Dispatches from Bitter America: A Gun Toting, Chicken Eating Son of a Baptist's Culture War Stories

by Starnes, Todd

  The other day I was pondering the Christian's responsibility in our computer-driven society when I received an e-mail from Cousin Billy. He could hardly contain his excitement.

  "I just got a Facebook friend request from God," he wrote. "Can you believe it?"

  I was a bit suspicious until I checked out God's Facebook page. It certainly seemed legitimate. He had several billion friends, listing Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith as His favorite musicians. Among His favorite books were the Bible and "anything written by Billy Graham." Under hobbies He wrote, "Creating things." As for His religious preference, He wrote, "Me."

  A few minutes later Billy sent a Facebook friend request on my behalf to God, along with the Holy Spirit and Jesus. Sure enough God and the Holy Spirit became my friends, but there was an issue with Jesus. He declined my Facebook friend request. I was stunned. Why wouldn't Jesus accept my request?

  "Maybe you should just poke Him," Billy suggested.

  "Poke" Him. This is apparently a Facebook strategy for getting someone's attention. I decided that was not a good idea. There are a few unspoken rules in this world. Don't tug on Superman's cape and never try to poke Jesus.

  I was really depressed. God was my Facebook friend, I was getting poked by the Holy Spirit, but Jesus was still ignoring my calls. I mean, He sits at the right hand of the Father. You'd think they would suggest friends to each other.

  But a few days later I received an e-mail from Twitter that lifted my spirits. While the Lord ignored my Facebook friend request, He did want to become a follower of mine on Twitter.

  I was so overjoyed, I wrote a song:

  What a tweep we have in Jesus

  All our sins and griefs to share

  A hundred forty words should do it

  If there's more I'd turn to prayer.

  The other day Cousin Billy was visiting on a college break, and the conversation turned to Twitter. I proudly showed him Jesus was one of my followers.

  "Uh, Todd, you might want to look at this," Billy said as he looked at my Twitter list. "I don't think Jesus is actually following you on Facebook."

  I told Billy he was mistaken. I was following Jesus, and He was following me.

  "No, really," he said. "You should check this out for yourself."

  I glanced down the list of followers, and sure enough there was the name of Jesus.

  "But check out the last name," Billy said.

  I scrolled over to the profile page, and immediately I was crestfallen.

  It was true. Jesus was indeed following me, but I'm afraid something got lost in translation. His last name wasn't Christ. It was Lopez.

  And if that wasn't bad enough, I picked up a virus on my hard drive from one of those social networking sites.

  Aunt Lynn is probably going to put me back on the church prayer list.

  32

  Gird Your Loins, the Preacher's Talking about Sex

  In their quest to become culturally relevant, preachers across the nation are encouraging their congregations to have relations—a lot. I think they even wrote a country music song about the phenomenon: "Christian Boys and Girls Getting Down in the Pew."

  Take, for example, the congregation at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas. Their pastor, Ed Young Jr., challenged his married church members to engage in sexual relations for seven consecutive days. The church has some twenty thousand members—many of whom decided to take up his challenge and do the Lord's work.

  "God says sex should be between a married man and a woman," Young told the Associated Press. "I think it's one of the greatest things you can do for your kids because as goes the marriage, so goes the family."1

  I'm not too sure how around-the-clock "fellowship" fits into his argument, but not many folks seem to be complaining. For good measure the pastor delivered his "Thou Shalt Have Sex" sermon from a bed.

  Seven straight days of sex? Whew. You know, even the good Lord took one day off.

  And then there's the story of Relevant Church in Ybor City, Florida. Paul Wirth told his congregation he was worried about the number of married couples filing for divorce. He figured the best way to reverse the trend was for them to spend more time in bed. So Pastor Wirth ordered his married congregants to have sex for thirty days in a row.

  The pastor didn't explain exactly how all that tussling in the sheets would save marriages.

  He did talk about how kids, jobs, and lots of other stuff can come between a husband and wife. He talked about how they need to spend more time together. I suspect after thirty days of doing what comes naturally, it's conceivable couples could be too tired to do anything else, much less call a divorce attorney.

  Anyway, the church Web site said people aren't having enough sex, and it could lead to marital problems—hence the Thirty-Day Sex Challenge. They even launched a blog to help churchgoers overcome their concerns and write about their journey. So church members were pretty pumped up, although some wondered if they would be able to muster the strength needed to fulfill their spousal obligations. It's too bad the makers of Red Bull didn't sign up as a corporate sponsor.

  The single members of Relevant Church had an assignment too. They were encouraged to refrain from sex for thirty days. I ran the numbers and determined this would result in an equal amount of both frustrated and exhausted congregants.

  I remember being in a service once where the pastor was extolling the virtues of marriage. "Brothers and sisters, I stand here today and tell you that sex is amazing! It's fantastic! It's the most incredible creation on God's green Earth!"

  The obligatory "amens" and "praise the Lords" popped up around the sanctuary, and at one point the young marrieds section of the church gave him a standing ovation.

  "But," the pastor chastised the crowd, "sex is only good within the boundaries set up by the Lord."

  That's all well and good, but I wonder if the pastor really made his point, especially to the throngs of teenage boys in attendance. Judging from their reaction to his sex declaration, their brains shut off just after he said "sex is amazing."

  If I may take a moment of personal privilege, I'd like to send a message to preachers who seem determined to preach about the greatness of intercourse. On behalf of all the Christian singles in your congregation, we get it. We understand sex is great, but we don't need to be reminded of it every Sunday. It's like the leader of Weight Watchers showing up to class with a Double Whopper. We get it.

  I need to be honest, folks. I'm not all that comfortable with preachers delivering such frank talks on sex. I'm a Southern Baptist; we don't even hold hands during "Kum Ba Yah." We're more likely to speak in tongues than kiss in tongues. I was a freshman in college before I realized babies were not the product of spontaneous combustion.

  All this talk about sex reminds me of an incident that occurred in the summer of 1982. I was in junior high school, and a group of us were attending our church youth camp somewhere in the wilds of Louisiana.

  It was late at night, and as most junior high boys are prone to do, we were looking for trouble. But as luck would have it, trouble found us—inside a run-down, clapboard cabin at a Baptist campground. One of the guys pulled out a book wrapped in brown paper. We were half intrigued, half scared to death.

  "You won't believe what I found," he said. Judging from the brown paper wrapper, I knew it couldn't have been spiritually edifying.

  "It's another book of the Bible."

  We all lurched away from it—afraid we might get hit by a bolt of lightning. Since childhood, I had known there were sixty-six books in the Bible, but for some reason, we only studied sixty-five. My friend's revelation was stunning. We slowly gathered around the book. Someone flicked on a flashlight, and my friend began unwrapping the paper.

  "It's called . . ." he said, "The Song of Solomon. And you won't believe what it says."


  We exchanged curious looks as he started reading from the ancient texts, and it didn't take us long to figure out those mountains of myrrh and hills of frankincense weren't geological anomalies. By the time he got to the part about gazelles and sheep, Bobby Donald's voice changed.

  About that time our camp counselor came walking up the steps, and we flicked off the light.

  "What's going on in there?" he hollered.

  "Nothing, sir. We're just reading the Bible."

  "Really? Well, praise the Lord, boys! It's important to gird your loins with the gospel!"

  Praise the Lord, indeed.

  And that brings us back to Relevant Church in Ybor City, Florida. I'm not all that keen on uttering prophecies, but I'm willing to predict the building committee might want to start drawing up plans for a larger church nursery. They may need one in about nine months.

  33

  The Worship Wars

  A battle is being waged in the choir lofts of America's churches. Troops adorned in flowing robes are mounting a vocal assault on contemporary praise and worship music armed with only a pitch pipe and the revered Baptist Hymnal.

  It's being billed as this century's "worship war," and it usually involves a frazzled minister of music trying to please those who enjoy traditional hymns as well as those who do not. I'm not too sure who coined the phrase, but it sadly represents both sides in this ongoing struggle of man versus organ.

  In my best guess, it comes down to a fairly simple question: Should our Sunday morning worship experience be filled with great songs of the faith, or should we orchestrate elaborate stage shows that employ musicians who use Backstreet Boy theatrics to bring honor to God? Or is it possible to have both?

  I'm not sure where I stand on the issue of worship style. As a generation Xer, I feel a certain urge to slap a guitar riff or drum solo in the middle of "Holy, Holy, Holy." But as a lifelong Southern Baptist, my heart also finds comfort in the traditional songs of my childhood, songs like "Amazing Grace," "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," and "It is Well with My Soul."

  Yet modern worship songs, unlike some hymns, are filled with passionate lyrics that breathe reality into church services. Like the lyrics to "You Are My King":

  I'm forgiven because you were forsaken,

  I'm accepted, you were condemned,

  I'm alive and well,

  Your spirit is within me

  Because you died and rose again.1

  Hymns don't always engender that kind of clarity. I never understood what "sheaves" were, for example, or where I was supposed to be "bringing" them. I only knew that I should "come rejoicing" wherever they were brought.

  There's also not that much spontaneity with traditional worship. The service starts with an organ prelude, followed by the call to worship, the deacon's prayer, a welcome by the preacher, a few hymns, the offertory prayer, and then that moment of a lifetime for choir members—the offertory solo. Services like these are now headed the way of the dinosaur in this new church age of television lighting, pulsating video shows, professionally choreographed worship teams, and other high-tech gadgetry.

  But honestly some days I truly miss those moments when the soloist would clear her throat, asking us to intercede on her behalf. You just knew your ears were in for three minutes of joyful noise—emphasis on the noise. Yet no matter how awful the singing was, you somehow knew she was wailing from the top of her lungs and the bottom of her heart.

  There's still something special in that.

  I believe the true victims in this battle over worship styles aren't the ones in the choir loft or behind a set of drums. They're the ones in our homes—our children.

  A few summers ago I was at a church camp and came across a group of folks sitting in rocking chairs heartily singing some of the great hymns of the faith.

  In my heart there rings a melody, there rings a melody of love!

  A few teenagers passing by stopped, listened, and marveled at the lyrics.

  "Is that a new chorus?" one of the kids asked. "I've never heard it before."

  Could it be? Have we produced a generation of believers who've never heard the hymns that have sustained our forefathers through sorrow and heartache, through happiness and joy?

  Maybe not.

  Last week young Cousin Billy informed me that he and his college roommate, along with two girls, were going to sing in church. They formed an impromptu quartet. I wondered if they would be performing a contemporary Christian song and was genuinely surprised when Billy shook his head.

  No, they chose to sing, "How Great Thou Art."

  "Why that song?" I asked.

  "I'm not exactly sure what I like about that song," Billy told me over cheesesteak sandwiches in Philadelphia. "It just strikes a chord in my heart. I like how it describes various scenes of nature and how great God is for creating it."

  Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee.

  How great Thou art, How great Thou art.

  Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee

  How great Thou art, How great Thou art.2

  But for Billy the true gem of the song lay in the final verse. "It's the one about Christ's coming and the joy that will fill my heart," he said. "That's what makes it a really beautiful hymn."

  When Christ shall come, with shouts of acclamation

  And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!

  Then I shall bow in humble adoration

  And there proclaim, "My God, how great Thou art!"3

  So with both sides laying claim to the title of my-way-of-worship-is-better, what's a back-row Baptist to do? For starters, we could have a little give-and-take. To be honest, trying something new in the worship service every now and then sure couldn't hurt. Even "Jesus Loves Me" started out as a contemporary tune.

  Maybe, just maybe, God is more interested in why we worship than how we worship.

  As for those of you who still desire a worship service on the cutting edge, check out this Christian tune:

  So I'll cherish the old, rugged cross,

  'Til my trophies at last I lay down;

  I will cling to the old rugged cross,

  And exchange it some day for a crown.4

  You want cutting edge? Now, that's cutting edge.

  34

  A Christmas Eve Miracle

  It was a husband and father's worst nightmare. Mike Hermanstorfer's wife went into labor on Christmas Eve. As Tracy Hermanstorfer prepared to give birth, Mike held her hand, and without warning the unthinkable happened. Tracy went into cardiac arrest. She stopped breathing. Her heart stopped beating. Tracy Hermanstorfer was gone.

  A team of doctors at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs furiously worked to save the unborn child, but the baby was delivered lifeless with barely a hint of a heartbeat.

  In a matter of moments, Mike's Christmas Eve was filled with sorrow. His wife and newborn son were gone. Doctors were eventually able to revive the little boy, but his mother—not even so much as a pulse.

  Then something strange happened—something that to this day puzzles the medical experts. Nearly four minutes after her heart stopped beating, she came back to life.

  "We did a thorough evaluation and can't find anything that explains why this happened,"1 Dr. Stephanie Martin told the Associated Press.

  But Mike and Tracy believe they know exactly what happened. It was "the hand of God," Mike told reporters. "We are both believers, but this right here, even a nonbeliever—you explain to me how this happened. There is no other explanation."

  The doctor said she wasn't sure if she had help from on high but acknowledged, "Wherever I can get the help, I'll take it."

  The story of the Hermanstorfers reminds me of a survey published in the journal Sociology of Religion. It indicates that most Americans believe God is involved in their everyday lives.2 Th
e survey also reveals Americans believe God is concerned with their personal well-being. An impressive 82 percent said they depend on God for help and guidance in making decisions.

  Even more interesting, to me, is this one little nugget: 71 percent believe when things happen, good or bad, it's part of the Lord's plan for their lives.

  Interestingly enough the survey reports people who make more money or have more degrees behind their names are less likely to believe in divine intervention. In other words, the smarter you are, the dumber you become.

  I'm sure the experts will try to find some sort of scientific explanation for what happened to the Hermanstorfers, and there will certainly be naysayers who refute any sort of divine intervention on that Christmas Eve in Colorado Springs. But I'm not too sure the Hermanstorfers will be swayed.

  One of my favorite George Strait songs, "I Saw God Today," addresses this very issue.

  I've been to church,

  I've read the book.

  I know He's there,

  But I don't look

  Near as often as I should.

  His fingerprints are everywhere

  I just slow down to stop and stare,

  Open my eyes and, man, I swear,

  I saw God today.3

  And then I think about the Hermanstorfer family. I think about the day God saw fit to bless them with a miracle. And in the years to come, as they watch their little boy grow into a man, one day they will tell him about a miraculous birth on a Christmas Eve—not in Bethlehem but in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The night a husband and wife saw the hand of God.

  35

  It's the End of the World as We Know It

  President Obama believes people who cling to their guns and religion are bitter Americans. Maybe the reason we cling to our guns and religion is because we're afraid he might take them away. And for that matter, it's not so much that we are bitter Americans. I just think we have a bad case of indigestion.