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Florida Baptist Witness has been publishing "Good News" since 1884. Sometimes they have to sneak in a little bad news to highlight how good, the good is.
This story about the Exec. Director of the Christian Coalition is ostensibly about his families prayer life, but in reality it is about a young couple's journey from uncertainty, to disgrace, to tragedy, and finally to a certain form of grace.
Follow me below to see how they became such a perfect blue-eyed family.
Despite being raised in a Christian home and walking the aisle at First Baptist Church in Huntsville, Ala., when he was 14 years old, Stephens, 33, said he started hanging with the wrong crowd in high school and lacked direction when he took classes at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and then at UA in Birmingham.
"I was searching for whatever it is that I wanted to do with the rest of my life and every avenue I went down there was a door closed at the end," Stephens said.
Reconnecting with a high school friend, Dawn, who was attending school in Central Alabama, the two started a relationship which resulted in pregnancy and an abortion in 1991. In 1993, though most couples who decide to abort a child out of wedlock have no future, Stephens said, he and Dawn were married.
Hmm, so raised in the church, then becomes a confused college kid. Pretty normal so far. Then his girlfriend gets pregnant and they abort the baby. Not the stuff of your average CC leader. The stuff of your average human though. Now comes God's wrath.
God had other plans. The couple began attending Sunday School at First Baptist in Centerpoint, Ala., but still shied away from worship. Stephens said the class eventually was "how the Lord brought us back into the fold."
Called to serve as the church's minister of recreation, Stephens said he enrolled at Southeastern Bible College, feeling a call to full-time ministry. Soon after, Dawn became pregnant with identical twins and they were told by a doctor that one twin was receiving all of the nutrition and both twins would die--one in the womb and one soon after.
"We were faced with carrying to term two dead babies," Stephens said. "We felt like it was what we deserved, that God was sending His wrath on us."
"What we deserved," wow, that is sad. Thankfully, the twins survived and all was well. They began counseling for the incredible "guilt and shame" they felt. I wonder where that could have come from?
What happens next is typical of people who have been to the edge and felt major guilt and pain, they run as far to the other side, to the "Right" side of their black and white divide to attone for their mistakes, and everybody elses while they are at it.
In 2002 Stephens accepted a job as state field director with the Christian Coalition of Alabama. Assisting counties in strengthening local chapters, quickly broadening his experience from a pro-life ministry approach, to a pro-family agenda--which encompasses public policy and legislation involving marriage and family initiatives, religious freedom, education, taxes, pornography, gambling--and more.
After a year with the Alabama organization, in 2003, Stephens was called to the Christian Coalition of Florida, as executive director.
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And tackling the Terri Schiavo issue didn't make Stephens' task any easier these past few years. Rallying on her behalf, Stephens said the issue was "very near and dear" to his heart because without the same type of delivery of nutrition, his son, Daniel, would perish.
"The same logic would say we ought to let my son go--starve to death," because he relies on a tube for feeding, Stephens said. "Terri Schiavo was very much a case of euthanasia."
In the future, Stephens said the "door could swing wide and encompass some of our elderly. I don't want to see that happen here in our country--not on my watch anyway."
Now it comes full circle. What this is really about is absolute fear of grey. This couple spent some time in a world without all the answers and it was painful, so they retreated back to the world of their youth--a world of good and evil and no confusion.
In this world there are no grades of truth. The Shiavo case is equal to that of their son who who has a major lung problem, because they are unable to see variations of the issue. This explains why none of these folks care about the autopsy report. They see absolutely no difference between Schiavo and a active and mentally strong 9 year old boy who needs a feeding tube; they can't, because they can't see levels of truth.
I've seen this with many christians back in college. They were faced with a version of christianity that didn't jive with their Sunday School teachings, so they completely shut it out. The world of an advanced faith demands searching for answers to difficult and at times impossible questions, so people retreat into the familiar.
It is important that we remember this about our wingnut friends. At least the christian ones. They are human, they've been hurt, and they are simply tired of searching for answers. This doesn't let them off the hook, but gives us hope. As Luke Skywalker said, "There's still good in him, I feel it."