The other day, I wrote a blog post about what we should do if Amendment One did not pass. It got a lot of traffic and got shared a lot on Facebook and Twitter and so on.

An editor from Religion News Service read it and suggested that there was a longer article to be had in that post, and that if I would write said article, they might be interested in syndicating it.

So, I did. And then they did.

But then the Washington Post picked the article up, and Holy Crap! my name was attached to an article I wrote on the Washington Post website.

Wow. Just Wow.

“Who is Will D. Campbell?” she asked.

Oh dear.

I told her Will is a Baptist minister from the South (although, he makes it clear he was no longer a Southern Baptist minister) who is a prime example of the Radical Christian tradition.

It was Will’s belief (as it is mine) that the average Church building is no different from the average Rotary club in the desired outcome of its existence. They both want to create good citizens – folks who do not rock the boat, but neither do they cheat or steal. In other words, the average church wants to create good, solid American citizens.

I guess that is admirable, but what has any of that to do with the fact that “God through Christ reconciled the world” or “The Kingdom of God is among you”?

Not much.

She asked if I could provide her a list of books to read, to introduce her to this Radical Christian tradition.

So here are a few.

Like all lists of books, it is incomplete. This list is primarily for a 21-year-old Presbyterian female in the US south. As a result, I am using authors who can speak to her context – so Gustavo Gutierrez is not on the list – neither is any number of other dark-skinned radical folks. This list is just to get her started. Once she starts down that road, she will find the books that are looking for her.

It is also highly recommended that you read other things these folks have written – they are all the real deal.

Dorothy Day – The Long Loneliness

Oscar Romero – The Violence of Love

Will D. Campbell – Brother To a Dragonfly

Leo Tolstoy – The Kingdom of God is Within You

Clarence Jordan – The Essential Writings

Jacques Ellul – Violence

William Stringfellow – My People is the Enemy

Every one of these books rocked my world when I first read it. Every one of them wrecked my faith – in the best possible way.

My reaction has generally been like that of Stanley Hauwerwas after he read Yoder’s Politics of Jesus -

“Shit. I thought I was a Christian until I read this.”

I get emails questioning my orthodoxy all the time. For example, about a year ago, I was asked if I denied the resurrection of Jesus, and I replied. I have learned, however, that answering critiques does nothing to calm them down. Witness, for example, the comments on that post. 

Lately, the emails have started back. Do I believe this, or that or the other thing. Virgin birth, historical resurrection, Genesis 1, the book of Job.

Sigh.

So, let’s try this again. . Here is what I believe… today.  

I believe:

• That action is to belief as 19 is to 1.
• That faith without deeds is not faith at all, but superstition.
• That people are worth fighting for.
• That the problems of the world are, at their core, relationship problems. 
• That when people ask “What can we do to end homelessness,” what they really mean is “What can we do to end homelessness and not change anything about us.”
• That you can replace the word homelessness in the previous sentence with almost anything and the statement will still be true.
• That when you ask for help and people say “I will pray about that”, you had better start looking for Plan B.
• That it is not we who wait on God to act, but it is God who waits on us.
• That no one is going to care about your dream as much as you do. This does not prevent them from having opinions as to how you are doing it wrong, however.
• That folks who ignore you in your struggles will flock to you when you are successful. And then they will be hurt when you question their sincerity.
• That to follow the Jesus path will look like failure to the world that watches you.
• That, when measured in terms of impact on the world around them, the average church is indistinguishable from the average book club.
• That a lot of church people will be pissed off at that last statement.
• That some of them will be pissed off that I said “pissed off”, and wish I would just talk about hell or something.
• That people who love that I fight for the rights of homeless people but wish I would shut up about the rights of women or the LGBT community do not understand either me or my work.
• That atheists contribute more financially to my work than do Evangelicals. (Actually, this is a fact.)
• That to ask whether evangelism or social justice is more important is the same as asking whether it is more important to send doctors to medical school or to heal people.
• That when there are two people groups, and one people group has more of something – power, money, privilege, resources, etc. – the onus for changing that discrepancy lies on the group with more, and to do less than that is less than Christian.
• That Jeremiah probably did not get invited to a lot of parties, either.
• That most Christians are indistinguishable from the culture around them.
• That I take anti-abortion people much more seriously when they have adopted a couple of kids.
• That the best critique of the bad is the performance of the good. As a result of this, I believe that if you want to know what I believe, you probably ought to just watch what I do.

How about you? What do you believe?

A weary looking, soft spoken black man, approximately 70 years, old gets on the bus in front of Glenwood Towers, a retirement community for low-income peoples. He boards the bus, says “Hey!” to the bus driver and shuffles to a seat. He looks across the aisle and smiles at me with a smile that can only be made when the one smiling owns less than 10 teeth. I smile back, and he responds by settling down into a posture that somehow speaks simultaneously of resignation and assurance.

The bus sits idle for a few minutes as we make up time gained by so few pick-ups at this hour of the morning.

“Hey! Bus driver?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you from Raleigh?”

“Yes, sir. All my life.”

“Do you know a lady named Betty Simpkins*?”

“Hmmm. I know some Simpkins, but I can’t call a Betty.”

“Well, she just passed.”

The driver looks across the street and sees the ambulance and fire apparatus parked in the lot of the apartment building.

“Oh, just now? Is that why the ambulance is there? ”

“Yeah. She was a nice lady.”

“Well, I know some Simpkins, but I am not calling a Betty. Did she ride the bus?”

“Some, but she had a car. You would probably know her if you seen her.”

“Maybe.”

“I wish I had a pitchur to show you of her. She was a beautiful woman – you would recognize her right off.”

“Was she sick long?”

“Not too long. It got bad at the end, though.”

“Well, I’m sure sorry. I’m gonna pray for her family.”

“Yeah, me too.”

The driver starts the bus and pulls back into traffic, and the old man closes his eyes and puts his head back and softly begins to snore.

*Her name was not Betty Simpkins; I changed it out of respect for her family. 

We were talking about various things, and I mentioned how busy and how behind I am. She told me I should get some interns.

Almost instantly, I had a near-visceral negative reaction to the suggestion. I have known we need to do it for about six months now, but honestly, the idea of masses of interns freaks me out.

Instead of just tuning out, however, I decided to talk it through. I am glad I did, because I discovered that it is not the interns I object to. It is that in order to manage interns, there is a lot of up-front work that has to  be done, such as:

• Procedures
• Job Descriptions
• Management
• Scheduling
• Increased expenses for equipment, etc.

I know that if we get interns, there will be a heap of benefits. However, at least in the beginning, there will be a heap of work, too. And most critically, it will be the sort of work at which I suck, and suck hard.

One day, Diogenes was eating bread and lentils, when he was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who made a very good living by flattering the king.

Aristippus sneered at the humble meal and told Diogenes, “If you would only learn to be subservient to the king like I have, you would not have to eat lentils.”

Diogenes replied. “If you would only learn to like lentils like I have, you would never have to be subservient to the king.”

When I get emails from people who want to know how to start an independent ministry or start a business or who tell me about how frustrated they are with the powers that be and their control over their lives, the first question I ask is:

“Do you like lentils?”

Because the only power anyone has over you is the power you give them. And most things cost more than the amount of money it takes to buy them.

It’s been nearly five years now since I got off that bus with my two duffel bags and $800.00 in my new home of Raleigh, NC. As I have said elsewhere, I was closing one chapter and beginning another.

In that time, for money I have worked as a freelance writer, a desk clerk at a health spa, a hot dog cart vendor and – my real job – as a minister to people who happen to be homeless. I have lived in four houses, owned four bicycles and three cars, acquired over 500 books, read somewhere around 600 books, written over 500 articles and blog posts and somehow, in the midst of all of that, created a non-profit from scratch (to employ me, since no one else seemed interested in doing that) and marry my best friend.

I recount this long list not to brag (because, honestly, who brags about working a hot dog cart?) but because this morning, I am sitting in The Morning Times, drinking a cup of coffee and trying to write, while looking out the window at the drizling rain, while Glenn Gould is playing Bach in my earphones and I felt an overwhelming sense of deja vu.

When I first moved here, I didn’t own a car, and so I walked to this coffee shop, sat in a table by a window on the second floor, put my headphones on and tried to write. In the first six months I was in Raleigh, I probably spent 20 hours a week at that table.

It was here I met my first three friends in Raleigh, dated my wife, wrote my first 4 fundraising letters to get Love Wins Ministries off the ground, wrote countless blog posts and articles and held numerous meetings with local pastors to shape the vision of Love Wins.

I have a lot of history tied up in this window and this chair. It is fair to say that no single physical space has loomed so large in the creation of the life I now have – a life I never dreamed of just five years ago.

Which is why, when people write me and ask how to start their own ministry or non-profit, I tell them to find a coffee shop and go their every day and write. Write as if your life depends on it.

Because it does.

No theme, no purpose. Just blogging. It was fun.

The beginning of the end of this for me was, I think, Twitter. In the old days (say, before 2008 or so), I would see a neat article or picture or video, post it to my blog and talk about it. Now, I just post it to Twitter and move on. No in-depth thought, no commentary (after all, I only have 140 characters), nothing but a link and maybe, a hash tag.

Then, I posted a few long-form blog pieces that went sorta viral, in a half-assed way, and I became half-assed semi-famous as a writer of Contrarian Christianity and engaged theism. And since I am good at that sort of writing, and I enjoy it, I started doing more of it, and less of the link blogging (where you post a link to something neat, with some commentary around it), especially if it wasn’t tied to my two main themes.

And then the possibility of my writing a book or three came up, and all the publishers want to know is what sort of platform you have, which means I post less cat pictures and more serious writing.

So, the net result was, I blogged less and posted the links to the cool things I saw to Facebook or Twitter. One problem with that is Facebook is a walled garden. The only people who see these things are the people I let into the garden. But, the bigger problem is that now, I feel like I am on Twitter and Facebook all the damned time. The other day, I spent two days off social media and felt almost guilty.

Guilty? Really? So, I am dialing it back a notch.

I started a link blog, where I shall post links to things I like. No theme, no platform building, nothing but links and commentary to things I like. I know I could do a tumbler or posterous or some other damned thing, but I don’t need more online social. So, I coded it by hand, on WordPress – like it was 2006 again.

Take that, Facebook.

I will still be doing long form work, primarily around my ideas of engaged theism, on this site. I now have a link blog over on my nameplate site, where I can post links to videos, or pictures of cats or articles about geriatric parkour or pretty much anything. And I will still be throwing links to all of it on Twitter and Facebook – but my primary online efforts will be directed at my sites.

I am taking my internet back.

It was the window seat I snagged that day, to the left of a sixty-something year old man who smelled vaguely of urine and cigarettes.

“If you stay on this road long enough”, my odiferous neighbor tells me, “you hit the Atlantic Ocean.” He then laughs, as if he has revealed previously hidden wisdom. As his laughter descends into his chest, creating a raspy cough, we pass to the right of the Pyramid, its shiny metal siding reflecting light into my eyes as the driver heads toward the ocean.

I won’t be going quite that far.

# # #

For 13 years, I lived in Memphis. Growing up, a dirt-poor kid in Marshall County Mississippi, I dreamed of moving to Memphis – of living in a gated community, of owning a red sports car, of the hot wife, the career spent in books and letters. Check, check, check and check.

But, as John the prophet said, life is what happened while we were making other plans. I spent the first decade of my adulthood climbing the ladder of success. I climbed, and I climbed and I climbed. One day, I stopped, and looked around. It was then I noticed that while I had done a good job of climbing – I am, in fact, a hell of a climber – my ladder was leaning against the wrong wall.

What if you plan a life and nobody comes?

When I was 30, I had been married to a beautiful woman for six years, I was a successful (in a middling sort of way) financial advisor, I had a great apartment on a good street and a closet full of Ralph Lauren suits.

And I was throwing up blood about once a week from the stress. And I was drinking way too much. I hated my life.

So, I quit. Not just the job – I quit the whole life.

If at first you don’t succeed, to hell with it.

# # #

That was five years before the day I sat next to khaki-clad smelly man on an east bound bus, with what was left of my possessions in a duffle bag stuffed under the seat. Here I sat, two years older than Jesus ever got to be, with a head full of Transcendentalist poetry, a gut full of bad coffee from the bus station and tears running down my face, washing away the memory of the dreams of all my yesterdays.

I was headed to Raleigh, NC. I needed a fresh start – a new place where I had never sold books or insurance, where I had never broken anyone’s heart, lost anyone’s fortune, where I had never fallen in love with someone who wanted the me I used to be, where I had never broken a promise or a wedding vow.

It was time to be born again.

# # #

So, that day, I sat on that bus, my entire net worth boiled down to $800 cash, a few books and two pair of jeans. And I was starting a new life – I had spent the first 35 years or so of my life focusing on me. On that long bus trip, I made a list of all the things I did not like about me.

It was a long list.

But chief on it, right at the top, was that I was a people user. I was all about me, and what people could do for me.

I hated that.

It was not the “me” I liked to think I was. I thought of myself as loving. Generous. Caring. Jesus-like, even.

But, I wasn’t. Truth is, I was just a user.

So, I decided it was time to change. Time to be the person I wished I was, the person I dreamed of being, the person I would be proud to be. The person my wife, or my girlfriend or my grandkids would be proud I was.

I decided to change.

Change is hard. I have heard it said that we only change when it becomes harder to remain the same than it does to change. Maybe that’s true. All I know is, on that bus, with broken dreams and shattered relationships behind me, I decided to change.

So I did.

I started a ministry based entirely on relationships – relationships with people who often cannot return the favor, and who can’t advance my career or puff my ego. I learned from them, and then I began to speak to churches about what I learned. Then I took resources from those churches and used them to help my new friends.

It was not easy. It was not the simple path, or the easy path – but it was the right path. It was my authentic path – the path I was born to follow. It was the path I was fighting all those years I was climbing furiously a ladder leaning against the wrong wall.

For the last four and a half years, I have lived the life I wanted to live – an authentic life: A life where I am not a user, but a contributor. I am married to my best friend. I have a wide variety of friends around my dinner table all the time. My work makes a difference. People’s lives are changed because I live mine. I get to do stimulating work and exercise my creativity.

Life is good.

# # #

So, why am I telling you all of this?

Because it is January. This means a lot of you are thinking about change. You are looking around and you see your life staring back at you and you do not like what you see. You see the broken promises and scattered dreams in your history and you find you do not like the story of your life. You are not living out your authentic story.

And you want to change.

But you are scared.

Scared you will fail. Scared you will be laughed at. Scared you will lose friends. Scared you will struggle.

You should be scared. Deciding to live your authentic life is scary. Deciding to be the person you want to believe you are is scary.

But you know what is scarier?

Waking up one day and finding out you spent your life living someone else’s dreams, building someone else’s vision, creating someone else’s legacy – and being too scared to change.

You can change. You can wake up and live the life you were born to live. You can build great things, dream big dreams, watch them unfurl and drink in the victory of living a life well played.

You can be born again.

But first, you have to decide to change.

Suddenly, I feel thirsty. “No”, I tell myself. “You cannot get up to get a drink of water. You are just procrastinating.”

As long as I am distracted, I might as well check Facebook, just one last time.

I look at the clock and notice it is now 8:42AM.

Damn Facebook all to hell. I got caught up reading about the “Top 11 Pop Culture events of 2011“.

(Is it just me, or is it cold in here?)

The problem is the internet, obviously. It’s then I remember, earlier this year, Seth Godin had written about a program you could install on your computer that shut down the internet for a predetermined period of time, thus eliminating the distraction of the internet.

It has gotten critical. I must have this program, if any writing at all is to get done.

The next 10 minutes is spent searching Google for things like “Seth Godin Internet Distraction” and “Kill Internet”. Eventually, I find it: Freedom.

The premise is, it kills the networking aspect of your computer for a predetermined period of time, thus keeping your undisciplined ass off the internet. So, I decide to drop $10 of Christmas money on it. Money well spent, if it will get me back to writing.

Download. Pay. Register.

8:55AM.

I fire up trusty Microsoft Word 2007, get that drink of water I wanted 30 minutes ago, shuffle back to my spot in the hallway and put my fingers to the keys.

Dammit, it is cold in here.

I cannot write if I’m cold. I get the space heater and put it beside my desk, plug it in and bask in the warmth exuding from it.

9:10AM.

I have found when I write, it helps to set a timer for 20 minutes, so I can focus on that one thing. I generally use Egg Timer. I already have it bookmarked in my browser and everything. I open up my browser and…

Dammit, I have no internet. Oh yes, the program I just paid $10 for is keeping me off the internet for the next 45 minutes.

Maybe there is a countdown timer for my phone? I pick up my phone, hit the Market icon… NO! I must get to writing.

It was then, at 9:25AM, that the lights go out.

First thought: Did I pay the light bill? Then I hear the gurgle from the fish tank and notice the Christmas tree lights are still on, so I know that isn’t it.

Must be the circuit breaker.

In the six months we have lived in this apartment, I have had no need to go to the breaker box. I have no idea where it is. The next 10 minutes are spent finding out it is not in the pantry, any of the closets, the basement or in any of the kitchen cabinets. I find it in the entryway to the back porch – I have walked past it three to four times a day for the last six months and never noticed it was there.

Having flipped the circuit breaker, I come back in the house, sit back at my desk, now bathed once again in artificial light courtesy of the Sylvania Light Bulb Company and Progress Energy.

I write less than 20 words when the breaker flips off again.

Ahhh. It is the heater. I guess I will just have to write in the cold.

At 9:50AM, the heater is put away, the circuit breaker flipped back on, bathrobe put on for warmth.

I think briefly about the things I am supposed to do today. Writing today isn’t going well, so maybe I should stop trying to write and start in on them now? Then I look at the clock and see I only have 10 more minutes of writing left to do and decide to gut it out. After all, I can do anything for ten minutes, right?

Right?