I recently watched a film called The Jesus Revolution starring Kesley Grammar of Cheers and Fraiser fame about the Jesus movement that sprung up in San Francisco in the 1970s. This movement ultimately grew two of the nation’s largest churches, Calvary Chapel and Harvest Christian Fellowship. The true spark of this movement that set 100,000’s of youth on fire and free from drugs and isolation was a hippie himself, Lonnie Frisbee. As pictured above, he often joked about how he might have looked like Jesus too.
However, the film doesn’t do Lonnie a service but actually a disservice that is commonplace in churches today. It exposes a virus that plagues churches today, and continues the slap in the face Lonnie received after his major role in this movement from Chuck and others. The movie fails to show that Lonnie himself was gay and died of AIDS. It sometimes lightly touches and outright ignores the way they eventually push Lonnie out because Chuck Smith, pastor of Calvary Chapel, reverts to control and being protective of his “ministry”. Instead, what the film hints at is Lonnie growing to be a bit of ego-manic who butts heads with Chuck and his wife. How appalling!
If you watch the documentary Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher, you learn a different story than the movie per say. The movie does do a pretty good job at showing Lonnie’s impact on Chuck and his church but it is not honest about Lonnie’s character, what he struggled with, the true reasons why that ministry team used him and then threw him out. On Calvary Chapel’s web page for their Church history, you would think Chuck started this movement. It was Lonnie and actually Chuck’s wife if anyone who was doing the outreach and Lonnie was clearly tapping into something out of this world.
I bring this up because this is yet another example of the farce we have in our religion today. You can be divorced, you can be cheating on your partner and forgiven, but you can’t be gay or you will be thrown aside if used at all. I remember once when I went to a large Church Christian Counseling speaking to the counselor who I trusted pretty quickly about my own homosexual struggle. I had taken notes and created my own battle plan to fight it. He asked at the end of session to hold onto them. He wanted to read them more thoroughly. The following Sunday the preacher was preaching from my notes without my permission and never giving me credit.
The Jesus movement started with all these young people experimenting on their bodies, and minds with drugs of all kinds, and delving into all these various beliefs to find meaning. When Lonnie came along sharing his radical transformation and love, 100,000’s of youth that came to an end of themselves were experiencing an awakening, a spiritual awakening due to who he was and the acceptance and the power of Spirit within him. It lasted for years creating all kinds of Christian music but it also gave birth to the Conservative Christian movement. It was this movement, with the likes of Billy Graham, and Chuck Smith buckling down on his church and others that swept these youth up and infected them with the “America Version of the Bible” worship virus, as I call it. A version separated from culture, context, heart, and the spirit that had once transformed them. They were now misleading them. This brings us to today where we have dead churches having to pair or triple up to survive because they can’t get members. The youth aren’t coming and the power of God has left the building. Walk into most churches today, and it’s like a time warp back to the 1950s and so are their beliefs. There are no youth dumb enough to carry that legacy forward and thank goodness for that. I say, let it die so something new can be reborn.
In America, we worship this American Interpretation of the Bible MORE than we worship God! What disasterious shame. Churches will not let go of this idol worship. It is idol worship of the worst kind. Utter foolishness to believe that this came straight off God’s printing press without flaws and to be taken literally as is. It is this idol worship of text that has produced so many divisive denominations that don’t work together, judgments on people like gays that don’t fit the bill, false doctrines like the prosperity gospel and so many more horrors throughout history. Worshipping the letter over the spirit and heart. This is the virus of the American Church today. What we have lost is the tragedy of a Lonnie Frisbee. We have lost love and compassion. God is love. You are supposed to be able to go through the Bible and substitute the word God for Love they say and I believe it! I’ve done it places and it is powerful!
Assuming God is love, there are some powerful things we can conclude no matter what spiritual belief you have:
- Anything spoken to you by anyone or in your own mind that doesn’t come from a place of compassion/love has nothing worthwhile to tell you. Throw it out.
- If we are speaking or acting out of anything other than an intention of compassion and love, that is not of God.
This said let’s look at a scripture that is often in a divisive and non-loving way. It is used to suggest that Jesus, as we read of him in our American version of the Bible, is the only name of God we can utter or believe in to get into heaven or spiritual realms. Let’s substitute Love for Jesus and watch the transformation of what you have thought you heard in the past. I’ve highlighted the part often used against other religious beliefs.
Here’s the original:
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. [7] If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.-John 14
Here’s our Love substitution:
Love said unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no person will come to the Father but by Love. If you had known love, you would have known my Father who is Love also, and from now on you know love, and have seen love.
You may raise your hand to object about what I’m getting at, but I would remind you that the literal translation of saying anything “in Jesus name” in the Bible isn’t that his name is a magic password that only the “saved” have. It is knowing the character of Jesus, and what is a major aspect of the character of Jesus? It is love, service, compassion. The “good news” is that the Love is for taking and it doesn’t matter what language you speak or how that love is framed, just that you receive it and are open to it. Let it transform you. Stop judging people on how they love. Stop judging people about how they love God, or how they love other people, or who they love. He didn’t put you in any role but to receive and then to give love. Period.
For there is another scripture where people swear they know him by his name and using his name to do great things too:
On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? ‘ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’”. Matthew 7:21-23
You have to know his character not just do, say or believe things in his name. His name isn’t a magic word. It isn’t a 5 step plan to salvation even though may have led you to some experience of God. Jesus isn’t your special genie lamp or vending machine reserved for your denomination or your Christian faith. Jesus is LOVE and Love can speak to anyone anywhere, even in another faith walk. If you dare to look at other faith walks and remove your idol worship of a name, you will see the correlations and signs God has placed that God and love is speaking there too. Jesus, Love, may show Himself in many ways we may not yet know. We know our own journey inside our own little bubbles we live in, but be open because no one can fathom the height, the depth, the breath of God’s love! We can fall into the trap that our perspective on how and who God loves is the only way! Love is bigger than that.
What I’m saying may even roll Lonnie Frisbee in his grave who was definitely all about Jesus so much so that some say he was very conflicted about his homosexuality as being against his will because of the Conservative movement at the time. The people at that time weren’t prepared for the radical Christian right and how they would take it over for their political, fame, and money aspirations. However, it is now Sept. 2023. Yes, like Lonnie’s time period, we are in dire need for a spiritual revolution. One based on unity, love, and compassion at a grass root level, in the grass if need be, like a Holy Fricken Woodstock of Jesus proportions where as long as you aren’t worshipping some kind of darker force and wicked witch dark magic stuff, we can start looking at these reflections of God among many faiths. We can consider our ancient texts but also, equally important, is how and what is the Spirit telling us today? It’s not just written in a sacred text and that’s that. This is where we get idol worship over books kept in charge and written by fallable human beings with all sorts of intentions. If somebody like Greg Laurie and Chuck Smith can re-write Lonnie’s story and impact, who knows what has been altered in our own sacred texts. Who knows what was destroyed and kept from us. So, it is important that we not fall for worshipping the law of a word written on paper but what is clearly written and known in our hearts. To come from the place of the heart. We know that if we wouldn’t do or say things to our children, we shouldn’t to ourselves or to others because we are God’s children. In Love, we can do no wrong, and that’s good enough.
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