Perhaps you remember the evening program on Fox, “Beverly Hills 90210,” from a few years ago. One of my fondest memories was the scene where the highly suspicious dad tracks down his daughter (Shannon Doherty), expecting to find her up to no good with her punkish boyfriend (Luke Perry). Finally one evening, he catches them in the act … the very act … of donating blood together, while on a date.
Yes, I was roped in from the earliest episodes in 1990. After all for a few years they were my peer group. My awkwardness wasn’t a threat to their airbrushed coolness. They shared their struggles with me (and millions of other anonymous viewers around the world). They accepted me for who I was (an anonymous fan, whose name they will never know).
While today I have “real” friends, who really accept me (not the least of whom is my lovely wife), I am deeply grieved over the untold millions of people who find it easier to move to “Beverly Hills 90210″ and other virtual towns like it. It is more rewarding to create an avatar on Facebook or MySpace, or perhaps several, than it is to do the difficult and emotionally painful work of actively participating in building relationships and friendships in real time. Let the pros work out complex relational problems in an hour a week (45 minutes plus commercial breaks). We’ll watch.
About the mid 90s I began seriously follow Jesus once again. I moved out of Beverly Hills 90210; only to find the Spirit of God leading me into the desert. Often times the only rain clouds that formed were in my eyes, as I longed for a real friend group to replace what I had left behind, both in the virtual and real worlds. Jesus did not disappoint, as he brought me into fellowship with other redeemed exiles and vagrants.
You can take me out of Beverly Hills 90210, but taking Beverly Hills 90210 out of me is a bit more of a challenge. I long for those days from time to time when problems worked out flawlessly. I also long for those early days of my true Christian walk, where the friend group God provided me became my oasis-family in the desert of family brokenness. However, the Spirit of God had decided a while ago to pick up camp and move to another part of the desert. Those days of yesteryear are now only a mirage in my imagination. Returning to them is certainly understandable. After all God made us for relationship, and is himself an Eternal Community of Three Persons, living in perfect love and shalom. No, returning to the oasis of yesteryear is not an option. Yet, I am who I am today because of God’s redeeming work in yesteryear. So perhaps yesteryear is a bit more substantial in the here-and-now than a mirage … so long as I grow from it and past it … but not back to it.
To be honest it is a bit difficult at times, when well-meaning people attempt to fit me into an emotionally-airbrushed cheap suit, known as “The Preacher.” They’ll pay a pro to work out complex problems in an hour a week, and occasionally they’ll show up to watch.
Yet, herein lays perhaps a very rewarding aspect of being a Christian who happens to be in church leadership. I have shared my some of my own struggles from time to time, and it is truly revolutionary for some that the pastor happens to be very human; despite any attempts to create a spiritual avatar. I am very human with very human struggles. Yet my heart is very much in love with the Father, Son, and Spirit. I love the Torah of Jesus. This rewarding aspect of pastoral ministry is showing people in a very real way that both can authentically exist at the same time. In fact that is the nature of Salvation: being authentically transformed in the real world and enabled to love and live for God authentically in the real world. The holy God of Creation wants me to participate in his holy community of Three. The sinless Jesus died for the horrid me that I might become his very righteousness in the great We, that community of other redeemed exiles and vagrants (2 Corinthians 5:21).
I love my friends that currently live in places where I don’t. I remember the thirst of my heart being quenched during the days when I lived where they do now. I hold out hope for authentic friends for my family in the vicinity of wherever we live. However, I refuse to return to Beverly Hills 90210. God’s people are most successful, when wandering through the desert, as exiles and vagrants from Beverly Hills 90210. It is then we can most fully experience the promise of Jesus, spoken to his loyal followers in anticipation of deep persecution, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23; ESV).
