I have many friends. Some are very close friends. Every week I play golf with one of those close friends. After 18 holes of golf, we head off to the Noisy Goose Café and eat. Our meal together often gets extended to two hours or more.

My friend is special in many ways, but what makes him exceptionally special is that he is a cancer survivor. His bout with cancer has lasted almost 10 years. His ability to walk 18 holes of golf is one of the great surprises of my life. The struggle to survive has added to his ability to be a very thoughtful man.

Now retired, my friend decided to write the memoirs of his life journey. He made a few copies and gave them to close friends and solicited comments. I have read it twice, and believe it could be expanded to a full book-length epistle. I suspect his story and his messages have an audience. Just now he is not interested in doing that much writing, and the manuscript will remain in its present form. It will serve as a catharsis for his soul and a great gift to his two grown daughters. In his introduction, this gentle, kind, loving man gets the reader’s attention very quickly. “I have enough anger to fill several volumes of books.” The booklet could rightly be described as the story of what he has done with his anger.

“Anger is energy,” writes my friend. “It is up to me whether I turn it inward leading to depression or turn it outward, destructively or creatively. I choose the latter in hopes that I might ignite creative anger in others.”

What makes him angry? He does not let the reader wonder very long. The title of his first chapter is “The Madness of War.”

About the same time that I reread my friend’s booklet, I received a copy of Baptist Peacemaker. It is the journal of The Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America of which Church of the Covenant is a member. BPFNA constantly echoes the anti-war message.

Since the beginning of the war in Iraq in 2003 the U.S. casualties total 4,139. Of theses, 3,355 have been in combat. Some 4,000 of those casualties have occurred since the “mission accomplished” pronouncement. And 3,678 have occurred since the capture of Saddam Hussein. In addition the U.S. wounded totals 30,400. Total wounded including Iraqis is more than 100,000.

The number of Iraqi civilians killed is approaching 100,000. The number of Iraqi casualties is estimated at about one and a quarter million. The number of refugees is estimated at over 4 million.

The madness of war!

At a recent worship service at Church of the Covenant, a layperson presented some research. At least 40 wars are occurring right now around the world. The deaths and casualties number in the millions.

The madness of war! If it does not make you angry, you do not understand what is going on.

In chapter two, my friend identifies a second source of his anger. The Christian church!

Understand that my friend is a seminary graduate and an ordained United Methodist minister. He pastored Methodist churches for 20 years. In his training he was told that he was to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” He gives ministers and churches high marks on the first but gives a big F for the second.

He was placed in a community in North Carolina that had a near 50-50 split in population. Black and white. When he initiated joint meetings with the youth of a local black church, panic set in. My friend was called a communist and a facilitator of KKK activity.

He was jolted into reality when his Methodist Conference met in 1984. By vote of clergy, the death penalty was endorsed, and homosexuals were barred from ordination. Clergypersons were more concerned about size of congregation and the compensation that comes with pastoring larger churches than pursuing the demands of the Gospel.

Enough was enough. The churches were accommodating themselves to community standards rather than challenging the social practices that flew in the face of Jesus from Nazareth. He looked for a different profession.

In anger my friend left the church.

My friend did not simply leave the church; he went on a search for the good, the beautiful, the compassionate. He found it in service, simplicity and community.

I am choosing to remain a vigorous participant in the church, but I certainly understand his story.

The Rev. Howard Bess is pastor emeritus of Church of the Covenant, an American Baptist church in Palmer. His e-mail address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.