Other than nothing, what do a Jewish Planned Parenthood counselor from Brooklyn, a male hairdresser from San Francisco, a Texas ranch wife and a Jesus-following missionary  have in common?  Actually, we do share one thing.  Four hours ago we were on a shuttle bus heading  south from La Paz, Mexico to the airport in San José del Cabo,  2-1/2 hours away.   I am the missionary in the group.

There were only five people on the small shuttle; and before we had even pulled out of the parking lot, four of us were talking about what for them  had been their individual vacations, but which for me is pretty much my daily experience since I live in La Paz.

First we talked about snorkeling with whale sharks, kayaking and going on the whale watching trips.  Then the conversation morphed to where we were all from.  It then meandered into occupations and then, of course, to Donald Trump.    A discussion about Donald Trump between a Texas ranch housewife and a male hairdresser from San Francisco is nothing short of a recipe for MAD (mutual assured destruction).

As far as life style goes, I was light years closer to the Texas rancher than I was to the other two; but as a follower of the Prince of Peace who has made us his ministers of reconciliation, my role became that of being the bridge builder, the peacemaker.  Without negating truth, my role was to bring people together, and to keep myself from falling into the ugly stereotype of Christians held by millions of people and which seems to be increasing day by day.   Jesus was gentle with people who didn’t understand and tended to reserve his fierce anger for the professional and fundamentalist leaders, the conservative religious right of his day, the kind of Christian many of us used to be before we decided to identify ourselves more closely with Jesus than with the current expression of Christianity.

My role was not to win an argument or to convince of truth – that is the job of the Holy Spirit.  My job was to keep the conversation going, to show this small group of people that  Jesus followers do not fit their stereotype of Christians. My job was to keep the door open for additional conversations in the future, probably not with me but hopefully with other Jesus followers who will build on today’s conversation and take these people one step closer to knowing truth.  My role was to create a safe place for people to express their views; because until we have verbalized our current view, it is really hard to listen to and accept a new truth.   At times Christians don’t  listen particularly well and are very quick to judge and try to correct the views of others.  This comes across as arrogant superiority.

What quickly became apparent is that these new friends are not my enemy. When they talked about the urgency of making condoms readily available to teens, they did so out of love for their own kids.  Their assumption is that their kids are or will be sexually active, so the loving thing is to give them condoms.  I expressed my admiration and respect for their love for their kids but also my concern that by assuming their children will become sexually active at too early of an age, they are  actually promoting  that which they fear.  I told my friends that if we truly love and respect our kids, we will know them to be capable of self-control and of waiting till marriage.  I think my new friends appreciated the high and trusting view I have of kids.   What I have to accept is that their actions, as are mine, are love-based.  They love their kids and sincerely want the best for them.  As a Jesus follower I probably have a more developed understanding of the consequences of behavior than do my new friends, and I certainly have a differently developed sense of right and wrong; but my friends  sincerely want the best for their kids.

When we talked about transgenderism, it was out of compassion for those lost souls who are confused to the point of intense suffering.  When we talked about immigration issues, they talked about people they knew, not a formless evil horde with no face and no name.  They are compassionate because they have taken the time to get to know the families others are simply willing to rip apart via heartless deportation.

We talked about abortion, transgenderism, homosexuality, immigration, racism, human trafficking – we covered it all.  The discussion was, at times,  very biologically graphic and the words were a bit earthy.  Some people would have been offended at the choice of words. There were some physiological activities mentioned that I hadn’t heard about since my lost years in Key West.   Honestly, I didn’t mind that the strong words were used around me because it indicated my friends’ level of comfort with me.  There was none of the “Sorry, reverend.  Pardon the French.” I was just one more of their group even though I chose not to be crude and graphic in my speech.

My takeaway from all of this?  People who disagree with me can be really good and friendly people.  They are not my enemy.  I think they are lost, misguided and unintentionally causing immeasurable harm to the very people they most love and are just trying to help.  My goal is not to defeat them.   It is possible to have deep discussions and express disagreements without being ugly and mean.   I learned that I really do love people who are at the extreme opposite of me on most issues.  I also recognize that these new friends have much to teach me and that we who follow Jesus do not have a monopoly on love and compassion.

What do I hope comes of this conversation?  I hope that my new friends realize that while American Christianity might appear to be their enemy, Jesus followers are not.   I hope that this small group of people will continue to pursue truth and that they will find it.  I hope that they will understand that there are Jesus-following people out there who will listen.

THE WORLD’S LAZIEST THEOLOGIAN

Steve Dresselhaus

I’m the world’s laziest theologian.  Most people might not even consider me a theologian at all because I don’t have a title[1], I don’t read a lot of books by a bunch of disagreeing authors,  big words I can’t spell don’t roll off my tongue, and I have no elbow patches on any of my jackets.  When highly educated people have come down on opposite side of the same issue for two thousand years, it seems rather pointless to waste time and  energy arguing  about that which is currently unknowable or to presume that I might be the one who comes up with the cosmos-altering, correct,  tie-breaking third solution.   I’ve decided I’m just predestined to be a lazy skeptic.

As the world’s laziest  theologian  I like bullet points. If I can avoid reading a book or taking a class or going to a conference on something that we all know will not resolve anything before it even starts, why waste  my time?  I’d much rather be shown the bullet point, meditate on it and then extrapolate and execute an appropriate action.  Transparency compels me to inform you that I did muddle my way through enough college to eventually, after several schools and several interruptions,  obtain a  degree, although I skipped my graduation, opting instead  for a dive trip in the Florida Keys.   I have also studied at theological institutions that made me read books and gave me  grades and everything  and where the professors had so many letters after their names they reminded me of  those Hawaiian fish.  “Students, meet Dr. Smith,  Humuhumunukunukuapuaah.”  I do read a few books now and again, or at least I glance at the captions under the photos.  I’m not opposed to formal education, unless  it creates intellectual gridlock, fosters inaction by requiring additional studies prior to performing,  or diminishes the value of those who have not taken the course or read the book but who are intuitively getting the job done.   I do recognize that it is usually the really smart, highly educated people who share their bullet points with me, so I am very indebted to these smart folks and hope they keep burning the midnight oil so I don’t have to.   I suffer from a condition called, in medical parlance, theologoparasitosis, a chronic condition in which I let others do the intellectual heavy lifting.  As you may have surmised by now, I did not like school when I was a kid and to date, nothing has changed.  My all-time  hero in education, the man to whom I would light candles were I a Catholic and believed in such things,  is Sir Ken Robinson (EDUCATIONAL HERO).  Where was this superhero when I needed him?

So, in my pursuit of bullet point theology, I have discovered one short phrase that has become my number 42[2], the axle to  my theological wheel, the North on my theological compass,  the starting and ending point of much of my belief.  This one short phrase guides virtually everything I do, think, or say.   It is Genesis 2:18 –“It is not good for man to be alone”–one of the very first thing God says about people.  Nine words – that’s all it takes to define my life’s current purpose, goals and actions.    This short phrase helps define my view of sin – sin creates loneliness and separation.  This short verse explains my view of Jesus’ death on the cross – to reconcile all things to God through his sacrifice.  These nine words , four of them only two letters long,  inform[3]  my view of eternity – we will be together with Jesus and each other forever.  This little phrase explains my view of the church – it is the mutually edifying togetherness that builds us up, not the complex and expensive program we have allowed to be defined as church.  This tiny phrase explains why I make disciples of Jesus – because disciples journey through life together.  Why do I promote caring for the environment?  It’s so people can enjoy being together in a pleasant place.  Why do I start new gatherings[4] of  Jesus followers?  Of course, you already know:  because “It is not good for man to be alone.”  Why do I help rescue abused women and children? – Go ahead and venture a guess.

So, in my role as the world’s laziest theologian I give you most of the theology you will ever need in just nine short words, only one of which is more than one syllable long. “It is not good for man to be alone.”

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[1] Actually, I have been ordained, so technically I can be called “Reverend”; although there will be ice skating in Hell long  before I ever  let myself be addressed  as “Reverend.”   

[2] 42 , according to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is  the  “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.”

[3] I had to insert the word “inform” since all theologians are currently using this word a lot and I want to be counted among the smart people.  The word “seminal,” once the rage, has now fallen into general disuse so I no longer use it.  Using the right words helps theologians shift the “paradigm.”  There, now that I have used the word paradigm , the most popular smart person buzzword  of all time  since a caveman uttered the first “Ugh,”  I have confirmed  the legitimacy of my status as a theological erudite.

[4] Jesus only used the word “church” two times in his recorded ministry, and when he used it, it had zero religious connotation. I would hope we could come up with a better way of distinguishing between the Sunday morning program, which looks a lot like school (shudder shudder),  and the way of life instituted by Jesus. 

SO, A MISSIONARY WALKS INTO A BAR……

                  Steve Dresselhaus

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Last night my wife and  I spent two hours in a bar in  La Paz, Mexico where we live.  Strange place for a missionary, pastor, and mission executive, — or is it?  In  the background a live jazz band played its music, but it was not overpowering; it did not disrupt normal conversation.

The event was a fundraiser for a reef and mangrove cleanup project.  Once a month the sponsoring group organizes big trash collections on the beaches, in the mangroves, and underwater on the reefs.  Kayaks, Stand Up Paddleboards (SUPS), SCUBA and power boats are the vehicles and tools  used to accomplish the task.  The money raised last night will provide a stipend to marine biology university students who do public speaking in the area grade schools to help the children learn to love and appreciate the ocean from an early age.

It is no secret that I am a mission executive, a devout churchgoer and a follower of Jesus.  The subject of my work came up several times  during the evening’s conversations and my friends  have scoped me out on Facebook so they know who I am and what I do.  Facebook is a wonderful tool if properly used;  to paraphrase Jesus, “out of the abundance of the heart one posts on FB.”

Should I go to a bar?  What if someone sees me there?  Will this ruin my testimony?  These questions scrolled through my mind for a couple of days prior to the event. I came to the conclusion that not only did I need to go to the bar, I wanted to go.  I wanted to be with my friends–and make new ones.  I wanted to be identified with their cause. I wanted them to know that I like what they like.*  I wanted them to discover that the frequently held stereotype of “Christians” might not be true for Jesus followers. I discovered that any anxiety I may have felt was a vestigial remnant  from my  cultural upbringing  and a latent predisposition towards negativism  prevalent among some evangelicals whose favorite word often seems to be “No.”

This particular bar, La Perla Negra (Black Pearl) is tastefully decorated, not a seedy dive; and it is the kind of place I envision as a Jesus hangout.    Honestly, I suspect Jesus would be much more comfortable in this bar than he would be in many traditional churches where program has replaced relationship and where competitive preaching  is the draw.  As I sat in the bar I wished Jesus had been there with us, joining in the laughter, telling  hilarious jokes and sharing life-changing stories.  I don’t know that Jesus would have had a beer or not since wine seems to be more his thing.   I imagined him enthralling us with his stories and challenging us to grow  while sipping a glass of wine.    I imagined the  bar owner being a bit nervous about having the world’s most famous  vintner  and the actual creator of the fermentation process  in his establishment.   I could imagine Jesus speaking to event organizers  and thanking them for their work in cleaning up the mess that has been made of the  beautiful  world he created.  Since the customers in the bar were not part of the religious right, nor church professionals, I think Jesus would have been very gentle with them.  Jesus seemed to have reserved his anger for the religious conservatives of his day, the traditionalists, the haughty literalists, the detailists,   the arguing theologians, those who used the Scriptures for manipulative purposes – people just like many of us. I wonder with whom Jesus would be angry today.

Should I have gone to the bar?  What if someone saw me?  What if my going offends someone?  My guess is that the only people who would be offended would be those who have been taught to be offended by this type of thing.  No one can use the Bible to build a case against  spending a pleasant evening in a decent place with new friends.  Since I am not tempted towards animism, I was not concerned about the physical space of the bar.  Might my going to a bar cause  a “weaker brother to stumble”? Maybe – – that is a possibility, assuming he truly is  a weaker brother and not an evangelical manipulator or a professional weaker brother dictating the behavior of others via his weakness of choice.  Had the bar been decorated with an image of Gaia and my contribution gone to buy incense to burn for her,  I would not have gone.  That  could cause a legitimate weaker brother to stumble as he would have seen an  apparent  act of worship,  which is the point the passage in the Bible is speaking about – not a religiously neutral activity.  The weaker brother argument, while biblically valid,  has been  highly misused.  Some church leaders have used it to selectively  manipulate and control people in regard to specific activities, but they have failed to use it uniformly.    Should I use a computer since computers are the main source of pornography?  Should I go into a donut shop since many of my friends are obese and diabetic and my eating a donut might tempt them?   Am I sinning by going into a Best Buy when most Americans are tempted towards greed and sinfully  view hyperpossesionism as a blessing from God? Am I sinning by using an iPhone since Steve Jobs was a practicing Buddhist?   We mustn’t use the weaker brother argument as a catch all to govern any behavior which makes others uncomfortable.   We mustn’t be led by American evangelical traditions if they are training and inducing people to live in  perpetual weakness.

Because I am aware of the potential discomfort my going to a bar might create among the more conservative American-style Christians, I went to the bar protected by the presence of my wife.  I also contacted a missionary coworker to let him know where we were going to be and I texted him at 9 PM when we got home to let him know that  the event was over.  Sin is generally  done in secret.  Secrecy breeds suspicion and fear and breaks trust. I want to be totally open about the fact that I went to a bar.   Jesus certainly had no qualms about boldly going into places which gave the legalists cause for attacking him.  What’s more,  he had his questionable acts  recorded in God’s Word for all of eternity.  Do you think that maybe he was trying to tell us something?

It was a wonderful evening, and I’ll do it again in a heartbeat.

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* The first thing God says about humanity in the Bible  is that “It is not good for man to be alone.”  Bars are a human  attempt to facilitate togetherness.   Drinking is an activity done in bars but is not their main attraction.  The fact that someone is in a bar is proof positive that they are searching for something.  If it is alcohol they are after they are more likely to go to a liquor store, a convenience store or a grocery store where it is far cheaper and faster to obtain it.   Living like I do in an alcohol ravaged city, I’m not downplaying the horrific problems caused by drunkenness and alcoholism,  but I can’t help but wonder if it  might not be  time for Jesus followers to redeem bars and  transform them into useful places in which  to share the good news of what Jesus has done for us?   I look forward to the day when people go to church for the same reason they go to a bar – to spend time with people.   In a bar alcohol is the tool used to break down inhibitions and facilitate relationships.  In the community  of Jesus followers it is reconciliation and forgiveness that allow true relationships.

This is the beach where I found Veronica

VERONICA (not her real name)

Steve Dresselhaus

“Hi Verónica [not her real name].   How are you?”  The truly  blank stare I got in return to my friendly query was neither hostile nor questioning.  It was blank, an empty vacuous open eyed nothing.  It was the blankest of blank stares – no emotion, recognition or acknowledgment.  For all the feeling they conveyed, the  eyes looking at me could have been looking at a rock, a palm tree or a garage door.  Verónica has sunk to and is existing in that horrible stage of drug addiction known as anhedonism, in which there is no longer any emotion, good or bad.  Sadness?  Happiness?  They feel the same.  How do you measure something that doesn’t exist?  Fear? It no longer exists because whether the addict lives or dies, “me es igual” – it’s all the same.  Anhedonism is the number one employment condition if you want to be a “sicario,” a trigger-man for the Mexican drug cartels.  If you kill your target or your target kills you, “me es igual.”

I have known Verónica for many years.   She was my across-the-street neighbor from the time she was 16 or so to her current late 20s.   Verónica is dirty, unkempt, and to the uninformed appears to be  an undeterminable age  much older than she really is.  Her hair is a matted, tangled mess that makes Bob Marley look like someone having a good hair day.  Her skin is old, street-grimy black; her feet are now the flattened wide feet of a barefoot person living on pavement, and her exposed belly could pass for that of an iguana.

Her clothes are old, dirty, torn–covering little, revealing much.  She is dressed in a way that exposes most of her,  way too much of her,  to the gawking eyes of men, the kind of low-life men  for whom momentary availability is the only  requirement and for whom  attractiveness is an unaffordable  budget-busting luxury.  Verónica’s way of dressing advertises her current career choice, but abuse, overuse, and lack of maintenance have relegated  her to the equivalent of a clearance bin at Walmart.   Yet somehow, she generates enough business to keep herself in drugs;  to keep herself stoned to the point of disengagement from normal life.

“Verónica, do you know who I am?  I used to live across the street from you.”  The blank stare simply looked at me and said with  unspoken words, “Go ahead and have me, use me,  just give me something.”  I urged her to get help.  I offered to take her to a recovery center.   When she failed to recognize me as her former neighbor and when she failed to acknowledge me as the missionary pastor that I am, and when she failed to accept my offers of help, I said  “goodbye”   and walked away down the sandy beach that separates the city of La Paz, Mexico from the Sea of Cortez.  I was conflicted in my soul.   I wanted to help, but there really was nothing I could do at that time.

On my return walk along the beach I found Verónica again, but this time face down in the sand in a deep sleep, the kind of deep sleep  that only a witch’s brew of drugs can induce.  I checked to make sure her airway was open and then walked away.  She’ll wake up in a couple of hours, stagger back to her shack across the street from where I used to live, and sleep  the day  away. Tonight she’ll head back to the street looking for men willing to rent her for nothing more than a small plastic bag half filled  with some white powder or tiny crystals.  If she eats anything at all it will only be so that she’ll find the energy to discover her next little bag of powder.

Verónica may have descended to anhedonism and feels nothing, cares for nothing, and lives the life of “me es igual.”   I have not made that descent to Hell.    I feel all kinds of things, and right now what I feel is not pretty.  I feel  profound sadness, lots of it.  My sadness  is caused by  people who, choosing not to exercise  self-control,  propel themselves  into horrifically harmful activities with predictable, guaranteed consequences.   I feel sadness mixed with revulsion  at  knowing what mentally depraved and physically  dirty  men have done to Verónica’s body and soul and what they will be doing to her again twelve hours from now.  I feel sadness for Verónica as she has made and continues to make choices which confirm in her mind that she is a worthless dirty nobody, a mere plaything for a certain class of disgusting, degenerate men,  and of no more worth to them  than a basketball or bottle of beer, to  be tossed aside after performing her limited function.    I am very angry with those merchants who peddle drugs. I am sad that so many churches justifiably condemn the behavior but far too often refuse to participate in the dirty and  messy process of healing and recovery; by their actions they  seem to indicate their belief that one can simply teach someone out of addictions.   I am upset at those churches which say “we need to preach the Gospel (Good News) in order to save the lost,”  unless  by Gospel they mean the Gospel preached by Jesus in which he taught truth,  touched the untouchable, shared life with the rejected, slammed ritualistic religion,  and invited people to journey through life with him.   I applaud those groups of Jesus followers willing to dirty themselves in order to help clean the lost.   I feel compassion for all those young people trapped in Verónica’s world, young people who made the wrong choices over and over again and who are now suffering greatly for having made those sinful choices.

Just like a rag cleans up a mess by absorbing the filth from the object being cleaned,  Jesus heals and cleans people by taking their filth from them and smearing  it  on himself.  When Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  it was because at that moment he became as dirty as all the  Verónicas of the world.  In that moment Jesus felt the  accumulated  consequence of all the sin,  the abuse, the treason, the immeasurable pain of a million Verónicas and he became as vile in God the Father’s eyes as Verónica.  But this is still not the end of it.  Jesus also took on the sin of assumed-to-be-clean, wealthy, comfortable  Americans and Europeans  who sin just as much as Verónica and whose sins are just as dirty and may be even more dangerous on a global scale  than Verónica’s sins will ever be,  but who are better able to hide their sins under a veneer of wealth.  Verónica destroyed herself with her sin – of that there is no doubt.  The sins of wealthy Americans and Europeans  (greed, pursuit of comfort, self-indulgence, entitlement, sense of superiority, self-declared national exceptionalism, violence,  incessant warfare) are  destroying millions of lives.  Jesus, the only sinless person to walk this earth, because of his perfect love for Verónica, you and me became, for a short time,  the ugliest sin-dirtied person to ever live.  God the Father did something to Jesus he never did nor ever will do  to us: he turned his back on him.

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This story happened and was written down a long time ago.  My wife and I just moved back to La Paz, Mexico, after a six-year absence.  We saw Verónica yesterday, which is what caused me to unearth this story. We were surprised she was still alive; but nothing has changed.  She was as dirty as always, her hair was a matted mess as always.   She was dragging a bag full of cans down the street, probably to turn them in for cash in order to get her next fix.  She talked to us but we couldn’t understand a word she said.   Heartbreaking.