Crime And Punishment

I thought about writing a column this week on why I wish Sarah Palin had won the presidential campaign. I know she wasn’t actually running for president but I guarantee you the huge majority of us real conservatives that punched beside John McCain were not voting for him but the Alaskan governor.

Now, (just like the 1970 movie) instead of Sister Sarah we got two democrats headed to the Whitehouse.

God bless our new President and may he be a good one. I really didn’t want to write on politics today.

Jesus Held Hostage
Then I thought about writing on the cheesy statue of Jesus stolen from a Michigan house.

In an apparent case of "doo unto others" a neighborhood spat over dog droppings resulted in a statue of Jesus Christ being stolen from a yard, and a ransom note left in their mailbox.

The Nobel prize-worthy writers of the ransom note stated ,

“We are holding Jesus ransom until you clean up the poopie from your wieners and trust us, we see you take your wieners for long walks w/out picking up their poopie in our yards. This has upset us dearly so please clean up all the wiener poopie, if you want to see Jesus unharmed.”

Only people from Michigan would talk like this. I can hear the writer’s nasally accent like those North Dakota people from the movie “Fargo” so let me translate into Texan.....

“We are all tired of your wieney dogs making our yards a biohazard and will be holding your yard art hostage until you clean up ours.”

– or something like that I think.

Yes I was going to tie into how I think religion holds Jesus hostage. The Yankee verbiage in that ransom note was just too embarrassing to include in my quality column.

He-brews
These are the confessions of a highly caffeinated Christian and I typically just spout off on what’s perking my front burner. But with so many things going on it’s been hard to lock in on one subject. So after careful review and study of my copious journaled notes, the big theme for the week in my life is Forgiveness. Ta-da! I finally landed on a subject and it only took me 409 words.

A-D-D is a beautiful thing.

Essential service of forgiveness
Unforgiveness is a destiny killer and a misery maker. We have to have forgiveness, not only for our sins and offenses but also in our own hearts for those around us. God is trying to disconnect us from our history while attaching us to our destiny. The Biblical term for this process is called reconciliation followed by restoration, both of which follow forgiveness.

See, for those of us that love the idea of justice, we have to deal with the paradox of forgiveness. God loves justice but justice doesn’t always have to be punishment. He wants justice to result in restoration. I think the relational side of justice is restoration and the un-relational side is punishment. One of the core values in my life is to prefer restoration over punishment. I got this from God.

So if I am going to love justice and would prefer restoration over punishment then I have to condition myself in the art of practicing forgiveness. That’s where the trouble starts. For a guy with a bumper sticker that reads, “Keep honking while I reload,” forgiveness has been a big challenge. However, my robust attempt to wrap my size 7-5/8 hatband around this subject has churned out a significant discovery or two.

For instance, forgiveness is not natural but is an intentional act of faith. It is not a feeling but a choice we make in surrendering to God’s goodness. Forgiveness does not excuse the wrong done to us but rather relinquishes the right for punishment and looks for reconciliation.

I have also noticed that when I judge people its always on their actions while I expect everybody to judge me according to my intentions or circumstances. I fear that anyone would define me by one mistake or even one season in my life while I so easily file human beings into a “bad” category by the same flimsy standard.

While I very much know the need for prisons and am glad for my families sake we have them, I hate prisons. I hate it when a person’s entire life, whether the victim or the perpetrator of the crime, is defined by one act or one season in one’s life. That’s what you see in prisons whether it is a State jail or an emotional trauma. There’s no hope in prison at all, just anger and shame. Enter forgiveness, and things start to change.

So there’s my cup of Jehovah Java for the week. One you probably shouldn’t sip carefully but rather drink deep and let it change your morning to a good one.

Contact the Brewer at www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com

Under the INFLUENCE

I saw a police officer pull over a guy in Joshua and had him walking the line for a sobriety test. He was obviously under the influence and it wasn’t the Holy Ghost. I felt sorry for him knowing how much trouble he was in, yet grateful for the police officer at the same time. That’s a paradox and I like that. There are lots of paradoxes in Christianity.

I do a lot of prison ministry, in fact my band Joshua Rising, is recording a live CD in the Eastham Unit next month. I love those guys behind bars. Yet, at the time I always leave those units saying, “Thank God for prisons.”

You love justice for your society yet you love the individual offender as a human being that needs help. To me, its not confusing, it just a little funny.

Since seeing that brother under the influence, I’ve been thinking about that word. According to Webster, influence is the power or capacity of causing an effect on someone.

Jesus said something about influence when he said; whoever is the greatest servant has the greatest authority. Because of this, I often say, “The way to the throne room is through the servant’s quarters”. You gain powerful influence in people lives by serving them in a way that is valuable. Value is everything when it comes to influence.

Feeding For Influence

Last Saturday our food outreach to the poor fed 139 local families (about 550 people) with over 12,000 pounds of good groceries. Like every week, there was a lot of hard work involved. The groceries are not free, yet we freely give them away. The event only lasts for a couple of hours yet there are hundreds of man-hours involved with every outreach.

I point blank tell people up front why we are such radical givers to them. Number one, because Jesus loves them and number two, because we want an opportunity to influence them towards something much better.

The church lost its influence in America when the church lost its value in our society. We have been moved to the margins because we are no longer about serving those around us. God help us to stop building our personal empires and be about building the Kingdom.

The Offer Of Influence

The Mafia’s way of gaining influence is through making you an offer you can’t refuse. Islam is marching through the world doing the same thing. Their way is through terror and Jihad. In both extreme and mainstream cases of Islamic ruled cultures, women are treated worse than animals and children abusively taught to hate and to fear.

We Christians point out how horrible that is, yet tend to use some of the same tactics and have the same mindset. No, we are not making women wear burkas and forbidding them to be educated, but many of us try to gain influence through being combative and overbearing. Our tactics of intrusion and invasion simply don’t work.

Kris Vallotton says that many times we believers become combative instead of “honorably confronting” and we should be demonstrating the benefits of a superior kingdom. When we combat instead of demonstrate, he says, “We reduce our influence to the small pond of the church and render ourselves powerless to the ocean of humanity.” Preach it Kris.

The Brewer takes influence as a very serious issue. If good people don’t have the influence in our culture, then I promise you someone or something else will.

Silence of the Lambs

In the mid eighties, I knew a part time preacher that made a living by working in a slaughterhouse in Cleburne. He loved the meat market and the trade of cutting meat. Out of the blue, Weldon called me one day and said, “Troy you’ve got to come down here and see something.” It was something that would impact my life.

When I pulled up behind the processing plant I saw a pen with about a hundred bleating sheep and they were totally freaked out. The door to the processing plant and to their death was wide open and all the sheep scurried to stay away from it. They huddled together on the opposite side of the pen careful to not go anywhere near that chute. Somehow they knew what it leads to.

My friend told me that unlike cows, when sheep get to the plant they have an awareness of impending doom. He said, “Isn’t that something, how they know better than to go inside?” then he confidently said. “Now watch this.”

A moment latter he released two goats into the same pen. They ran to the herd and mixed in with the sheep. After a few minutes they seemed to calm and Weldon rattled a bucket with feed. At once the goats jumped from the herd and into the chute of the slaughterhouse. To my surprise, one by one, all of those sheep that earlier wouldn’t have anything to do with going inside, followed the goats and with the last one in, Weldon closed the door. It was a big metal door and made a dramatic sound that sent a chill down my spine.

Weldon smiled. “You see that? Be careful of goats in your life, Troy.”

That’s a sermon on influence I would never forget.

You can reach The Brewer at www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com