My life in the Brownsville Revival (Part VIII)

I’ve spent a good deal of time in this series pointing out the flaws in myself and my perceived flaws of Brownsville, and for me it has been a necessary part of my growing period, but there were a lot of good things about my time there as well. I’ve already talked about the community aspect, and though that was not always perfect either, it is the best sense of community I’ve had during any time of my life. The only thing that has come close was our group of friends we had while in Monterey, California for language training with the Navy.

The focus of the Brownsville Revival and the school was relationship. This focus started me on a journey that has never ceased. I have a different, perhaps deeper, definition now of relationship with God, but this is where it started. It’s as if my soul is a guitar and at some point an everlasting chord was struck. In music you have consonance and dissonance. Consonance is harmony – resonance. Dissonance is disharmony, like a child banging a piano during Beethoven’s ’Moonlight Sonata.’ When that chord was struck inside of me the idea of relationship resonated with me. It felt right.

If you’ve ever tuned a guitar you know what perfect resonance feels like. Not just sounds like, but FEELS like. When your tuner is playing a perfect low-E, and you get your guitar to that perfect low-E, it literally warbles. You can feel it on your finger if it is close enough to the string, you can feel it in your inner ear, and if it’s loud enough you can feel it in your chest. That’s what the spirit of the message of Brownsville did for me, and still does. All of the politics and back-biting aside, it still resonates with me.

Over the years I’ve learned to focus on that inner chord instead of my own mind. I love learning, and I know it’s important, but it means nothing if I’m not true to myself. Because of this, there are things that I know to be true for me for which others call me a heretic, and I’m fine with that. I have to feel for resonance.

The thing that hurts the most is that there is so much dissonance coming from the Church, and I’ve willfully perpetrated it in the past, but those few years in Pensacola were years of harmony. Even in times of struggle, I was always close to that chord, and it was never hard to find resonance. Perhaps a prayerful walk through the woods, curling up with a good book, or jamming with some friends.

I left Pensacola during a time of dissonance – not only in the school but in my own personal life, and I lived in that dissonance for years. I tried the same routines (going to church, reading the bible, etc.), but they weren’t working, because I had ceased to be true to myself. Part of it was guilt. Guilt is the greatest cause of dissonance in the human soul. Somewhere around 2005 or 2006 I was able to finally come to terms with my guilt, and that started me on the process of rediscovering that chord. The night I found it again, I wept, and it didn’t come through the traditional means.

Inside of me that chord never changes. Instead, I am constantly changing to create a better resonant quality. All I can say is thank you to Brownsville for striking that chord in me (or at very least revealing that the chord was in me).

 

The “Good Deed” Deception

“Where God is not present, there is no good deed either.” -Hans Joachim-Kraus

A friend from when I was in Bible school (a million years ago; I feel old) posted this on his Facebook profile today, and it hit me hard. Not the truth of it, because I do not believe it to be true, but the brazenness of it. The underlying theme here, and it’s been taught by the church for centuries, is that no one can do good unless they are a Christian, and should a non-Christian perform a good deed it was either done for selfish reasons, or because God used that person as an unwilling tool to further the cause of Christianity.

It is very common to see Christians turn to a “No True Scotsman” type of logical fallacy when dealing with unbelievers. Instead of taking others at face value, they redefine “true” goodness into terms that only consider acts of Christian deeds.

For example:
Bob: I don’t believe the Bible to be the word of God.
Tom: If the Bible is not God’s word then where would we get our morality from?
Bob: Morality is self-evident and summed up into how we treat others.
Tom: You can’t just make up your own morality. Then you can justify any type of behavior.

Or:
Bill: Did you know Bob is an atheist?
Tom: Yeah. I hate seeing him go to Haiti and working with the orphans there because I know he’s just doing it to make himself look good.

Not only is the logic flawed in this mindset, but I do not believe it is the mind of God. If we were created in the image of God, then we are created toward goodness. And though we may be flawed, that goodness is very much still in us. Furthermore, fruit is how we know a tree is good. Not church attendance, not theological leanings, but fruit.

Christians spend way too much time questioning the motives of others, and too little time questioning our own. A life that produces good fruit…fruit helpful to neighbors and humanity in general…is a good life. A life that produces bad fruit…hatred, inclusiveness, war, etc…is a bad life. It’s pretty much as simple as that.

It has become apparent to me over the years that there is a huge difference between spirituality and goodness. I’ve met tons of spiritual or religious people who were outwardly mean, nasty, vile individuals, and I’ve met a ton of atheist who were nice, respectful, and giving. Believing in God does not make you good (though it should make you want to be good), and disbelieving does not make you an immoral barbarian.

On that same note, it’s become clear to me that there is also a difference between personal morality and social morality. If an adult girl makes the decision to have sex with her boyfriend, that’s an issue of personal morality that only involves her, her boyfriend, and God. No one is directly hurt in the exchange, and it’s not my business. However, if my neighbor just lost his job and needs groceries, it’s an issue of social morality if I go out to buy a new TV instead of helping him. No one can make me help him, but if I call myself a Christian, I have a responsibility to do so or else I’m a hypocrite.

When Jesus talked about those he would cast away, it was for sins of social injustice. Lack of goodness. In Matthew 8 he even said that a Roman centurion had greater faith than all of Israel. Keep in mind, that centurion was not a believer in the Jewish god. He’d simply heard that there was a healer around, and he was desperate for anything to work. Did he become a believer afterwards? Quite probably, but he came as an unbeliever and in that unbelief he still had great faith.

So next time you hear that Sean Penn is spending eighteen hours a day actually helping hurricane victims rebuild their houses (instead of only sending money and sitting back relaxing in Beverly Hills), perhaps you could put your sneer away and consider that he really is just a good person who honestly wants to improve the world.

Just a thought.

He who WHAT!?! against the wall?

I’m sure most of you have seen this video. If you haven’t, do so. It’s only four minutes, and it’s totally worth it. I really hope he’s not teaching an exegesis course at his local college or anything, because I’m pretty sure he’s doing it wrong. That being said, I’m accused of doing it wrong a lot too, so I don’t begrudge him. I just rewatch the video every now and then for a nice laugh.

The Cult of Ignorance

The famous science fiction author, and all around cool dude, Isaac Asimov once said “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.‘”

The man is right, and it’s becoming especially prevalent in the church. The Church has gone through some very dark times (and perpetrated most of them), but there was a time when some of the greatest forward thinkers in the world were Christians (or believed in the God).

Descartes, Pascal, Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Boyle, Faraday, Einstein.

These men were philosophers, mathematicians, and scientist, and they understood a simple truth that the Church has rejected for…well…ever – We are thinking beings with an insatiable urge for understanding (which we claim God put in us, especially if we’re made in his image). Another thing that most Christians refuse to recognize, is if God made everything, then the building blocks of that creation ARE important.

I’m talking about a few things here, but it all comes back to willful ignorance. First of all, I’m talking about truth. Everyone has heard a supposed fact that supported their ideals and just ran with it without due diligence. It happens. We make mistakes. But there is a very unseemly habit in the Church of doing this…a lot.

For instance, a “fact” that I believed for years, that was taught to me in church, was that on his death bed Charles Darwin claimed to have made up his theory of evolution. I trusted the man who taught us this. He was a man of God. However, four seconds of research would show anyone that it is a completely unfounded claim. A women by the name of Lady Hope (not conspicuous at all, ehh?) told a church a short while following his death that she was there that day and told him this. That’s literally the only claim to this, and if the roles were reversed the Church would never accept it as truth.

Here’s another one: America was founded as a Christian nation by Christian men. Listen, I know you can show me a quote here and there from one of the fathers that indicates this, but I can then show you more quotes, some from the same people, that say otherwise. And guess what. It’s not that important. Who cares? We act as if it’s a part of the cosmic truth, and that our world will fall apart if it’s proven false. America was founded by men who wanted to escape tyranny. Not all of them were Christian, or religious at all. Most were Christian, but not even all of the founding fathers were believers.

Here’s a fresh one: Barak Obama is a Muslim. I honestly do not care what you feel about the President. You can hate him if you want (which wouldn’t be very Christian), but here are the facts. Barak Obama’s father was Muslim, and was only around for three years after President Obama was born. He spent most of his childhood and teenage years in Hawaii with his maternal grandparents, who were Catholic, and prior to ascending to the presidency, he spent twenty years at Trinity United Church in Chicago. There is no Muslim tie. No one can place him with any Muslim connections in his political or personal life. It’s a conspiracy theory based solely on racism and hate, and the Church has bought into with out a shred of viable research. Congratulations!

In this cult of ignorance I’m also talking about science. Listen, if you believe that God made the world, then you have to believe that the way we find it is the way he made it. It’s that simple. Trusting the Bible for the way you want to live your life is great. Awesome. Go for it. But the Bible is not a science text. Just because someone from the Bible thought the world was flat, or that creation only took six days a handful of millennia ago, doesn’t mean it’s true. If it was true, then science would prove it because it would be inside of creation itself. Do you really think that God would create something, and leave millions of traces of deception? Never. We have discovered particles that literally teleport in their wave patterns because of harmonic resonance, yet many Christians are still fighting over when the dinosaurs lived.

Intelligence is not ungodly. Learning and informing yourself is not setting yourself up for destruction. When Jesus said the truth would set you free, doesn’t that include all truth? If Jesus is truth, then he is in truth.

Willful ignorance is not the path of God. The path of God is accepting truth, and instead of limiting ourselves into thinking that our body of knowledge was sealed four thousand years ago, we need to accept that we are ever growing as a species, and as such there are going to be new things we learn that do not discredit God, they may just mess with some of our pet doctrines.

And please, for God’s sake (literally in this case if you consider yourself a Christian), stop the propaganda. Pay attention to facts. The media as a whole is biased and corrupt, but there is specifically a site for the daily lies that come from Fox News. Egregious lies. They have no journalistic integrity. Christians need to stop thinking that Fox News is the latest prophet of God. It sickens me to see how many people listen to their dribble without any due diligence on their own parts.

We should rejoice in truth, whatever the source. Christians who claim to love truth should be on the front lines of discovering the wonders of our world and standing against propaganda (from all sides). That is the path of God.

American Staples and Two Jesuses

As of 2009, 78% of Americans claim to be Christian (citation). That’s an astounding number given the level of division in our country. Of course, not all of those who make the claim take it seriously, but still, the major religion in America is Christianity.

What would Jesus say about that? I mean, 78% of people in the country claim to follow his teachings, so how would we fare? Let’s look at a few American staples, by which I mean actions or attitudes that are so ingrained in our culture that they are expected or not questioned when they occur. Some of these will apply to the Western world in general, but some are uniquely American.

• Capitalism – Capitalism is built on the pretense of amassing wealth. On a socio-economic level it has become so much a part of our culture that speaking out against it gets the attention of new McCarthyists. Would Jesus support Capitalism? I honestly do not think he would support any system. I think he’d stay out of politics in general. However, it seems to me that Jesus would willingly live as a socialist. Again, not in promotion of an economic system, but as a natural way of living.
• Stuff – This is an offshoot of our obsession with Capitalism, but Americans like stuff. For the record, I’m chief amongst sinners here. I like my big TV, I like my video games, I like my gadgets. But it has to stop. If I claim to want to live like Jesus, I have to declutter. I have to lose my obsession with stuff. I have boxes that haven’t even been unpacked from our move almost two years ago. If I haven’t used it in two years, I don’t need it. Americans feel its their right to have stuff, which it is, but just because it’s a right doesn’t mean it is right. Jesus knew the hold that stuff has on us. It consumes us, which makes consumerism a nice double entendre. For years the church preached on how it was okay to have things, but not let them rule us, but that never really panned out, and now it seems that the church has given up because prosperity teaching is at an all-time high (Coleman). I don’t think Jesus ever wanted us to live in denial for reasons of self-flagellation, but I also can’t see him being to happy with us having things beyond or needs when others have needs. Man, I’m convicting myself here.
• Individuality – Now listen, I’m not advocating for some weird hive mind type of society where we are all just cogs in a gear. I enjoy diversity and the uniqueness of others, but in America we’ve become so reliant on our own individuality that we fail to recognize ourselves as community, nation, and Church. Not in all cases. We’re great at recognizing Church when we’re in church, but we really suck at it during the week. Obsession with individuality puts us at odds with the greater picture of humanity. The basic idea is that your personality is fine, until it conflicts with mine, then you’re wrong and I’m right, and that’s not the mind of Jesus.
• Patriotism – Our individuality hasn’t caused us to forget everything. Patriotism is HUGE right now. It has been since the towers fell. It’s also quite militant and closed-minded in most cases. Did Jesus call us to be Americans or did he call us to all of humanity? I ask, because honestly I cannot see Jesus walking the US/Mexico border with an assault rifle trying to protect “our God-given country.” Nor can I see him calling for war in Iran, or saying that we need to kill all Muslims (read the comments on any online news story about Al-Qaeda for a great view into that world). I personally do not think that Jesus would be political at all, but it’s almost impossible not to be in today’s society, in which case I think the proper reaction is “how does this make the world a better place?”
• Church Spending – The average salary for a church pastor in America is…wait for it…$85,000 (citation). Now, obviously a lot of that has to do with the size of the church and such, but averages exist for a reason, because though there are paid pastors out there making $30,000 per year, there are also those making over $100,000. That boggles my mind. I understand what pastoring is about. I used to be one. It’s a lot more than preaching on Sunday. But what happened to the idea of living simply? And the costs to build beautiful churches and run them is astronomical, well into multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for some. I have personally witnessed mega-churches being built across the street from homes where the kids wore hand-me-down clothes and ate Cheetos for dinner. I cannot see Jesus looking at a blueprint, then across the street to those homes, and deciding that six million dollars would be best spent building the church.
• Poverty – The imminent American view on poverty is that it’s usually the fault of those in poverty and it’s not my problem. Fine. It may be their fault. It may not be your problem. But Jesus didn’t say to take care of the poor, orphaned, and widowed as long as they were blameless in their predicament. He just said to do it. And he lived it.
• Manifest Destiny – I had a professor tell me last year that manifest destiny was absolutely correct, and in God’s eyes Americans are better than the rest of the world.
  WHAT?!?!
  Most Americans aren’t as strongly observant of such beliefs, but much of the church at least loosely holds onto this idea.  In the church’s eyes, God upholds justice for us, but maybe not so much for the rest of the world. We see our victories as God’s protection and intervention, but we either deny our defeats, or blame them on the devil. Worst of all, we fail to take responsibility for our own actions. Let me give you some context. America trained the Taliban. We trained them to fight Russia. We armed them for that fight. We also made a habit of bombing civilians in Afghanistan for about two decades (first while fighting the Russians, and then while trying to fight the Taliban to disarm them). Then September 11th occurred. Am I saying that the attacks were justified or right? God no. Neither were our bombing runs in Afghanistan. We spent decades treating Afghanistan like our own chained up mongrel, and then we acted surprised when it bit back. We incited them. Both sides acted reprehensibly, and yet we can only seem to blame one side.

I see two Jesuses in America today. One is a powerful warrior who takes a stand for what he believes is right and shouts down his enemies. He’s not above slander for the cause, he supports torture for our safety, and wants to rule the nation – perhaps the world.

The other Jesus is meek. He’s a servant. He wants to help people on a personal level. He could care less if he has to pay taxes or not. He is willing to let people live their lives and make their own mistakes. Instead of telling others how wrong they are, he simply shows them how right he is. That’s my Jesus. You may not like him. You may think I invented him. But I don’t like your Jesus, and I think you invented him.

 

Profiles for Child Sexual Abuse Awareness April 2012

Reblogged from Love, Life, and Relationships: Overcoming Emotional and Child Sexual Abuse:

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Greetings,

My name is Ressurrection Graves. You may have read my blog for a while in passing or have taken the plunge to join my blog family. You can join us right now by adding your email address on the right hand side --------------------------> we don't bite! If you are a Wordpress user, please reblog this! Allow other Wordpress users who are healing from…

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So many people suffer from sexual abuse as children. It's heartbreaking.

7 reasons I left church (and 1 reason I’m thinking of going back)

This is the most diverse church in the world.

I got this idea when I saw Rachel Held Evans’ post 15 Reasons I Left Church. I stopped making an effort to attend church at least somewhat regularly in 2008, but I really left church somewhere around 2005 or 2006. I was tired. In a big church you can get swallowed up and escape from most forms of drama, but you miss out on true fellowship and community, which I craved. So we attended small churches, but that level of community often comes with its own baggage. Not just the family-type drama, but expectations and prying. And to be honest with you, for the first part of my Christian life, I was the one pressing expectations on others and prying into their lives. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.

Except for a few special occasions, I haven’t walked into a church in four years.

Why I left church

• Pride – I want to jump on this one first, because no matter what other valid reasons I may have, this is the root of it. I was prideful, both actively and passively. I’m a smart guy, and there’s nothing worse than a smart guy who knows he’s smart. I’ve been a pain in the ass for  a lot of my life because of this. And church was a great place to flaunt my intelligence. “Oh Carlton, you know Hebrew? Please teach us…” There was a time where I could quote huge chunks of scripture, and I knew at least the basic points of almost every theological issue out there. Then there was the passive pride that made me feel as if I was better than others, or fear that they thought they were better than me.
• I wasn’t with the program – Churches have methods, and structure, and programs. I don’t like that sort of stuff. It’s always felt artificial to me to fellowship on a schedule. I was finally just done with it, so I left.
• Pretext – People aren’t themselves in church, and it annoys me. Smiles are bigger, hair is shinier, and vocal pitch is higher. People who laughed at my fart jokes on Saturday wouldn’t laugh at them on Sunday. I’ve been to churches where most of the adults were drinkers (not alcoholics, just social drinkers…nothing wrong with that), but no one would talk about it on Sunday.
• Questions – In a religion that claims to have the truth, Christianity seems to cringe at questions. The typical response to really tough questions is “God’s ways are not our own,” and that’s not an appropriate response to me. I have full faith that God’s intention for us is to progress and learn about ourselves and our sphere of existence. We were made for intelligence.
  Once a person starts having honest questions about their faith, those questions don’t stop, and eventually people start accusing you of trolling (purposefully being annoying) instead of being earnest.
  “How could a loving God command his people to kill women and children?”
  “They were idol worshipers.”
  “So that makes them any less deserving of God’s mercy?”
  “That’s why Jesus came, so that we didn’t have to die for our sins.”
  “Wow.”
  Or
  “How is it right that God condoned rape in certain situations or that the woman be stoned as well in others?”
  “What? Where?!?” (Because they always ask where).
  “Deuteronomy 22:23-29 and Numbers 31:15-18″
  “Well, God’s ways aren’t our ways.” (The daring would say things like “well, it gave the women a better life because the man had to marry her.”)
  “Wow.”
  Honestly thinking about questions like these (and there are a lot) requires you to question everything you believe, and most Christians are afraid that they will fall away from the faith if they begin to question. Others believe that the questions are irrelevant and are happy in blissful ignorance. But they were important questions for me because I did not doubt my belief in God but I did start to ask myself is God was really the personality presented to me all of my life.
• Politics – I’m not a Republican. I don’t agree with most Republican values. And I definitely do not believe that Republican values represent the teachings of Jesus. I’m not a Democrat either, but I am socially liberal. I can handle all of that. I get along with both Republicans and Democrats. What I can’t handle is when Christians, typically Republican, turn militantly political. Patriotism and Jesus are not equal.
  After the towers fell a chain email started circulating around the Christian community. It went like this: “Praise God for his goodness. The destruction of the Muslim nations is prophesied in THEIR OWN KORAN. Koran 9:11 says ‘and the mighty eagle will swoop down on the people of the crescent moon and utterly destroy them.” That’s not the exact verbiage, but it’s a very close paraphrase. And it’s an utter fabrication. Surah 9:11 talks about redemption. “But (even so), if they repent, establish regular prayers, and practise regular charity,- they are your brethren in Faith: (thus) do We explain the Signs in detail, for those who understand.” How in the world can someone maintain their Christian integrity by acting in such a manner (and this is just of hundreds of such fabrications)?
  And the birther controversy, and the outright hatred for President Obama (whom you are told God placed there and that you should pray for him. You honestly cannot pray for someone with honesty when you hate them).
• Changes in beliefs – Once I was willing to take an honest look at what I believed, and why I believed it, things started changing in me. I realized that as I was trying to make God the focus of everything, he was making us the focus of everything. It’s all about humanity. Jesus was about humanity. Sin is about humanity. Could my sin really harm God, the Infinite Divine? No, but it could hurt me, and I’m the apple of his eye (and so are you). And when I realized that my sin was about me; that my sin was warned against not because of some cosmic, intrinsic wrongness but because it was harmful to me (and often others) and God did not want me to be harmed, everything changed.
  All of the sudden homosexuality was a non-issue, whereas poverty broke me. I stopped caring about the definition of marriage, and started seeing social injustice for what it was. And I realized it was what Jesus taught, and how he lived, and I liked that.
  The Bible became a narrative, not a rule book.
  The life of Jesus became paramount, and theology meant little.
• Flakiness – I went through a flakey period, but I eventually learned to despise it. I could no longer handle blowing shofars, acronyms, theology wrapped up on a bumper sticker (or tee shirt), anointing prayer clothes, televangelists, and other such malarkey. The charismatic church has its own little “spell book” of rituals, myths, and incantations, and they have nothing to do with becoming a better human being.

Those are the main reasons I left church. It just wasn’t who I was anymore. I caught a lot of flak for it, but I survived, and I didn’t burn any bridges (as far as I’m aware. If I did offend anyone, come to me with that offense and I’ll make it right).

Why I’m thinking of returning:

• Fellowship - I miss community. A lot. Not the churchy stuff, but the other stuff. The shared meals. The impromptu jam sessions. The serious group discussions about issues that matter, and even issues that don’t matter.

That’s it. That’s the only reason I’m thinking of going back. I can do without the sermons and conferences. I do enjoy Bible studies, as long as my views are welcome to the discussion (no one likes to feel ostracized). But it’s community that I miss the most.

I don’t know if I’ll go back. There are alternatives that will allow me the sense of community I desire, but we’ll see.

My life in the Brownsville Revival FOLLOW-UP

I’m posting a follow-up to my post yesterday in order to clarify a few things. First of all, when I started the post, I had no idea that I would focus as much as I did on Dr. Brown. My initial intention was to simply talk about my thoughts on the leadership at the time.

Once I was done writing it, I knew that it was going to be polarizing, but I need to clarify that I do not begrudge any of the leadership or my own time and experiences there. I learned who I wanted to be from my time at BRSM, and I also learned who I do not want to be.

Also, I am not writing this series in an attempt to move on from my past. I have moved on. I’m writing it because it interests me to see who I was then compared to now. I write these posts for me. In fact, with a normal post I may get fifteen views. The only reason a few of these have blown up is because my friend, Steve Bremner, has shared them, and his readership dwarfs mine. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not upset over more readers and conversations, but these posts are largely my own personal character sketches.

Some people have wondered how my views different so much that I felt I needed to move on from past influences, and honestly that’s a hard question for me to answer because I am still searching. Here’s what I can tell you.

I do not believe that we have been called “fight” anything. This “us vs. them” mentality is bad for the Church, and it’s bad for humanity. It does nothing to promote peace and the love that Jesus spoke of. And honestly, I do not care how much you want to justify things like “tough love” and “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Those things were not represented by Jesus. Sin is a personal issue, not one that we should be spouting over the air waves. We were not called to legislate morality. We were called to live lives of peace, loving our neighbor more than we love ourselves, and promoting meekness and humility. I have nothing to stand against, just something to stand for.

Also, and this one will be a bigger kicker than that last one, I no longer view the Bible as the direct Word of God. Is there wisdom in it? Yes. Is their godly wisdom in it? Heck yes. But if it is all truth in all ways, then I cannot worship a God who has, in times past, commanded his people to kill women and children in entire cities, justified rape (as long as the man married the woman or paid her dowry), and promoted genocide. I’m sorry. If you can skip over all of that, then more power to you, but I cannot. I love reading the Bible. I love seeing how people interpret their experiences with God. I just no longer believe that it’s all true, just because someone wrote it and someone else quoted it.

So, there you have it. The most important thing that I learned from my time at BRSM is that if I am going to call myself an ambassador of Jesus, then what I do matters. I use the name of Jesus to promote humility, honesty, love, and a better world, and others (even when we disagree theologically) dot he same. Still others us the name of Jesus to promote wealth (really greed in most cases), hatred (called love when it’s being yelled across a rally by red-faced people with looks of disgust on their faces), and inclusiveness. I’ve chosen my path, and I think it’s the better way.

 

My life in the Brownsville Revival (Part VII)

UPDATE: Over the past month since I posted this entry a lot has happened. The most important thing to occur is that I was simply convicted regarding my tone in this article. I talk a lot about how, as mature adults, we should be able to be disagree without malice, and though I was not consciously aware of my tone as I wrote this entry, rereading it throughout the month has shown me that I was harsh. It’s one thing to question the actions of a person as they affect others, but it’s entirely another thing to question their motives. The second thing to occur is the I have renewed conversation with Dr. Brown, and through a few simple exchanges, I was able to see how hurt he was by my post. Not how defensive he was regarding the actual topics at hand, but how he was genuinely hurt by my words and my tone.

Neither Dr. Brown or I am perfect. We are both humans who are still growing and learning. I still maintain that we disagree on a number of things, but that in no way makes me right. To any future readers, I would like to say that in my experience, and I cannot speak for others here, Dr. Brown has always been forthcoming and honest, and has a genuine desire to serve God, so if you’re looking for any sort of ammunition against him, it will not be found here. In fact, if you continue reading my blog, you’ll find that I am moving away from what I see wrong with the Church, to being more positive about my beliefs and my journey.

And to Dr. Brown, I’d like to say again that I am sorry for the hurt I caused. There is no excuse for my tone in this article, and I had no right to make the assumptions that I did. Please forgive me for that. Hopefully we can move on to have wonderful discussions about our differences, and settle on the common ground we do share, which begins with both of us having an earnest desire for truth and loving God.

Carlton Brumbelow – 4/21/2012

Leadership in the Brownsville Revival was a sacred thing. Not because spiritual authority was heavily taught (though it was), but because most of the members of the church and BRSM students nearly worshiped the leadership team. In our minds, they were the catalysts of the revival, no matter how often we were told that it was all God’s doing.

At the end of every service, people would rush to the altar in throngs and line up waiting to be blessed by their favorite leader. If you felt God was calling you to more scholarly pursuits, you spent most nights chasing Dr. Michael L. Brown around. Music? That was Lindell Cooley’s pervue. Church pastor? John Kilpatrick? Evangelists and missionaries? Steve Hill.

Over the years the charismatic church has created its own “book of spells,” if you would. I do not question the end result – that God moves and acts (though I do not think he does so in the manner we so often attribute to him) – but large facets of the church have become reliant on methodoly, words, and soft incantations to achieve these results. This is what happened at the revival as well, otherwise worship leaders wouldn’t need to seek out Lindell Cooley for an anointing so that there “fingers played the music God wants them to play.” In fact, an old adage of the revival was “when the pattern is right, the fire will fall.”

Over the years I have stopped following the events of most of the Brownsville leadership. I know Steve Hill moved to Dallas and has a church there. Lindell Cooley moved to Nashville and started a “grace-based” church there, which is a stark contrast to the holiness focus of the revival. I’m not sure what John Kilpatrick is up to.

The only one of the main four leaders of the revival who would know me from Adam is Dr. Brown. For many years I considered him my spiritual mentor, and though I now personally believe that he has gotten off base, I still cherish the things I took away from his teaching.

And this is where things get hairy with my readership. Please remember, I am sharing my own personal opinions based on my own personal experiences. You may have had very different experiences, and most of you likely have very different opinions.

There were two reasons why I gravitated toward Dr. Brown. First of all, his background was Judaism, complete with a PhD. in Near Eastern Languages. When I first became a believer I was obsessed with eschatology (the study of the end times), and most interpretations have a lot to do with Israel, so I became obsessed with Israel by proxy. Secondly, he had written about revival for many years before Brownsville started, so he was the resident expert on the subject. I was a smart kid (though I thought myself to be much smarter than I was) who wanted to be like Mike (I’ve literally been waiting years to be able to say that in context. Check that one off my list.).

When I left Pensacola I kept in touch with Dr. Brown via email for a few years, but things started to change. I personally started to change. My views were evolving into a gospel based more on how we treated our fellow human beings rather than an overly spiritualized obsession with becoming perfect, and Dr. Brown was changing too.

I don’t remember when I noticed it. I think it was when I got a newsletter mentioning a trip to Washington D.C. for a protest. I was fine with the protest itself, but it was very unlike the Dr. Brown I knew to be involved politically. In my experience he had always strayed from politics in favor of pursuing the personal, individual changes a person could go through.

And then things got gay. No, seriously. At some point in the early aughts Dr. Brown, and FIRE School (BRSM split in 2000, which I will talk about in a later post), started protesting at gay/lesbian rallies, and Dr. Brown started producing materials about the gay agenda.

Here’s the deal, no matter what my views on homosexuality are, the shift of focus from revival to politics shocked me. It shouldn’t have. Right before I left Pensacola Dr. Brown’s Revolution: The Call to Holy War was released. When I read it, I read it with the mindset of a revivalist, so everything was figurative. A passage that would call for us to stand up against encroaching evil meant more prayer and witnessing to me, but it never meant legislation.

I don’t have contact with Dr. Brown anymore. I don’t support his methods. I still love him as one of the greatest influences in my life, but I personally believe his focus has shifted. I know mine has, so I can’t blame someone for shifting focus, but my shift has gone in a different direction than his. Is either one of us more right than the other? Well, that’s a question that will get a different answer from everyone.

Here’s what I can tell you though. For years I lived in the shadow of the revival. It haunted me, and even though the changes I was going through felt right, I still couldn’t escape the revival (for the record, I did not just easily step into these changes. They came through many years of prayer, contemplation, and running back to the familiar comfort zones of the revival). Then one day I made the decision to cut contact. Not out of anger, resentment, or meanness. I just had to move on,  so I unsubscribed to everything coming from Dr. Brown’s ministries (with the exception of one newsletter, which only gives a brief synopsis of current events and happenings in the ministry).

It was cathartic. Since doing so, my spiritual life has flourished. I still have things to figure out, and changes to make, but things are just different now.

And to the Dr. Brown superfans out there, please know that I am not bashing Dr. Brown. I’m simply sharing my experiences. I expect this is where my readership drops, and I’m okay with that. I told you all in the beginning that this series wouldn’t be all roses and no thorns.

Next time I want to talk about my experiences with BRSM leadership. I have a lot of really great memories from some of them, and a few not-s0-great ones.

NOTE: Dr. Brown, I know there’s a good chance you’ll read this. You do a good job of keeping up on where your name pops up. If you do read this, please know that I truly do love you. I don’t agree with you like I once did on many subjects, but I still cherish you.

My life in the Brownsville Revival (Part VI)

It was about community, and change. We were going to be history makers. We were going to start a revolution of peace that would spread around the world.

But we didn’t. We joined churches, and put on suits, and started doing things like believing in bottles of oil anointed by Dick Reuben. We sold out.

Bible college students are always hippies at heart. You always have the few there who are already “churchified” and want to stay that way, but most are free spirits. They want to travel the world and give to people.

I sold out. I turned inward and selfish. This was the moment, and it had to have been around 2002 or 2003, when I realized the truth of Jeff’s words back in 1997.

“You know what you are?” He asked, and he did this thing that he used to do when he got excited. He sort of leaned up in a side stance onto his tiptoes and pointed a finger at me. “You’re a pseudo-intellect.”

And though I was now conscious of the truth, I continued to act like that for years.

If I heard someone across the room having a conversation about religion, I jumped right over there and joined in…”wowing” them with my vast well of knowledge. And I did wow them. People were impressed. And I was smug…and a pseudo-intellectual ass.

There was a period of time when I started to become free spirited. I was always so afraid of what people would think about me. I wanted to be scholarly. I wanted to be taken seriously. So I could never really let loose. But there was a time when I started to. It was a deeply rich time of experience and beauty. After over a decade I am finally experiencing such a time again, although from a bit of a different theological perspective as last time.