The Mad Ravings of a Bona Fide Tree Hugger

By Brent Garzelli

Have you ever wondered how the universe came to be and how a world, created so perfectly, could stray so far from its original objective? Does sin have something to do with not only the way we live but also the world we live in? These and many other questions have intrigued Reverend Brent Garzelli for his more than fifty years of following Christ. Garzelli believes he is on the most important journey of all—the trip to find God, man, and the relationship between the two. He deftly applies the authority of the Bible to find ultimate truth built on the foundation of faith. Won’t you come along as he shows us how to take a fresh, new look at the identity of God and all we see around us?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Sep 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483457932

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Garzelli

Copyright © 2016 Gary Brent Garzelli.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission. NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® and NIV® are registered trademarks of Biblica, Inc. Use of either trademark for the offering of goods or services requires the prior written consent of Biblica US, Inc.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5792-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5793-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016914863

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 09/14/2016

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Chapter 1. You Are What You Eat!

Chapter 2. Creation Theories

Chapter 3. The Significance of the Fall

Chapter 4. The Nature of God

Chapter 5. The Advent of Sin and Its Lingering Effects

Chapter 6. Caution: Love Causes Blindness

Chapter 7. Faith Leads to Enhanced Eye Sight

Chapter 8. Angelology and Demonology

Chapter 9. From Silage to Soul Winning

Chapter 10. The Cost of Pharisaism

Chapter 11. Relationships Are All That Matter

Chapter 12. Death-The One Thing We All Have In Common

Chapter 13. The Great Commission

Chapter 14. God Revealed Through Creation

Chapter 15. Forgetting vs. Forgiving

Chapter 16. Political Correctness Run Amok in Our World

Chapter 17. Choices of Love

Chapter 18. Faith (addendum)

Chapter 19. The Antithesis of Cultural Norms-Humility

Chapter 20. November 28, 2009

Chapter 21. January 14, 2010-Why I Dread Saturdays

Epilogue

About the Author

For Cheryl and Erin who taught me to love and have inspired me far more than I ever did them.

A special thank you to:

My grandparents-who modeled love before me.

My parents-who taught me far more than they taught their students.

Air Force chaplains Harry E. Houseman, Doc Hiram Jones, Walt Beamon and Brad Riza-who saw more in me than I ever saw in myself.

Dr. Hugh Wamble, Dr. Bill Ratliff, Dr. Pierce Matheney, Dr. Jerry Horner, et al-each of you taught me to think and not what to think.

Author’s Note

Our God is so immense, so awesome, and so magnificent that none of us can fully understand Him. Hence, revelation is an individual matter. God reveals Himself to each of those that believe in His Son to the degree they are able to understand the revelation, within the talents each of us possess. God reveals Himself to me differently than to other Christians. We may both be correct even though God reveals different aspects of Himself to each of us. Only the Bible provides uniform revelation of God to His Body, the Church.

I will often refer to God as He or Him. This is not because I am a male chauvinist, but because God has no gender and mankind has always had difficulty finding a name to apply to their God. The ancient Israelites called this God, Yaweh, Elohim, or some other name for the Creator. As you journey with me, I hope the great I AM, the Alpha and Omega will become more real to each of us. If nothing else, I hope my faith inspired by years of living for Christ, will generate thought in the reader.

The Lord has allowed me to live in such exotic places as Costa Rica (twice), Panama and Venezuela. He has sustained me as guns have been placed against my head, my stomach, and while I lie on my daughter as multiple rounds ricocheted off of tables and concrete all around us-and not one round struck either of us. Six years ago, I survived a near-fatal brain aneurysm. Later, one of my doctors told me that only about five per cent of persons survive from a brain aneurysm in the same location as mine. A missionary friend and sister in Christ in Costa Rica suffered the same sort of aneurysm, but did not survive. Why did I survive and not her? Only the Lord knows for sure, but it was His grace that gives me opportunity to write down a life of interaction with our Creator.

After thirty-seven years as an ordained minister of our Lord Jesus Christ, I can only conclude that I am here to tell you about the great mystery to be found in our Savior, Jesus. Now, in my sixty-third year, a life of revelations is finally leading me to formulate a theology. But I have no desire to make the reader suffer through another boring theological treatise like those I was forced to read in seminary. There is no attempt on my part to form another systematic theology. Rather, I hope the reader will join me in thinking about our Lord; who He is, what He has done for each of us, and where He is to be found. It is more important for each of us who believe to ask the right questions than to reach uniform answers.

As you read, you will note that sometimes the word church is spelled with a small c and other times with a capital C. Church denotes the Body of Christ as established by God in Matthew 16:18. When I use the word church I am referring to the physical edifice or the institution established by man or some manifestation of man.

By way of disclaimer, I want to disavow any affiliation with Wicca, or any other divergent group. Have no doubt I am a Christian who sees God in both his Creation and beyond. He is in every aspect of creation, experience, relationship, prayer, and His Word, The Bible.

I have used the New International Version for my biblical quotes except in a few cases where I preferred the translation in a different version. In those few cases, I have clearly indicated the translation used.

Some of the chapters will logically follow the preceding chapters, but many will not. I wish my life had been so congruous, but it has been a series of valleys and mountains and I have finally realized that the Lord has been in it all. Enjoy the journey; I know I have.

CHAPTER 1

You Are What You Eat!

Some of my earliest memories include days with my mother’s parents-too few days as I look back now. My Grandmother Laughlin was a large, fleshy woman who kept my cheeks red from her frequent kisses. I never had to ask if she loved me since her actions were self-explanatory. She not only loved me but every human she met. She even loved the hens, and the horse and cow in the pasture above her house.

Grandfather Laughlin was a large man who was ashamed of his weight. Periodically, we would drive the cattle off of the cattle scales and weigh this large man. He always wore a western felt hat and was the epitome of the ideal man in the western culture. He was so masculine that he made John Wayne look like a wimp. I always found it ironic that he loved to watch the television show The Andy Griffith Show since we lived close to Waynesville, Missouri, the twin of the fictitious Mayberry, North Carolina. As depicted in the television show, church was a major part of our lives and entertainment was often Grandpa Laughlin telling an old Ozark tale by the stove or on the front porch in summer.

Waynesville, Missouri had its own share of colorful and unique characters. One in particular, had Tourette Syndrome, before I knew the definition of that term. He would sit directly in front of the pulpit as the minister preached and cursed in the most profane terms possible. The children of the church would sit behind him and wonder what new terms he had in his vocabulary that fine Lord’s Day. He seemed to have no brain and would sometimes brandish a small pocket knife, rotate it inside his left ear canal until the blade would disappear from sight. We often wondered if the tip of the blade would exit the other ear canal.

My Grandfather Laughlin never ceased to amaze me. He taught me to hold a clip of grass between my thumbs and make a noise like a whistle. He showed me how to properly bridle and saddle a horse, to drive cattle up a chute into a waiting truck and to love others as the Lord has loved us. For a man with a fourth grade education, he was the most intelligent and wise man I have ever known.

One morning after breakfast, Grandpa said to me, Get out from under your Mammy’s skirt (his term for Grandma Laughlin) and come and go with me. It’s time to learn to be a man. I was three years old, plenty old to him since his father died when he was seven and he was plowing the Roubidoux Creek bottom with mules when he was eight. He had me raking hay by the time I was five. From that day forward, when my grandfather left the house, I was not far behind. I thought he desired my presence because of my special place in his heart, but in fact, we had no electronic devices to summon help and he had suffered several heart attacks. I was there to retrieve help in case of another attack. But he did love me.

The wisdom of the early Ozark settlers was embodied in Grandpa Laughlin. He was a wonderful farmer and could read the land. At age four, I stood at the end of a half-mile long field. My uncles had plowed and disked the field and Grandpa Laughlin was crumbling up the dirt clods to check for water content. He said, It’s time to plant corn when the new oak leaves are the size of a squirrel’s ear. He must have been right because he always had some of the best corn crops in Pulaski County, Missouri.

Grandpa was always mischievous with that glint in his eye that betrayed a jovial nature. But on that day, as he crumbled the dirt, he looked straight at me and said, Son, your Mammy thinks God is up there somewhere (as he pointed to the heavens), but God is right here. In about three months, there will be corn plants ten feet tall growing out of this dirt. God is in every clod of dirt where they grow. There on the banks of the Roubidoux Creek, I began my search for God. As promised, God revealed Himself the following September as that field produced the biggest silage harvest of my lifetime.

Following one of my Grandmother Laughlin’s famous home-cooked meals, Grandfather Laughlin took me aside and said, You are what you eat. Everything from that meal was produced in the soils of these Ozark hills. The potatoes, beans, and corn were grown here on the farm. The beef was raised on these grassy hills and the milk for the chocolate pie came from that old cow out in the pasture. You are a true Ozarkian. His eyes nearly filled with tears of pride as he spoke.

For Grandfather Laughlin, the Ozarks and God were synonymous terms. One time, he told me that Moses made a wrong turn at the Red Sea. The Ozarks are the real ‘Promised Land.’ To this day, I am not sure if he was joking or not.

Grandfather Laughlin was an endless source of wisdom. Much like our Lord, Jesus Christ, he loved to compare and contrast. He told me, Son, there are two kinds of people in this world that you can never feed-them that say they ain’t hungry and them that bring their own spoon. Experience has taught me that he was right on both counts. On another occasion, he said, Son, there are two kinds of folks in this world-them that have to hit the wall and bounce and them that learn from watching others hit the wall and bounce. You want to be one of the latter.

I could continue to rave about how God has shed His grace on my native Ozarks, but to do so would be to miss the point. It was here, in my earliest years that I began to formulate a theology that has served me well all of these years in the Body of Christ. It was in Missouri that I first saw what the Church could be and should be.

When I was three years old, my Grandfather was nearly killed in a car wreck. With a bad heart, he survived, but the man with him did not. Grandpa was in the hospital for weeks and his cattle had to be fed in his absence. He had plans to build a new barn and had already poured the cement for his silos and the foundation of the barn, but all of the lumber remained stacked nearby. In one accord, the men of the Church came to the site and erected a huge barn on the foundation in two days. The ladies of the Church brought meals to the men and at the end of the second day, they scattered hay all over the hay loft of the new barn. The entire Church came to the barn on the second night and had a square dance until midnight. All the while, the Church fed my grandparents’ cattle and took my grandmother, who could not drive, to see her husband in the hospital. The love the Church showed for them was inspirational to a little boy like me. I have spent my life seeking to find this love that is free in Jesus Christ and nowhere else.

There is no doubt that I am a true Ozarkian and proud of that fact, but more importantly, I am a Christian. Like my Grandfather said over half a century ago, we are