I read this today, a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. and, with that same, sudden, pop that comes from a freshly opened jar of whatever, came to my mind my own blessed defiance of one of my stepdads.
“To our most bitter opponents we say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”
As many of you know, I became a believer when I was seven on the steps of a church bus here at The House Modesto. That means I already knew the Lord when I met the stepdad, the fourth of five, about whom I am going to tell you .
“Nicky Cruz: “You come near me and I’ll kill you!”
David Wilkerson: “Yeah, you could do that. You could cut me up into a thousand pieces and lay them in the street, and every piece will still love you.”” – “The Cross and the Switchblade,” a comic book I read in church.
We had moved to Montana and Canada with this stepdad. He is the one who, as we passed into Canada, punched a Canadian Mountie and could not be prosecuted because he had diplomatic immunity.
He was the most violent of my stepdads. Where the others were just sloppy drunks who beat us with hay-maker punches and whatever they happened to have in their hands at the moment, this dad was cold, calculated, creative, and purposeful in his violence.
He was the one who would look me directly in the eyes, making sure I was looking into his as he punched me in my lips, causing them to bleed, if I laughed or cried.
I can still taste copper as I write this.
I didn’t sleep much as a child and while my mom, brother, and sister slept, I would sneak down to the restaurant portion of our ‘home’, which was a dilapidated hotel/restaurant and the only place left in which to live there in Roy, Montana.
I would play with toothpicks, rubber bands, and Bicycle playing cards, building fanciful houses and structures. I would lose track of time and often be caught unaware as this stepdad came home at 2 am, after the bar had closed.
He would find me and, in his drunken and violent state, would drag me from my booth and throw me across the tables scattering my toothpick and playing card creations. From where I fell, I would run up the stairs to the rooms, and hide beneath one of the rusted iron frames of one of the rickety beds and listen.
He would rage, roaring for me to come back to him and I would hear him slowly making his drunken way to the stairs, only rarely making it to the top, find my room, find me beneath the bed, and pull me from under it, throw me onto and press me into the mattress so I could feel the metal springs in my back and barely breathe.
He would place his face within inches of my own causing me to gag on his alcohol laden breath. He would give me one last push into the mattress, close his fiery blood shot eyes, turn and lumber from the room.
Later, out in the hall, I would hear him murmuring and sobbing himself to sleep.
I was a child, immature in my defiance, when I knew him, but already determined to defy the enemy who wanted so badly for me to be bitterly angry and vengeful. I think, with stories like those of MLK, Jr. and David Wilkerson, so fresh in my mind, even as a child, I had somehow grasped the concept of the power of forgiveness over bitterness.
Every next day, it was as if nothing had ever happened but inside my heart grew an insatiable urge to prove I could, by God’s grace, love my only version of a dad at the time, and someday, win him to the Lord.
“every piece will still love you”
The Beatitudes are that same kind of “Blessed Defiance”.
Where the world says, “To the victor goes the spoils”, the beatitudes dare us to be humble, hungry, thirsty, merciful, pure, peaceful, and… …followers of God. Unlike the reward that goes to the world’s victor, that which spoils, the rewards for being, for obtaining these attitudes, will ring eternal.
The Kingdom of Heaven
Comfort
The Whole Earth
Satisfaction
Mercy
God’s Presence
Being a Child of God (My personal favorite)
Defy bitterness, hatred, and revenge.
Forgive.
