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.