Misfit Faith: Confessions of a Drunk Ex-Pastor - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JASON STELLMAN, cohost of the podcast Drunk Ex-Pastors, is a Southern California native and transplant to Seattle who wishes he still lived in Europe. He served as a missionary with Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa in Uganda ('91-'92) and in Hungary ('94-2000). Ordained In the Presbyterian Church in America, he was called to plant Exile Presbyterian Church in the Seattle area where he served from 2004-2012. In September 2012, he was received into the Catholic Church. He drinks and questions his faith regularly.

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Daddy Issues (Or, Does God Deserve That “World’s Best Father” Mug?)

“I Believe in God, the Father Almighty . . .”

When I was a missionary with Calvary Chapel in Europe, I was introduced to the work of the singer-songwriter Rich Mullins. I was initially dismissive of him because of how much I think Christian music sucks. I mean, there’s only so much soft rock “Jesus Is My Boyfriend” drivel a guy can take, and I was at the point where if I heard one more song about how Jesus wants to take me into a garden and whisper sweet nothings into my ear with his hot breath while running his hand over the small of my back, I was going to light myself on fire. But the other missionaries (most of whom shared my disdain for religious rock) assured me that Mullins was different, and when I popped in the cassette tape of A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band, I realized they were right. There was something very human and earthy about his style and his words, a grittiness to which I was unaccustomed, especially when juxtaposed with the glammy and overproduced Christian music that was popular at the time.

One of the songs on that album was called “Creed,” and in it Mullins simply sang one of the oldest expressions of the Christian faith, the Apostles’ Creed, the first line of which reads, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” He then added a chorus, part of which said (in reference to the Creed), “I did not make it, no, it is making me.” That particular line initially struck me as odd until I remembered the words of Paul in Romans 6, where the apostle referred to the gospel as “that form of doctrine to which you were delivered” (verse 17, NKJV). The idea is that the truth of God is not something over which man sits as judge or maker but rather something that makes and judges him. Faith is constantly sculpting us, is what I’m getting at.

As I made my own transition out of a rather high-strung and sure-of-myself Protestantism into a more unclenched, misfit Catholicism, I realized that what was “making” Rich Mullins, and what had made so many other saints down through the ages, was the truth contained in that first line of the Creed: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty.” As elementary as it sounds, it was the fatherhood of God that began to play the most significant role in my own spiritual transformation, a transformation that left very few nerves untouched and very few stones unturned. What I’d like to do in this chapter is explore God’s fatherhood, seeking to show how a better grasp of this reality can transform our view of God and our view of ourselves as his children.

“This My Son Was Dead, and Is Alive Again!”

The concept of “the fatherhood of God” may be unfamiliar to many of you, so let me explain it as best I can. Since around the fourth century, the Church has taught that God is three-in-one, that he exists in three distinct but coequal Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (And please don’t try to actually understand this. It’s weird, mysterious, and not really the kind of thing we can wrap our brains around.) This is why Jesus, when teaching about his Father, often resorted to stories and parables, and without a doubt, his parable of the prodigal son is one of the most illustrative portrayals of this idea in all of Scripture. In case you’re not familiar, or your memory’s a bit rusty, I’ll sum it up:

The younger of two brothers decides that he wants his share of his father’s inheritance immediately rather than waiting for his father to get around to actually dying. (Old people take forever to do anything, am I right?) The father agrees, and the younger son heads to a far-off land--whatever antiquity’s version of Vegas was--in order to party, sleep with, umm, “women of ill repute,” and engage in whatever other salacious activity money can buy. (Use your imagination. Actually, don’t.) Not unpredictably, the son reaches the end of his rope once his inheritance is exhausted: he is living in squalor and tending swine, even finding himself so hungry that he would gladly have filled his belly with the scraps he was feeding his pigs. The prodigal finally comes to his senses and decides to humble himself and return to his father, even rehearsing a confession speech about his own unworthiness to be considered a son and willingness to be hired on as a servant. But before he can even reach his door, his father sees him afar off and runs to meet him. And despite the protestations of his older and better-behaved son, the father embraces the prodigal, kisses him, and before the younger son can deliver his mea culpa, his father commands that he be adorned as an honored member of the family and that a lavish feast be prepared to celebrate his return.

Now, speaking for myself, I can imagine a much more likely response to this son from his father upon hearing his son’s initial request: “What’s that? You want to skip the remainder of my life as well as the funeral and get straight to the reading of the will? And you want this so you can run off and dishonor yourself and me with a bunch of hookers and blow? Nice try, but howsabout instead I just write you out of my will altogether, you little punk?” But this father reacted very differently to his son’s disloyalty, which is what is so obviously striking about the story. In spite of such willful disregard, the father responded to his son’s selfish request and eventual return with utter grace, understanding, and familial love. In a word, he responded like a father.

What Is God, Really?

For most of my Christian life, ideas like “the Trinity” and “the fatherhood of God” were things I had little practical use for. They were concepts I kept in my back pocket in case some Mormons (who deny them) came knocking at my door: “Listen up: You guys are totally in a cult. Read these verses about how God is three-in-one and get back to me. And quit it with the whole polygamy thing. Geez.” While God being a “Father” could become useful for apologetical purposes, it didn’t make much difference in day-to-day life, is what I’m saying.

More often than not when I would present the gospel, I would root it in a God who was a creator and judge but not so much a Father. I’d say something like “The God who created all things, and who also made you, will one day be your judge when you stand before him on the last day,” and so on. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, the Bible is clear that God acts as both creator and judge. But the question I began to ponder was, “Is being a creator, or being a judge, actually what makes God God? Are these traits necessary? Do they define him?” The answer is obviously no. We know this because before Genesis 1:1 happened, God was still God. He didn’t somehow need to create anything in order to fully be who he is. This idea that God did not create out of some inherent need on his part flies in the face of the way the gospel is often presented: God is displayed as having been bored and in need of companionship before he created man, and therefore his creative efforts were to assuage his divine loneliness. In short, God had a man-shaped hole in his heart that only we could fill.

But if God would still be God if he never created anything, and if his godhood would not be diminished in the slightest if he never judged anyone, then what exactly, at the end of the day, is he? What is it that makes God God? The answer is simple (albeit hopelessly complex): God is three-in-one, he is a Father who has a...