Getting Smashed on New Year’s Eve

In about four hours the glittery “ball” will drop in Time’s Square (which is not so far from me now) and we will usher in another New Year. This past year was enigmatic for me, in that it was filled with very perplexing events and high drama. Against all odds, I managed to graduate from a fundamentalist Baptist seminary down in Texas. I am not sure how I managed to graduate from there without getting kicked out.

That did not happen, and I somehow got out of Texas relatively unscathed. Well, “unscathed” in a physical sense, since I was absolutely "pistol-whipped" emotionally from the fundamentalist jihad I experienced down there. I am not certain if I am the same person that I was when I went in that school.

Somehow, I lost something about myself during my six full years in the epicenter of Southern Baptist life. While I graduated at the top of my class, I managed to hit absolute rock bottom spiritually. So, much so, I feel like getting completely smashed tonight on New Year’s Eve.

But getting “smashed” is not a good idea. No, I won’t get “smashed” on booze tonight, but turn my heart towards God in prayer and forgive my fundamentalist enemies. New Year’s Day is all about new beginnings and new resolutions. 

My prayer is that no one will get smashed on booze tonight and end up smashing their cars against  an unsuspecting telephone pole. The sad and tragic reality is that someone will…

Today, I resolve to let my bitterness towards Paige Patterson and the Southern Baptist nightmare I endured down in the Bayou. There is nothing more I can do about it and I must now place my bad experiences in the South in the hands of God.

The time has come for me to move on and fight new battles, scale new heights and rise to new challenges. New Year’s Day is about New Beginnings and in Christ I am a new creation. The most important thing about being given life in Jesus Christ is that I can begin again, right here and right now.

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, old things have passed away and behold, new things have come" (2 Corinthians 5:17).