Searching for Truth
My quest to know and to know why is a passion which has consumed me wholly for a lifetime. Now, though, in my mid-life years, this quest has taken on a much deeper meaning and purpose. It is probable that so many of life’s experiences have lubricated the gears and fueled the engine of my drive. For now, I cannot simply believe because I have been told, or because of what I have been told. I must dig deep in order to discover truth. As this life moves towards its end, I realize that what I leave behind for my children and others will be what I believe and how I acted on those beliefs. Nothing will come near the importance and value of these things when I am gone. So for this reason, although stated with some brevity, I move on into discovery and learning, sometimes entering those caverns of darkness that, by implication, have been forbidden.
I have far more questions than answers. In fact, each answer seems to birth a plethora of new questions and quests. So, if you are reading this for answers, disappointment may be what you find. Although I feel I do have some, my curiosity and continued search is made visible here.
My intent, as always, is to build. At times, however, you must deconstruct prior to building. In my humble opinion, we must move away from the constant conflict (both overt and covert) and towards a more peaceful existence.
Brief Background
My search for the truth of God began when I was very young. I write more about this in an upcoming book, Meeting the God of America. However, I will briefly state, or restate some of that here.
I have always had a place in my thoughts and longing for the truth of God. Who is He? What is He? Why is He? Who am I to Him? Even in my early childhood, I held these thoughts and questions. I have never doubted there is a creator, and in fact a loving one. But this fact does not define God, or answer any of the questions I just listed. It is not enough to know God exists, not for me anyway.
As a child and adolescent, I rarely attended church. Church was not something our family did. We did try on a couple of remembered occasions, but never enough to develop a history. Many times I read from an old Phillips translation my parents kept on the living room bookshelf. I don’t think I really learned much, but I do know, by virtue of memory and recalled feelings, that my search and satisfaction was the right path for me.
I have since childhood also had an ability that is uncomfortable to document here. It is one that some know about, especially my wife, but I am sure documenting it for the first time will bring on questions and judgment. However, honesty and transparency are far more able to propel me along this current path than holding back.
Before I share this ability with you, I must note that it is not something easily controlled. There is no magic and there is no switch. It simply is there when it is needed to be there and generally for the good or building of others, not for personal gain.
When in the presence of others, I am able to feel what they are feeling. To know, in many cases, what is going on in their lives. In some instances, I am able to know what the future holds for them as well, or even reveal past occurrences.
For many years this ability has been more of a burden then pleasure. People tend to think you are strange or crazy. So learning to keep quiet unless led (by spirit I believe) is necessary. The greatest burden however, is feeling pain of others so intensely. This is especially upsetting when in a group of people, and so much is felt from so many. At times, this has been absolutely draining for me. But as I move farther along in life, and some amount of understanding is gained, I have learned to deal with it in much better ways.
I believe wholeheartedly this is a gift provided to me, by my creator, and for a purpose.
On July 8, 1978 at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, I accepted Jesus as my personal savior – what Christian’s call being “born again” or “saved”. This moment was life-changing, but not wholly in ways that are commonly communicated. I certainly was consumed with a feeling of euphoria during the alter call and prayer of confession. However, confession tends to free the soul for most, in whatever form it is released.
Immediately I involved myself in church, primarily a youth group. I changed my group of friends, leaving behind many who I was close to. This was not the right thing to do. But, I was lead in this direction by those I now held up as the ones I should look to for life advice and mentoring. Certainly, this is not part of what Christ did. So, at the start, Christ-likeness was not being reflected in my new life.
As with most new converts, I believed I had discovered the one truth and pushed it radically on many, sometimes under the leadership of others, and other times on my own. I am not saying I had not discovered a truth, only that I mishandled it, whether by teaching or my own decided action.
At this time in my life, I lost some of my curiosity to know, because I mistakenly was under the impression that I now knew. I was wrong and am sometimes saddened by the lost time of discovery. However, I did strive to know what the bible said and meant. I was being taught, although rigidly and myopically, but I was learning some valuable things.
In 1984 I was married. We had been dating since our teens and for about six years prior to marriage. Although the marriage sadly ended in divorce after twenty-two years, we were seriously and undeservedly blessed with three amazing children.
Along the way, I have been a youth pastor, speaker, writer, I have written plays, been on radio, performed music, and preached. The most valuable of all these experiences was being a youth pastor. I really wanted to instill a sense of life purpose within the kids I was leading. At that age (junior and senior high) youth are looked at as an inconvenience so often. They are not taken as seriously as they should be. Granted, they do not yet posses the wisdom of most adults, but they are in a strange place of discovering so many things, both internally and externally. They must be graced with mentoring and guidance, and this takes more effort than many are willing to extend.
During most of my adult life, I have learned that there is more than one component to truth and “the way”. The stressfulness of dialogue where ideology and theology are concerned is painful to me. Why is something such as personal faith, which claims to produce love unlimited, so quarrelsome and destructive? To remedy this will be my pursuit for the remainder of my life here on earth.
Today, my focus is on recovering from past mistakes, developing a strong relationship with my wife, Gina, and moving back into healthy relationships with my children, who suffered damage in my divorce from their mother. In addition, I am doggedly pursuing complete truth (as complete as any one lifetime will allow), facilitating growth in others (see my article, You Know You Can, but Think You Can’t at christianschaal.blogspot.com/ or at christianschaal.com), and honing patiently gifts I have been given.
So, Shall We Dance
I should note here, and before going on any further, that I fully expect some questioning from those who know me, and maybe even from some who do not. I am in no way denying God or His love at any point here. That said, I will be stating some things with full awareness they will be somewhat controversial, at least to some. There is no need to read between the lines, or draw conclusions based on assumptions that may arise. I am writing from my own experience, study, life-lessons, and spirit.
A seasoning of motivation for this piece is firmly grounded in something I have already mentioned – the ugliness of disagreement between those of differing faiths, or even denominations. It is evident that these factions are mostly dogmatic about their systems and practices. What should be apparent is antithetical – their love. Love, the love that God is and gives, is what we should all share in. This love should be what exudes from every part of our being – unconditionally. Show me evidence that this is the case for the majority who claim it as part of their faith, and I will forever shut up. Until the, I will, as I have already stated, do my part in moving myself and others to that euphoria.
There is no “one right way”. The path to God’s love and presence varies with person, circumstance, and time. The Christian way to salvation, the salvation prayer for example, has become diluted and to a large degree meaningless. Not because of anything God has done, but because the life to be lived after such an experience is not taught with any love/conviction mixture. In my view, and from my experience, church leadership has lost its way and moved from the light and into a somewhat dim place.
It may sound as though I am angry. I am not. It is understandable for you to feel this way. Many who write or communicate in such a way, or about such things, are. I am not.
Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and Christians, all claim the same God. Much of the same history is recorded by these faiths. All claim, among other things specific to their faith, that God is a God of love; then why the wars, the killings, the arguments, the bombing of abortion clinics or the murder of the abortion doctors? Why the dogmatism and blame?
I claim here and now, that none of these faiths have it completely right, and I maintain Christianity for myself. Since I do lay claim to Christianity, much of my focus will be concerning this faith. Sadly, I feel it is a most conflicted and precarious position – for many reasons. I also have many of my own questions concerning my faith and the Bible as well.
For example, the writers of the gospel have documented much of the life of Jesus. Some write of his birth, and all write concerning is ministry years. So someone please tell me then, seriously, where is the documented history of his life between the ages of twelve and thirty? Why has it been omitted? Did the writers do this, or early church leaders (council of Nicaea maybe)? This question and others have perplexed me for some time. There must be a reason and I would love to know why. To many this leads them to feel the bible is unreliable. Is it?
There are many such conflicts, questions, and seeming inconsistencies with the pages of this ancient text. It is a difficult thing to understand, and for some a deal breaker. Sadly, for others, it is an excuse to disregard anything of faith, at least as far as a god is concerned.
However, this is not the greatest issue of divide, people and our behaviors are.
Look, there can be no honest disagreement that conflict of varying forms is now woven throughout the church and its people. The church has become little more than a reflection of common culture, and the opposite should be the way of progression.
I have been entrenched in churches for most of my adult life. I have either been part of leadership, including providing sermons and other talks, or been personally involved with the leadership personnel, first and foremost as friends. I have seen and experienced the beautiful and the ugly. So the issues I am writing of have been a part of my own tapestry through the years, not merely a feeling I have.
Here are a couple of examples. Human nature will lead you to make assumptions as to my motivation as you read through these. These examples will serve as a foundation for building, not the opposite.
1 - As stated earlier, after my salvation experience I immediately became involved with a high school youth group at a church close to my home. The pastor of this youth group became a good friend of mine over time. I was nearly eighteen when I first began attending, and he was in his twenties. My future wife and I spent much personal time with him and his family. In time, he was given his own church to pastor, which is where I became youth pastor for the first time. I was also on the elder board and involved in music presentation.
To say we became close friends is an understatement. The foundation of my theology was based on his teaching, both in church and as part of our friendship. He was the man who I modeled my life after as a father, husband, and Christian man. I saw him at least three or four days a week and thought I knew him as intimately as I could know anyone. His seeming passion for God, people, and shepherding were to me unquestionable.
After more than a twenty year, close relationship, you can imagine my shock and dismay when I discovered he and his wife were divorcing. In my mind there was no way this was true.
I called his wife to find out what the heck was going on. I rarely take second hand information as fact. I will seek the facts from the horse’s mouth as they say.
During our conversation she shared with me many things that had been going on for some time, including sexual relations with other women in the church. So, of course, I asked her, what woman he was having the affair with. To my utter and crippling astonishment, her response was, “who said it was a woman”. I nearly collapse to the floor, seriously. This was my role model! He was the “man of God” in my life. He was the man who married my wife and me! This just could not be true. But it was, and is.
As it turned out, from the beginning of my knowing him, he was involved in homosexual affairs with other church leadership, as well as affairs with other women. The homosexual affair had been going on for over twenty years. Once this began to come out, so did many other things, as so often is the case. One of those issues greatly disturbed me for deeply personal reasons. He had brought in a pedophile to help with our choir.
Now, let me be clear, I do not judge those who are gay (or anyone else). It is not my lifestyle, nor is it one I feel is part of created design, but I am not the Creator. It is not my place to judge. That said, this is a man who proclaimed one lifestyle with passion and conviction, and lived antithetically to all he proclaimed. Many lives were forever damaged, and possibly souls as well.
2 – During the period between 1992 and 1998, my family and I lived in a small town in Kansas. After a brief stint in a town of three-hundred, we moved on to a large town of thirty-five-hundred – large for Kansas. We searched for a churched based on one main factor – community affection. In other words, demolition was irrelevant to me. The real draw for us was how a church was affecting its community.
We decided on the First Assembly of God church just one block from our home. Although we did not agree wholly with their practice and faith, their affect on the immediate community was the most profound in the area.
We met with the senior pastor as well as the elders in order to introduce ourselves, as well as get to know them. We shared our disagreements theologically in a very honest and peaceful way. Part of their criteria for membership was coming to agreement on ten points of faith and practice. We agreed on eight. After some studious debate, we agreed to disagree and our membership was allowed. Honestly, this whole process itself is evidence of just how divided the Christian church is; but more on that later.
Immediately a friendship developed between the senior past and me. He was a driven man, and committed to put whatever beliefs he held into practice. I respected this in him. However, he was also egotistical and paranoid, which forms the root of the event I will share with you in this example.
Within a very short time, the pastor had me up front every Sunday morning speaking, introducing and interviewing people, and other things. I was also invited to preach on some evening or weekday services. I say this not to lift myself, but to give you an idea of the closeness of our relationship, both professional and personal. Remember, I did not come to agreement about all elements of their faith and practice, and he caught some flack from other members for inviting me to do these things. This is yet another flaw in the church today – human ego; and again, I will provide more on this later.
I rarely attended Sunday evening services. This is the time I used to write and produce plays, a part of the ministry I had been doing for years. With Lamplighter Ministries, we brought very high impact and relevant dramas to youth. I worked with a small group of persons who volunteered their time to be a part of what we were doing. Some of these persons were part of the First Assembly church as well. All were friends of mine at varying levels.
An important issue to me was the meeting together with the entire group in order to further develop ideas, and spend time in support of one another on a personal level. At times, this would include a brief but relevant study of bible text. Somewhat informal, as that is how I operate with these types of things.
It is extremely important to note here, that I full supported the pastor and all his work at the church. I spent many hors of my time working with him and others in order to manifest visions he had for the church and community. In all I did, I made every effort to make sure there were no conflicts with events having to do with his work or the church functions. However, people were drawn to what my work wanting to be more involved. In time, the congregation stop be concerned with our disagreement on part of the faith and practice, and began to want and expect more from me. If you recall from earlier, the pastor was closet egotist and paranoid. I love him to this day, but it is the truth. This fact is evidenced by his current standing, which I will not divulge here.
Apparently he bean asking around secretly about my activities, which is odd because I discussed everything with him, as a friend and mentor. He went to this I worked with and asked them if I was trying to start my own church. He was firmly and quickly told no, and that I was in full support of him. He was also told that he really should speak with me about this directly. Now, let me tell you, I am the last person who would start a church, and the last one you would want as your pastor. Not a lot of patience for gossip, back-stabbing, or judgment of others, in any way. I would be fired!
I was told of this activity and elected to say nothing. Stirring up flames unnecessarily is not my cup of tea, nor do I find any good in it. But I did know what he was doing. Because I was also told by those he spoke with that they had told him to speak to me directly, I figured he would. He was a pastor and that would have been the biblical approach to the matter. He never came to me.
It was Sunday evening. My wife and daughter decided to walk to the church for the Sunday evening service. My daughter had never attended a service on Sunday evening, so this would be her fist experience. I, as I shared earlier, worked on my writing Sunday evenings. I had a full time corporate position, so I had to make the most of any time available to me. This had been my practice for years prior.
To my surprise, about thirty minutes after my wife and daughter had left for church, my daughter came literally bursting through the front and yelling for me. I turned, somewhat in shock, to see a look of utter panic on her face. I asked her what was going on and she told me, half out of breath form running home, that my wife and the pastor were arguing on the front grass of the church. Mind you, this is during service time, and the congregation was still sitting in the pews.
At first I thought my daughter was playing a joke on me. But her eyes quickly conveyed the truth of the matter. My mind was racing and it took me a moment to gather my thoughts and ahead out the door. I made my way briskly down the street and the one block to the church. As I approached, and to my incredibly real astonishment, there they both were; my wife pointing a finger at the pastor as she angrily gave it to him. By his body language I could see he considered everything she was saying invalid and unimportant.
I moved quickly to place my body in between the two of them in order to fist bring peace, and then discover what in the world was going on. My wife continued and I pointedly asked her to stop. She did, and as she did, the pastor started in on me, telling me angrily that I should be in the Sunday evening service. Okay, I was shocked.
He had known full well how I used my time on Sunday evenings. This was nothing new to him, so I did not buy this as being the root of the issue. It had been two or three weeks since his questioning of other concerning me and, honestly, I had forgotten all about it.
I replied to him, reminding him of what I did on Sunday evenings. This only increased his anger, which really confused me. I asked him why he was not more concerned with the men in the church who abused their wives, or were alcoholics and all stayed home on Sunday evenings. We were getting nowhere. He began to remove his jacket as if he wanted to fight me, which I thought was odd. He was the senior pastor, and he did have a congregation inside probably wondering what the heck was going on.
In short time, I turned to my wife and asked her what had happened. The story she gave me seemed incredible to me at the time. But in the end, it was completely accurate. I have the audio tape of the service as proof.
At the beginning of the service, the pastor stood at the pulpit scanning the congregation, apparently to instill his authority over the situation prior to his sharing with them. There was an unusual hush within the building as his words poured out over them as seeming punishment. He began to share how someone in the church was making attempts to undermine him, to ruin all the church was attempting to. In addition this person he was convincing others to leave the church and come under his leadership. All eyes were glued to him as he spoke. This was a close knit group of people and I am sure they were all wondering at the time, with some serious confusion, what in the world was going on.
He went on like this for about four minutes. Then, he turned to look right at my wife, who was sitting with my daughter, and say this, “and it’s your husband [her name here]”. She was shocked. My daughter began to cry. Remember, this was her first time in Sunday evening service. And in her mind, this was a very close friend of mine, who we spent a lot of person time with. My wife sat there frozen and tremendously embarrassed. She is a private person and this absolutely knocked into a silent yet emotional frenzy.
At that, the pastor went to prayer. He asked all to bow their heads. As he did this, my wife made an attempt to silently and politely leave. He looked up to see this and called her out, right in the middle of prayer. He told her not to leave. She continued to the exit with the pastor hot on her tail. And this is where I found them – out on the front lawn of the church.
He had said the Holy Spirit lead him to share this. However, the Holy Spirit does not lead in contradiction to scripture. If He did, then the concept of biblical truth is not only diluted, but vaporized. Since the pastor never once spoke to me directly, not once, he was way out of line. Besides all that, he was wrong. I was in full support of him and the church, at least until that day.
After a week or so, he apologized and admitted he was wrong, but not publicly. But it was tool late. There was no way we were going back there. In addition, because of what he did, thirty families left the church. To be honest, I felt the only reason he was pleading with us to come back was to get all the other families back as well. I accepted his apology, but never went back.
In reading the above, you may think me to be negative, demeaning, or even divisive. It is human nature, based on the culture we live in, to assume such things and move to judgment. My intent however is stated in the opening of this article and is foundational to my own beliefs.
None of us is perfect. Certainly I am nowhere near. I have caused and created much pain during my lifetime, some of which will take years to remedy. The examples above are not example of judgment against those of which I wrote. They are provided only as a foundation from which to build. Many more could be shared by me and by you, I am sure. As stated, the church today is rarely more a reflection of common culture. It is certainly made up of the same people. So, from here we will now move forward.
A Youthful Quest
Jesus is recorded as saying we should come as with the eyes of children to our faith. Matthew 18:2 & 3 – And he called a child to himself and set him in before them and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted (turned) and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” What does he mean by the term children? Another question which we will tackle later is what is meant by the kingdom of Heaven. But first, lets drill deep into what is it to become as a child.
The Greek term used here is paidion and it means an infant or half grown child (boy or girl). This is, for me, one of the most important sayings of Jesus. And, although most Christians (as well as others) are aware of it and would claim to an understanding to its meaning, evidence is lacking. Earlier I stated that salvation has been diluted today “…because the life to be lived after such an experience is not taught with any love/conviction mixture.” One of the elements missing is the becoming as a child. This is no small matter, and it can prove to be a bit complicated when you are middle aged, as I am.
I am a fairly simple minded person. With that stated, lets look at some universal attributes of children.
• Malleable
• Trusting
• Curious
• Loving
• Adventurous
• Needing care
• Requiring guidance
• Not fully developed
• Emotionally immature
• Fearful
• They Laugh a lot
• All children grow
This is how we must come to our faith – any faith that is new for us.
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