An old friend came by a few days ago, someone from my past, before I experienced the very real spiritual regeneration inherent in the true Christian experience. It seems like a dream when I look back on it, like something from another reality, something long ago. But it wasn't so long ago.
Kyle was my closest friend, and at the end, my only friend during the drug crazed days of 2008 to 2012, a time we affectionately referred to as the year of no-light. It was a time when I worshiped at the altar of the tri-plateau tripping levels of the drug dextromethorphan. If the human experience on Earth is disconnection from God, I walked in the opposite direction and explored the darkest night anyone could see.
I slipped into a deep dark forest, so dark I couldn't see a thing, and got lost. But no one came to look for me. And when I opened my eyes that forest had turned into a pseudo-spiritual yellow brick road. It was highly convincing, and deeply intriguing. One could explore such a forest their entire lives and never find all the trans-realities present, but absolutely none of them had anything to do with truth, or love, or peace. Only pleasure, my own pleasure, and my own delusional god-less exploration of sensory warping.
Kyle had been there. He saw how ugly it was. Our mantra was always "Something dark is coming" a composition by Bear McCreary that haunted us every time we listened to it. Maybe it was an addiction to being haunted, to feeling combinations of emotions, happy but sad, mellow but crazed, inspired yet perplexed, despairing and hopeful, magnificent and purple dark. Maybe it was worshiping the darkness in the red room.
I had reached down for the bottom, the end all be all of mental anguish and on that rock, called upon Jesus. How, why, I don't know, only that it wasn't me, it was Jesus, and I'm grateful to be step by step trudging on the Christian road, hopefully to walk one day through the thin door.
Kyle continued in that dark scene, he did not have the spiritual experience that I did. And I broke contact with him. I tried to help him, I tried to introduce him to Jesus at first. But I had just met him myself. Not to mention, Kyle didn't care. He just wanted to drink, and smoke pot. No sermon could've been convicting enough, and no apologia reasonable enough. So I broke all contact.
Fast forward to June 9th 2014, a few days ago. And there he was, my old comrade in arms. And he had a crazy story to tell. A story that broke my heart. Bone chilling.
He had fallen into the dark world of methamphetamine addiction. I was shocked. We had drank, smoked pot, and we had tripped endlessly on dextromethorphan. But we never did crack, heroin, meth or the other hard drugs. The "light" drugs had been bad enough.
He told this terrible story. His girlfriend left him and I broke contact right at the same moment.
In sadness he slipped off with a crazed meth addict named Anna to Minneapolis. Halfway there he discovered he was transporting the meth king pin, codename "Dreamer" across state lines. This "Dreamer" had introduced methamphetamine to the midwest in the 1990s. From there things descended, and he ended up, after his first hit, cripplingly addicted to methamphetamine, a drug made by combining ephedrine, draino, battery acid and other household items, to make the drug.
Poor Kyle. This was the nerdy kid I ran the UW newspaper with. This was the kid I used to walk with every night 2am to 5am talking about society, philosophy, and spirituality; during spring semester, carefully evading homework. This was someone I deeply cared about, as a close friend and adviser.
He told me he had met up with a transexual meth dealer, a man pretending to be a woman, and delivered drugs for him. They had sex and became close. He said one night he overdosed and called an ambulance, but when they came the police arrived as well, and caught him with drugs. The police recruited him into a special task force searching out methamphetamine dealers in the Wausau area. He became a citizen informant. He wore a camera, got yelled at by police, manipulated, conned. Eventually his information led to the arrest of 11 individuals and $10,000 of meth product confiscated by police.
Oddly enough, he also said that some police officers assisted the meth dealers by giving them the names of informants. The transexual guy found out about Kyle giving information to police. Kyle had been found out, and the meth community, the subculture in the area were aware of him. Kyle said for the past 6 months he's been smoking meth daily with the transexual drug dealer, making several thousand dollars a month as a driver.
Dark days. And the things he described.. The children neglected... the drug dealers luring in girls in their teens, getting them addicted to "up" and then using them as sex toys. The insanity of it all, the meth addicts shaking as they wait for the pipe. The fights over the drug. So very shocking.
So very dark.
When I first started exploring darkness, it was like something in a dozen shades of dark, dark blue, dark purple, all in a black, murky sky. Like a dark sunset. And it was beautiful. Even the pain was beautiful. Isn't that always how it is at the beginning of some quiet, nasty pleasure? Isn't that always how it seems, and what the road looks like at the beginning to entice us? Yes, indeed it is. It would be easy if these temptations felt terrible, but they don't feel terrible at first, they feel wonderful.
It isn't until you're in so deep that you can't see a thing, that those beautiful colors fudge together into a brown black darkness, turning bright red and cutting into the soul with sharp blades. That's where exploring darkness leads, the darkness indeed as they say, looks into you. And later, it dismantles you, while tickling your fancies.. and at the end it finishes you off, and kills you spiritually. And eventually it will cut you apart physically. And you just fade away.
Kurt Cobain said it's better to burn out then fade away. Maybe he was right. But I'd rather be reborn, than burn out or fade away. That's the lie of this society: Coke or pepsi, democrat or republican, mcdonalds or burger king, kill yourself or die slowly of drug addiction? I refuse those options. I choose the 3rd way, saving faith in Jesus Christ. The option they never told me about. I choose water, libertarian, organic food, and Jesus Christ.
They stole Kyle's dignity. And the meth has turned my old friend into a monster. Immorality, cussing, hours of manic "up-sex", as they call it, driving around drug dealers, working for the police, and abused and ridiculed by the police, some of whom work with the meth dealing community. It's insanity.
We were two middle class kids in the suburbs guzzling cough medicine, drinking, and getting into a lot of addicted trouble in the year of no-light. But he's stepped into the hard drug world. And I'm so afraid for my old friend. Because I can just tell, he isn't ready to quit. He knows he's addicted, but.. he likes smoking the meth. He likes what it does to him. He's just not willing.
And I don't respond with judgment to that. I understand how it is when you're addicted. You just aren't ready. It's so hard to summon the will. If you're thinking about judging.. imagine never eating sweets again, or quitting television or the internet, or facebook. Would it really be that easy? No. We are addicts as people, more than we might like to admit. And the truth is, the drug problem in this country is something massive, expansive, and growing.
On the eve of founders day, June 10th, today they officially legalized gay marriage in Wisconsin. And this Friday is a full moon, Friday the 13th. I spoke out against the gay marriage issue, and of course I was mocked and called ignorant and intolerant. No surprise there. Though it was surprising to have someone suggest that I must be subconsciously gay myself since I'm against it. There's a new one.
I reflect on where our society is moving. Who could really be surprised by the growth of drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, school shootings, abortion, and on and on and on? It's been invited in, perhaps even carefully orchestrated. It's everywhere.
And the class warfare, the attack on the middle class by corporate america pushes people down those roads in increasing numbers. Couple that with the demise of the Christian message in the United States, and people have absolutely nowhere to turn when trouble rises up all around them. This world has a million temptations and any one of them can run us ragged and put us on our knees before it's altar. Time and patience is a powerful weapon of temptation.
A lot of times in the Christian evangelical movement, I think we kind of exist in a bubble. We don't see these things, even though they go on in the community day and night. Terrible things. I work at a homeless shelter remember, I get to see these things. And I think my goodness, these are the people who need the Gospel message the most. And I think churches need to be willing to engage, and put themselves in danger, to help people Jesus spent the most time with: the worst kinds of sinners. We need to seek and save the lost. We aren't doing that. Not to the extent we should. As Christians we exist in our protected churches, kinda staying there, and then we sit back and complain about the culture going to hell. But what are we doing to stop it? We think everything is fine, maybe. But it's not. I know. I was there. Evil is alive and well, growing, and recruiting people. My friends. But still we can't go? Why can't we go? Today?
I would like to request prayers for Kyle. He is in a dark place, he sees the extent of the chaos, but feels powerless to muster the will to change anything. I will continue to encourage him, and tell him the things I learn about Jesus. But please, pray, Please Lord Jesus, have mercy on him, like you had mercy on me, and had mercy on all of us sinners, one by one, helping us to the gates of heaven, one day at a time; in the same way show mercy and grace to Kyle. Help him to call upon your name in his darkest hour. In your name we pray, Amen.
These are the greats, some of the most brilliant individuals the world has to offer. Christian apologists for the most part, and if you recall from previous posts, apologetics is the reasonable defense of the Christian faith.
If theology is the teaching of the content of the Bible, apologetics is the teaching of the reasonable evidence that exists in science, history, and philosophy for the God of the Bible.
The first video is Norman Geisler and he walks through some of the most powerful scientific evidences for the Christian faith. The second video is Frank Turek at the University of Wisconsin, and he deals primarily with logical fallacies of post-modernism and scientific evidence for God. The third is the highly noted apologist Dr. William Lane Craig, a man who holds two doctorates and he tends to give a fairly balanced understanding, usually leaning somewhat scientifically as well. Dr. Nabeel Qureshi is a Christian who had originally been a Muslim and he deals with Jesus in comparison to other religions as well as the philosophical arguments for the God of the Bible. The next video is Ravi Zacharias a personal favorite of mine who deals with the implications for a world without Christianity and also deals heavily with philosophical arguments for the God of the Bible, particularly the moral argument.
1. The New Atheism, featuring Norman Geisler
2. I don't have enough Faith to be an Atheist, featuring Frank Turek
3. The Evidence for God, featuring William Lane Craig
4. Christianity, featuring Nabeel Qureshi
5. Christianity in the Public Square for the Public Good, featuring Nabeel Qureshi and Ravi Zacharias
Related Posts:
- Philosophy, Science, Logic, and History: Presentations on the truth of Christianity from Multiple Disciplines
- Nine
Documentaries & Presentations on Atheism, Intelligent Design,
Cultural Marxism, Old Earth, Young Earth, and Evidence for God's
Existence
- Modern Christianity & Apologetics
- A Vital Spiritual Experience, an unparalleled Adventure
- Believing in the Miraculous: The Work of Jesus
- Using Youtube for Spiritual Health (Three Videos)
- Five Presentations by Ravi Zacharias
- 12 YouTube Sermons by Mark Driscoll on Jesus
- Five Passionate Powerful Youtube Sermons
- Good News in Untenable Circumstances
Does
working endlessly for idiot corporations during the week and sleeping
around on weekends at the bars complete you? Or has it left you feeling
empty and hopeless? Has life become a bore, a dread, an endless game
where nothing feels particularly right? Has sex left you feeling empty?
Has alcohol and drugs run a number on you, and left you even worse than
empty? That's because life doesn't make sense
until we try to live right, in the next dimension of living, which is a
spiritual connection to a higher power. The truth of that higher power
is found in the Bible. It's not about religion either, it's about a
relationship, prayer is just talking to God, and Bible is listening for
him. Step into that next level of life, leave behind the slime fest of
bars and sex, and seek a higher way. There is more to life than meets
the eye, I promise you.
Seek him out, he is there. You were not made for crude acting out and pleasure seeking, no, you are a child of God made for Holiness. Don't believe what they say, they want you in the muck, enslaved to passions, buying, consuming. It makes them money. But there is a better way.
His name is Jesus.
Seek him out.
Our fathers and grandfathers have presided over the demise and collapse of Christianity in the Western world. It has tumbled to the ground. Congregations of old gray busy bodies, biddies, and bitter old rebukers close their doors weekly as the congregations are folded off into caskets and die. The marvelous and majestic cross of Jesus Christ fades in the twilight of this, the moldy post-modernist after morning. Their deeds are vile; drunk on consumerism and flashy media culture of depravity, lawlessness, skepticism, and sexual frenzy.
The children of the church generation all around declare their superiority over the old faith, the old foolish ways of their parents.
They scream from the rooftops, "God endorses slavery!"
"All the wars in the name of religion!"
"The Bible is inferior because it doesn't endorse homosexuality!"
And blah blah blah, and on and on and on. All such objections easily refutable, but they don't care about the evidence or the arguments, try talking to one of these objectors and they'll bounce from complaint to objection, change their footing ten times, contradict themselves and then walk away laughing smoking a cigarette. Never the less apologetics is the way to show them plainly that their "objections" have no footing. They are lies.
This has happened from the very beginning of time. The first generation witnesses the blessings of God (such as in the history of Israel), and their children turn from God. Or as I heard it explained, the first generation accepts faith with proof, the second generation assumes faith without proof, and then the third generation raised on faith without logical proofs turns from that faith and declares their superiority over the old faith.
I can see it all around me. There are two different places in town, just here in Wausau where I feel quite uncomfortable while I'm there. Panera bread in Wausau, I used to host a Bible study there. And every thursday this young kid, probably 16, seeing our shirts and the Bibles would just glare across the counter. And every time since then I go to Panera and I get that same glare and sharp attitude when I order. It's the same thing at Allister Deacon's coffee shop. I recall one day I wrote on the cover of a Bible "free" and I left it out for someone to take if they wanted. Next time I went there one of the assistant managers who I would guess is a homosexual individual, he had pulled the Bible behind the counter and he rudely tossed it onto the table in front of me next time I was there, like, "no you need to keep this, we don't want this here."
Wausau, Wisconsin is quite a conservative bastion still even with all the changes in their country, population of about 80,000. But one by one the churches in the area are closing their doors, mostly Catholic and Lutheran congregations. And if you go to Madison, Wisconsin and try discussing Christianity in public wow, the hostility just vibrates off people. You can just feel it, sense it. There were a few moments when I thought I might be attacked verbally from across the room.
But that is the way of things. Social and cultural changes begin in the big cities, Madison, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and then slowly the smaller cities change as a result too, like say in Wisconsin cities like Green Bay, Eau Claire, Wausau, Stevens Point, and Sheyboygan. It just takes a bit longer.
Christianity was really caught with it's pants down, with bad leadership and arrogant rebuking fools with no desire or need for apologetics, science, philosophy, or even fun, and in no more than thirty or fourty years, the great experiment of Christendom crumbled across Europe and the United States. Strangely enough at the same time Christianity grows in China, Russia, and the Middle east as it falls in the West.
There are many contributing factors, but much of the blame falls on the church. The church has failed their own children and with their foolishness has sent their children off into a world of sin. Certainly the secularism doesn't help. The socialist atheists professorships at once Christian universities brainwashing untold hundreds of thousands of students into dead ideologies doesn't help either. The mainstream media's insane dive into total sexual depravity and sin celebration has certainly done untold damage to millions and millions of young impressionable minds. And the corrupt mega-corporations, uber corrupt banksters, and politicians caught daily with their head in the till certainly causes incredible outrage, anger, but worse yet, poverty, broken homes, and strained overworked spiritually bankrupt people. And then there is the genocide, of 56 million children by the unspeakable horror of child sacrifice our culture dresses up in the guise of abortion, or "choice."
It's ugly. It's bad. And it's getting worse, not better. Which is why I write this today. We need heroes. We need activists, working day and night for the truth. We need humble leaders. We need dedicated, genuine, hard working, brave, inspired, and pragmatic new leaders. We need heroes.
This is a call, a humble request, for new, young heroes of faith. Rise up my brothers and sisters. Rise up now. Now, today. You are so needed. Your fathers and grandfathers have presided over the collapse of the faith we rejected. But I'm calling on you to take up the rusty broken banners of the Christian faith and begin your triumphant campaigns across the west to lead the fallen, broken, lost, "tolerant" masses back to the truth!
You will be hated for it, you will be shunned for it, you will be mocked for it, but the truth is on your side. The scientific truth, the moral truth, the philosophical truth, the reasonable truth, when it's all boiled down all of these forces of truth belong to the Christian, even if they have been rejected and lost by the miserable, old church fathers of dying Christendom as they mold and mildew away in their wooden pews sitting down and standing up for the God they no longer love or even believe in.
The old self righteous fools, when they see you rising up young leaders, they will be rebuke you, mock you, and shun you as well. Believe it, they will force you right out the doors of those churches, and try to lock you out because they're afraid of your passion and drive for Jesus Christ. Not only will you face the uneducated atheist "tolerance" crazed post-modern sex junkies mocking you and shutting you out, but you'll face the last old, wicked, tired, self righteous remnants of fading Christendom attempting to shut you out, quiet you down, and stomp out your genuine faith and love for Christ. Believe it as well, I have faced both personally.
Nevertheless great warriors, great minds, young heroes, you are so needed, if you're out there now, please, rise up, and work hard, never give up and keep fighting even when all hate you and despise you and shun you for the beautiful cross of Jesus Christ! And refuel your fire, your passion for the Bible, for God, for the truth, love the truth, adore the grace, and take a stand for Jesus Christ the Lord of the Universe!
Operate in the wilderness, make bastions of your cities to stand against the night, the tidal wave of sin celebration approaching from the cities; set up outposts of hope and truth, devise plans and operate from secret rebel bases. Even better, retake the big cities, set the fires of truth across the nation; Operate like John the Baptist amongst the wilderness, as the religious pharisees in the brick buildings fold, operate like John the baptist in the wilderness boldly proclaiming the truth of the Gospel, raw, uncut, intense, genuine, full, wise, yell, shout, share, proclaim boldly and bravely!
You are so needed young hero, and all is against you, but God the Father is for you, and since he is for you, none can stand against you. Prayers are out for you young judges, that you would be raised up, equipped, and fired up to the core with genuine drive, passion, fire, and incredible faith for your Lord, your Savior, your Comforter whom says to you: Go forth and make disciples of all nations! Lead the revolution, lead the young and old back to the truth!
Amen.
