The Truth Will Wreck This Place

Sixteen months ago I walked through the doors of a church a broken man, and God’s love poured out over my life, my burdens lifted, rebuilt, His forgiveness washing away my past.

Only He forgot about one thing: I own and operate a sinner’s heart.

How could He have missed this? Does God not know I live in a world fueled by sex and alcohol, lies and pornography? Los Angeles is a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.  Why on earth would He bring me here to find Him? It’s like sending me to Hell in a gasoline suit.

Ah, L.A. Unique and full of diversity.  Nowhere else can you find the Catholic church, a strip club, the Scientology Center, hookers, and your local synagogue all on the same block.  There’s a conflict of interest there somewhere.  How’s a confused twenty-something supposed to find truth in all that?

He won’t if he doesn’t know where to look.

Ten weeks after I walked through the doors of that church I went sober, only to have my sobriety become a burden too heavy to carry.  A public image I felt forced to uphold to remain a Christian.  Crushed beneath the weight of my misguided thoughts—the out-standing citizen I believed I was viewed as for having beaten the devil at his own game—I slipped into a maddening depression.

I’ve finally hit the bottle again, hit the bottom, and relapse is not the homecoming I hoped for.

14 months of sobriety, and I drank it away in less than 120 seconds.  Cigarette in hand, hot desert sun tearing up my skin, it felt good.  So good, in fact, I needed an IV drip of Jack and Coke to do something about all that blood in my alcohol level.

Taking that drink was like stepping into a rusty bear trap just to see if it still worked.  Yep, alcohol still gets me drunk.  Who knew?  Now get this damn thing off me!  No? Turns out it is not that easy.  Quick then, someone shoot me down with a horse tranquilizer before I try to drive myself home and have sex with all these women who conveniently look exactly like my ex-girlfriend.

Get it? I’ll do my best to explain.  Unfortunately, due to the lack of beer in my blood this morning and the appetite for pornographic imagines I refuse to feed, I’ve got a headache so fierce it could slay a mountain lion.  Plus, I just paid five bucks for a lukewarm latte and a bagel that shares the same chemical makeup and characteristics of cardboard so I could get on the inter-highway long enough to write this. (And that isn’t my spoiled-rotten, coffee-snob, once manager of Starbucks past talking here.)  So please forgive me if I seem a bit irritated.

…the guy next to me is a very loud chewer.  Excuse me while I break his jaw.

Now then.  I struggle to believe with the best of them.  Doubt devours me.  The devil sits content in the darkest corners of Hell dressed in his most pretentious Sunday’s best, smoking the cheapest of cigars.  Swirling Brandy in a glass I can smell from here.  For he’s done his job.  He can sit back and relax.  He hasn’t won my soul, but he doesn’t need it right now.  For it is God that has forsaken me, right? That’s precisely what the devil wants me to believe.  I’m distracted from the Truth.  The Original.  And that’s good enough for him.

He’s jammed a wedge between the God who has gifted me with this ability to write, and myself.  I can’t get back to God with all these bars, liquor stores, and sexy billboards advertising jeans in my way—though no one in these damn ads seems to be wearing any jeans, or anything at all for that matter.  I’m on the verge of something great here, sharing the truth with hundreds, and my enemy does not find this beneficial to his master plan.

What does this mean? Am I ruined? Cast out like a Leper into a colony of the diseased and too contagious for the Kingdom of God?

Listen up, folks.  No one is too contagious to be loved, too broken to be rebuilt, or too sick to be healed.  But just because you’ve been rebuilt does not mean you will never break, again.

Do not forgive me if I’ve shattered my image, for I am not asking.  I do not know who you think I am, but I am only me.  That’s all I have ever been, and that is all I will ever be.  This is the truth.  I am an addict and a believer.  I am living in God’s grace, His passion, and His desire.  His Truth.  He still loves me even if the world does not.  This is the truth, the only truth I’ve got, and it will wreck this place.  I’ll leave you to pick up the pieces and sort it out.  All that can be asked of us is that we remain authentic.  That we live the lives God created us to live to the best of our abilities.  And if we fall along the way? Grace, baby! We’ve got grace!

Turns out I lost the receipt to my sinner’s heart, so it looks like I have to keep it.  The good news is, “Your sins are forgiven. Go out into the world and be the hands and feet of Jesus.”

Great.  Pleasure doing business with You.

“And just in case you mess up tomorrow, your sins are forgiven, again.  And again.  And Again.  Forever and ever and ever and ever because My love for you is relentless.”

Well, how about that?

© copyright 2010 Make It MAD