Month: October 2019

Dear Mr. President: A Letter of Faith, Love, and Resistance

Dear Mr. President,

I think I owe you an apology.

For the past few years, I have paid close attention to all you say and do. I have done so because so much of what you say and do scares me. I have been fearful for the safety of people I care about, both those I know and those I don’t know. I have been concerned that much of what you say and do will bring harm to them. I have not been wrong in this, nor have I been wrong to speak out against your cruel policies and hateful rhetoric. But somewhere along the way I forgot something important.

I forgot about you.

I have basically not cared for you as a person, as a human being made in the image of God. My Christian faith teaches me to do so, but I have allowed myself to become so angry over what you have been saying and doing that I have forgotten to see you as such. In this I have sinned, against God and against you. I have asked God to forgive me, and now I ask you to do the same. I doubt you will ever see this letter, but if you do I hope you will accept it as both an apology and expression of a sincere desire to, in the words of scripture, speak the truth to you in love.

I fear I am not alone in having neglected your well-being. Many of the professing Christians who support you have done the same. I think here of the ones who continuously express their support for you, the Christian leaders and pastors who stand in your innermost councils, the ones who have prayed over you and called you ‘God’s anointed.’ Mr. President, these men and women have misled you. They are court prophets and false teachers, wolves in sheep’s clothing who preach a false Gospel. The Bible tells stories of sycophantic false prophets who tell kings exactly what they want to hear, and I fear that such as these have surrounded you. Theirs is an understanding of God and the Christian faith that is completely at odds with the scriptures. Moreover, I fear that many of them are simply using you. They see you as someone who can give them what they want, e.g., conservatives on the Supreme Court, the end to legal abortion, the preservation of their brand of religious liberty, a theocratic nationalist state. In order to gain these things, they have treated you like a god. They have showered praise upon you. They have given you ‘mulligans’ for conduct they have long preached against. They have engaged in all sorts of theological gymnastics to uphold you in everything you say and do.

But in all this they have failed to do one thing: tell the truth. They have failed to tell you who God is and what God wants. They have failed to tell you the Gospel. And in this failure, they have, I am afraid, led you farther and farther away from the one you need most of all: Jesus.

And so Mr. President, I would like the opportunity to tell you the truth. Because truth matters. Not just for its own sake, but for yours.

It starts with this: God loves you. He doesn’t love you for the things you have done. He doesn’t love you for being a successful businessman or for winning the presidency. He doesn’t love you because you draw big crowds at rallies. He loves you because he is love. God loves us all, limitlessly and without condition. From the foundations of eternity, before you or I or anything else existed, he looked down the corridors of time, saw all the bad things you and I would ever do (imagine the worst thing you have ever done – yes, God saw that) and loved us anyway. He saw us in all our sin, separated from him, and could not bear the thought of spending eternity without us. And so, in the councils of the Holy Trinity, of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a plan of action was determined. God decided to come to us in the person of the Son, Jesus. He decided to make atonement for our sins at the Cross and restore us to relationship with Himself. I am sure you know John 3:16: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life.’ You are part of the ‘world,’ Mr. President. God loved you so much that he sent Jesus to die for you. That’s how much he loves you. That’s how much you matter to him. That’s how much he longs for you to be in his arms. Mr. President, God wants to be the center of your life.

But for him to be that, you must surrender to him. Specifically, the Bible tells us that we need to repent. You have famously said that you don’t feel the need to ask God for forgiveness. Mr. President, we all need to do that. The Bible tells us that ‘all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23). God is perfect and holy, and none of us measure up to his glorious standard. But he has provided a way for us to be holy, to be cleansed of the sin that separates us from him, by confessing our sins and embracing the gift of Jesus. Mr. President, I don’t know if the Christian pastors and leaders around you have told you this, but this is something you need to do. If you want a relationship with the God who loves you, both now and in eternity, you need to confess your sins. You need to ask for forgiveness. You need to turn to the cross and invite Jesus into your life to be your Savior.

I pray with all my heart that you will do this. But there is more. The Gospel is not lip service. In addition to inviting Jesus into your life to be your Savior, you also need to embrace him as your Lord. Jesus never asked anyone to be a mere believer. He called us to be disciples. A disciple is someone who seeks to be like their Master. For Christians, this means striving to live like Jesus. Not that any of us will ever do that perfectly (Lord knows I don’t). But we need to work at it. We need to do our best to imitate Jesus and care about the things he cares about. To stand up for the people and issues that matter to him.

In this, Mr. President, your Christian advisors and supporters have, at least from what I can see, deeply failed you.

There is much they have not told you. They have not told you, or at least so it would seem, that Jesus would not condone the building of walls to prevent people fleeing for their lives from finding sanctuary. They have not told you that Jesus himself was a refugee (Matthew 2:13-15). They have not told you that the way you treat those seeking asylum, the strangers and sojourners in our midst, is not only the way we treat him but also the basis on which we will one day be judged (see, Matthew 25:31-46). They have not told you that God is affronted when you separate children from their parents. They have not told you that God cannot abide racism or hatred of the other. They have not challenged your hateful words, when you have demeaned black and brown life. They have not told you that Jesus is about love and hope, not hate and fear, and that your use of the latter to advance your political career both devalues human life and runs contrary to the Gospel of Jesus. They have not told you the Parable of the Rich Fool from Luke 12, the one that teaches that our lives do not consist in an abundance of possessions, nor have they told you of Jesus’ love and affinity for the poor, of the Bible’s insistence that we care for the weak and marginalized. They have not told you that bullying and name calling is contrary to Jesus’ way, that Jesus himself said that calling someone a fool, let alone ‘human scum,’ or ‘enemy of the people,’ or ‘bad hombres’ or other racial epithets, puts one in danger of hellfire (Matthew 5:22). They have not told you that when you label others with such names, you put their lives in danger and demean the image of God within them. They have not told you that followers of Jesus are called to be peacemakers (Matthew 5:9), not people who tear up peace treaties without giving a second thought to how to replace them. They have not told you that followers of Jesus walk in the way of nonviolence and peace; they do not encourage their supporters to beat up or otherwise harm their political enemies and critics. They have not told you that to be pro-life is not merely to oppose abortion, but to work to protect and preserve life from womb to tomb. They have not told you that Jesus called his followers to be servants, not abusive autocrats (Mark 10:42-45). And they have not told you that Jesus was a respecter of women, not someone who viciously attacks women the way that you have persistently done.

Mr. President, I know that may sound a little harsh. I hope you believe me when I say that I do not mention any of this out of anger or hatred for you. I mention it out of love for you. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t get a warm, fuzzy feeling in my chest when I think about you and the things you have done. I refer here to agape love, the love Jesus commanded us to have for everyone, the love that seeks what is best for people, whether they deserve it or not. Mr. President, I write all of this to you out of that spirit of love, because it is my sincerest hope that you will repent and turn to Jesus. Repentance in the Bible means that you turn around, that you stop moving in the direction you are heading and start traveling the other way. It is my deepest hope to see you do this. To see you stop walking in the way of fear and hate, and start walking in the way of hope and love. I long to see the day when you turn and follow Jesus, the day when I can call you, not just ‘Mr. President,’ but ‘brother.’

This is what I hope for. That you will come out of the darkness and into Christ’s marvelous light. Until that day comes, I will continue to peaceably speak out against any and all hatred and cruelty you speak, do, or propose. I will continue to be a prophetic voice for truth and the Kingdom of God. I will continue to do what the false prophets around you won’t. But I hope you know that even as I do so, I will be longing for the day when you will listen to the call of Jesus and walk in his way. If and when that day comes, I will rejoice and be glad.

Mr. President, I wish you life, health, and peace. But most of all, I wish you Jesus.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent D. Miller

Give Me Jesus

‘Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him’

– Paul the Apostle, Philippians 3:8-9(a)


Some days I feel like Zacchaeus.

For you who are church people, you know who that is. ‘Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he,’ as the old Sunday School song goes. For others, Zacchaeus was, well, a wee little man. He was the vertically challenged tax collector whose story is told in the 19th chapter of Luke’s Gospel. There we learn that he was the chief tax collector in the city of Jericho, a plum job if there ever was one. Jericho was one of the wealthiest cities in Judea, a place where a chief tax collector could make a killing by running what was essentially a pyramid scheme. Zacchaeus would hire junior tax collectors to collect sales, customs, and other taxes, knowing in advance how much he was required to hand over to the Romans. This left him free to collect enough to line the pockets of both his subordinates and himself (especially himself). Zacchaeus worked this system very well, and as a result had become very rich. Yes, it was good to be chief tax collector in Jericho.

But to become rich, Zacchaeus had sold out. He was a Jewish man whose name meant ‘righteous one.’ Obviously, his parents had high hopes for him. But he had exchanged those hopes for a lucrative career in collaboration with the Romans. I imagine he knew this: that he had been meant for something better, a life of meaning and holiness and the pursuit of God. But hey, this was the real world, right? If you wanted to make it there, you had to make compromises. Give up your idealistic dreams. Focus on what was in front of you. Make the best use of what the world gives you. And the world, it turned out, gave him a lot: a nice house, servants, and wealth enough to keep him in the lap of luxury for the rest of his life.

Some days, he could almost make himself forget that he was a sellout.

But then came the day when he could do so no longer. The day when Jesus came to town. Zacchaeus had obviously heard about Jesus. The Rabbi from Nazareth who had been traversing the Judean countryside, challenging Israel to live as God intended, delivering people from whatever bondage they had fallen into, healing people’s bodies, minds, and hearts. Jesus had been offering everyone the opportunity to fulfill their God-given potential and to experience life with God the way it was meant to be. The stories of Jesus were the kinds of things that made a man think of both who he was and what he could become. Such thinking provoked a crisis in Zacchaeus’ life. It made it harder to forget what he had become. It made him think that there was more available than life as a sellout.

And so, Zacchaeus thought, maybe there was. Maybe Jesus could give him what he had reportedly given to others. New life. New hope. A fresh start. Life with God as it was meant to be experienced. He had to find out. He had to see Jesus. There was only one problem: Zacchaeus was short (micros in Greek) and as Jesus made his way into the city, he was surrounded by groupies. Poor Zacchaeus couldn’t see over them. Zacchaeus knew that to see Jesus, he would need to think creatively. Up ahead, he saw a sycamore tree, and off he went. He cut Jesus and the crowd off at the pass and scurried up the tree. It may have been a creative solution to his problem, but it was also a ridiculous and undignified thing to do, a man of his stature and standing, running and climbing a tree. But Zacchaeus had summoned up the courage to do it, and it paid off. You can read the rest of the story in Luke 19:1-10, but the gist of it is this: Jesus found him and offered him a fresh start, which Zacchaeus eagerly accepted, embracing life the way God meant it to be experienced.

You may wonder why I feel like Zacchaeus some days. After all, I’m not a tax collector. I don’t run a pyramid scheme. I’ve never defrauded anyone. I’m not short. And those of you who know me probably don’t think of me as a sellout (at least I don’t think you do). But some days, I feel like one. As the years have ticked by, I have increasingly felt that my life as a pastor in the American church is one of compromise. Truth be told, I’m kind of sick of the compromise (for those in the church I serve, this is not a resignation letter – it’s a call to something deeper, so read on). Actually, and I know this sounds terrible, I’m sick of Christianity. I’m sick of religion. Institutional church. Denominationalism. Stone buildings and stained glass idolatries. I’m sick of the syncretism we pass off as the Christian faith, the façade that is actually a mixture of nationalism, patriotism, militarism, consumerism, selfishness, and apathy all tossed in a bowl and then glazed over with a thin veneer of Jesus. I’m sick of playing the game that pretends all of that is okay just so that I can collect a paycheck. It’s not okay. It’s all a farce. There is so much more available. So much more that Jesus offers. So much more to living the way that God intended.

I won’t to be a sellout any longer. I want to see Jesus.

That’s why, some days, I feel like Zacchaeus. I feel a real kinship with him. Just this morning, as I was walking my dog Corky, looking at the trees that line the streets of Collingswood, I imagined myself sitting with Zacchaeus in that sycamore tree. There we were, together, sick of everything we had become a part of, longing for something more, singing the words of the old hymn:

In the morning when I rise
In the morning when I rise
In the morning when I rise, give me Jesus
Give me Jesus
Give me Jesus
You can have all of this world
Give me Jesus

Oh how I want Jesus. I don’t want anything else. Keep your stained glass, your stone, your denomination, your religion. Keep your well-constructed worship services that aim to please a consumer church. You can have it all. The only thing I want from here on out is Christ. May God grant me – and all of us – the creativity and courage to be like Zacchaeus, to be every bit as undignified and ridiculous as he was in the quest to get to Jesus.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Pastor Brent

Forgiveness

I’ve been trying to get down to the heart of the matter, but my will gets weak, and my thoughts seem to scatter – but I think it’s about forgiveness.

Don Henley

This past Sunday, I preached a sermon on forgiveness. The local church I serve has been studying the Apostle’s Creed and we had come to the line: ‘we believe in the forgiveness of sins.’ The timing was perfect, as the topic of forgiveness had been in the news quite a bit the previous two weeks. There had been a debate raging over whether, in certain circumstances, it is ever appropriate to forgive (I will touch on the cause of that debate near the end of this post). For me, the answer to that was easy. Forgiveness, for the follower of Jesus, is simply not an option. And so, I shared with the congregation four reasons why I believe this to be so. Even now, post-sermon, I still feel the need to share my thoughts about it. And so in this post I will. Readers who were in the service this Sunday will find nothing new here. I encourage you to read it anyway, to let it really sink in, because for Christians, forgiveness truly is, as Don Henley says, ‘the heart of the matter.’ For everyone else, well, I present my thoughts to you in the hope that they will show you the importance of forgiveness as well, even when, and maybe especially when, it is difficult to extend.


First, followers of Jesus need to forgive because God is a God of forgiveness. We see this all over the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments. Some people think God is rather unforgiving in the Old Testament. I remember an episode of Dharma and Greg in which Dharma described the Bible this way: ‘Old Testament – God is wrath. New Testamant – God is love.’ But God has always been a loving, forgiving God. People were always messing up in Old Testament times, from Abraham to David to Hezekiah to the nation of Israel as a whole, and God was always willing to forgive them, to separate their sins from them ‘as far as the east is from the west,’ and to cast them to the bottom of the ocean floor (Psalm 103:12; Micah 7:19). This is who God is, a pardoning God of chesed (steadfast) love. To be fair to Dharma, this became clearer once humankind was given the full revelation of God in Jesus. Jesus told stories like the Parable of the Prodigal Son. He forgave the woman caught in adultery. And he offered forgiveness to the entire world at the cross – even those who crucified him. Remember his words: ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do.’ Don Henley sang, ‘I think it’s about forgiveness, even if you don’t love me.’ That’s the way God forgives. He forgives even those who spit upon and crucify him. That is a powerful reason to be forgiving. I mean, if God forgives like that, who do we think we are to do otherwise?


The second reason Jesus followers need to forgive is related: we have been forgiven. Jesus once told a story about a man who owed a debt he could not possibly pay (Matthew 18:21-35). He owed millions and he made minimum wage. At first, his master dealt with him as the world would: ordering that he and his family be sold into slavery. Isn’t that the way of the world? Instead of forgiving, you get even. But then, when the debtor begged for mercy, the Master relented, and decided to act like God. He not only revoked the prison sentence, he forgave the debt. But then the ungrateful little booger ran out and tossed someone else in prison for owing him a mere bag of shells. When the King found out, he called the man ‘an evil servant,’ pointed out his hypocrisy, and tossed him into jail. The story ends with one of the most ominous lines of scripture: ‘That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from the heart.’ Ouch. The lesson is clear: God has forgiven us for the things we have done. It is the height of ingratitude not to forgive others. God considers it a slap in the face. And so, followers of Jesus have no choice: we forgive others because we have been forgiven by God.

Now, I understand that if you aren’t a follower of Jesus, those first two reasons may not mean much to you. I would love for you to accept that there is a God who loves and forgives, and that you should forgive others out of gratitude for grace. But even if you aren’t sold on that, I really hope you will consider this: we need to forgive because to do otherwise is disastrous. Two parts here. First, when we fail to forgive, we bring disaster upon ourselves. Let me ask, when you refuse to forgive someone, who gets hurt most? That’s right. You do. Don Henley sang, ‘there are people in your life, who’ve come and gone. They’ve let you down. You know they’ve hurt your pride. You better put it all behind you baby, ’cause life moves on. If you keep carrying that anger, it will eat you up inside.’ Nelson Mandela famously said that harboring resentment is like drinking poison and expecting your enemies to die. You really don’t want to be one of those people who go through life nursing grudges, carrying bitterness and anger around in your heart. When you do that, you just allow the people who hurt you to go on hurting you. Lewis Smedes said that when you forgive, you set a prisoner free, and discover that the prisoner was you.

It is equally true that when we fail to forgive, we spread disaster all around us. Gandhi said, ‘an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.’ In his sermon, Loving your Enemies, Martin Luther King spoke of driving with his brother A.D. in Chatanooga. The oncoming drivers were refusing to dim their high beams. A.D. got fed up and said, ‘The next car that refuses to dim their lights, I’m going to fail to dim mine!’ Dr. King said, ‘Oh no! Don’t do that…it will end up in mutual destruction for all!’ He went on to explain that this was the trouble with history, that as people moved up the ‘highway of history,’ so many have looked at others who refused to dim the lights, and decided to refuse to dim theirs. He said that if somebody didn’t have enough sense to turn on the ‘dim and beautiful and powerful lights of love in the world,’ everyone would be destroyed. He ached for someone to have ‘sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate.’ This is another powerful reason to forgive: we need to forgive because forgiveness is the only thing that can break the chain of hate and replace it with the freedom to love.


Which takes me to the final reason why I believe we must forgive: because forgiveness is beautiful. It is here that we turn to the uproar that has recently taken place over the issue of forgiveness. By now, I am sure you have seen, or at least heard, of what happened at the sentencing of Amber Guyger, the white Dallas police officer who entered the wrong apartment and shot Botham Jean, an unarmed black man in his own home. It was a senseless tragedy that exacerbated racial tensions and fueled legitimate concerns about how dangerous it is to be black in America. As I pointed out to my congregation this past Sunday, if you don’t understand those concerns, it’s likely because you have been privileged enough not to have to think about them. No person of color, and no person of any color who loves a person of color, enjoys such a privilege.

At the sentencing, there were two important voices. The first was the voice of Allison Jean, Botham’s mother, who spoke of racial injustice, in both the case and the culture, and of the need to fight against such injustice. She is 100% right. There is great racial injustice in this country (and there was in that case) and we must find ways to deal with and overcome it. The second voice was Brandt Jean’s, Botham’s brother, and unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know what he did. He dimmed the lights. Tearfully, he forgave his brother’s killer. He told her that he loved her and that he wanted what was best for her. That he hoped she’d give her life to Christ. And then, he asked if he could give her a hug. The judge said yes, and as he stepped down and moved toward her, her brother’s killer ran into his arms.

Some people didn’t like that. They said Brandt didn’t have the right to do it. That forgiveness was being exalted over justice. Now let me be clear: justice matters, and the way the story broke did suggest that for some, it didn’t (it took several days for anyone to pay serious attention to the words of Allison Jean). And sadly, there are some whites who will use Brandt’s willingness to forgive as an excuse to ignore racial injustice entirely. They should be ashamed of themselves. That anyone did and will react that way to the embrace in that courtroom only proves that the fight for justice is far from over, and that we all have work to do.

But as followers of Jesus, how can we not rejoice at the sight of grace? Of course we need to work for justice. But we are still people of forgiveness. Because forgiveness is beautiful.

And you know what? It is also powerful. An eye for an eye will make the world blind. But forgiveness and enemy love, well, listen to Frederick Buechner: ‘the love for equals is a human thing – of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing – the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing – to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy – love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.’

The world will continue to debate the embrace between Amber Guyger and Brandt Jean. Many will never understand it. But when I think about so much of what plagues our world today, and struggle to get down to the heart of the matter, of what will really make a difference, I think it’s about forgiveness. And I say that not just because Don Henley thinks so. I say it because Jesus thinks so. Followers of Jesus believe in a lot of things, justice included. But we can never forget that we also believe in the forgiveness of sins.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Don Henley quotes are taken from his song, The Heart of the Matter.

Martin Luther King quotes taken from his sermon, Loving Your Enemies.

Frederick Buchner quote is from his book, The Magnificent Defeat.

Apple Pie Hill

‘Direct your children on the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it’ – Proverbs 22:6 (NLT)

This past Sunday our church’s Band of Brothers (an intergenerational group for guys) took a hike along the Batona trail in the South Jersey Pine Barrens. Our destination was a fire tower (pictured above) atop ‘Apple Pie Hill.’ In our company of men were several adults and boys at various stages along the masculine journey, among them my eight year old son Caleb.

Caleb is an adventurer if there ever was one. He is pure energy, always ready to take on the world. A force to be reckoned with. A few months back he attended a week long parkour camp during the hottest week of summer. His class met in an old a warehouse with no air-conditioning, a real oven. Each night, after a grueling eight hour day, he bounced in the front door and shouted, ‘Dad, let’s go play soccer!’ That’s Caleb. I go to the gym mainly for two purposes: (1) so I can eat more ice cream; and (2) so I can keep up with my son.

We had a great time on the hike, talking and sharing as guys do, and eventually arrived at our destination: Apple Pie Hill. My heart skipped a beat when I saw the tower. It was much taller than I thought it would be, and the stairwells were open – no caging or fencing. True confession time: I’m more than a little afraid of heights. I didn’t used to be. When I was a kid one of my favorite games was ‘what’s the tallest thing I can jump off of without getting seriously hurt’ (answer – it’s a house, and trust me, you’re better off not finding that our for yourself). But as I’ve aged I’ve developed a sense of vertigo. Like Jimmy Stewart in a Hitchcock film, I freeze when it comes to heights. But there she was, Apple Pie Hill, complete with the tower that everyone, including Caleb, wanted to climb. I would just have to man up and give it a try.

We could only go up in groups of four, and Caleb and I were in the first group. Two stairwells up my concerns began to mount. The openings on the sides of the stairwells were even bigger up close, certainly big enough for an eight year old to fall through if he became careless. In spite of my own fears, my concern, at least at the conscious level, was all for Caleb, and an event in the not too distant past wasn’t helping matters. A few months earlier, Band of Brothers had gone canoeing in these same pine barrens. The river was a fast, and at one point our canoe flipped. I popped up out of the water nicely, but Caleb popped up under the canoe. He was safe, but for two seconds, I could not find him. It is amazing what goes through a parent’s mind in such a scenario. Those were without a doubt the scariest two seconds of my life. And now here I was, climbing a tower overlooking those same barrens, filled with Jimmy Stewart-esque visions of my son falling through one of those openings. There was no doubt in my mind: this was too risky. I told Caleb as much, and as soon as I did, his bravery vanished. It’s frightening for a boy to see his Dad frightened. He agreed that we should go back down. We did. We had only made it up three of the eight or so staircases that led to the top of the tower on Apple Pie Hill.

Let me ask you: what do you imagine when you hear the word, ‘deflated?’ A balloon that’s lost its air? A blown out tire? For the rest of my life, whenever I hear ‘deflated,’ I will picture my eight year old son sitting on the ground at the base of the tower on Apple Pie Hill. He watched as other groups of four made their way up the tower and felt like a failure. I tried to explain things to him. I said this was like those signs at the amusement park that say you have to be ‘this tall’ to go on the ride. We were just being responsible. That sort of thing. I foolishly thought he would understand. He did not. As I watched Caleb sit in his frustration and failure, he almost appeared to shrink in size.

I struggled for a few minutes. What should I do? Was it too risky to climb that tower with Caleb? Was the fear I felt for him just a projection of my own? I almost convinced myself that the risk of falling was too great. But then it hit me: there are some things more dangerous than the risk of falling. There is the risk of a boy learning that he doesn’t measure up. John Eldredge says that the primary question every young man asks, and needs his father or a father figure to answer, is ‘do I have what it takes?’ There are crucial moments when a young man needs to hear his Dad affirm that he does. If this happens, he will grow to be a man. If it doesn’t, he may very well limp through life as something less.

Caleb was asking himself that question. More to the point, he was asking me. And suddenly I knew that I was failing him. I knew, as well as I’d ever known anything, that there was only one thing for me to do. I had to man up, for real this time, and lead Caleb up that tower.

So up we went. I won’t say I wasn’t a little scared. I was. But I knew what was at stake. And you know what? No one died. We, along with two other young boys asking similar questions of themselves, made it to the top. The views were spectacular, all the more so for what we had overcome to enjoy them. The ranger at the top showed us amazing pictures taken at night that made it seem that from that tower you could reach out and touch the Harvest Moon and stars. The look on Caleb’s face was priceless (the other boys too). When we made it back down there were high fives all around. No conqueror of Mount Everest has ever been more proud. Caleb looked at me and said, ‘Dad, this is the best day ever!’ and I could see in his eyes that he knew the answer to his question.

Fathers have a sacred trust. In his beautiful novel, Chasing Fireflies, Charles Martin writes about the importance of fathers in the lives of their sons: ‘I know this about boys: we are all born with a dad-sized hole in the center of our chest. Our dads either fill it with themselves, or as we grow into men and start to feel the emptiness, we medicate it with other stuff.’ Which is why we must keep the trust that has been given us. Our boys lives depend on it. This will require that we man up. That we overcome our fears. That we deal with the wounds we ourselves have experienced. We need to do this so that, when the important moments come (and they come every day) we will be able to fill the hearts of our boys, and show them that they have what it takes.

I shudder to think what might have happened to Caleb’s heart had I failed to see what was happening within it at the base of that tower. I hope that in the future, I will more quickly realize what is at stake. I pray that every time my son’s heart is on the line, I will have the courage to do what is necessary. And I pray that every man out there who is reading this, and every woman too for that matter, will do the same, for both our sons, and the sons around us.

Because every boy needs someone to show them they have what it takes. Every father needs to show every son the way to the top of Apple Pie Hill.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent