George and I are twenty-five year friends. I don't know how many twenty five year friendships you have, but I don't have many.
I met George when I was on staff at Calvary Baptist Church, Las Cruces, NM. He was a deacon and a Sunday School teacher--a pillar in the church. To say the least, his beliefs have drifted from those conservative roots.
George and I used to be first-tier friends. We used to work out together and eat lunch five times a week. We went on vacations with our wives, spent countless evenings together and, of course, we were always together at church.
Over the years, our relationship has drifted just a bit. No big fights or drama or anything. Life has just pulled us in different ways so we are still good friends, but we don't see each other nearly as often as we used to. When we are together, we usually pick up right where we left off. He is one of the few people I have confidence if I had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night, I could call and he would be there. I trust he feels the same about me.
Not only has our friendship drifted, our beliefs have as well, as you will see. I don't want to say too much too quick, and I don't want to put words in George's mouth, but to say that he has drifted from where he was as a Baptist deacon and Sunday School teacher is to greatly underestimate things. More on that later; that is what this blog is about.
We had a long conversation the other night about theology. George has not gone to church in years, and there is a tendency to think that people like George who don't attend church don't think much about God and theological issues. This is not true. He raised one question after another and clearly thought through many issues on a very deep level. Toward the end of the conversation, George asked for more time. I think he was sensing I was getting tired. George told me he would like to have about three hours of my time to talk through some of these things. As I thought about it, I wasn't sure three hours was going to be enough. And, I knew my answers were not going to be short either. Some were going to require research.
The idea occurred to me to have our conversation in writing, publicly, in the form of a blog, so here we are.
George:
If you don't mind, let's begin this way. When I write a book, I generally write the table of contents first. Give me an overview of some of the major themes you would like to discuss, then just dive in any where you like.
I look forward to an honest, respectful, fun, tough, combative, friendly debate about some of the things that matter most.
