Well, no, not really, my mom never went to prison, but yes, I have been drunk before, but not for a very, very long time; however that’s another topic for another day.

The title of this bit is a line from a song by a fine upstanding gentleman from Texas, Mr. David Allen Coe called “You Never Even Called Me By My Name.”  Like most real Country and Western Songs (as opposed to the mass-produced, over-engineered, commercialized cookie cutter tripe that is being churned off the assembly line in Nashville lately), Coe is lamenting a broken relationship, and like all such songs, he offers an intimate, personal glimpse into his heart. With the help of his friend, Mr. Steve Goodman, we are given THE Perfect Country and Western Song.

I firmly believe with total confidence that your life would be a better place if you took the time to use your favorite search engine and check out the song.

Really, go ahead, what are you waiting for?  I can hang out while you take a few minutes to do this.

Alright,

For those of them who didn’t search out the song, Coe is in a bad relationship with a woman who will not even call him by his name. And yet, he remains faithful to her. Like I said, THE perfect Country and Western song, even without the help of Steve Goodman. It was Goodman who added the final verse to the song which begins with the line, “I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison…” Things get very interesting from there.

If you haven’t listened to the song yet, you should do it now.

Really, go listen to it, I can wait.

Like most songs, both good and bad, this song is about a relationship. All relationships require two or more people, and there must be some agreement, formal or casual, silent or spoken, on the terms of that relationship, even abusive relationships. I really can’t imagine a more abusive relationship where one party absolutely refuses to acknowledge the other by their name.

Your name is significant. Your name is what separates you from everybody else. Your name is an expression of your humanity, moreover, your name is your identity. When someone strips you of that, or if you freely relinquish it, it’s no wonder that life spirals to the point where you are “…drunk the day my mom got out of prison…”

Conversely, finding yourself in such a situation where you were hammered when your mother was released from incarnation has more to do with the root rather than the circumstance.

I have long maintained that there is no such thing as an “illegitimate child,” but there are illegitimate parents. Such men and women have defaulted on their responsibility to do what is necessary for the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being of the child. I have no idea what the mom in this song did to be imprisoned, but it is obvious that she wasn’t there for her son when he needed her. Perhaps she wasn’t living a lifestyle conducive to being a good parent. Perhaps the father was out of the picture (another side of the same problem) and she found herself in a position of making bad decisions under drastic circumstances. I really don’t want to speculate too much on one line from a song about a fictional character, but you get the idea.

What it boils down to is a situation where the child has not been shown love, affection, or value, and will seek acceptance wherever they can find it, even if it means they must find acceptance in degradation.

Things need not be this way.

We already have complete and total acceptance.

Our Father, the one “…who art in heaven…”, has, is, and will continue to accept and love you totally and unconditionally.

“He who counts the stars and calls them by their name is in no danger of forgetting His own children.” – Charles Spurgeon

The problem is that we seem to have forgotten Him, and who He is.

There are two reasons for this.

 In 1960, in Ewing Township New Jersey, the same school buses transported the children to both the public school, and the Catholic school across the street. A citizen named Arch Eversion was offended and decided to instigate a lawsuit to stop this. The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the majority opinion was written by Associate Justice Hugo Black. 

Justice Back, a self-admitted member of the Ku Klux Klan (a rancid organization that has been very vocal in its distain for our Catholic brothers and sisters), decided to misuse a private letter from Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist Church in Danbury Connecticut as a proof text to promote his own agenda. Jefferson promised the Danbury Baptists that they are protected from the intrusion of the Federal Government into their affairs by “…a wall of separation between Church and State…”

Justice Back took Jefferson’s letter completely out of context and, by using “legal reasoning,” twisted it into a successful effort to remove God from the classroom, and by extension the public conversation, lest the KKK’s version of “god” be contradicted. (Justice Black also wrote the Korematsu decision which endorsed the rounding up United States citizens, confiscating their property and putting them in forced labor camps because they appeared to have Japanese genealogies.) 

The next time someone mentions they support the so-called “Constitutional separation of Church and State” (which cannot be found in the Constitution because it is not there), you may want to ask them what other KKK ideologies they endorse.

Consequently, there are now several generations of us who have been bereft of a daily reminder of who Our Father actually is, and the results are obvious. 

The second reason is that there are quite a bit of “religious” folks who have somehow gotten the idea that Father is not only extremely angry with you, but He is bent on punishing you in the worst ways possible. I thoroughly reject the idea that our heavenly Father is a child abuser. Consider this: We were created in His image and His likeness. It only follows that if Father is a child abuser, we must abuse our own children as well. If that were true, then every time we hear of a child being abused, we would not consider it a problem, but something to be celebrated.

I’m not buying that earthenware container of male bovine excrement!

That entire “religious mindset” is convinced that Father is focused on sin.

Graham Cooke once said, “…The Father is not obsessed with sin… What He is obsessed with is you!  He is totally head over heels in love with you!”

These “religious” folks don’t seem to realize that before there was even the concept of “original sin,” there was an “original blessing” already established. If you haven’t done so recently, go read the first two chapters of Genesis.

Yes, sin is real, sin is harmful . . . but it has been dealt with once and for all by Jesus, at the cross, about 2000 years ago, long before you were born, long before you have had even an opportunity to sin. Long before you committed any sin, it had already been taken care of. Unfortunately, so many of us have been manipulated into believing we need to grovel before an angry Father and perform various stunts like a trained seal in the circus to convince Him we are worthy of receiving what He has already freely given us a long time ago.

These two mindsets, the “legally reasoned” and the “religious,” are from the same source, but from different angles. They both want to distract you from the Love of the Father, from the Love of the Son, and the Love of the Holy Spirit. Once that diversion is accomplished, we forget that “…in Him, we live and move and have our being…” (Acts 17:28)

In Him we find Acceptance.

In Him we find Love.

In Him we find Identity.

In Him we know our Name.

Thanks for letting me take up some of your time.