Confessions of a Whiskey Priest
I can’t remember when I first heard the line, “We are our secrets.” I probably just tucked it in my quiver of deep sounding wisdom to be used at a later time. Now, forty something years into my life, it seems so obvious – like a defining factor of my existence. For a long, long time, an entire life in fact, it wasn’t so. The secrets only haunted me from the shadows. The change came from above and with all the subtlety of a seismic shift, festooned with volcanoes, suffocating ash and fire.
All of my life had been lived as if the glittering image that we constructed, our façades, our masks, were the real thing. Who I was would be defined by what I accomplished, who my friends were and what my girlfriend looked like. Whatever the secrets – they were just that, secrets that were only for me. They represented, not the real me, but that dark part of the soul that simply had to be kept in check, away from prying eyes, in a prison of sorts.
Life would teach me that we are our secrets - they are our truest selves. We hold them down deep – in the graves of our hearts or the furnaces – sometimes both. The path of true grace for me is the one in which God slowly peals back the layers of our soul, not for the sake of honesty and integrity (though they are necessary concomitants), but for the high and holy cause of opening the depths of our souls to the explosive power of the love of Jesus – the new Kingdom that starts within.
Perhaps a little personal history would be helpful. I was the ideal Christian young man. I was always the good guy. The son of a preacher man, a product of Christian private schools, always a leader, youth pastor, short-term missions participant and spiritual mentor to others.
That was the side I wanted everyone to see. The dichotomy, however, was as deep as it was disturbing. Where there were hints and suggestions in my younger years, it really presented at college. I was great at being “good” to keep God away. I was even “bad” at times in an attempt to do the same thing. Whether keeping the rules or breaking them (I did both well), I had no aesthetic appetite for the true Jesus in my soul and what it meant to be known and adored in total honesty. I was caught in my wild swings between being good to get the reward of earthly blessings and ultimately heaven, and my lusty rebellions of what I wanted to “feel just to know I was alive” (to loosely quote the Goo Goo Dolls from Iris).
The divergent worlds were no more apparent than in the fact that I lost my virginity the week before leaving for Africa on my first short term mission trip - I was 19. The gospel that I was taking with me sounded right and I wanted it to be true for me, but what I thought and what I felt in the deepest places were not the same. What I really wanted was to desire deeply, to feel passionately, to live out loud. So while I said one thing, I ran toward pleasure, deep dark pleasures, normally fortified with liquid courage, of some variety.
I lived both lives well and kept them separate and distinct, or so I thought. But then, the clouds came. The rumblings of the storm that would prove to be the magnificent defeat began to form on the horizon.
As a stand-out in seminary, I was, upon graduation, afforded an immediate position at a prestigious church. I could talk good, really good; passionately and with great conviction. I was a good technician of communication. And, people loved it. Pretty soon, there was a radio program and television exposure – I was yet to hit 25.
But then she showed up. I remember well the young lady who seemed an ordinary soul. She was a participant in the Young Professionals Sunday School class that I taught at a 10,000 member church. She came up to me after a particularly impassioned lesson and said, “It almost seems like you wish ‘it’ were true for you…” ‘It’ was the gospel. Her insight was spot on and drilled me like an armor piercing round from an assault rifle. I thanked her for her depth, honesty, and vulnerability by sleeping with her and promptly breaking her heart. But she saw something – something of the secret.
She wasn’t the first, by a long shot, nor would she be the last. But, she was the most influential. She was the one who turned me in, who ratted me out, and who turned out to be an agent of redemption.
Within a short period of time the whispers started, I don’t know how much of them were about ‘the secret’ but it felt like they all were. It seemed like every glance had an air of suspicion. Every whisper was a retelling of my secret. That’s the thing about dirty little secrets – they turn up the heat of our introspection and exacerbate our self-centeredness. Pretty soon though, the hints and innuendos become outright questions by those close to the situation. I deflected and lied and died a slow death – every day.
The stress of worrying who might find out and what would happen were tearing my insides out. I remember praying for deliverance, at any cost. I had preaching responsibilities at the contemporary service in April right in the midst of this storm. Standing up before hundreds of people with my secret was unbearable. I felt like my knees would give out, like my face would melt off and I would simply crumble to the ground. I preached the gospel of forgiveness – with such passion because, at the end of the day, I was preaching to myself as if I were a dying man – and so I was. I hadn’t the courage to commit ecclesiastical and career suicide – to go in and confess. So I chose instead to live in hell.
When the call came from the office of the Senior Minister, I knew exactly what it was about. I was going over the specifics of a wedding that I was meant to perform for a young couple and walking them around the chapel. “James, we need to see you right now,” the voice said. “I’m with someone just now, could it wait for 30 minutes?” “As soon as you can.” My terror was mixed with numbness, and an odd bit of hope for the redemption that might be on the horizon. Maybe this would be the end and I would be free.
I went up to the senior Minister's office like a dead man walking. I tried to summon a smile for the executive assistant but it must have seemed tortured. He was there along with a representative from the regional church board. “James, there have been accusations and charges of sexual misconduct leveled against you…” The room was already spinning and something in my mind snapped. “Yes, it is true…” said I.
I don’t remember much of anything after that moment, especially not the details of who said what or when, but I do remember feeling that the weight of the world was beginning to be lifted. Even when the board read their pronouncement a few weeks later at the ecclesiastical regional meeting, “James, in the name of Jesus Christ, we remove you from office and pray that God will have mercy on your soul,” I was broken hearted but somehow not destroyed. I was no longer an ordained minister in the church; I was defrocked for sexual misconduct. The words fell like a hammer but the mark was perfect. It was a severe mercy. I had had the title but not the life. They insisted on congruency regarding the title and hoped that the other would come.
The reality is that there was a radical disconnect in my heart and I had no earthly business being a priest. I didn’t see the church as wrong or judgmental or anything like that. I was wrong. Despite all of the varying degrees of hypocrisy present in the hearts of my judgers, Jesus was shepherding my soul with a fierceness and compassion. He loved me too much to let me go on dying like that.
In the years that followed, many suggested that the church could have been more gracious and merciful in their judgment and execution of discipline. I don’t know. What I do know is that I needed more than a quick fix. I needed a death and a resurrection.
Had they just suspended me for a time (definite suspension), I would have played the game, done the right things, said the wise and repentant stuff and manipulated the system, as I was so good at doing. No, the death was necessary – and it has been a long day’s dying.
I was blown from the ministry because Jesus loved me so much. I was exposed, humiliated and broken because he was going to make all things new. And that “all things” meant all of the dirty secrets I had built my life on. I knew I didn’t have real life. What I wanted was to know the Jesus I had imagined in my dearest hopes, and not to use his stuff to appear like I had something I didn’t. I needed the broken fragments of my life to be integrated into a whole soul that had the love of Christ as the bedrock of existence.
That began with a destroyed life. I had no reason to be dishonest any more. Through the compassion, openness and wisdom of brothers and sisters in Christ, I was given permission to not be a Christian, to not be religious at all, to not be righteous, wise or holy. I was given, in the midst of the darkness, the space to speak out the secrets that were killing me. I was given welcome to be my truest self. As Shakespeare once said, “The weight of these sad times, we must obey. Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”
Within the environment of a compassionate community I was afforded an increasing awareness of my own sadness and pain and only then did I begin to feel the love and peace of the true Lord Jesus in own my soul. It was here in the deepest spaces and darkest secrets where all of the religious words and thoughts began to fall away and the simple truths of the real Christ began to take hold. The glittering images that I had fabricated and fought so hard to keep up were beginning to fall. In those sacred moments, there was only his life, his love, his righteousness and his peace – and it was more than enough.
A friend once told me, “Whatever you love most deeply, that is your religion.” I don’t think spirituality is something you believe, primarily. It is an experience, a reality that has happened upon you. It is not simply a set of truths you see with your mind’s eye, but a beauty that has captured your soul. “Once I was blind, but now I see.” I didn’t do it. He did it to me – he ripped away everything I loved to give me what I had, all of my live-long days, hoped for.
That is at least some of what coming alive has meant for me. It was in the fires of my own hell that I met Christ. Even now, I’m reticent to talk about it.
After a little more than 10 years, the church, encouraged by many dear friends, invited me back into fellowship – the Reverend title was restored and the credentials reestablished. But everything is different now. Oh, I am still the Whiskey Priest. I am still the broken soul who struggles with selfish ambition and much more besides. That is true, but it is not the whole truth, not the deepest truth. Somehow, there is joy in the journey with Christ that creates a confession along the way and a sensitivity to the heartache I feel when looking for life in the wrong places. The journey is no longer lonely because there is one who knows my secrets and fears and pain but who loves anyway. And, He has given precious friends and fellow-pilgrims along the way.
I am priest, once again, but I don’t minister in a church. I can’t right now. I can’t use words in that arena, yet. I can’t authentically relate to people in a “ministry” role. I don’t know if that will ever change. But, I am what I have always wanted to be – known and loved. And I want more…
Though the path is marked in blood and passes through many dark spaces, it will yet lead me home. Sometimes, now and then, with a word or two, I am able to share this journey of grace. And, that is all the priest I may ever be…Praise Him.
All of my life had been lived as if the glittering image that we constructed, our façades, our masks, were the real thing. Who I was would be defined by what I accomplished, who my friends were and what my girlfriend looked like. Whatever the secrets – they were just that, secrets that were only for me. They represented, not the real me, but that dark part of the soul that simply had to be kept in check, away from prying eyes, in a prison of sorts.
Life would teach me that we are our secrets - they are our truest selves. We hold them down deep – in the graves of our hearts or the furnaces – sometimes both. The path of true grace for me is the one in which God slowly peals back the layers of our soul, not for the sake of honesty and integrity (though they are necessary concomitants), but for the high and holy cause of opening the depths of our souls to the explosive power of the love of Jesus – the new Kingdom that starts within.
Perhaps a little personal history would be helpful. I was the ideal Christian young man. I was always the good guy. The son of a preacher man, a product of Christian private schools, always a leader, youth pastor, short-term missions participant and spiritual mentor to others.
That was the side I wanted everyone to see. The dichotomy, however, was as deep as it was disturbing. Where there were hints and suggestions in my younger years, it really presented at college. I was great at being “good” to keep God away. I was even “bad” at times in an attempt to do the same thing. Whether keeping the rules or breaking them (I did both well), I had no aesthetic appetite for the true Jesus in my soul and what it meant to be known and adored in total honesty. I was caught in my wild swings between being good to get the reward of earthly blessings and ultimately heaven, and my lusty rebellions of what I wanted to “feel just to know I was alive” (to loosely quote the Goo Goo Dolls from Iris).
The divergent worlds were no more apparent than in the fact that I lost my virginity the week before leaving for Africa on my first short term mission trip - I was 19. The gospel that I was taking with me sounded right and I wanted it to be true for me, but what I thought and what I felt in the deepest places were not the same. What I really wanted was to desire deeply, to feel passionately, to live out loud. So while I said one thing, I ran toward pleasure, deep dark pleasures, normally fortified with liquid courage, of some variety.
I lived both lives well and kept them separate and distinct, or so I thought. But then, the clouds came. The rumblings of the storm that would prove to be the magnificent defeat began to form on the horizon.
As a stand-out in seminary, I was, upon graduation, afforded an immediate position at a prestigious church. I could talk good, really good; passionately and with great conviction. I was a good technician of communication. And, people loved it. Pretty soon, there was a radio program and television exposure – I was yet to hit 25.
But then she showed up. I remember well the young lady who seemed an ordinary soul. She was a participant in the Young Professionals Sunday School class that I taught at a 10,000 member church. She came up to me after a particularly impassioned lesson and said, “It almost seems like you wish ‘it’ were true for you…” ‘It’ was the gospel. Her insight was spot on and drilled me like an armor piercing round from an assault rifle. I thanked her for her depth, honesty, and vulnerability by sleeping with her and promptly breaking her heart. But she saw something – something of the secret.
She wasn’t the first, by a long shot, nor would she be the last. But, she was the most influential. She was the one who turned me in, who ratted me out, and who turned out to be an agent of redemption.
Within a short period of time the whispers started, I don’t know how much of them were about ‘the secret’ but it felt like they all were. It seemed like every glance had an air of suspicion. Every whisper was a retelling of my secret. That’s the thing about dirty little secrets – they turn up the heat of our introspection and exacerbate our self-centeredness. Pretty soon though, the hints and innuendos become outright questions by those close to the situation. I deflected and lied and died a slow death – every day.
The stress of worrying who might find out and what would happen were tearing my insides out. I remember praying for deliverance, at any cost. I had preaching responsibilities at the contemporary service in April right in the midst of this storm. Standing up before hundreds of people with my secret was unbearable. I felt like my knees would give out, like my face would melt off and I would simply crumble to the ground. I preached the gospel of forgiveness – with such passion because, at the end of the day, I was preaching to myself as if I were a dying man – and so I was. I hadn’t the courage to commit ecclesiastical and career suicide – to go in and confess. So I chose instead to live in hell.
When the call came from the office of the Senior Minister, I knew exactly what it was about. I was going over the specifics of a wedding that I was meant to perform for a young couple and walking them around the chapel. “James, we need to see you right now,” the voice said. “I’m with someone just now, could it wait for 30 minutes?” “As soon as you can.” My terror was mixed with numbness, and an odd bit of hope for the redemption that might be on the horizon. Maybe this would be the end and I would be free.
I went up to the senior Minister's office like a dead man walking. I tried to summon a smile for the executive assistant but it must have seemed tortured. He was there along with a representative from the regional church board. “James, there have been accusations and charges of sexual misconduct leveled against you…” The room was already spinning and something in my mind snapped. “Yes, it is true…” said I.
I don’t remember much of anything after that moment, especially not the details of who said what or when, but I do remember feeling that the weight of the world was beginning to be lifted. Even when the board read their pronouncement a few weeks later at the ecclesiastical regional meeting, “James, in the name of Jesus Christ, we remove you from office and pray that God will have mercy on your soul,” I was broken hearted but somehow not destroyed. I was no longer an ordained minister in the church; I was defrocked for sexual misconduct. The words fell like a hammer but the mark was perfect. It was a severe mercy. I had had the title but not the life. They insisted on congruency regarding the title and hoped that the other would come.
The reality is that there was a radical disconnect in my heart and I had no earthly business being a priest. I didn’t see the church as wrong or judgmental or anything like that. I was wrong. Despite all of the varying degrees of hypocrisy present in the hearts of my judgers, Jesus was shepherding my soul with a fierceness and compassion. He loved me too much to let me go on dying like that.
In the years that followed, many suggested that the church could have been more gracious and merciful in their judgment and execution of discipline. I don’t know. What I do know is that I needed more than a quick fix. I needed a death and a resurrection.
Had they just suspended me for a time (definite suspension), I would have played the game, done the right things, said the wise and repentant stuff and manipulated the system, as I was so good at doing. No, the death was necessary – and it has been a long day’s dying.
I was blown from the ministry because Jesus loved me so much. I was exposed, humiliated and broken because he was going to make all things new. And that “all things” meant all of the dirty secrets I had built my life on. I knew I didn’t have real life. What I wanted was to know the Jesus I had imagined in my dearest hopes, and not to use his stuff to appear like I had something I didn’t. I needed the broken fragments of my life to be integrated into a whole soul that had the love of Christ as the bedrock of existence.
That began with a destroyed life. I had no reason to be dishonest any more. Through the compassion, openness and wisdom of brothers and sisters in Christ, I was given permission to not be a Christian, to not be religious at all, to not be righteous, wise or holy. I was given, in the midst of the darkness, the space to speak out the secrets that were killing me. I was given welcome to be my truest self. As Shakespeare once said, “The weight of these sad times, we must obey. Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”
Within the environment of a compassionate community I was afforded an increasing awareness of my own sadness and pain and only then did I begin to feel the love and peace of the true Lord Jesus in own my soul. It was here in the deepest spaces and darkest secrets where all of the religious words and thoughts began to fall away and the simple truths of the real Christ began to take hold. The glittering images that I had fabricated and fought so hard to keep up were beginning to fall. In those sacred moments, there was only his life, his love, his righteousness and his peace – and it was more than enough.
A friend once told me, “Whatever you love most deeply, that is your religion.” I don’t think spirituality is something you believe, primarily. It is an experience, a reality that has happened upon you. It is not simply a set of truths you see with your mind’s eye, but a beauty that has captured your soul. “Once I was blind, but now I see.” I didn’t do it. He did it to me – he ripped away everything I loved to give me what I had, all of my live-long days, hoped for.
That is at least some of what coming alive has meant for me. It was in the fires of my own hell that I met Christ. Even now, I’m reticent to talk about it.
After a little more than 10 years, the church, encouraged by many dear friends, invited me back into fellowship – the Reverend title was restored and the credentials reestablished. But everything is different now. Oh, I am still the Whiskey Priest. I am still the broken soul who struggles with selfish ambition and much more besides. That is true, but it is not the whole truth, not the deepest truth. Somehow, there is joy in the journey with Christ that creates a confession along the way and a sensitivity to the heartache I feel when looking for life in the wrong places. The journey is no longer lonely because there is one who knows my secrets and fears and pain but who loves anyway. And, He has given precious friends and fellow-pilgrims along the way.
I am priest, once again, but I don’t minister in a church. I can’t right now. I can’t use words in that arena, yet. I can’t authentically relate to people in a “ministry” role. I don’t know if that will ever change. But, I am what I have always wanted to be – known and loved. And I want more…
Though the path is marked in blood and passes through many dark spaces, it will yet lead me home. Sometimes, now and then, with a word or two, I am able to share this journey of grace. And, that is all the priest I may ever be…Praise Him.