John Fountain’s Testimony: The God Who Embraced me

This is a powerful example of personal testimony about God’s real presence in one man’s life: Listen to the audio here.

All Things Considered, November 28, 2005 · I believe in God. Not that cosmic, intangible spirit-in-the-sky that Mama told me as a little boy “always was and always will be.” But the God who embraced me when Daddy disappeared from our lives — from my life at age four — the night police led him away from our front door, down the stairs in handcuffs.

The God who warmed me when we could see our breath inside our freezing apartment, where the gas was disconnected in the dead of another wind-whipped Chicago winter, and there was no food, little hope and no hot water.

The God who held my hand when I witnessed boys in my ‘hood swallowed by the elements, by death and by hopelessness; who claimed me when I felt like “no-man’s son,” amid the absence of any man to wrap his arms around me and tell me, “everything’s going to be okay,” to speak proudly of me, to call me son.

I believe in God, God the Father, embodied in his Son Jesus Christ. The God who allowed me to feel His presence — whether by the warmth that filled my belly like hot chocolate on a cold afternoon, or that voice, whenever I found myself in the tempest of life’s storms, telling me (even when I was told I was “nothing”) that I was something, that I was His, and that even amid the desertion of the man who gave me his name and DNA and little else, I might find in Him sustenance.

I believe in God, the God who I have come to know as father, as Abba — Daddy.

I always envied boys I saw walking hand-in-hand with their fathers. I thirsted for the conversations fathers and sons have about the birds and the bees, or about nothing at all — simply feeling his breath, heartbeat, presence. As a boy, I used to sit on the front porch watching the cars roll by, imagining that one day one would park and the man getting out would be my daddy. But it never happened.

When I was 18, I could find no tears that Alabama winter’s evening in January 1979 as I stood finally — face to face — with my father lying cold in a casket, his eyes sealed, his heart no longer beating, his breath forever stilled. Killed in a car accident, he died drunk, leaving me hobbled by the sorrow of years of fatherlessness.

By then, it had been years since Mama had summoned the police to our apartment that night, fearing that Daddy might hurt her — hit her — again. Finally, his alcoholism consumed what good there was of him until it swallowed him whole.

It wasn’t until many years later, standing over my father’s grave for a long overdue conversation, that my tears flowed. I told him about the man I had become. I told him about how much I wished he had been in my life. And I realized fully that in his absence, I had found another. Or that He — God, the Father, God, my Father — had found me.

 

Bono At the NAACP Image Awards

Missional Christianity, Atheists, and Fundamentalist Christianity

You may be familiar with The Blasphemy Challenge on YouTube, where mostly teens and twenty somethings make videos of themselves denying the existence of the Holy Spirit, thus committing the Unpardonable Sin. Of course, they don’t even think they are sinning because they totally lack any belief in any god, much less the God of the Bible. They are really doing this to build the community of atheists so that they can better combat Christianity and theism because they think that God-belief is harmful to the world.

So of course, there have been many Christians who have stepped into the breach in order to defend Christianity and respond to these young Atheists. They are all over YouTube trying to engage atheists on many different issues and topics, from abortion to evolution.

The most notable Christian to enter the fray is Ergun Caner, the current president of Liberty Theological Seminary. This is the school that was started by the fundamentalist tele-evangelist, Jerry Falwell. Caner wants to engage the Rational Response Squad, who are the creators of the The Blasphemy Challenge. In fact, he is supposed be a part of a live internet show via the the Rational Response Squad’s website.

I personally do not think that any minds will be changed in their “dialogue”. What I do get a sense of is the fact that fundamentalists see atheists as a threat because of their ability to deconstruct the Bibe, and because they are usually strong advocates for Evolution. Atheists see fundamentalists as a threat because they are anti-science and put biblical revelation before scientific fact. I just don’t see a way for these two communities to connect without a lot of shouting and name calling happening. Even if the communities can manage to be civil to one another, there will not be any friendships forming.

This is another reason why I am a missional Christian. Missional Christians do form long lasting relationships with non-believers from all kinds of backgrounds, including atheists. We are not afraid of modern science, and I suspect that most of us are theistic evolutionists. Being a missional Christian means that you don’t pretend that you have all the answers, you just trust that He who is the Answer will reveal Himself to your non-believing friends in the course of your friendship.

For us, it is not so much about winning the argument, but rather, sharing our stories and just hanging out. Plus, could you imagine theists and atheists building Habitat for Humanity homes together? Or maybe just having a regular weekly meal with one another? Now fundamentalists don’t want any part of this because the danger is that they cannot control the conversation and there will be questions asked that they do not have answer for. Whereas missional Chrisitans are comfortable not being able to have a answer for every question.

Further, I bet my last dollar that if atheists saw Christians focusing on caring for the marginalized, being involved in racial reconciliation and social justice, and accepted the fact of evolution and global warming, they would actually begin to take us at least a little bit seriously, and perhaps would even want to engage us in a real way.

Sam Harris

Here is a working link for the video.

Sam is one of my favorite public atheists. He makes some really salient points amongt Steve’s brilliant humor (which supports Sam’s thesis btw). I like Sam, and he definitely is not the enemy. We Christians who do not live up to our creed our the problem. I think that if the Christianity that Tony is talking about below was the one most clearly followed and demonstrated, that Sam would not have a problem with us.

Tony Campolo on the Colbert Report

Here is a working link for Tony and Steve on the Comedy Central’s Colbert Report:

Haggard and Dawkins

Very disturbing video. I don’t want to beat up on anyone, but I was not surprised by Haggard’s fall. There is something wrong with the kind of Christianity that tries to force everyone to believe the way you do, and makes Christianity look like one big show that you put on every week. When you amass that much power and influence, I bet that it is tough to admit your weaknesses to someone else. I think that this video proves that the megachurch model simply is not the healthiest one, especially for the ones who are in charge. Mind you, I have not decided that all megachurches are bad, there are some I like, with pastors I really look up to, but it is not for me.

Rick Warren on Hannity & Colmes

The video is of rather poor quality, but I like how Warren represents both himself and the faith.

God, Violence, and Genocide

They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys. Joshua 6:21

I do not like it when God sends death and destruction upon humanity, but it does not cause a crisis of faith for me. I do believe that since God is our creator, He has the inherent right to destroy us. However, I do have a problem with those Scriptures where God calls for the destruction of entire groups of people at the hands of other people, usually Jews. This does create a crisis of faith for me because all manner of religous fanatics from Eric Rudolf to Osama Bin Laden use the Bible and the Q’uran to justify violence in the name of God. This lends credence to the argument from my atheist friends that religion is the greatest cause of evil in the world. This is the kind of argument that people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have been making. And let me state at the outset that Messers Harris & Dawkins are not the enemy, violent religious extremists who kill in the name of God are. They give all theists everywhere a bad name.

Let me state first that though I am a Bible-believing Christian, I do not accept those parts of the Bible that have God commanding people to kill for Him. Call me selective in my application of Scripture, but I do believe that if the Hebrew Bible was perfect and complete, that there would be no need for Jesus and the New Testament.

Second, in a pluralistic world, believers of whatever stripe are going to have to be comfortable with people disagreeing with what they believe. Moreover, many people are going to be very disrespectful and irreverent towads every permutation of religious faith, including your own. And the more you try to ram your faith down other people’s throats by using politics or violence, the more people are going to disrespect you and your faith.

I think that the way forward for Christian believers in navigating the problem of religious violence against non-believers is to follow Paul’s admonition: “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?”1Corinthians 5:12. Further, I also think that the way we influence those who think differently than we do is not through the ballot box, with bullets or diatribes, but rather, being the kind of community that speaks cogently to the larger culture, not by what we say but how we live.

What if we had churches that became demonstration projects for the truth of the Gospel? Imagine, multi-ethnic congregration that are racially reconciled and build homes for the homeless, and care for widows and orphans. I suspect that if we had a bunch of churches like this, that even Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins would be impressed.

Life is Hard

Things have been crazy, my pay has been significantly decreased since November by InterVarsity (I have to raise my own support). Plus, we had a pipe burst the night before last, and water was everywhere. We had to shell out over $800 to get it fixed, and then the plumber told us that our drain pipe is broken and that is another $800 fix. On the very next day (yesterday) I was asked to resign from my new job selling Honda’s at a local dealership. I don’t know if we will have enough money to pay our mortgage and the van note this month and the months to come. And I don’t have a clue what to do. Life is hard and it is certainly not a board game. And we just got the board game for our three girls for Christmas. It is their favorite game. We just played it during our family time together a few days ago. They love this game, I hate it, because it only reminds me how difficult life is and all of the mistakes that I have made.

The funny thing is that I specifically heard God say that this year, 2007, would be a year of blessing for us as a family. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not some kind of prosperity, name-it-and-claim-it, preacher. But I do believe that God is going to bless us both spiritually and materially this year. Yet I also believe that life is going to continue to be difficult and hard. I guess it is supposed to be that way. I just saw “The Pursuit of Happyness” with my wife. The main protagonist of the movie, Chris Gardner said near the beginning of the movie that the framers of the Constitution were on to something when they put in the preamble of the Constitution something about the “pursuit of happiness”. Chris made the salient point that happiness is never a destination, but a pursuit, a striving towards some kind of ineffable goal.

I think that Chris is on to something here. I don’t think we ever arrive at a total place of bliss, at least not in this life. But I do believe that we can experience joy right now. Joy is not the absense of difficulty or pain. It is actually a choice to choose to be joyful inspite of how hard life is. This means that ultimately, you have to have faith in order to experience deep and utter joy.

So yes, life is hard. I am having a really tough time right now, but I still have faith, hope, love, and yes…joy.

Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan, author of, The Conservative Soul and senior editor of The New Republic is speaking at Oberlin College tonight at 8 pm. I have been reading Andrew’s editorials in TNR and elsewhere since the early ’90s. I like him, but I have been pretty upset with him and the other neocons out there for creating the apologetic that swept us into the war on Iraq. He is now back into my good graces since I heard him give a very sincere mea culpa during an interview with Brian Lamb on CSpan’s Booknotes for supporting the war at its onset and clearly admitting that he was wrong.

What is interesting about Andrew is that he holds within himself opposing principles, ideals, and values. He is a practicing homosexual, but he is also a very devout pro-life Catholic who takes the teachings of Jesus seriously. And he is a diehard supply-side conservative, but he supported Kerry in the last presidential election (he could not vote because he is not a citizen of the U.S.).

I have always saw Andrew as a sort of best friend that I never met because in many ways I hold the similar opposing views within myself too. I am a Bible thumping, Jesus-is-the-only-way Christian, but I strongly believe in pluralism and I am against prayer in public schools. Along with Andrew, I am against abortion after the first trimester, and I agree with him that we have to allow it during the first trimester. I feel this way because only people of faith like me and Andrew see a zygote and a blastula as being fully human.

Ultimately, what I like about Andrew is the humility in which he holds his beliefs. He does not feel comfortable pushing his beliefs on others. This is why I like the guy. He is a great conversationalist because he has a lot of ideas, but more importantly he is willing to listen to ideas of others, even those ideas that he do not agree with his own.