Talking to a Cop About Healing

Sometimes ministers wish for a do-over. We find ourselves in some of the most awkward conversations at some of the strangest times of the day. I recall as a graduate student in Nashville on my way to preach for a church early one Sunday morning. I was driving my little Saturn Ion from Nashville into the country down I-40 towards Memphis. Now, if you don’t know this stretch of highway, it’s some of the most breathtaking stretch of landscape in all of Tennessee. It is truly holy ground. Normally, I would time it right so that I could find myself in the midst of rolling hills just as the sun was coming up on the first day of the week.

As I made my way down I-40, a large S.U.V. (bad traffic stories usually involve a S.U.V.) swerved off the road, and before I could think one simple thought, I saw a re-tread tire coming, like a boomerang) right for my head. I ducked, swerved off of the highway and ended up 30 feet below in a huge ravine that divided the highway. As I pulled glass out of my face and walked up towards the top of the hill I spotted the projectile that had knocked me off course. It was an almost full tire tread with the metal wires still inside the tire. This thing could have killed me on the spot.

A few moments later, a police officer showed up on the scene. He was a tall, young, heavyset fellow. I’m not saying he ate a lot of donuts, but he sure was eating something. He got me cleaned up pulling more of the glass from my face, ears, scalp, and head. As we sat in the back of his police car (I wasn’t under arrest, I was writing a report so that had something to go on when they finally caught the Semi-truck illegally using re-tread tires on a warming Tennessee summer morning)—he asked nonchalantly, “So where you headed this early in the morning?”

“Headed to church,” I said.
“That’s nice. Real nice.” This was Tennessee after all, not Detroit. Going to church is what socially sophisticated people do. “You know a lady was killed last week in the same kind of accident. You’re lucky.” I didn’t respond.
“What kind of Church?” he asked.
“Oh, a real loving, caring church?” A pause ensued.
“Say, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Are you . . . no . . . any chance . . . are you a preacher?” Here I am still pulling glass out of my face, heart racing, calculating the cost of the damage to the car, wondering who’s going to preach for me, and I could feel an ad hoc counseling session about to take place. I can see these things coming a mile away.
“Well, yes sir, I am. I am a minister. I was on my . . . “He interrupted me before I could finish.
“Man have I had a difficult last five years.” I sank lower in my chair, realizing I wasn’t going anywhere, hoping no one who knew me would drive by in gawking fashion. “My life’s a mess. I’ve really messed things up. I’ve conned friends, cheated family, made my wife so upset, we’re getting divorced next month. Says she’s keeping the kids. My life’s breaking into a million little pieces.”

We chatted for a bit. I assured him that life has a way of giving us second, third, and fourth chances. I gave him my card. We would talk at least one more time that week on the telephone.
Here’s what I wish I would’ve said. If I had a “do-over” (a mulligan for golfers), this is what I’d say.

"Officer, I need a word with you.” I would lock eyes with eyes and I’d say, “I’m going to tell you something that’s truer than you and I sitting in this car this morning. Something more real than the cut marks on my face. If you think that God roots for the perfect, got-it-all-together, pious, BIG ONES of this world, well, you are wrong. You have to get real before God. No more posturing. No more spin-zone. No more hiding. No more deceit. You have to deal with the mirror you try to avoid. Deal with who you really are, not who you want others to think you are. You gotta come to grips with truth, not who you portray yourself to be on the stage of life. Before you can pray 'I am not who I should be, or who, by the grace of God I will one day become . . .but thank God I’m not the person I used to be.' Before you can pray that prayer, you have to get painfully transparent. And when you find yourself in that moment, when you feel you are at your lowest, your littlest . . . that’s when you have the space and grace to meet God for the very first time.”

If I had a do-over that’s what I would say.

Scars and Secrets (Part Two)

"I hear addicts talk about the shakes and panic attacks and the highs and lows of resisting their habit, and to some degree I understand them because I have had habits of my own, but no drug is so powerful as the drug of self. No rut in the mind is so deep as the one that says I am the world, the world belongs to me, all people are characters in my play. There is no addiction so powerful as self-addiction."

---Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz (pg. 182)

Scars and Secrets (Part One)

I know men are not supposed to dwell too much on their physical appearance, lest they become suspicious to their surrounding friendship network. I need to confess that lately I’ve been thinking about my physical appearance. I’m not talking about my receding hair-line, or my height, or the teeth that bare the reality that I chose not to wear my retainer after the braces came off in middle school.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about a few of the physical scars I carry.

I have two identical scars on my forehead—the result of two completely different events. Some people tell me that if you get close enough, it looks as if I used to have horns growing out of my head. Had I participated in the political drama many Christians fueled, the horns might have come literally true.

One of the scars on my head came from a running accident when I was two. Not being the polished athlete I am today, I ran into the corner of a brick wall.

The other scar is from a time when I was five living in Wichita, Kansas. I was at the mall with my next door neighbor who challenged me to a race. I took off at Michael Phelps type speed, and he decided his best chance to beat me was to trip me from behind. I went falling into a sharp indoor street lamp. The next thing I knew, I was laying in the ER, face-up, staring into a bright light with a doctor holding stitches, analyzing my grill.

I should note that these scars used to be separate. In pictures from adolescence, they are on opposite sides of my forehead. But as I’ve grown older, these two scars have decided they need to be closer. Hence, the horns.

Another scar I am aware of is the one located just beneath my chin. This scar was given to me by one of teammates on my college basketball team. It was innocent enough. We were doing a routine drill when he accidentally elbowed me right beneath the chin. My screen went black. Again, the next thing I knew, Garth Pleasant (the coach) was standing over me as I stared at the ceiling, saying, “Graves, Graves, Graves.” That was the first and last time I’ve ever been knocked out.

I also have a scar on my side that I’ve had since childbirth. You don’t have to be a M.D. to know this is known as a birth-mark. One of the eerie things that happened to me in college was the time I discovered that my roommate and best friend had an identical mark in the exact location. If the Apocalypse was upon us, we surely bore the mark of the beast.

I’m starting to believe that scars are incredibly important in our journey as people of deep spirituality. Not just physical scars we can detect with the eye, but the spiritual scars we carry with us.

For one, scars remind us that we are all fragile people. Even the toughest, macho-men must remember that from dust we came and to dust we shall return. None of us are as invincible as we convince ourselves. We might live a little longer, but the fragility of being human waits each day as we enter into the world.

I will never forget the dramatic reminder of this I received my sophomore year of college. I was in the weight room at Lipscomb University in Nashville. A teammate and I were lifting weights, getting ready for the Big Game the next night. There was only one other person in the weight room—a young athletic girl. We learned later she was a volleyball player. After we left the weight room, she started to feel ill. She went to her dorm room to lie down. During the night she became deathly ill. She died from meningitis. Just like that . . . a young athletic twenty-something dead.

Our scars remind us of our inescapable fragility.

Scars also remind us of a truth that holds the universe together. Some of the events and experiences of our lives are the result of our choices. Yet, some of the events and experiences of our lives are the results of choices other people made. If the statistics are correct, many of the women in our churches have experienced some form of sexual molestation. I realize that’s not taboo to talk about but if we don’t who will?

Scars are also significant, because immediately beneath the scars are the secrets we keep from one another. Underneath the surface, when he dig deeper and become fully transparent: we have to deal with the generational sins that haunt us: alcohol and drug addiction, physical and sexual abuse, pornography, sexual addiction, anorexia and bulimia, lying . . . and the list spreads as far as the veins in the human body (if you doubt . . . check out this site which is closing in on 200 million hits).

I just mentioned personal scars . . . but societal scars can also be detected in all of us: ageism, sexism, racism, classism . . . all of these are part of our experience.

Physical scars . . . spiritual scars . . . going deeper, we’re reminded of the secrets that rage below the surface. These secrets that sit right below the surface of our scars have the potential to destroy us. They are, like skin cancer, absolutely toxic if we do not open ourselves up for treatment.

A Scholar's Parrot

From C.S. Lewis . . .

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all friends merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love--a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But , self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

---

In times of great debate (family, church, politics, etc.) I'm always drawn back to the heart of The Jesus Story: sin, evil, and corruption do not exist "out there" . . . sin, evil, and corruption run right through the middle of me. I think that's what Lewis's poem is doing.

A Jesus Story . . .

Two men decide to go to church one Sunday. One is a preacher, the other, a biker.

The preacher gets to church early. He turns his computer on in his cozy office. He checks over his notes one last time, combing every last detail and transition. Feeling a twinge of doubt creep into his gut he looks up at his wall to view his theology degrees hanging in great pride.

The preacher walks into the sanctuary prepared for worship. He holds his hands high in the air and declares, “God, thank-you for making me a leader of leaders. I teach, tithe, and volunteer with the homeless. It’s good to be me.”

The other man, the biker, comes into the worship service ten minutes late. Several pairs of eyes meet his. He doesn’t fit the church-going look. Unsure of where to sit, the biker walks close to the front—greasy jeans, tattoos, big black boots and all. As he walks toward the front the chain attached to his hip smacks against his leather coat.

During one of the worship songs (“Who would’ve thought that a lamb would rescue the souls of men?”), the biker drops his head, and presses his right hand against his chest. “God, I sure have made a mess of my life—please, please, forgive me.”

Two men went to church to pray. One was a minister with all the right credentials. The other was a man who loved Harley’s more than the air in his lungs. The man who’d lived a hard life went home justified. The minister just went home. Why? Jesus gives us the answer, “For whoever thinks highly of himself will be humbled. Whoever is humbled will be justified.”

Jesus told that story. It’s in Luke’s gospel. I like it, but some stories Jesus told really irritate me. Actually, some stories haunt me, and keep me up at night. Christianity becomes something different when Jesus begins to keep you up at night. It’s one thing when the Tigers or your shopping list keeps you awake. It’s another when it’s Jesus that won’t allow you a peaceful night’s rest.

The Power of Confession

Donald Miller got a crazy idea when he was a college student to put up a confession booth on the secular and anti-Christian campus of Reed College. His timing was a bit awkward for he wanted to do this during Ren Fayre, a time of drinking, drug use, and orgies. Instead of asking other students to confess their sins (something Christians are curiously good at), Miller led the experiment by offering a confession of his own sins, as well as the past sins of Christianity.

You never question the truth of something until you have to explain it to a skeptic. I didn’t feel like being in the booth or wearing that stupid monk outfit. I wanted to go to the rave. Everybody in there was cool, and we were just religious.

I was just going to tell Tony that I didn’t want to do it when he opened the curtain and said we had our first customer.

“What’s up, man?” Dude sat himself on the chair with a smile on his face. He told me my pipe smelled good.

“Thanks,” I said. I asked him his name, and he said his name was Jake. I shook his hand because I didn’t know what to do, really.

“So, what is this? I’m supposed to tell you all of the juicy gossip I did at Ren Fayre, right?” Jake said.

“No.”

“Okay, then what?” What’s the game?” He asked.

“Not really a game. More of a confession thing.”

“You want me to confess my sins, right?”

“No, that’s not what we’re doing, really.”

“What’s the deal, man? What’s with the monk outfit?”

“Well, we are, well, a group of Christians here on campus, you know.”

“I see. Strange place for Christians, but I am listening.”

“Thanks,” I told him. He was being very patient and gracious.” Anyway, there is a group of us, just a few of us who were thinking about the way Christians have wronged people over time.”

After haggling over the intent, Jake finally began to understand. The conversation took a serious turn once Jake realized that this was a life-giving proposition.

“So, you are confessing to me!” Jake said with a laugh

“Yeah. We are confessing to you. I mean, I am confessing to you.”

“You’re serious.” His laugh turned to something of a straight face.

I told him I was. He looked at me and told me I didn’t have to. I told him I did, and I felt very strongly in that moment that I was supposed to tell Jake that I was sorry about everything.”

After confessing for a good while, Jake became empowered. His passion increased with each passing second.

“It’s all right, man,” Jake said, very tenderly. His eyes starting to water.

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat, “I am sorry for all of that.”

“I forgive you,” Jake said. And he meant it.

The two talked for a little longer about the essence of the Christian story and Donald shared with him the Gospel message and Jake told all of his friends that they needed to visit the Christians in the confession booth. I can just imagine that conversation, “You won’t believe what those Christians are up to now!”