Reverend Johnny Dragon

I am a huge fan of Evangelist Pastor Jay Bakker. He is the Son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker from the defunct PTL Club, the Ministry that suffered great scandal in the 1980′s. Jay has written two books that have been pivotal in my own faith called “Son Of A Preacher Man” and “Fall To Grace”. He spent a lot of years struggling with his own personal demons and now has his own Ministry in Brooklyn, New York called Revolution. His church is run out of a local bar and he works with individuals that have felt forsaken by the Church and presents the message of God’s Grace and acceptance. A message that has been bastardized over time by the Religious Right through years of judgment and exclusion of the very people that Jesus Christ came to Minister and to Comfort.

Mark 2:17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

In one of his sermons Jay talks about how people come to the Church broken, forgotten, and in great need of God’s Grace. Once they embrace that unconditional Grace, it then becomes very easy to look at others in their same straits and start passing judgment and rules that would deter them from being a part of the very thing that they themselves had been so desperately seeking. This concept intrigued me greatly and really opened my eyes to the hypocrisy that seems to become the Norm in modern day Christianity. It also showed me why so many people are willing to turn their backs on what they believe is the tenants of the Church and what Jesus represents. The reality is that this is the exact opposite of what Jesus taught and modeled as the Son of God. God did not send Jesus as some great and powerful deity full of pomp and circumstance to sit upon a lofty throne in the confines of a luxurious temple. He was not sent to hang out with the Spiritually Superior and pass judgment upon those who Society has forsaken. His daily duties did not involve sentencing those who did not fit a certain mold to an eternity of hell and damnation. He was sent to accomplish just the contrary. Jesus was born in a stable, and grew up a Carpenter. His life was simplistic and he hung out with the Tax Collectors, prostitutes, and anyone else deemed unworthy of God. In a nutshell he hung out with people like me. He experienced true human emotion that he did not have to experience. One of my favorite stories of Christ was when he was informed that his friend Lazarus was extremely ill and needed his healing. Jesus did not return immediately, but when he did, he was informed that Lazarus had already died. John 11:35 Jesus wept. The shortest verse in the Bible, but offers so much insight into Jesus’s humanity. You see, Jesus knew what was going to happen. He knew that moments later he would say the words that would restore life to his friend an all would be well. Instead, however, he took a moment and experienced grief and loss. He allowed himself to experience pain that only those people who have lost someone close truly understand. Jesus did not have to feel any of that, but understood the importance of doing so. For me this is so incredibly powerful.

Another moment is in Luke 22:42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” Jesus knew that very soon he would be taken away to accomplish his ultimate purpose and he fully knew how difficult and painful it would be. In that moment he did what many of us would have done when facing a painful proposition, he prayed that if at all possible please don’t make me do this if I do not have to do it. This is going to be hard and it is going to hurt and I really would rather not have to do this if at all possible. He ends it by saying that if that if this is an impossibility, I am fully willing to do what you need me to do no matter what. My faith has continually been strengthen by the Humanity of Christ, and not His Majestic Spiritual Role.

I did not begin this piece for the purpose of promoting my Faith. For those of you who really know me I take a Spiritual rather than a Religious perspective on Faith. I support all Faiths and do not believe that one is right and all others are wrong. I do not believe that the vast majority of this planet has been sentenced to some arbitrary eternal life of damnation simply because of the geographical location where they happened to have the bad fortune of being born. This is a ridiculous idea and I am ashamed of the fact that people truly believe this is even possible. If that ruffles your feathers, well that is just too bad. This is about loving all of the people all of the time and that is the bottom line. The reason I started this piece is because of the recent changes in my life.

I have spent the better part of the decade working in the Field of Chemical Dependency in not only the Clinical aspect of the profession but also strictly in the Spiritual aspect of Recovery. God has used me to help hundreds, if not thousands of individuals who have suffered from the disease of Addiction. I assure you that I am not bragging, I give God all of the credit because I fully understand my limitations as a human being. I also know that it has been by the Grace of God because I can assure you and so could those closet to me that I have by no means been a Saint. In fact the majority of my forty years on this planet has been full of shame and disgrace. My behavior has not been characteristic of someone walking a Spiritual path of enlightenment and the example I have set in my personal life has been horrendous at best. God, however, has chosen to use me for a purpose that until recently I had never fully valued. My personal Recovery has been riddled by dishonesty, ego, hypocrisy and self-destruction. No matter how badly I have tried to sabotage my own life, God has consistently been there to pick me up, dust me off, and then provide an even better path of opportunity. On November 21^st 2011 I once again had one of these experiences. I have left the Vocation of Chemical Dependency once more and although one is taught to never say never, I fully intend never to do this as a job ever again. I was good at it, hell, I would even say I was great at it. I lived and breathed the job and over the years I sacrificed pieces of myself that I will never get back. I tried to be a Hero to everyone except the very people who already considered me to be their hero. I couldn’t give two shits about money or notoriety. There are plenty of ways to make money, drive expensive cars and define one self by the title you carry. All of that is empty bullshit and I pity all of those people who think that means a goddamn thing. Please do not flatter your ego by thinking that I am talking about any one of you who may or may not be reading this. In the words of Carly Simon, “Your so vain, you probably think this song is about you.”

The point is that prior to November 21^st, my phone rang off the hook with people wanting direction, demanding to know the answers to life, wanting advice on every stupid, mundane issue of their existence. Crying out their souls an seeking solace for past indiscretions. My office was constantly filled with broken individuals begging for insight and affirmation that their lives somehow held a purpose. I sacrificed dinners with my Family, days off, full nights sleep, time with my Children and intimacy with my Wife. I would sit in church and obsess about text messages that demanded my immediate attention when I should have been communing with the Spirit. I agreed to things that deep inside I new were the dumbest ideas on the planet just to appease the egos of others. I placed great importance in the opinions of people who in reality were really just wastes of time. Now, the funny thing is that after November 21^st, all of those people simply disappeared. My phone has gone almost completely silent. Where did all of these people suddenly go? Don’t get me wrong I have received a great deal of support from a bunch of people but most of them have no connection to the “Principal Following Community of Recovery.” The ones who have reached out have all been people that I have not always shown the appropriate respect and who at one time or another I have treated them negatively. These are the members of the Recovery Community that have shown me love and support, not the ones I have sacrificed heart and soul to be there when they needed me most. It has also been the people who are not addicts, and who have had no experience with Recovery that have shown me love and support. I actually find this frigging hilarious and ridiculous.

In all my years of being a Recovered Alcoholic I have never wished to be a Normal Person and for the first time I wish I was. Not because I wish to drink like a normal person, but because for the first time I am ashamed to be associated with many of those who claim to be Recovered. It will be very easy for most people to simply chalk all of this up as sour grapes and that is just fine with me. The Universe simply gets to the point when it has had enough and it simply wipes its ass with those people who are too blind to see their own selfish stupidity. I speak for experience, on November 21^st it wiped its ass of me and I deserved the wiping.

For the first time in my life I get to just be J.D. I get to be the husband my Wife deserves to have, the Father my Children deserve to have, the Son my Parents deserve to have and most of all I get to be the Servant that God has always intended me to be. For those of you who still care, I thank you for all that you have done in the past few weeks. You know who you are and I value you greatly. Most of you walked into Recovery broken and seeking direction. Once you became a part of the fellowship you refused to make rules or pass judgment on those seeking that same acceptance. Please continue to hold your heads high and “Practice those Principals in all of your affairs.” To my Normie Friends, thank you for seeing me for me and being good with that no matter what. You have no idea what this has meant. To the rest of you…”I am alive and doing fine.”  I would appreciate it if you would permanently lose my phone number.

J. Fucking D. has left the building.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 at 9:57 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.