Wednesday, September 30, 2009

How to Win, part 1 - Recognize the Roots

How do you beat an addiction?

First, and most important… recognize the struggle is spiritual. If you don’t know what game you’re playing, you will lose pretty much every time. You’ve got to know the game, the rules, the techniques, especially to play in the big leagues. And when we head into the area of addiction, we’re on spiritual territory, not just physical or emotional or psychological.

There are two huge implications to that fact. The first is that what you are dealing with is sin. It is wrong. This is not merely a disease, not just a weakness. This is sin. This is something that offends a holy God. That’s true of any addiction, I think – we should not be brought under the power of anything but Him. Our wills should belong to Him, to be exercised in accord with what He wants.

While there are physical, emotional, and psychological elements to any addiction, and probably to any sin, ultimately, the fight is not just of the body, feelings, or thinking. It is spiritual. That addiction to alcohol, drugs, or porn is a sin, and if you’re going to beat it, you must recognize it for what it is. So long as it gets whitewashed, renamed, minimized, and justified, it will never be defeated.

I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a lot I don’t know about the physiological element to withdrawal symptoms for a lot of drugs. I’m not a doctor, and I’d probably get tongue-tied if I played one on TV. But I do know that the real fight over whether a person goes back to an addiction is spiritual.

Since it is spiritual, you can’t beat it without Jesus Christ. Even if you beat the substance or the behavior you were trying to change, you just get mired in self-sufficiency and pride, which can have worse eternal effects than any drug.

Since it is spiritual, you can have victory in Jesus Christ. He died for that sin, and when He rose from the dead, He proved He beat it. You can’t beat sin on your own – but you don’t have to. Once you realize that - that you can’t do it, but Jesus Christ already did - you’re finally in a position to really begin to win. Faith in Jesus Christ isn’t just the only way to go to heaven (John 14:6 - “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the father, but by me”) - it’s the only way to real and lasting freedom and victory in this life.

Once you’ve trusted Him to save you, you don’t have to defeat that sin, because you died to it in Him, and you’re risen to walk with Him in newness of life (Romans 6). The whole process of getting freedom from addiction starts with the realization that in Christ you are already free. The shackles have been broken and trampled beneath His feet. Any victory you get is something He won.

For some people, this simple realization is all it takes. The battle is in the mind, and once they really believe the sin they fight was already defeated by Jesus Christ, they can just walk away from the battle and never struggle with the temptation again. Many just ask God to take away the desire for the sin (and some don't even ask), and He does. They never struggle with it again.

Maybe their faith is greater than mine, because I wasn’t like that. In Jesus Christ, I am dead to sin. But I’m far from dead to temptation. Yeah, there’s victory in Jesus, but I’ve got to be willing to live in that victory from decision to decision, and all too often, I’ve decided that defeat looked better than victory.

So if you’re dead to sin, but the temptation is still camping outside your door, what do you do when it knocks? How do you live in that victory Jesus already won?

I’ll get down to more practical measures in the succeeding posts… things like accountability and thinking for success. Some of those tools might work in specific situations, even apart from the spiritual foundation for them. In fact, I know that they can and do. But I like to have the whole picture. I don’t like swapping an obvious problem for a more subtle one. I want solutions, not problem exchanges. I like to know where the roots of a problem are, so I can weed them out. And the roots of the weeds of addiction are sin, burrowed deep into the heart of man.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

How to Win, introduction

In a comment on my last post, I was asked about my thoughts on accountability. It's a dramatically under-used tool in beating sin in general and addictions in particular. It's not a cure-all, of course; you can have accountability and still fail, and some have succeeded without it. I don't even think it's the most important tool (given its relative prominence to other truths in Scripture). Nonetheless, it's a valuable tool, and it bears discussion. Sin thrives in darkness, and it shrivels in the light. Accountability is one way to shine light on your life.

However, that got me thinking. Instead of just dealing with one tool for beating an addiction or sin, why not address several? So I'm going to do a series of posts on how to get victory over sin and addiction.

For anyone who's wondering, yeah, I'm still clean. I guess if I'm going to talk about how to beat sin and addiction, I'd better stay that way. I'd hate to end up the spiritual equivalent of Jake Delhomme giving an off-season clinic on how to avoid throwing interceptions.

Have you won or are you currently winning a battle against a sin or addiction? What tools did you use, and which ones helped the most? Did you find ways to use those tools that worked better than others?

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Two Tough Weeks

We're now up to the two week mark since everything changed. I won't say they've been easy. There has been struggle on every front. There's no sense of sportsmanship or fair play with Satan, and he's got no problem kicking you when you're down and assaulting you when you're weak.

These two weeks haven't been easy, but they have been victorious. Satan may attack while I'm weak, but God's strength is made perfect in weakness. To God be the glory; great things, He hath done.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Why I Don't Believe in Religion

I don't believe in religion. Yes, I'm a Fundamentalist. But, no, I still don't think much of religion, for the most part. I know of only one place in the whole Bible where the term "religion" is used positively, and it has nothing to do with how a person gets to God or has a home in heaven or receives eternal life.

Why would I be generally opposed to religion? Because religion, at its core, gets the most important thing wrong. Religion is man's efforts to please God. It's usually all wrapped up in what you do and how you do it. Often it brings in rituals and rites, observances and sacrifice. It's usually rooted in morality, and it often has some fine things to say about the duty of man. But when you come right down to it, religion is man trying to make himself good enough to please God. Or it is man trying to find the right levers to pull to make God happy enough to accept him. It is man trying to work his way to God.

That's backwards. Man can't ever, on his own, be good enough to please God. Romans 1-3 systematically proves that no one, not even the most religious, is good enough to please God through his works. And the clincher is that truly, none of us seek after God. Lots of people call themselves seekers - but they are usually trying to find their own way to God, to blaze a path of their own devising.

Religion has it all wrong. Man can't work his way to God. God came to man.

Religion has it backwards. Men don't seek until they find God. God isn't lost, needing us to find Him. WE are lost, needing Him to find us. Jesus Christ came to this world to seek and to save that which was lost.

I don't really have a religion. I have a relationship with God, based on the work of Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for me. I'm not some poor searcher standing at the door of heaven, frantically pulling at levers on a cosmic board, hoping to find the combination that makes God happy and convinces Him to let me in. I've already been brought into the household of the King. It wasn't because of anything I did or any good that I am. It was all because of what He did. He sought me and He saved me. All I did was believe in Him to receive that gift of salvation.

So don't call me religious, please. I'm trying to please God, sure, but it's not so that He'll let me in. Instead, call me a child of God, trying to please Him because I am in.

"Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us."

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

What Is a Christian Fundamentalist?

In order to address what I mean when I call myself a Fundamentalist, I'm going to have to take a little time off from my busy schedule of practicing my anti-Obama chants, working on my AK-47 marksmanship, and developing bombs. That makes me mad enough to blow something up.

Oh, wait. I don't mess much with political stuff (especially in my role as a pastor), I don't own an assault rifle, and I've never built a bomb. (Well, that egg-drop project back in high school might have come close... but nobody got hurt, aside from the smell. The fire wasn't really all THAT big.)

Despite the impressions you may have gotten from media outlets (which can rarely be troubled to make careful distinctions - it's hard to clarify who really is what in a 600-word article or 2-minute television news report), Christian Fundamentalists have virtually nothing in common with the Islamic Fundamentalists or Hindu Fundamentalists who have done such violence recently.

The reason the media can apply the term "fundamentalist" to all of us is that we all take what we believe seriously, and we're deeply attached to core tenets of our faith. But our faiths are radically different, and that's what gets missed in the popular image. I don't know of a single self-professed or accepted-by-the-community Christian Fundamentalist who has committed any act of violence in the name of his faith. We don't kill people for God, and we don't blow things up for God. We're willing to die for our faith - but we would never kill for it. That would be a foolish denial of the very fundamentals we stand for.

So if I'm not defined by radical politics or violence, what makes me a Fundamentalist?

A Christian Fundamentalist is one who holds to and is willing to stand up for the basic truths of Christianity. The list of fundamentals differs from person to person, but they pretty much all boil down to the essential truths for salvation, and those all revolve around Jesus Christ: who He is, what He did, and what we must do in response. This is no surprise - it's a Biblical idea, even though the name is recent. The Apostle Paul repeatedly told people to know doctrine and to be willing to separate from (not work with or fellowship with) people who denied core truths or who lived in blatant sin. The Apostle John nailed it down really clearly in I John 4:1-3. The person who accepts the truth about Jesus Christ, whatever else they may be wrong about, has a relationship with God. The person who hasn't believed the truth about Jesus Christ, whatever else they may be right about, has no relationship with God. When a person teaches the truth about Jesus Christ, whatever else they may get wrong, they are helping the cause of Christ in that at least. When a person teaches error about who Jesus is and what He did, whatever else they may get right, they are hurting the cause of Christ.

The difference between a Fundamentalist and other Evangelicals is not in what they believe about the gospel - both believe that salvation is by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, as the Scriptures make so plain. We all agree the Jesus Christ is God the Son who came to earth as a man, died for our sins, and rose from the dead. The difference between Fundamentalists and the rest of the Evangelicals is the Fundamentalist's willingness to obey the commands to evaluate and separate from those who don't believe the gospel.

Am I a Fundamentalist because I hate people? No! I'm a Fundamentalist because I love God and want to do what He says. (This is the test of love, after all: "If ye love me, keep my commandments.") I'm a Fundamentalist because I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ to be the most important truth this world has ever seen - so important that I can't pretend I'm the same as someone who rejects it. I want to share it with anyone who will listen - but I don't want to work with someone who won't, at least not joining together in so-called ministry.

That's what makes me a Fundamentalist - believing the fundamental truths of Christianity and being willing to take a stand for them. The movement by the name of Fundamentalism has gotten tangled up in a lot of other things, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't. (It's made up of people, even people like me, which guarantees it won't be perfect.) At its heart, though, Fundamentalism is about the gospel of Jesus Christ and obeying Him.

Now I think I'll go and make another ... sandwich, a sandwich! What, you thought I was going to make something explosively dangerous, just because I'm a Fundamentalist? Well, okay, that description might suit any sandwich I make.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The Deed Is Done, And The Chips Are Falling

I delivered the letter last night. One of the toughest things I've ever done in my life. I still don't know how it's all going to play out - you never do when you hit someone with news that big and devastating. There has to be time for it to sink in and the reactions to begin to distill.

But something is working... I'm up to 10 days now, which might be a record in recent history. And the victory is really all due to surrendering to God and doing it His way.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

The End of a Letter, The Beginning of Nervous Waiting

The letter has now been finished. I'll probably give it another once-over sometime this afternoon, then print it up. (Yes, it's typed... painful though it may be, I want her to be able to read it, and that ruled out my handwriting.) I don't much like it... it's so hard to write something that's not rambling, doesn't include justifications or excuses, and breaks things as gently as possible.

I expect the best opportunity to give it to her will be tomorrow or Tuesday night. Feel free to pray for us.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

One Week Down, One Eternity to Go

I'm now seven days clean. The letter still hasn't been completed, much less delivered, but I'm hoping to accomplish that in the next few days.

Seven days. So little, set against most of a lifetime of failure, and even those seven not without their momentary stumbles of thought or glance. But by God's grace and with His help and doing it His way... hopefully just the first days of an eternity of victory.

That Growing, Dying Dinosaur

"So, Sonny, back in my day, there were these guys called Fundamentalists."

"Really, Grandpa? They were like what, professional fun-thinkers, game-makers or something?"

"Heh. Not if you believed Mencken."

"Who?"

"Never mind... he's deader than they are now. Though a lot of those Fundamentalists had a lot more fun than folk realized. Sneaky fun-havers, a lot like the Puritans."

"Who?"

"Never mind - the Puritans wouldn't have liked the Fundamentalists, either. Mostly, the fundies just said and thought stuff people didn't like. Got 'em in all kinds of trouble."

"Wait... I heard about those in school. They're the ones who were always blowing themselves and other stuff up until they just died out, aren't they?"

"Well, that's pretty much what you'd expect to happen to people who blow themselves up, isn't it? But nah, you're thinking of the Muslim kind. I'm talking about the Christian ones. Mostly they just blew up at people until they blew themselves out and all dried up because nobody wanted to be one."


Will grandads and grandsons be having this conversation in twenty or thirty years? Probably, if this article by Michael Spencer in the Christian Science Monitor is correct, and grandads who tell their sons about the good old days and all the bad things that happened in them haven't all gone out of style or into nursing homes before then.

The consensus among those who even have a clue what Fundamentalism is (more on that in another post) seems to be that Fundamentalism is a dinosaur. The meteor that smashes the movement into oblivion like an out-of-date species has already crashed someplace up north. The dinosaur is breathing in all that dust, and its lungs are getting black on the inside like a five-pack-a-day smoker (not that most Fundamentalists would ever condone smoking, even among dinosaurs, unless, of course, it's a way to make dinosaur jerky). The dinosaur is about to keel over and die any day now, if not from lung cancer, then from the cold because of all the dust it didn't breath in and get stuck to the inside of its lungs.

Now, Mr. Spencer is a smart guy. He's probably running a couple of post-graduate degrees hotter than your average Fundamentalist, too. He says some very sharp things in his article, some very insightful things that I agree with completely. He's also humble enough to admit that he's definitely wrong in some of his predictions. And I think I know what one of them is, because in his routine filling-in of Fundamentalism's death certificate, he missed one obvious, glaring thing about the dinosaur: it's still growing.

The dinosaur of Fundamentalism really is pretty old-fashioned in a lot of ways. In some of them, it goes beyond old-fashioned into timeless and eternal, I think. In others, many of its members have ideas and practices that make Amish buggies look positively space-age. But Fundamentalism is not wheezing its last breaths and wasting away because its throat is clogged with second-hand asteroid smoke.

Like it or hate it, understand it or have no idea what it really is, Fundamentalism is alive and growing. A recent survey of independent Baptist churches (the most common culprits in the harboring of Fundamentalists) done by Global Baptist Church Planters (there's a book coming out with Paul Chappell, based on the study) found that among respondents, the average church has grown by 20% since 2005. It reported that the average independent Baptist church was seeing people saved, baptized, and becoming faithful members. Maybe this dinosaur is so resilient it made one of those desperate space missions starring Bruce Willis to blow up the asteroid, then immediately junked the technology because, of course, all technology not at least one generation out of date is probably evil unless it's really useful.

I am not honestly convinced the study was enormously scientific, from what I've seen of the data. It tries to be aware of and compensate for obvious deficiencies, and they made it on the largest scale they possibly could. However accurate the actual numbers are, the general trend confirms what I've seen. Fundamentalists are out there, sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, which the Bible calls, "The power of God unto salvation." Thus, even as mainstream evangelicalism staggers toward the brink of destruction, its lungs clogging further with every step, this group that has always been out-of-step with the rest of the group now finds itself marching in a completely different direction.

Many Fundamental independent Baptists have somehow managed to hang onto a portion of the Bible that is strangely disappearing even faster than the dinosaurs did - the bits that tell them to tell other people about Jesus Christ and to be bold and active in doing it. (This is the "aggressively evangelistic" trait Mr. Spencer referred to.) And it kind of makes sense - the people getting their message out there are the people who most likely to propagate themselves, wouldn't you think? And the people actually doing what God told them to do with His power are the ones most likely to fully realize it, aren't they?

Maybe this dinosaur is better equipped for the post-meteor (whatever that mysterious meteor of destruction might be) world than most of so-called Christianity. Maybe it's even good enough at the core of what it does that it can even deflect or evade that big rock completely (even without Bruce Willis' help), though tough times are surely coming. It may not be good with technology, and it may not be as socially conscious as some other dinosaurs - but neither social consciousness nor techonology are the power of God unto salvation.

This dinosaur ain't dead, and it ain't dying. Whether it scares you or excites you, it's growing.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Upcoming

To let you know this blog won't be all self-examination, introspection, and navel-lint-picking, despite the opening post, here are some of the things I plan to look at as we go along (not necessarily in the following order):

Why I don't believe in religion.
Why I do believe in sex.
Don't make me take my earrings off.
What is a Fundamentalist, and do they really get to blow things up a lot?
Fundamentalists and movies, television, and video stores. Ah.... Netflix.

What would you like to hear from a Fundamentalist on?

Just don't ask me to reveal my identity... talking about this stuff can get a guy in big trouble... though maybe not as big as this.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

The Courage to Pay the Cost

Everything changed on Saturday, September 12, 2009.

But that’s not what this blog is about. Not primarily, anyhow. I want this blog to be a frank recounting of the life and observations of a (sometimes) thinking Fundamentalist, a young pastor who likes to watch, think, speak, and sometimes laugh about what he sees and thinks.

However, there’s a danger to speaking out about a movement (in good or in ill). There’s even a danger to describing your own life and how you see things. That danger is pride. It’s thinking you’re somehow better and smarter than the people you critique. It’s trying to make yourself look good for the people you’re addressing. Both of those are all the easier when the setting is anonymous. They’re easier yet when you’re trying to be funny while you do it.

So I’m going to tell you I’m not perfect. But I’m going beyond that obvious statement (usually a prelude to, “…but here’s why I’m more perfect than this person is!”). The second purpose of this blog is to lay bare one of my most shameful imperfections. I hope something which loves darkness will shrivel in the light.

*deep breath*

I’m a pastor. I’m a Christian, a married man, and a father. But I have struggled with pornography in its various forms for years. Okay, for decades, and the sad thing is, I’m still young. I’m sick of losing that struggle, of being dominated by that addiction. It’s time to win.

And so, on Saturday, September 12, 2009, I quit. I quit trying to fight the battle my way. I quit trying to do it alone, without letting anyone else even know the struggle was going on. I gave in to God instead of caving in to sin, and I determined that I was willing to do whatever He wanted, whatever it cost to win.

Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and that means He already triumphed over this sin. If He could triumph over it even in His death, He can give me the victory in my life.

But few meaningful victories are won without courage and without cost.

For years, I’ve kept the struggle with internet porn a secret from my wife (and everyone else too, for that matter). The one time I admitted to visiting a porn website, it hurt her terribly, and it’s had repercussions in our marriage ever since. I’ve been afraid that telling her I’ve fallen to it not just once, but throughout our years of marriage, will hurt her too badly for her to endure it and possibly wreck our marriage. If my marriage is wrecked, then my ministry is ruined too. That’s a real danger, and a terribly high cost for me. I have so much to lose.

In short, until now, I haven’t had the courage, and I’ve been unwilling to risk the cost to win the battle.

Now I’m writing a letter to her, putting it as gently as I know how, and pleading for her forgiveness, hoping for her help. I hope to give it to her in the next several days, when the opportunity is there for her to respond as she will. Perhaps I'll tell you how that goes.

Sin thrives on darkness, and it thrives on fear – my actions have been motivated by fear, and they’ve had me fighting a black thing in the darkness. No matter how she responds, whether in forgiveness or in anger, and no matter what it costs me, I’m going to win this battle, by God’s grace and through His power. Doing what is right is finally more important than doing what is safe.

There’s another factor here, though. As a fundamental pastor, if I were to admit to regular people in my church or to other preachers that I struggle with this, it would very likely end my ministry. Though everyone quietly knows that almost everyone either is struggling with or has struggled with this, when the knowledge becomes public about a particular person, that individual becomes a peculiar sort of pariah, looked on with either condescending pity or sneering scorn. A problem with porn is a quick route out of the pastorate.

Yet when I help other people fight a sinful addiction, be it alcohol, drugs, or porn, one of the best things I can tell them is to get someone or several someones to keep them accountable. Have people who know about your struggle and will keep checking up on you. Don’t slip back into the darkness where the sin thrives, but force it out into the light if it wants to ensnare you.

That’s the second purpose for this blog – since I can’t come clean, so to speak, with people who know me in real life, you, the hypothetical reader, are now my accountability. I’m going to try to be completely honest here, and I plan to give frequent updates to let you know how I’m doing. If I go a bit without posting, someone jog me with a comment or email.

This kills two birds with one stone – it’s a continually humbling reminder that no matter what criticism I may level at another’s ideas or practices, and no matter what praise I may heap to myself, I’m among the chiefest and most despicable of sinners. It also gives me the accountability I need to get victory over one of my oldest and most hated foes.

Perhaps my recounting of this battle in the days to come can be a help to someone else. I hope so. But even if no one ever reads this, or no one ever cares, I’m going to win this battle, because I gave up fighting it my way. It’s all God’s now, and He’s already won.

I’m under no illusions that this will be easy – remember that I’ve struggled and failed time and again for decades. There are steps to victory I haven't listed here in a single simple blog post; maybe another time. But now it’s time to stop fighting and start winning. I hope you’ll come with me on this journey of victory.

So, in case you’re out there and are ready to step into the light too, what do you struggle with? Are you winning? I’m four days clean. How about you?