Late Friday evening at the God for People Who Hate Church conference, there was a viewing of "Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher".
This was an hour-long documentary on Lonnie Frisbee, a 1960's freeze-dried hippie from Southern California who encountered the CEO during a drug trip. After his conversion, he became a John the Baptist-like preacher amongst the Hippie community which fueled the Jesus Movement of the early 1970's. His influence and ministry was the catalyst that started both the Calvary Chapel movement and The Vineyard churches. And both church denominations wrote him completely out of their history when his rumored homosexual leanings were exposed by his AIDS related death in 1993.
The documentary featured dozens of interviews. Old friends, hippies who were baptized by him, former church staff, even his ex-wife.
For me, this whole movie played off the repressed sin I and every Jesus follower has: judgment.
Was he an agent of the CEO? Was he a fraud? Since he was gay, does he go to heaven even through he led thousand of people to the CEO?
The tennis match-like volleying in my judgmental heart of "he's good" and "he's bad" hit a stand-still at the closing. One guy was interviewed and stood up for Frisbee, saying something to the effect of, "God ALWAYS uses the foolish to confound the wise. And we're ALL sinners yet not one of us has a sin greater than another"
Not that this amounts to much, but Lonnie Frisbee is now an official "uncle" on the agent b files. Right up there with Uncle George.
3 comments:
"Who's to say that the sin of homosexuality is worse than being judgemental."
You are exactly right.
The older I get and the longer I walk on this earth, the more I listen to Jesus' words, "I did not come here to judge the world, but to save it".
In the end, the CEO is the only one to determine which of us is "right" and which is "wrong".
CEO - forgive me for ever holding judgment against another...
Agent B! Hey, Texas isn't really a very homo-friendly place. Sure ya want to be posting this??? Counter-agents might react! :)
Goooood post, brother. All of Frisbee's sins are covered by the Blood (same as you and me!); that's how God could use him. Nothing else. The institutional powers that be just didn't like a particular "sin" of his, and swept him under the carpet. Kinda cold hearted. But, hey, they did forgive David Hocking when he messed up. Oops, wait. David's hetero. Yeah, that makes it easier to forgive. At least it's a NORMAL sin.
Now, a really big pill to swallow: what if being gay isn't a sin, and they erased his history for nothing? Hypothetical, of course, but maaaaybeee if it turns out to be true, the powers that be disqualified him for no good reason. If so, I wonder what the CEO is going to have to say about that.
Post a Comment