My last three columns

Our uniqueness doesn't fit stereotypes

I'm deployed stateside this summer to Beale Air Force Base near Marysville, Calif., where I am made increasingly aware that I don't exactly fit the military stereotype.

First of all, as I often joke, "Because I don't like tobacco, coffee, golf or beer, I don't know how I made it this far as a military officer."

Oh, uh, another thing: I don't do guns, unless you count the fact I qualified as a BB sharpshooter at junior high church camp. Impressive, huh?

Also, I don't have the physique you'd expect. My snow-white hair gives me the appearance of a retiree and my stomach threatens to hide the toes on my slumping 6-foot-1 frame. Not exactly a mean, green, fighting machine.

Truthfully, none of these differences prevents me from fitting in, but they sometimes make me stand out. Like you, my differences can leave me feeling awkward, like I don't belong. When I feel this way, I remind myself that God created us to make our own unique contributions to life.

Sure, it's a cliché, but the truism is supported by the popular Myers-Briggs psychological assessment test. This test identifies 16 distinct personality types using a combination of four pairs of letters:

• Extroverted or Introverted = E or I.
• Sensing or Intuitive = S or N.
• Thinking or Feeling = T or F.
• Judging or Perceiving = J or P.

For instance, Meyers-Briggs finds most military officers are INTJ. (Introvert, iNtuitive, Thoughtful and Judgmental.)

It's a rare combination of traits, but they have nearly a mystical sense they've been appointed to lead. They are practical, realistic, matter-of-fact folks who get things done. They have a clear set of logical standards and can be forceful in implementing these standards.

Uh, not me. Unlike most career military officers, I test out as an INFP, (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling and Perceptual), which means I depend more on feelings and perceptions than logic.

Meyers-Briggs says folks of my personality type tend be idealistic and loyal. We are curious, adaptable, flexible and accepting.

But the biggest difference between most INTJs and us INFPs is we usually will care more about getting along with people than we care about whether a certain set of tasks were completed. A chaplain who cares more about people than programs? I'd say that's a value-added fit for the military.

The point is, you can't judge normal by what is normal for you.

Based on Myers-Briggs alone, it's a personality zoo out there, and we would need Noah's Ark to hold a pair of every different kind of normal creature.

So heed the Apostle Paul when he says, "Go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't."

Trust in his words and be encouraged to stick to what you are made to do.
For instance he says:

"If you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don't get bossy; if you're put in charge, don't manipulate; if you're called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don't let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face." Romans 12:4-8 (The Message)

To which I would add, I married an INTJ, so they can't be all bad.


My calling from God came early

Callings have many beginnings, and if you'll allow some rambling as I near my 10th anniversary of writing this column, I'd like to share mine.

My most solid memories begin in May 1962 when my pastor-dad graduated from an Arkansas college. In the days after his graduation, he crammed all our worldly goods inside a plywood box he built atop a rusted boat trailer. He transplanted our Texas-born family to the opulent, and likely opiate, hills of Marin County, Calif. There, he enrolled as a ministerial student in Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

It was on this campus that I first conscripted my friends to play army with toy rifles and dirt grenades. We transformed the campus into a basic-training confidence course, spending hours fashioning forts in the overgrown summer grass, tumbling down ice-plant-covered embankments and storming the persistently under construction student housing area. Among my playmates was Rick Warren, not yet the famed author and pastor of the largest Christian congregation in America.

Then, in our unkempt thrift store coats, we concealed an armament of squirt guns, cap guns, stick guns and, if all else failed, a clicking thumb atop a shuddering index finger.

Demilitarization came twice on Sundays and again on Wednesdays when, dressed in suits and dresses, my family of five heaped into our blue, 1963 Rambler station wagon and joined the hymn-singing congregation my father pastored in a storefront church.

Once in the hardened pew, I laid my head in my mother's lap as her diaphragm emptied the operatic notes of "Amazing Grace." I heard her refrains as lullabies and preludes of peace before my father's sermon, a tandem that nearly always favored a 45-minute nap.

I found myself lost in the musical rhythm and hypnotic oratory of the church; some cynics even may say I was indoctrinated.

In fact, many a time I'd assemble a congregation of family members to play church, casting myself as the preacher, and my siblings as the church choir. Perhaps these early times would explain why, by the time I was in junior high, I was convinced my future role would be something behind a lectern: perhaps a lawyer, possibly a professor, probably a preacher.

It was no surprise to my friends that I enrolled at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in 1975 and, at the same school where my parents met, I told my advisor that like my father and his grandfather, I was called to preach.
My advisor told me my calling was commendable, but it would be good if I had something practical to fall back on. So, three years later, and 17 years before Baylor approved on-campus dancing, I earned a bachelor of arts in religion along with a fallback degree in journalism.

Baylor provided no special-colored tassel for a 3.01 GPA, but four years later I would add a master of divinity degree from GGBTS, the same seminary where I premiered the characters of preacher and soldier. Fifteen months after that, I blended those roles into the real life of a pastor commissioned as a citizen soldier in the Air Force Reserves.

Next month marks my 25th year in military service, and this year added my 30th year to ordained ministry. The imagined childhood roles of soldier/preacher have come to pass. God truly is good and I remain beyond grateful to be called into his service.

Biblically speaking, how well-versed are you?
Jul 17, 2011 |

Before you read this column, please open your Bible to find the book of 2nd Hesitations.

Not. There is no such book. It's an old joke perpetrated by pastors who like to check the biblical literacy of their congregants.

But the Pew Research Center didn't find America's lack of biblical knowledge funny. Last year, this nonpartisan fact tank tested the religious comprehension of Americans. If you're a churchgoer, it won't tickle you to know that atheists and agnostics scored best. Take the test yourself at http://miniurl.com/bibletest/

As a chaplain, I'm not surprised. I often find churchgoers don't know basic biblical stories. For instance, many people think the Bible says that Eve gave Adam an apple. Not true. The Bible only says it's a fruit. Furthermore, Eve received the fruit from a serpent; no mention of the devil.

Even the Christmas story has its share of misconceptions. We may sing, "We Three Kings," but the ones we call three kings were astrologers and we only assume there were three men because they brought three gifts.

But these are simple facts and harmless trivia. The real damage is done when folks use biblical misinformation to assert their own standards.

For instance, some evangelicals will assert their doctrine, "Once saved, always saved" as if it were a Scripture verse proving their Christian conversion is an irreversible lifetime membership. Not only is the saying not in Scriptures, but too often folks gloat over it like a get-out-of-jail-free card to justify bad behavior.

"Spare the rod; spoil the child" is used to justify corporal punishment. Sorry, it's not in the Bible. I'm not saying it's wrong to swat the hand of an errant child, but the actual passage is Proverbs 13:24: "The one who withholds (or spares) the rod is one who hates his son." The verse probably says more against the complacent parent than it justifies the violent expression of your will upon a child.

But the one misquote I rarely tolerate is: "God only gives you what you can handle." As I've explained in past columns, the quote is a poor paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 10:13, which is more accurately paraphrased as: "God will not allow us to be tempted beyond our ability to escape." It's the writer's way of saying, "Just say no" and it means God will provide us with an out in every temptation. The danger in this folksy misquote is it burdens people with a belief that God gives them their calamities.

Jesus angrily denounced religious leaders for their habit of quoting verses that supported their selfish causes: "They tie up heavy loads, hard to carry, and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing even to lift a finger to move them."

If you are like me and got 100 percent on the test, congratulations. We are spiritually gifted and well-versed in verses. But the real test is how you apply the Bible, not to others, but to yourself.

I read a blog recently by Craig T. Owns, a Michigan pastor (see http://craigtowens.com). He says when he reads the Bible, he asks himself some hard questions.

• Do I have an emotional response? Or is it just a meaningless daily habit?
• Do I share with others what the Scripture has revealed about me?
• Am I willing to be accountable to others to make the changes I need?

But his best question is the one that I've been trying to say for the past 600 words: Do you just read the Bible? Or do you allow the Bible to read you?