If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and purify us from all unrighteousness.

— 1 John 1:9

When I was just turning 21, I “gave my life to Christ.” At least, that’s how it’s put in evangelical circles… Truth is, God took my life away from me. Gone was any lasting desire to do the things I had done… deceit, licentiousness, hatefulness chief among them.

Soon after, I began to smoke.

“Hmm,” you might be thinking, “that seems like a weird thing for a new Christian to start doing!” And looking back, it indeed seems very strange. I can’t remember any real motive, it was just something to do while I sat around reading and playing music. For at least a year or so my smoking was pretty calm… a clove cigarette (expensive, stinky kind) or two a day, no big deal. Right?

Fast-forward some six years, and I’ve probably smoked thousands of cigarettes. I was probably up to a pack a day before Shelley and I got married in 2003, and have struggled ever since in attempts to quit. A week here, a month there, I’ve gotten away from the stuff, but it always calls me back. It’s an addiction, and that’s what addictions do.

Meanwhile, my attempts to break my habit have been overall unsuccessful, and stresses as of late have had me enslaved again. Our church situation is almost nonexistent… we’ve been going to a cool little place and hearing God’s word preached clearly, but haven’t built any real relationships. Our friends (and people we WANT to be our friends) are generally well-meaning but do little if any reaching-out to us… if we don’t call and arrange something, it doesn’t get arranged. I’m trying to run a business, make a “real” living at the newspaper, raise a child, nurture a marriage, make music… and hopefully stay sane through it.

That’s the part that’s not working: the sanity. And cigarette after cigarette tells me it’ll calm my mind.

Anyway, I know (and have known) that my real sin here is in hiding… being addicted is more a disease than a sin, but pretending not to be is deception. I have hidden this from most people—how many of you are a little surprised to hear it?—have stretched the truth about it with everyone, even Shelley. I hate that I’ve done it, and yet I know that in mere hours, I could rationalize it again. And to rationalize is to desensitize, and how long does God and my rational brain and the medical consensus have to push-push-push until I get the drift?

SO: Beginning this day, I’m out of the closet. I am an addict—and I’ve no wish for qualifiers—but now it’s in the open. I’m praying for deliverance from this addiction, and I know from experience that God won’t hand it to me on some heavenly silver platter. Instead, everyone reading this has the chance to help me.

I won’t be blogging here too often, because I’m going to be breaking my addiction through an experiment in openness… it’s called Ashes of Addiction, and I’m going to chronicle the ups and downs of my struggles. If you want to help, then please visit every so often.

I pray each of you will forgive me, for my various hiding and/or lying and/or whatever… I’ve sinned not just against God but also, in a way, against anyone who thinks they know me. I ask, meanwhile, that you pray for me. That God would grant me victory over addiction, and give me something glorifying to do toward His work.

PS: Next time I’ll write something funny here. I promise.

I’m a Mac person. So are a lot of my friends, colleagues and readers. Generally, I like Mac’s programs (iPhoto, Mail, etc.) and the simple, intuitive nature in which they work. I use Mac’s Safari browser for most of my Webbing, and it generally keeps me happy. However, for some reason it just doesn’t know how to deal with my blog posting—video links, for instance, never work if I compose my blog entry in Safari, though there are at least five other problems I’ve run into.

So I use Firefox to post (I’m using it now), and it generally does what I want it to do.

Now Shelley is a PC person, and in fact we just bought a new Compaq laptop for her, and it’s running Windows Vista. Of course, it comes setup with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which I’ve always found to be the worst browser on the planet. But the new look of Vista—along with all the Safari features that the Big M has ripped off—reassured me, and I didn’t install anything else.

So, I arrived at home yesterday to find Shelley irritated over her attempt at blog posting—via Internet Explorer—on the family blog; basically, the formatting of the pictures and text wasn’t coming out anything like the preview. I immediately said, “Let’s download Firefox,” and she, frustrated, said, “Well, we’ll do it when I’m done, but I’m gonna fix this now because if people look at the blog I don’t want it to be all jacked up.” So I went ahead and fixed my lunch, while she continued to post, evaluate, edit, repost, and so on, adding minimal hard returns and such to try to get the alignment corrected.

It was at this point that I wondered, “How can we possibly be so different?”

In my mind, it would’ve made more sense to stop editing and just download and install Firefox—a task that later took me less than 3 minutes—and then use Firefox to edit the blog. What was the likelihood that anyone was going to look at the blog during that 3 or 5 minutes of bad alignment, whilst Firefox was being installed? Virtually none, I think.

All this to say: Other people are often the biggest stumbling block to my faith. I have no doubt whatsoever of a creator; I know enough about the history and origins of the Bible to trust it. But every time I deal with someone (anyone) who acts in a way that’s incomprehensible to me, I have the strong urge to turn individualistically new-age: Is all this a dream, and I’m the only real person? Is it some sort of cosmic challenge, in which I’m tested on my dealings with people whose entire way of thinking is (to my mind) broken? The difference in thought I’ve mentioned may not seem significant… but what about the many employees I’ve had, to whom it hasn’t occurred to change a light bulb if it burns out? The reporters who don’t understand why “The festival included many activities, like ring toss, face-painting, etc.” gives the impression that the festival didn’t actually include those activities? The Dairy Queen employee who wouldn’t make my wife a Mocha Chip Blizzard® because it wasn’t on the menu, despite the fact that they had all the ingredients?

I have a hard time believing these people are real in the sense that I’m real. I can understand differences of opinion on politics, religion, art, music, etc. But I really can’t fathom that so many people would operate in such senseless ways. It causes me a lot of grief, really, and a lot of wondering what God is up to, exactly. Were I to meet him, maybe I’d get the same vibe from him.

I’ve always hated the way politicians speak. Their voices, when they get in front of a microphone or camera, always take on a life of their own… louder, with more faux-nuance and lots of thumbs-up (because it’s not polite to point!) hand gesturing.

Which leads to my continuing fascination with Barack Obama. His blockbuster speech at the ’04 Dems’ convention made everyone say, “Why can’t we have a candidate like this?” And though I’m far from committed on a presidential candidate as of yet, I think this video gives everyone one good reason to vote for the guy: namely, he can speak as a normal person. No crazy inflection; no outlandish, cartoonish hand-jives; no “I’m gonna save this country!” rhetoric. Just talking.

NOTES: 1.) The actual substance of the debate or of the candidates’ positions is not my subject here. I make no endorsement of anyone, anywhere, anytime. 2.) Listen to the whole thing. It’s only five minutes! It’s important to listen to Obama speak in the context of Clinton and Edwards sounding like total gasbags, just like every other presidential candidate in the last 20 years. Save maybe Ralph Nader and Ross Perot.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5BWQhZBh6U]

NOTE: The serious discussion of faith can weary me. Indeed, that is not at all what this page is meant to encompass, though it will be touched on from time to time. I have a lot more whirling ’round in my head than tomes on doctrine and denomination, and I mean to address it. However, as this is raising such discussion, I’ll extend it for one more post. Coming soon: Something funny!

My conversion story—or, if I was Baptist, my “testimony”—is unlike any other that I’ve heard. Briefly put, it starts in high school, when I questioned belief in an old book and an unseen god. A Muslim woman spoke to my “gifted” class when I was in 10th grade, and asked for a show of hands of all the “Christians.” Mine was the only unraised.

Looking back, I remember that day as a turning point. I was at once disturbed and proud that I was the only non-Christian in my class. Had you asked every person at school, they all probably would have said they were “Christian,” in the same way that so many actors (to use a somewhat valid stereotype) would say they’re “Jewish.” It was a culture, not a faith. And that said a lot to me.

While in college, I continued thinking about all this. I was living the pagan life in moderation—getting drunk once in a while, smoking pot even more rarely, trying (though not very successfully) to woo women into my bedroom—but finding little satisfaction in it all. Meanwhile, two of my closest friends had started a band, one I thought would be awesome and that I really wanted to be a part of, except that it was “Christian” and, of course, I wasn’t. I helped out at their first two shows, and though musically it was far from perfect, something in these performances stirred me like nothing else ever has.

I went home, a sophomore, during some sort of break from school. And there in my mom’s book basket was an old copy of “The Screwtape Letters,” C.S. Lewis’ dialogue between a high-ranking devil and one lower on the totem (no offense intended to my many American Indian readers). I read it in one sitting—in the bathtub, I think… a few days later, I was in my own bathtub back at college, praying to God and asking for His Spirit to invade my heart.

•••

Lewis’ writings have held a huge place in my life ever since. No one I’ve read puts the gospel more succinctly, more smartly than he, and his conversion experience closely resembles mine: from committed nonbeliever to committed Christian, the axiom coming very unsuspectedly and the change dramatic. He and I both went from arguing strongly and convincingly against a god to arguing strongly and convincingly for THE God.

All that being said, occasionally I’ll read something he wrote and think, “Is that so?” His major works tend toward an intra-ecumenical Christianity, accessible and useful to any Christian regardless of denomination. But in his letters (two parts of a three-volume, extremely dense collection of every letter he ever wrote grace my shelves) there’s much more discussion of his particular church experiences, qualms with the priest, issues with the worship music, etc. And more than once I’ve read something that took me aback, that I found not only disagreeable, but in rare cases unbiblical. If further research bears out that it’s unblical, i simply try to toss it into the Recycle Bin (PC)/Trash (Mac) in R.’s well-tuned OSBrain.

In fact, the religious tradition of which I’m a part encourages this, to some extent. While taking notes during a pastor’s sermon, for instance, if something unbiblical is presented as biblical, it’s within reason to write it down, consult the scriptures, and raise the offending passage with the pastor. Ideally, then, he would either a.) prove the validity of his statement or b.) apologize for the error, and make whatever reparations are necessary, if any. He graduated from seminary and I didn’t; however, the Bible says what it says, and the layperson may theoretically be gifted with just as much discernment and understanding as the church official.

These, then, are my self-imposed standards on judging the words and deeds of the Church:

1.) The Word of God, revealed through the Scriptures, is the utmost authority on all things related to the faith. Admittedly, there are many issues on which Scripture is mute. However, all discussions, arguments, theories, etc. can be weighed against the Word, to determine whether some or all of it should be discarded out of hand.

2.) The Word of God, revealed through the Scriptures, are without error (in the original autographs). Obv. this is not held by all “Christians” these days… esp. those “theologians” whose working premise seems to be, “The meaning of a particular scripture is usually not found in the literal language of that scripture.” Yet it has been held by most of the church through most of history, hasn’t it? Circular logic, maybe, but that’s where faith comes in. Anyway, no other writing can be held as such. And this is why I think that Lewis—and even the earliest Christian writers, for that manner—must be taken with a grain of salt. Are they useful? Sure! Are they divinely inspired? In some sense and to some degree, yes… but so am I, at times. Are they inerrant? I highly doubt it. I would even go so far as to say that other letters of the Apostle Paul, if we were to find them, shouldn’t immediately be assumed to be divine and inerrant, because Paul (and all other humans, before and after) was fallible and could have written things that were, in fact, mistaken.

3.) Traditions, customs, etc.—even sacraments—are useful, so long as they are not turned into a new “circumcision” by which faith is measured. This applies equally to the Protestant teetotaler, the Baptist dipper and the Catholic candle-lighter. Paul is clear: Christ tore down the law, which draws men to evil. We are not to build new laws to replace the old.

•••

It’s worth noting that we’re explicitly told that men will be judged on their actions. And in that sense—though it pains that part of me which rebels against postmodern excesses—the individual must ultimately come to his own conclusion. We’ll not be let off scot-free for causing others to stumble simply by claiming, “Well, my church does it this way” or “I picked that up from a Yancey book” or “That’s the way 21st century America worked.” No man is an island, but he is invariably a sort of sovereign nation in the world of believers. He should be expected to come to the aid of impoverished nations, whether by finance or philosophy; he must tend to the security of his own soul’s homeland; he must write his own constitution, amending as it becomes necessary.

Mine’s called the Honorable Republic of Roy, Inc., and will soon be the first nation to be publicly traded on the NASDAQ. Reserve your shares today… an investment in Roy is an investment in the future.

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of blogs… I blame my friend Derek for this. There’s lots of interesting discussion going on all over the place… communication has changed entirely from what it was five years ago, and now anyone with an Internet connection has a platform with the potential to reach the world. Whether or not that’s a good thing… well, let’s just move on.

It turns out that a lot of the blogs I’ve been reading today—on the back porch with a cup of coffee, while Shelley shops and Lewis sleeps—have been focused in one way or the other on “the church.” Some friends are headlong into Orthodoxy (which, honestly, I had no idea was really practiced in America), others are deep in discussion about the “emerging” church (as dumb a name as I’ve ever heard, as if “the church” has been hiding in a cave for the past 2,000 years). As if that weren’t enough, there’s also the “emergent” church—seriously, two schools of thought which, though linked in origin, are different in scope and system. And there’s all this talk, too, of being “missional,” meaning (I think) that we’re to step outside our local church bodies and get involved in other people’s lives. Which, no offense, shouldn’t be news to anyone with half a brain.

After an hour or so of this, my head hurts. My soul, too… why must we complicate things so? What is it about modern man that makes us so eager to devise new systems, new names? What makes us want to complicate what is a rather simple (in comparison to others) faith? What shoves our spiritual focus off of the primary point—Christ died for our sins, and through relationship with him we enter communion with God—onto eating habits and justice walks and “postmodern” this and “recapturing” that?

There’s nothing wrong with nuance, per se, and as I was telling a friend just the other day, I think the diverse quilt that is modern American Christianity serves an important purpose: namely, to address the peculiar, God-given gifts of very different Christians in order to ultimately glorify him in particular ways. But it’s very tiresome, all this rethinking and rehashing and nit-picking.

When the church I’d belonged to since I became a Christian was in between pastors, a fine man named Larry led our congregation for a time. He was absolutely Christ-centered… at times, almost mind-numbingly so. Three points to every sermon, and the answer to each point was Jesus. “How quaint,” I thought at the time. But I find myself longing for that kind of community now… a place where real human stuff is discussed, where people inquire as to one another’s prayer lives and Bible study and sick relatives and struggles with pride and doubt and attention span.

When I was in college, it seemed lots of fun to get sucked into endless discussions pitting Calvinism against Armenianism, or prayer vs. praise, or debating the merits of every segment of the church in general. Now it’s just tiresome.

Can we agree: God created the heavens and earth and all that are in them. Christ died for sinful man. His Spirit gives us passage back into relationship with God. And that Spirit enables and urges us to share that faith with others. Too many Christians are spending too little time exploring the deep truth in those simple statements, too little time sharing those truths with others… and too much time distracted by form and unconcerned with function.