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NOWHERE MAN #2
AN EMOTIONAL CARWASH
We read a cute anecdote the other day about a young
woman who showed up at the DMV to get her license renewed. First off,
her hair was a different style AND color. Before she had glasses, now
contact lenses. She’d lost weight. Her address had changed. To top things
off, she’d recently gotten married, so now her last name was different.
And the clerk who looked at her old ID, and then examined, close-up, the
“new” person standing in front of her couldn’t help but comment. “What’s
the deal with you anyway?” she asked. “Did you just enter the witness
protection program?”
We’ve chosen this as our topic for the week: NOWHERE MAN. What is it like
to be stripped of your identity, to feel insignificant, unloved, unwanted?
I mentioned yesterday that Bible verse from Isaiah: “Can a mother forget
her baby?” And you know, the answer is yes. Mom CAN forget. People CAN
be left by the side of the road, because those who SHOULD care . . . don’t.
Speaking of witness protection programs, it was good timing that we noticed
in the L.A. Times right when we were getting ready to record, a feature
story by Christopher Noxon about a TV special on HBO with that very title:
Witness Protection. The article, and the TV film, describe what it’s like
to be one of the 25,000 or so people who are completely stripped of their
identities — and eventually emerge into a faraway community with new names,
new papers, new jobs, new houses, new backgrounds and histories, new EVERYTHING.
Apparently there’s actually a place, a government complex, called the
Witness Security Safe Site and Protection Center; it’s top-secret, of
course, and this is where federal marshals take a family through this
“stripping” process. Most of them are criminals, actually — close to 98%
of them — and the government gives them this option, generally because
they’ve testified against other criminals or mobsters. In this particular
television film, the story is about a Boston loan shark who has played
the rat, testifying in court against the Mafia bosses he used to work
for. So now he has to go into hiding; either that or end up wearing cement
shoes in the Hudson River. “Sleeping with the fishes,” if you remember
that old line.
The film’s producer, a Howard Meltzer, describes how hard the process
is.
“Most of these guys are being plucked out of an urban
area,” he says, “and spit out somewhere in Montana to work at a Jiffy
Lube for minimum wage. It ain’t easy.”
But there’s something harder than the minimum-wage bit.
Do you know what it is? It’s when they take your NAME away from you.
“The last step, and frequently the hardest for participants,” says Mr.
Noxon, the author of the newspaper article, “is a renaming, officially
severing all connection to their previous life.”
“This place is an emotional carwash,” says actor Tom
Sizemore, who appeared in the film.
Have you ever felt like YOU’VE been through that carwash
. . . with the windows rolled down? Or maybe even without the car? Sometimes
we get our identity, our sense of worth, from our job. “Who are you?”
“Oh, I work at such-and-such factory.” “I’m an executive on the 35th floor.
Corner office.” And then, all at once, after 32 years with “The Firm,”
they dump you. They have a Pink Slip Saturday, and you’re out of there
without much of a golden parachute. And that was who you WERE! You were
a Provider, a Good Family Man, because you brought home that paycheck.
All at once, those huge brushes in the carwash just scrub away that feeling
of self-worth.
Maybe a divorce has happened to you. Or widowhood. You were the wife or
husband of a wonderful person; in fact, maybe you got your NAME from that
person. Your standing in the community came from being married to so-and-so.
And now, either through a death, or because your spouse filed to get rid
of you, you LOSE that identity. A couple of years ago, David tells me,
he was the weekend speaker at a singles retreat. And most of these people
were single because of divorce. A number of them, recently having gone
through this, were still kind of dazed. “Who am I?” they asked their friends.
“Being married and having babies and being a mom and driving kids to soccer
practice and getting supper for my husband . . . this is all I know. This
is all I WAS, all I ever wanted to be. And now it’s all gone.”
Or maybe you’ve been thrust into sudden homelessness. Don’t we define
ourselves by our addresses? “I live on Moocha Moola Street in Prosperity
Palisades”; that’s what you always told people. But now you can’t claim
that address.
Well, you know, the Bible tells us that this struggle of being a Nowhere
Man, a Nowhere Woman, is nothing new. God’s people have always had to
endure that “emotional carwash.”
Consider with me the Children of Israel. God’s CHOSEN people. That was
their name, their identity. They basked in it; they bragged about it.
But . . . for a while they had their own land — and then they didn’t.
They were a free and proud people, and then slaves. In fact, when four
young man named Daniel, Hananiah, Michael, and Azaria were taken from
their homeland and made prisoners in the pagan kingdom of Babylon, the
very first thing the king there did was . . . to strip them of their names.
That’s right. You can read it for yourself in the book of Daniel, and
this happens in the seventh verse of chapter one. Boom! Old names erased;
passports destroyed; social security numbers reassigned. IMMEDIATELY the
king of Babylon assigned them brand new names — remember Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego? — and these were names linked directly to heathen, Babylonian
gods.
Of course, in today’s witness protection programs the trick for the participant
is to LEARN the new name, to immerse yourself with the new data: the fake
birthplace, where you “pretend” went to school, the new driver’s license
with the new name on it. But for Daniel and his three friends, the challenge
was just the opposite: they wanted to recall and hang onto the OLD name
— and even more, their former IDENTITY as sons of the living God.
And friend, this is the challenge for us right now, today. Maybe you’ve
lost just about everything that you thought made you . . . YOU. Your home,
your family, your job, your bank account. Just about all of your definitions
are gone. Or maybe you never even HAD those things. You were born with
just about zero, and have gone steadily downhill from there. But do you
know something? Those THINGS really aren’t your ID at all! This young
hero named Daniel: they took him away from his home. He was separated
from all his loved ones; in fact, he never saw them again . . . ever.
The king even tried to give him a different name: “Belteshazzar,” referring
to the pagan god Bel. And yet, during his long and incredible career of
service, Daniel just kept hanging onto his TRUE identity, which was to
be a servant of the living God in heaven. Nebuchadnezzar could call him
whatever he liked, and Daniel answered respectfully. But he still served
the true God. They could assign him to sleep in any bunk they chose; they
could point out to him that he was an alien in Babylon. That didn’t matter;
his true home, his true citizenship, was heaven. He just kept saying to
himself: “I am God’s man. Nobody can take that away.”
In this newspaper article describing the center where they warehouse and
debrief these would-be “witness protection” participants, Robert Sabbag,
who first reported on this for the New York Times Magazine, marvels at
how thorough this “stripping” process really is. I mean, they really do
a job on a person’s brain, ripping away every shred of the past, all the
former links. When it’s over, you hardly know if you’re coming or going.
“It’s not like a military base, it’s not like a hospital,
it’s not like a jail,” he says. “It’s almost like a space station in a
science-fiction movie — there’s absolutely no frame of reference. They
don’t want you to have ANY sense of where you are or how to get from one
place to another.”
That’s quite a description, isn’t it? And I think this
is exactly what our enemy, the Devil, would like to do with our minds.
If he can get us to pin our identities on things that he can then add
— then subtract — then add — then subtract . . . well, then he’s got us
on HIS spiritual yo-yo machine, doesn’t he? It’s ironic that he can tempt
us into sin. And the minute we DO sin, he whispers in our ear: “Look at
you! Look what you did! And you call yourself a Christian? No way are
YOU a Christian! Not any more.” And if your frame of reference is your
performance, how good you are, how seldom you sin and blow it, then he’s
got you right where he wants you: ready for him to rewrite your passport
his way.
But the secret is one short verse; in fact, HALF a verse. Daniel 1:8:
“But Daniel MADE UP HIS MIND to be IDENTIFIED with the God of Israel.”
Once he did that, all the king’s horses and all the
king’s men — could not make Daniel a Babylon man.NOWHERE MAN #3
HUMAN POKER CHIPS
Have you ever said to yourself, “I’m being used”? “I’m
not even a person to that individual; I’m nothing more than a bargaining
chip”?
There’s a conversation that maybe you recall going back about a quarter
century, found in the bestseller: Jaws. Actually, if I recall correctly,
this particular exchange happened in the BOOK by Peter Benchley, and didn’t
make it into the big-screen adaptation starring Roy Scheider and a very
large fish. But maybe you remember how the sheriff there in Amity was
determined to close the beaches. There was a shark out there; they had
to shut down the swimming areas, even if the Fourth of July was coming
up. And the mayor and his business friends said, “No, you’re NOT going
to shut down the beaches.” “Yes, I am.” “No, you’re not.” Etc.
Well, the mayor wins out. The beaches are open. People go swimming. And
a little boy named Alex Kintner is killed by the shark, just swallowed
right off of his little floating mattress. And there’s this horrible scene
later where the mother, dressed in black, comes up to the sheriff and
slaps him in the face. “You knew,” she says. “You knew there was a shark.
You knew people had been killed. And you didn’t close the beaches. Why?”
It’s a horrible moment of conscience-stricken guilt.
In the book version, though, the mayor comes over to the sheriff. It’s
really HIS fault, of course. And he says to Martin: “Look, we took a gamble
and lost. That’s all there is to it. We thought the shark had gone away
and it hadn’t. We gambled, we lost.” And the sheriff looks at him, angry,
and says, “Yeah. Great. We played a poker game and we lost. Now go tell
Mrs. Kintner that we’re sorry we used her son as chips in the game.”
And you know, that exchange right there about people being “chips” is
sobering, isn’t it? Sometimes we use the term “pawns” instead. You and
I are just “pawns” in this great chess game, this struggle between good
and evil. And the people who hurt most, those who pay the price, those
who are chewed up by the sharks of greed and war and death . . . are the
innocent Alex Kintners of the world. And we feel used.
Back in December, 1999, we did a radio program called God’s Christmas
Card to Slobodan Milosevic. And do you know what struck us in researching
and reading world opinion about this tyrant from Serbia? Time after time,
different global leaders said with a shake of their heads that this Mr.
Milosevic just does not care about people. People are tools to him. They’re
pawns. Poker chips. In fact, Joschka Fisher, the foreign minister for
Germany, was quoted in Newsweek magazine using that exact metaphor.
“He’s completely cynical,” he said, referring to Milosevic.
“He’s playing — he likes to play cards. But PEOPLE are at stake, not money.”
I suppose in a military sense, there is always an element
of “chips.” If your enemy has five thousand troops, and you’ve got ten
thousand, well, you’re probably going to win tomorrow’s battle. But you
might well lose ONE thousand of your men in the process. One thousand
men . . . in order to take such-and-such hill. And the general has to
muse to himself: “I need that hill. Is the loss of one thousand men worth
it?” And the answer’s yes. So they charge the hill, they take it, and
it costs them the lives of one thousand men who are husbands and daddies,
and some grieving mothers’ sons. That’s high-stakes poker, and sometimes,
when you’ve got to take a hill, you make that bet, hoping to win.
But in the case of Mr. Slobodan Milosevic, those people are spent as poker
chips for a much more selfish purpose: just to further the personal perks
and power and position and prestige of HIMSELF. He’s stripping people
of their self-worth, and then spending them just for HIM.
Elie Wiesel, the great Holocaust survivor, says this about Milosevic:
“It is no accident that he is nicknamed ‘the Butcher.’
He is interested not in peace, but in absolute domination. But what about
the cost in lives, including those of his own people? They are of NO CONCERN
to him; his personal power alone matters.”
Our former U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, a man named
Warren Zimmerman, takes note as well of this “chips” attitude of Milosevic’s:
“He is the COLDEST person I’ve ever met . . . He seems
to see people as pawns in a great strategic GAME, as ABSTRACTIONS, as
OBJECTS to be controlled and manipulated, not as flesh-and-blood humans.”
Then he adds: “I believe that this sinister coldness has made it easy
for him to order or condone the mass killings that have earned him his
place in history.”
Well, maybe the ravages of that particular war in the
Balkans seem like a long ways away. There aren’t any bullets flying over
and around and through your neighborhood or mine. But friend, I know full
well that this feeling of being used, of not being a person but just a
poker chip, or a plaything, or an expendable resource, is something that
hits MUCH closer to home. Because we get it in your letters. We hear it
from people who are taking our Discover Bible Course. We get it from prisoners,
who sometimes feel like they’ve been reduced to a number, not a name.
This is the human condition, isn’t it?
Well, I want to tell you the ironic thing. Because it’s realistic, I suppose,
that the higher up you are on the authority chain of command, the more
likely it would be that you would TEND to use people as chips. Kings simply
have to; so do generals. You spend a thousand men, or ten thousand, or
a hundred thousand, to win that war.
But again, here’s the irony. Jesus Christ, the King of ALL kings, and
who is involved in the biggest war, the greatest controversy, the universe
has ever witnessed — and who could be forgiven for adopting this “poker
chips” attitude toward us — DOESN’T! Friend, you and I are not “things”
to Him, or toys to be traded away.
Let’s start with small and work up from there. Do you recall a story where
a woman was taken in adultery, and the big shots of the day dragged her
through the dust and dumped her off in front of Jesus? Now, obviously,
SOMEBODY had been treating this woman like a THING, like a twenty-shekel
toy. She was nothing but flesh to them, a commodity to be used, either
for sexual pleasure, or to score a debate point with this Jesus character.
These guys would use her for sin or for sanctimony; they really didn’t
care which.
But what happens? Jesus values her. He defends her. He spares her dignity.
He lifts her up and wipes away her tears and tells her He doesn’t condemn
her. He looks beyond the skin, the torn dress, the near-nudity, the sorry
saga of sexual servitude. And He sees a PERSON, a treasure, a rare and
redeemable jewel for His kingdom. He doesn’t use her or abuse her or bargain
her away in a debate with the Pharisees. No, even though she’s an army
of ONE, He goes to battle to protect and save that army.
Or let’s take the broader view. In fact, let’s expand our scope to take
in our entire planet, with its six billion citizens. Plus all members
of the human race who have EVER lived. Wouldn’t a five-star general like
the Lord Jesus Christ take the attitude: “Okay, win some, lose some. I’ll
save a few million to live in the New Jerusalem; the others can go to
hell for all I care”?
Well, friend, there undoubtedly WILL be those who reject salvation and
miss the joys of the New Jerusalem. But not because Jesus bargained them
away! Over in II Peter 3:8, 9 we find the strongest possible statement
that Jesus Christ doesn’t trade away His trophies; He doesn’t bargain
us off like one-dollar poker chips. Listen to this:
“With God, time is not a factor — one day or a thousand
years — it makes no difference in His purposes. This doesn’t mean that
the Lord is slow in keeping His promises, or that He does things only
when He gets around to it. Time has gone on ONLY because of God’s patience
and kindness. He loves EVERYONE, even the wicked, and He doesn’t want
ANYONE to lose out on heaven but to turn from their sins and be saved.”
“Not willing that ANY should perish,” says the good old King James. Listen,
friend, God doesn’t grade on the curve, and shrug off a third or half
of the class, giving them F’s. He’d be glad to save EVERYONE. You and
I absolutely are NOT just chips to Him; He wants to save ME — right now.
And YOU right now too.
We mentioned in that Christmas program how Milosevic not only treated
people as bargaining chips, as tools to be traded, as human shields for
his factories and bridges, but he also systematically tried to strip people
of their IDs. He took their passports, their papers, their drivers licenses,
their government documents. He purposely MADE people into Nowhere Men
and Nowhere Women; he WANTED to make them feel stateless and homeless.
Not just chips, but SPENT chips, discarded chips.
And then . . . God steps in. He gives us new names. He writes those new
names in glory, in His Book of Life, it says in Revelation. Friend, that’s
better than a passport, isn’t it? He restores us to our homes; in fact,
He gives us new homes — mansions, even.
The only way HE uses us is to forever fill up His loving heart. And you
know, I could get used to THAT.
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