Voice: "Welcome to the Rich Mullins Brother's Keeper Radio Special"
[Brother's Keeper fades in and then out...]
Radio Disc Jockey: We're here with Rich Mullins. We're going to be talking about the Brother's Keeper record, his eighth album, actually, on Reunion. And we'll be chatting a little bit, too, about the upcoming Brother's Keeper Tour which is going to be going Coast to Coast, all over the United States of America. You're actually going to be doing this thing right this time, huh, hitting almost every state in the Union, I think. You went up to Alaska?
RM: Yeah, but you say that like we haven't done it right before...
DJ: No, you have done it before. Nobody's (I don't think) toured more than you, but it just seems like...no, I'd better not say that. I was gonna say, it seems like we had two final tours, and then...
RM: (laughs) Yes, this is the third in a series of "Farewell Tours". (laughs again) Yeah, I think there's more energy behind this tour. Touring is a blast for me. You know, for several reasons. 'Cause one, I hate making my bed, and I love sleeping in a bed that's been made. So you never have to make your bed and you always have clean sheets. And you only get that in a hotel. You certainly don't get that at home. I like that about it. I also like...you know, a lot of people will say "when you're on tour, how do you get any quiet time?" Which, you know, you spend the majority of your time traveling from one place to the other, and I always travel in such a way that it's very quiet. There are no phones in the Jeep, there's no tv, we don't hardly ever play the radio or tapes or anything like that. And whoever rides with me in the Jeep generally are pretty quiet. So you have tons of quiet time. That's a real valuable thing to me.
DJ: Let's jump to the record just a little bit. Cause, I mean, it's the Brother's Keeper Tour, the name of the album. Very cool name for a record, because I think it's been on everybody's mind, and yet I've heard that phrase my whole life. And yet, I've never known a Christian record that had that title. By now, you'd think someone would have already thought of it.
RM: I'll bet someone has.
DJ: But they never did it!
RM: Yeah. I just never find anything that I've ever done that someone hasn't done before, and probably done better.
DJ: But it's so simple compared to some of your other titles of your records. (Rich laughs) It seems like, why did he name it that? And this is so simple.
RM: Well, we were just gonna call it Songs. Because I thought that would be a really funny joke, but then no one else thought it was very funny.
DJ: Just Songs would have been the original title?
RM: Yeah, because of all the other titles having been so long, I thought, "That would be funny just to call it Songs." But no one else got the joke, so we decided not to make a joke out of the title and we called it Brother's Keeper. But we had some other interesting titles. We thought about calling it Too Many Chiefs and Not Enough Native Americans. You know, kind of poking fun at whatever we could.
DJ: Well, since people listening to this can't see the record, there's some very cool artwork on there.
RM: Yes. And what makes it even cooler is that it was done by Jimmy Abegg, who's also in the band. So it's kind of a real in-house kind of record. We didn't hire background singers, we had to wives of the guys sing for background. And it was kind of a blast. This record was fun to make because, instead of hiring background singers - and in the past, I've worked with some amazing and wonderful people - but this time, it was much more of a family kind of thing. Three of the guys, two or three of them just had kids. Yeah, three of them just had kids right before we made the record, so while we're doing the background vocals, you know, with the mothers of these children, we're having to take breaks for nursing and breaks for this and breaks for that. So it was more of a family kind of project. It was for me, a real blast.
DJ: It's also the first album you basically produced yourself. I mean, Reed did not produce this one. That's very interesting, I think, to a lot of people, when you see "Produced by Rich Mullins," etc. They wonder, "Is this gonna sound different?"
RM: I think it does sound different. But that's part of it. You know, one of the things I've always wanted to do was to be a part of a band. And this is another step closer to being a part of a band. I hope that on the next Ragamuffin album that it's more band-y than this. So, we're kind of moving in a direction that I kind of like.
DJ: It is a fun sounding record. It really is. It has a lot of energy to it, some great songs. And album with a title of Quoting Deuteronomy to the Devil somewhere in there, you know it's gonna be a fun record. Rich, the phrase "brother's keeper" - has that been rolling around in your head for awhile?
RM: Um...boy, I don't know. I used to live with James Brian Smith and his wife Megan and their little boy Jacob, and he's a writer and one of the things he writes about - he just finished a book called Embracing the Love of God. And one of the things that he wrote about, and so we talked about a lot as I was living there, was the whole idea of loving each other, and how do you do that, and where does that all come from? And Beaker came over one evening and we were sitting out on the porch, and he went, "OK, I've got this little thing going" and he showed me this little guitar thing, and it just sounded like this song. I mean, it sounded like this lyric. And we wrote it fairly quickly there on Jim's porch.
[Brother's Keeper]
RM: We love things because we allow ourselves to be attracted to them. And that's, I think, the place where a good many of us are. We love nothing because we're too busy criticizing it, or we have learned to love things because they've attracted us to them. And I think the third place, which I think is the place where Christ is, is you love things because you have love in you. It has nothing to do with the object. Love is then a force, and love itself compels you to involve yourself with other people an other things. Does that make sense?
DJ: It makes perfect sense.
RM: And so, that's the place I think we all want to get to, and I think the lyric that a lot of people have asked us about, because we've played it live and stuff, and people go "What do you mean, I won't regard someone for their strength?" And that cut goes back to that thing, of saying... You know, I'm not that way. This is my ideal. (laughs) I'm still hung up on people's weaknesses and on their strengths. I still love something because it's attractive to me, rather than love something because love is in me and it demands an object. But if we despise someone for their weakness and we admire them for their strength, then we're still missing the person. It's the weakness or the strength that's getting our attention. And the person behind the strengths and the person behind those weaknesses is cut out of the picture. When we learn to see people for what God has created there, rather than for what they have made out of what God created there, then, I think we're more likely to love them. And so, the lyric "I won't despise him for his weakness, I won't regard him for his strength," that's where that kind of comes from. I guess that's a lot of where we we're at, is the realization that love is not something that I can conjure up out of myself, I don't go in a room and get myself hyped up to love somebody. That love seems to have an energy all of its own. And I do my best, when I get out of the way of it and I allow it to use me for its own ends.
DJ: Well, that's always been one of your strengths, with your songs. (Rich chuckles) Looking back, to the very first record, the songs that really touched people are the ones that made them say, "That's exactly what I'm saying. I just can't make it rhyme, I just can't put it down on a sheet of paper." When people really identify with that, and a lot of stuff that you're talking about, those same thoughts come up, like, "Yeah, I just have to love them. I don't have to judge them." And you manage to get all that into 3 1/2 minutes with a great-sounding song, and that's a true gift.
RM: I think one of the things - the writers that I really like, when I sit down and look at, "Why is this a really good song?" It's either because it's a great story, brilliantly told, and what makes a great story are things like irony, humor, something very human, very tender...vulnerability...those kinds of things make story-songs good. But songs that are less a story-song and more a subject song or an issue-song, it's because a lot of times we feel the need to apologize for everything we think. We feel the need to defend our thoughts, rather than just say them. One of the wonderful things about Carl Barth's whole thing about preaching is, he said, "preaching is not so much me telling you what I think about what the Scriptures say. Preaching, good biblical preaching, is simply a proclamation of the Good News." And so often in Christianity, we're trying to make Christianity more attractive. John Fisher said one of the most profound things I've ever read. He said...I can't remember the exact quote, but something along the lines of "Why be cute when you are beautiful?" And I think a lot of our energy as Christians, we're trying to make Christianity more appealing to people when Christianity is the most naturally appealing thing in the world. What is more appealing than the idea that we can be loved? What is more appealing than the idea that we will be given the power to love? What is more appealing than the idea that we can experience peace in the midst of turmoil? What is more appealing than all of these things? Rather than trying to become propagandists, when we simply become people of God, when we are simply what He made us to be, then people will be drawn, rather than our trying to figure out some cool way to present Jesus that will trick people into being believers. You can't be tricked into the Kingdom of God.
[Let Mercy Lead fades in and out...]
RM: You know, a lot of people are hung up about being single, or being married, or whatever. And that's why I think community is a great thing, because I have the great advantage of being able to vicariously experience the joys of marriage, through watching my friends who are married. You get some of the crumbs under the table. One of the things that's been really wonderful for me is that Julie and Beaker had a baby. They had Aidan. And it's just amazing to me, from the time that Aidan was born, if I was visiting with Beaker, we'd be in the middle of some great discussion, and he would suddenly jump up, run across the room and rub Aidan's head and come back and carry on the conversation. It was like he couldn't wait to touch him. He couldn't wait to see him. That love that a father has for his child was just so much a part of his being that he couldn't keep his hands off him. He couldn't keep himself away from him. A guy once told me that someone told him that you could never really understand John 3:16 until you became a father. That you couldn't really know what it meant to give your only begotten son until you really had a son. And I think in a sense that's true. I think that's so far beyond my experience that when I try to think of what did it really cost God to redeem me, I really can't imagine; I can't really measure that. But having a friend who's married and has a kid, it's a blast to see: this is the kind of a love that a father has for his son, or for his daughter, or a mother has for her son or her daughter.
And so, before [Aidan] came out of the womb, Beaker wanted to write a song for him, and we worked and worked and worked. And you know, we write songs all the time, but it was so amazing and so wonderful to see how careful he was about everything he wanted to say to Aidan in this song. I mean, really, it was intense, kind of. And we wrote and threw away so many songs that I thought were pretty good. But they weren't good enough for his kid. And we finally finished it up. I had a teepee that a friend of mine gave me, and we went out in the teepee to spend a day. I think when you're writing, sometimes there's a great advantage in taking yourself and putting yourself in a whole different environment, some kind of seclusion. Something quiet. So we were out there in the teepee and that's when we actually finished the song. I'm not sure exactly the things that came together to make this one click and make Beaker go, "Yeah, that's the song that I want for my son. That's what I want him to grow up with."
But one of the things that struck me was, when I think of when God wanted to reveal Himself to me, when God wanted to speak to me, how - He spoke through the prophets, and He spoke in different ways. He speaks to us through nature, and He finally spoke through Jesus. Which is a perfect revelation of Himself. Jesus is an extension of God. And this song, I helped write it, but I think it's more of an extension of Beaker than it is something that I wrote and it's just cool to think of how much care a person takes saying something to someone they really love.
DJ: When Aidan made his guest appearance, when he vocally inserts himself in there...honestly, I know people probably asked you this before. Was that him crawling around in the studio, or he just wanted to be on it, did Beaker want him to be in on it?
RM: No, Beaker wanted him to be in on it. I wanted him to be in on it! Cause I love the sound of a kid. I think kids make a great sound. I think they're much more articulate than we are.
[Let Mercy Lead, whole song]
DJ: Hatching of a Heart, just the title of that song is very cool. I want to guess what that really means, but I'll probably guess wrong, so you'd better just go into it and act stupid!
[Hatching of a Heart fades in...]
RM: That's a line I...I stole that straight out of Thomas Merton. All the best lines are really stolen. (laughs)
[Hatching of a Heart fades out...]
DJ: You know, when I first heard the song Promenade, I really wanted to call my friends and just get a square dance happening.
RM: That's the idea of the song. It's a song about a square dance. Sort of. I mean, in a sense.
DJ: Well, yeah, just the name of it. But there's gotta be more to it...I know you wouldn't just write a song...
RM: (interrupts) More to the song...?
DJ: Than just a square dance, yeah... (laughs)
RM: Well, yeah, and it's a funny thing because the whole thing was sort of a parable, but I didn't know what it was about when I wrote it. But now I do. Once again we're back to the thing of, we're always trying to come up with ways of making Christianity more appealing when Christianity is appealing. It's not something we make appealing. We don't make it appealing by doing anything, except being Christian. And so, it's a circular song, because it ends up where it starts. I am Officer Black. It's about this guy who goes up to make these people who are dancing and playing music, he's supposed to make them be quiet. But he is so drawn into the music that he goes back down to the people who sent him and says "No way. Y'all need to go out there and make music. You don't need to be quiet." And I think that's the way Christianity is. You know, you talk to people who are really anti-Christian, and you go, "Boy, you got a point. The church has done some really awful things and you've got a point, the Bible doesn't always make sense, and you've got a point, I can't prove that God exists to you. But here's the thing: if you know God, the rest of it sort of flows from there."
[Promenade fades in and out...]
[Wounds of Love fades in...]
DJ: Have you ever been wounded by love?
RM: Oh, yeah.
DJ: Well, how many, well, no I won't ask how many times...I know at least three. (both laugh)
RM: Anyone who's ever been in love's been wounded by it. My thing is, if you're going to be wounded by something, it might as well be by love. (both laugh) And if you are too scared of being wounded to love anybody, then you're worse than wounded. You're dead. And so, this is sort of a blessing you're giving to someone who's far away from you, someone you want to be with, and you say to them "Hey, there's gonna be some hurt in life. It's either gonna be inflicted on you by someone you love, or it's gonna be inflicted on you by yourself. I hope it comes to you through someone you love." The real tragedy in life would not to be wounded by love, but it would be to have never loved because you were so afraid of being wounded. The real tragedy in life would have been to have missed life because you were afraid of dying.
[Wounds of Love fades out...]
DJ: One of my favorite songs on the record (and I know Beaker does not believe me) (Rich laughs)...but Damascus Road. I just love that song. It's one of those songs I will fast-forward to get to. Which is a pretty good indication that I like the song. I don't wanna wait 18 minutes to get to it.
RM: So you don't like the other songs, the songs before it?
DJ: I hate all the other songs. (Rich laughs) Damascus Road, I wish the album was just one long, you know...
RM: Well, I really like it, for a lot of reasons. I wrote some of it years and years ago. I wrote it the night I was engaged and my fiancee broke off the engagement, and I went away and then I went, "Oh, man, I'm gonna feel really depressed, but before I get really depressed, you're supposed to thank God in all things, so I'm gonna try to think of something thankful to say." And that's when I wrote that song. Of course, this many years later, it doesn't make a lot of sense, anything I wrote the first time around. So Beaker helped me to revise it, and wrote the bridge in it, and stuff like that...I like it because I think sometimes we take worship so seriously. You know, we think "OK, worship time. Let's huff and puff and blow the house down. Let's get hysterical about something," and this song is a very worshipful song, but it's very joyous. A lot of the times we think of the idea of self-sacrifice being this morbid, "Oh, I'm gonna be a martyr for Christ" thing. When you realize, wow, what a wonderful thing that I should be able to give my life away on something so rich and so wonderful. What is my life that I want to keep it, in view of what I gain by giving it up? And so it's kind of a prayer, it's kind of a worship, it's kind of a lot of things, and it sounds so silly, that's what I love about it.
DJ: And that's maybe what drew me to it. I think a lot of people that have the same experience, you know, when you first hear it, you know...you just think, I gotta listen to this thing again, because that couldn't have been it.
RM: Yeah. You know, the St. Francis thing. St. Francis has been called the...he's been called a lot of things, but one of the...I can't remember the exact word, but it means something like "Clown...the clown for God." He did a lot of clowning around as worship. And I think there's something to that.
DJ: That kind of ties you and Beaker together too, with that "Kid Brothers" thing. Just a couple of clowns for God.
[Damascus Road fades in and out...]
DJ: So who's Eli?
RM: Eli is Rick & Nicky Lundgren's little girl. She was born about a month after Aidan was. I had this little hammered dulcimer melody that I really liked, it was kind of a kid-y kind of melody. Maybe I should write a children's album. I didn't want to go to all the bother to do that, so I thought about Eli, and I went, this would be a nice thing for her. I talked to Lee and Nicky, and we decided to write a song for her, and use the little melody.
Once again, when parents start talking to their own kids, they're very picky about what they say and we got nowhere and got nowhere and got nowhere...finally we recorded, while doing the album, the dulcimer part. And in their hotel room we finished the song. And Nicky had talked about the prayers of Paul in his letters, and there were a couple of prayers that she especially liked that he prayed for the Ephesians, and I think maybe one in Galatians. We talked about the image, just the sound of the hammered dulcimer, and she said, "Yeah, that sounds kind of like a cowboy, and kind of like a ballerina all at the same time. We really worked from the idea of that scripture, those prayers that Paul prayed for the churches, which would also be Nicky's prayer for Eli and Lee's prayer for her as well. And that one little image of a cowgirl ballerina, something that is both rough and tough and delicate and graceful, a lot of different things. Cause kids are more than just one thing. We tend to see each other very one-dimensionally, and people are multidimensional.
[Eli's Song fades in and then out...]
DJ: The song Cry the Name is another one of those songs that, just the title is really intriguing to me. The song is intriguing, but the title just drove me to it.
[Cry the Name fades in...]
RM: Getting down into the Southwest and really seeing the canyons and really hearing the sounds that you hear in them. You don't hear it anywhere else. Of course we didn't write it there, we wrote it in Nashville, but it's just that whole thing of...I think one of the things I love about the desert is that there are few illusions out there in the desert. You're just out there, you're alone, there's nothing to soften the landscape. It's very rugged, it's very stark, and it shocks you out of that coma that we get into by being perpetually comfortable. And so, the song is another prayer song. It's a prayer that a guy prays when he looks around and sees how beautiful and desolate the world is. And that it is both of those things. Both of those things causes us to cry out in the name of the One who loves us.
[Cry the Name fades out...]
DJ: I'm not sure exactly what it is about the song The Breaks, but it seems to have a unique quality, like there's a whole other dimension to it.
[The Breaks fades in...]
RM: Well, I wrote that one in Ireland. And I wrote it as a love song. And I think even at the time I suspected that...there are times when you think it would be fun to be in love, and you realize, ahh, this is something I can't really do, and so even while you're enjoying that brief, frail illusion, you go, "This is not what it is. This is not what it's supposed to be. So I have to go beyond this, go past it. I have to leave this." And so I think for me it's kind of a combination of whimsy and longing involved in this. It's kind of like, ooh, ow, this really hurts, but...so what?
DJ: It brings up a lot of feelings.
[The Breaks fades out...]
RM: Yeah, which is typical of life.
DJ: You've captured a lot of that on this record. A lot of the fun stuff, but...and I don't want to think the other albums weren't fun. But this one, it just seems like you smile a lot more, doing this record.
RM: Yeah. It was an easier record to smile on. I mean, there were tense moments, and there were...any time you get that many musicians who write and do that thing together, you've got a lot of egos, you've got a lot of strong opinions, you've got a lot of deeply felt emotions, you've got a lot of stuff. (chuckles) So in that setting you're gonna have a lot of conflict. You're gonna have a lot of tense moments. And we certainly have our share of those when we work together. But for me the end product is, you have a record that is very much like the band. It's kind of multi-dimensional. That's why everybody helped produce it. To bring that many flavors into one project was really important to me. And to give each of those flavors space to breathe and room to voice themselves on. That was important.
DJ: There's gonna be some people who hear the record for the first time, just when they think they've got it figured out and thinking, "Boy, this is nice. I know exactly what Rich is saying here. It really speaks to me." Then they're gonna hit Quoting Deuteronomy to the Devil. It's like smacks you right between the eyes, because that is a powerful song. Even just musically speaking. It just kind of rips you apart.
RM: Well, I thought it was a funny song. I think it was one of the funnier ones on the record. But I think one of the things - I think there's a book by Fulton Sheen called The Life of Christ and he talks about the temptations of Christ in the wilderness, and how Satan didn't offer Christ anything God didn't want Christ to have. There's nothing wrong with food. There's nothing wrong with power. There's nothing wrong with glory. These are all things that were waiting for Christ. But what Satan offered him was a shortcut to those things. Satan said, "you can have these things without suffering. But let me show you how to do it, rather than doing it God's way." And one of the problems I think we have in the Christian church today, one of the problems I have in my own life anyway, is that we want to do godly things but we want to do them in a worldly way. We want to have God's will in our terms and you can't do that. You either follow God...if you follow God, you go the path He leads. You don't say "Well, God, I'll meet you in Indianapolis." You follow Him all the way to Indianapolis. You go the way He goes, the route He goes.
Because that is the route He wants you to take. And that route is going to take you, necessarily, through some suffering. You have to die to yourself. People always want to argue, "You have to be baptized to be a Christian. You have to be a member of a church." They want to argue about all this stuff about Christianity. If we take the gospel seriously, you have to die to yourself to be a Christian, to be spiritually vital, to be spiritually alive. Why don't we take the gospel as seriously as we take everything else? If you want to inherit the earth, you'd best be meek. If you want to be filled with righteousness, you'd best hunger for it. Jesus, when he was dealing with the devil, it was there in the desert, in the 40 days of fasting that the victory was won. And it was 3 years later on Calvary that it was actualized. But the decision was final there in the wilderness. Christ accepted suffering. Christ accepted the plan of God for His life. It was there that Christ closed all the doors to any other possibility. And I loved in the play "Godspell," how during the crucifixion, these demons come up to Christ and they're saying "Give the word and these stones will become bread." "Throw yourself off of this temple and the angels will come and rescue you. Do this and I'll..." I mean, they quote the temptation of the wilderness. And I thought that was a great piece of insight on the part of whoever came up with that. I suppose Steven Schwartz. And Fulton Sheen then says the same thing, when he talks about Christ in the wilderness, that Christ accepted his identity as the Lamb of God and said, "I will not be a social reformer. I did not come to distribute bread. I came to be bread. If I'm going to be the bread of life, then I'm going to have to be broken." When Christ said, "I will not throw myself off this temple to see if the angels will rescue me," it was because he knew he wasn't going to take himself off of the Cross. He said "I will not put God to the test. I will allow God to test me. I will allow God to prove himself in my life. I'm not going to make God jump through hoops. I'll let Him hold the hoops and I'll jump where He says." And when Christ said "I will not bow down and worship Satan," the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory were forever His. And he didn't leave us out of the deal. Because of the suffering he endured, we get to be His Kingdom. We get to be His Glory.
DJ: That's a constant amazement, isn't it? Why we don't deserve anything, and the fact that He did that...and so many songs on this record say the same thing, in so many ways.
RM: well, I always feel like I'm a broken record. I don't think I'm saying anything today that I wasn't saying 8 albums ago. I don't think I was saying anything 8 albums ago that I wasn't saying before I even got to make an album. I think sometimes I've grown as a songwriter. I think my voice is...well, you work with what you've got. And I don't have the makings of a great voice, but I think singing-wise, I've improved since the first album. But message-wise, I think I'm saying the same exact things that I've always said. Which is why it's amazing to me that anyone stays interested.
[Quoting Deuteronomy to the Devil, fades in then out...]
DJ: For the Brother's Keeper Tour, a couple of great players opening up for you. Carolyn Arends and Ashley Cleveland. You looking forward to that?
RM: Oh, very much. I'm looking forward to just spending time with them as much as hearing them. Although I love hearing them. I've known Ashley for years, and she used to come up to my house. I had these friends who would come visit and they loved her music so much and she'd come out and sit down in the living room and play for hours and we never got enough. She's one of those artists who's really able to let the rubber meet the road in terms of Christianity. You know, recovery and those sorts of issues. And it's a wonderful thing to hear. And on her new tape, one of the things I really love is that in concert, we end by doing hymns, and she does several arrangements of hymns on her new tape, and of course, when you hear someone say "We're doing arrangements of hymns," you think pipe organs, strings; well, until you've heard Ashley Cleveland singing a hymn, you haven't heard every possible interpretation. I know one time I visited the church where she attends, and she started the service out, singing The Morning Guilds the Skies and I had never liked that hymn until I heard her sing it, and all of the sudden I thought, "What a great hymn! This is a blast!" So that fits exactly in with where we're at. Carolyn Arends, I only have met a couple times very briefly, and she's a lot of fun to be around, so I'm really looking forward to getting to know her better.
DJ: And the whole tour, being sponsored by International Bible Society, again, that's something new for you to have an organization like that sponsoring the whole tour, that's great.
RM: Yeah. And I'm very excited about the whole Jesus Way Bible, because...going into a Native population and being able to say "This is not a white man's religion. This is the religion of God. This is a revelation of truth. And it has nothing to do with any particular group of people, but it speaks to all people." I think a lot of the work the International Bible Society has done is that way. To say that every people group needs to be reached. For me, it's very cool the way I feel, like...you know, I love Compassion and I also love International Bible Society and I think they're both two organizations that go hand in hand. It's hard to tell someone about the bread of life if they're starving to death. So one is providing very real, educational and physical needs and the other is providing Scriptures, which of course address us not only in terms of socially and emotionally and physically, but spiritually as well. It's two things I feel great about.
DJ: You told me once about a chief. And he had some really interesting things to say about the church.
RM: One of the really interesting stories to me is the story of Chief Joseph and after they'd cheated him out of everything, and they're putting him on a reservation, they said "Why don't you want to go to the reservation? If you go to the reservation, we'll give you schools." And he said, "We don't want schools." And the government of the United States said "Why don't you want schools?" And Chief Joseph said "If you give us schools then churches will follow." And so the United States government said "You don't want churches?" And his father, Chief Joseph's father was a Christian and Joseph was baptized in the church and rejected Christianity, and he said, "No, we don't want churches." They said, "Why don't you want churches?" And this is a very telling statement, he said "When we have churches it will teach us to argue about God." And we can argue about a lot of things, I know, but we shouldn't argue about God. It's very difficult for me to understand why the church has been so reluctant to speak with Native Americans about Christ in whose name their land was stolen. Maybe there's a little bit of shame or something. Which might even be appropriate. But the past is past and people need the Lord. And I think when an injustice has been done, people need to go the extra mile. You can't undo what's been done, and there've been injustices done to people of all races and all creeds and etc. But I think that there has to be some kind of healing. And I want to be a part of that.
