By James Wilson
Another of my favorite movies is the Robert Duvall classic, The Apostle. Duvall modeled his character, “Sonny” Dewey, after his Pentecostal preacher Grandfather. Sonny is not a good man by any stretch. He has affairs with women throughout the film; he discovers his wife’s infidelity and kills her lover with a baseball bat. He is eventually sentenced to prison. He is nobody’s idea of a model Christian, but – like King David, Zaccheas, and Saul of Tarsus, not to mention Matthew, the tax collector who walked with Jesus – what counts is the heart for God, not the history of sin. Sonny always returns to the Father’s side, and the Father is always glad to have his son back at home.
When the film opens Sonny witnesses a car crash; one occupant is dead. Sonny prays and the dead person returns to life. At its end – when he is in prison and deservedly so – he again returns to the Lord and begins to preach and minister to the inmates, people who understand imperfection better than most good citizens can ever hope to do.
Don’t get me wrong. God hates sin; He is anything but soft on it. But He does not hate sinners and His hatred is not reaction to disobedience. What He hates is death – He will stop at nothing to transform death into life – even at the cost of the death of His Son. There are never hard feelings toward the one who ran into death once that runner repents into life. There are likewise no limits on the heights to which God longs to raise the repentant one – no matter how many resets become necessary. Sonny Dewey is a model for uncomfortable faith, the kind that knows nothing of personal merit or limited opportunity for grace. His character calls us to live in the tension between mercy – it is always undeserved – and our own frustrated lust for self-ordained success.
What we Christians all too often forget is the Church is His Body, not His brain. The Mind of our King is outlined in the pages of the Bible. If we would fully participate in the unfolding Great Awakening we need to re-engage with the whole of this record – fully dependent on the Holy Spirit for context – because it is much too massive for human comprehension. That is why the Scripture says the letter kills but the Spirit gives life; this verse from 2 Corinthians is not just a sentimental nod to feelings.
Where, for example, does God say we can only serve Him once we know enough of Him? Yet we require coursework and testing before we even admit converts to Baptism and the Table of Presence. His servants range in education from shepherds like David and farmers like Amos to scholars like Daniel and Paul. Many of us forbid even moderate drinking and dancing – because we fear temptation – forgetting Jesus both drank and danced responsibly in thanksgiving for these gifts from His Father. There is no place for a maverick like Sonny Dewey or a Lonnie Frisbie – the sexually conflicted architect of the Jesus People – in this fear-based community. If there is no place there is no way to shape their true zeal for God and His Kingdom into authentically sanctified service.
Churches all too often provide a safe haven for abusive leaders. Bill Gothard drew cultlike adulation from mainstream believers until he was exposed for misconduct with teenaged interns. Ted Haggard and Jimmy Swaggart perverted and prostituted themselves while leading the National Association of Evangelicals and bigtime television ministry. Abusive behavior on large and small scales – only a small portion of it sexual – occurs in local churches without the headlines that follow the big guns when their fall becomes visible. These leaders always exalt themselves above their ordinary followers, who are expected to bow to them and avoid rising above their subservient station.
In secular circles we honor the Crab Bucket, Tall Poppy Syndrome, Hanta Law, or whatever other identity the demon of legalism assumes. The idea is that no one should excel above his peers; this might cause jealousy leading to unrest. Crabs – in nature – pull their fellows back inside when they attempt escape; taller poppies are lopped off; Hanta Law forbids singular achievement. Everyone-a-Winner is a current American incarnation; its fruit in schools from Orlando, Florida, to Rohnert Park, California, where policy requires every student be given a passing C if they have done no work while effort meriting a lower achievement is still flunked. The policy stifles effort and thence growth at the top and bottom. We worship Clintons and Obamas, even as they order us not to seek to emulate their success. The very people who trumpet we must not rise above our neighbors are nothing but elitists; in another culture they would be called Pharisees.
These Pharisees sought elite treatment not through relationship to the King but by such legalistic adherence to rules they invented they imagined they were exempt from the vulnerability relationship occasions. Show me a legalist and I will show you an elitist. They tend to be more jealous than zealous. At the same time it must be said it is neither laws nor policies that disease our culture; it is the vulnerability to disease displayed in every heart that indulges that jealousy leading to unrest. It is certainly in every heart that commits idolatry. The problem – in church or society – is not some conspiratorial THEM; it is us.
The abundant life our God desires for us is the polar opposite of Everyone-a-Winner. It is Every One Who Commits to it abandoning self-determination in favor of personal determination – becoming the person we are created to be by letting go of pretence and approximation. It is recognizing there is a Sonny Dewey in each of us and – instead of rejecting him – bringing him back to the Father’s side where he will be welcomed home along with all the other prodigals.
That requires from each of us the sacrifice of our sacred and legalistic cows in favor of relationship with God who first sacrifices for us and offers a much higher albeit more humbling standard of living. His strength is literally perfected in our weakness.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times, and Kingdom in Pursuit – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at praynorthstate@charter.net
