Myopic Me! Freedom from Religion

By John D Lane Jr

When nine of us prayed at Holden Beach, we thanked God, though we had been the victims of the Shepherding Religion. But Jesus's proactive trip into the Wilderness had confronted an estimated forty-two hundred religions, according to current estimates. Jesus's bedrock actions, combined with His confrontation of "Legion," spelled the doom for religion's strongholds.

Post-Holden Beach, my wife's dream revealed that "T-Jacks" come to snap at the ankles of every irreligious person, who nevertheless has formulated their own religion. They, we, become ensnared in the sweaty religion of Myopic Me!

Paul says that Myopic Me! perfectly describes the crooked generation's love of self and money, contemptuous of Law, acting with cruelty, disobedient to parents, boastful, and loving pleasure while scoffing at God. Paul tells us that religion comes to everyone who demotes Christ's finished work. Thus, my five books address these battlefields for the soul of man:

Captured by the Faith-Time Continuum

Jerusalem with Solomon & Einstein

Made in the Bipolar Image of God

Dividing Wall of Hostility

Freedom from Religion

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886445527

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

1: One True Religion?

2: The Shepherding Movement

3: The Recapitulation

4: The Duke Alliance

5: Just Show Us the Way!

6: Our History Makes Wikipedia

7: Addendum: Paul's Spiritual Son

8: Holden Beach Prayers

9: Moving to Midland

10: The Curse of the Law

11: Superstitious Prayers

12: Attack of the T-Jacks

13: The Trickster in the Wilderness

14: The Conundrum of Hamartia

15: Tolerance as Religion

16: Daniel's Religion

17: The Pharisaic Conundrum—Authority!

18: The Pharisaic Conundrum—Salvation!

19: The Pharisaic Conundrum: Advocate!

20: The Pharisaic Conundrum—Ordinances!

21: The Love of Money!

22: Tongues and Things

23: The Only Gate or Way or Door

24: Great Oaks of Righteousness

25: Concomitance and the Ugly Thunder

26: Quantum Entanglement

Bibliography

About the Author

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Myopic Me! Freedom from Religion

John D Lane Jr

ISBN 979-8-88644-551-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88644-552-7 (Digital)

Copyright © 2023 John D Lane Jr

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

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1

One True Religion?

Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.¹

The search for meaning and purpose is not new. The struggle to be identified with this group or that is as old as Cain and Abel. When King Solomon expanded his immediate household to include a thousand beautiful women, he was asserting his prerogative to find love daily in one or more of his Palace bedrooms.

It took Solomon thirteen years to build the palace. He ignored the warnings about religion infecting his fabulous house. When Pharaoh's daughter arrived with her chariots full of shrines to a thousand gods, religion moved into his house in a single night.²

Now King Solomon loved many foreign women. Besides Pharaoh's daughter, he married women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and from among the Hittites. The Lord had clearly instructed the people of Israel, You must not marry them, because they will turn your hearts to their gods. Yet Solomon insisted on loving them anyway. He had 700 wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines. And, in fact, they did turn his heart away from the Lord.³

More recently, Stalin and Hitler imagined themselves to be gods, hoping for thousand-year reigns. Millions died because of their narcissism and paranoia. Religion can be found in all of these, for we humans build altars out of bath soap and flat screen TVs. There is no boundary which has not been tested by these new and ancient religions. Wikipedia makes the following claim about the religious landscape of the current generations of man:

According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,200 religions, churches, denominations, religious bodies, faith groups, tribes, cultures, movements, ultimate concerns, which at some point in the future will be countless.⁴

Countless has various meanings, with the one most interesting to me being legion. If you are a reader of the New Testament, then you know that Jesus encountered the Gerasene demoniac in the cemetery after crossing the Sea of Galilee in a fishing boat during a violent storm. Arriving among the burial tombs, Jesus found a man who was naked, dragging chains behind him. The man could no longer speak or act of his own free will according to the counsel of his right mind. He was entirely under the control of thousands of demons represented by one who called himself Legion. My name is Legion, because there are many of us inside this man.⁵

Jesus sent Legion into the pigs in a nearby farmer's field after the demons begged Him for mercy. That was far too much religion at once for those pigs, and they all ran into the lake and drowned. Today, the forty-two hundred religions in the current research tracks very nicely with the story from Mark's gospel. Legion, in Roman military terminology, means there were between three thousand to six thousand⁶ demons infesting this man's body. Jesus's profound miracle, setting the most captive of all men free and restoring his right mind, reveals that forty-two hundred is the approximate sweet spot. Jesus likely drove forty-two hundred demons out of the poor man's body.

My observation is this. Legion is lurking behind every religion but the one true religion, and Legion is calling the shots for anyone who surrenders their heart and mind to religion. If someone has lost their minds, can Legion be far behind? As Solomon famously said, History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new."⁷

Where men search for meaning and purpose in every generation, Legion will continue to infest the careless cultures of man when they choose among the religions or when they invent a so-called modern version of the old religions. Like the infamous times when human sacrifices were widespread and common, Fathers are still sacrificing their daughters on the altar of fame and fortune.

The recent saga of the father who made himself a rich man, while controlling Britney Spears' life, is a useful example; but this is one in millions of lesser known examples. There is the ancient story of Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter to gain an improved wind for his upcoming battle.⁸ Religion cares nothing for human life, and even Solomon accompanied his wives who made sacrifices to Molech.⁹

This book will show you a better way, a certain truth, and offer you a life with meaning and purpose. Several chapters will lay out for you how I became seduced by religion, even while pursuing the one true religion. If during this journey you conclude you don't like this subject of religion, imagining that religion has no impact on your life, then you should bail out right here. But you really will find yourself at another altar very soon.

The word religion is referenced two-hundred and fifty times in this book. I repeat this relevant word with great emphasis because of the confusion about this universal subject impacting billions who don't understand the danger of their alliances with dark kingdoms.

My intention is to strip naked this word, exposing its tentacles throughout the culture, the churches, the synagogues, the temples, the legislatures, the medical systems, the educational systems—and even your family. Paul the Apostle points to these relentless tentacles of religion. He was speaking to the believers in the region of Ephesus (close to the Aegean Sea in modern-day Turkey—99.9 percent Muslim today!).

A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God's armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

Honestly, I feel that the definitions of religion in dictionaries misconstrue the nature of religion. Religion is always a human effort. While reflecting upon spiritual entities or spiritual power, it is self-salvation at the core. It may lean toward relativism or toward legalism, but it leans away from the only one that matters in all such discussions: Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God. Wikipedia describes this complex and confusing topic in the following manner:

Religion is usually defined as a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements; however, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. (Emphasis added)¹⁰

Religion, in my analysis, is pervasive self-salvation. God, the Creator of all things, Who sent His only Son to die on a cross, just might not be the author of that globally popular religion you currently follow. God just might not be the object of your worship and praise. He might not validate your stub in the parking garage of your preferred Temple or Synagogue or Cathedral. That God who chooses to describe Himself as Father, revealing Himself as the Son, and empowering His followers with the Holy Spirit just might not be your current King or Savior.

Reading the cautious words of several famous Hollywood celebrities, their explanations of their religious life is sincere, quite limited, but some offering the importance of daily prayers. The range of religions went from Catholic, to Hinduism, to Scientology, Kabbalah, and Buddhism as well as Pentecostalism, Judaism, and Islamism. The general knowledge, in terms of theology, that was expressed by each person was very limited. It is quite possible that a few have a muddled relationship with their preferred religion and associated God or gods. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Me.¹¹ Some of these Hollywood folks, for certain, are not worshiping the King of kings and Lord of lords.

I am certain you will agree, if you will read to the end of this book, surrendering to Him during this journey. You might enjoy the audiobook version of this published text which offers multiple voices and dramatic musical accompaniment. Either way, you will learn that religion begins with the flawed doctrines of Myopic Me!

Religion seeks to control life and even afterlife. Religion seeks solutions for the pain of life, and it is always oriented around the issues of purpose and meaning. Religion is shortsighted self-interest, even as it claims altruistic goals. You will discover that Paul the apostle was right when he asked us this fundamental question: Foolish [believer], who has bewitched you?

When I got on my knees to confess my sins in Atlanta on Highland Avenue in 1968, I confessed my own obsession with the rituals of self-religion, which I had constructed from known and unknown stuff. At one point, I was reading about urine on a toilet as having a soul. I was reading about good witches and bad witches—that is surely some kind of political or ideological difference between witches—which are all bad.

I had made daily altars to bring comfort and pleasure during a very difficult time, and those altars of worship would be recognizable to nearly every man in America in 2021. Religion then and now does nothing lasting to address or resolve the pain or loneliness, the guilt or shame, or the sense of impending doom which throws its net over the whole race of humankind.

As a focal point in this book, I have listed the needs common to man which religion should solve. This list is by no means perfect, and you may discover a better list while reading this book. The list will, at the least, help us take a look at our own religious structures to see how they may stack up. Throughout, I will refocus your attention on the Word of God as the only benchmark for life or liberty.

If we might roughly agree that these expectations are important, then this journey will be more fruitful. This is the desire of the God who died and rose again so that we might come to life with freedom from religion. In chapter 2, The Shepherding Movement, self-salvation will get its most extensive and personal brushstroke in this scrutiny of religions of all sorts.

Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.¹²

Ruth's story in the eighth book of the Bible follows two widows whose husbands have died during a time of famine. Ruth, a Moabite, had married Naomi's son, but he had died, leaving Ruth alone. Ruth's insistent and loyal speech to her mother-in-law is one of the most famous verses in the entire Bible. It is a story that helps us understand God's definition of the one true religion; therefore, I include it here. There is always a famine or a pandemic that creates the widows and orphans of this present world. God makes provision for these, and Ruth is an important picture to help us understand God's heart in the matter. Ruth's loyalty is the crux of the matter, and her speech to Naomi is important in every detail.

Don't ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us!¹³

God's provision comes through her loyalty to Naomi. She even surrenders to Naomi's God. Her faithfulness in a little thing, not thinking too highly of herself, leads her to gather the leftovers from a rich man's barley field. Naomi and Ruth are at the mercy of God to save them in a time of despair. The portrayal of family opens to us the beautiful narrative of God's kingdom being established in the earth.

This story speaks into God's deep regard for the vulnerability of the foreigner, the desperation of the widow, and the surprising compassion of God. The picture of family opens to us this beautiful story of God's kingdom through family.

All that happens in the story of Ruth is found in the character and the nature of the Savior whose choreography entangles people in beautiful ways. It is the enactment of the powerful biblical promise that faithfulness in a little thing… causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.¹⁴

Understanding the nature of that promise is at the heart of this journey we will take together in this entire book. Ruth and Naomi's love and loyalty for one another reveals the powerful truth that faithfulness in a little thing brings the working out of the good for those who love God and who are called according to His purposes. I am linking these two promises together because Ruth shows us that humility is always the precursor for God's promise.¹⁵

God's promise comes first, but the partaking of the promise activates humility in the character of the one who receives it. In Einstein's world, this is called Quantum Entanglement—more on this phenomenon in the final chapter of this book. Albert Einstein, in the twentieth century AD, and Ruth, in the twelfth century BC, became entangled in God's plans. Ruth and Albert Einstein discovered that humility is fundamental for the appearance of God's promises—regardless of the century.

Ruth's simple story is a picture of the Church, the body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, revealing the nature of God's family. Ruth's small story, with the intricate plot and the connected relationships, reveals the nature of God's supernatural provision. In Matthew's gospel, we find Ruth listed in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Hers is a beautiful portrait of favor and grace coming from God. We find her story in our own daily encounters with the Savior whose finished work has made up for our deficits, our depravity, and our failures—our sin! On a most fundamental level, it begs the question of how we receive foreigners into our expanding human family? Do we protect and show compassion?

There are many answers for this question. Do we embrace the foreigner in the manner of the Savior, incorporating them into our own family? The answers again are simple: a partial yes and a partial no. Remember that God sent Saul to destroy every foreigner in every city they encountered in the promised land. Where's the compassion in that?

It is for the protection of a people set apart for God's purposes. God sends Ruth help in a dry season, a season of famine in the land she has come from. She not only accepted Naomi's kindness, the landowner's generosity, but she accepts Naomi's God as well. She does not bring her false gods into the camp!

In 1140 BC, Ruth arrives, just a century before Saul's failed campaign to purge the foreigners from the promised land. Ruth has faith in Naomi's unseen God to feed her, care for her, counsel her, and create a family for her. She already sees her new God as her provider in the midst of a generous people whom she loves.

In our day, the widow crosses the border with various motivations. She may find a home and end up living on the Upper East Side of New York City, where she can earn a six-figure income some day on Wall Street. While orphans are being dropped, literally dropped, across our southern border daily, the well-paid trillionaire cartel drops these babies with a plan for them in the future. They will have to pay for their freedom in America with the promise to deliver the drugs to every distribution point. They are the child labor of the deadly business of drug trafficking in America.

In the verses from James, this story about true religion seems to define an urgent social justice message. Jesus arrives in Jerusalem to stridently confront the social justice failures of the Pharisees. He tells them they are making every convert into a greater child of hell than they themselves are!¹⁶ He confronts their shocking self-interest, telling them that they are always tangled up in the brambles of avarice.

"What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things.¹⁷

When massive amounts of money change hands in any system, there is graft, with a significant portion of the tax collections never reaching the person in need. Up to 70 percent of the money for this so-called social safety net never reaches the widow or the orphan. Massive paperwork challenges block the people who need it the most.¹⁸

There are very few orphans since most of them are killed in the womb of the mother by heavily government-funded Planned Parenthood. What a disingenuous name, Parenthood, since the actual goal is to keep the girl from delivering her child at all: American Eugenics Inc. It is a most Nazi-like characteristic, highly attributable to liberal political aspirations in America and elsewhere. Ruth's understanding of these leftovers, missed by the harvester going through the field of barley, exposes us to another promise of God. Faithfulness in a little thing will bring a greater thing through God's miraculous choreography and provision. Work is not a curse, as many imagine; and Ruth's example is extremely important for embracing the whole kingdom of God—all things working together for good with the Holy Spirit coming through our belief in the cross of Christ—these two are monumental in promises expressing that fullness. Ruth's understanding of these leftovers, missed by the harvester going through the field of barley, exposes us to another promise of God.

Faithfulness in a little thing will bring a greater thing through God's miraculous choreography and provision.

When she finds a few seeds left on the ground, she repeats the miracle of the daily manna which kept the Israelites alive in the wilderness of Egypt.

Applying another biblical pattern, another kingdom parameter, she is faithful in a very, very, very little thing. She is grateful for this humbling system of survival. By faith, she receives God's generosity as a promise that He will give her more—and in her story, that promise of God is dramatically fulfilled when she marries the rich man whose field she has visited.

Still, this would be just another religious tale if it were not for God's ultimate purpose in our lives. When Ruth marries Boaz, this foreign widow from Moab has a child whom they name Obed, and Obed is listed in the genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew's Gospel: Salmon was the father of Boaz (whose mother was Rahab). Boaz was the father of Obed (whose mother was Ruth). Obed was the father of Jesse [who was King David's father, and Jesus came out of the House of David].¹⁹

Ruth teaches us this profound lesson about humility and faithfulness in a little thing. But the main story is about God's favor and love shown to the widow and foreigner. When she adopts Naomi's traditions and her God, God introduces her to Boaz. Their union brings the child, Obed, and Obed's son is Jesse, father of David, the King of Israel. Jesus Christ comes out of the stump of Jesse's house. Through God's mercy, she is connected to the King of kings forever.

Her story does not begin in victimhood, which is the god of our present age. Her story begins in love and gratitude. Ruth joins her star with Naomi's family. She might have thrown a fit over the unfairness of life and the futility of gathering forgotten barley seeds. She might have curled up in a ball as the pitiful victim of a famine. Losing her husband, she might never have trusted to love again.

But Ruth shows us the face of resiliency in her adopted family. Does that sound familiar? It should sound familiar because the body of Christ is the extended family which came out of her genealogy. God's only Son came from the root of Jesse, and God promises Jesse's son, David, that the King of kings would come out of his reign in Jerusalem. Ruth's adoption by Naomi and her marriage to Boaz brings her journey all the way to the Hill of the Skull outside Jerusalem's walls. Three crosses on that hill remind us of the potential for adoption and the potential for judgment. One criminal is grateful, but the other shuns God's salvation.

You see, for all those who believe in His Son, God accomplishes this miraculous adoption into His family. Though I will mention this many more times in this book, it is crucial to see religion beside relationship, which is always through adoption. Jesus had alluded to this essential adoption when He addressed those men who had cast out demons in His name. He warned them that religion could not save them. He told them that good works without adoption would leave them in outer darkness on the final day.

He might have said, Come in the humble manner of Ruth if you want a Relationship with the King of kings. Come with your empty bag to gather leftover seeds in the barley field if you want to know Me. Rather than words about humility and faithfulness in a very little thing, Jesus shocks His audience, describing the status of those who cast out demons in His name: But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God's laws.'²⁰

Every man is a lawbreaker in God's eyes, according to His standard revealed in His Son. When Jesus's disciples were sent out two-by-two, they returned jubilant that the demons had been cast out in Jesus's name. Jesus upbraided them, saying, Be thankful your name is in the book of life. Casting out demons had given them no assurance of eternal life, whereas adoption by God through His name would save them. There is a moment in Ruth's story when adoption by God is assured. In this seemingly trivial incident, there are three allusions to the Savior who will come to our Barley Field to save us as well.

At mealtime, Boaz called to her, Come over here, and help yourself to some food. You can dip your bread in the sour wine. So she sat with his harvesters, and Boaz gave her some roasted grain to eat. She ate all she wanted and still had some left over.

In this simple scene, Ruth touches three powerful images from Jesus's life before His resurrection from the dead. These all reflect on God's supernatural provision for the Israelites when they were rescued from Satan's power in Egypt.

The sour wine is offered to Jesus on a hyssop branch when He is thirsty on the cross; this was reminiscent of the blood spread over the doorposts in Egypt with a hyssop branch;

the disciples dip the bread in the wine during the Last Supper with Jesus, a new covenant in His blood for the forgiveness of our sins; and

there were twelve baskets left over after the miraculous feeding of the five thousand with a little boy's lunch; again, this reminded the gathered crowd of God's feeding of the Israelites in the wilderness with manna, or bread, from heaven.

Jesus tells the crowd in Jerusalem that Relationship comes with new motives and a powerful new intentionality. Those who are adopted into God's family love the generosity of the Father, and they will listen to the voice of the Son. Adoption brings gratitude and faithfulness in a little thing. Adoption brings honor to the Father and this new attentiveness to the words of the Son. This is eternally consequential. He warned every religious person that knowing Him would be essential for eternal life. It is cold out there, apart from Christ. Jesus told the crowd in Jerusalem, Anyone who isn't for Me opposes me, and anyone who isn't working with me is actually working against me.²¹

Remember also what Jesus asked Peter and the other disciples. Their answer would determine eternal life—or eternal separation from God!

Who do you say that I Am?

Part of adoption and knowing comes through understanding whom you serve. When anyone is adopted by God, filling their bag with barley seeds from His field, then they are changed completely. They become a new creature with a new destiny and a new way of living. Through adoption, they are set apart for God's purposes.

They are rescued from the prince of the power of the air, the lord of the famine, and the one who hates the widow and the orphan. John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, proclaims this knowing and this changing, which comes from the relationship with God's only Son. He explains that Jesus Christ separates us from our well-practiced rituals of sin.

We know that God's children do not make a practice of sinning, for God's Son holds them securely, and the evil one cannot touch them.

God demonstrates His sovereign love and purpose for the Moabite woman, Ruth, when Boaz receives from the elders, witnesses, and the family redeemer the required permission to marry her.

Then the elders and all the people standing in the gate replied, We are witnesses! May the Lord make this woman, who is coming into your home, like Rachel and Leah, from whom all the nation of Israel descended! May you prosper in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. And may the Lord give you descendants by this young woman, who will be like those of our ancestor Perez, the son of Tamar and Judah.

With utter simplicity, the disciple who was loved by Jesus sums up the battleground of religion. From the cross, Jesus had made John His mother's son. Now, near the end of his life, John concludes his first epistle to every religious person who will follow him. John describes the frailty which follows us into that perilous barley field of true religion.

John points to that spiritual field which Paul describes in the first paragraphs of this chapter. John points to the fickle heart of man, the domain that is invaded by the prince of the power of the air. In that lonely field, we are still susceptible to the wiles of the devil who roams the earth, looking for someone to devour. This author of sin—this scribe of idolatry—slides across the hills and valleys, the lonely barley field of the heart.

Therefore, John tells every one of us children to watch out, keeping watch over our hearts. Humbled, we have come to that field grateful for God's provision, faithful in a little thing, believing with all our hearts in the God who makes all things work together for the good, never leaving us nor forsaking us.

While God's Spirit is teaching us to speak the truth in love, He expands the depth of our loyalty, showing us our great inheritance through adoption. Cautious now, through what we have suffered, we sip from the living water of life with a cupped hand. We keep watch for the enemy who looks for another opportunity to steal the affection of our hearts. John puts it all into perspective with these few words:

And we know that the Son of God has come, and he has given us understanding so that we can know the true God. And now we live in fellowship with the true God because we live in fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the only true God, and he is eternal life. Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God's place in your hearts.²²

2

The Shepherding Movement

Let me ask you this one question: did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ.²³

Nine of us were seated in the living room of the Crowd Inn at Holden Beach. Happy to see each other, it was unclear to me what we would talk about or do together. Think about it—sitting together on rented furniture, looking out on the bright ocean, in my case. Julie, Ansley, Eric, and I hadn't seen each other for two years. Jessica and her two children had been busy with their lives in Winston-Salem, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and Kiawah Island for nearly fifteen years.

We hadn't seen her since her beautiful and fabulous wedding. Nobody could forget these two sisters together on the dance floor in their own world, incredible dancers, looking ahead to their lives too far apart for words, knowing each other like no one else could ever really understand, sharing a love their husbands would have to work hard to discover for themselves!

Would we swim in the ocean now at Holden Beach? Would we devour brunch together? Or would we talk about their kids? Would we discuss jobs, books, family struggles? Politics? Surely not! Honestly, I was socially inept at that point, yet the room just begged: purpose! Who are we? Where are we? Why are we here together? We had not been to the Crowd Inn since our fiftieth anniversary was canceled by Ann's brain bleed two years ago.

Last year was COVID, and very few people were traveling to North Carolina from Boston in cars or airplanes. Surely this time together would join us in special conversations, special fun meals, laughter, and shared experiences. We would get to know each other again, catching up on recent family events, church events, marriages, and struggles. We would drink or not, eat too much or not. We would exercise, in sun or in sand, or not; and now this gathering seemed very intimidating and out of synch with those mundane plans.

This was drama in a bottle waiting to come out. It was pain in brown paper wrapping, love twirled in bright colorful ribbons, and a deep sweetness that could hardly be put into words. Ann was very quiet as we moved together like a living thing into what we would all become together and separately for a few priceless hours. This day would be monumental, momentous, and maybe even life-changing. I could not have articulated this peculiar challenge, this wonderful opportunity, this beautiful potential for love to grow, and for God to come down from heaven to remind us of His deep unto deep calling, never-ending, like the ocean outside.

Seeing Jessica and Julie with their children was an amazing surprise, kept secret from Ann, Christopher, and myself until late in the morning. Did they think we would run away? Was this day for Ann, whose memory could use a little fine-tuning at times. She had asked me a dozen times where we were going and who we would see when we got there.

Very quickly, after we sat down, our brilliant small talk concluded, stories pitched into the ring, and after our laughter had faded, it became clear that our conversation would lead us into the shared past. Julie opened with her Facebook Messenger conversation from that very week with Carrie Merlyn. Carrie was the daughter of our former shepherd thirty-four years ago. Carrie, Julie, and Jessica are about the same age, between forty and fifty, and this was their recapitulation of our corporate story seen through their eyes, revisiting forty-six years of our families loving each other.

It was July 20, 2021, when we sat down, and it was a new day when we got up a couple of hours later. This composite of our experiences and current status was a corporate testimony of God's grace. We really had not seen it with that clarity at first, but God would show us the height, depth, and breadth of His love.

The nine of us were taken captive by the detailed recollections that drew us all into a room that had a single door. We could not leave the way we came in, from different cars, lives, cities, and states in America—Texas, North Carolina, Massachusetts were represented in that room—and we had lived in all of them.

We would leave through a door that God opened when He pierced our lives, offering us true bread—saving the best wine for last. In the distance, I could hear Him saying something familiar: Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life. We would leave changed, our courses shifted, and love would have everything to do with it. We could almost hear Carrie's voice from those ancient days in Winston-Salem and Midland, Texas, as Julie articulated their personal conversations about our years together in the Shepherding Movement.

This rare dialectic between Julie and Carrie had been precipitated by the death of the man who was our first point of contact with the Shepherding Movement in 1976. Richard Lawson, from Atlanta, had spoken with Albert about a committed relationship with Charles Simpson's group. At the age of eighty, Richard's death triggered this recapitulation of shared and forgotten memories from forty-five years back in time.

Carrie and Julie had met when we started out in Winston-Salem in 1975 when Julie was a new baby born after her obstetrician father's death from leukemia. Carrie recapped her recent conversations with her mom, telling Julie, She is still looking for the latest thing. Mom still talks about ‘speaking the truth in love' in spite of her painful experiences with dad. She joked about the ‘truth in love,' asking me, ‘What's love got to do with it?'

Carrie's mom had been the first of Albert's three wives as he consistently applied his special version of the truth in love to these three unfortunate women. Paul's teaching on maturity for Christians had emphasized that we should be growing in every way more and more like Christ.²⁴ Carlie asked Carrie, I wonder what that would look like? I remember something very different happening—I remember much more about him growing colder and more callous in his dealings with me! The ‘truth in love' just armed Albert with another excuse for his anger—I'm convinced that ‘truth in love' made it much easier for him to shred his three marriages before cancer broke in for the last dance.

Albert's harsh emphasis on the truth had left Carlie beleaguered, and Carrie knew firsthand how strange the juxtaposition of truth with love had become where our shepherd was concerned. As Carlie said, What did love have to do with it? Carlie, in a wistful moment, had told Carrie in a letter that, Albert left me like a blind date. The truth was Albert left me for another woman who could pay the bills. So, daughter, ‘What's love got to do with it?'

Since you just might need a little more background to help you follow this narrative, I'm going to provide you with the aforementioned segment of Paul's letter to Timothy. Keep in mind that Paul was writing to Timothy, the pastor of a church with over a hundred-thousand members in Ephesus. He was speaking to his spiritual son about growing up.

If there is a subject more significant for America in 2021, I can't tell you what it might be! Paul told Timothy what we all needed to hear on that morning at Holden Beach. God is calling us to a better land than the one we currently know—He is calling us to grow up. Paul starts with a Then, below, which we will address shortly for clarification. The bottom line is healing—growing up means getting healed of the immaturity.

Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. (emphasis added)²⁵

Apologetically, I must present these dialogues to you, the reader, because I am presenting my thirdhand versions from July 2021 and from my own memory of events. These interactions between Carlie [Albert], Carrie, Julie, and myself and the nine of us together may be a fiction at times! I am taking some license as the author of a book while realizing that details are important, reflecting on people's reputation and character. I think it is accurate to say, We were about to grow up!

Solomon said there are few things more important than reputation. Character became a stumbling block for the famous king of Israel.

Therefore, with confidence, I tell you Carlie was most definitely our shepherd's first wife—I'm pretty sure—and their marriage suffered a peculiar emphasis with these verses from Paul's letter to Timothy's church in Ephesus (certain of that). Paul's letter to the Ephesian believers had significance for another reason. Even our baby girl, Julie (now forty-five-ish), had experienced Albert's wrath firsthand—more on that infamous event in a moment.

While we were in Texas, we did not experience a lot of what Paul was talking about—the truth and love and the growing up in Christ. Our own experiences with truth in love were nonetheless pivotal for us, and we are still trying to grow up in Christ all these years after. It turns out that Paul's letter contained the entire script for our current conversation in the Crowd Inn in 2021! Julie recapped her Facebook Messenger conversation with Carrie from across the large living room while I strained to hear a few scraps of what she shared.

This reporting comes to you as a thirdhand version of their dialogue. At my age, all the high-frequency sounds have been chopped, leaving me with mostly low frequency gurgling from below the 300-Hz auditory range. Jesus knowingly spoke to my situation, For those who have ears to hear. Therefore, I make no promises here.

But that's not the only filtering of this conversation that I will relate to you, for Carlie summed it up pretty well for all of us: Albert left me behind like a bad blind date. My daughter, I ask you, ‘What does love have to do with it?' Paul's deep revelation about Christian growth has gone over the head of 90 percent of the Christian population in America.

In the American church, truth has become a selfish version of truth. Love leaves a bad taste in the mouth, causing us to forget the height, breadth, and depth of God's love. That taste is not Jesus. That taste is the deceiver of the brethren, the taste of the serpent's scales, the taste of the lie, the twisting of God's Words around the thin tree in the Garden where the python holds forth with his common theme: God did not mean…that you would surely die.

The truth in love kind of hangs in the air over the whole Church and is still a problem for me decades later. I tend to avoid the prickly cactus of truth at all cost, preferring some vague version of love in every conflict. Paul's love never avoids the conflict of the truth, knowing that we don't grow up unless we practice this fundamental in all of our relationships most of the time.

In Midland, Texas, we did very little in the way of growing up, if you really want to know. Our immaturity seemed to increase by the day during our years in the Shepherding Movement. Some referred to this condition as a numbness that comes over you—or a thick garment of shame—but for me, it turned out to be a vague pulling away from the whole vision for starting a church in Midland, Texas, under the watchful eye of our shepherd. Carlie said that Albert's shepherd in Louisiana and Texas helped to exacerbate the problem for all of us.

From the start, Albert's shepherd made him crazy. He got more agitated and tense the longer he was submitted to Jerry Spitzer. Jerry told Albert that the whole body would grow up, becoming healthy and growing up full of love. But it never seemed to happen.

Ironically, for us at Holden Beach, love for one another remained very strong—maybe we had endured that harshness so that our relationships would deepen over these five decades. We were by now into our second hour of recapping the years we spent together—from 1975—and I realized later that each of us would need to answer Paul's three questions about the Holy Spirit before our journey could progress.

Growing up does not happen if we miss Paul's dramatic warning to the church at Galatia. These verses, along with the truth in love verses, will be pivotal for us and for any Christian [any religious person]. As we move forward in our separate lives, hundreds of miles apart or not, the Shepherding Movement has left us with a potential windfall of wisdom and gratitude.

Even before we came together at Holden Beach from Boston, Midland, Winston-Salem, Durham, and Chapel Hill, Paul's question to the Galatians had become our question, arriving in three distinct parts:

(1) Did you receive the Holy Spirit? Yes or No? And (2) Did you receive Him through the Law of Moses? Yes or No. And (3) Did you receive Him—the Holy Spirit—through believing the message you heard about Christ?²⁶

The answer to each of these questions could not be, I don't know. We had to answer, Yes or No. This is critical for us to move on with our lives. Of course, Julie had arrived from Chapel Hill, as she had two years before; and Jessica had driven with her kids from Winston-Salem. This was Jessica's first time with us at Holden Beach, and she and Ansley had just spent a week at Kiawah Island a few weeks earlier.

For Ann, Christopher, and myself, we had last seen Jessica during her wedding in Switzerland in a very dense fog. Her beautiful mountainous siting had been swallowed up in the fog before she emerged miraculously as a married woman. She stepped directly into her after celebration, and that exasperating fog could not ruin her wedding plans.

Now this whole group was together again, missing four others. Jaylen and Jocelyn in Greensboro and James and Erica in Houston, Texas, could not be with us—James likely on a missionary journey to some distant clime—nearly fifty countries and counting.

We had last seen Jaylen and Jocelyn in Boston at the Starbucks next to the Old State House. There they sat with their coffees, heading to see a family friend at Harvard. We joined them for a few minutes, later visiting their home in Greensboro where Jaylen had become a partner in a law firm. We had traveled once to Virginia Beach to spend the night with James and Erica in their home.

Jaylen and Jocelyn were about to surprise us again, arriving on the weekend after driving down from Greensboro for an overnight visit with all of us on the beach. Julie and Jessica's preteen children provided a highlight for us getting to know them better. Wives and mothers