My strip club experience

Last night Michael Tipton took me to a strip club. Well, that is not totally true; I will rephrase. Last night Michael Tipton took me to three strip clubs. Now before you shut down my blog and remove it from your “favorites” list, let me give you a bit of an explanation.

Last semester a Prof. from Wesley College started standing in front of a strip club in Jackson, Mississippi. She would tell the men walking in that she was praying for them. She would walk around the parking lot and pray. One of the managers asked her to leave … she didn’t. The next week she brought some students. Throughout the next few weeks each Thursday, they were there … and reactions were mixed to say the least. One student has been punched in the face, a dog was released on a few students, the head professor was kicked, and many threats of “bad things” that were/are going to happen.

So Last night at 10:00 PM The Right Rev. Tipton and I took a trip to downtown Jackson, across the bridge of no return (cause the railroad tracks are so jacked up the almost blow your tire out… but that’s a story for another day). We then parked in a used car lot, and met with about 14 other students who were there for the same task. We split up and went to three different “adult clubs”. Tipton and I walked across the street to the closest one, and immediately a man in an orange shirt came out the door and started walking right towards us. “Looks like some new faces today,” he exclaimed, “you guys bringing in recruits?” Everyone laughed as he, Terry*, walked around and shook hands with the students. Each asked him how his family was, what was going on in his life, and other various questions. I found that this particular guy had asked the group to pray for his family a few weeks back. He then brought his truck around and said, “Hey I got my MercyMe CD back, I’ll play it for ya while you pray.” With that, he turned on the music and walked back into the club, letting me know it was nice to meet me before he disappeared back into the smoke filled building.

Michael and I then walked down to the next club. We were greeted by a student who explained to us the situation. While the previous clubs head manager (the dog releasing guy) was pretty mean, this clubs bouncer was really nice. Apparently, on one exceptionally cold and rainy night, Ray* came out to the students and said, “I am standing out here cause I’m gonna make $500, but you guys are out here cause you believe in something … I admire that.” I was able to talk with Ray* a little bit, and hear his story. He’s been bouncing for 20 years. He has two children, both under ten years of age, and he is only addicted to cigarettes now. He cautioned me to “watch out for drunk drivers,” and to “stand on the curb if they get too close.”

After that discussion, we walked to another establishment. This particular one was where one of the students had been punched a few weeks ago. I enquired about that particular story and he explained. He had been talking to a potential customer, and the manager Ted* took exception to it. Soooo…..what was Ted* to do other than punch a student. The action was much less hopping at this place, but just as I was leaving, a dancer came out. One of the guys asked her if she needed help loading stuff into her car, and she smiled and said no she could handle it herself. It was here that my heart started breaking. These girls, this situation, everything going on took a face, was given flesh, just walked outside. One of the female students told me they had brought the other manager a Christmas gift before they had left for Christmas, and said it seemed like he was warming up to them.

As Michael and I returned to the club we started at the students were in a fairly heated discussion with a man that had just left the club. At one point he said something about his sister being a lesbian, at that moment Terry* said something I will never forget “So is mine, and I’m glad. I see what guys are like here every night, and they are jerks. They’re bad news.” What a statement. This man would rather his sister be with a girl because he saw how poorly men acted at this club. Terry* then told the group that the girls had forgotten they were coming, however next week were going to bring out coffee and donuts to the group. As Terry* and I discussed his random piercing, his affinity for pain and suspension, and his statements “when I die I’ll become dust, but these piercings will still be there…. That’s all I’m leaving this world” and “I like pain… it helps me remember that I’m still alive …. Here in ‘paradise’.”

I left a different person. My mind has not stopped working since I came back. How do people like Terry* and Ray* hear the gospel. What does it take to have them think about their lives? What does it take to get them to contemplate a better life? Apparently, it takes a group of brave students and Christians walking around the outside the parking lot ... praying.

Tonight the question is why

Tonight the question is why?

Tonight my heart aches, back breaks, shoulders shake
From the pain, weight, and sobs.

My mind hurts, as nothing works
Quite like it should.

Dark nights turn to days I know
But now bitter seeds are sowed
And the harvest seems to be the same.

I know I’m real small, and not tall
And I cant’ see all
Of his plans

But right now my empty hands, want to grasp
I want to lay down this happy mask
And weep and cry
And just ask why
Such a beautiful rose has to whither, bruise, and die.

---Aaron Duvall

Tonight a good friend died. She was one of the happiest human beings I know. I had never heard her complain in my life. She was never just good, never “ok”, she was always terrific, until she couldn’t say that anymore, and then it was a thumbs up and a salute. She was the best example of unconditional love that I had ever seen. Always good for a hug and a smile. I hope some day when I become a good Christian I can be one like Kim. I don’t think she would have complained about this. But tonight I’m not Kim. Kim Hawk is heaven, and I’m here …. Tonight …. Asking why.

A Life of Apologeticts

In the book Adventures in Missing the Point, Tony Campolo recalls an experience he had with two of his advisees at the University of Pennsylvania. One was a brilliant, neo-Marist-atheist, and the other was a committed Christian, yet not an intellectual. Both decided to go to Cornell for graduate work, and were to be roommates. Tony was worried that the neo-Marxist who loved to argue would overwhelm the Christian and drag him into his atheistic beliefs.

You can imagine my surprise a year and a half later when I visited with them both at Cornell and discovered that the neo-Marxist had become a Christian. How was that possible? I asked seeing what a good arguer he was.
“I always won the arguments,” the ex-atheist said. “It seemed like every evening I would give him an array of good reasons why religion in general was ludicrous, and how the belief that Jesus was the incarnation of God was untenable. But at the end of every argument, after I had won the confrontation decisively, my buddy would always say, ‘But I know that Jesus is real. I know that Christ is alive. I sense his presence. I have experience a sense of his leading in my life. You may have won the arguments, but you cannot undo what I know to be true. Jesus is alive in me.’
“What could I say to that? Sooner or later my attacks were no match for his defense. How could I unconvince him of something so obviously real in his life?”


What a powerful testimony of faith! Even when his position seemed un-defendable and when his intellect knew that he had lost the arguments, he continued to believe in that which he knew was true; that which he had faith in.

I’m starting to realize that most worldviews, most positions, most opinions, and our choices to follow these ideologies are chosen by a priori commitments. We choose what to believe and then go on constructing are arguments after the fact.

I am finding that apologetics and intellectual defenses do great work in reaffirming one’s faith. I love to read Lee Strobel and Evidence that Demands a Verdict. But my question is can these create faith or do they just confirm for those who are seeking faith?

I recall a story about a well-known Christian apologist that had traveled to secular schools debating with atheists and student bodies over the proofs for Christianity. At one such event a student came forth and asked a question. The apologist quickly answered and twisted the question back towards the student. The student stuttered for a moment and answered as best he could, but his answer was met with a flurry of other, more difficult questions. Finally the student answered the only way he had left … “I don’t know.” The apologist answered “As such, do you really think you should be asking me questions.” As the student body was clearing out one young lady was over heard saying “I don’t care if the (explicative) is right, he’s a jerk and I’m not buying it.”

A life lived in accordance to the Gospel is the most powerful apologetic that we can share. We has humans are emotional beings and the choices we make are as influenced by those emotions as they are our logic and intellect.

THOUGHTS?

Reason defined?

Now if anyone else was writing this particular blog and they did not define what “faith” and “reason” meant early on I would be upset. I would be the jerk in the comment box that was saying “how can you say that when we don’t know what the words mean to you.” So I’m going to do my best of defining these two terms. If you have a better definition that you think would help I would love to hear it.

Reason: rea·son n.
1. The basis or motive for an action, decision, or conviction.
2. A declaration made to explain or justify action, decision, or conviction: inquired about her reason for leaving.
3. An underlying fact or cause that provides logical sense for a premise or occurrence: There is reason to believe that the accused did not commit this crime.
4. The capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought; intelligence.
5. Good judgment; sound sense.
6. A normal mental state; sanity: He has lost his reason.
7. Logic. A premise, usually the minor premise, of an argument.

I think that each of these has probably a bit of what I mean. Numbers two, three, and seven are probably the ones I will be dealing with the most. That which is logical. Not only that which is logical, but that which conforms to logic.

So what does this look like in a church or faith sense? Well I don’t really know exactly. Obviously their must be some sort of order or logic behind that which we believe. If there wasn’t then there would be no way to communicate it or really to live it out. However, does everything have to fall into the neat and orderly categories that reason likes to put it in.

Faith and Reason

So, in the last few blogs I have been looking at for the past few weeks, there has been a common theme in my thought process. What's with "reason"? So I know that's a broad thought, and it is one that can be dealt with for a long, long time, but I want to at least play with it for a little bit.

How important is reason to the Christian walk, and furthermore to the everyday walk that all people deal with. There seems to be a great tension with “faith” and “reason” whether it be in Science, Religion, Govt., Church matters, or well just about anyplace else.

We are all children of modernity, well most of us anyway. We were taught a modern view of science (that it is objective and totally correct). Matter does not move without being acted upon first. FACT! Electrons float around in these nice little lines around the outside of the nucleus of an atom. FACT! The speed of light is always constant. FACT!

And then I came to college. There I learned that Science is not objective, but biased just like everything else. I learned that matter does move without being acted upon (quarks inside of atoms), and Electrons are flying all over the place we don’t really know where they are all the time, and the speed of light has actually slowed down over time.

This put me in quite the predicament. Reason was being tested and losing on multiple fronts. I learned that matter can take up the same space at the same time as long as we don’t observe it, and other crazy facts. This then started to change my view of scripture, philosophy, and life in general.

So I think I’m going to play with this idea in my next few posts, but I’d like some reactions first. Where does reason fit in with religion? Where does Faith fit in with life as a whole … Am I exercising it at least a bit when I take a step, or sit down?