A Good Idea at the Time

(This is a Christmas related story I wrote a few years ago based on middle of Luke chapter 2)

It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

The stone slaps a slow, tired rhythm against my flat feet. It sounds like the tired waves that fall to the shore on a too hot day that make you wonder if creation will have the energy to go on. Like the rocks along the shoreline, the stone beneath me that was once chiseled sharp and clean has been worn smooth by a thousand feet. But my path through it is the deepest. Time has worn me down as well. I'm not made of the stuff of stones. I should never have tried to play its part.

I was young then and full of life like a rutting ram. I didn't believe in old age then. Not my own, anyway. But I did believe in grander themes. I believed in a God who had made us a blessing. Not that we are such a prize. True, we are a proud, sturdy people. That's part of our problem. We are so proud that sometimes not even the very voice of God can call us away from our own plans.

But we are also a frightened people. Our fears are the fears of old men. We have built great cities and fought great battles, but the world has grown in and over us and we fear that silent time in the middle of the night when the wind comes and whispers in our ears, "Who are you? What will become of you now that your knees grow weak and your eyes have dried out?" Hard questions and uncomfortable for a practical people. We like our feet planted firmly on the ground. It's easier to push these questions aside and ask, "Where is our next meal to come from?" and pretend we are fearless.

I remember the day it all changed for me. I came to the temple as usual—well, perhaps not quite as usual. I was in a foul mood. I'd been cross with Ruth about some money that was missing. I accused her of being careless, but I found the money before I had left home. It was there where I'd put it and forgotten. Too stubborn to admit any fault, I didn't say anything to Ruth. I was still brooding, trying to find some way to avoid the blame. I went to the temple because it was the right thing to do—my father and all Israel's fathers had gone since we settled this land--but in my heart, I was not all that I could have been. I'm telling you all this so that there will be no mistake. What happened was not because I was such a good man.

If I had told anyone this back then, they would have laughed. I would have been accused of giving way to the vain visions of the young or worse, the visions of too much wine. Now, I've been here too long for anyone to laugh. All my friends have died and no one here remembers a day of their life when old Simeon wasn't shuffling around in the corner. There is no one left who knew me young.

That day my God sent his Spirit to me. There were no lights, the earth did not shake, but there was no mistaking the Spirit. It was like laying with a woman for the first time. The air was bright and alive like a cold, flowing stream. Each breath had to be bit off, swallowed and held down as if I had been plunged naked into that same stream. My heart threatened to burst my ribs. And there was a voice. It spoke in a whisper backed by the power of thunder. My people had been promised a day when God would visit us. On that day he would give us a new spirit. Our stubborn, rocky hearts would be worn away and we would be given a new heart that could rest with God and do what is right. It would be the beginning of a great peace. It would be good, and while we lived with hardship now, we all stretched out our necks out toward that day. The Spirit came to me and caressed me and promised. It promised that I would not taste death until that day came to pass.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was young and elastic. Now, my skin is stretched and flinty, my arms are thin and the wind taunts me with every step. It exposes my bony knees and picks at my dry eyes and laughs. It has been too long. Ruth is gone. The friends of my youth are all dust. In my youth, I would never have believed that there would come a day when I would long for, hurt for, that last, long sleep.

But just now, when my hope was as frail as my bones, I saw her. The whirlwind of people around the entrance to the temple parted for a moment and there she was. She clutched a small bundle of a child to her breast. Beside her was the husband carrying two doves. A sacrifice for the child, a consecration for the first born son. They weren't much to look at and I would have passed them by, but the wind pushed me forward. The mother looked up into my eyes from across the court. The voice of the wind whispered in my ear and I knew. This was the child.

I stumbled forward and caught the woman's arm. The husband moved to catch me, but she motioned him to wait. She unwrapped the child and held him before me and the world before me grew transparent like the ghostly vapors that play across the dessert in the late afternoon. I saw through the stones around me to what lay beyond. There was a whirlwind mounting that would strike my people. This was the child that would usher in everything that God had promised. It seemed too small a bundle to carry so much. When the whirlwind finally struck, it would raise many of the low and cause the high and proud to fall. That came as no surprise. When you have lived as long as I have, you realize that the world is in need of being turned upside down. But what I saw next made me want to crumble to the ground and hide my face and weep. This child was to be the glory of Israel, but Israel would speak against it. In the end reject it. But even though we would reject God's gift, God would not reject us. He would make a new Israel around this child with men and women from every nation. We would not be forgotten.

I realized that I had been standing, trembling before this young woman and her child like some senile old man. I put on a brave face and spoke words of blessing over the child. I described the good he would do before the bewildered parents. Surely they had to know that this was God's Son sent to save us from our pride and stubbornness and bring us back to God. But I wanted to spare them from the rest. Why bring tragedy to such an important day? Then for just a moment's time I saw her face as it would look that day when they broke her son. When God spoke the truth to my forefathers, he always spoke the whole truth. Nothing less would be honest. I spoke of her pain. Maybe it would lessen it a little if she were warned. But then I remembered that I had children of my own once. Nothing could have lessened my pain.

When I finished I felt as though the force of the earth bending my body down to the dust had been released. I almost believed I could fly. God had made a promise to me and he had kept it. My time was finished. There were tears of relief and joy in my eyes as I thanked the woman for her time. But there was awe at my last glimpse of the child's eyes. For the Spirit showed me one last thing. They were the eyes of a child and you could see the child behind them, but God was in there too.

I go away to die now. It's not a sad thing. There is no one left to say good-bye to. I'm tired and I want rest. I will see God soon. It really is comforting. Once it would have been frightening, but today I have had a preview. I've seen God's eyes and there is love there.

Stagnation is Cool... Then It Stinks

As a kid I loved exploration, poking and prodding the things that made up the life around me. One of my favorite activities was capturing and watching, bits and pieces of my environment. I had cans and bottles and jugs filled with a bit of the stream that ran through our backyard or of a lake or filled with random ingredients. I'd watch them to see what would become of these samples.

There were glorious surprises. A can with a bit of peach juice in the bottom would grow luxurious strands of grey mold. Swamp water would grow swarms of single-celled animals large enough to see with the naked eyes. Strange, wiggling life forms would begin to emerge from algae-choked jars of water.

It was great for a couple of days, but then the inevitable happened. Decay set in. The stench of death dimmed my fascination. The wiggly things turned out to be mosquito larvae, and I didn't want to be around when they morphed into winged predators with a taste for my blood.

Stagnation has a limited appeal, and what was true for my early nature experiments is true for faith. I have a goal. It has actually sparked concern and alarm among traditionalists at times. I want my view of the world and of God to go through some radical change every two years or so. If not, I feel nervous.

Why? Because I don't want to stagnate. I'm not looking for some new and radical truth that no one else has ever been able to figure out. Originality is not my goal. I'm looking for understanding that is new to me. God is so big, his wisdom so vast, his understanding so far beyond me that I never want to be content with what I already know.

Spiritual stagnation comes when we stop exposing ourself to fresh opportunities for insight. What was in my jars died because they were cut off from new nourishment. They had become a closed system unable to survive. Each little environment consumed itself and died. My spiritual growth is dependent on an open system. Nourishment comes from God and his Spirit. That may seem sufficient, but it is not. God has chosen to work through his people to add to our, (if you will allow me to stretch out the analogy), spiritual nutrition.

The ‘me and Jesus’ model of spirituality can't be found in Scripture. Instead, we are given people who are gifted as pastors, teachers, and more, to instruct and train us (Eph 4:11-13). We are gifted by the Holy Spirit to minister to each other (1 Cor 12:7-11). These influences come from those immediately around me, or have been preserved by the writing of people such as Augustine, Luther, N. T. Wright, Timothy Keller, or Andy Stanley (This is not a comprehensive list).

God's truth is eternal, and my understanding is eternally lacking. If I don't work to push out the boundaries of my understanding, then I'll merely consume what I already know. If I don't challenge my assumptions, then God will not be able to correct the half truths that I carry with me. Tradition will replace a dynamic life. If I don't continue to ask, seek, and knock, if I'm not willing to test what I think I know while being open to be proven wrong (while God is proven right), then I will stagnate and never know the true meaning of abundant life.

Christmas: Focus Beyond the Family

The practice of celebrating Christmas began as a community festival to celebrate the birth of Christ much like Easter was already celebrated. It was a worship gathering and a festival to be shared. In our individualistic culture it has shrunk from the community celebration to a family gathering. This has changed the celebration in many ways and taken some of what is special and redemptive out of Christmas.

Jesus' birth marks the beginning of a new people a new stage in God's work to establish his Kingdom on earth. Jesus' life exemplifies Jesus' love; his death and resurrection establish the possibility of being united with God; and the gift of his Holy Spirit unite us together as the new community of God. As Paul says when describing communion, "And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf." (1 Cor 10:16-17) Our individual commitment to Jesus leads to a new corporate reality where love, care, and forgiveness are actively practiced.

The celebration of Jesus' birth should be a celebration of his mission. No wet blanket here. Celebrations are a good thing. God gave Israel feast days to celebrate and remember his great works. The work isn't finished, but that doesn't mean that we should be miserly in our celebration of Jesus' decisive and game changing acts. God's promises were fulfilled in Jesus and the angels heralded Jesus' birth as the day everything began to change.

But Christmas is also a day to remember that the Kingdom has not yet been fully established. Many believers come from broken, damaged, and damaging families. As a community we encourage, heal, and give hope. As individuals, people remain alone. Many twenty-somethings are separated from their families due to jobs, education, and even missions. Young professionals today tend to be more isolated. Many of this generation are now labeled nomadic Christians because they have ceased to belong, but maybe our focus on the nuclear family, orphans those who don't have a nuclear family of their own. Families are important, but the New Testament places its emphasis on the gathered community of God.

Christmas was also a time to remember the poor and the abused. To include the outsider. It was not seen as the one day to make up for ignoring the poor the rest of the year. Instead, it was a reminder that God's justice was meant for all, a reminder of how we were to live the rest of the year. It was a reminder that God expected more of us than to be good capitalists. The pagan villain of Dickens', A Christmas Carol was a great capitalist. He would have made modern writers like Ayn Rand proud.

I don't reject capitalism. It has much to commend it. But any "ism" must be tempered by God's wisdom and love. God's love doesn't only extend to the poor, the forgotten, and the abused, but it even embraces my enemy. And it extends - and this is hard in today's protective political climate - to the stranger, the immigrants among us.

How do we celebrate and care for those around us without wearing ourselves out or giving up in despair? We do it together as communities. Christmas doesn't really have to be less than a feast, a time with family, and even a football game. But it can be so much more. Presents aren't necessarily an evil, but people are more important. Together, Christmas can be an active celebration of God turning back the curse, of love breaking into the world, and a foretaste of what God has in store for us. Christmas was meant to be a public, community feast and celebration that reminds the world who we hope in and what we hope for. Enjoy it together.

Lessons from C. S. Lewis for Today (His Birthday)

Today marks the 113th year since C. S. Lewis was born, and his writing is still making a major impact on the lives of people throughout the world. PreChristians and Christians alike read and are influenced by his work while much of today's Christian writing and media does not engage the world. Why is that?

The first reason is that C. S. Lewis wrote for the world. He was not writing for the already convinced. He was not writing for Christian bookstores and Christian critics. He was writing to inspire the imagination of people who did not agree with him. He wanted to inform people who were skeptical. Too often today, our communication is aimed at the convinced. When that is the case, we take too much for granted, we assume too much prior knowledge from our audience, and we become combative rather than inspirational.

Most of Lewis' work first appeared in public media. He had to connect to an unbelieving audience or the paper would stop asking him for his columns and radio stations would stop giving him air time. Captive audiences inspire laziness and inhibit creative and persuasive thought. Good outreach, inspiration, teaching, and communication is most likely to happen when we are competing to be heard along with all the other voices in the world. Then we need to push our creativity, our ability to find common ground with others, and our ability to relate to felt needs and interests. C. S. Lewis became a master of this. The power of his writing comes in part to the fact that he wasn't singing for the choir.

Lewis also had a strong respect for the truth. He wasn't interested in propaganda. He wanted God to peel back the curtain and reveal to him what was real. In this, he was never guilty of a secular/sacred split. All truth was God's truth. This meant that he went to the Bible to understand who God is, who we are on a fundamental level, and what are purpose in the universe is, but he didn't limit himself to the Bible. He was a professor of literature and knew that art was a powerful tool to explore truth. He drew quite a bit from history and philosophy and, somewhat, on science. He had little patience for people who thought they could learn science, medicine, engineering from scripture. Scripture is the highest authority on those things that God directly addresses, but we are made in the image of God and are given other tools to explore the ordered creation that God has provided us with. This added credibility to his writing.

C. S. Lewis did not neglect his Christian learning, though. He once said that nothing he wrote was original. I thought this was just false modesty until I began to read the Christian classics. More often, than I would have imagined, Lewis is translating the thoughts of Augustine or Aquinas into modern language and applying them to our current situation. Lewis' grounding in the Bible and Christian thought was the bedrock of everything he wrote. Originality is highly valued today, Lewis applied originality only after he had walked the well trod path of Christian scholarship.

I think the most powerful tool that Lewis brought to the table was his imagination and love of story. It seems that most of our communication today reflects the cold logic of the modern era. The Bible is a story, Jesus conveyed most of his message in story, yet we tend to turn the dynamic story of the gospel into a set of philosophical principles. Lewis loved and respected logic, but he loved passion, story, imagery, and metaphors more. Logic points to truth that can be contained while story and metaphor speaks of mysteries that cannot be contained. It is the latter that inspires. I'm not sure how you can communicate the wonder of the gospel unless you love story. If you don't appreciate fiction or history I can't imagine how you connect with or inspire those in the world. I don't think C. S. Lewis could either, and I'm thankful for that.

Typewriter or Laptop?

Okay, let's have a show of hands. If you had to write a term paper, and you had access to both a laptop and a typewriter, who would choose the typewriter? Of course you would choose the computer. I remember the days of correcting fluid and carbon paper, of stuck keys, and old ribbon. Who would want put in all that work just to have one hard copy that was easily eaten by the dog?

Okay, I have a few friends that would stubbornly holdout for the typewriter, but that says more about their character, their desire to stand out just for the sake of standing out, their need for an excuse to fall back on when they don't complete their paper, their belief that suffering is an end in itself.

Where is the source of my strength? One of the reasons I follow Jesus is that he brings a computer to the table when life only offers a typewriter, but that does me little good if I just keep right on using the typewriter. Jesus brings more to the table regardless of how good my life may seem at the moment, but I must choose to pursue the strength he offers.

God's strength comes from three sources: Scripture, personal prayer and worship, and the Christian community. Scripture is the primary way that God's Spirit communicates with us, revealing his will, encouragement, and guidance. God shapes and molds us through personal prayer and worship. We get to recognize his voice and touch so he can guide us throughout the rest of our lives. And, surprisingly, it's through the gathered Christian community that God chooses to minister to us individually.

1 Corinthians 12 - 14 describes God's desire for dynamic communities whose members actively care for each other. Where we gather with gifts supplied by God to fulfill each need while others come with gifts for us. It is God's decision that he will supply most of our strength, growth, encouragement, and healing through each other. The God of love has decided that we will participate in his works of grace. In this way, we learn to love each other as we learn to love God. There was a day when we looked toward a place, the mountain of God, to see where our strength would come from. We still look to that same God, but now he no longer works from a distance. He works intimately through a combination of Scripture, prayer, and his community.

If we look anywhere else for our strength, then we have chosen the typewriter when God has provided us with a laptop. Of the three, I think the community is the one most neglected today, although all three are suffering as we choose politics, social engineering, culture wars, and peer pressure over God's guidance (I am speaking to Christians here). Among younger Christians we see the rise of nomadic Christianity, the idea that we can live our life apart from the church and still love God. This cuts them off from one of the main sources of strength.

I don't blame them too much, though. For many, church is an activity that is done once or twice a week. It is more a performance to be attended, a lecture to ingest, than it is an active time of interacting with each other. There should be times of teaching and community worship, but there should be more. A community shares in each other's lives, cares for each other, suffers through each other's mistakes and growing pains, shares each other's joys and suffering, doubts and insights. A community is dynamic.

If you are a follower of Jesus, community is not a suggestion but a command. Flee authoritarian, bitter, controlling communities, but don't give up on God's plan, on God's values. If you have been burned, then start with just a few trusted friends. If you go to church, then start with a few from within that group and begin to live the church. If not, then you better like carbon paper and correction fluid.

Community, Strangers, and Old People's Snacks

I didn't like church as I was growing up, and it didn't grow on me over time. In fact, the tension grew until I could leave it behind.

I didn't particularly like dressing up on Sundays. I wasn't into sitting still for an hour or more while the adults participated in something I didn't quite understand. The music was strange, and the coffee hour was full of old-people's snacks.

But that wasn't what bothered me most. The biggest problem was spending time with people I didn't know. The only time we saw each other was on Sundays. Somehow, our paths never crossed during the week. There were no social calls, no shared events, no shared missions... except work day at the church once or twice a year.

The message was simple. The church meeting was important, but the people? Not so much.

The idea that the church could be described as a building is alien to the New Testament. A persecuted group doesn't hang a big sign outside a regular meeting place to advertise to the authorities where they can be found and gathered up for prison.

Equally alien would be the idea that the church was a denomination or a system of governance. Even a quick reading of Paul's letters shows that the early church was out of its depth and still trying to work through this new thing God had done.

In Scripture, the church is people. It is a group of people who have given their lives to Jesus, have been united by the Holy Spirit, and are called to love and serve each other as they work together to establish the Kingdom of God.

Today, we hear a lot about nomad Christians. An emerging generation who accept Jesus as their Lord, but have abandoned the church. This is a problem for at least two reasons (in fact, there are several more). The first is that the call to committed community is Jesus' idea. It is his intention that we come together to serve each other and serve the world in a cooperative fashion. To say that Jesus is Lord and then not follow him is a contradiction in terms. Jesus called us to reform our priorities and our way of life.

But another problem must be addressed. Are we the church or are we just having church? Many youth are walking away because their church experience looks a lot like mine did growing up. If church is impersonal, driven by activities that keep people busy without them connecting personally, divided up into small speciality groups (age, activity, interest) so that a larger community doesn't emerge, if it's all about information transfer instead of encouragement and a shared, personal journey then it will become impersonal. If the emphasis is on right doctrine, but there is no room to share doubts, struggles, or to question, then personal growth has taken a back seat to "getting a good grade" in church.

We have "focused on the family" when God asked us to focus on the community. Jesus told us that families would be divided because of their belief in him, but he came to create new community. Which is the priority then?

There is no Christianity without the gathered, connected people of God. "For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body---whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free---and we were all given the one Spirit to drink." (I Corinthians 12:13) There must be a real, personal connection to the body. But we must ask two questions: First, am I really willing to respond to Jesus' authority and follow him? Second, has church become another activity and obligation like work or soccer practice, or is the church part of my relational identity, a group of people I work to get to know and love, people I've included in my larger life?

If the faith that Jesus established is still going to be influential for the next generation then these questions have to be dealt with.

No More Bite-Sized Gospel

The gospel is not something you can explain in three minutes. You can introduce it in three minutes, but if you can explain it that quickly, your gospel is too small. I believe it is the practice of presenting the gospel as a small thing, to be consumed in bite-sized pieces, that partially explains why the church is losing so many youth as they move from high school to adulthood.

The Bible is more than John 3:16 and the twenty or thirty favorite stories we like to repeat. God has used this scripture to inspire great writers such a Dostoevsky, J. R. R. Tolkien, Annie Dillard, T. S. Eliot, and Waker Percy. It has shaped great thinkers such as Augustine, Pascal, Kierkegaard, and contemporaries such a Peter Kreeft. It has inspired great art and influenced the shape of modern science, medicine, and law.

A small gospel doesn’t seem to stand up well against worldviews that have been well thought through (they may contain error, but they have been given thought). The tragedy is God has given us so much more to chew on, has addressed all the great questions of life, and presented us with more than enough to feed and inspire us for a lifetime.

Real classes and teaching need to replace our short commercial moments for God.

I know the first objection, because I get it often. Youth have the attention span of a chipmunk. Really? Are you sure.

Several years ago I was asked to teach at a large youth retreat. I’m a college missionary, and I hadn’t felt comfortable with high school students. To make matters worse, this retreat included middle school students. I never thought I connected well with this audience, but I agreed to speak.

I brought some musicians and a drama team for a “hip” factor. I don’t do hip well.

I was given several 90 minute teaching blocks. 90 minutes? Even with music and drama, that still left me with over 45 minutes to fill. As the youth groups began to arrive, each youth leader pulled me aside. “Our group only has about a ten minute attention span,” they warned. I was polite, but inside I wanted to ask, “Then why did you give me 90 minute teaching blocks?”

I approached this retreat differently, though. I remembered my audience. I know what they talk about among friends at school. We tiptoe around topics that they talk about openly elsewhere, and it makes us sound naive and foolish. Worse, it makes God seem naive and foolish. I decided to talk to them like they were college students, to be frank and shoot just a little over their heads. I talked about things that mattered to them in straightforward, frank terms.

The result was that I had a group of middle school and high school students that were engaged and focused throughout the long teaching blocks.

Content matters. If you have a few that don’t engage, then create something else for them. But don’t keep aiming for the least interested. You will lose the majority for the rebellious few. Reward faithfulness and you will create faithfulness. Focus your best attention on the slackers and the message is clear: slackers mean more to you than the faithful. Find a way to reach both, but give your best to the faithful. That’s Jesus’ model.

If the idea of diving into these topics deeper, of reading the great theologians, or wrestling with the big questions just makes you feel tired, then you don’t really believe in the life-giving qualities of God’s truth. Devotion to God is... well, devotion, commitment, taking the place of the students before we simply cover our preconceptions with religious trappings and present it to the world as God’s truth. That may seem harsh, but if we treat God like a hobby, then we will have little to offer.

Saint Steve Jobs and “Buddy Jesus”

This should be my last blog about Steve Jobs for a while, but today, CNN has collected a group of writers to consider the question, “Is Steve Jobs a saint.” But perhaps the first question should have been what is a saint.

The definition of saint used by most of the writers is synonymous with fame and celebrity. My problem here is not the elevation of celebrity, but the devaluation of faith and its objects.

What does the word “saint” mean? For many, it means a really good person. Someone better than you. Someone who God needs to sit up and take notice of. For others, it represents dead people who lived such good lives before God that they now have God’s ear. They now have spiritual leverage, so you want them on your side. This second definition implies that God, himself, is distant and aloof.

The Bible has another definition altogether. A saint is a follower of Jesus. A saint is special because Jesus has made them special. As saints grow, they don’t revel in their perfection, but they understand their falleness, and how short they fall when compared against Christ (the only comparison that matters). As they understand their shortcomings, they begin to understand God’s gift better. “God made him who had no sin (Jesus) to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.”

Everyone who has responded to Jesus’ call to follow him is a saint because of God’s grace displayed and bestowed to us through Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. It all points back to God.

That’s my problem with our use of saint today. It’s too casual, and it points the wrong way. When sainthood is equated with celebrity it points back to us. There is nothing wrong with being a fan. But hero worship and true devotion are in a completely different league.

My main concern is not with hero worship in itself, but the trend to pull our admiration for Jesus down to the same level. In Kevin Smith’s film, Dogma, the church is worried about young people leaving the church, so a new advertising campaign is initiated. Throw out all the seriousness, commitment, and call to serve. Instead, a new “Buddy Jesus” image is presented. A more relatable, “he’s just one of us,” happy go lucky, celebrity Jesus.

Jesus is not a celebrity. He is God, and that puts him in a completely different class.

I am a fan of Star Wars and Star Trek and Farscape. The inner geek in me rejoices. I am not a fan of Jesus. I’m a devotee of Jesus. I have given my life to Jesus. I’ll give Star Wars a bit of my time, but I’ll never give my life to it.

Saints are not marked first by innovation, how charismatic they are, or the recognition of others. None of that is bad. We should work hard and set our sights high. A saint is marked by his or her devotion to God, by obedience, by embracing God’s love and sharing it in a life of service.

Don’t market God as though he were Steve Jobs, Jonny Depp, or a new deodorant. Promote him as the Lord of Life, the Creator, the Beginning and the End, as God. He doesn’t want fans. He wants devotion.

We don’t make Saints. We don’t decide who becomes a saint. It’s a gift of God that raises us beyond the trivialities of fandom into a new life as a new creation. Only God makes a saint. Celebrities follow the trends. Saints follow Jesus.

The Source of Steve Jobs Confidence

Steve Jobs' authorized biography hits the stores today. A sign of his legacy (and that of a select few), it hit the Net first through the Kindle, iBooks, and the Nook. It is a portrait of a very human man, warts and all. Many will read the book looking for the warts, but more will be looking for those things that motivated him and inspired his genius. After all, we'd all like to be able to learn from success.

Walter Isaacson shared a surprising but understandable piece of Steve Jobs’ motivation. In an emotional moment, the adopted Jobs asked his parents why he was rejected by his birth parents. His parents response was, "No, you don't understand. We specifically picked you out."

Jobs reflected, “From then on, I realized that I was not—just abandoned. I was chosen. I was special.” Isaacson reflected, "And I think that's the key to understanding Steve Jobs."

This is no small thing, and God knows it. It is easy for us to feel rejected in this life, to think that God has thrown us away because of our past or God’s indifference. King David realizing his crimes against God says to God, “Don’t throw me out with the trash.” (Psalms 51, The Message) I think we all have a desire to be needed, but I know we all need to be wanted.

This is why Jesus wanted his disciples to understand, “You did not chose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last...” (John 15:16) This comes right after Jesus tells his disciples that they are not servants but friends. The two things that Jesus points to, when telling them they are his friends, is that he has shared his plans with them, and he wanted them to be with him, he chose them.

That’s great for those first disciples, but what about us? When Jesus died on the cross, he died for the sins and the salvation of all. This is the strongest way that Jesus could say, “I want you.” The New Testament gives witness that Jesus did not die for generic humanity. He died for each and every one of us as individuals. Jesus wants us.

Humanity has abandoned God, but God has not abandoned us. Instead, “when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” (Gal 4:4-6)

Jobs was right. He was special, he was loved, because he was chosen. We need to be wanted. He was wanted by his parents, but how much more worth do we experience when we realize we are wanted by God? We can work forever to be needed, but it is a clutching desire that is seldom fulfilled. On the other hand, to be wanted is a gift. That gift makes us special.

When Jobs realized that he was wanted and special, it motivated him toward higher goals for his life. It gave him a confidence, a confidence that sometimes slipped into arrogance, but confidence none the less. The same will happen for us when we take Jesus’ love for us seriously. Confidence is sprinkled with humility when the God of the universe is added to the picture, but it is an enabling confidence. Jesus chose us and chose us to bear fruit for him. This is a gift as well. He has already decided that we can be part of what he is doing, and he has gifted us to accomplish great things. Great things? Yeah, we need more confidence and gratitude to take up the promise and run. After all, “all you who have faith in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

Of Shakespeare & UFOs

The soon to be released movie Anonymous is a tale of intrigue revolving around the true author of Shakespeare's plays. Yes, conspiracy theory lovers unite! Shakespeare may be a well-established historic figure, but there has always been a small number that question his ability to write. After all, he was a noble, people question his education, and he...well, he wrote so many plays. Surely one mere mortal couldn't have achieved such a feat. Maybe it was a group people, or several hundred trained monkeys (but then, the typewriter hadn't yet been invented, so that's out of the running), or Francis Bacon (he could do anything).

So what do UFO's have to do with Shakespeare? For the same reason that some people have a hard time accepting Shakespeare's genius, people propose that aliens built the pyramids. How could we ever believe that humans could create something as cleaver as the pyramids? Of course humans couldn't have made it to the moon on their own, ancients couldn't have formed glass skulls, and what about that iPad?

Each case offers a small and petty view of humanity. Instead, we should be celebrating the unique wonder that is man and woman. We are the only animal on this planet capable of abstract reasoning. Other animals solve problems and make tools, but instead of jumping around a problem poking and prodding until we stumble on a solution, we sit down and think through the problem first (okay, I confess, when it comes to my computer, I start with picking and prodding). We are the only animal that makes tools to make other tools (think about it). We are the only animals that create our own, diverse political systems. For other animals it's hard wired into them. We are the only animals that practice fine arts (art that builds on itself from generation to generation). We adapt the environment to us as well as adapt to the environment.

All in all, that's pretty amazing. We have been made in the image of God. We are animals infused with the gift of spirit. The difference is worthy of celebration wherever we see it. Of course we could build the pyramids, go to the moon, even create the iPad (did I mention I was writing this on an iPad?). The gifts of God are to be appreciated.

It is the wonder of this gift that makes our use of it so tragic. There is so much power in this gift. The power to sail across space, and the power to destroy nations. We have done both, but we weren't created for both purposes.

The fact that we can do such harm does not mean that we need to run down or deny our humanity. The gift is good. We need to look for the problem elsewhere. The power that comes with the image of God requires divine wisdom, knowledge, and guidance to wield it properly.

Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely. God's wisdom, balance, beauty, and love are incorruptible, but ours is not. We lack the perspective and the perfection. God gave us the gift along with his guidance, but we decided we were wiser. I would suggest that history has already proved us wrong. But that doesn't mean the gift is evil in and of itself. We best celebrate our humanity when we return to its source. When we surrender to God's guidance, his wisdom, grace, beauty, and love. We find the fulfillment of humanity in the one who gave it to us in the first place.

So, I'd love to find a flying saucer in my backyard, but the Egyptians didn't need one to create the pyramids, and I don't find it difficult to believe Shakespeare wrote thirty-seven plays (they weren't all good plays after all). I choose to celebrate and fear this amazing gift we have been given by pursuing the One who gave it to me.

Advance Love First

We are all damaged goods. I think it is essential that we remember this. The fruit of pride and rebellion is pain. There might be the moment of pleasure, of defiance that feels like freedom, momentary consolation, or fleeting power, but after that fades, we are still left with pain - the pain we inflict, and the pain we carry away. Sin is crippling in many ways, but perhaps the greatest is the fear and distrust it imparts that makes it hard for us to receive love.

I believe the first task that Jesus has given us is to help people learn to receive love. It is not the only task, but it's where we need to start. Before someone can agree with God, before they can repent and begin to set their lives straight, before God's renewing love can bring freedom and health there must be a surrendering to God's love. This is more than an intellectual exercise. It requires trust and vulnerability. Two of the things sin crushes.

We have other tasks. There are actions and philosophies that we are called to oppose. We are to be watchful of error and deceit. We are to call out and oppose injustice. But all of that is meaningless if it doesn't advance love. That's the root cause of self-righteousness. We defend causes and ideas while forgetting why God sent us out in the first place. It starts with God, but then it's all about people.

Our continuing freedom is wrapped up in this as well. Sin is still at work. We want to judge. We want power. We sometimes fear what the world fears: loss of possessions, outsiders taking our place, being left behind, becoming insignificant. We are tempted to take matters into our own hands, circle the wagons, and return to our oppressive ways. We all struggle with sin, but our release is still the same as the one we offer the world. We again trust and surrender to God's love. We continue to let God channel his love through us.

"And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them." (1 John 4:16) This is the first lesson God gives us and the one he returns to again and again. It was God's love that inspired him to send Jesus. It was his love that led him to raise Jesus from the dead and won our salvation. It was his love that motivated him to send his Spirit to us. It was his love that hunted you down and brought freedom to your life. It is his love that is healing our scars and teaching us how to better receive love so that we might be freed to give love.

The first step of salvation is to open up to God's love for us, so our first task is to help people receive love. They have been hurt, selfish, prideful, and sometimes downright deceitful, but none of that will change until the walls that hold out love come down. Most people believe deep down that they don't deserve love - and they are right. Love is a gift and not a wage. We need to love first, often, and in creative and surprising ways. We need to love until a hurt, damaged person finally is able to receive the single most powerful truth in the universe: they are loved by us and, most importantly, by God.

This isn't easy for us. It cost Jesus his life. But this is part of the reason God sent his Spirit to us. The Spirit is here first to continue to express God's love and intimacy to us. We are not forgotten after we respond. But that same Spirit empowers us to love beyond our means, and that's where the real adventure starts, where we begin to experience the true power and faithfulness of God - and where we begin to really understand the greatest truth of all: God is love.

Inspired by Steve Jobs

Creative people change the world. The critics have their moments, the bitter and the power-hungry leave scars, and the takers eventually vanish into obscurity, but it is the acts of creativity that shape the world. It's for that reason that we should take note of the life of Steve Jobs.

Some Christians will argue that it is dangerous to hold up as examples people who are not known for their faith, some even feel the need to run them down, but that only reflects a poverty of spirit and a lack of respect for the image of God in each of us. We can celebrate the gift of humanity without diminishing or ignoring the need for salvation.

Like many of my generation I count creative people among my heroes. Jim Henson, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Steve Jobs are all high on that list, and they all teach one important lesson: Creativity is more powerful than critique. It's not that critique is unimportant, but it never built anything. In the end, we fail if we don't build more than we tear down. That's an important message for the church today. We need fewer angry old men (and many fewer angry young men) and more people of vision.

Steve Jobs inspires me because he was a man of vision. He had a picture of the future he wanted to share with the world. I have no idea how long we have, but I need to live my life as if we have another thousand years before Jesus ushers in the next great age of humanity. Inspiration comes from people of vision. If you believe it's all over and we just need to hold on until the final curtain comes crashing down, then you will waste the gift of life you have been given. With Jesus it's about life, living, and vision.

Even when Jobs had made his fortune, when he was comfortable for life, and when he was ill, he still gave his life to create. Vision added meaning to his life. Our vision may look small or large to others, it may touch a neighborhood or a continent, it may be directed to toward the forgotten or the masses - that doesn't really matter - what matters is that you have a vision, that you have given yourself to create something in someone's life.

One of the important life lessons that Steve Jobs learned was that vision is not accomplished on his own. He had two careers. The first was innovative, but self-centered. People were obstacles to be conquered or workers to whipped into shape. He lost Apple as a result. When he returned, he returned a bit more humble. He highlighted the accomplishments of the team and began to focus attention on others. He became a man known for bringing men and women (corporations are in the end just groups of people) together to bring music, film, TV, books, magazines, and newspapers into the digital age. Vision is accomplished by community. Communities need leaders, many leaders of many types, servant leaders who do not see themselves as the answer, leaders who value community. The lone rebel makes a noise for a time, but communities change the world.

Creativity changes the world. If we are too poor in spirit to celebrate creativity wherever we see it, then we are most likely to become smaller, bitter, withered. If we fail to see and honor creativity, then we are unlikely to recognize the extent of Jesus’ creativity, generosity, and vision. That would be tragedy because we would be left with a vision of Jesus as stingy and judgmental rather than the generous Lord of light, love, joy, and vision. Jesus should guide and shape our creativity, but celebrate the creative - celebrate vision.

Jesus without the Church?

Students often tell me that they are okay with Jesus, but they don't like organized religion, therefore they don't attend any church (I am tempted to ask their opinion of disorganized religion, but I'm sure I'd get a confused stare). Today, there is a growing group that seem to affirm faith while disconnecting from other believers. Rather than an affirmation this is a rejection of Jesus' work and intentions for mankind.

First, let me say that I understand that some people have been hurt by impersonal, bureaucratic, and authoritarian churches. Always hear someone out before you respond. At the same time, church is not an optional extra for disciples of Christ.

A church is not a building or a corporation. Scripture describes the church as people who have been united by faith and the Spirit of God. All believers are part of a universal church, but that universal reality must be realized personally in some setting if we are to be obedient to Jesus' call.

Paul instructs the Corinthians that "Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body---whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free---and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many." (1 Corinthians 12:12-14) We are not only baptized in Christ, we are also baptized into his body. Communities of the redeemed who care for each other and work with each other to redeem the world are part of God's plan. If we are disciples of Jesus, then we go where he leads us, and he leads us into caring communities.

Jesus has come to establish his kingdom, the way God intended life to be lived. Under Jesus' Lordship, we find wisdom, creativity, and love. Love doesn't come naturally for us (Time to be real). We need the Holy Spirit to teach us and empower us to become more than we were before we met Jesus. Love cannot be experienced in isolation. It must be experienced together. God brings us together as a forgiven and humble (at least we are if we are honest about why we needed to be forgiven) people. Together we fumble around learning to support and encourage each other. We often fail, but as a community united by Jesus' forgiveness, we learn to apologize and ask for forgiveness. More importantly, we learn to extend that same forgiveness.

If we can't extend grace to each other, the grace that builds up, liberates, and forgives, then how can we ever represent Jesus to a world that doesn't know him?

But there is a larger issue here. Can we claim to be Christian, to be disciples of Jesus, if we refuse to follow him, if we refuse to gather together as he instructs us? Most of the students I meet who claim to follow Jesus, but aren't interested in "organized religion", are really saying that Jesus isn't important enough to change their life for. Church on Sunday is inconvenient. In most cases they don't want anyone telling them right from wrong. Not even God.

Jesus is never just okay. He's either the gracious and powerful Lord that leads us into a better life, or he's an advice columnist that you periodically consult. Jesus' teaching were divisive because he defined himself as God and never as a consultant. His love inspired him to tell the truth, and we should never water them down. We should make sure our words represent Jesus' love and grace, but there is nothing loving about hiding the truth. It's a package deal. Jesus and the church come as a package deal. You walk away from one and you walked away from the other.

Investing in the Faithful

Does your campus outreach, youth group, church reward the faithful? We've all heard the saying, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you live by that saying than you are going to end up with a lot of squeaky wheels. You build what you focus on.

The problem with a one-size-fits-all approach to ministry is that it always descends to the lowest common denominator. If you want to build strong disciples, if you want your youth to maintain their faith into adulthood, you need to offer additional opportunities for the faithful.

This was central to Jesus' personal ministry. He preached to the multitudes, he pastored many, but he poured himself into the faithful. This group included the apostles, but it didn't end there. He also gave extra time to Mary and Martha, his mother, and several other faithful women. We hear of one group of seventy-two that Jesus trained in outreach (Luke 10:72). Individuals from these groups traveled with him, shared meals and campfires, and were offered additional training and opportunities.

I care for the fringe and the lost. I want to see people transformed for the first time, but those who have been reached must be rooted in their faith and equipped to minister. Anything less is failure.

Failure? That seems like a strong statement, but look at Jesus' command. He didn't command us to make converts. That's not enough. He called us to make disciples. Outreach is not complete until the convert is ministering at your side. Effective ministry is not measured by the public activity of a leader. It's measured by the fruit of those he or she disciples (Mat 28:18-20).

You set the bar low, and you will not be disappointed. On the other hand, if you set the bar higher, reward faithfulness by giving the faithful more attention, you are likely to be pleasantly surprised and more people will be reached because you will have created a partner and a coworker.

Students that come out of this kind of background will become influencers rather than the influenced, and they will survive into an adult faith. Jesus pastored the many, but he poured himself into the faithful. We should do nothing less.

Are You Working for the Wrong Side?

It's when we fight the world's systems that we are most likely to be controlled by them. This is a hidden danger that we don't often recognize and many in the church have fallen to it.

We are to fight the systems of this world. Not for the sake of the fight but to free those who have been held captive by these systems, actions, and beliefs. This is an important distinction. If we lose it than our battle turns on people (flesh and blood) rather on the spiritual powers that create the deception (Eph 6:12). We begin to destroy people rather than strongholds. Sadly, that has too often been the practice today, and the gospel has been disgraced. But even when our focus is right, we are open to manipulation.

When we confront the beliefs and systems of the world, we must begin by stepping back and consulting with God first. The powers and principalities that entrap and deceive don't play fair. If they only lied, they would be easy to confront, but they make the task harder by mixing truth in with their deceptions. If we simply react before we consult with God, then we will inevitably throw the baby out with the bath water. We will reject the truth along with the error, and that is just what the enemy wants. He wants to unconsciously recruit us to his cause by tricking us into opposing truth as well as error.

God taught us the principles that led to scientific method, but because some people have misused science to try to prove there is no God, many Christians have rejected those God-given principles. The Scriptures have a great deal to say about the stewardship of nature, but because some extreme environmentalists have tried to diminish humanity through distortions of Biblical principles, many Christians have rejected Biblical stewardship. Even though social justice is perhaps the most reoccurring theme in both the Old and New Testaments, because some people have attempted to build new systems of justice based on worldly opinion, many Christian oppose social justice in general.

In each case, Christians have become pawns of the enemy when they thought they were doing the right thing. Why? Because they didn't stop first and consult with God. We must go to Scripture and test the challenges. We must separate the truth from error, so that we don't throw away God's truth while opposing the enemy's lies.

I know it's tempting to say that the issues are so important that we can't waste time with things like study. The perceived urgency of the moment is one of the enemy's greatest weapons. Who or what is in charge? Does the situation or God rule our lives? If it's God, then we can afford the time to consult with him. Not just try to find a few proof texts to support our preconceived ideas, but time to wrestle with the truth. God honors those who put in the time. The apostle Paul gives us a great example: "Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." (Acts 17:11)

We live in a fast food world, and I think that has rubbed off on us. God's truths are not self-evident. Sin has blinded us. It takes work to throw off worldly common sense and replace it with the wisdom and knowledge of God. Too many today try to take on the world while their Bibles and theology texts gather dust. When that happens, God is no longer in control. Satan is now leading us by the nose as we react to his carefully laid plans. It's past time to repent and do the hard work of reclaiming God's truth and put away the false, fast food theologies of reaction.

The Power of Grace on 9-11

Swift, mindless, and violent retribution. That's what tends to come to mind when everything we love is put into danger. From Walking Tall to The Patriot the message from Hollywood is that you hurt those who endanger you and yours, and that revenge is justified and noble. I'm thankful that on 9-11, I saw behavior that looked nothing like Hollywood. On that day and the days that followed there was a vision of hope on campuses as well.

I had been in the D. C. area for about a week conducting outreaches on several campuses. Harvey and Sally Herman were city directors there, and I was staying at their place. That morning a prayer meeting was scheduled and campus missionaries had begun to arrive. I fired up my trusty MacBook and logged onto AOL (yes, those were some of the early days of the Internet). As the welcome screen came up, there was a picture of one of the World Trade Centers and the now famous gaping, smoking hole. We turned on the television just as the second tower was struck. There was the Pentagon strike, close enough that we heard and felt the impact, and the nervous hours until all the remaining planes were accounted for.

The prayer meeting went on, but the agenda had radically changed.

The images of destruction will never be forgotten. The collapsing towers, the sight of the Pentagon smoking for several days, the military personnel who could bear to look as we passed the broken building, and the military Humvees on every corner. But it was the student response that was a hopeful surprise.

Very quickly after the disaster there was a fear of violent retribution toward anyone of Middle Eastern descent. The first reports, though, were not of violence but of American students seeking out Middle Eastern students to form protective shields for them. In most cases, those were Christian students.

There was a need for food, clothing, and blankets for those displaced by the disaster. College students went to work and had begun collecting supplies while most of the country was still sorting out what had happened.

Chaplains on campus began collecting people together to process what had happen. I was part of a crowd of thousands at American University. Around me I could hear people talking about family members and friends that worked in the Trade Center or the Pentagon that had not been heard from. I heard people remark that they had been bumped off the fatal flight from D.C. I was amazed by the close connection between D.C. and the people of New York. This was personal.

The Christian and Jewish chaplains worked together with the Islamic chaplain. The goal that day among Christians was to make sure that Jesus' teachings were upheld: "You have heard that it was said, `Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Mat 5:43-48) It is interesting that it was people of faith who did the most to comfort, unite, and mobilize people on campus.

I returned to American University one year later to publicly discuss the differences between Islam and Christianity with an Imam. The strongest difference is that the god of Islam is a god of justice and judgement that will never be close or intimate with his followers - grace and mercy should not be expected. While Jesus so loved us that he got as close as possible to and demonstrated both justice and mercy by paying the price of sin through his own life. What I will remember about those first days after 9-11 is that the grace and mercy of Jesus was shown to be more powerful in a disaster than prejudice, hatred, and revenge. Hollywood was wrong and Jesus was right.

Of Orange Trees and Theology

I have eaten oranges and consumed orange juice all my life, and yesterday I learned I knew almost nothing about oranges and what little I knew was wrong. I began reading John McPhee's book, Oranges, yesterday. McPhee is one of America's greatest nonfiction writers. I wanted to learn from his writing style, so I chose Oranges because I wanted to see how he could sustain the reader's interest through a whole book on just one fruit. The answer? Oranges are pretty interesting

How can something so familiar be so unknown? I never questioned the existence of oranges, where they came from, how they work into human history, or ever what color they are (Orange right? It's right there in the name, right? Turns out thats not really the case)? Curiosity may have killed the cat, but I can guarantee that cat's short life was richer for the exploration. And what kind of society are we that we made up such a morbid saying about the desire to know more? And whose cat was it anyway?

What's true of oranges is true about a great many things, including theology. If you don't ask questions, dig deeper, and risk an untimely, feline death, then the Christian faith and the things of God seem pretty dull after a while, and the dullness is infective. I am surprised about the lack of hunger to learn more about God, the Scripture, and the history of the Christian faith that I see around me today. But it is understandable. Many sermons, Christian classes, and books are little more than self-help guides, moral lists, and dry Cliff Notes versions of Divine truth.

Who wants Cliff Notes when they can have Shakespeare? Actually, that's easy. The uninspired, the lazy, and the mediocre. The people who are content to have what is given to them by others but never question for themselves. Toadstools rather than explorers. People who waste their life watching other people go through the motions on reality shows rather than experience life for themselves.

That sounds a bit harsh, but that is the legacy our ministries leave unless we are willing to bring the fact forward, unless we are willing to dig deeper to have more to offer, unless we welcome and encourage questions.

Did you know that ripe oranges are not necessarily ripe? An orange needs a cold spell in order to turn the color orange, but that has nothing to with its ripeness. In fact, oranges are one of the few fruits that can only ripen on a tree. It doesn't contain the starches that apples and pears have that allow them to ripen after they are picked. So if you avoid green oranges in the store, you are passing up perfectly ripe oranges. In fact, some oranges turn the color orange and then go back to green as they ripen. That's a meaningful fruit fact. It could keep you from starving in an orchard of green oranges.

Did you know the Christian faith got it's start in cities? That the wealthy and educated were among the early converts? That the early church warned people strongly against taking the Genesis creation account as a scientific, literal picture of how God created the earth and man(while affirming God as Creator)? Do you know how the religious festivals that were a backdrop to most of Jesus' public miracles deepened the meaning of those miracles? Did you know that Moses' body was taken up into heaven by an angel (One of four bodily ascensions into heaven? The other three were still alive. Lucky them).

The wonder is in the detail not the generalizations and the quick and easy outlines. Writers such as N. T. Wright and John Walton (The Lost World of Genesis One) are good at bringing these details to bear and there are many more authors that I will recommend later. Unlike that unfortunate feline, curiosity about God brings revelation, knowledge, life, and enough fascination for several lifetimes. Why settle for less?

Reinventing Jesus in Our Own Image

Selective Attention: to focus on those things that are consistent with our opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and felt needs.

It's how we are wired. We can't take everything in at once, so our brain edits what's around us to make it manageable. Without this mechanism, we would be so overwhelmed with information as we raced down the freeway that survival would be questionable. Unfortunately, selective attention is always at work trying to shape Jesus to meet our expectations.

Ask someone to draw a picture of Jesus and they will draw a Jesus that looks like them. He will be black or white, Asian or European, barefoot or sandaled, clean shaven or bearded based on what the budding artist is familiar with. Selective attention has led to the familiar portrait of a blue-eyed, light-haired, pale-skinned Jesus that could never have been of middle-east birth. In many cases this is harmless, but in others this distortion has left racism unchallenged.

Labels such as conservative, liberal, traditional, radical, and middle of the road can be dangerous when we are approaching Jesus and the Scripture. First, they are vague, confusing labels that mean radically different things to different people, but their greatest danger comes from the fact that they are all social labels that are culturally informed by the times we are living in. Cultural expectations are formed by what we already know. Jesus' wisdom is based on eternal truth that we are still learning. Culturally conditioned faith fosters the belief that we have already captured the truth, but the apostle Paul tells us that living faith involves an ongoing activity of taking off the old man with his old understanding and assumptions, and putting on the new man as Jesus continually reveals himself (Eph 4:22, Col 3:9,10).

Are you stuck in a rut? Has it been a long time since you have been surprised by something Jesus said? A long time since you have disagreed with something in Scripture and had to wrestle it out with God? If so, then you have been making Jesus in your own image. If you doubt this could happen to you, then you underestimate our tendency to wander and the deceptiveness of sin.

We need to be surprised by God. We need to wrestle with Jesus as our prejudice is confronted. We need this because Jesus brings a liberation that leads to love, joy, peace - and a meaningful life. We may feel safe with what is comfortable, but it's a trap set up by the enemy. He loves us to be comfortable if comfort acts as a cage to keep us from God.

So how do we escape selective attention? I'll suggest three ways, though I'm sure there are more.

1) Study the Scripture with others. Small group Bible studies mean there are more eyes on the page, more chances of seeing what we usually miss. This is especially true if you make sure the members of the study are from different backgrounds, professions, and even racial groups.

2) Read Christian authors who have stood the test of time. Most of the Christian books written today will not be remembered again after six months. That's because they merely reflect our time and prejudice. They just tickle our itching ears. But some books last because they convey eternal truth in a way that has been challenging and accessible to several generations. Add some of them to your reading list.

3) Break the bubble. We tend to listen to and read people we already agree with. Let yourself be challenged by other voices. You may still disagree after you have heard them out, but you will have gained something. No one is completely wrong, so you will take away some truth, but more importantly, you will come to Scripture with new questions. New questions always bring a positive response from God.

You may have noticed that Scripture has been at the center of this discussion. That's because without the regular study of Scripture you will be trapped in your preconceptions, and you will miss out on the riches that God has to offer. Ruts may seem safe and familiar, but they represent the broad way that leads to destruction. Jesus' narrow way has few ruts because few choose to travel it, and that's sad really. The view is so much better.

Smart Christians?

Conventional wisdom seldom consults the facts while stereotypes thrive on ignorance. When unchecked both create a reality distortion field that skew our good intentions and derail earnest ministry... And screw up the life of our youth.

Conventional wisdom says that the dim and the ignorant are more likely to have faith, so beware of book learning and distract people from deep thoughts and rational inquiry. Yet the facts say something very different. A recent University of Nebraska-Lincoln study shows that likelihood of someone attending a religious service increases by 15% for each year of higher education he or she completed. In addition, the likelihood of reading the Bible also increases 9% for each additional year of education. That's significant when you take into account that Biblical illiteracy is now so high even among evangelicals.

Also contrary to conventional wisdom, the group leaving the church in the greatest number are those without a higher education. I need to note here that a college education does not define a person's intelligence. Some are bright enough that a college education is redundant. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, philosopher Mortimer Adler, and a number of people I've meet in my life and travels attest to this, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

Learning is important. The majority of the U. S. population over 24 and under 40 is now college educated and that number is continuing to rise. We are commanded to love the Lord with our mind as well as our heart, soul, and strength (Luke 10:27). A tension develops, though, when pastors, youth leaders, and parents try to teach information that is not accurate, especially concerning history and science, and when they belittle learning.

Some pastors and teachers go so far as to edit Scripture to undermine the idea that study is important. They teach that Paul's outreach in Athens was a failure because he reasoned with his audience (according to Acts 17, he started a church there), downplay Peter's command for good apologetics (1 Peter 3:15), and present the Apostles as a group of simpletons. God has shaped learning, art, literature, laws, values, and more through the brilliance of his Word to us. It's okay to see the entry point of the gospel as simple, but God's message to us is not simplistic. Scripture never says, "Stop thinking and everything will be okay."

We should be ministering to the poor, the needy, and the uneducated (the three are not necessarily the same), but not because we are unwilling to do the hard work of ministering to the majority around us. Throughout most of the last two thousand years, Christian leadership was known for the hard work of learning and then communicating that knowledge to others. Pastors were expected to know Scripture and to personally devote themselves to God through prayer, worship, and service. In addition, they were expected to be knowledgable in science, philosophy, history, and literature at the very least. It was a high calling to be sure.

Intellectual laziness kills. It creates false tensions between what some say Scripture demands and what is readily observable. It is a false tension since the conflict doesn't result from Scripture or the correct observations we make but from passing on bad interpretations and misinformation that result from pop theology, short-lived Christian bestsellers, or the current Christian superstar. There are real answers to the tough questions of life. There is wisdom and understanding to be found in sincere and honest searching. Learning is not more important than the other parts of the Christian life, but neither is it less important.

The numbers show us that education and faith go together, but they also tell us that if we are too lazy to meet the challenge of this generation, they will go somewhere else.

Invite Jesus Into Your Conversations

One of the first ways to bring Jesus into your conversation is to keep up with the news. CNN has a religion blog on their Website and NPR often has positive discussions of Christian issues. Their reporting can be a good starting point as in: "CNN just reported on a huge national study that reveals that you are more likely to go to church the more educated you are. I was a little surprised by that. Are you very religious?"

I'll have to talk about this report later, but it shows that less educated Americans are leaving the church in the largest numbers. Each year of higher education makes it more likely that you will become a faithful church member. I like this because the truth violates the stereotype. It's one of those facts that people go, "Hmm..." It has great potential to lead to a longer conversation.

You should be always looking for these kinds of conversation starters, but be careful where you search. You are looking for positive, surprising information and insights. Fox News, Focus on the Family, and Christian radio stations are not good sources. Not because they are necessarily unreliable, but because that media is aimed mostly at people who already agree with the attitudes and information being expressed. It's not persuasive to the unconvinced.

The primary reason that C.S. Lewis has remained interesting and persuasive for so long is that all of his writing was for a general audience. He wrote for newspapers and radio, not for Christian bookstores. There are similar writers today such as Timothy Keller, N.T. Wright, and Rob Bell.

I also recommend that you talk more about you spirituality. Spiritual exploration, development, and growth remain popular in our culture. Be willing to start there. Too many Christians make every discussion into an all or nothing treatise on theology. It's often too much too soon and doesn't address the questions people really have. If you've just come back from a retreat, talk to your friends about your spiritual growth weekend. Spiritual insights you have received from a good book, say those of Henri Nouwen or Eugene Peterson are appropriate to bring up in conversation.

What makes most Christians nervous about bringing Jesus into their conversation is the belief that we have to go for a full-court press every time he's mentioned. Pepper your conversation with your spiritual life and see where it goes. Sometimes people will want to go deeper. Sometimes you'll just move on to the topic of discussion. What you will have demonstrated is that you are comfortable talking about God. This means that your friends will know that you are the one they can go to if they have questions or they need help.

PreChristians talk about God a whole lot more than we think. Take a look at the current crop of TV shows and movies. When science fiction and supernatural shows are popular (and they are right now), it means that people are interested in the big questions of life. Unfortunately, it's Christians that make spirituality a taboo topic by pushing too hard, too often or by avoiding the topic altogether out of fear. Just remember that every discussion doesn't have to be persuasive. Bring Jesus into the conversation and don't be too pushy, and people will start asking you questions.

I'm not done with this topic. More next time.

The Life of an Explorer

(Note: I promised some practical input on talking to others about Jesus, but as I was praying, God directed me to begin with this practical advice.)

Humanity was created with a sense of adventure. Since the dawn of civilization we have wondered what was over the next hill or across the ocean. We have dreamed of strange new people, exotic animals, and giant carnivorous plants (they always seem to show up in stories of exploration). We have dared to dream of and seek out new adventure, experience, and understanding. To boldly go... We seek to discover a universe large enough for our imagination. And if you don't like adventure and are content with this side of the hill, then you're not going to like Jesus very much.

There is a reason that Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who resonate so deeply with so many. They all reflect that desire to discover and explore the world around us. We intrinsically realize that we grow larger as our world grows larger. The fact that Doctor Who values the discovery of a new person as much as the discovery of a new planet has made him, perhaps the most popular fictional character in modern history (You don't have to like any of these shows to be a Christian. Insert your favorite explorer, but if you don't have a favorite explorer or innovator... Well?).

As we share our faith, we need to be sure it's a living faith that people can get excited about. There are many religious systems, including Christian religious systems, that try to tame God and make him manageable. Religion is used to control the lives of those around us so no one will rock our boat.

These systems create deep, safe, predictable ruts that are presented to others as the will of God, but really these ruts are there to make us evade the challenges God brings to our lives. That means that even Jesus must be kept at arms length because he's all about rocking our boat. It is easier to try to make Jesus into a self-help guru or a political pundant, than embrace him as the Lord of life who is making us into a new creation.

We should be hungry for the mysteries of God, looking forward with expectation for God's next surprise, looking forward to see what new thing he is building in us. We should have a holy discontent as we strain ahead to see what Jesus will reveal through us, to see the wonders he will preform through us as he touches others through us. That is the adventure of the gospel.

Jesus is not boring, comfortable, safe, a proponent of the status quo, an American, a conservative, or a liberal. He is Jesus. The most creative being in the universe, full of love, mercy, justice... And most of all wild love. Intentional love. Faithful love. Trustworthy love. Serving love. But wild love.

Jesus invites us on an adventure to change the world by sharing in his quest to bring his wild (intentional, faithful, trustworthy, serving) love into the lives of those around us.

Jesus thoughts are not our thoughts. They are wiser, grander, and larger. So much so that they seem like foolishness to those who have not given their hearts, minds, and strength to God. It's scary to think Jesus' thoughts also seem foolish to those who hide behind religion that keeps our boats from being rocked, who dislike adventure, and aren't sure they are willing to go where Jesus leads. That kind of religion makes cowards of us all and looks to the world like the limp, dead thing it is.

This may seem harsh, but our gospel needs to be authentic if we expect people to be intrigued by it. Religious conservatives hated, literally hated, Jesus in his day. Jesus calls to obedience rather than chaos and self-indulgence, but I choose to be Biblical in my obedience rather than to attach myself to the manmade systems that are labeled conservative or liberal. Instead, I am hungry to know what I don't know and to experience in Christ what I haven't yet experienced.

Life is motion and change. I want that change to be directed and empowered by God. I don't want to find a comfortable place and just sit. That only brings the disease of nostalgia, and nostalgia is no gospel.

If you want others to consider your witness then it needs to be a witness to a living gospel, a gospel worthy of an explorer.

Talking About Jesus

After the challenge from the last blog to talk about our faith with others, I have had several requests to offer some practical guidance about talking to people about Jesus. So I'm going to take a few blogs to do just that. I hope it helps, and please, keep the feedback coming.

Attitude is the first practical concern. What we say and how we say it is shaped by our attitudes. I'll start with the two most common: political correctness and the belief that you actually save people.

Political correctness is a polite way to say peer pressure. It is an attempt by others to tell you what you should be embarrassed to talk about. In all honesty, many churches have done this for centuries and now the world has caught up. Ideas are not dangerous to talk about responsibly, but the censorship of ideas are. Political correctness is the last refuge for the lazy, the thoughtless, and the tyrant.

Relationships also suffer in a culture of political correctness. Instead of honesty, people are always frightened they will accidentally insult someone, be misunderstood, or be labeled for something they have said. It's like wearing a spacesuit. It may be safe, but it gets in the way of any real contact.

Political correctness is great for mindless sheep, but it's a debilitating trait for leaders, influencers, and friends. Honesty is a virtue. Fear is not.

I'm not recommending tactlessness. Being polite and sensitive are virtues as well. They can both be used in service of truth and love. Political correctness just means that you are letting other people control what you believe and say. If you bow to the power of political correctness, then you will find yourself in conflict with Jesus. Our culture tells us we should be embarrassed to talk openly about our religious beliefs, but Jesus says, "If any of you are ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of you when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels." (Mark 8:38)

The opposite attitude is also a hinderance to sharing. If we think it is our place to force others to believe, then we will most likely do more damage than good. I cannot change anyone's heart. Only God can do that. My job is to tell Jesus' story, to tell my story, give answers when they are requested, love, and serve.

If I believe it's all up to me, then each time Jesus comes up in a conversation, it becomes an all or nothing proposition. There are times when you will sit down and spread out the whole story of redemption before someone, but more often than not, it starts with bits and pieces. You make a comment here or there or someone asks a couple of questions about your faith but doesn't go any further. That's fine. People process information a piece at a time. Curiosity develops over time. You are letting them know you are comfortable about talking about your faith and that you won't leap on them every time they ask a question.

If you think you save people, then you will push too hard. You will try to dominate others. You will back people into a corner. You are responsible for your decisions and not for other people's decisions. Don't try to live other people's lives for them. That's not love. That's not friendship.

So if you choose to give other people the space to make their own decisions while rejecting the political correct idea that spiritual indifference is somehow loving, you will find you will become a better communicator and a better friend. You will find gentle honesty to be freeing. The first, practical step in sharing effectively is to examine your attitudes and let Jesus deliver you from the fears that can rob others of the opportunity of new life.

Next time, I will look at practical ways to bring Jesus into your conversations.

Good Advice from a Chief Atheist

Last night Penn Jillette of Pen and Teller (the magicians) fame was on Piers Morgan Tonight. Pen is a very talented, compassionate, moral man who is also an outspoken atheist. He has recently written the book, God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales. This may surprise you, but I think we need to take his advice.

Morgan, a theist with a Catholic background (he didn't say much about his current beliefs), told Pen that the title of his book angered him. Pen replied that was not his goal and that respectful discussion was important to him. He took pains not to make fun of anyone in his book. Pen's desire is not to shut anyone down but to get people talking. "I am a huge fan of proselytizing," says Pen. "I am a huge fan of speaking your mind. The only way we can share the universe, to share humanity, is by talking very strongly about what we believe."

I think we would do well if we had the same attitude. While extremists seem to have no problem being vocal, I find that too many Christians take truth lightly. I want to encourage normal, caring, compassionate Christians to be at least as vocal as the insensitive and the rude.

We're fine at being vocal when we are together, in fact we're often too good at taking pot shots at others when they are not around, but we are too silent today when it comes to making Jesus known. Far too much polite Christian conversation today is about morality, America, and politics. There needs to be more talk about Jesus and what he thinks and teaches. The founding fathers are fine, but Jesus is the author of truth and compassion.

I understand most of the overriding fears we have. I share many of them. I actually do care what people think of me, and I am very sensitive of making people uncomfortable or pressured. I don't want to be callous and drive people away from the gospel, but if I never breach the topic or tell Jesus' story, then there is no chance that I will be involved in leading anyone closer to Jesus either.

I spent several years doing open air preaching on college campuses around the country. No, it's okay. You don't need to back away. I'm not frothing at the mouth.

I loved and hated open air work. At the time, hateful, name-calling, and often apostate open air preachers were a common occurrence. I didn't want to be associated with them, but I also didn't want their voice to be the only one heard on campus. The activity made me nervous. I would have lost my breakfast on those days, so I didn't eat breakfast. But I don't want fear to control my life.

I loved those times because once I started God was right there. The fear would leave because I was focused on the people who stopped to listen. I used a question and answer format, so I never really knew what was coming next. I still use that format even in my teaching. I found that if I treated people with respect and listened to them that people would treat me with respect. Heckling was easy with someone who was rude, but no one wants to be the jerk first. If we belittle people and make cheap jokes about their beliefs, then we should expect rejection. But that is not really an option for us. We are commanded to share with "gentleness and respect." And we are called to share. Disciples of Jesus are called to be "fishers of men." Jesus' last command to us was to "make disciples of all men." This was not a call to pastors or apostles. It was a call to all his followers.

I am not asking you to all start preaching on street corners. The campus is unique and made for activities like that. But Jesus asks us to talk to the people around us. I do challenge all of us to follow the advice of one good atheist and start "speaking your mind." Just make sure that when you do it, you don't sound like Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, or Al Franken. Try for Jesus' voice. I hope compassion drowns out the noise of the disrespectful and the mockers, but that will only happen if the compassionate speak up.

Campus Ministry and the First Weeks of College

Prepared to be surprised. Whatever you know about your faith, there is more to learn. You stop learning and you stop growing and you begin to wilt. College brings new and healthy questions. Questions that God wants you to confront in order to grow, but you don't grow alone. That's where campus ministries come in. If you seek out a healthy ministry from the start, you'll find your college life will be much more dynamic.

A college fellowship will blow out the walls of your faith. Your life is about to get a lot bigger. Classes will expose you to ideas, information, and concepts that you never considered before. Those new ideas, questions, and even the challenges will lead you to ask new questions about God, and, surprise, God has answers. I guarantee you that your picture of God is too small. You have been content with small answers because your questions have been small. That's all going to change, and if it doesn't your faith will not fare well.

Campus ministries are full of believers going through the same challenges and exploring the same issues as you are. They will be a great source of strength and encouragement. These groups are led by campus pastors who will help you navigate the Scriptures as you grow and help with practical guidance.

I often tell our students that you won't survive adult life with a Sunday school faith. I'm not putting down Sunday school, but it's goal was to help children begin to understand the faith. You are no longer a child and now you need stronger stuff. Campus ministries will supply that.

You also need spiritual friendships. People you can trust who will be there to listen, to pray, and to drop everything if you need help. You also need to be that kind of spiritual friend to others. It's how God created us to function together. So you should look for a group that encourages small group ministry and discipleship. It is not unusual for life-long friendships to emerge from these groups.

I am part of Chi Alpha Campus Ministries, and we offer these things. So does Intervarsity, Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ), and Navigators. We are four large national ministries, but you will find others that fit the bill if these are not on your campus.

You should seek out a church near your campus, but I don't believe that is enough. You should fellowship with Christians within the campus environment for several reasons. First, because time passes differently on campus. A lot of life is squeezed into every week. Growth happens quickly, and it is often hard for things off campus to keep up. Secondly, college life deals with a unique set of questions, pressures, and challenges. You should surround yourself with people who have successfully had to deal with them. Third, outreach is central to the Christian life. You should plant yourself in the middle of this rich mission field and minister to those around you. Campus ministry is strategically positioned for this.

You should make the decision before you arrive on campus as to whether you want your faith to thrive or wilt. Wilting is easy. You only have to neglect your faith. If you want to grow, then plant yourself in a healthy campus ministry. Check them out during your first weeks and then commit yourself to one. You will be surprised by the results.

Romance in the First Weeks of College

Let's be honest. You arrive on campus, you don't know anyone, and your homesick. I don't care who you are, this makes you relationally vulnerable. First and second week college romances are the norm. So is the fact they almost never work out. They start for all the wrong reasons. You are lonely and looking for friends.

The best course of action before you arrive on campus is to commit yourself to finding some good friends and decide that romance is out until at least the first few weeks have passed. Hook up too soon, and you will miss out on a lot of potential friends. You want to meet many new people instead of focussing on one person right away.

Friendships are important. In fact, building good relationships should be one of your main focuses for the first half of your first year. Those friends will be with you throughout your college life, and you will need them as much as they will need you. I still have friends that I have stayed in contact with since college. Your college life will be richer for good friendships.

On the other hand, do you want to spend most of your relational energy on a stranger you met at a relationally vulnerable moment only to have them (or you) lose interest a couple weeks later when you have both adjusted to college life and exit your life perhaps to never be seen again? This happens all the time. You just need to decide if you want it to happen to you. If you like drama, I suggest a soap opera. It's less painful. If you meet someone interesting, just give it a few weeks. If he or she has the right stuff, then they will still be around. If not, well, who needs the pain.

You need to know that sex is readily available on campus without the messiness of a committed relationship. But there are several catches. The first is that you are not made that way. Sex is meant to enhance a committed relationship where trust is involved and security is present. Graduates have become more vocal about the fact that their indiscretion during their college years has screwed up their married lives. The study in book form, Premarital Sex in America by Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, contains many testimonies to this effect from the preChristian community.

Another huge catch is that one in four premarital sexual encounters involves a sexually transmitted disease. Some of these are quite serious and currently incurable. I have been warned by campus nurses that female infertility is a far more common result of sexually transmitted disease than most people think. They have had to tell far too many women that they will never have children because of a one night stand.

It is not unusual for healthy, life-long relationships to develop during college, but they seldom develop in the first weeks of school. If you protect your romantic and sexual life then you will retain more freedom that you can use on good choices later.

Preparing for the First Weeks of College

This is for both parents and students. It is important to think through and discuss how to deal with the unique challenges that come with the first weeks of college or university life. For students, you need to know what is ahead and make decisions before you find yourself caught in a situation you wished to avoid. For parents, you have a responsibility to help your son or daughter prepare. You won't be there, and you can't control the decisions that are made, but you can give wisdom and advice. Just one note on tone. Don't come in as the authoritarian. Come in as one who had to deal with the same decisions, temptations, and pressures. But forewarned is forearmed, so here are the pressures we see students dealing with.

These issues need to be discussed before college, but it's important to note that all these issues begin in high school and in some places even during middle school. It would be best to discus them earlier, but make sure it happens before college.

I'm going to start with parties because decisions here can have huge consequences.

You are a stranger when you arrive on campus, and you want that to change as soon as possible. There is a strong social component to the first weeks of school, and parties are part of it. There are many kinds of parties that will go on the first weekends. Their not all bad, and their not all alcohol based. In any case, you need to know what you are getting into.

It's okay to ask about any function you are invited to. What will be going on? What will it cost? Will there be drinking? Where is the activity? How will I get back to campus if I want to leave early? You are investing yourself in this activity, so ask.

It is okay to leave if you are no longer comfortable. Other people should not make major decisions for you. Always have a backup plan so you are free to choose.

To drink or not to drink? Students who have never drunk before are more vulnerable than they realize. The effects of alcohol will be stronger than expected, and they will not be used to effects of impaired judgment. First of the year parties are not the place to experiment. The first parties of the year always result in a number of students being sent to the hospital with alcohol poisoning. This is serious and life-threatening. Every student should know about the effects of alcohol. Don't exaggerate in an attempt to frighten students away from alcohol. Students can sense exaggeration and will dismiss the advice. Instead, just be frank. That will be respected.

Unfortunately, date rape is a real concern on campuses. If you choose to impair your judgment, then you make yourself vulnerable. Also realize that others are trying to impair you. Don't ever lose track of your cup unless you want it spiked with a date rape drug. Don't expect parties to be a source for long-term relationships. The norm today is the one-night hook up. People cruise parties primarily for one night stands. Most barely remember who they slept with the night before and really don't care if they see that person again in any other setting.

That may sound like a harsh over exaggeration, but sexual ethics have changed. Sex is often seen as merely a recreational activity without any greater significance until someday in the far future when marriage is considered.

You don't have to drink. There are many students who just say, "no." in fact the number of recovering alcoholics on campus has grown. Campus based AA groups can be quite large. Most students will respect your decision. It's not politically correct to pressure anyone else. If you are pressured, it is a sign that the person pressuring you is uncomfortable with his or her own activity. Don't let other people's insecurities influence your choices.

Underage drinking is illegal even on campus. There are still consequences when the police are called in. But most of all, is that the situation you really want to find yourself in? There will be many health alternatives where you can build strong friendships, healthy relationships, and not regret what you did the next day.