How Lloyd The Overlook Hotel Bartender Got It Right - Which Is More Than Most Christians Can Say...

I like Stephen King books. I've probably read most of them - including Christine, It, Pet Semetary, the Dark Tower series, and a few of his short stories books. I'm not as passionate about King as one of my brothers. I believe he has all of his books and reads them over and over again.

There was one book of his I could never get through, however. That would be The Shining. It just plain freaked me out too much.

I'm one of those weird people that actually liked the miniseries better than the movie. Yeah, go ahead film snobs. Get mad at me. The miniseries was more true to the book (from what I read), and I'm not a big fan of the directing of Kubrick. Once again, go ahead and get mad at me. I liked the idea that the weapon of choice was a huge kick-ass croquet mallet, not an axe like in the movie. Anyone can get killed with an axe, but it takes someone special to get their head split open with a croquet mallet. It could also be the fact that my wife and I were in Estes Park, CO at the same time they were filming the miniseries. We didn't get to see anyone famous, but we did get to see them make fake snow.

Anyway, I was in Barnes and Noble today, hanging out, listening to the iPod and reading through some magazines, when I happened upon an interview in a music magazine. It was an interview of Joe Turkel. Now, that may not be a familiar name to you - but if you love the movie The Shining, you probably know that Joe Turkel played the part of Lloyd, the bartender of the Overlook Hotel. You know, the one that helps Jack Nicholson go bat-s**t insane. It's obviously been several years since the making of The Shining, so I decided to read the interview to see what has been happening in good ol' Joe's life since then. It was a good interview - it mostly focused on Joe's relationship with Stanley Kubrick. I guess Kubrick wasn't a real easy guy to get to know, but since Joe did three movies with Kubrick, he probably knew him as well as anyone.

At the end of the article, Joe was talking about Kubrick, and the last thing he said about him hit me like a ton of bricks. Seriously. I had to read it over and over again to make sure that what I read was what I read. He said this:

I once asked him, many years ago, "Stanley, are you religious?" And he just shook his hand at me in a dismissive fashion. I should have asked him then if he believed in God, which I didn't. I regret never having asked him that. There's a big difference between the two.

How did Lloyd the Bartender get it right, and we Christians get it wrong so often?

Religion is what creates crusades and inquisitions and indulgences. It is what creates the idea that if you aren't a Republican, you aren't a real Christian. It is why the old joke goes that Baptists don't allow foreplay because it could lead to dancing.

It's sad that the world views Christians as religious. As Don Miller states in Blue Like Jazz, "She couldn't believe that a girl this kind and accepting could subscribe to the same religion that generated the Crusades, funded the Republicans, or fathered religious television."

The difference between Christian religion and Christian spirituality - and great quotes from Blue Like Jazz for support:

1. Religion tries to explain everything about God; spirituality embraces the mystery of God.

In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton says chess players go crazy, not poets. I think he is right. You'd go crazy trying to explain penguins. It's best just to watch them and be entertained. I don't think you can explain how Christian faith works either. It is a mystery. And I love this about Christian spirituality. It cannot be explained, and yet it is beautiful and true. It is something you feel, and it comes from the soul.

2. Religion gets us to focus on relatively meaningless things, mainly ourselves; spirituality gets us to focus on what God wants us to focus on, mainly others.

Satan, who I believe exists as much as I believe Jesus exists, wants us to believe meaningless things for meaningless reasons. Can you imagine if Christians actually believed that God was trying to rescue us from the pit of our own self-addiction? Can you imagine? Can you imagine what Americans would do if they understood that over half the world was living in poverty? Do you think they would change the way they live, the products they purchase, and the politicians they elect? If we believed the right things, the true things, there wouldn't be very many problems on earth.

3. Religion tells us we need to sell and market Jesus; spirituality tells us we need to be Jesus to those who are hurting, dying, suffering, lonely, addicted, AIDS-infected, cast out, and unloved.

I was a salesman for a while, and we were taught that you are supposed to point out all the benefits of a product when you are selling it. That is how I felt about some of the preachers I heard speak. They were always pointing out the benefits of Christian faith. That rubbed me wrong. It's not that there aren't benefits, there are, but did they have to talk about spirituality like it's a vaccum cleaner? I never felt like Jesus was a product. I wanted him to be a person.

Lloyd the bartender is right. Being religious and truly believing in God are two different things altogether. Thinking of this almost gets that awful scene of the blood flowing down the hall out of my head.