after Whitney's Pinning...


A few months ago, a project began that was being completed by a television production company out of Dallas, on behalf of a current, famous Christian author and preacher.

We were contacted by the producer of this project, requesting permission to use BJ's life in the work. It was to include interviews and video of his life, reflecting the impact still being made, though he has gone home. Excited, we enlisted many who knew BJ to be a part of it. Many from around the USA and Peru were interviewed. Video and pictures were provided. I went to Dallas and did an on camera interview.

Most of this took place in the last three or four months. I had not heard from the producer in a while, so I sent her a message asking how it was progressing.

She responded with, "I will call you this afternoon."

She did.

She proceeded to tell me that the team working on this had decided not to include BJ's story. She indicated she had fought consistently, and aggressively to keep it in. God had changed her life through reading the book and interviewing those close to him.

She had held off on contacting us as she had remained hopeful that she would prevail. She did not.

The team decided that BJ's story was "too different" from the others they were profiling. The others are apparently fund raisers and humanitarians. BJ's life "overshadowed" all the others, they felt.

On some level I can understand this.

Honestly, I felt like I had been punched in the stomach when she told me. Things like this tend to be very close to the heart, and have major emotional ties.

The producer consistently pleaded for the opportunity to hold onto the pieces they'd prepared on him for potential future use. She also stated more than once, her desire to produce the story on her "own time and her own dime," if that is what it took.

In a culture where my son continues to be held up as an "exception" rather than a "rule" for Christian living, the point has been emphatically made.

Few live like he did. Few try to. Few want to.

When his story is too radical to be utilized because of the implied "extreme" nature of his walk, it is evident few of us allow our hearts to be transformed by Scripture and/or relationship with Christ.

The bottom line is that this does not matter. We have never been in charge of what God was doing with his life or his story. We still aren't. We want Jesus to be glorified and not BJ. It's what he wanted as well. It's how it should be.

That he will not be included, does not reduce who he was, how he lived, or his impact on the world. It simply reveals that most of us fall woefully short of living daily, radical faith.

I pray that one day, it would not be so in my own life.


dad