Chapter 4: Learning I Was Not Welcome
We remained a part of the Louisville Christ Fellowship for about 9
months after my ordination. But I was
mostly quite restless and unhappy. I
knew the pastor was doing things which I did not think were right. Nearly all these pastors, (except for Forrest
Richey) took the attitude that being the pastor was like being a commanding
officer, through whom God speaks, and to resist or rebel was rebellion against
God. Apologizing was unthinkable. And everything had to make them look
good. I would get almost nauseated
because people made a comment, “God has a man in Louisville” as if Pastor Greg
McBride was the only man of God in a city that large. By then, I am thinking he is not really one
anyway.
Please do not get me wrong. I do
think God uses men and women. Since I
have become Catholic, I love the stories of the saints, and the liturgical
calendar which gives us different days to memorialize various saints and learn
from their lives and their example. Even
before I became Catholic, I loved spiritual biographies. Reading the life story of John Wesley,
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, or George Fox was something which had really helped me
in my own spiritual growth and development.
My intent here is not to minimize that.
We also know of the saints in our own lives, the people in our towns and
churches, who by the way they live and pray and serve, show Jesus to other
people. I have prayed my entire life
that I could be one of those people.
But I had grown increasingly dissatisfied with what I was seeing, where
the praise flowed freely for the leaders, not just for the Lord who was
supposedly leading them. I saw evidence
of this in the fall of 1984. Loran Helm
had led a group on another Holy Land tour in October 1984. The church in West Virginia invited my friend
Jim Newby to go on the trip, and so I was invited as well. This was my second time to visit Israel, and
this one was at no cost.
It was a difficult trip. People wanted to be near my friend and talk and sit with him, which was fine, but I was not welcome. I was asked to step out of the way when certain photos were taken. It hurt. Someone said it should not hurt. It was like I introduced two friends and they ended up getting married. My response was that it was more like I introduced two friends and they end up getting married and I am told I am not welcome at the wedding! My problem was not with my friend Jim, my problem was that the people who fawned on him made me feel like my presence was nothing but a nuisance.
After this ten-day trip, someone said something which made me
livid. They were looking forward to when
Jim was “in the ministry.” I told them
Jim was already in the ministry. But
that was not what they meant. What they
meant was the day he left the Friends Church and became part of this
fellowship, which was built around Loran Helm, so he could “be in the
kingdom.” To this person, this
particular fellowship, the ministry, and the kingdom of God were all
synonymous. I was offended by that. I knew it was inherently idolatrous.
What if the way God wanted to use my friend was exactly where he was, in
leadership of the Yokefellows movement?
It was troubling to me that this fellowship was becoming a runaway
train, and in the eyes of some, the only train which had tracks leading to the
kingdom of God.
One time I got in some trouble because we had a family visiting for
several weeks. This husband had attended
Bible college some and knew the Biblical languages. They were of kind of a charismatic bent. I was talking with him after church one
Sunday. I made a comment to the effect
of “here are some things I think out fellowship does well…and here are some
things which, quite frankly, we fall short and do not do well.” The church treasurer heard about what I had
said, and sternly chastised me. “You do not tell people we have
shortcomings!” I asked, “Why, because we
don’t?”
Now Greg was also a horrible preacher.
He had no theological training and would read from the King James
version and ramble on and on and repeat himself over and over. But he did not want anybody else to preach.
He came across as so insecure. I was only allowed to preach if he was not
there. When he was there, people stood to attention when he walked into the
service, but they did not stand if he was not there and someone else was
ministering. This whole thing was about
him.
The day of my ordination happened to be his birthday and there were
people who wanted to make a big deal out of his birthday more than my
ordination. That really was
hurtful. It seemed like there was never
going to be a moment which would be my moment.
I was ancillary. I was an
appendage. I was miserable.
These are just a sampling of the incidents which happened while we were
there. But the worst one happened after
we left. I was serving in a Church of
the Nazarene near our home in Louisville, and Greg was out of town when a
couple wanted to have me do a baby dedication.
Greg had said since I was going to be there anyway, it would make sense
to just have me preach—so I said I would.
But then I learned that back in West Virginia, Oliver Hogue had
overruled this—I do not know how, it was not his church. I could do the baby dedication, but they were
sending another young man from West Virginia to preach that morning. The parents of this baby felt awful for
me. And they had family coming for the
dedication. I said I would be
there. I would do the dedication, and
nothing else. But they were
uncomfortable. They decided to have the
baby dedication in a private ceremony at their home that afternoon. I agreed to
do this. Gay and I did not go to the
church that morning at all.
That morning after church, there was a knock at my back door. It was
Phyllis, the same church treasurer who tried to set me straight as I mentioned
above. And she had brought my
mother-in-law, without telling her what she was going to do. Phyllis gave me an overall dressing down over
not being there and having left the group—I will talk about having left the
group next. She was mean and harsh and
called me an instrument of the devil and said I was trying to make God’s men
look bad. Well, by now I have figured
out these are not God’s men. I told her
it had become cultish, and it was not going to last. God would bring the whole thing to naught. At
the very least, I did not believe it was my responsibility to make them look
good.
I do not believe, if my mother-in-law had known what Phyllis was going
to do, she would have come along. The
way this group did things was to have as much as possible shrouded in secrecy. The pastor did not want people to know what
he was paid. I was working as a teacher
and was not paid by the church. He said,
“I do not know what you make.” I
replied, “No, but my employer does, and like it or not, this church is your
employer.”
One of the things which bothered
me about Loran Helm is that he did not want anyone to question him. He was stubborn, hard-hearted, and
stiff-necked. And there were people who he
thought were beneath him to even talk to.
I was one of those people. I
would estimate that well over 90% of the time, anything he wanted to say to me
was done through some intermediary. I
never understood why he could not speak to me, and why he could not speak to me
as a colleague.
Loran Helm claimed to be an apostle.
He felt he had a once-in-a generation call from God which put him on a
level with people like John Wesley and Martin Luther. The story line was that through his ministry,
God would send the great revival which would bring millions of people to Jesus,
right before the Second Coming. The
claim was made that he was in the Spirit of Elijah, to prepare people for Jesus
coming the second time the way John the Baptist did the first time. He claimed to have so much spiritual
authority that even the papacy should submit to him. Of course, it did not happen that way and he
died in 2006. He was buried in a rural
church cemetery in Eastern Indiana and most of what he said, including
predictions of famine, and predictions of a great revival that this ministry
would usher in, did not happen.
But this Sunday morning in my kitchen, in front of my wife’s mother, I
was told I had disobeyed God and I was jeopardizing God’s will being done on
earth. I was told I had put myself in
danger of eternal damnation. I was told I had led my wife astray and I was
endangering her soul as well. I had left the group by then, and that had made
me even more certain that I had done the right thing. And the funny thing is, my mother-in-law came
to me in a few days and told me that she could now see I was right, not them.
In the time between the ordination service and our actual leaving, a
couple of key things happened which made it clear to me I was to walk
away. The first was a young adult
retreat which happened at Clifty Creek State Park in Southern Indiana for young
adults from some of the fellowship groups.
Gay and I led a small contingent from Louisville, and fellowships from
Indiana and West Virginia were represented as well.
A couple of significant things happened at this retreat. One of them involved R., the woman I almost
married. She was part of the
Indianapolis group which was there. Now
here is where my memory was fuzzy, but either shortly before or shortly after
the retreat, the youth from Indianapolis had come to Louisville to sing, and
the members of this youth group stayed in homes of families in the Louisville
fellowship. R. was a guest of Gay and me
in our apartment. And I do not remember,
like I said, if it was before the retreat—I think it was, but it may have been
after. I was sitting at a table, all
alone, at this retreat, with a cup of coffee and R. came over and asked if we
could talk. She said she was happy to
see me and Gay together and she hoped there were no hard feelings between
us—and of course there were none on my end.
Then she put her hand on my hand and said, “I just want you to know the
problem was me, it was nothing you ever did or said. It was all me.” I almost cried. I was glad to hear that, but of course, now,
I was glad things had worked out the way they did because I felt so blessed to
have Gay as my wife.
Having her in our home as a guest may have started a tradition. When my son got married in 2010, a former
girlfriend of his sang, and another former girlfriend was the photographer.
The second thing was that the ministers at the retreat were sitting
around talking and I just expressed a little frustration that doors for
ministry were not opening for me like they had for each of them. One of the
guys, RM from West Virginia, said, “well, isn’t it obvious? What you are called to do is so much bigger
and more important than the rest of us that the evil one is putting obstacles
in your way.” I do not know if that is
true or not—but at that moment it was clear to me there was never going to be a
place of ministry for me as part of this group.
I began praying about how and when to leave and where to go.
Finally, I began to feel like I was being led to this Nazarene church
where I had taught school. I had met
with the pastor and explained my situation.
I told him I only wanted an opportunity to serve. I had a full-time job at another school, the
school at this Nazarene church having closed. What I wanted was a place where I
could transition into having my ordination recognized and finally find a
pastoral position, but I was not making any expectations of him or his
church. He said they would be glad to have
me, so I told him I would pray over it.
Not long after that we had a concert at the Louisville Christ Fellowship
with a musical evangelist named Dan McCraw.
Dan and I had met on a trip to Israel in 1978. In fact, we had a fun memory. He had come to my hotel room in Vienna,
Austria, and awakened me after we were up all night travelling from Venice to
Vienna. “Come with me!” “Where?”
“You’ll see…” And he took me to a McDonalds there in Vienna. In the intervening years I had heard him many
times in concert, and now here he was at Louisville Christ Fellowship. Greg,
the pastor, was away and I was sort of left holding down the fort. I had an opening prayer and made some
announcements, turned the service over to Dan and sat by my wife on the front
row. Dan was going to be our guest
overnight in our home.
Now this man’s music is a blessing
from God. I still listen to his
CDs. I saw him a few years ago and we
have kept up with each other on social media.
I am just basking in his music, when he stops, in the middle of a line,
and looks at me. He said, “I do not know
what it is you are thinking about doing, but you are supposed to go ahead and
do it.” He had no idea until later that
evening, back at our home, that I was contemplating leaving the group. Shortly after that, I made it known that
Easter Sunday would be our last day there.
One of the things I have found so disturbing over the years is that
people profess Christian faith and hold to conservative politics. Those seem utterly contradictory to me. I will write more about that in another
section of this memoir. But the Ronald
Reagan presidency turned me off. I had
registered as a Republican and voted for the first time in 1980. I was twenty years old, and I voted for
Reagan, because the fellowship leaders said God had called him to be
President. Whether that is true or not,
I do not know, but I do know he did not do what was right while he was
there. I remember being at a fellowship
prayer gathering in Indiana, and someone prayed for God to protect Oliver North
and for Reagan to not be implicated. I
was appalled! Why not pray for the truth
to come out?
I became a Democrat. I have voted
for some Republicans over the years.
2020 was the first time in my life, at age 60, that I voted a straight
ticket. But I have never voted for a
Republican for president since 1980. I
did not vote in 1984 and 1988, but I voted for Bill Clinton twice, Gore, Kerry,
Obama twice, Hilary Clinton, and Joe Biden.
I was so grieved by the Reagan presidency. So was my grandfather, who had always been a
proud Republican, but when Reagan said school kids’ lunches could count ketchup
as a vegetable, my grandfather was so infuriated even he became a
Democrat. The tax cuts and cuts to
programs which hurt the poor and increases in military spending broke my
heart. Bishop William Barber calls this
“prophetic grief” and it is something I have been familiar with for 40
years. It is the kind of grief I felt as
I sat in church in Scott Depot, WV, and wept.
As Reagan was leaving office, I wrote him. Now, I have no idea if he ever read that
letter or not. But I told him that God
was grieved with his stewardship of the presidency, and he was going to end up
unable to speak or know who was with him in a room. And sadly, this did happen to him.
I had over the years written both Oliver Hogue and Loran Helm several
letters, informing them of how heartbroken I was over their rejection of
me. I thought, maybe they did not
realize how wounded I was over their rejection of me as a minister of the
Gospel. My desire was to share with
them, in hopes of a reconciliation taking place. Every time I was rebuffed. I had written a couple of times even when I
was a Quaker pastor in Iowa, thinking certainly by now they will see they had
gotten it wrong. What I never understood
was, that if I operated on the assumption that they did not know how hurtful
their behavior toward me was, I expected that once I made them aware, there
would be change. I thought they would be
sorry. I thought they would make things
right. It did not happen. Even when I communicated to them how their
conduct was causing me emotional harm, there was no response. No Change. Nothing. No acknowledgement. Crickets. Like I said above, every time I tried to let
them know, I was rebuffed. I began to
realize then that they were frauds.
One letter brought a response, not from Oliver, but from one of his
assistants, saying I was totally wrong and none of what I was saying was
true. I thought, “OK, there is no more I
can do.” I said I would not write
anymore.
But God had other ideas, and specifically led me to write Oliver, about
a year after this, not about what he had done to me, but about what he had done
to Jesus and to the Gospel. I said he
had become one of the false shepherds the prophet Jeremiah spoke of. I told him his improprieties had grieved
God. I told him, as Lord Acton said,
power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I said, “Oliver, you have become absolutely
corrupt. The window of grace is closing
soon, and you had better jump through it, or it will close on you and your evil
will be exposed.” And in a few months, a
series of revelations of sexual and financial scandals on his part were
uncovered and he resigned. I did not
know the specifics, but I knew something was going on. People said to me, “You must be
devastated.” I said, “No, I am
vindicated. I was where you are now with
this, ten years ago.”
The staff member who wrote me and asked me to quit writing to Oliver
contacted me and apologized.
I must say one thing more as I
reflect on all of this. Leaving this
group has benefitted me more than I ever imagined it would. I was angry for a
period of years, but much of that has subsided, and all that remains is a sad,
hurting, grief. But years later, in my
late fifties, I remember something which the good Lord brought to my mind. Every rejection was a protection.
I look back on this with some awe and some sorrow. I remember when, as a student at Earlham
School of Religion, I was called into my advisor’s office. He asked me a pointed question. He said that the faculty realized I was as
intellectually astute as any student there, but when it came to my actual
performance in terms of my grades, I was struggling. They were concerned about me and wanted to
offer help. I was at that point in the
throes of being a part of this ministry which was so abusive towards me. I think I knew what was wrong, but I would
not tell him. Either it was fear of the
leadership finding out I said bad things about them, or fear that in breaking
away I would endanger my own soul—honestly almost four decades later, I still
do not know. I do know that I was
afraid. It was a gripping fear which was keeping me from leading a productive
life.
I do not want to belabor the details of this. I have never used illicit drugs in my life,
but I did do some drinking, and I made poor choices, and I even engaged in some
sexual behaviors which I had no business getting involved in, and the scars
from these stay with me to this day. I
believe all the above was my way of trying to medicate the pain I felt from
this group’s rejection of me as a potential minister. These behaviors were where I turned when I
did not get what I was looking for from that ministry. I made these choices—nobody but me made
them—and I am accountable for them. I do
not believe they were morally correct choices, and I am not trying to justify
them. I believe, as my faith teaches me, I am forgiven, but the scars have
remained. That is the sorrow.
The awe, however, is what has come from this most painful time in my
life. As I said above, I came to believe
every rejection was a protection.
I gave Loran Helm and Oliver Hogue a degree of control over my life, or
a degree of influence, which neither of them was loving enough to deserve. All I longed for at the time was to feel the
same level of acceptance the other young preachers-to-be were receiving. I kept wondering what was wrong with me. Why was I not being affirmed like these other
guys were?
It was nobody but me who opened the door for these people to be abusive
to me. I will be accountable for what I
did, and they will be accountable for what they did. I have written about how this experience led
me to know some of the finest people I have ever known, and my wife, the
absolute love of my life. Had I left the
group earlier, Gay and I would never have met.
This is where the awe comes in.
The real irony of this is that had they given me the affirmation I
sought, had they found a place of ministry for me within the group, I would
have ended up handing them more control over what was going on inside me than I
even did. I would have lost much more
than I would have gained. Indeed, every
rejection was a protection.
This is the story of the greatest pain of my life. I believe I am being truthful in how I
portray it. Over the years my contact
with people in this fellowship can be categorized in two ways.
There are some who have had similar experiences to mine. They did not necessarily have the exact
experience I had, but there are several people who have had similarly painful
memories to deal with from their own time in the group. I have found that there is a fellowship of
suffering which transcends issues and specifics.
Last evening my wife and I were discussing an essay in a book to which I
am also a contributor. The book is Partnering
with God.[1]
We had a discussion after reading one of the essays together about the
suffering of Jesus. Jesus came to share
in our suffering to make himself one with us and show us the way to be one with
God. The question came up in the
discussion of whether Jesus suffered everything we suffer. I thought about the biblical verse,
For we do not have a high priest who
is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every
respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15 NRSV)
I do not know that “in every respect” means
that Jesus faced every possible situation we ever would. We have no record that Jesus was married, so
the specific experience of divorce or the death of a spouse would not have been
part of his earthly experience. I do not
know that Jesus ever faced the question of whether to go to war, or to report a
loved one to the authorities when he learned they were endangering others.
I can
imagine there are other situations where Jesus did not experience exactly
what we do. I do not believe that is
the point. The larger point is that by
becoming human, Jesus entered with us into what I will call the fellowship
of suffering. No two people
experience exactly the same thing. We
would never dare to say a gentleman who lost his wife cannot bring consolation
to a lady who lost her husband (or wife!)
The exact details of the suffering do not constitute qualification to
speak a word of healing and hope. But
membership in this fellowship of the suffering does. Jesus came and entered the realm of human
suffering so he can sit with us in it.
Catholic Christians talk about the call to
take up our own cross and follow Jesus (Matthew 16:24) as an opportunity to
unite our suffering to the suffering of Jesus.
In so doing, we can offer our trials and tribulations to God as a form
of intercession for what the liturgy of the Mass calls “the peace and salvation
of the world.” I have experienced this
and believe that it is true.
But as my wife and I discussed this, it
dawned on me that Jesus has also united his suffering to ours. I was sitting alone in our Catholic church
one day, and as I looked up at the crucifix, I said, “Lord, I can see all of
your wounds.” I felt like he spoke
back to me, “That is OK because I see all of yours.”
There are those of us who were in this
fellowship who have joined together in the fellowship of the suffering. The exact details of the pain and/or abuse
differ, but there is a bond of knowing the nature of what the other has
experienced. My own experience as I have
contact with these people is that uniformly we have interacted with a lot of
love and tenderness and empathy. It has
touched me profoundly.
The other group is made up of people who,
regardless of what is presented to them, continue to defend this ministry and
it’s now-deceased leaders. There are
people who have venerated Loran Helm and/or Oliver Hogue to the point of being
unwilling to even entertain the possibility that what they proclaimed and what
they did may have been wrong. My
experience has been that these encounters have shown me a group of people with
what seems like little growth or fruit in decades. They are still telling the same stories,
still using the same religious catchphrases, and still living like the past 30
years has never happened.
I have had some of them tell me that the
experiences I am writing about in this book did not happen. They have said the statements I have talked
about which these men told me were never said.
I ask, “Were you there?” And I
get answers like “No, but I know these men and they would never do this to
anyone.”
Excuse me—I was there, and these
hurtful things were said to me. When I
explain that an absolute statement, such as Helm’s claim that he loved everyone
in the world just like Jesus loves them, only needs one counterexample to prove
it totally false, they seem incredulous.
I guess this might be why they did not want me to study philosophy.
I find the experience of these
conversations heart-breaking, and there are probably two reasons why. First, I am stunned that people would go to
such lengths to come to the defense of those who used a position of religious
authority to abuse their congregants.
The dynamic here is as real as the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic
church. What people do not realize is
that at least as much abuse, proportionately, occurs in evangelicalism. Some of that abuse is sexual, and some is
not. But the pain and grief and
life-long scars are similar either way.
Second, and this is more difficult to
admit, I have longed and hoped for vindication, and it has not come. Now, I know one can make a case that by the
grace of God, the events of my life have overwhelmingly vindicated me. I believe that is true. At the same time, however, I also have had a
desire for the people who were in the group to know I was right, and the
leaders were wrong. Maybe this desire
does not come from the purest of motives.
That is certainly possible. But
the desire remains.
As these leaders have died, I began to
realize these hopes would remain frustrated, and these longings would be
longings I would take to my own grave.
This was a painful realization at first.
It is getting better over time—but it was at first very discouraging.
As much as I had hoped that these things
would end up differently, they did not, and there is a certain grace even in
that, in which I can rest. Part of what
these experiences teach us is the value of living with disappointment. Disappointment can be crushing, or it can be
liberating, depending on how we choose to sit with it.
Another young minister in the group came to
me one time and said she was becoming disillusioned with the fellowship. My response was, “Praise the Lord.” She asked why. My response was that if we are disillusioned,
then what we are losing is an illusion anyway.
If it is an illusion, we are better off without it. Disillusionment can be a precious gift if we
receive it as an opportunity to see more of reality.
Disillusionment is painful. But it can be the bitter, resentment-inducing
kind of pain, or it can be the “no pain, no gain” kind of pain. As my friend Tom Oord would say, that depends
on the degree to which we are willing to collaborate (to labor together) with
God, in how we deal with that pain. I
believe that when we bring such pain to the goodness and mercy of God’s loving
heart, there is an inner strength to be found which we may not have known was
there.
There is a third group among those who I
knew from this fellowship, and with whom I have reconnected, and this group is
quite small. These are the people who
still attend one of these fellowships, but they realize there was wrong-doing,
and they know I was a recipient of some of the wrong-doing. These are people who have loved me and not
passed judgment on me. Some of them have
even come to my defense. They have
rejoiced with me over the blessing and abundance God has poured into my life,
and yet they have remained a part of the fellowship. Most notable among them are Pastor Daniel and
Beverly Jones, who are like family to me.
I understand where they are, and it is not
problematic for me at all. I stayed as
long as I could have myself. My hope was
that because of the other connections I had, with Yokefellows, for example,
that I could be an influence for good in this fellowship. I am making no judgment on these people. I understand where they are.
I have spent decades doing what my friend
Jim Newby says we must do, in his book Sacred Chaos. Newby says one of the keys to spiritual
growth is “Processing Pain.” For
me, this process began in the late 1970s and it only seems to wind down in the
2020s. I do not know when, or if, it
will be finally over. I see, however, in
my own life, and in the lives of those I care about, that if we do not process
our pain, it becomes all-consuming. One
of the reasons I can write about it now is that some processing has been done.
On a national level, I am writing this
during the time span in which American military personnel are leaving
Afghanistan. I believe it was wrong to
be there in the first place. I heard
Tony Campolo say one time the world has no idea what would happen if a
superpower like the United States embodied the New Testament teaching, “if your
enemy is hungry, feed him.” I heard Tony
say during the first Iraq war that he would love to see what would happen if we
dropped food on Iraq instead of bombs. I
believe the same could be said about the last twenty years in Afghanistan.
When
I talk like this, inevitably, something it triggers something in someone. I understand that because the comments of
people who still support what Loran Helm did have at times triggered me. They do not do so anymore. I still have a profound sadness over it, but
not much anger.
I have been thinking about the
Christian response to war for 40 years. I was a pastor for almost 30 years, and
I still function as a Christian philosopher and theologian in the last 10. And
everyone who knows me knows that I believe it is an unavoidable consequence of
the message of Jesus Christ that there is never a justifiable use of violence.
I say that because he said that. When I would preach years ago, I would tell
people-- if you don't like this--don't get mad at me, I'm not the one who said
it. I'm just telling you what the one who said it said. I did not create the
message. I am just the messenger.
It is not that I believe
Christian pacifism is something that an individual takes on because they know a
personal conviction from God to do it. No. It is my belief that this is what
Jesus explicitly taught by word and example. And I do believe that every
preacher whoever has gotten in the pulpit and not preached this, has fallen
short of what God called them to do.
Over the years, nothing I have
said or done has bothered people as much as this. For the life of me I do not
know why. I am no threat to anyone. If people think I'm wrong, they can write
me off as kooky, eccentric, delusional, or as a false teacher. I do not think I
am in any of those, but anybody who wants us to think that, go for it.
But for the life of me, I have
not figured out why my refusal to conflate Christianity and patriotism is so
offensive to people. And I do not understand when I say that Christ does not
ever approve of war and does not want anyone to take part in it ever, why that
is so offensive to people. If you think I'm wrong, like I said, write me off as
a kook. And if you think I'm right tell the Lord you're sorry and begin to work
for peace. But seriously folks there is no reason for people to be angry at me
that I can understand. I am just the messenger here. I have tried for the last
35 years to faithfully hold this message out there because it's the word of the
Lord. I know that because of what Jesus himself said. Don't penalize me for
that.
People raise the issue of
consequences with me. What if no one had stood up to Hitler? I understand those
questions because I used to raise them myself. My professor in ethics at
Earlham School of Religion, Wil Cooper, answered those questions in a powerful
way. He said that it is not our job to think of contingencies or calculate
consequences. This is not about end results. The concern with consequences is a
misplaced concern. Our concern, said Wil, is just to be sure that we do what
Jesus said in The Sermon on the Mount. That is our sole responsibility here.
The results are up to God. When he told me that I became a Christian pacifist.
My thinking turned on a dime. I saw so clearly that he was right.
Something shook me to the core of
my very being that day, as Wil Cooper explained the call to Christian
nonviolence to me. Forty years later, it
has never faded, it has never waned. I
cannot shake myself loose from it. I am
convinced Jesus-followers are not permitted to use force, not even in
self-defense, because by word and deed, Jesus totally repudiated that.
I want everyone to understand
that my message is not a message judgment of where people will spend eternity.
I do not get to make that call-- and I do not want to make that call. Yet
people take this personally as though I am condemning those who have been in
the military. I assure you I am not. We are not saved by our own good deeds. We
are not saved by works. To think that what we do and where we will spend
eternity is so inextricably bound together that there is no room for grace is
to conflate two things that should not be conflated.
People like to quote the verse where Jesus says to
the Pharisees, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God
the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21) What people often miss is that
Jesus defines what is Caesar’s as that which bears Caesar’s image. He is really saying what is God’s is that
which bears God’s image. Fighting in war
is taking what is God’s and giving it to Caesar.
The Old Testament prophets, like
Jeremiah, who is my biblical hero, had two messages. The first was a message of
impending judgment. If it is the message that we are on a wrong trajectory, it
will not be healthy for us to not change direction. The second message is a
message of hope, but the hope does not come until the first message is
understood and acted upon. It does not make sense to start with a message of
hope they called that lets people think things are fine the way they are when
they are not. This was a theme in most of the biblical prophets.
I think about what our country
has been through for the last 20 years, and the trillions of dollars that have
been spent, and it was all for nothing because it was something that this
country had no business getting involved in in the first place, and it grieves
me. The biblical injunction is, if your enemy is hungry feed him. As I have
suggested, what if we had been dropping food on the Taliban? That idea makes
people angry. And that anger and tells me the American culture has shaped
people's worldview more than the Christian faith has. And I grieve over this.
What I want you to know is that
people who have been in the military do not have my disrespect even though I
did not have additional respect for you above or beyond or anyone else. To me
it is all the same. But I'll tell you it's people like me who do not want your
life in danger like that, I think I can make it an argument that we care about
you more than do the people who want to send you off to fight. Your lives are
so valuable that I do not want them to be put at risk. But the lives of people
from other countries, even the lives of terrorists, are just as valuable in
God's eyes. Opposing a military action does not mean you oppose the individuals
involved, and it does not mean you support the other side.
As I write this, someone I care
about isn't happy that I say these things and expressed to me that they feel
judged. The judgment is not from me. I believe that when this happens people
feel conviction from the Holy Spirit and do not want to surrender to it. I
believe that deep down, people know Christian faith is a life of non-violence.
I could be wrong, but I believe the reactions I have gotten for the last 30
years to this indicate that the message is on target more than not.
What I do know is I dare not
abandon this burden and the message God has given me to proclaim. Some do not
like the fact that I view it as an absolute but I'm here to tell you, Jesus
made it an absolute--not me. I'm not angry at anybody. I am not condemning
anyone. No one has ever responded to me with physical violence over this,
intensity of the emotions they respond with seem violent sometimes. I'm just
broken hearted because people are willing to resort to violence when it's never
the right thing to do.
For me, what seems important is
that we do get around to processing our pain.
I put off writing this story for decades because of an awareness that
the pain would be so loud nobody would hear anything else. I knew I could not convey the details of the
story without it being an expression of anger. Thank God, that is not the
case. I believe that as I write, I am
experiencing a measure of healing, and my hope is that this story will help
facilitate the healing of others.
The decision of how specific to
be was a difficult one. I decided to use
some names and not use others. I have
touched on the reason for that already, but I want to reiterate it. My practice here is not to use names of
innocent bystanders. I have used some
names of people who were loving and did not ever do anything hurtful, like
Daniel and Beverly Jones, Bill McPhail, and Forrest Richey. I have also named the ones who did tremendous
harm to not only me, but others as well.
I came to believe I had a responsibility to call out Loran Helm and
Oliver Hogue by name because they both proved to be false shepherds, hirelings
who cared for themselves and abused God’s sheep. There are still those who venerate them, and
I felt compelled to make clear that associating oneself with either of them
would eventually harm one’s soul.
Now, having said that, as far as
I can tell in my own heart and mind, I have no axe to grind. The motivation for writing this is, I hope it
may help others who also suffer wounds from those who claim to be leaders of
the people of God. My own heart is at
peace. I did not know it at the time,
but they were doing me a favor, albeit an unwitting favor. I am doing fine.
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