The Best Form of Protest

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Church Kid

Hi, I’m Jonathan and I’m a part of the church.

I’m not going to mince words at the beginning here. I straight grew up in church. In the Bible belt, the Bible pants, and the Bible shirt. I sometimes think that if my mom could have given birth to me inside of a sanctuary she would have.

My dad was a pastor when I was growing up so some of my earliest memories are crawling under pews and being in church nurseries. Some kid bit me in a nursery one time and I’ve never forgiven him for it. I remember eating the extra communion crackers with my sister Melissa when my parents weren’t looking. I remember Melissa and I would make games up in the church parking lot to kill the time while my dad talked to missionaries and members for hours upon hours… upon hours. I think he still might be out there talking.

On many rides home from church, I remember praying to God that my dad would forget that he told me I was going to get spanking for screwing around during service. Sometimes it actually worked. (That’s how I learned about the power of prayer.)

It always baffles me when I have friends, even in my twenties, that have never been to a funeral. I’ve been to so many I can’t even begin to count. I’ve been to a whole lot of weddings, too. Just part of growing up in church with a family that is super involved. The church is a place of weddings and new lives starting, and it’s also a place of funerals and where death is put on display. It seems that life and death both can be found in the church on given days.

I remember the VBS’s, the revivals, the choirs, the fall festivals, the Christmas musicals, and the cake. The people of God love cake if you didn’t know that.

I remember other heavier things as well.

I remember visiting people in trailer parks and how scared I was of the random dogs running around. I remember the crazy people arguing with my dad outside of our small church because he wouldn’t give them everything they wanted financially. I remember visiting sick and dying people in hospitals and nursing homes. I remember handing out food to hungry people. And I particularly remember standing outside all throughout my hometown with hundreds of other people from churches holding signs on one Sunday every year. Signs that said, “Abortion kills children” and “Adoption: The Loving Option.” Everyone loves a good rhyme, right?

Interestingly enough, I don’t remember ever having a choice to go to any of these heavier things. My parents never asked me, “Do you want to go do this?” I just went. And other than the fact that it was hot and boring, I didn’t think we were doing anything wrong or ridiculous. It’s just what we did as a church. As the church. As the people of God. I figured this was how we made God happy.

The point of my essay is not to talk about any of these things specifically. I simply want to just give you some insight into my upbringing. When I say I was born in the church, I mean it.

Once I hit my twenties, I started to rethink some things. We could talk for a long time about opinions of mine that have changed over the recent years and some opinions that are in the midst of transitioning right now. But for the sake of having an actual point to all of this, I will just say that I’ve realized that I don’t think the church is what I grew up believing it was. The church’s four walls are not the holiest place in the city, the people within them are not always nice, and the sermons aren’t always 100 percent accurate.

I don’t think that Jesus was a Republican, and I don’t think that God is happy when we just go down a ballot and check off the box for all the Republicans with no thought whatsoever as to what the candidates' actual stances are. Maybe it’s just moving to DC, but daily I become more annoyed with what I hear people saying the church should be and what people say a Christian should look like. Just because someone has a national show doesn’t mean that his or her voice is anything worth respecting. In fact, they constantly show me exactly what I don’t want to look like as a Christian, or even as an American.

Welcome to the Age of Extremes

I recently read that President Obama is leading a war on coal. Really? Is he sending soldiers into the mines? I also heard that there is a war on Christmas. And I think I heard that there is a war on marriage, too?

Everything is a war these days. If I was “War” I’d be pretty offended that you were throwing my name around like that. “Hey, I’m War. Don’t you lump my WWII in with this stuff, that’s disrespectful to my past! I leave people dead and homeless, not just opinionated and annoyed!”

Thanks to 24-hour news networks, everything has to be a big deal. Never forget that CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC are competing with American Idol and Monday Night Football. They want ratings just as bad as NBC, but they just happen to have to be reporting news all the time. Everything has to be a “war” or no one will watch it. And when everyone is at war, no one is at peace.

Disaster and fear boost ratings. It’s proven. I grew up in Florida, and the only time we watched the weather channel was if there was a hurricane coming. We were glued to the coverage. The same concept is what these news networks use. Disaster and fear. You had better hear what they have to say or you may lose your job or your civil liberties. Nothing usually plays out to the extreme they say it will; yet we keep watching and listening to the rhetoric they have to tell us. And they know it.

Can we admit that we are in an age of extremes? Why does everything have to be so far one way or the other? Go read through your Facebook news feed or a YouTube comment section, I guarantee you you’ll find 99 extremists to every one peacemaker. I believe this is why Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” because he knew they are as rare as an actual good deal at Banana Republic.

We might like singing, “Give peace a chance” but few really want to do what it takes to bring peace. Peace means compromising. We like the thought of “peace on our terms.” Agree with my views and we can get along. That’s not real peace, but it’s really what we want, isn’t it?

What Did You Expect?

As a Christian, I am often annoyed with what I hear coming out of my brothers and sisters’ mouths. Every time there is an election it’s like we finally open up the book of Revelation and start pulling random verses out and make them apply to various different aspects of candidates.

Of course it goes beyond just election season. I can think back in my life at the various things I’ve seen church people boycott. Then we get really mad when other people want to boycott the things that we like and act like they are ridiculous for thinking a boycott could possibly work. If that sounds like a double standard… it’s because it is.

When I hear people say things like, “We need to get America back to where it was,” it makes me wonder what point in time they are talking about. Back to what? Back to segregation? Back to slavery? Back to Civil War? Back to the raping and murdering of the natives? What time could we possibly want to get back to?

Or do they mean, “Back to when it was easier to be a Christian, white man. Back when we weren’t challenged by anything. Back when Presidents and Generals praised our religious beliefs. Back when we could say one thing and do another and there was no one to hold us accountable for our hypocrisy.”

Just what do you want to go back to?

Now, obviously I don’t believe we are living in the sweetest time of the earth’s existence. There are tragedies and heartbreak every single day. There are things worth getting upset about. There are things worth taking a stand over. There is still endless room for improvement. And in defense of the church, I will say I am sad to see God being pushed out of agendas. I am sad to hear that people don’t want to be a nation under God. I am sad to hear that people don’t want to pray. But most of my sadness comes not from God being moved out of the government and society, but out of our hearts.

I’d love it if Jesus was sitting on earth as the President of the United States, but he’s not. And since he is not, we are left with human beings running the show. The world would be at peace if we didn’t have any humans, so if you really want world peace then maybe you should start praying for a plague. Until everyone on earth dies out, though, you can bet Christians will continue to see things play out in ways they do not want them to.

I don’t say that to be a downer, I say it because I am referencing Jesus.

John 15:18-19

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”

So should we be surprised by disagreements with our faith? Should we be surprised that not everyone wants to celebrate Christmas with us? I mean Jesus kind of spelled it out for us didn’t he?

So, what if there actually is a “war on Christmas”? What should our response be? Does God want us to flip out and spread more fear and outrage? Is that what brings change? Do we want to be the annoying “woe-is-me” people who try to get everyone to feel sorry for us? Or do we want to be stand-up people aren’t afraid to be disagreed with? People who can say “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day”? (2 Timothy 1:2)

We cannot claim to be given a Kingdom that cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:28) and then say that if one man is elected then everything we know will be destroyed. If one man can destroy what we say we believe with all of our hearts, then we have no hope at all. We are selling empty promises. If we think a government can keep the Kingdom of God from coming then we must not really believe what we say we do about the power of God.

The Best Form of Protest

Sometimes I get so annoyed with the church. Then, I have to remember two things: I am the church, and she is the bride of Christ. So I better not abandon her, and I better defend her.

I am proud to call myself a Christian. I am proud to be a part of a religion that accepts me for who I am. I am glad that I serve a God who loves me just as I am, but who is still working on me. I like being in the church. And I love that we have a God who is bigger than our mistakes.

The point of all of this hasn’t been that Christians need to shut up and just grin and bear it all. It hasn’t been that we are in a losing battle. If anything, I want to echo Proverbs 31:9, “Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.”

I’ve just been wondering for some time now what the best form of protest is. Is it holding signs on the side of a street? Is it writing our congressman or marching on Washington? Maybe there’s some good in those things, and maybe God has called some of us to do them, but maybe the steps towards the change we want to see in this world don’t come with national headlines.

I’ve been thinking about when Jesus was talking to Pilate before he was crucified (John 18:37-38). He told Pilate, “Everyone who is for me is on the side of truth.” Pilate responds, “What is truth?”

I feel like Pilate in a lot of ways. I know I am on the side of Jesus so I must be on the side of truth, but if I can be honest, sometimes the lines seem to blur due to all the noise, charts, and graphics on TV and computer screens. I’m left asking, “What is truth?” But I think that is a question that God doesn’t mind us asking him.

The truth about truth is that whether it makes us happy or not, whether we can agree with it or not, or whether we want to accept it or not does not change the fact that it is truth. Maybe in our pursuit of the truth God will reveal some things to us that we really don’t like, or answers that might mean we have to eat some of our words.

What if the best form of protest is different than the ways we’ve advocated for change in the past? What if we were not just hearers and repeaters of the word, but doers of the word? What if we were people who kept our cool in the thick of the changes we didn’t like?

The Apostle Peter gave some governmental advice in 1 Peter 2:17, “Fear God, honor the king.” He didn’t say to fear the king; he said to fear God. Perhaps we are wasting our time getting up in arms about things that wouldn’t be such a big deal if we learned what it truly meant to fear God.

To me, the best form of protest is to live a holy life. To learn how to disagree in love and respect. To learn how to stand for truth first and foremost in our own lives. To hold ourselves accountable before we hold anyone else accountable.

I’ve always been impressed by the way Jesus handled his crucifixion. It was the most incorrect and unjust governmental and societal action in the history of time. A perfect man forced to carry his cross and die. But he took it with dignity and in holiness.

Isaiah 53:7

“He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”

Surely there are times for us to speak up and let our voices be heard, and we’ve heard that the squeaky wheel gets the oil, but I ask that we at least consider the way Jesus actually handled his opposition. He shut his mouth. He stood for something greater than what any man could take away. The person the church strives to be like knew when to speak and knew when to stand silent.

I believe in the church, and I believe in the church in this country. I really could talk for hours about all the good I’ve seen come out of the people in the church. But the reason I love the church is because I’m allowed to be a screw up. I’m allowed to be someone who constantly makes mistakes and gets it wrong. I’m allowed to still be a part of the Body of Christ and I am encouraged to even boast in my weaknesses. It’s an amazing thing. Simply put—the people of God are the people of God because we know we are so messed up that we need God.

If we serve a God who is willing to find the best in us and to continue to work in us despite our shortcomings, we had better be people who are willing to change. People who can ask hard questions. People who can undergo surgery on our hearts, our motives, and our character. People who can admit when we are wrong.

Our God is humble. Are we?

The Grey

Do you remember that show “The Facts of Life”? I had an older sister so I had to watch it growing up. I can’t remember too much of the plot or characters (thankfully) but I do remember the theme song.

Sing it with me folks!
“You take the good. You take the bad. You take them both and there you have the facts of life. The facts of life!”

Nothing like an 80s sitcom to speak truth into your life. There you go; it’s plain and simple. There’s good and there’s bad and that’s about it. Well, maybe not quite.

Any of you that really know me probably know that I grew up in church. Under the pews, finding frogs in the bushes, hitting people’s cars with footballs; just all of that good, old church living. From the time I was born I did most of my thinking about life from the view inside of the walls of a church. Wasn’t really told to do much thinking anywhere else.

Now just to be clear, I could talk for hours and hours about all the good I have seen in the church and in the people involved with it. This is in no way a letter bashing what I was born into; I love the church and I will defend it as long as I have to. But that being said, I think I would be doing a disservice to myself if I didn’t at least bring to light some of the things I am learning and that might not coincide with what I grew up being told was true. I'm finding in my own life that one of the best methods of teaching is not necessarily saying, "This is what I've learned," but rather, "This is how I am learning." Not that I in any way claim to be a teacher, but I do think we can learn from each other.

One of the things that I feel I grew up hearing a lot was basically that there were always only two sides to everything. Just like a coin. The good and the bad. The right and the wrong. The truth and the lie. Life is made up of clear sides and dividing lines. There is no room between the black and the white areas.

For a very long time I was fine with that. I did what I was supposed to do and things pretty much worked out. I had a great faith in a great God and what I knew him to be. My best friends were people who believed basically what I believed, and we all encouraged each other in our own views. We were pretty happy. People are usually happy when things go according to plan.

Then, I went away to college.

College was a bit different. As you probably know, you get people from every walk of life at a university, especially one as diverse as the University of Florida. Even in the Christian circles I was in I realized that not everyone believed the same things about the Bible that I did. Now, I’ve never been one for confrontations or disagreements because I never really had to be in them; I was surrounded by people who agreed with me. But as I interacted with people I grew to love, I found that we could disagree on issues and beliefs but still work together in accomplishing the same common goals. Diversity at its finest.

How can that be possible, though, if there are only two sides? How could there be more than two ways to look at something? May I submit to you an area beyond just black and white? An area I have taken to calling “The Grey.”

All right, get all your 50 Shades of Grey jokes and Liam Neeson references out of your system right now.

You may have heard of “the grey” before, and perhaps you have heard it called by some other name. I heard about it once or twice growing up, but I concluded that if I had any doubts about anything then it belonged on the “wrong” side of the line, because the Bible had clear answers for everything.

Fundamentalists, go ahead and pick up your stones because here goes… the Bible does not answer all of the questions most of us have. It just doesn’t. And I don’t believe it was intended to.

The Bible in itself is made up of ancient texts. Things that people wrote thousands of years ago. Can we really expect those same words to give us answers about practices and decisions that would have never come into play back then? If you read the Bible’s words as only black and white, you can’t. But as you look into the grey, you may come to see that the words are indeed “living and active” and they can remain relevant in an ever-changing world. God could have outlined every single command and every single answer to life in the clearest way possible, but he didn’t. He gave us brains. And more importantly, he gave us his Spirit.

I get frustrated sometimes because I want things to be laid out a little more clearly. I want answers explained better. I want to know if I’m doing things right or wrong. Most of my troubles can be attributed to the fact that I am terrible at waiting and I also have a brain that doesn’t shut off. The combination of these two disorders can make it very difficult to live life when you’re only seeing things in black and white.

I think thoughts like, “Well, a little bit of faith can move mountains, and I have a little bit of faith. So… why is this mountain not moving? I must not have faith. Or maybe I’m screwing something else up and God is upset with me and unwilling to back me up?” When you think black and white you may tend to think thoughts like that.

So, faith can move mountains, but what about when it doesn’t? What about when the sick are not healed and the poor stay poor? Does it mean that there was not enough faith in the prayer? I mean, the Bible clearly says that faith moves mountains. If the mountains aren’t moving then something must be off with us, right?

I think many of us struggle with the idea of prayer being something like water being put into a water balloon. The more we pray, the more water is deposited into our balloon. We keep filling it up and eventually, after we’ve prayed and fasted enough, the balloon will pop and what God really wanted to happen will finally be done. But I am learning that what I want to happen and what God wants to happen can seem to differ quite a bit. Can prayer force God to do something he doesn’t want to do?
Well, yes it can, right? Prayer changes things. That verse 2 Chronicles 7:14 says, “If my people pray…” Look, I believe prayer can change things, but what if the greatest power of prayer is not the power to change our circumstances but the power to change our hearts, our minds, and our motives.

Black and white can only see a mathematical system: Prayer + Faith = God’s will. But the grey throws out the formulas.

So maybe some of you are thinking, “Listen, hippie. I get what you’re trying to sell us. ‘Question everything. The truth is out there, maaaan.’ But what am I supposed to do with that?” That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not saying we cannot ever be certain about anything. I am just trying to say that maybe it’s all right to have a few questions every once in a while. I question things all the time, and it doesn’t mean that God is upset with me. God is bigger than our questions.

I understand about two percent of all of this, but I believe it. Maybe that's all that faith is. Maybe honest faith that God approves of can only at times say, “I don’t understand this, but I trust you.” What if we only have two percent faith, but it’s enough to get us to act as if we had 100 percent faith? Does God accept our decisions even though we don’t have everything figured out and have some doubts? And do we trust God enough to be wrong?

If we believe in Jesus then we believe that God loved us enough to come to us as Emmanuel, “God with us.” We serve a God that wants to be known way more than we even want to know him. If you seek him, he will find you because he's looking for you, too.

If we are called to come to him as children then that is about as ignorant as you can get. A child doesn’t have it all figured out and a child doesn’t know how things work; they just do stuff. They don’t question the laws of gravity; they just go down the slide. They don’t know how mom and dad are going to get them dinner, but they know they are going to get it. Is that really how God wants us to come to him? Isn’t that blind faith?

Yes. It is.

We are so afraid to have blind faith because our society demands proof on all accounts, which is what makes the grey so hard. But blind faith in God is exactly what he calls us to have. To be able to say things like, “I really don’t know the answer to that, but I trust that God is good.” And say things like, “I don’t like going through this, but God knows what he is doing.” I know those are hard words to say in the thick of it, but in essence that is what we must live out. To say, “I don’t really understand this, but I believe it and I trust you.”

The Word of God pulls no punches. It clearly says, “The wisdom of the world is foolishness to God,” (1 Corinthians 3:19) which can only mean the other side of that is true as well—“The wisdom of God is foolishness to the world.”  No wonder we feel so dumb sometimes. We have human brains trying to figure out the far superior mind of the Creator.
Read the Bible and you will find many stories of men and women who experienced the grey.

They wandered in it.

They wrestled with it.

They walked on it.

They endured it.

It seems to me that the grey is an essential part of our faith, and possibly a requirement or right of passage for all true believers. To know God is to know his mystery. To understand that you will never fully understand him and be okay with that. He is a God who is bigger than our doubts and fears. He can handle a humble heart that is searching for truth, because he is the Truth.

I don’t think God is as afraid of the grey as many might think he is. The grey is where we search for him because we don't know the answers to life’s questions. The grey is why we seek him. The grey is why we need him. And the grey is where we discover beauty we never could have seen in the black and white.

Don’t run from the grey, run towards it.

Different Minds, Different Kinds

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One of my favorite lyrics from Billy Joel’s music comes from “It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me.”

Should I try to be a straight A student? If you are then you think too much.

I picked up this mantra when I hit college and realized I was all right with making B’s, and depending on the course, a couple of C’s. I liked to refer to them as “A Gentleman’s C.”

I grew up as a straight-A student. The work just came easy to me from elementary through middle school. Math made sense. Science made sense. English didn’t make sense but I could at least figure out what the teacher wanted. When I got to high school things got a little more challenging and I had to try a little harder in some classes, but I still graduated with a GPA over 4.0. (Alright ladies, who’s impressed yet?)

Then, I went to the University of Florida. I was in classes with some of the brightest minds in Florida and even the nation. It didn’t take long until I felt like the dumbest person there. I was in a marketing class barely getting by with a C and people were telling me, “Oh this class is so easy.” I would laugh along with them and agree, completely lying through my teeth. I would think things like, “I do not belong at this university. I am just not smart enough to hang with these students.” For a long time I felt that way, but I loved being a student there so I kept working hard at it.

I majored in advertising because I was told it had less math than marketing, so I thought I was done with math forever once I hit the classes for my major. I was wrong. There was a course we had to take called Media Planning that was all numbers and statistics and budgeting. I was in advertising hell. We took an exam and the next day our professor wrote the highest and lowest test scores on the board. I think the highest was about a 92 percent and the lowest was a 43 percent. My friends and I laughed and said, “Oh wow, I wonder who got the 43! That’s awful.” Again, I laughed along with them. Then I went home and checked my grade online and guess who had gotten the 43 percent. (Any ladies still impressed?)

I’ll never forget that.

For a while I had been telling some people, “I feel like I might be the dumbest person here.” That day I got to confirm that I was in fact the dumbest person there. My confidence was not soaring, so I went and ate my comfort food… Sonny’s. (Worries and fears seem to melt away at the smell of corn nuggets.) This sort of struggle went on for a while. I’d try to find the other students who were struggling like I was in whatever major they were in and have mini-group therapy sessions where we could feel like we were not alone. But those were rare. There are a lot of smarty-pants Gators.

I soldiered through the course because I had discovered long ago the art of “sitting next to the smart kid and making them your friend.” That’s a skill I hope to pass onto my children. By using that technique, as well as writing a good amount of “please pass me” letters to my professors (true story), I was making it through college one plea for mercy at a time. But I still did not feel like I belonged in that academic region.

Then something happened. I got to take some creative classes. Classes that graded you on how creative your ideas were, not just how well you could regurgitate and reinterpret a book. Classes that required us to come up with slogans, ad campaigns, and use a variety of media vehicles. I started to feel better about things because I started to feel like this was where I belonged.

I would talk with students who I know had gotten way higher grades than me in our other courses and who were now struggling to come up with creative ideas, while I was coming up with plenty of ideas with very little effort. I was now the one getting the highest grades. Professors told me they used my projects as examples in their other classes. Me. Literally the dumbest kid in the Media Planning class.

My confidence found me and for the first time at UF I felt like I belonged, and it was there that I started learning about my strengths and weaknesses. Like I said at the beginning, I stopped worrying about making As in classes I knew were really hard for me, and I focused on being the best in the courses where a mind like mine felt more at home. I figured out how to use my creative strengths in group projects where we all could benefit from each other’s different skills. I had one friend who was very book smart and thorough, two things I really wasn’t, but she liked working with me because I would come up with the creative ideas and ads. We took about every advertising class together and we aced quite a bit of assignments and projects.

I grew up my whole life thinking that being smart meant you had straight A’s, and no doubt you’re obviously not an idiot if you can pull off grades like that. What I have come to realize, though, is that there are many different forms of smart, but in America, we tend to do a good job of defining intelligence with only one explanation. “Kids, [this] is what a smart person looks like. Be like them.” So when students, and adults, struggle in areas that others don’t, they feel like they aren’t smart people. They lose confidence. They settle.

I’m willing to bet if you’re not a straight-A type of person, you have strengths that you don’t even realize are strengths. It’s just a matter of finding them or seeing them as strengths. Start to look at what you’re good at doing and see if everyone around you can do it like you can. There are so many things I see my friends and colleagues doing that I just cannot do or even begin to understand the process of doing, but I had a friend ask me how I write songs and I walked him through my process and he said, “I don’t know how you are able to do that. I never could.” But for me, it’s sometimes as simple as just sitting down with my guitar and a song will pour out in about 30 minutes. Not every time, of course, but it’s just something that comes easier for me. It clicks with me. And it’s something I constantly am trying to improve in, but the initial connection and reaction are there to begin with. That connection is not there with pleeeeeenty of other areas. For example, I can’t learn a foreign language to save my life.

Maybe I’m old school but I don’t really like the idea of every player getting a trophy after baseball. I think a 3^rd place trophy is about as low as it should go. When everyone is a winner then no one really is. (Again, maybe that’s the old man in me. As you have may have seen, I do love my cardigans, plaid shirts, and my pipe.) We tell our kids they can be anything they want to be when they grow up, but it simply isn’t true. I’m not saying to squash your children’s dreams, but I do think you are lying to them in a sense. The truth is we have the freedom to be anything we want to be, but we don’t have the abilities.

One of the best things I think my mother did for me as I was growing up was let me try out anything I wanted to try out. If I wanted to play baseball, she was going to get me to the baseball games. When I got really into basketball, we had Michael Jordan games on all the time. When I was 13 and wanted to play guitar because I thought it was cool how Steven Curtis Chapman could play and write his own songs, she sat in my room with me every night and taught me whatever she knew. She was at all my band gigs and comedy nights. If she saw me excelling in something, she got behind whatever it was. She didn’t try to make me do Model U.N. when I had no interest in it. (Which was a good call because I pretty much hate politics now even though I live in DC.) There were countless other endeavors I had from time to time, and she was always supportive of them, but she never tried to make me be someone I wasn’t. I really appreciate that, and to this day she still is the exact same way.

In no way do I think I am someone who needs to be telling you how to raise your kids; obviously I have none of my own, but this is more than just a letter about child rearing. I see the same school day struggles in my adult life. So many people are unsatisfied with who they are or what they are doing because they don’t look like someone else. America has one definition of success, and if we don’t meet that definition then it’s because we haven’t worked hard enough. But that is a lie.

If we spend our lives trying to conform to what works for other people but isn’t supposed to work for us, we will always be conflicted and discouraged. God made you the way you are for a reason. Just because you don’t look like someone else, it doesn’t mean you are not successful or gifted. It just means you are not identical to someone else, but who wants to be in a world full of robots? I know Will Smith doesn’t.

This straight-A mindset might work for some people, but really it could just be that they are gifted in the academic realm. Walt Disney didn’t make straight As. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates didn’t either. I know Tim Tebow sure as heck didn’t.  But all of those people found out ways to strengthen their strengths and move past their weaknesses. There is power in being able to say, “I can’t do that,” “I am not good at this,” and especially “I was wrong.” I know it goes against every self-help book out there, but I think humility, rationality, and acceptance need to find their rightful places in our minds and character.

You might not be able to ever be the CEO of a company; you might not have it in you, but what if you were never meant to be a CEO? What if the world doesn’t need you to be a CEO, but rather, to be the coach of a little league team that a CEO would never have time to coach? (Make sure you don’t give all of them trophies if they lose, though.) Does that mean you are unsuccessful in life? Does it?

What if you were actually able to be content with your job and what you do?

What if you don’t need to “be more like your older brother” like you’ve always heard?

What if you are exactly where you need to be?

My advice is to find out what your strengths are and invest your energy in them. If you have weaknesses that you want to work on then, by all means, practice and pursue those changes. All I am submitting to you is that maybe we have wasted a lot of time feeling bad about ourselves for reasons beyond our control. Your family needs you to be you. Your friends need you to be you. And most of all, you need you to be you.

A Stupid Way to Live: Expectations

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By no means do I feel like I am someone who should be giving advice on how to live your life, but I’ve seen enough people on TV and Twitter that give advice that shouldn’t be either so I figure I can’t be much worse than them. I can’t really offer any deep wisdom or profound thoughts, but I can just tell you some of the ways of how I am learning.

Sometimes I simply find myself just plain sad. Do you ever have those days where you feel like you did when you just watched Mufasa die for the first time? It comes out of nowhere and hits you in the heart and head. Sometimes you can shake it off relatively quickly, but other times it seems to stick around for a little longer. Maybe for some it is a daily occurrence right now. I know there have been times in my life where every morning I had to look myself in the mirror, turn on the Rocky soundtrack, and give myself a pep talk.

Recently, I was bummed out. Not watch-Mufasa-die bummed out, but just kind of low. If you have a non-stop brain like mine then you know that it can be pretty annoying. I’m not good at pushing out the negative thoughts and thinking about good things or random things, or even just zoning out. I analyze the heck out of it and try to solve the mystery and piece together the puzzles. It kind of sucks being that way. I wish I could just go turn on the TV and turn my mind off, but I can’t. I was in full detective mode.

I was trying to figure out what the issue was, and I concluded it was because I was disappointed with some of the current areas in my life. Things weren’t going the way I had planned for them to go. And to be frank, I didn’t think God was holding up his end of the deal. You know that deal that really isn’t a deal but we think it is a deal? The one that goes a little something like, “Hey, I’m a good person… so things should be working out a little better.”

So I was bummed. I was bumming myself out that I was bummed. I was talking to my friends and bumming them out. It’s not a fun state of mind. Nobody enjoys being around that, except maybe Goth kids. Are Goth kids still in existence? Are they all still congregating outside of my high school geometry classroom?

But the next morning I had some wisdom knocked into my head in the form of one of my favorite songs by John Reuben called “Hindsight”:

Patience tends to not agree with my psyche. That's more than likely just some pride in me fighting expectations of where I think my life should be. Selfishly I forget so quickly.

That line hit me pretty hard. As hard as when Simba hit that hyena in the face. (I need to get another DVD besides The Lion King.) It started to become clear to me that the frustrations I was wrestling with were my own, dumb fault.

I think a lot of the unrest in my life comes from expectations. It comes from the fact that I put expectations on myself, on others, and on God. When what I’ve expected to happen doesn't turn out like I think it should, I get upset. And that's really a stupid way to live.

It's not that we shouldn’t have goals or plans for our lives, but it's different when you have expectations on your life that you just make up in your mind. If I place expectations on other people and on God to do things I think they should do, that is unreasonable and unfair. What does anyone else owe me? What does God owe me? Nothing. Of course there are a few things that maybe certain people are required by law to give me, but most of the things that we have as expectations come from selfishness. Pride. A false sense of entitlement. (The spoiled little brat inside of us. My inner spoiled brat’s name is Nelson. He is horrible to have at dinner parties)

I believe we are all selfish people by nature. Perhaps you don’t agree with me, and that’s fine, but go try to take away a random 2-year-old’s toy and tell me what he does. We don’t ever get rid of that nature, it is just the things we desire grow with age. Our toys get more expensive, and our expectations get more unrealistic. It’s no wonder they are unrealistic, though, when in 21^st Century America we call “reality” what Jersey Shore is getting paid millions to live in. Reality has become a bad TV show on the E! Channel. (Here is the one rule I adamantly live by: Know as little as possible about whatever is on the E! Channel.)

We want control. We want control of our realities. We want control of our false realities. We are selfish. It’s just a matter of how selfish we let ourselves be.

Being a valet for a few years gave me some insight into life. One of the lessons I learned was this, “Not everyone should drive a car.” Good grief, if you only knew about some of the people that we let get back on the road. It’s the same with our metaphorical roads of life. We’re trying to drive cars we were never meant to. We are steering wherever we want to go and not where the road takes us. God is the only one who should drive. And maybe some of us backseat drivers need a good old-fashioned reach into the backseat smack in the face. Oh you never got one of those?

I don’t have all of this figured out perfectly yet, and maybe a dude in his twenties doesn’t really have a place to be giving his opinions on life like this, but like I said, all I am offering is how I am learning. I’m making a point in my life to focus on shutting up and killing my stupid expectations.

Chase your dreams. Challenge yourself. Set goals. But know there is a difference between those good things and our selfish expectations. I’m willing to bet that the distinction of the two will give you a little more peace in your life and make you more enjoyable to be around. It could also be the difference in you getting an ulcer in your thirties or not.

Hey, I’m right in this with you. I’m finding the more words I say, the more words I have to eat. And I’m already totally stuffed.

How I Went to Prison

I wrote this for my good friend Robert Valdez's newsletter about his ministry to the prisons of Central Florida, Casting the Net Ministries.

Greetings! My name is Jonathan Tony. Not Tony Jonathan, that’s ridiculous. I’ve been working with Casting the Net Ministries and Robert Valdez for a few years now, so let me give you a little bit of my story of how I came to be involved with it all.

In 2009 I was working for a local Christian radio station in Ocala, FL, but living in Gainesville, FL. I would drive down on Monday nights and host a 3-4 hour show consisting of a lot of talking and music. I started getting calls from a man in a South Florida prison every week. He said that he and some of the men there would listen to our show, and we’d end up talking a little bit each week. I thought it was really cool, and then the Lord started working in my heart about it all. In that same time frame, I had started meeting with Robert every week or two for dinner. We had become friends at church during a prayer service, and I just liked hanging out with him. I didn’t know at first that he went into prisons and ministered.

So Robert started talking to me about the ministry he was doing, and I got really excited. Robert has a way of getting you excited about whatever he’s talking about. I’m not entirely sure how he does it, but I think much of it can be attributed to volume of his voice. If you’ve never seen Robert get excited, it doesn’t mean that you haven’t heard him get excited. If you’ve ever heard a random voice and been like, “What was that? Who’s talking?” That was probably Robert excitedly talking to someone a few miles away.

So after the phone calls from the man and talking with Robert, the Lord spoke to me the simple verse, “I was in prison and you visited me…” (Matthew 25:36) I don’t know if I totally understand what God’s will is for many different areas of life, but I figured visiting someone in prison was a pretty straight-forward, easy to understand place to start. So I told Robert I’d like to get involved and we decided I’d start going on Monday nights to the work camp services.

After a few weeks of having a surprisingly difficult time of just being able to get approval to go into the Gainesville prisons (including me falling asleep during the orientation with the Chaplin, Robert, and I) I was finally ready to go in. My only experience with anything like this was when I went to a youth corrections facility when I was 14, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had questions like, “How do I possibly relate to men in this situation?” I’d never had a run in with the law. I’d never sold drugs and didn’t even know what most of them look like; for the first 20 years of my life I thought marijuana was a city in Brazil. What would the men think of me? I don’t have anything in common with them. Why would they want to hear anything from me?

I started going in and for the most part remained quiet during the services. I was leading the worship and pounding out old-school hymns I hadn’t sung in decades on the raggedy, out-of-tune piano that was in the chapel. I thought it was going to be a little easier to lead worship and that most of these guys would be able to sing like in the Jailhouse Rock video. Turns out I was way off. If that praise and worship was beautiful incense to the Lord then we have entirely different noses. But I’m sure God loved it, and in all seriousness, there is nothing like hearing a room full of prisoners sing Amazing Grace and sing of what it truly means to be free in spite of the walls of razor wire and bricks around them.

 Anyways, it didn’t take long for me to realize that just because we didn’t share the same backgrounds, it didn’t mean we didn’t share the same struggles. You see, at the heart of every human being, we are made up of the same stuff. We are all insecure. We are all afraid. We are all helpless. It is our undeniable need for a great God that makes us all the same. Once you realize that everyone has a breaking point, you may find it’s not so hard to connect. I couldn’t stand up there and preach to them about how hard it is to be in prison, I didn’t know anything about that. I don’t know what it’s like to miss my wife and kids. But I do know what it feels like to think God has forsaken you. I do know what it feels like to know you need something but you’re not even sure what it is. I do know what it means to cry in desperation as you beg for the God you’ve put your faith in to forgive you of sins you wouldn’t forgive yourself of. I do know about those times.

We’ve all been given a voice that needs to speak. We’ve all been given a testimony that needs to be told. If you think your life only comes down to you, you’re quite mistaken. I personally think that so many people are just waiting to know that they’re not the only ones who are like them. It’s amazing what showing your own heart can do. It’s amazing how showing your own wounds can be the very thing that starts to heal someone else’s. And when you think about it, it’s actually how Jesus works. “By his wounds, we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)

We’ve all been given grace, and true grace can only continue to spread. Whether you find yourself in a prison with 30 men, or in a Starbucks with a new friend, allow yourself to share the stories of the life God has given you. You may find the Kingdom is closer than you think.

Robert and I outside of a Gainesville, FL prison after our weekly Monday night service. Gotta love that guy.

If you would like to partner with Robert and Casting the Net, please contact them on their Facebook page here.

The Sun Wouldn't Rise (Story and the song)

This is the story behind my song “The Sun Wouldn’t Rise”. 


I wrote this song a few months ago while I was still job hunting. If you’ve never had the fun of job-hunting, I assure you it is one of the most annoying things you could possibly go through. Worse than a marathon of Olsen Twins movies.

Each day I would wake up and apply for jobs, go to interviews, networking events, etc. and each day I would get notified about some new rejection. Every “Thanks for applying, but…” email would continually remind me how bad I was at everything and how everyone was moving way faster in life than I was.

Now, for the first few weeks or so, it’s doable. You just turn on a Rocky movie, get pumped up, and remind yourself that good things take time and hard work. But going into your third year post-college and still being in the same spot you were when you started can really wear on your emotions and self esteem. Needless to say, every word that came out of my mouth was not an “Amen.” In fact, many of the words would probably upset a lot of you parents. I'm sorry, but it’s just the truth.

I could talk for a long time about those years and all the struggle I went through because there are so many stories from that time. And I know a lot of you probably have shared a conversation or two with me during that time and you know what I mean. But for the sake of this message, let’s just say that I was pretty low and every day was a day I had to fight through, with more than just the lack of a job coming against me.

So let’s flash back a little while before that now.

While I was in college I was heavily involved in FCA at the University of Florida. One of the best decisions of my life was getting into that community of amazing people. Even after I graduated, I stayed in Gainesville for two years, and FCA is the type of community that you will just always be a part of.

Unfortunately for FCA, a casual, fun trip that some of the students had gone on in Georgia ended up being the exact opposite. While doing a little cave diving, my friend (and the current president of FCA) Grant Lockenbach was tragically killed along with another member of the group whom I never had the privilege of meeting.

That’s the kind of thing that no one plans for or could ever be ready for. How could you be ready for something like that? It’s so sudden and so painful that it just cuts through you like a knife. One of those things where you just look up to God and stare clueless and helpless.

I went to the memorial service they had for the two boys the following evening or so. It was one of those times where everyone is hurting and angry even, but yet you feel some strange sort of peace just by being around people you love and knowing you had loved the same person. That’s the redeeming part of funerals.

We sang some worship songs led by the FCA band and spent some time in prayer. Then to my surprise, my friend Keri got up to speak. The reason this was a surprise to me is because she was Grant’s girlfriend at the time of the accident. She had literally just been with him the day before. I thought, “How the heck can she get up and share anything and it make sense right now? What could she possibly say? I would be way too angry at God to encourage the people of God.” But there she was, standing before the crowd and holding the microphone.

Keri shared a story and even all this time later I haven’t forgotten it. She said that on the Georgia trip her and Grant had gotten up early to try and go watch the sunrise. There’s nothing like seeing the sun come up while you’re in the mountains, and being from Florida, it’s not something we have the chance to see often.

She said that they had gotten up quite early and headed off to find a good spot. They headed out and found a good spot that the view would be amazing from and they waited for that breathtaking sunrise. And they waited. And they waited a little longer. After waiting for so long, they decided that they should just head back to the campsite, and that apparently the sun wasn’t going to show up that day.

As they were heading back, they slowly began to see some light shining behind them. Turning around, they realized that it was of course the sun. She said they felt pretty ridiculous. “How could we have thought that the actual sun was not going to rise that morning?!”

Sure enough the sun rose. And she went on to say that even though this time that they were all in was dark, and it seems like it’s been darker longer than it should be, the sun would indeed rise on it all. The glory of God would show up. The comfort and restoration promised to us by God would come around. The sun would rise.

I couldn’t get these thoughts out of my head one November evening as I knelt by my bed. I wish I could say I was kneeling out of faith, but I was on my knees in desperation. I had just gotten done yelling at God in my closet so the neighbors wouldn’t hear me screaming and think someone was being murdered. I’m not sure that’s what Jesus meant by “prayer closet” but it works for me. It was hard to worship God. It was hard to believe for something good to happen because for so long just absolutely nothing had worked. I remember literally praying for the "crumbs of the bread off the table," I’d receive even just any little thing from God. I didn’t care. (Matthew 15:17)

But I felt the Lord keep reminding me of Keri’s testimony, and telling me that sun would rise on me. I couldn’t shake it and I felt a peace come over me that I can’t explain. You know how the Bible says that God will turn our mourning into dancing? Well, it’s true. I sat down on my bed and began to write this song.

This kind of Hope is what separates us from the rest of the world. The hope we have in darkness. We'd be delusional to try and act like things are always good when honestly they just suck. And I don't think God expects us to wake up some mornings and just say, "I'm happy!" when we're not. But what I'm finding more than ever is that the Word of God really is what it says it is. And in my weakness, he really is strong. I don't get it, and I don't like it, but there is a purpose for it. We may never find out until eternity, but there is a purpose. I don't think God wastes any of our tears. And we have to believe that the sun will rise. That God's promises are not just neat thoughts, but they are actually his unshakable, reliable word.

And so I started believing that. That God is going to come through, not because of any amount of works I could do, but simply because he loves me. And good things are in store, because he said they were.

And here I am ten months later and I can’t tell you how much has changed just in that amount of time. I don’t tell you this because I think it's because I’m so smart and persistent; I tell you this because I’ve simply seen the grace and goodness of God in ways I can’t deny. You can call it what you want if you don’t believe and it doesn’t bother me, but with everything in me I believe that God does it all. I’m not talented enough to pull any of this stuff off.

I don’t know where you’re at or how dark things might seem for you right now. And I guess I don’t even want to phrase it “might seem,” things could be just straight dark. But just as sure as day comes, I am confident that things will not always be dark. And in your heart you have to ask yourself, “Who is more faithful? The sun, or the Creator of the sun?”

You can make it. You don’t have to give up. You don’t have to believe the thoughts in your head or what others may be telling you. Believe that he “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.” (Ephesians 3:20)

I know I'm only in my 20s and I can only tell you what I know and what I believe, but I still believe that the sun is going to rise. Keep the faith.

Link to the song

Never seen a night like this one, and maybe I’m not right where I should be.
I’ve been looking under tables for the crumbs, that are falling from the bread of kings and queens.

Maybe you’ve grown tired of my prayers, or maybe you’re expecting more of me,
They told me that you’d always be there, but I never thought it’d be so hard to believe.

Don’t let me go, don’t close your eyes, don’t go away even when I say you should.
I know you know, I’ve told you lies, but my lies are facing up to The Truth.

Staring into the darkest of nights, how could we believe that the sun wouldn’t rise?
And what I can’t see is still in your sights, how could we believe that the sun wouldn’t rise?

Tight fist, and no one knows the pain, of what it means to lose what you’ve believed.
And I think you’ve got a lot to explain, but right now you’ve chosen not to speak.

But I know your voice is more than words, it’s more than just what I could hear or read,
And I’ve made the choice to put you first; so this must mean I’m right where I should be
And I know you’re here taking this with me.

Staring into the darkest of nights, how could we believe that the sun wouldn’t rise?
And what I can’t see is still in your sights, how could we believe that the sun wouldn’t rise?

And we will see, the dawn will rise in majesty,
And we will know, what all the pain and loss was for,
And when he comes, our tears will blow away like dust,
And I believe, that this Kingdom never lost its King,
I still believe.

And though right now I can’t see your ways,
Soon we will see face to face.

Staring into the darkest of nights, how could we believe that the sun wouldn’t rise?
And what I can’t see is still in your sights, I still believe that this sun will rise.

Office Talk

Today's lesson:

Do your best to avoid office gossip. Even the people you like in the office are normally negative about things going on there. It's kind of how people like to unite I'm seeing. But keep a positive attitude about everyone. Don't get sucked in. Avoid it because you also don't want to know too much of what is going on, especially coming from one person. You never know what the truth is and you can form opinions around what they say.

Today's wrap up: --Stay chill, don't speak ill.--