real.faith blog

They say common sense ain’t so common these days and it seems this adage couldn’t be any more true than in the church. Fear not though, in response to the overwhelming lack of understanding that has led the misguided among us to take their right to bear arms to mean they have a right to play God and commit other less serious but equally embarrassing acts, I have decided to offer an eight-week seminar this summer called “Common Sense for Christians.” Here is our course outline:

• Week 1: Being Pro Life- Believing that life is precious and has value means all life is precious and has value. You cannot bolster your shiny new gun and go out killing people you disagree with. You also shouldn’t blow up their places of business. Also, if you believe in protecting the second amendment, that’s great—but you might want to consider why a person who is pro-life would want to own a device that can take life. Oh, and if you are pro-life, you may want to really look into the annoying contradiction of calling yourself pro-life while supporting the death penalty.
• Week 2: Marriage- You can’t go around telling homosexuals that marriage is a sacred spiritual bond between a man and a woman until you start treating it as sacred. Fix your own marriages and bring your own divorce rate down, have fewer broken families than the rest of the world and maybe the rest of the world will be more apt to listen to you. Change always comes from within.
• Week 3: Poverty- Politically, you may have a point about it not being the government’s job to meet everyone else’s needs. However, as a Christian, Christ has commanded you to give your money to the poor. So, whether you give in the form of taxes or donations, you’re giving. Hoarding is not an option that is available to you.
• Week 4: Stewardship- All you have belongs to God. All you have is going to burn one day to make way for a new Heavens and a new Earth. When Jesus says don’t store up treasures on earth, there is a very good chance He means that if you have two houses, one of which you only use for a few weeks out of the year and there are people in your community who don’t have any houses, you may have a bit of a stewardship problem.
• Week 5: Politics- Jesus did not come to set up an Earthly kingdom and He didn’t send you into the world to set one up either. We serve an eternal Heavenly Kingdom. Political involvement is important, but it is always secondary to the Kingdom of Heaven, which operates under completely opposite and paradoxical rules than the Kingdom of this world.
• Week 6: Judging- If God had appointed you as the judge of the world, you’d have been born with a black robe, an tacky wig and perfect. If you didn’t pop out of your momma’s womb with these three attributes, then you are a worker in Christ’s field, which means you must sow the fruits of the spirit. In case you forgot, those are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
• Week 7: Sin- It does exist, and you do it too. If everything in life is a psychological problem we have no control over, or if everything we do wrong is just something society needs to learn to accept, then there is no need for a Savior. If there is no sin and there is no Savior, then we really don’t need to read the Bible or go to church anymore. We could instead devote our lives to debauchery, which is much more fun.
• Week 8: Unity- We don’t have to agree, but we should get along. Somewhere in the New Testament we’re told that we are all parts of one body. A body doesn’t function well if the hand is continually punching the nose or the right foot won’t stop kicking the left behind.

Get it? Got it? Good. Class dismissed.

In honor of my sixth wedding anniversary today, I am devoting this one blog to my beautiful and loving wife, who for reasons unknown to me has chosen to spend the rest of her life with me.

Last year, just before our anniversary “The Wife” was diagnosed with a chronic illness, and that struggle has dominated much of the last 12 months. Despite the struggle, I can honestly say that I have learned much more from my wife this year than I would have if the disease had never entered our lives. Here is what I’ve learned this year:

• God’s power truly is made perfect in weakness. Not only has my wife’s faith grown stronger, she has begun the process of starting a non-profit organization to help children in distress. God has given her the strength to do this despite the many hours she has spent ill and in bed over the course of the last year.
• I need my wife. I knew I loved her, but a part of me always suspected I could stand on my own if anything happened to her. I can’t. I could never go back to life without “The Wife.” The fear of losing her proved that conclusively.
• Humans are fragile. It doesn’t take much to injure or cripple us. Our lives are fleeting and out of our control, and we should enjoy the time we have because it truly is a blessing.
• My wife is beautiful. I already knew this, but going through the rough spot that was this year, I can honestly say my wife is more beautiful to me right now than at any other time in our lives.
• My wife is a better person than I am. Throughout this whole ordeal, one of my wife’s major concerns has been that her sickness has made it so she cannot be the wife she wants to be. Her primary concern has been tending to my needs. Sadly, my biggest fear has been losing her.

This video is truly inspiring. If you’re like me and struggle sometimes to know you are loved by God, this beautiful combination may bring some peace. It is the words of Og Mandino’s “The God Memorandum” also known as “The Greatest Miracle In The World” set to the music of Steven Curtis Chapman’s “Fingerprints of God.” The combination of the two provides an excellent look into God’s feelings for His children.

Do you know someone who is?

Here are the rules: The movies listed below are produced by Christian filmmakers and studios. They are listed in no particular order and the selection of the five movies were limited by movies I have personally seen. They are also the five that popped immediately into my head. This does list does not seek to deny or change the fact that at least 95 percent of all Christian movies are cheesy. These however, are worthy of mention.

• THE JUDAS PROJECT: This movie isn’t actually that bad. It is little-known though and suffers from horrible special effects, long musical interludes and poor acting. It is the gospel told in a modern (early 80’s) setting, with a man named Joshua as Jesus. Despite all the negatives, it has two strong points. The first is that the Jesus character is one of the most likable I’ve seen. The movie does a good job of showing what Jesus would have been like to the people of his time by giving a contemporary equivalent. The second positive, is the totally cool Grey’s Anatomy-esque crucifixion scene. The camera doesn’t cut away and the screams are horrific.
• LEFT BEHIND: This is almost too easy to pick on, because it wandered unrecognizably far from the book. I don’t remember the special effects for this one being as bad as they could have been, but the strangest part was the lack of special effects for the rapture scene, which was a rather big part of a movie called “Left Behind.” It also suffers from a common ailment among Christian movies, called “Hey! We’ve Got Kirk Cameron Syndrome.” If you’re a Christian filmmaker and you get Kirk Cameron, nothing else matters. Forget about music, special effects, camera work and even plot.
• LEFT BEHIND II TRIBULATION FORCE: Same as above, only the “Hey! We’ve Got Kirk Cameron Syndrome” has gotten worse. In this one, they actually go a little further with the special effects, which results in some over-the-top attempts at making the Antichrist look like something out of a horror film. If you thought Christian filmmakers should stay away from special effects altogether, you’ll agree that the last thing they should do is attempt to pull off horror effects.
• THE CHAMPION: Carman should have left boxing well enough alone after his song, also titled “The Champion.” If Christian filmmakers should stay away from special effects, Christian musicians should stay away from Christian films, especially those Christian musicians who don’t actually sing. I don’t remember the plot of this one. All I remember is there was boxing, a wedding and it was bad.
• THE RIOT MOVIE: Not to pick on everyone’s favorite non-singing songwriter too much, but this novel idea fell flat on its face before it even went out the door. Carman had the “unique” idea of packaging the music videos for his popular RIOT album inside a 2 part movie. This allowed him to a.) test the waters for a feature film, b.) star in his own movie and c.) make $40 off of his music videos instead of $20. The latter one seems to have been the most important aspect here. Aside from these issues, the dialogue is forced, the acting is worse than most infomercials and the music videos between each scene break whatever momentum the film may have had going for it.

Politics, politics, politics, oh how we love what you have done to the Church. Instead of a long divisive rant, I’ll keep this short and even-handed. I have a couple of questions to ask:

Conservative Christians: If Jesus came back today and held a press conference and announced He was in favor of open borders, universal healthcare and embryonic stem-cell research, would you find it hard to love Him? Would you try to persuade Him to your way of thinking?

Liberal Christians: If Jesus came back today and held a press conference and announced He was in favor of traditional marriage, denied global warming and was pro-life, would you find it hard to love Him? Would you try to persuade Him to your way of thinking?

Both sides: What is really the most important aspect of your belief system? Are those hills you are willing to die on as important to Christ as they are to you? Are they more important to you than He is?

Christian outrage intrigues me. I find it highly ironic and somewhat amusing when people of love become filled with anger and contempt. It almost seems unnatural for those who claim to follow an all-knowing and all-powerful God to act as though the world has suddenly spun out of control and the navigator has left the ship in the middle of a storm.

Let’s look briefly at the church’s current areas of outrage. We’re upset about abortion, gay marriage, Hollywood, books that question the authenticity of our beliefs. We’ve been known to picket porn shops, adult video stores and strip clubs and we have a very special place in our sinful hearts for politics and political action.

Most Christians will begin weeping on the issue of abortion and will start screaming about a depraved nation when the topic of homosexuality is broached. We’re viewed by outsiders as being on the fringe or way over the cuckoos nest because of our passionate dislike of these issues.

It isn’t that we’re necessarily wrong. In fact, I think the concerns of the church on these issues are legitimate, but our expressions of those concerns are often off-the-wall and do not show the world the nature of our God.

The nature of our God is that He is all knowing and He is in control of the universe. God did not rest on the seventh day and like it so much that he left everything well enough alone until the present time. He is an active and powerful being who is the ruler over all we know, all we don’t know and all we can’t fathom.

God knows people have abortions, and God controls the world in which they have them. God is well-aware that homosexuals are getting married, and He is not shocked. The fact that Hollywood glorifies things that don’t glorify God does not knock God off His throne for even one millisecond. Attempts by authors to write books that question Christ’s existence do not change the reality of His existence and do not cause God to disappear. Porn shops, adult video stores and strip clubs don’t strip God of His power or His influence on the world He created, and the outcome of American elections never have and never will unseat the God of the universe.

Yet, the followers of this all-knowing and sovereign God, act as though the world is suddenly spinning out of control. We, who hold the hope that can save the entire world, act as though all is lost and the outcome is hopeless. We who call on the name of the One who is in control, who are told in His word to “be still, and know that I am God,” are shocked, outraged and thrown into despair by what we see around us—and we don’t need to be.

God is in control. God is not shocked. God is never surprised. God has sent us into a fallen world—a world He still controls—to spread His love and His truth with all who will listen, but He has not asked us to take the wheel or change the seas. He has never told us to take the reins. He has given us a gospel and said “Love one another and spread this love throughout all the world.” He specifically said, “Do not worry,” and “fear not.” And yet, His children live in fear and worry because they think this fallen world is absolutely falling apart and they have to be the ones to stop it.

Friends, if you could stop the course this world is on, there would have been absolutely no need for God to send His son to rescue the world. If God could send One He loved that much—with the love a father has for a son— to the cross without being shocked or outraged, you can go into the world and spread love without being shocked and outraged as well.

Sometimes we all need a reminder of who we are and what God thinks of us. This video was just what I’ve needed to hear lately.

My wife introduced me to a product this week called “The Ungame.” I’m not sure how long it has been around, but I imagine it has been out for a while and I’m just now becoming aware of it. For others like me who are a bit slow on the uptake, “The Ungame” is a board game that isn’t a game— at least insofar as there is no winner and competition is strongly discouraged.

In a nutshell, you ask a question from a card and give an answer that must be between one and three sentences long. Players can pick whether or not they choose to answer a deep question or a more shallow one, so it works as either an ice breaker or a way to get to know your current friends on a deeper level.

What struck me most, and what I enjoyed most about the game was the comment rule. When a player answers a question, the other players are not allowed to respond to the answer. They have no choice but to listen and wait to speak until their turn. The only way to respond to a previous player’s question is to land on a “comment” space on the board.

This forces people to listen and it also forces people to think carefully about what they want to comment or respond to, because they may only get one or two chances during the course of the game to respond, so it naturally clears away trivial discussions or minor nitpicks. It also eliminates the possibility of an aggressive game of “top that.”

I can honestly say it was nice to be able to just spend an hour or two listening to my wife and not thinking about what I was going to say next. The game allows you to get to know someone’s heart, and reintroduces a valuable conversation skill called “listening” into a culture that is often consumed with talking and interrupting.

photo credit: mahalie