Prodigal Medic....

I was reading a major Christian magazine the other day. They always have a great section about all the great books out there, classics and new selections that are of spiritual relevance. This is always the section that I flip to first. I was excited to see a good friend’s book in there a couple of issues ago. He was the first person to use the word “emergent” in a book title, in reference to the loose-knit group of people that The funny thing is (and I don’t remember the exact dates of it all), there was also a cover article about John Calvin. One of the things that I’ve been quite aware of is the flap/kafuffle/conflict over this emergent thing. The purpose of writing this is not to involve myself in said kafuffle. Just the other day, I also read something on a stranger’s website, about how they “didn’t want anything to do with anything emergent-ish… give me some good ol’ Calvinist reformed theology… some Macarthur, Piper, or Driscoll.”

These groups are pretty diametrically opposed to each other, at least on paper. Ideas on faith, grace, works, pre-destination, church structure, accountability of the church, how to teach, what to teach… The list is long enough to choke on. And I do. I look at it though and think of my friend’s job writing books about this, and about all the books and Celebri-pastors that are finding their way on to Larry King Live and in sound bytes all over the place talking about their way or how wrong the other way might be.

About a month and a half ago, my family hosted a couple from Houston. This couple whom we came to love dearly taught me a lot. About seven years ago, this guy had a tree fall across his yard. His friend said he knew a guy with a jeep who might be able to help him clear the tree. And this is how he met my Uncle Mike, the friend with the jeep. What an unlikely pair. An African-American lay pastor who works as a handyman to support his backyard tent ministry and yearly trips to Georgia to hold revival meetings. A white-looking Mexican biker with a short-man’s complex and enough demons to fill his own level of hell. Fast friends they became. It started with the tree. Then Fred would call Mike when he needed help on a job. And after each job, he’d call his wife, and they’d invite Mike to eat at their house. Uncle Mike was passionately anti-God. He’d seen too much. Been a part of too much. A life of violence, addiction and lawlessness had firmly set his heart against God. And yet Fred and Faye would always ask him to dinner, welcome him. Faye started making Saturday breakfasts for Mike. He’d show up faithfully and let these people slowly start melting his heart. They would offer encouragement, a place to sleep if he needed it, and always a warm smile and meal. Years passed. Nothing changed. Mike was arrested and in prison. Fred and Faye were the family he called when he got picked up, and when he got out.

Something changed. He got out and started going to the church meetings that Fred and Faye would hold in their backyard tent. Then he started serving meals to homeless people. He would get there early on Saturdays to set up chairs. After the meals he’d eat with the family, he’d sit in an easy chair in their living room and quietly read one of their Bibles. And one day, Faye asked him about his savior, and Mike knew that Jesus had redeemed him and that he knew in his heart that he was “saved.” (Again, don’t get hung up on the terminology or theology.)

The thing that Fred and Faye taught me was that a life of loving the people around you has powerful consequences. These lofty ideas that those of us that have the luxury to argue over rarely trickle down to the life of the broken-down biker gang type, like my Uncle Mike. And thank God for that. If he knew what we Christians were really like, he might have just ridden off into the sunset. Instead, when he died recently at a fairly early age, he set and example for the rest of my family of faith, a family that like him has rejected any and all forms of organized religion for years. What Mike related to, according to these people that knew him best, wasn’t these theological arguments. It was a homeless rabbi who loved him, who pissed off the teachers who “knew” their idea was right and rejected all things on the other side of the aisle, teaching that the Kingdom of Heaven was here and now and available and brought great peace. Maybe this is where we should be spending our time and energy and money.

I heard that “introspection is a luxury afforded to the wealthy.” I also heard from a friend that a pastor told his congregation last week that “if the kinds of people that Jesus was passionate about showed up here, most of you would leave.”

I think its time that we became more poor, the hurting, the needing and the lonely, thinking less about the “other team” and how wrong they are. Look at the person in class next to you. Look at the person sitting across the nurse’s station, making your coffee in the morning or bagging your groceries. Lets start leaving behind our luxury of arguing over such minutiae and start actually loving the people around us in tangible ways.

I know that I’ve met plenty of people that have been loved into heaven, and no one that has been argued there.