The Journey of His Followers
Tribal Gospel Album 2
“I don’t believe in God”
If you say, “Well, okay, I don’t believe in God. There’s no evidence of God,” then you’re missing the stars in the sky and you’re missing the sunrises and sunsets and you’re missing the fact that bees pollinate all these crops and keep us alive and the way that everything seems to work together at the same time.
Everything is sort of built in a way that, to me, suggests intelligent design.
But at the same time, there’s a lot of things in life where you say to yourself,
“Well, if this is God’s plan, it’s very peculiar.”
— Stephen King, speaking to Terry Gross on NPR about his new novel, “Joyland”, May 29, 2013
A Blue-Collar Man
Ushaa Shialom (Jesus) lived as a common man among common men.
He lived where they lived – fishermen, tax collectors, shepherds, street vendors – and He loved them all, outcasts of every kind, the untouchables, lepers, lunatics, Samaritans, street people and women taken in adultery.
He loved kids and crowds, celebrations and solitude, miracles and quiet meals with old friends. He was a blue-collar man, and He calls us to be blue-collar Christians – loving the loveless and washing tired feet, even when there is no one to watch.
— Richard Exley
The Bride of Christ
Leo Buscaglia tells the story of a barefooted, ten-year-old boy staring through the window of a shoe store on a cold December day.
A lady approached him and said, “My, but you’re in such deep thought.’
The boy replied, “I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes.”
Taking him by the hand the lady led him into the store and asked the clerk to get half a dozen pairs of socks for the boy. Then she asked him if he would please get her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly brought them to her.
She took the little fellow to the back part of the store, removed her gloves, knelt down and washed his feet and dried them with the towel. By this time, the clerk had returned with the socks. Placing a pair upon the boy’s feet, she then purchased a pair of shoes for him.
As she turned to go the astonished kid caught her by the hand.
Looking up into her face, with tears in his eyes, he asked her:
“Are you God’s wife?”
“Are you God’s wife?”
“Are you God’s wife?”
— Richard Exley, May 27, 2017
College and Religion
Here’s where a lot of you stand when it comes to religion: It isn’t for you. You don’t mind if other people are devout, but you don’t get it. Smart people don’t believe that stuff anymore.
I can be sure that is what many of you think because your generation of high-IQ, college-educated young people, like mine 50 years ago, has been as thoroughly socialized to be secular as your counterparts in preceding generations were socialized to be devout. Some of you grew up with parents who weren’t religious, and you’ve never given religion a thought. Others of you followed the religion of your parents as children but left religion behind as you were socialized by college.
By socialized, I don’t mean that you studied theology under professors who persuaded you that Thomas Aquinas was wrong. You didn’t study theology at all. None of the professors you admired were religious. When the topic of religion came up, they treated it dismissively or as a subject of humor. You went along with the zeitgeist.
— Charles Murray, The Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2014
Things Ushaa Shialom Said
These are some things that Ushaa Shialom (Jesus) said:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me.”
— John 14:1
“Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
— Mark 11:24
“For even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
— Mark 10:45
“Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
— John 3:3
“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
— John 14:6
“So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Search and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened for you.”
— Matthew 7:7 and Luke 11:9
“Don’t worry about tomorrow. For tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
— Matthew 6:34
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”
— Matthew 5:7
“For what shall it profit a man if he gained the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”
— Matthew 16:26 and Mark 8:36
“A new command I give you, love one another as I have loved you.”
— John 13:34
“If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross and follow me.”
— Matthew 6:34 and Luke 9:23
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
— Matthew 6:33
“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.”
— Luke 14:11 and Luke 18:14 and Matthew 23:12
“And know that I am with you always. Yes, to the end of time.”
— Matthew 28:20
“When you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them so that your father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”
— Mark 11:25
“So in everything due to others what you would have them do to you.”
— Matthew 7:12
“Let your life so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your father, which is in heaven.”
— Matthew 5:16
“If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give
up your life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, you will save
it.”
— Mark 8:35 and Matthew 16:25 and Luke 9:24
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever
drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give
them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal
life.”
— John 4:13-14
“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies. Do good to those who
hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully
use you.”
— Luke 6:27-28
“My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
— John 18:36
“I have told you these things so that in Me, you may have peace. In
this world, you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the
world.”
— John 16:33
Jesus said all of those things.
And many others.
And many others.
And many others.
Pure Christianity is Not a Religion
Pure Christianity is not a religion.
Pure Christianity is the proclamation of the end of religion; not of a new religion, or even of the best of all religions.
If the cross is the sign of anything, it’s the sign that God has gone out of the religion business and solved all of the world’s problems without requiring a single human being to do a single religious thing.
What the cross is actually a sign of is the fact that religion can’t do
a thing about the world’s problems — that it never did work and it
never will.
— Robert F. Capon
Jesus was Not Killed by Atheism
Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God’s will from their own.
— Barbara Brown Taylor
I am always surprised when people tell me that they are not at all religious. It seems to me that to live without religion is to condemn oneself to a world which is the psychological equivalent of decaf coffee, non-alcoholic wines, fatless butter substitutes, paper made out of reconstituted garbage, language dominated by political correctness, and all that rubbish which is supposed to make life safe and inoffensive and hardly distinguishable from death. Only of course we never talk about death. We hope to read in the paper some morning that science has found a cure for it.
— Robertson Davies, The Merry Heart, p. 279
To God be the Glory
To God be the glory, great things He hath done!
So loved He the world that He gave us His Son,
Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,
And opened the life gate that all may go in.
O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,
To every believer the promise of God;
The vilest offender who truly believes,
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.
Great things He has taught us, great things He has done,
And great our rejoicing through Jesus the Son;
But purer, and higher, and greater will be
Our wonder, our transport, when Jesus we see.
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
Let the earth hear His voice!
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
Let the people rejoice!
O come to the Father, through Jesus the Son,
And give Him the glory, great things He has done.
— Fanny Crosby, 1872
Green Flannel-graph
When I was a young boy, Sunday-school teachers used felt figures to reenact the stories of Ushaa Shialom (Jesus) on a green, flannel-graph background. That two-dimensional story telling might have been a step up from a one-dimensional reading of the story, but that’s where many of us get stuck in our relationship with the maker.
For many of us, the maker never escapes the pages of the book. When the word of the maker ceases to be alive, it is just ink on paper. We end up with a flannel-graph maker who can never amaze us, overwhelm us, or transcend us.
We need to break down and rebuild our understanding of the maker.
In the beginning, the maker created us in his image.
We’ve been creating the maker in our image ever since.
— inspired by the writings of Mark Batterson
Holy, Holy, Holy!
Holy, Holy, Holy!
Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning
our song shall rise to Thee;
Holy, Holy, Holy,
Merciful and Mighty!
God in three Persons,
Blessèd Trinity!
Holy, Holy, Holy!
All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden
Crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim
falling down before Thee,
Who wert, and art,
And evermore shalt be.
Holy, Holy, Holy!
Though the darkness hide Thee,
Though the eye of sinful man
Thy glory may not see;
Only Thou art holy;
There is none beside Thee,
Perfect in power,
In love, and purity.
Holy, Holy, Holy!
Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy Name,
In earth, and sky, and sea;
Holy, Holy, Holy;
Merciful and Mighty!
God in three Persons,
Blessèd Trinity!
— Reginald Heber, 1826
The Problem with Every Sacred Text
The problem with every sacred text is that it has human readers. Consciously or unconsciously, we interpret it to meet our own needs.
There is nothing wrong with this unless we deny that we are doing it, as when someone tells me that he is not “interpreting” anything but simply reporting what is right there on the page.
This is worrisome, not only because he is reading a translation from the original Hebrew or Greek that has already involved a great deal of interpretation, but also because it is such a short distance between believing you possess an error-free message from God and believing that you are an error-free messenger of God.
The literalists I like least are the ones who do not own a Bible.
The literalists I like most are the ones who admit that they do not understand every word God has revealed in the Bible, though they still believe God has revealed it.
I can respect that.
I can respect almost anyone who admits to being human while reading a divine text. After that, we can talk – about we highlight some teachings and ignore others, about how we decide which ones are historically conditioned and which ones are universally true, about who has influenced our reading of scripture and how our social location affects what we hear.
The minute I believe I know the mind of God is the minute someone needs to tell me to sit down and tell me to breathe into a paper bag.
— Barbara Brown Taylor
The Worst of It
The worst of it, of course, is the way we think we know what the stories mean that were told by Ushaa Shialom. (Jesus)
Heaven knows, people like me, who ought to know better, have explained the life out of them often enough, have tried so hard to “pound the point in” that more often than not
all you can hear is the pounding.
— Frederick Buechner
What a Friend We Have in Jesus
What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer!
Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer!
Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged—
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful,
Who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness;
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Are we weak and heavy-laden,
Cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge—
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In His arms He’ll take and shield thee,
Thou wilt find a solace there.
Blessed Savior, Thou hast promised
Thou wilt all our burdens bear;
May we ever, Lord, be bringing
All to Thee in earnest prayer.
Soon in glory bright, unclouded,
There will be no need for prayer—
Rapture, praise, and endless worship
Will be our sweet portion there.
— Joseph Scriven (1855)
The Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever
David was just a humble shepherd when Samuel anointed him king
— 1 Samuel 16:1-13
Elisha was plowing in his father’s fields when Elijah placed his prophetic mantle upon him.
— 1 Kings 19:19-21
Jeremiah wasn’t even born when the Lord appointed him as a prophet.
— Jeremiah 1:4-10
Peter and John were going about their business as fishermen when Jesus called them.
— Matthew 4:18-22
The point I’m trying to make is simply this: we don’t have to do anything special to get the attention of Jesus.
He knows where to find us.
But who is Jesus?
Many would like to accept Jesus as a prophet or a wise teacher, but they will not believe that He is the Son of God.
But those options are not viable.
If Jesus is not the Son of God as He claimed, then only two options remain. Either he was a liar who falsely claimed to be divine. Or He was a madman suffering from delusions of grandeur.
In the middle of a storm on the Sea of Galilee, the followers of Jesus asked,
“Who is this man, that even the winds and waves obey him? Who is is this man? Who is He?”
— Matthew 8:27, Mark 4:41, Luke 8:25
Allow me to answer their question.
He is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
— John 1:29
He is the risen savior who has conquered death, hell, and the grave!
—1 Corinthians 15:55–57
He is the author and the finisher of our faith!
— Hebrews 12:2
He is the faithful witness,
— Revelation 1:5 and 3:14
the firstborn from the dead,
— Colossians 1:18
the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last,
— Revelation 1:8 and 22:13-15
who is and who was, and who is to come!
— Revelation 1:8
He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
— Revelation 19:16
He is Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever!
— Hebrews 13:8
He is Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever!
He is Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever!
— Richard Exley
The God I Grew Up With
The color is gone from the sky today.
The color is gone from the sky.
I went to church and was told things about God that I never heard before.
I was told there are 5 things God really cares about, and that it is my job to make sure that God gets what God wants.
According to the man at the front of the room, this is God’s new list:
Border Security.
Religious Liberty.
Heterosexual Sex.
And having lots of kids.
And making sure that no one ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever
gets an abortion.
I miss the old God. I miss the God I grew up with; the one who believed in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
I miss the God whose son refused to get involved in politics, even when his followers urged him to do so!
I miss the God who looked into the face of Pontius Pilate and said, “My kingdom is not of this world!”
Did God change his mind? Did God change his mind? Did God change his mind?
And if so, when did that happen? And why am I only just now being informed?
I remember when the Son of God shouted at the religious leaders of his day, “You have replaced the commandments of God with the traditions of men!”
“You have replaced the commandments of God with the traditions of men!”
“You have replaced the commandments of God with the traditions of men.”
In my mind, I can hear him shouting.
In my mind, I can hear him shouting.
I can hear him shouting.
But now I have an idea.
I have an idea that I like.
I like it a lot.
You go ahead and worsship your Five Rule God.
Fall down on your face before the God of the Five Rules.
As for me, I’m going to go look for people who have not heard about the God of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control!
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
I’m sticking with that God.
I’m staying with the one I know.
The one I know.
I wish you knew him, too.
I wish you knew him, too.
— A. Nonny Mouse
Wolves at War
When I was a little boy, my grandfather told me a story about two wolves that are fighting inside all of us.
We have two wolves inside us.
And they are fighting.
One of the wolves is anger, envy, self-pity, and regret.
The other wolf is love, truth, faith, and hope.
I asked my grandfather, “Which one of the wolves wins?”
My grandfather dropped down to one knee, so that he could look into my eyes. And then he said, “The one you feed.”
The wolf that wins is the one that you feed.
Faith is different from Religion.
And Religiosity is different from both.
Faith is where you place your deepest and highest confidence.
Is your highest and deepest confidence in science, science and technology?
Is it in your fellow human beings? The inner goodness of mankind and the wisdom of the masses?
Is your highest and deepest faith in American Exceptionalism?
Is it in Democracy, Free trade, Capitalism, Patriotism, a strong economy and a powerful army?
Everyone puts their faith in something.
Religion happens when you organize your faith and create a set of principles to embrace, rules to follow, and steps to climb.
Religion is Faith that has been codified.
And that is not always a bad thing.
But religiosity is always a bad thing! Religiosity is weaponized religion.
Religiosity is when you sign God’s name to checks that He did not write.
You can be certain that you have created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people that you do.
Christianity is different than Faith in Christ.
Christianity is a lifestyle, a moral code to which you can subscribe.
Christ is a person you can know.
We lose our way when we begin spreading Christianity instead of spreading the joyful news of Jesus Christ.
Are we feeding the wolf of anger, envy, self-pity, and regret?
Or are we feeding the wolf of love, truth, faith, and hope?
The wolf that wins is the one you feed.
— inspired by a comment made by Detective Inspector Jack Mooney in “Death in Paradise,” season 6, episode 6, when he spoke of his grandfather telling him about the two wolves that fight within us.
Be Thou My Vision
Be thou my vision O Lord of my heart
None other is aught but the King of the seven heavens.
Be thou my meditation by day and night.
May it be thou that I behold ever in my sleep.
Be thou my speech, be thou my understanding.
Be thou with me, be I with thee
Be thou my father, be I thy son.
Mayst thou be mine, may I be thine.
Be thou my battle-shield, be thou my sword.
Be thou my dignity, be thou my delight.
Be thou my shelter, be thou my stronghold.
Mayst thou raise me up to the company of the angels.
Be thou every good to my body and soul.
Be thou my kingdom in heaven and on earth.
Be thou solely chief love of my heart.
Let there be none other, O high King of Heaven.
Till I am able to pass into thy hands,
My treasure, my beloved through the greatness of thy love
Be thou alone my noble and wondrous estate.
I seek not men nor lifeless wealth.
Be thou the constant guardian of every possession and every life.
For our corrupt desires are dead at the mere sight of thee.
Thy love in my soul and in my heart —
Grant this to me, O King of the seven heavens.
O King of the seven heavens grant me this —
Thy love to be in my heart and in my soul.
With the King of all, with him after victory won by piety,
May I be in the kingdom of heaven, O brightness of the sun.
Beloved Father, hear, hear my lamentations.
Timely is the cry of woe of this miserable wretch.
O heart of my heart, whatever befall me,
O ruler of all, be thou my vision.
— Dallán Forgaill (Irish, 6th century) — Mary Elizabeth Byrne, (English, 1905)
The Full Substance of Faith
I know that the Bible is a special kind of book, but I find it as seductive as any other.
If I am not careful, I can begin to mistake the words on the page for the realities they describe.
I can begin to love the dried ink marks on the page more than I love the encounters that gave rise to them. If I am not careful, I can decide that I am really much happier reading my Bible than I am entering into what God is doing in my own time and place, since shutting the book to go outside will involve the very great risk of taking part in stories that are still taking shape.
Neither I nor anyone else knows how these stories will turn out, since at this point they involve more blood than ink.
The whole purpose of the Bible, it seems to me, is to convince people to set the written word down in order to become living words in the world for God’s sake.
For me, this willing conversion of ink back to blood is the full substance of faith.
— Barbara Brown Taylor
Compassion is the Antitoxin
In the alchemy of man’s soul almost all noble attributes
— courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, etc. — can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless. — Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human
The opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness; it is indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy; it is indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death; it is indifference.
— Elie Wiesel, writer and holocaust survivor
The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
Asking questions is part of what it means to have faith.
So the fact that you’re questioning what you’ve been told isn’t evidence of your lack of faith.
It is evidence that you take your faith seriously enough to examine it, and to follow the truth wherever it leads you.
— Keith Giles, Before You Lose Your Mind: Deconstructing Bad Theology in the Church
The Tip You Leave on a Table
The Bible talks about how God sends the rain on the just and the unjust.
Bad people need rain just as much as good people.
I think about that when I’m being served by a waiter who is really bad at their job.
I always leave them an extremely generous tip.
Sometimes it is so large that it is ridiculous.
I do this for three reasons:
The tip that you leave isn’t really about the waiter. It is not a statement of who they are. It is a statement of who you are.
The second reason that I leave monumental tips to bad waiters is because I know that it will confuse them. They will know, of course, that they did not deserve it. So it may cause them to think for a moment about the relationship between the person who is serving and the person who is being served.
The third reason I leave such comically large tips is because a person who is doing a bad job is usually unhappy. I do not know why they are unhappy, and I don’t need to know. But an unexpected gift of a large amount of money tends to brighten a person’s day.
So as I drive away from the restaurant, I get to smile about that little spark of joy I left behind.
I get to smile about leaving them a happy little surprise.
You can keep a bad waiter from stealing your joy by being generous to them, even though they don’t deserve it.
Now I know what you’re thinking.
I know what you’re thinking.
You are worried that I am cheating all the waiters and waitresses who work hard and are doing a good job.
Don’t be silly. I’m not a fool.
I treat the good ones even better than the bad ones.
The tip you leave on a table is a statement; a statement about you.
What are you saying about you?
— A. Nonny Mouse
Weird Christians
Many of us call ourselves ‘Weird Christians,’ albeit partly in jest.
What we have in common is that we see a return to old-school forms of worship as a way of escaping from the crisis of modernity and the liberal-capitalist faith in individualism.
Weird Christians reject as “overly accommodationist” those churches that have watered down the stranger and more supernatural elements of the faith, like miracles, and the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ.
There are churches that no longer believe in miracles, or in the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ.
We weird Christians also reject the fusion of ethno-nationalism, unfettered capitalism and politics that have come to define the modern, white evangelical movement.
— Tara Isabella Burton, May 8, 2020
Then My Soul Bursts Forth into Praise
O great God, when I behold that world
You have created with your omnipotent word,
How your wisdom guides the threads of life,
And all beings are fed at your table:
Then my soul bursts forth into praise!
O great God, O great God!
Then my soul bursts forth into praise!
O great God, O great God!
When I consider the high wonders of heaven,
Where golden vessels plow the ether blue,
And sun and moon measure the moments of time
And alternate, as two bells go:
Then my soul bursts forth into praise!
O great God, O great God!
Then my soul bursts forth into praise!
O great God, O great God!
When I hear the voice of thunder in the storm roaring
And the blades of lightning run out of the sky,
When the cold, fresh winds of the rain whistle
And the bow of promise shines in my sight,
Then my soul bursts forth into praise!
O great God, O great God!
Then my soul bursts forth into praise!
O great God, O great God!
When the summer wind blows over the fields,
When flowers scent the spring’s shore,
When thrushes trill in the green tents
From the silent, dark edge of the pine forest:
Then my soul bursts forth into praise!
O great God, O great God!
Then my soul bursts forth into praise!
O great God, O great God!
— Carl Boberg, (1885) A poem titled “O Store Gud” (O Great God),was later adapted into the famous Christian hymn “How Great Thou Art”. The words were inspired by a powerful thunderstorm and the calm, peaceful natural scene that followed, including a thrush singing in the woods. The poem was eventually paired with an old Swedish folk tune and became a popular hymn sung worldwide, especially after being translated into English by Stuart K. Hine in 1931 and popularized during the Billy Graham crusades.
Closing Comments from the Narrator
Well, that’s the end of Tribal Gospel Album Two, “The Journey of His Followers.”
You can read the script of all the bits and pieces that made up this album, and you can download each of those bits individually, or all of them in one unbroken piece, at TribalGospel.com
You can also download each of the individual audio performances or the whole album at once. No charge.
You will find a detailed list of “who wrote what” at TribalGospel.com, but I’ll give you a quick list right now:
First, we heard from Stephen King,
then Richard Exley,
Charles Murray from the New York Times,
then Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Robert F. Capon, Barbara Brown Taylor,
Robertson Davies, Fanny Crosby,
and then Richard Exley a couple more times,
then “A. Nonny Mouse,” Mark Batterson,
Reginald Heber, Frederick Beukner,
Eric Hoffer, Elie Wiesel, Keith Giles,
Dallán Forgaill, Mary Elizabeth Byrne,
and Carl Boberg.
When you visit TribalGospel.com, you will notice that there is no paywall, and we do not solicit donations. In fact, we don’t even accept donations.
There is nothing about Tribal Gospel that involves money.
In fact, there is no organization behind Tribal Gospel.
It is just a celebration of Jesus, and The Journey of His Followers,
— A. Nonny Mouse