What Happened When That Hippie Hugged Me

“A new commandment I give to you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 12:34-35

I recently had the great delight of seeing the movie Jesus Revolution. It is Pastor Greg Laurie’s experience of coming to faith in Christ during what has become known as the “Jesus Movement.” Beginning in the late 1960s and early ‘70s thousands of young people who initially became disenchanted with the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury hippie scene found redemption and significance through faith in Jesus Christ.

The movie was of especial interest to my wife and I as we had grown up in Southern California and got to spend a lot of time attending services in Calvary’s big tent.

It was a time chockfull of “Jesus Freaks.” Most were kids that found that the promise of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, was as empty of real and lasting meaning as they thought their parent’s churches had been.

They left San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury District hippie experimentation and through the ministry of people like former hippie-turned-street-preacher, Lonnie Frisbee, and the pastoral leadership of men like Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, were introduced to the reality of a real and lasting relationship with Jesus Christ. It was the experience with God they were seeking. This generation found a satisfying life of grace and truth (John 1:14), not in what the world was offering but through the lifechanging power that God offered through His Son (John 3:16-18).

I grew up in a hardline Christian denomination that was heavy on judgement and light on grace. There were many prohibitions within our church’s doctrinal naughty list that smacked of rebellion against God and my church’s traditional doctrines, with dancing, and going to movies high on the sin. Card playing was in the “questionable” bracket. Dominos-OK. But the greatest sin in my church was “mixed bathing.” It was not taking baths with the opposite sex, as that would have been bad enough. Mixed bathing was where boys and girls were together in their swimsuits at pool or seashore. Oh yeah, and did I mention long hair? There was that too.

When the Beatles hit the U.S. in ’64 with their “Beatle cut” hair that tickled the tops of their ears I immediately judged them as the Four Fab Squids, rebellious English losers in need of fiery judgment, or at least to be stuffed back onto a TWA flight to Liverpool. All through high school I kept my hair cut “high and tight.”

Attending a service at the Calvary Chapel tent was a new experience for my straightlaced denominational upbringing. Guys in Nehru Jackets, Jesus tunics, tie dyed T-shirts, beards, long hair, shorts, beads, sandals and big Bibles were well…different. I remember during one worship time a guy with beautiful blond hair to his waist, raising his hands in adoration to the Lord who had given him a new life. I thought, “Are these guys for real? Looking like that? If they had really accepted Christ, they would go to the barber and stop trying to conform to the world.” It was twisted and legalistic thinking, yet I continued to hold onto my bias that anyone whose hair touched their ears was still a squid.

Then one evening, for my own good, the Lord allowed me to get ambushed. I got Hippie Hugged. I had just walked into the tent with my brother when this hippie in a baggy white shirt and hair past his shoulders, and beard to his chest, walked up to me. He opened his arms, smiled at me, and said, “Good evening, my brother, the Lord bless you!” and hugged me with the greatest show of genuine love. It was what I have come to call a golden moment of the Holy Spirit, when He imparts a beautiful truth that changes a life. He spoke to me as He had to Peter, “What God has cleansed you must not call common” (Acts 10:15).

I recommend this movie along with the book of the same name by Greg Laurie and Ellen Vaughn. We are currently seeing God redeeming the times with another spiritual awakening beginning amongst the youth of many universities within our nation and even around the world. Where Satan is determined to destroy those made in God’s image, all humanity, Christ is always faithful to raise up His banner of victory in our defense, for the Father has given Him all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18).

His salvation is available to everyone, longhairs, shorthairs, bearded and cleanshaven, red, and yellow, black, and white, we all are precious in His sight. No one who asks to come into fellowship with Him will be denied. I used to think His acceptance depended only on my how I looked or performed, until the time I got hugged by that hippie. 

We only need come to Him with the sacrifice of a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart (Psalm 51:17). All who love their brother and sister live in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble (1^st John 2:10). The Lord certainly does move in mysterious ways to see His will done in our lives, even to do so through the hug of a hippie.

Ken