In the Beginning Who?

Someone noticed the cross that hangs around my neck. It is a rare art-deco, post-modern, high-tech, tungsten-metal cross. It catches the eye because the design is, well, cool. I get reactions from this 1.5-by-.75-inch piece of jewelry.

My brother-in-law, Jeff Jackson, and I went to the 2012 Tampa Bay Blues Festival. It was a three-day outdoor gathering in the early spring and we were having our typical Florida weather for that time of year. During the day, we could feel the warmth of the sun and the cool southeast breeze coming off of the bay working in concert with one another. In the evening it cooled down and a light jacket would have been nice to have.

We sat in front of a young couple who were in their early thirties. She was an attractive, tall, lean woman with long, straight black hair who had the most beautiful tattoo art on her arms I had ever seen. Her boyfriend was dressed in black and wore a bandana on his head. He was a mean-looking dude.

The woman noticed my cross when I got up from my unfolded canvas chair and then turned around to go get something cold to drink. Now that I was facing her, she said, “I like your cross.” I thanked her and replied, “I like your arms.”

The way she smiled and lifted her head and the way her boyfriend looked at me clued me in on what that must have sounded like. “I mean, you have the most amazing tattoos I have ever seen!” I rebounded with a smile and a shake of my head.

We introduced ourselves and Jeff and I had two new friends to enjoy the blues with. We talked between sets. While Jeff has a career in the medical field, he is also the lead guitarist and vocalist for a local Tampa Bay–area blues band named Ace Jackson and the Jump Kings. He previously played in a rock-blues band called Scraps, which once opened for B. B. King when B. B. was becoming popular back in the day; so, we had music as our bond in conversation.

When Jimmie Vaughn played the last song for the last set of the night, Jeff and I said our good-byes to this young couple, and for some reason, the young lady asked me what I did for a living. In an elevator speech, I explained I had recently formed a national attorney network and a few financial services–related companies. She gave me a parting hug and her business card. She was an attorney. Jeff and I then learned her boyfriend is one of the most prominent pathologists in the Bay Area.

It turned out we had more in common than a love for the blues.

But it was the cross that got the first notice.

Or was it the tattoos?

Conversations I have with people like the tattoo lady and the mean-looking guy I met at the blues festival remind me that symbols like my cross, or body art and nose rings, or business suits and piercings and clerical collars and head bandanas talk—but not with words. Sometimes the messages we get from them can be incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading.

Because God is branded by an altogether different kind of a tattoo I asked myself, “If we can so thoroughly draw wrong conclusions about ourselves, then why would we not be prone to come to wrong conclusions about God?”

So where do we go from here?

My aim is to lay down some foundational matters concerning human beings and God in such an unconventional manner as to allow you room to affirm or reformulate your own thoughts concerning us; us, meaning human beings and God. In my view, the odds are in your favor that you will do just that because non-thinking people do not read literature like this book.

The human brain is an exceptionally complex thing capable of simultaneously processing and interpreting information in linear, multilinear, and an array of imaginative ways. Therefore, I trust you will get into the flow of things as you read on.

Sometimes I will draw on personal experience and share stories with you to illustrate a thought or to underscore a point I am making. Throughout this book I will also include interviews and share stories of other people who personally understand and know God. The most profound thing I find in doing this is that there is so much for us to draw from it is often difficult to pull out that one story that does the thing justice. So, we chose to share subtle intimacies, rather than the spectacular. Another “profoundment” is these stories are true – they actually happened.

Happenings like the ones I will share with you happen in the lives of believers so routinely that it is astounding, remarkable, ridiculous and downright beyond mere coincidence, serendipity or - happenstance.

Let’s begin…