Scott Freeman

So, I am preparing a summer series on dealing with issues that confront us today as Christians.  The idea is to redeem spiritual matters from the myopia of a political view, to look at things as a Christian first before we bring country or party into it.

Some of the issues that we will be dealing with are:

• Stem Cell Research
• Just War
• Torture
• Homosexuality
• America and Christianity
• Osteenism
• The Environment

What do you think of these issues?  What are your thoughts?  What would you like to see added to this list?  Am I crazy? (Actually, you don’t have to answer that one.)

I really covet your feedback here.

Or, Blog On

When I began this blog on January 26, 2005, I had no fully-developed idea why.  I thought it would be a place to put my bulletin articles, a few insights on life and scripture, family stories, and entertainment recommendations.

I figured a few people from church would read it, along with some family and friends.

One vow that I made early on was that I would not be political or controversial.  This would be a neutral site on all of those matters.

By June, I couldn’t take it anymore:  I blogged about Darfur and the risk that we face of repeating the Rwanda catastrophe.  Afterwards, I began to write out more of my feelings on poverty and being Christ-like.  Comments began to trickle in.

Then I wrote about my opposition to the Iraq war.  Crickets began to chirp.  No comments.  Not a one.  But people began to read.
The direction of my blog had changed.  I began to blog more and more about my struggles with the issues of the day.

The benefit of this was that I began to think more about where I stood.  By journaling my journey I began to force myself to reflect more, to go deeper in my understanding.

This blog became the avenue through which I processed God’s leading me.  It is where I grappled with God’s answering of my prayer to love more.

For example, when I began this series two weeks ago, I envisioned a 2 or 3 part summary of how I got here.  But sitting down and writing it out, I realized the story was bigger than that.  Even now, I could add 10 more chapters. I’m even considering drafting a book proposal from this.
Therefore, this blog is the final piece that got me to where I am today.  I imagine it will be an integral part of where I am going.  It has disciplined me to write and to reflect more than I would typically do.

Where do I stand right now?

• Completely alienated from my Republican past.
• Completely unwilling to embrace a Democratic “solution”
• No longer will politics determine my faith.  Faith will determine my politics.
• No longer will I be guided by one or two “issues.”
• At the core, I will be directed by two “laws:”  How I love Him, and how I love His.
• Knowing that I must not ultimately seek political solutions but that I must be the in-breaking of the Kingdom of the world I inhabit.
• My nation is that Kingdom.  It knows no borders or secular entity.  It is neither slave nor free, male nor female, American nor Iraqi.
• I must be a voice for the voiceless, hope for the hopeless and a reminder to seek the forgotten.
• I must be a “red-letter” Christian.  No longer will I be content to embrace “Jesus Excepted”
• I love Jesus Christ more now than I ever have, although I understand Him a whole lot less.

This series ends now.  Replacing it will be a semi-regular series entitled “Where I Am At Right Now.”  It will be a look at where I stand on current issues that stand before us.

The title acknowledges both the journey and the struggle. It understands that, although the journey to this point is finished, the journey to where God is calling me is just beginning.

I look forward to the next chapters. I hope you will continue to walk with me.

Or, The Most Important Part of This Story

Two confessions:

1. I’m not very good at prayer.
2. I’m not a people person.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the power of prayer. I believe that there is great benefit and power in prayer. I’m just not very good at it.

I bristle with the rote, legalistic attitude with which we often approach prayer. (I.E. you have to pray before every meal, you have to ask forgiveness in each prayer, you have to have the proper opening and closing, etc.) But, that’s another blog post.

The more important part of my confession, for this story, is the fact that I am NOT a people person.

I love people. I even like a whole lot of them. But I’m not the most outgoing, gregarious fellow you will encounter.

I don’t like large groups. I don’t feed off of big get-togethers or things like that. I hate the phone and will beg Tracy to make even the most basic calls.
I’m content to be home with my family or at my desk studying. I don’t have the gift of hospitality.
I’m not much on visitation. I was raised to never go somewhere uninvited, and that has stuck with me.

I am introverted, much more likely to escape into my thoughts than I am to strike up a conversation.

I do well one-on-one. I’m fairly adept at counseling people with marital problems and other issues. I even, typically, enjoy that.

But, my ministerial strengths are preaching and teaching. That is where I am gifted.

As a result, one of the criticisms of me through the years has been on the pastoral side of my job. (Note: one thing that the Church of Christ has to get over is it’s nit-picking attitude toward the use of the word “pastor.” Name me one “minister” in our churches who is not expected to pastor.)

I’ve been called, repeatedly, unapproachable. In Michigan, the elders continually encouraged me to engage more. It was obviously a source of frustration for them that I did not fit squarely into their ideas of what a preacher should be.

When I accepted the call to move to Waco I realized that I needed to try harder to correct that. So, tying those two “weaknesses” together I decided that I would pray about it.

I began to pray that God would place within me the capacity to love people more.

I began to pray that I would be more caring and compassionate.

Over and over, I repeated the simple line, “Help me to love people more.”

I began that prayer under the hopes that it would improve my inter-congregational skills.

What I did not know, at the beginning, was that God would have something else in mind.

The prayer worked, but not in the way I expected.  All of those seemingly random events that I have been describing in this series began to make a whole lot more sense.
I did begin to love people more. All people.

I began to care about the poor. I began to be concerned about the plight of people across the world who are suffering.

Words like Rwanda and Darfur appeared on my radar screen. AIDS ceased being a bullet I dodged when I got married, but a crisis of biblical proportions.

Homosexuals stopped being “fags” and “dykes” and started to become precious souls in need of love. A proposition I would have voted for became one I voted against.

Muslims ceased being the source of all my scorn and hatred and became men, women, and children to me.

A lifetime of racial jokes against people of different colors and backgrounds became a source of tremendous shame.

War became a travesty. The killing of innocent lives was impossible to justify, even for the sake of “freedom.”

The way we treat the earth became a concern. The disadvantaged and the downtrodden bear the brunt of our environmental excesses.

God gave me the capacity to love, but it became a love without borders, without doctrine, without skin color, without denominational loyalty.

It became the love of Christ.

I began to love the convict and the criminal. The poor and the forgotten. I began to love the homosexual and the Baptist. I began to love Democrats and Libertarians. I began to love the HIV-infected and the USA-affected.
I began to tremble with the weight of compassion that such a prayer had. My preaching changed.

My politics changed.

My worldview changed.

My sense of right and wrong changed. No longer did I look first at how things affected this country but I looked at how they affected the Kingdom.

Poverty became my problem. Racism became my problem.

The environment became my problem. Embracing the immigrant became my problem.

Oh, God answered that prayer.  I love my congregation more.  But I also love the rest of God’s creation so much more.

I’m still an introvert and I probably always will be.  I’m learning that many of us out there are the same way.  It does not mean that we don’t love.  It does not mean that we don’t care.

It just means that God uses us in a different way.  And I’m ok with that.

Pray that same prayer and God will change you.  I’m not doing praying it:

“Help me to love people more.”

And you will love.  Ultimately what got me to where I am today was through the power of God to take this reserved, often cynical, individual and place within him the capacity to love.

To care.  To weep for those we tend to discard.

Pray this with me.  May we each stive to be guilty of loving too much rather than judging too much.

Tomorrow: The beginning of my story and the end of this series.

Or, Bombshells

In making the transition from youth ministry to the pulpit, I threw myself into honing the “craft” of preaching.

I submerged myself into learning how to be a better preacher, how to engage the text, and repeat the process on a weekly basis.

I focused on learning how to counsel and minister to adults. I finished my Master’s Degree, as well.

As a result, I missed a lot of what was going on around me. I stayed up on politics but missed out on all the conversations that were “emerging” at the time. It wouldn’t be until I felt more comfortable as a church pastor that I would engage those conversations. But, that’s another story.

During the ramp-up to Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL), I was an ardent supporter of military conflict. I longed for us to go into Iraq.

Killing a few Muslims, I thought, was a good thing. I even taught a class at church that perverted Just War Theory enough to justify our invasion into Iraq.

I didn’t really care if there were WMD’s there or not. I just hated Muslims. For me, that was reason enough to go. Toby Keith was my favorite theologian at the time.

My hatred was not Christ-like nor was it holy. But, as I talked about a few weeks ago, I had become good at re-writing the words of Jesus to fit my tastes.

In early 2004, I was standing in my local library (I would go broke feeding my book jones, otherwise). One of the small joys in life is discovering a book that you know nothing about.

On the shelf, was a work titled Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World. Two of my all-time favorite books are Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I was struck by the melding of these two titles, so I picked up the book. I immediately noticed that the author, Lee Camp, was a professor at Lipscomb University, a Church of Christ School.

Taking that book home and beginning to read it was a bomb-shell for me. It was a call to righteousness and discipleship that I was not prepared for. I had heard of John Howard Yoder, who greatly influenced Camp, but had not read any of his work.

I would like to say that I quickly grasped everything, but I didn’t. I was still too hate-filled for the idea of truly following Jesus.

I loved war too much to contemplate peace.

I invoked my rule and gave up after 50 pages.

But Camp’s words would not let me go. For, I knew, that they contained truth, that the kingdom I was a part of was not an earthly one made with human hands. My allegiance was in Christ, not a nation. I had even preached against the dangers of nationalism.

I went back to Camp’s book again. And again. And again. It is one of the foundational works in my life. It has served to lead me to the writings of Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and others.

More importantly it drove me back to the gospels, to examine the Nazarene anew, to see with fresh eyes the radical words of a Jewish firebrand.

It was this work that began to propel me toward re-examining my faith. I began to ask some hard questions and found that the answers shamed me.

I was a Christian, but I was not like Christ.

Next: Becoming 3/4 of the man I once was

(For an excerpt from Camp’s book, click more) continue reading…

Or, Compassionate Conservatism

In retrospect, I would like to say that the thoughts and sentiments of Rich Mullins (see previous post) stuck with me, but they did not.

A “savior” emerged that offered the restoration of the greatness of America, the reclamation of all that made America good and right and pure, i.e. Reagan Redux.

George W. Bush campaigned on a platform of Compassionate Conservatism, the idea that you could hold conservative ideas yet still help those in need.

This idea of compassionate conservatism was a soothing balm for me. It enabled me to straddle the chasm between my growing understanding of the words of Jesus and the reality of American life. I could vacillate between both worlds with no compunction.
However, the idea looked far better on paper than it did in practice. Compassion and love in its truest form is not conservative but radical, it breaks free of the constraints of the status quo and seeks to effect change in the lives of the forgotten and the least of these.

By this time, however, I had arrived. I was youth minister for a 1000+ member, affluent church in a northern Dallas suburb. I was at the pinnacle of my profession.
We had built an enormous multi-million dollar building with the ideas that it would be the flagship church in our community. People would flock to us because of our gleaming edifice fronting the highway.

They would knock down our doors because they would see our cross dominating the skyline.

It did not matter that we had incurred enormous debt in order to do so. God had blessed us with the financial means and the population to make a huge splash. He had “expanded our territory.”
We were positioned to be “the” church in town.

(Note: my observations about my time at this location are just that, my observations of my own feelings.  Wonderful and godly people are members of that church who have done and continue to do great things for the glory of God.  Any indictment in my words are directed at me and not them.)

Life was great. Tracy was pregnant. We were making money hand over fist. Everything was as it should be.

But I was miserable.

There had to be something more.

Every week we had a staff meeting of all the ministers where we would discuss the ministry objectives of our church. Part of that process was long-range planning.

During one particular meeting, a small committee of “business-minded” men were asked to join us as we began to plot our future.

We were asked to envision where we saw the church 5 years down the road. As we went around the room, I was struck how all the answers dealt with the cosmetics of church–bigger auditorium, gymnasium, greater reputation and visibility, etc.

Is this what it was all about?  Was my ministry so easily reduced to the three B’s: Budgets, buildings, and baptisms?  Was I to be known for what I was doing to improve our appearance, or for what God was doing through me?

Around that same time I had a meeting with parents where I was taken to task for the number of spiritual activities that I was having.  I was told that there were too many Bible Studies and not enough “fun” events.

I left those meetings with the impression that spiritual growth was not the focus.  For our church, the focus was size and reputation.

For our teens, the focus was not producing spiritually mature young adults, but to keep them from participating in activities that their school friends were involved in.  It was less important for our teens to be holy than it was for them to not appear unholy.  (I realize that this paragraph is somewhat hyperbolic, but it was how I felt.)
In both instances, I felt that I was invested in an immature faith.  Being at the biggest church, with the highest youth budget, with the salary in the upper-echelon of the “brotherhood” were my signs of success.

I had become a cosmetic Christian.  I wasn’t holy as much as I was not unholy. I didn’t drink, cuss or watch too many R-rated movies. I was on the “right” of all the important moral issues of the day.
Yet, I didn’t care about the line that crossed through town marking the racial and economic divides between my ministerial world and the world where Jesus lived.

I needed to change. I was conservative, but I sure wasn’t compassionate.

Does any of this make sense?

Next: A baby, a terrorist attack, and a move to Michigan

Or, Seeds

I was a long way from leaving the party but I did become disillusioned at the time of the Clinton Impeachment.

Clinton was wrong, granted.

But the GOP was not much better.

I began to describe myself as a “Political Athiest.”  I no longer believed in the god of politics.

I could not support the Clinton presidency nor could I stomach the hatred that sprang forth from the Republicans (this has flip-flopped, to coin a phrase, during the Bush administration).

I was asked by one girl in my youth group to give her my views on Government.  My response was that governments were all set up to fail because they were based upon human reasoning and intellect.  They were secular institutions, including democracy, that were self-serving and temporal.

This feeling, which I held during that time, had been influenced by one of my favorite artists of the ’90, Rich Mullins.  I’m not a big fan of most Contemporary Christian Music.  Insipid lyrics, amateurish production values, and a sound that always seems dated leaves me somewhat underwhelmed.  But the words and music of Mullins always spoke to me.  I was devastated by his death and grieved the loss of this voice of compassion and truth.

During the impeachment process, I heard a retrospective of his work on the radio.  He had said something that stuck with me:

I think the big problem is that, as Christians, we forgot that our identity is wrapped up in Christ and for a long time we bought into the illusion that the will of the masses would be more generous and more benevolent than the will of one dictator. But democracy isn’t necessarily bad politics, its just bad math. A thousand corrupt minds are just as evil as one corrupt mind. 

I’m very hurt at the apathy in the church. I’m very hurt over the determination of the government to destroy life and its not simply over the abortion issue. Anyone who has any awareness at all of Wounded Knee, not only the first Wounded Knee but what happened there, what 20 years ago, whatever. You kinda go, there can be no doubt that governments that are controlled by men are without exception anti-life and anti-Christ.

I think for a long time I believed that there would be political solutions because, growing up in America, you endure several political campaigns and these people make promises and they say, we will do this and we will do that and you believe them because you don’t know any better. And I really believed for a long time that this was all going to work. And I thank God now for Richard Nixon and for Gerald Ford and for all those people who betrayed any confidence that the American people could have in their government who said that the leadership of this country is not accountable to the people who elect them and who made so clear what we now know that no government works. And I wanted the government to work. And what I have now realized is I used to make fun of the sentimental feeling of the church that there was an afterlife. I used to mock songs about Heaven. And I used to think that it was somehow stupid and even wicked to dream of Heaven and to long for Heaven. And now I see the kind of a horrible place earth really is. And I go hiking and I go, this could be so beautiful. I met the guy last night sweeping the stairs down there and I talked to this very gentle man, a very kind man, a very simple man and I thought, how could a world made up of people like this be such a horrible place. And then I pick up the paper and read about dishonesty and deceit and betrayal and all that and go, I do long for Heaven. Someday God will destroy injustice. Someday there will be a judgment and because we have a loving and a forgiving Father, maybe we’ll survive it. If we don’t, sometimes I think hell is better than what we deserve anyway.

I miss Rich Mullins, still.  I believe he was right.  I believed it then, but it was too radical for me to fully embrace.  Besides, 2000 was coming and a Republican “Savior” was emerging.

Coming: America Held Hostage

Or, How Bill Clinton Taught Me True Grace.

I remained a good little Republican boy throughout the 90′s. However, 8 years of the Clinton presidency somewhat muted my enthusiasm for politics.

Sure, I had that momentary feeling of euphoria when the GOP “cleaned house” during the 94 mid-terms. However, that was short-lived.

After all, Bill Clinton was still in office.

Where I come from, hatred of Bill Clinton runs deep. The animus between many conservative Christians, in my experience, is not due to political differences.

It is not disagreement with his positions or ideologies.

It is hatred, pure and simple. Bill Clinton was the poster boy for all that is “wrong with America.”

In 1996, I stumbled a little bit. I made some mistakes, committed some sins, and left ministry. I wandered for a while before I made my way back home.
To come home, I needed grace. I needed forgiveness.  Thankfully, I received that.
During that process of returning, I met my beautiful wife, Tracy. She, too, had the Republican pedigree: actively involved in the Arkansas GOP, a delegate to the 1996 Republican National Convention. We were kindred spirits in more ways than one.
We married in 1998 around the same time a name entered into the vernacular: Monica Lewinsky. I was shocked and outraged at these charges, as was the rest of the country.

Of course, Clinton initially denied the allegations of sexual affairs in the White House. But when the truth emerged, he confessed and repented.

Yet, for many, there was no way he could be sincere. “The only reason he is sorry is because he got caught” was a chorus I heard over and over.

I struggled greatly with the Christian community’s reaction to all of this. I, too, had needed grace and received it. Why would we withhold it from Clinton?

My frustration finally bubbled over one Sunday night when we had a guest speaker at our church. He was a prominent man in our community of Albuquerque. A portion of his sermon was a diatribe against Bill Clinton.

He said, “The Bill Clinton mess is the perfect opportunity to teach our children about sin and about God’s judment on those who persist in such wicked living.”

I was boiling. Where was the grace? Bill Clinton had repented. He had asked forgiveness and prayers. He had asked three Christian leaders to minister to him and hold him accountable. But that wasn’t enough for many of us.

It wasn’t repentance we demanded of Bill Clinton. For so many, the only way Bill Clinton could redeem himself would be to change his political affiliation.  It wasn’t Jesus that Bill Clinton needed to square himself with, it was Newt Gingrich.
That was the first time I felt like abandoning my political party.

When I got to our teen devo that night I said, “The Bill Clinton affair is the perfect opportunity to teach our children about God’s grace and mercy. It is the perfect opportunity to teach that we can find forgiveness no matter who we are, no matter where we have been.”

My years as a Clinton-basher ended that night.

He asked for forgiveness.

It was not my place to doubt his sincerity, question his motives, or withhold forgiveness.

It was my job to forgive.

And to love.  Even Bill Clinton.

Next: Political Atheism

I want to begin to chronicle, for posterity, the seismic shift that has been taking place in my heart and life over the last couple of years.  All of this is a work in progress.  I do not know where all of this is going or how it will all work out, but I am not the same person that I once was.

If any of my statements in this series seems incomplete to you, understand this: I am incomplete.  God is still refining me into His image.

If any of this runs counter to your beliefs, I ask you one favor: see this through with me to the end.  Give me your feedback and comments but understand that this is a work in progress.

Back in the early 90′s I was chairman of the Wilson Country (TN) Young Republicans.  I remember in the aftermath of the Clinton election receiving phone calls from members of the GOP in the area, asking if I had considered running for any local office.

I had subscriptions to National Review, The Conservative Chronicle, The American Spectator and The Limbaugh Letter.

I had Rush Limbaugh’s TV show programmed on my VCR and the EIB tuned in each afternoon.

I had my bumper sticker that read “I did not vote for the dope from Hope.”

I had an understanding of who our enemies were: those who might try to restore communism, Middle-Eastern Nations, Democrats, Tree-Huggers, Feminazis and Ivy-league educated liberal snobs.

I had an intense desire to protect our “rights” as Christians lest we find our faith outlawed.

I had stringent views on immigration and affirmative action to ward against middle-class white men becoming the true minority in this country.

I had condescension toward “tree-hugger’s” and “environmentalist wacko’s” who valued the earth too much.

I had a healthy dose of indignation toward homosexuals, criminals, and other members of the detritus of life.

I had moral outrage in the capacity of this nation to elect a morally-bankrupt president.

I had an understanding that America was God’s means of achieving His purposes in a lost and dying world.  Our military dominance was imperative to maintaining the cause of Christ.

Yes, I had all of this.

I had it all figured out.

But I had not love.

Little did I fully realize how central love was to becoming like Christ.

(Coming up: How a White House Sex Scandal provoked an unexpected response)

“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Anne Lamott (Note: If you haven’t read Traveling Mercies, what are you waiting for?)

“The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians, when they are somber and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths.” Joe Aldrich

“Any man or woman who neglects to maintain inward vigilance, and only makes an outward show of holiness in dress, speech, and behavior, is a wretched creature. For they watch the doings of other people and criticize their faults, imagining themselves to be something when in reality they are nothing. In this way they deceive themselves. Be careful to avoid this, and devote yourself inwardly to His likeness by humility, charity, and other spiritual virtues. In this way you will be truly converted to God.” Walter Hilton

“Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.” G.K. Chesterton

God’s green earth: Local pastor takes environmental focus

Here’s another article about me.  Since most people won’t click the link, here is the text.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

By Katy Moore

Tribune-Herald staff writer

When pastor Scott Freeman prayed last year for God to help him be more loving toward other people, the Hewitt resident thought perhaps God would direct him to be a bit more extroverted with his congregation at Northside Church of Christ in Bellmead.

Freeman describes himself as something of an introvert, which may seem contradictory for someone who speaks from a pulpit every Sunday morning. But he notes that preaching is a private, one-dimensional thing. It’s easy to go back and forth between his study and the pulpit without interacting much with his parishioners, he said.

So Freeman did not expect that he would become a part of an evangelical movement to encourage environmental awareness. Nor did he anticipate the attention he’s recently received from the Dallas Morning News and the British Broadcasting Corporation. On Sunday a crew from the BBC was present during the church’s morning service and interviewed Freeman for a documentary on evangelicals and the environment. In September, Freeman joined nearly 100 other church leaders nationwide in signing the Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation, a call for environmental awareness from religious conservatives.

“Because we worship and honor the Creator, we seek to cherish and care for the creation,” the declaration states. “Because we have sinned, we have failed in our stewardship of creation. Therefore we repent of the way we have polluted, distorted, or destroyed so much of the Creator’s work.”

Before he began researching green-friendly issues, Freeman thought of concern for the environment as a bunch of “liberal politics.” But his view has changed, and he now considers caring for creation part of a larger call — to care for the poor.

“When I began to pray the prayer, I thought God would move me toward loving people in my own congregation more, but I think he had bigger plans for me in that I began to love everyone more,” he said. “It began to help me rethink some of my long-held convictions and misconceptions about people. I began to question my political views, my sociological views, everything.”

Freeman said those questions brought up more questions — about how he might be understanding Jesus’ call to be a steward of creation. He said he began to contemplate what it meant to have “dominion” over creation. Many Christians believe God gives humans dominion, or authority, over the earth, which Freeman said he thinks many people could take to mean dominance rather than stewardship.

“I’m not chaining myself to any trees or anything like that, I’m just trying to take more personal responsibility,” he said, explaining how his family is getting more deliberate about recycling and the efficient use of energy.

“That’s one of the things I loved about this initiative,” he said. “It wasn’t in support of any specific legislation or in conjunction with any political party. It was a group of conservative Christians saying we acknowledge that this is true, and it’s time for us to be a voice.”