LONG BEFORE I LANDED IN PORTLAND BUT shortly after my own conversion to Christian spirituality, I experienced periods of affinity with God. I would lie on my bedroom floor, reading my Bible, going at the words for hours, all of them strong like arms wrapped tightly around my chest. It seemed as though the words were alive with minds and motions of their own, as though God were crawling thoughts inside my head for guidance, comfort, and strength.
For a while, I felt as though the world were a watch and God had lifted the lid so I could see the gears. The intricate rules of the sociospiritual landscape were something like a play to me, and I was delighted at every turn in the plot.
The truths of the Bible were magic, like messages from heaven, like codes, enchanting codes that offered power over life, a sort of power that turned sorrow to joy, hardship to challenge, and trial to opportunity. Nothing in my life was mundane. After I became a Christian, every aspect of human interaction had a fascinating appeal, and the intricate complexity of the natural landscape was remarkable in its perfection: the colors in the sky melding with the horizon, those south Texas sunsets burning distant clouds like flares, like fireworks, like angel wings starting flight.
God was no longer a slot machine but something of a Spirit that had the power to move men’s souls. I seemed to have been provided answers to questions I had yet to ask, questions that God sensed or had even instilled in the lower reaches of my soul. The experience of becoming a Christian was delightful.
I don’t think, however, there are many people who can stay happy for long periods of time. Joy is a temporal thing. Its brief capacity, as reference, gives it its pleasure. And so some of the magic I was feeling began to fade. It is like a man who gets a new saw for Christmas, on the first morning feeling its weight and wondering at its power, hardly thinking of it as a tool from which he will produce years of labor.
Early on, I made the mistake of wanting spiritual feelings to endure and remain romantic. Like a new couple expecting to always feel in love, I operated my faith thinking God and I were going to walk around smelling flowers. When this didn’t happen, I became confused.
What was more frustrating than the loss of exhilaration was the return of my struggles with sin. I had become a Christian, so why did I still struggle with lust, greed, and envy? Why did I want to get drunk at parties or cheat on tests?
My best friends in high school were Dean Burkebile and Jason Holmes. Dean and Jason were both on the tennis team, and I was good enough as a practice partner, so we spent the majority of our hot Houston nights pounding the courts at the city park. We’d show up early in the afternoon and play till ten or eleven when the city shut down the lights, then we’d sit in the parking lot and drink beer, and Jason would smoke pot.
Dean’s dad was a recovering alcoholic who had been sober for something like seven years. He was a handsome man, short, but he talked with a tongue swagger the way John Wayne talked in True Grit. Mr. Burkebile had amazing stories of his drinking days. He told us that he was driving drunk one night and blacked out at the wheel, steering his car directly into a parked police cruiser. I always looked up to Dean’s dad, what with his drinking stories and tattoos and that sort of thing. He worked in a hospital now and drove a black Volvo. My family had a Buick. My mother never drove drunk. My father probably did, but I hadn’t seen him in years.
When Dean and Jason and I would sit around in the parking lot, I felt earthy and real, like a guy out of a movie. They both came from wealthy families whose lives didn’t revolve around church. I felt cool when I was with them, very sophisticated, as if I were going to play at Wimbledon the next week, sipping wine and signing autographs after the match.
Dean and I were serving as copresidents of the church youth group at the time. Dean never took any of it seriously. He took being president seriously but not the stuff about spirituality, not the stuff about metaphysical things taking place in your life. I’d try to get him to go to church camp, but he never wanted to. Camp was at the end of the summer, and it was too close to the school year, and if he went to camp, he’d feel convicted and it would take him a good two months to start drinking again, so he never went. One time, right after I got back from camp, Dean bought two cases of beer and had me stay over at his house. He said I had to get drunk to get over the initial guilt so I could have a good time at all the fall parties. I drank about a case all by myself. Dean and I walked over to the city park and shot baskets under the moon, staggering and swearing because we could never hit the rim.
I didn’t mind the drinking, mostly. Dean was about the best friend a guy could have. He really cared about people, I think, and so did Jason for that matter. They just liked to have a good time like anybody. With me, though, it was different. I really wanted to please God. I mean, I sort of wanted to please God. I felt like God had done something personal and real in my life. I also felt that I should probably try staying sober for a while, being copresident of the youth group and all.
One night while hanging out by the tennis courts, Jason pulled out a pretty-good-size bag of weed. Dean hardly smoked the stuff. He hated the taste and said it never got him high. I had never tried it, but that night Jason was pretty insistent on all of us giving it a go. I wasn’t big on the idea. I had already had about five beers and was feeling pretty drunk. I had heard you shouldn’t mix those things. Dean started packing Jason’s pipe, and Jason got pretty excited, so I told him I’d take a hit.
To be honest, it didn’t do anything for me. Anything good. Like I said, I was already pretty drunk, and the pot just put me over the edge. I got sick about five minutes into it. I felt like I was stuck in a suitcase at the bottom of a ship in the middle of a storm. Everything started sloshing around in my stomach. My hands and forehead began to sweat and my knees felt weak and yellow. I was poultry.
We walked back to Dean’s house, and I lay down in his dog-smelling backyard. I slipped into seasick dreams of alligators and TBN talk show hosts. Jason came out and lay next to me and went on and on about what truth was, and did I think there was anybody out there. Jason had come to believe that truth was something imparted to you when you were high. Later he would go off to college. Friends of mine told me that he became known for waking up miles from campus, in his underwear, never knowing how he got there. On this night he was telling me about truth, about how it is something you know but you don’t know you are knowing it. He was saying the key to the meaning of life is probably on other planets.
“Don. Don.” He tried to get my attention.
“What, man?” I lay there, seasick.
“They could live on that one, man.”
“Who, Jason?”
“Aliens, man.”
As soon as one of the guys sobered up enough to drive, they took me home. I crawled through my bedroom window, stretched out on the floor, and waited for the ship to run aground.
I wondered, in that moment, about the conviction I had felt so many years before, the conviction about my mother’s Christmas present. I figured all of this was God’s fault. I thought that if God would make it so I felt convicted all the time, I would never sin. I would never get drunk or smoke pot.
I didn’t feel worldly wise that night, rolling over on my stomach trying to hold down the vomit. I didn’t feel like a guy after a tennis match at Wimbledon. I don’t guess Mr. Burkebile was all that happy when he was drunk and wrecking police cars either. If he was happy he probably wouldn’t have sobered up, and he probably wouldn’t have to attend all those meetings. I think the things we want most in life, the things we think will set us free, are not the things we need. I wrote a children’s story about this idea, but it’s not really for children . . .
There once was a Rabbit
named Don Rabbit.
Don Rabbit went to
Stumptown Coffee every morning.
One Morning at Stumptown,
Don Rabbit saw Sexy Carrot.
And Don Rabbit decided
to chase Sexy Carrot.
But Sexy Carrot was very fast.
And Don Rabbit chased
Sexy Carrot all over Oregon.
And all over America,
all the way to New York City.
And Don Rabbit chased Sexy Carrot
all the way to the Moon.
And Don Rabbit was very, very tired.
But with one last burst of strength,
Don Rabbit lunged at Sexy Carrot.
And Don Rabbit caught Sexy Carrot.
And the moral of the story is
that if you work hard, stay focused,
and never give up, you will eventually
get what you want in life.
Unfortunately, shortly after this story was
told, Don Rabbit choked on the carrot and
died. So the second moral of the story is:
Sometimes the things we want most in
life are the things that will kill us.
And that’s the tricky thing about life, really, that the things we want most will kill us. Tony the Beat Poet read me this ancient scripture recently that talked about loving either darkness or loving light, and how hard it is to love light and how easy it is to love darkness. I think that is true. Ultimately, we do what we love to do. I like to think that I do things for the right reasons, but I don’t, I do things because I do or don’t love doing them. Because of sin, because I am self-addicted, living in the wreckage of the fall, my body, my heart, and my affections are prone to love things that kill me. Tony says Jesus gives us the ability to love the things we should love, the things of Heaven. Tony says that when people who follow Jesus love the right things, they help create God’s kingdom on earth, and that is something beautiful.
I found myself trying to love the right things without God’s help, and it was impossible. I tried to go one week without thinking a negative thought about another human being, and I couldn’t do it. Before I tried that experiment, I thought I was a nice person, but after trying it, I realized I thought bad things about people all day long, and that, like Tony says, my natural desire was to love darkness.
My answer to this dilemma was self-discipline. I figured I could just make myself do good things, think good thoughts about other people, but that was no easier than walking up to a complete stranger and falling in love with them. I could go through the motions for a while, but sooner or later my heart would testify to its true love: darkness. Then I would get up and try again. The cycle was dehumanizing.