I have a very dear friend named Wade Brickman and to be honest with you I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like Wade. To get a feeling for what Wade is like you have to know that this month for no shave November he shaved his whole head face and after doing so he looked like a 230 lb baby. What’s wonderful about that is that the image isn’t too far from accurate. Most people would describe Wade as child stuck in a football lineman’s body; he is the epitome of the gentle giant. My favorite thing about Wade is his Lego collection. When I was a kid I had Legos, a big purple tub full of them and I played with them a lot, not as much as I played with Barbies and Polly Pockets, but still I liked my Legos. At nineteen Wade still has an awesome collection of Legos that any child would be very jealous of. What is even better is that he still plays with them and loves it. I suppose at this point I should clarify that Wade does not have any developmental problems and is just as mature as any other nineteen year old, not that that’s saying much.
Last summer I was at a camp (the one with the holy-rollers and people speaking in tongues) and Wade was there as well. For worship one night, I was dancing and laughing and speaking in tongues, as I often do in such situations, and Wade was walking around with a little green ball. The joy on Wade’s face blew me away. He was grinning from ear to ear and he had the most genuine smile you’ve ever seen. He loved that ball and he would throw it around a little bit and hug it and then look up and keep singing the worship songs and then he’d giggle and do it all again. Can I just say little green balls are not that exciting, God, on the other hand, is. This is a spiritual connection that goes far beyond anything I will ever understand, but there is something very important I think anyone can draw from this. God wants us to be child-like.
I realize how ridiculous everything I just said sounds, but it was Wade’s courage and confidence in who he is that allowed him to forget what anyone thought about him and to just play with that ball and hang out with God at the same time.
Children are born Narcissicists, as my friend Tim the Kilted Southerner says, but this is a survival mechanism really. They cry when they’re hungry so they don’t starve, or when they’re hurt so their parents know to come and care for them. With this Narcissism, however, comes the knowledge that they are special. While we all hope that our children will stop putting themselves first and cease to be Narcissicists at some point, I would also hope that the children I may one day have would never forget that they are special. It is our knowledge that we are special that allows us to be confident in who we are. But can I just say it is so hard to feel that we are special when things we encounter everyday tell us we are not. TV, grades in school, things people say to us, even our own friends and family tell us directly or indirectly that we are not special. When that happens we begin to lose who we are. We shut down our natural reactions and revert to how normal people expect us to act out of fear that what we do or say might cause people to tell us yet again that we are stupid, immature, lame, un-cool, annoying… and ultimately not special.
I wish that children couldn’t learn put-downs until they were old enough to use them responsibly. We begin to lose our child-like selves and become who we are not when people attack what we are, because that HURTS. When our families tell us we are not good enough, when are friends say we are annoying, when our grades say we’ll never make it, it ruins us. What saddens me is that many Christians are better at this than most other people.
I go to Seattle Pacific University, which is a Christian college. Even though it has a reputation as being the “liberal Christian college” and some people seem to thing it is a joke of a Christian school, it isn’t a joke and it is Christian. I’m going to speak in very vague terms for this story so as not to embarrass anyone. There is a guy in one of my classes who has a particular habit that drives most people nuts. Often in class he acts on this habit and every time he does there is an audible groan from the whole rest of the class. Initially, I groaned with everyone else but at some point I realized that his habit was one that I have as well. While this sounds so cliché I thought about how I would feel in his shoes and the only answer is, terrible.
As all this was running through my head, I thought about a story from Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. Miller was attending Reed College, a super liberal, free thought, legal drugs etc. kind of place where nudists hardly received a second look, and there are probably three Christians in the whole place. In the story he talks about a man (whose name I can’t remember) who talked and looked just like Elmer Fudd and who didn’t know is left from his right. Miller was helping Elmer Fudd move into his dorm room and quickly found out that Elmer Fudd was essentially a genius. Miller also went on to say that through out that whole year he never heard a single person make fun of Elmer Fudd behind his back or to his face.
Isn’t that strange. In a Christian community where all should be welcome we mock this man whose habit doesn’t really inconvenience us or harm us or anything else, yet in what most would consider the most heathen of places, this man who is a little different is welcomed and a bad word is never spoken about him. This is terrible! God calls us to be child-like and confident in who we are, yet the “Christians” mock who you are and the “heathens” embrace you. No one wonder people hate church. This same thing is what turned me further from God in middle school.
In seventh grade I had a Mohawk and wore spiked bracelets, chains on my black pants, an AC/DC t-shirt and about five lbs worth of hardware on my body all the time. The principle of my private Lutheran school called me into his office when I showed up at school with the Mohawk and he informed me that my hair was a poor representation of the school and that I would have to cut it. I didn’t believe in God at this point so my thought was, “stupid Christians.” That same night I went to a new youth group where I didn’t know anybody. Right when I walked through the door I was welcomed with open arms and received lots of compliments on my hair. I have since abandoned the Mohawk and hardware but I have never stopped appreciating the people who loved on me that night.
Because of my experiences, many like the one I just described, I have developed a heart for people who hate church. I know your pain and I hate that that sort of behavior has been instilled in who we are. But I also know the love of Jesus. I know that he saved a prostitute from the pious mighty men of the church and I know that we are called to embrace everyone and that we have failed miserably at doing so. I am sorry for any of you who have been hurt by other Christians doing this very same thing and I wish I could turn back the clock and undo those things. But as it is, I am afraid all I can do is tell you that Jesus wouldn’t have wanted it to be that way, and that he does not judge you.
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