.

"Austin... Gary's dead."

Yeah... that's when it all changed.

The rest of the night – no, the rest of the week plays like a fog through my memories. I recall trying to go to sleep to on the floor of my room with 90 Pound Wuss playing on repeat. I remember sleeping with the windows open, because I liked the cool, moist air. I remember my mom coming into my room at 2 in the morning after going to visit Gary's mom and dad, and confirming what we already knew. "Double suicide"

My dad recited the twenty-third Psalm. I slept horribly. I got to school the next day with grey thunderheads above me still blotting out the sky. My brother Ross spent his tenth birthday in tears.

The media seized upon Baily Junior High like vultures. Grief counselors filled the library. Kids came to them, and I had no idea why. Hardly any of them knew Gary or Angela – not the way I did at least.

Gary and I had been friends since fourth grade. He took me to one of the first church services I'd ever been to. We banded together in the "Damage, Inc." club we formed to stand against all the gangsta' kids who wanted to beat us up for being white. We started listening to deathmetal together. He helped talk me out of suicide when my pret-teen crush rejected me, and when my fifth grade teacher mocked me and ridiculed me. I helped talk him out of suicide when he flunked sixth grade. I was with him at Six Flags when some guy jacked him up with a fistload. We went to God's Place and took in the local Spirit-filled hardcore and metal shows. He had been there at almost every pivotal point of my life for those six years, and then he created another one for me.

Double suicide...

It was the first time I felt the cold emptiness of deep, real loss. It was a point when I came face to face with the way my friends lives were moving along. Shiftless. Hopeless. Godless. What could help them? What could save any of them?

Chris Cordio was in tears and he looked at me and said "That guy at God's Place last Saturday, that guy who went into Gary and Bambam for all the stuff they're doing – he was their last chance!" Chris was right. I saw Gary hanging out with his neo-Nazi friends, and I remember this one man turning around and saying without the hint of a stutter that they needed to repent, in no uncertain or seeke-ersensitive terms. It turned into a fiasco after that, but Chris was right. Two days later, Gary had no more chances.

Every day I think about him. I can still feel the weight of the casket in my left hand. I still see him resting so peacefully in the white drapery. I still feel myself wanting to shake him and say "Wake up!"

I saw the stitches on the top of his head from when the coroner had finished his autopsy. I saw the scars on his arms from where he carved "Divine Intervention" onto himself a couple years back. I remember the coffin shutting. I remember that last good-bye.

Being a pallbearer sucks, especially when you're only fourteen years old. Everyone I know who has passed in all the years since have brought him back to my mind. Every person who's taken their life or had their life taken. Every person whose last chance slipped by. I like to think that I've done something to save a "Gary's" life since then. I want to believe that I've helped someone. Maybe I have. I hope so. I still know mostly that I have had a lot of friends die, and to mind, I cannot think of a single one of them who died of natural causes.

Gary Don Dean: 4 July, 1982 – 19 May, 1997
I pray that he rests in peace...

On Simon Magus and Bad Revivals

Discussions with several friends have had me looking at what the New Testament says about focusing on the spiritual. This is a well and good thing, it seems, when balanced with the right priorities. But what happens when people come to God with the wrong motives? What happens when it isn't so much God that people want, as the nifty little things that happen when God comes to town?

One of the first incidents of a conversion gone bad occurs in Acts 8. It focuses on man named Simon the Sorcerer. In Samaria, Simon would woo the crowds with displays of supernatural power. He soothsaid, he enchanted, he cast spells. Early Church historians relate his also having a consort whom he claimed to be a manifestation of the godhead¹, and within whom was a pearl of the purest heaven. Through her intervention, and the secret knowledge he held, mere men – heavenly beings imprisoned in these cells of flesh – could ascend back to the state of bliss whence we originated. Or so he claimed.

False messiah, Gnostic syncretist, spiritualist huckster, spellcaster, soothsayer,  enchanter... by the standards of Deuteronomy 18, he should have had his head lopped off.

But something happens to him – Simon sees a spiritual power that goes beyond his abilities. He is perhaps scheming the entire time, perhaps genuinely moved. Whatever the case, he decides to listen to Phillip. He gets baptised. He joins the Congregation.

Now, in just a little while, the Disciples down in Jerusalem get wind of this. They're glad. They praise God. But they know water baptism is only half the deal. They need the baptism (immersion) of the Holy Spirit up there in Samaria, so John and Peter go to lay hands and pray.

Now note how essential baptism of the Holy Spirit is. Like I intimated earlier, "baptism" is just a fancy, Greek way of saying "immersion." In the Disciples' eyes, the new Samaritan believers need this blessing in order to truly be a part of the Congregation². Along with the baptism of the Holy Spirit undoubtedly come the usual signs, wonders, tongues, prophecies and everything else. Indeed, the manifestations and dynamis of the Spirit's work makes Simon's magic pale. Simon saw this and thought this is it!

So Simon uses the only thing he knows to get the power – and one might presume from his past as a crowd-pleaser, enchanter, false messiah and showman for various magical, mysterious and supernatural abilities, his motives might not be entirely altruistic. In fact, they are most likely quite far away from altruistic. Nevertheless, he makes an offer...

"I'll pay you a $50 registration fee for this power... another $200 for VIP passes!"

"I'll pay you a 10% covenant tithe, plus a love offering!"

"I want to sow a seed into your ministry so I can reap a harvest of your ministry's power!"

Whatever the case, Simon tried to use money as a means to the power of the Holy Spirit. The Disciples, on the other hand, are none-too keen on the idea. To be precise, they're furious.

Maybe they remember Jesus' simple command: "Freely you have received, so freely you shall give." Perhaps they recalled the fury of the Lord when He saw the sacrifice-sellers and money-changers at the Temple of God, ripping people off just so they'd be able to worship.

Maybe they recalled Jesus' statement that you cannot serve God and money. Maybe even memories of Judas Iscariot flashed through their minds – one of their own who betrayed the Lord to His death for thirty pieces of silver. What if their fears were that they themselves might fall prey to Mammon's curse? Oh, that we had more ministers in this land in this time who had this concern foremost in their minds!

Keeping with his character, Peter speaks up to Simon. Most translations render his first sentence in Acts 8:20 as "May your money perish with you!" or something along those lines. Not exactly kind words, by any esteem. But here I love how the Living Bible captures the boldness and harshness with which Peter speaks on the matter; "to hell with you and your money!"

Yes, to hell with you and your money! You think you can buy the gifts of God? You have nothing to do with this – your heart is not right with God! Repent of this desire for power, and this notion that it can be bought, and then I'm sure God will forgive you. But you, I perceive, are poisoned with bitterness and enslaved to iniquity.

God's power cannot be bought.

There isn't enough money in the world for it. There's no school that teaches it. There are no indulgences that grant the power of God. Even the institution of apostolic succession could not preserve the wonder-working activity of the Ruach Ha'Kodesh.

Simon wants not just to purchase God's power, he wants to use it for a money-making scheme. He wants to show it off. He wants to reduce the life-giving Spirit of the very Creator of the Universe, and use it for parlour tricks so he can get a decent return on his investment. Comb your mind and ask yourselves if you know ministries like this. Ask, is this the power of God to bring dead men to life, or is it just something else to do because I'm bored? Is this the power of God, or perhaps, mass hysteria? Mass hypnosis? Inducement? Maybe it isn't anything even so benign - when you're toying with the spiritual and not using the utmost caution and discernment, know that there are other spirits that would love to grab a hold of you!

God's power cannot be controlled

Note again that the Disciples refused to lay hands on the man whose heart was not right with God. Those who did receive the power of the Spirit only to go on into outright rebellion had this odd habit of winding up dead. God's Spirit does not fall on people because of rituals, commands or ordinances. When it does come, it will not stay put in the nice little "happy Holy Spirit time" corner we want to make. The Spirit comes in and wreaks havoc on the strongholds the Devil once held. There won't just be jumping, laughing and crying, but repentance. Deep, deep repentance. There will also be signs and wonders, but they glorify the Lord and spread His Kingdom - they do not live at the service of mere men!

God's power cannot be ignored

Simon Magus, hardened sinner that he was, even had to recognise this. When Jesus opposed demons in His earthly ministry, they knew who He was, and knew their number was up. When the Spirit of God drops like a bomb on a place, when real revival comes, the doubts fly away. The occurrences are obvious. In Wales, 1904, pubs and bars were shutting down because men weren't binge drinking enough. In America in the early 19th century, the second Great Awakening set the roots for abolition, women's suffrage, and united the country for the last time before the slow, steady spiritual decay that led to the Civil War set in.

Throughout history we can see signs of the power of God. It's never just fun and games. It's never a dog and pony show. And every time it happens, things shake. Foundations are set and others are uprooted. The course of nations has changed because of how God's Spirit has acted over them.

But as it was in the beginning, so it is nowadays. Everywhere we look in the church, another Simon Magus is offering spirituality and contentment for a price. Another huckster is trying to delude God's people and line his own coffers. Another charlatan is taking advantage of our desire to see revival so he or she can sell us a revival of their own design.

Will we stand aside and let Simon Magus subvert our Lord and poison His reputation with falsities and impurities? Or will we take the zealot's course - will we stand with Peter saying that this is wrong! Greed and the Gospel are wrong! Trying to command God's Spirit is wrong! Christian spirituality without deep, meaningful change is wrong!

To hell with that! To hell with all of that! This land is in too much pain to let us compromise in our hearts with the impurity that saps God's people of their power. I want revival. I want Him.

Nothing else matters.

Perhaps even yet we may repent, and come to experience the glory of the Holy Spirit. Until then, pray. The time for revival could be nigh. It could also be very, very far away.

---

1 - Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963. p.103ff.

2 - For a powerful and scholarly assessment of the importance of baptism of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament see J.D.G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit: A Re-Examination of the New Testament Teaching on the Gift of the Holy Spirit in Relation to Pentecostalism Today. Philadelphia: John Knox Press, 1970.

Where is the God of Elijah?

Where is the God of Elijah
And the King that leadeth me?
Where's the power that came to Moses
And preserved the burning tree?
Where is the Almighty Father
Who said He'd never leave?
Where is the Spirit of love
By Whose guidance we could see?
Despair now clouds the people's minds,
Ill will now fills our hearts.
The Maker shunned with pride and greed,
Soul and strength now torn apart.
Where is the promised Counselor?
Where is the Source of hope and peace?
Can He not go where we have gone,
Are we now beyond His reach?
Where are the words of the prophets,
Where are the convictions true?
Will anybody say the things
That God would command him to?
Where are the signs and wonders
That light the way to the Kingdom?
Have charlatans all taken over,
Or do honest men still bring them?
O! we are broken and besieged,
Defeated by what we woke,
But the Spirit moves in this time
To fulfill all that He spoke.
Among the saints the Kingdom dwells
Though our holiness is weak.
Yet in the truth, which we preserve,
Is the freedom people seek.
Hope abounds, for He never left,
Though His glory descends on few.
Call out to the Lord, cry for Christ!
Revival begins with you!
There are yet those who have not bowed,
For whom the Enemy still stands in fear.
And I know where Elijah's God is at,
And He is here!

Someone Set This Town on Fire!

So, more proof that the system works for them...

Those pigs that killed that one guy on his wedding day by pumping him full of fifty pieces of lead just got acquitted.

And just to show that real estate developers and politicians have officially chopped the balls off this City, I'll bet nothing happens as a response to this sort of injustice.

The broken windows theory? It works the other way 'round too... When pigs and fascists see that one person can get away with injustice, murder and corruption it makes others think "Gee, why can't I?"

Load of bollocks. If things go well, I'll be dodging Molotov cocktails on my way home from work today...

But I doubt I will.

"The Music of the Spheres"

In ancient times, starting with the Greek mathematician and cult-leader Pythagoras, peoples have speculated that the planets and even the very cosmos gave off energy that ultimately culminated to make the Musica universalis, or "Music of the Spheres".

They had no technology to measure this postulation; there were no audio radars, satellites or radios to pick up these emanations. Instead, it derived from a belief that nature was interconnected, that the world was a place wherein mystic, beautiful and mysterious realities played upon one another to form the underpinning of all existence.

In modern times, much of the wonder that the ancients felt about the universe and the glorious patterns within it have been downplayed by the assertions of randomness, blindness, and materialistic positivism. Strangely, it is now with modern technology that the music of the spheres is being verified. For instance, scientists have recently recorded that the Earth itself makes a music of sorts. Previously, music has also been found emanating from the sun, Saturn, Jupiter, and several other planets.

C.S. Lewis remarked when reflecting on the Medieval worldview and the "science" behind it that people believed in the music of the planets the same way they believed in light, reason, mathematics and God. They had no proof of the music's existence, but their perception of the universe required it. They thought that while we couldn't hear the music, it would become obvious and terrible if it ever were to end.

As people have sought to shuffle off the "constraints" of Medievalist thought, the Music has been ignored and shoved off to the side. The voices of progress and materialism have attempted to drown out the quiet hum of the world behind us. The results have also indeed been terrible and obvious. From environmental degradation to nuclear warfare; from profound and widespread perversion to callousness about human and animal life; from the mechanisation of human interaction to technology that threatens our very right to be free. Strangely, it is in these modern times that the ancients' have been vindicated. Perhaps the music is not what they anticipated, but it is there, nonetheless, and it persists.

Would that we as a whole would listen once again, and believe in things greater than ourselves.

The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth...

Life is full of intangibles.

In ancient times, before we knew about "atoms" and such, the wind and the air were perfect examples of this. You cannnot see the wind, but it moves the trees. You cannot see a breath, but you can feel it. You still use it, yea, you still need it.

It continues on even until this day. Consider love, for instance. We see love, observe it, note its effect. We can extract chemicals that either cause or are caused by love. We know of love as a noun, a thing, a real and extent object. But love can't be replicated in a lab. We can't sell love by the bottle. We have a concept for measuring it ("their love is deep") but we don't have units to measure it with. It's something very real yet also very intangible.

Love has a place alongside many things in our lives. Justice, mercy, compassion – these intangible objects we examine with metaphysics. Light, gravity, sub-atomic particles – these we examine with regular physics. All of them have the qualities of being real. They also, however, have the qualities of being rather difficult to explain. In the end none of them make sense. Existence doesn't make sense. The things that make our universe possible defy logic.

The Hebrews had a word for these matters. To account for the unseen that affects the physically tangible, they used the word ruach. While we might have science to explain wind and breath, and psychology begs the question about the existence of a "soul", there are still ruachót that effect our lives.

I mull over the Carl Sagan argument about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence. People say that if God is so obvious, why can't we point to Him? Why can't we identify Him? Why don't we have more than all this conjecture to just say "He's here"?

People don't question love's existence. They don't question light or existence itself, though the "tangible" evidence for all of these can be sketchy at points. When people ask me where God is, I look at the cosmos and see His beautiful craftsmanship on everything and everywhere; behind reality and beyond it. I find it within the energy that makes the atomies to the fractals that unify the galaxy with the sunflower. Order rising out of chaos on a scale that not only bedazzles but bewilders.

I see Him in my life and the lives of others. I'm not perfect, but I've been reflecting lately on how much further from well off I could be. I've seen His hand moving beyond randomness and chance, leading me into an ordained path that I have foolishly strayed from. I see Him in the questions of the metaphysical. I see Him in our desires for things that have never existed.

One might be tempted to wonder what water is if they've lived in the ocean, or what air is when we live in the midst of this. God is the ruach of this cosmos. If you want to see where He is, just look, or think, or feel. The extraordinary evidence is all around us, we simply need minds and spirits to observe it.

It may be intangible, but it doesn't make it any less real.