Guilty or Not?

I don't know if this is news anywhere in the world other than Dallas, but the trial of Dena Schlosser ended today. She's the sicko mom accused of killing her baby by sawing off the baby's arms with a kitchen knife.

The verdict? Not guilty.

Apparently, the judge things she's insane.

Ya think?

Of course she's insane; she killed her kid. Not only that, she did it in a grotesque, inhumane, disgusting, cruel way. After killing her child, Maggie, Schlosser calmly dialed 9-1-1 and explained what she had done.

There's no doubt that she killed her daughter; Schlosser and her family would admit as much. There's no doubt as to the manner Maggie was murdered; Schlosser's 9-1-1 testimony describes the heinous crime in detail. She's guilty. Crazy, but guilty.

How is it that we as Americans have allowed insanity to be an excuse? Further, what hard core criminal is not insane? Adolf Hitler? Insane. Sadaam Hussein? Insane. Osama Bin Laden? Insane. Timothy McVeigh? Insane. Charles Manson? Insane. Jeffrey Dahmer? Insane.

They're all absolutely crazy. And they're all guilty. Their insanity is part of them.

So we find out that Dena Schlosser had a brain tumor that might have caused hallucinations causing her to kill her baby. Thus, Dena Schlosser isn't guilty. Don't we see how inconsistent that is? Is the brain tumor guilty? Isn't the brain tumor a part of Dena? If not, I'm sure the insurance company will be happy to learn that piece of information.

In our society's haste to shift blame, we've forgotten some of the values that made our country great: liberty and justice for all. Where there's no justice, there is no liberty. Where there's no blame, there's no justice. And where there's no blame, there's insanity alright, but it isn't where we think.

Meet Fred

Meet Fred. Fred grew up in a Christian home as a preacher's kid and a military brat. His dad was both a pastor and a chaplain in the army. He had a normal childhood and, as any good preacher's kid would be, was in the church every time the doors were open. He learned the stories we all grew up with as children - Moses parting the Red Sea, Jesus turning water into wine, Samson killing thousands of Philistines by pushing down the pillars of a building - the stories that normally get young boys' blood pumping.

As Fred grew up in the church, he began to notice a problem: The passion, ferver and excitement in Christianity seemed to have disappeared. Churches that used to be bursting at the seams with those wanting to hear God's Word taught were closing their doors, while the majority of people that graced the church with their presence seemed bored and uninterested. They came to church for the same reason Fred did - it was what they had always done.

Fred also noticed that the church had lost much of what it used to stand for. People identified with Christianity because of the culture they lived in. After all if the culture is based on Christian principles, they reasoned, and I'm born into the culture, I must be Christian. Christianity wasn't unique any more. Being called a "Christian" didn't seem to mean anything any more. And the more Fred searched the more discouraged he became. Not only did the church seem to be losing ground, it didn't seem to care. It didn't seem relevant, didn't seem palatteable, and didn't seem to be effective at all.

Sound familiar?

Oh yeah. I forgot to mention. Fred lived nearly three-hundred years ago.

Fredrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher isn't exactly the person you would expect a conservative Christian to quote. Those familiar with his name recognize him as one of the fathers, if not the father of modern liberalism.

Schleiermacher was fed up with what he perceived as flaws in Christianity during his day, and set out to do something to defend Christianity against people who wrote it off as culturally and intellectually irrelevant. But in doing so, he committed several fatal errors that ultimately did more harm than good.

In "defending" Christianity, Schleiermacher gave up many of the basic doctrines that had been essential to the church since its beginning. He called miracles, revelation and inspiration "fairy tales," and proposed a church that was based almost solely on feeling. Religion was not about "Knowing or Doing, but a modification of Feeling or of immediate self-consciousness. And when you give up essential ground to critics just for the sake of agreement, bad things start to happen.
Sound familiar?

There's a discussion going on within Christianity in the 21st century that mirrors almost exactly some of the ideas that started Schleiermacher on his quest in the late 18th century. The church seems to be losing influence in America. The modern culture is disengaged. A majority of those who attend show up because they always have. The majority of America tells surveyors that they are "Christian," but truth be told, the majority of them see American citizenship and Christianity as synonymous terms.

But the problem is not Christianity.

Schleiermacher goofed when he examined the problem and decided that the problem was Christianity, and that Christianity needed to be rescued from extinction. So, he changed Christianity and gave up some of the essentials in order to be more culturally relevant. His answer to the cultural problem was to adopt a "generous orthodoxy" that agreed to fudge on some issues in order to bring more people in.

Did I say "generous orthodoxy?" Those aren't Schleiermacher's words. They're the words of a 21st century theologian who is attempting to answer the same question Schleiermacher answered. I think he's a well-meaning guy, who has aptly articulated a very real problem within Christianity today. But the problem isn't with Christianity.

Christianity does not need our help. It doesn't need to be rescued from anything. And it isn't our prerogative to change Christianity so we can get more people involved. We don't need to change Christianity to make it "relevant." Christianity is already relevant. We may change what we do to show Christianity's relevance, but Christianity itself can never be changed. And that's a very important distinction.

I'm all for cultural relevance. I'm all for creativity. But we have to understand that while we have freedom to be creative in what we do, we do not have freedom to be creative in what we are.

When Fred set out, he set out to solve a very real problem. But in the end, he sacrificed more than was his to give. I fear many of our brothers and sisters in Christ are dancing dangerously close to the same slippery slope that claimed Schleiermacher's life, and fear even more greatly that the result of their concessions will be the same. We're still paying for Schleiermacher's mistakes today. Let's not do the same for those who will come after us.

Ministry and Marriage

Several weeks ago, the professors of my "Leading the Church in Effective Ministry" class brought in a panel of pastors to discuss leadership development and staff relationships with our class. In my four years at DTS this is the first class to focus solely on practical issues in ministry. I've been saturated with theology, history, Bible, and languages. I could diagram the Gospel of John in Greek, but couldn't perform a wedding, would drown the first person I tried to baptize, and would probably wear a baseball cap to the first funeral I performed. Okay, maybe that's a stretch.

Suffice it to say that this class has been a fresh air - the light at the end of the tunnel for me. We hear from pastors and ministry leaders on a regular basis who attempt to tie the theoretical with the practical so the pastors we send out on the field aren't simply educated fools.

One of the pastors on the panel on leadership development in this particular class was Gary Brandenburg, the new Senior Pastor at Fellowship Bible Church Dallas. I was so impressed with the things he had to say I offered to buy him lunch.

I bribe pastors and professors like this from time to time. They get a free lunch, and I get to pepper them with questions. It's a win-win situation.

Gary is a tremendous conversationalist, and one of those people who has tremendous insight on almost any topic you bring up. But the best came when I asked him about ministry transitions. My exact question went like this: "Gary, you've just made a transition into a church where the former Senior Pastor still attends, who built this church around his philosophy and vision for ministry. As the new senior pastor trying to build your own philosophy and vision into the ministry, how do you find the right balance between moving too slow and not moving at all."

He didn't miss a beat. "Chris, learn how to love your wife."

Huh?

I guess I must have betrayed my ignorance, because he went on to explain something that I thought was pretty profound. You see, there isn't an exhaustive checklist for how to love your wife. If someone tells you they can give you ten steps for how to love your wife, they're lying. They could give you ten steps toward better communication, but you can communicate until you're blue in the face and still not love your wife. It takes communication, but it also takes intuition, wisdom, foresight, experience, and a host of other things.

As a young husband learning to love my wife, I'm using a majority of the skills I'll need to learn to love a church. There aren't ten steps to being an effective young pastor (or an effective old pastor for that matter). You can't run down a checklist, or check a gauge, or read a book. Those things may be helpful in an area, but they're certainly not exhaustive.

I thought about his words a lot last night. They make a lot of sense. And I think the parallel goes even further. The skills I'm learning in marriage won't just help me in the first years of ministry - they'll help me throughout ministry. Maybe that's why Paul made it essential for Christian leaders to be those who "manage their households well" (1 Tim. 3:4).

Sometimes I've felt like I'm spinning my wheels in ministry, like my hands are tied. I can't be leading a staff right now. I can't preach on Sunday mornings. So many of the things I need to know to be effective are learned by experience, but I haven't felt like I'm in a place where I can get that.

But I am.

Learn how to love your wife. I can do that.

Distinct

Here's a question that has puzzled me for a while: What one tangible thing sets me apart from an unbeliever? We're called to be the light of the world (Matthew 5:14), but what exactly is it that the world would see in us that they won't see in someone else who doesn't believe? We're supposed to "behave properly toward outsiders" (1 Thess 4:12), but what does that look like? It has to be more than just good works, because good works in and of themselves don't set Christians apart.

The Pharisees had good works. The false prophets had good works. Unbelievers do good works all the time. The Mormon church is one of the most benevolent organizations in the world, and they're a cult that denies the Christ of the Bible. For years secular organizations have run circles around Christians when it comes to doing good works in the world. So the Christian has to have more than good works when it comes to showing the validity of Christianity to a fallen world. The world often behaves better than us.

From the world's perspective, they don't need the virtues of Christianity because they often live more virtuous lives than us. We have good works, so does the world. We have community, so does the world. We have religiosity, so does the world. We have happiness, so does the world. In a large part, for everything the Christian has, the world has developed a counterfeit.

But three things remain: faith, hope, and love.

The world doesn't have faith because faith is based on hope, and hope is absent from the fallen world system. When we really get down to it, there's not even hope for tomorrow in the fallen world.

Just today, I talked to a guy (during my daily visit to Taco Bell) who just gave up giving up smoking. The way he figures it, medicine and technology will catch up with his bad habit before his bad habit catches up with him. He's only been smoking for five years - surely by the time lung cancer comes to him science will be able to clone him a new lung. After all, when he was a kid the idea of a heart transplant was science fiction; now we do them all the time.

Hope in technology? That's not hope. My hope is based on a certainty that has been proven time after time. His hope is built on wishful thinking.

The world also doesn't have a counterfeit for love. The world talks about love a lot, but in the context of "making love," "falling in and out of love," and "finding love." Love that can be made, fallen into and out of, or found is not love. Love is something that must be done. And the only true demonstration of love is that while we were still sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
The world talks about love because it doesn't understand it. The Christian has the ultimate example from which to live by.

But here's the problem: the Church does a lousy job of believing, hoping, and loving, and we're not doing anything to get better. Most churches do a pretty good job of getting their people to do good works but when those good works are done for the sake of doing good works, and apart from the overt presence of faith, hope, and love as a motivating factor, the works are useless. They fall into the same mental file with unbelievers as what the United Way or some other secular organization does. Consequently, the Church isn't a "city on a hill," but a streetlight in an already well-lit city.

Instead of thinking about how we can do more good stuff, maybe it's time for us to consider how the good stuff that we do can better reflect the things we have that nobody else does.

Let's "Converse"

If you've read my blog very long, or know me very well, you know that I completely detest being put in a box. I have a hard time identifying whole-heartedly with a particular system, fad, movement, or trend - mostly because I feel like when I jump in one of those boxes I'm going to have to identify with all the baggage that goes with it. Then, when it comes time for a discussion, I find myself having to spend all my time cleaning up all the messes someone else has created rather than explaining what I believe to be true. That's no fun.

But I still read a lot about the various ideas out there. I just finished a biography of Jonathan Edwards that had some real ministry gems in it. I followed it up with a book by Len Sweet, a newer writer who has almost nothing in common with Edwards, but had a few really great insights. I'm intrigued by a lot of the newer movements within Christianity, although I've noticed something in recent years that bothers me about some of the newer "boxes" within Christianity and the terminology they use: they all want to be called "conversations." The last four or five books I've read about newer movements in the church all refer to the ongoing "conversation" in that particular circle.

The emphasis on "conversation" is born out of necessity. The Christian culture has shifted along with the American culture in the past couple of decades. We used to be a Mars Hill type culture, where ideas were taught and received. Now, we're a discussion-oriented culture, where ideas are thrown out and hopefully discussed on their merits. You see the shift in educational philosophies, in the political arena, and even in the boom of the blogosphere. Culture has become oriented around conversation.

The problem with Christianity, is that we tend to adopt lingo before we adopt practice, and sometimes before we even know what the lingo means. The trendy "conversations" today aren't conversations at all; they're lectures with friendly titles attached to them. "If you don't buy in to our new philosophy of Christianity wholesale, you're wrong and behind the times." That's the sentiment of the "conversation" right now, which is no conversation at all.

If we really want to have a conversation about the future of the Church in America, I think that's a really good thing. But that's not what is happening. Right now we're having an old-fashioned argument with a new title, and that's goofy.

Worship In the Dr.'s Office

My aunt, wife of the pyromaniac, recently posted about the latest drama she experienced in the waiting room of a doctor's office. I don't know why drama always tends to find this family, but my wife made me add to our wedding vows that I would never vacation with them - an activity that ranks on the risk scale just under skiing slopes only reachable by helicopter. If you haven't already, read Darlene's post about her visit to the doctor's office, and search for the prequel. Then sit back and be amazed, because these are not isolated experiences for them. Wherever they are, weird people seem to show up on their most outlandish behavior.

I've had my own share of doctor appointments recently. The doctors have finally diagnosed me with what's called "Ramsay Hunt Syndrome." To put it shortly, in a very few lucky people who had chickenpox as a kid, the virus hangs around and reappears in the form of shingles later in life. For a very few of those lucky people, those shingles decide to attack the inner ear rather than the outside of the body, and eventually attack one of the major nerves in your face. The result is a paralyzed half of your face accompanied by a really fun ear ache. There's really not a treatment; the doctors just hope it will go away. And it certainly will... sometime in the eternal scheme of things. But fortunately, it's not life threatening and isn't really painful - just annoying. So life is good.

You should know that I hate doctors. I'm deathly afraid of needles - deathly afraid of needles. So I dread doctors just because I know they might recommend a shot or blood work, and I wouldn't have any choice to submit to the humiliation of asking some 20 year old nurse to let me lay down on the cot while she tries to locate a vein, and then passing out two or three times throughout the process. Nurses earn their money with me.

But this whole experience has been fascinating to me. It turns out, according to the ENT, that all my problems are due to the swelling and degeneration of the 7th cranial nerve - a teeny tiny nerve that runs along my jawbone, and governs all the muscle movement in the right side of my face including eye blinks, smiles, chewing, frowning, and everything else you can think of. That one teeny tiny nerve malfunctions, and the whole face goes limp. Pretty cool huh?

One of the neurosurgeons who looked at me attached some electrodes to my face and plugged me into a wall outlet to see what would happen to my face (If nothing else, the experience served as a deterrent for my ever committing a crime that would lead me to the electric chair). By sending an electrical shock through my face, the doctor was able to gauge the exact percent my nerve was functioning. Amazing.

If the swelling of one tiny nerve can cause me to look like a wax museum statue that got placed too close to the furnace, imagine the number of things that work perfectly in harmony every single day. Our body is perfectly designed by God, fearfully and wonderfully made. How can you reach any other conclusion? The intricasies of the body combined with its delicate balance is truly an amazing thing. We can't even begin to understand it to the point that we can fix it, but God had the infinite wisdom and skill to design it, create it, and to continue to sustain it as long as I live on the earth.

Last week, I went to the doctor. I passed out twice, but I worshipped there too.

How precious to me are your designs, O God; how vast the sum of them!
Were I to count, they would outnumber the sands; to finish, I would need eternity. (Psalm 139:17-18)

Out Sick...

No, I haven't totally given up on blogging. And no, I haven't been consumed by the TeamPyro megablog, which has turned out to be the bloggosphere's equivalent of a black hole threatening to suck the life out of measley blogs everywhere. I've been pretty under the weather for the past three weeks, and struggling to stay above water in Hebrew took precedence over blowing off steam on my blog. I'm still not out of the woods with the illness, or with the Hebrew, so I don't know how much I'll add over here until I get back on my feet, but I'll be back.

One of the highlights of my seminary day is my trek to a Pizza Hut/Taco Bell combination store for lunch. I've been going with some regularity for the past 3 years, and have been trying to build a bridge to Christianity with a couple of the employees there who have become my friends.

John is the guy at the counter, and he's my favorite. For 3 years we've made casual conversation in passing - usually about sports, but occasionally about politics or some other current event. I don't know why I'm surprised by his intelligence - maybe it's because he's thirty-something and still working full-time as a cashier at Taco Bell. But he's bright, articulate, and as far as I can tell, as far away from Christ as he can be. But we've never broached the topic of Christianity, until today.

He knows I'm a seminary student... I'm usually flipping through Hebrew or Greek flashcards, or reading a conspicuously Christian book as I eat. It's not tough to tell what I'm up to. But I've never pushed the issue with him... just waited for him to bring it up. Today he did.

"Hey Chris. What do you think about dispensationalism?"

Uhhhh.... Not exactly what I expected from a guy who works at Taco Bell, teaches me new curse words from time to time, and who has never touched the topic of Christianity.

Turns out, he read an article in the Dallas Observer, a fairly liberal newspaper-type publication about Dallas Seminary and some controversies about dispensationalism at DTS that are actually old news although the article came out last week. I hadn't read it, so I looked it up when I got back to school.

If you're interested in dispensationalism, or some of the current discussions within dispensationalism right now, you might be interested in reading the article here. It's a really long article, but does a fairly good job in a lot of respects. It minimizes some of the distinctions between traditional and progressive dispensationalism that I wish it had brought out more, but I was overall fairly surprised at the thorough treatment given in such a liberal publication that isn't at all committed to explaining biblical truth. Dispensationalism has some black eyes, and the article brings them out, but does a pretty good job at painting dispensationalism overall in a fairly good light.

If nothing else, the article gave me a really bizzarre starting point to lead into sharing the Gospel with a guy at Taco Bell.

Will and Grace Update

According to the website of the American Family Association, producers of Will and Grace have elected to pull the show featuring Britney Federline's "conservative Christian" character due to pressure placed on them by the viewing public.

Some have asked, "Why do you care? Shouldn't we expect unbelievers to act like unbelievers? What good does it do to boycott programs because of their moral content?"

The answer is, as a Christian, I understand that unbelievers won't conform to the moral standard of Christianity, because they can't. But as an American, I have the ability and privilege in a free-market society to affect change in culture through my vote.

While the fact that NBC has taken this offensive episode off the air doesn't get them a step closer to Christ, their real need, it does prevent NBC from further murking up already muddy waters by propogating stereotypes of Christianity that are an unfair characteristic of the belief-system I follow. The more often secular television unfairly presents a stereotype of what Christianity is about, the more baggage we have to fight through to reveal the Truth behind Christianity.

I'm between classes right now, but wanted to post this while I had a chance. Maybe I'll further clarify my thoughts on this issue later.

Failure is not an option... or is it?

I'd love to be a weatherman. If God ever calls me out of the ministry, and closes my second dream of being a Major League Baseball umpire, the third choice is meteorology. Think about it. The weatherman has the most cush job in the world - show up to work, gain celebrity status, point to a couple of maps... and oh, by the way, you can be wrong ninety percent of the time and nobody cares. As long as you mention high pressure systems, hot and cold fronts, and barometric pressure somewhere in your presentation, the world is generally happy. Oh, they joke about you behind the scenes, but you laugh about it all the way to the bank. I could live that kind of life.

Isn't it ironic, then, that I've chosen a career in which people have historically given themselves absolutely zero margin for error? Ministry is a career that deals with the most important issues in the lives of people during the most significant times in their lives. We are present to kiss babies, are used to lead those children to faith in Christ, baptize them, marry them, and sometimes bury them. Name a truly significant life event, and the chances are the pastor will be there. So our demand of ourselves for success is in some senses understandable.

But it's also driving us nuts.

A Major League baseball player who fails to hit six out of ten times will make it to the hall of fame. But we don't have a philosophy that allows us to fail, so we hide our faults and hate ourselves. We're an insecure bunch, which casts us into a dangerous tailspin of failure, hiding, hating ourselves, which leads to more failure, hiding, and hating.

How do we get out? By changing our perspective. Most pastors think their drive towards one-hundred percent success is a product of their high view of God. It isn't. Instead, it's a product of the opposite: a low view of God the believes success is (1) something that is commanded of us, and/or (2) something that is attainable.

God has not called us to be successful; He has called us to be faithful. Accordingly, He has not given us the tools to be successful. Success in ministry is entirely connected to the hearts of people - something over which I have no influence as an individual. Thankfully, God uses me from time to time as His instrument in affecting the heart, but heart-change is not my responsibility.

When I understand that success is not my responsibility or God's goal for me, I'm free to serve without fear. I will fail, but I pray to God I won't quit. And that is success.

Tolerance?

This just in from Fox News

NEW YORK — Britney Spears will guest star on an episode of "Will & Grace," NBC announced Tuesday. The pop star will appear as a Christian conservative sidekick to Sean Hayes' character, Jack, who hosts his own talk show, on the April 13 episode, the network said.
Jack's fictional network, Out TV, is bought by a Christian TV network, leading to Spears contributing a cooking segment called "Cruci-fixin's." As a young girl, the 24-year-old Spears was a regular on "The Mickey Mouse Club." After becoming a pop singer, she starred in the critically panned 2002 film "Crossroads."Last September, Spears gave birth to her first child, son Sean Preston, with husband Kevin Federline. "Will & Grace," which also stars Eric McCormack, Debra Messing and Megan Mullally, is in its eighth and final season. It airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. (EST).

This is probably not the best place for this public confession, but I watch Will and Grace fairly regularly. I don't agree with the agenda behind the show, and I certainly don't care for the casual way the cast members deal with serious issues. But dang it, the show is funny.

This episode might spell the end of my toleration.

I'm confident the writers of Will and Grace will present a fair portrayal of conservative Christians. I'm sure Britney Spears (ahem... Federline) will present an intellectual, caring, loving, Christlike portrayal of Christianity. Yeah right.

I could be wrong, but isn't this head-on attack of other ideals the exact same intolerance that has been the rallying cry for the homosexual agenda over the past ten or so years? When we do it, it's intolerance - hate speech. When they do it, it's activism.

Honestly, I wouldn't have a problem with Will and Grace promoting whatever agenda they want to promote; I can change the channel if it offends me. But if they're going to dish it out, they had better be ready to take it. The tolerance argument wins no sympathy from me if it isn't going to go both ways.

Hannahisms

I don't know if you're familiar with Dr. John Hannah, professor of Church History at Dallas Seminary, but he's one of my professors this semester. He's a quirky man, self proclaimedly, but also one of those people with the ability to create "sound bites" of wisdom with nearly every sentence.

For the most part, church history isn't one of the subjects that get my motor running. Mostly, I pay attention because (a) my grade depends on it, (b) I understand how important history is to an understanding of the future, and (c) because you never know when Dr. Hannah is going to say something great.

I've begun the habit of taking two sets of notes simultaneously. The first set of notes are notes about church history; diagrams, dates, names, and doodles of stick people who take up the space in the margin. The second set of notes are what I call "Hannahisms" - usually a sentence or two that sum up what would have taken the majority of us 3 weeks of blogs to say. Sometimes they're funny; sometimes they're serious. But they always make you think.

Since I've been pretty swamped between work and school, I thought it might be good to give you a top-ten of my list of Hannahisms for the first two class periods. Let me know if any jump out at you one way or the other - they're fun to think about and discuss.

1. Seek more than excitement. It is a shadow of eternity, but that is all.
2. A friend is a person who never believes the best things you say because he knows you're a liar, but never believes the worst things you say because he thinks better of you than that.
3. There has never been a time in our history when there were so many of us who have had so little influence.
4. If you're a Christian and willingly disobey God, He will judge your sin and break every bone in your body. In that day, thank Him for His grace.
5. A man is simply not equipped to meet the needs of a woman.
6. People preach toleration when they don't have power. Once they get power they stop preaching it.
7. Committees are places where minutes are kept and hours are lost.
8. You can get away with sin, but not forever. You can also blindfold yourself and walk across the interstate safely a time or two...
9. If God has called you to be a janitor, you should not stoop so low as to be a clergyman.

...and my favorite...

10. Don't think too highly of yourself. The best this world will do for you is to build a statue of you so the birds can come defecate on your face.

"Real" People Make the Best Fiction

As I've mentioned before, my wife and I are hopelessly addicted to "24," the Kiefer Sutherland drama that packs more heart pounding drama than a pacemaker with a turbo gear. A new season of 24 premiered on Sunday and Monday, and Kari and I were settled in our seats at promptly 7:00 to start the 24 hour saga that will fill our Monday nights for the next several weeks. We weren't disappointed.

After watching the Monday night edition, our adrenaline levels were at dangerous levels, so we flipped channels to see if there was something on that would calm our nerves. Believe it or not, we have sixty something channels on our satellite package and couldn't find anything better than "The Bachelor." (which speaks more to the lack of good programming on TV than it does the quality of "The Bachelor)

I've been promising people for a long time that the Reality TV phase is on its last legs, but somehow these shows keep reappearing. And sadly, America still seems to be interested in reality shows ranging in topic from washed up TV celebrities who want to learn to ice skate to desperate singles attempting to win a marriage proposal.

I don't know what the fascination is with Reality TV. Personally, I think of it a lot like I think of a really gory car accident. You know you shouldn't look, and determine to drive by, but at the last second you always sneak a peak.

But there's something fundamental that bothers me about Reality TV: It doesn't picture reality.

Maybe some of you had a budget the size of NBC's, or ABC's millions of dollars behind you when you lined up the fifty girls who wanted to date you so bad they'd quit their jobs and leave everything behind to travel to bite, scratch, and pull-hair over who would get your hand in marriage on national television. I missed out on that bit of reality.

Maybe your first job out of college was one where you worked in a swanky building, got chartered around on a private jet, and pitched your proposals to high-ranking executives of the world's top companies, in hopes that you would impress a boss who has more power than the President of the United States, but who obviously doesn't have the authority to hire a decent hairstylist. But for the vast majority of Americans, that's not reality.

Where am I going? I'll tell you.

Authenticity is one of the things I value most in my life and ministry. I feel that others deserve a pastor who approaches them with an appropriate level of openness and vulnerability, and expect that from others in return. That means being "real" with the people I serve, rather than someone who preaches down to people from a podium set high above them. I'm not talking about guys who feel the need to turn their public speaking opportunities into confession time, but about being a real person who leads a real life trying to do the best he can to bring glory to a real God. After all, if people don't perceive me as a real guy leading a real life, why should they perceive the God I speak about as being real?

But television is attempting to redefine authenticity. The conversations with "The Bachelor" are supposed to reveal him as a "real" guy who's having a difficult time choosing between fifty of the hottest girls on the planet. We're supposed to feel for him. He has a tough task ahead of him.

Who are we trying to kid?

That guy's not real. He's not revealing his innermost thoughts. On national television? Yeah right. The rare parts of the show that are not scripted are still a part of the game. "Authentic" comments are calculated; guarded. There's not an ounce of reality there, but we're supposed to think there is.

We're supposed to identify with the reality that television is creating - a reality in which "authenticity" is just a part of the game.

That's scary. When authenticity because a part of the game, it's no longer authenticity. When we become self-revalatory because of where it will get us, we're denying who we really are: selfish, self-absorbed, insecure manipulators who will pretend to be "real" to enhance the charade. And that type of authenticity, frankly, is conceived in the pits of hell.

IWJO

I never got into the WWJD kick. I never owned a bracelet, or a t-shirt, or a hat, or a belt, or the trendy boxers that sported the "WWJD" fad phrase. I overanalyzed the whole fad, (that's what they train us to do in seminary), so I never got around to buying a bracelet. I wasn't really comfortable asking myself "What would Jesus do?" in a questionable situation.

There was the time I forgot to order the pizza for our huge youth lockin. The teenagers were there, the volunteers were there, the drinks were there, but we were starving... no pizza. I didn't have a bracelet on, and it's probably a good thing because I probably would have gone in search of a kid with 5 pizza rolls and a few breadsticks hoping to multiply them. That could have been disastrous. Instead, I just ordered the pizza.

Then there was the time when the Coke machine ran out at the church. If I had donned a bracelet that morning, I probably would have told people to go to the water fountain to get their Dr. Pepper fix. After all, Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding... maybe I should try to turn the drinking fountain into a Dr. Pepper fountain.

Jesus was God on earth. He did everything to the end of dying for the sins of world. Maybe WWJD is not the most logical question I can ask myself in every situation. Yes, I understand the spirit behind the bracelets, and think it's admirable to ask ourselves what Jesus would think about our actions, specifically in moral questions, but I couldn't quite be so pious to wear a bracelet around advertising to the world that I planned to do the things Jesus did throughout the day.

But here's a fad I could get in to. I'm crossing my fingers like crazy that someone gets me a IWJO (I Watch Joel Osteen) pin for my birthday. It's this year's hot item, and I want to catch the fad before it gets rocking so I'm in on the ground level.

I'm not such a big fan of Joel Osteen, honestly. He doesn't believe in the Trinity, and prefers not to talk about sin, or judgment, or anything that might be considered a "negative." But he's got such a great smile, and a southern drawl that has the ability to draw you in. He's captivating. And his church service is good entertainment.

Season 5 of the TV show 24 comes out this Sunday, and I can't wait for that. Kari and I love to watch 24. It's full of suspense, action, drama, and betrayal. We can't get enough. But hey, Osteen's show is like that too. Joel's pretty subdued, but his wife is fiery. When she starts talking, I'm on the edge of my seat. Heck, she took on a flight attendant not long ago because the flight attendant hadn't cleaned out her seat properly. The FBI got involved and the Osteens were invited to take another flight. Days of Our Lives has nothing on this...

IWJO is the fad of the year, and I'm jumping in early. You should too. These pins will be harder to get than an Oral Roberts prayer hankie. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Praying the Scriptures

"Most Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this day. Thank you for [insert daily event here]. Please bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies, and our bodies to your service. In Jesus Name, Amen."

That's what God heard from me for about fifteen years. When it was my turn to pray at family dinners, that's what I came up with. On special occasions, I would read the cross-stitch prayers that hung behind our dinner table to mix things up a bit, but for the most part I stayed true to the original prayer you can read above.

I meant it too - every word of it. Throughout my growing up years, I knew God was the Most Gracious Heavenly Father. I was truly thankful for the day, and the day's events. And I hoped Mom's meatloaf would bless my body, because it evidently hadn't blessed the body of the person who ate it before me.

I prayed that prayer for years and years. It was heartfelt, sincere, and to the point. But it was also a habit.

I didn't realize it until I was asked to pray for a Bible Study I was attending, and I accidentally slipped in the "bless this food" part at the end. There were doughnuts and coffee at the Bible Study, so nobody else cared, but it hit me hard.

This is the Sovereign God of the Universe Who spoke the Universe into existence, and I come at him with cliche? Something was wrong. If I stepped back and thought about it, I meant what I said. But I had to step back to consider it. My sincere prayers had become trite formulas, and that was a problem for me.

So I started reading. I read every book on prayer I could get my hands on at the small Christian bookstore near my apartment. But nothing flipped the switch. I loved to study the Bible, but couldn't quite get my prayer life going.

One day, I mentioned my quandry to one of the interns at the church where I was working. He showed me something I've been using off and on ever since. Maybe it will be useful to you as well.

He called it "Praying the Scriptures," and the premise is simple: You attach your prayers directly to the Bible Study you're doing. This way, the Bible Study (God talking to me) and prayer life (me talking to God) are intermingled like a conversation I would have with someone sitting across the desk from me.

It's especially easy with the Epistles, but can be done with any book. Here's how it works:

First, I read a short passage of Scripture I've been studying. Say I'm reading Ephesians; I might start with Ephesians 1:1, where I read:

"From Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus. "

After reading the verse, I begin to pray chunks of the verse at a time like this:

"Lord, thank you for the ministry of Paul and for the lives he touched while he ministered on the earth. Thank you for gifting Him as an apostle. Help me to understand and implement my own spiritual gifts as Paul did. Just as he was an apostle by the will of God, I know that it is Your will for me to serve You using my gifts as well. Lord, Paul mentions that the Ephesians were faithful in Christ Jesus. I want to be like that. Help me to be faithful to you above and beyond anything else in this world; that's my desire."

Then I would move to verse two, and so on.

For the most part, it has helped me break out of the "habit" of praying, and has allowed me to view prayer for what it truly is. This month, as you might guess from my previous blog, I'm praying through 1 Samuel. Today my prayer was that my ministry would be protected from the selfishness that plagued Saul, and that I might have a heart like David's.

Happy "Pimped Out" New Year!

This morning I set a world record for the shortest amount of time to hold a New Years Resolution. Unfortunately after beginning the paperwork, I was told that a witness from the Guiness corporation needed to be onhand to witness my flop before it was recorded in the Book of World Records. I'll make sure they get my Christmas Card next year...

Prior to our move, I had been doing pretty well at keeping in shape. I ran two or three miles, two or three times a week, in addition to playing softball and volleyball with the guys from church. But a new job, finals, packing, moving, and Christmas bumped my exercise regimen down on the priority list. Although I know I should excercise, I hate excercise with the white hot intensity of a thousand flames, so watching it fall off my to do list was not a sad occasion. Nevertheless, now that we're starting to get unpacked, I resolved to get back into some type of excercise program.

Right.

This morning I woke up with a cough, and a stopped up nose. God doesn't want me to excercise, I'm sure of it.

So I started over from scratch. After all... what's really important? Shaving ten seconds off my mile time, or growing closer to God? (Feel free to comment on the art and grace with which I justified my failure of the first set of resolutions).

This year, instead of making a major resolution (turning this ship requires small adjustments), I decided to set some goals for my devotionals this year. You might remember, I talked about pimping my devotional time several weeks ago. When I do things right, I set New Years resolutions every month, so it only goes to reason that I should start the year by planning to do my devotional time right. So if you're interested in this philosophy and don't already have a devotional plan in place, I'd encourage you to work alongside me this year. From time to time, I'll post some of my observations/applications, and expand a little on how I go through the process. There are certainly other ways, but this one has made a huge difference in my lifel maybe it will do the same for you.

Check out the link above if you need a refresher on the "rules." (Make sure to read the comment I made about commentaries. That's pretty important to the overall philosophy... I very rarely use commentaries for my devotional time because I tend to cheat when the going gets tough, which defeats the purpose).

If you're up to it, here's the schedule I plan to follow this year:

January - 1 Samuel
February - Luke
March - Ezra
April - 1 Thessalonians
May - Esther
June - 1 John
July - Lamentations
August - 1 Peter
September - 1 Kings
October - Colossians
November - 2 Kings
December - Titus

2006, here I come!

Not a Tame Lion...

Kari and I finally took a break from unpacking boxes Wednesday night and went to see "The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." First, I should tell you that I'm not in to fantasy-type movies and books. The Lord of the Rings movies turned into a $10 nap - they just don't do anything for me. But I wanted to support the Chronicles of Narnia because of its family-friendly value and the message behind the story.

You'd have to be blind to not see the references to Christ throughout this entire movie. Aslan the lion is the rightful king of Narnia who has gone away for a time. When he returns to reclaim Narnia he joins forces with four children, but not before one of them defects to the side of the White Witch. This defection, according to the law of Narnia, requires the blood of that child. Aslan dies in the boy's place, and rises from the dead citing a higher law that states the shedding of righteous blood would not prevail, even over death. If you can't see Jesus in tha, I don't know what to tell you.

My favorite line, however, came at the end of the movie as Aslan walks away. The youngest child can't understand where he is going or why he is goine away. Mr. Thomnas, her fawn friend, explains that Aslan can't always be understood.

"He is not a tame lion" Thomnas says.

"No," replies Lucy, "but he's good."

Simple, forthright, and intensely theological.

I don't know about you, but I often have a difficult time remembering that God is not a tame God. He hasn't been put under the control of anyone else, and isn't altogether predictable. We often don't understand why God does what God does, or how this mess-of-a-world can be a part of God's ultimate plan. But while we know that God is not a tame God, we also know that He's good.

Lucy's confidence in Aslan can be our confidence in the God of the universe. Though we don't usually understand His plan, or how He works, we can always know that He is good.

Five Things Every Christian Should Know - Number 5

One of the most anticipated Summer events for members of my youth group as a kid was Super Summer. Every year during the hottest part of the summer, we would load up an jalopy church van and make the two-hour journey to Kansas City so we could cram into an undersized (also unairconditioned) auditorium with a few thousand of our closest friends. We rocked out to loud music, chanted "We love Jesus yes we do, we love Jesus how 'bout you?" until it reached a fevered pitch, and listened to a motivational speaker get us fired up for the obligatory two-week life change that every camper is bound to produce. Good times.

One year at Super Summer (isn't that the way all good stories are supposed to start?), the theme was "Evangelism." Throughout the week, we were taught a modified version of the "Roman Road" to salvation and pointed questions that were intended to help us turn any conversation to a conversation about spiritual things. It was supposed to go something like this:

Friend: "Hey man, did you watch the Cowboys on Sunday?"
Me: "Yea. Hey, do you believe in God?"
Friend: "I guess. The Cowboys were pretty awful huh?"
Me: "Yea they were. Who is Jesus to you?"
Friend: "I don't know, I was hoping you could tell me."
Me: "I'd love to. Take out your Bible and turn to Romans 3:23"
Friend: "Okay. I happen to have the KJV and NIV in my bookbag, which would you prefer?"
Me: "Whichever you would like. Romans 3:23 says we're all sinners."
Friend: "No doubt about that."
Me: "Romans 6:23 says we owe God death, but God sent His Son as our gift. Is there anything keeping you from trusting in Christ right now?"
Friend: "I can't think of any."
Me: "Great. Let's pray and thank God for your salvation right now."

After learning this method, they turned us loose on fellow campers so we could practice evangelizing each other. I'm not going to lie; I was a master evangelist that week. I led more fake people to fake professions of faith in Christ than Billy Graham could shake a stick at. People were swarming to the fake altar after my presentations. This was easy.

By the end of the week I was ready to take on my entire high school. I reasoned that with three years left in high school, I could average ten conversions a week no problem. Ten conversions times fifty weeks (one off for Christmas and Spring Break each... I planned to keep going during the Summer) all of Rock Bridge High School would be won over before I graduated. After all, how hard could it be?

The church bus rolled back into Columbia, Missouri and I hit the pavement looking for my first opportunity, which came the next day. I worked on swinging a conversation that started on the topic of baseball. Somehow it seemed easier at camp, but I wasn't dissuaded. Then I worked through the Roman Road, which had developed potholes over the 24-hour period since I had last traveled it, in part because the guy I was sharing with hadn't remembered to bring his Bible to our conversation. But we made it down the road, and I was ready to "close the deal."

"Is there anything keeping you from trusting Christ right now?" I asked.

"Yes." He replied.

The silence that followed lasted at least 45 minutes.

Finally, I got the courage to squeak out, "What would that be?"

"Well, I just can't believe that there's a God out there who loves us so much He sent His Son to die for us, but who doesn't love us enough to keep bad stuff from happening to us here." He said.

That certainly hadn't happened at camp. So I did what any right-minded, sane, Christian evangelist would do:

I changed the conversation back to baseball.

Every Christian needs to learn basic apologetics - a basic defense of the Christian faith (1 Peter 3:15). It isn't a faith based on blind leaps and uncertain guesses; it's a faith based on Truth, and rooted in fact. But that doesn't mean that there aren't tough questions out there. And many of our unbelieving friends and neighbors are asking those questions.

How can a loving God send people to hell? Why doesn't a good God stop the evil in the world? Are miracles really possible? These are all good questions that we as Christians don't need to be scared of. Furthermore, if truth is on our side (and it is), we should be eager to seek answers to difficult questions because they will always lead us back to the God in whom we believe.

There's a degree to which all Christians should be comfortable with the unknowable: to accept that there is an unfathomable God in heaven Who is bigger than us is to accept that there are certain things we will never know. But that shouldn't ever be an excuse for not searching for the answers to questions we are able to know.

Many of the questions unbelievers are asking are questions that believers should have asked a long time ago because the answers give us glimpses into the character and nature of God. The question of evil in contrast to a good God is a question about the character of God. We should be ready to defend that character when the question comes up.

There are several good books out there to get you started. The most popular are by Lee Strobel or Josh McDowell. My favorite, however, is a book by Kenneth Boa and Larry Moody called "I'm Glad You Asked." These authors have determined that there are only 12 questions that skeptics ask, although these questions show up in a variety of different forms. This book attempts to answer these questions from a Biblical perspective. Some of the chapters are a little heady, especially when the authors tackle issues dealing with science, but the information is solid and worth reading.

I truly believe that if you don't know why you believe what you believe, you really don't know what you believe.

Five Things Every Christian Should Know - Number 4

Several years ago, on something of a whim, I decided to get my pilots license. I was always fascinated by flight, and like to get places fast, so flying was a good fit for me.

One of the weird things about flying that might surprise some of you, is that there aren't road signs in the sky. Rather than street signs, pilots rely on landmarks to navigate their way around. Instead of looking for the intersection of Live Oak and Boardwalk, they'll draw their route on a map, and look for sections of a lake, or small towns they know they should cross en route to their destination. They stay oriented by knowing that a major highway runs on their right and a river on their left. If you don't know your landmarks, bad things happen.

Case in point: Shortly after I received my private pilot's license, I decided to fly from Stillwater, OK (my home at the time) to Columbia, MO (my parents' home at the time). It was about a four hour flight, which was a big deal for me. The flight to Columbia was a success. I arrived when I thought I should, and didn't have any problems. I had the use of GPS (global positioning satellite) in the plane, which meant I didn't have to rely on landmarks at all - it automatically helped me stay on course, and allowed me more time to look out the window and enjoy the scenery.

On the way home, I threw my maps in the back of the plane since I hadn't used them on the first leg of the trip. They're big and cumbersome, and you have to contort your legs in weird ways to keep them spread out on your lap and prevent them from falling to your feet. I left the airport without a hitch and made my final contacts with Air Traffic Control in Missouri. I didn't expect any more communication from them until about the time I would fly out of their communication zone, where they would transfer me to a different channel that would follow me the rest of the way back to Oklahoma.

That call never came.

About 45 minutes into the flight, I realized the scenery was unfamiliar. I looked down at the GPS to make sure I was still on track, and realized it was off. Knowing this was weird, I attempted to turn it back on. Nothing. Its fuse had blown.

Not knowing how long it had been off, or where exactly I was, I attempted to call back to Columbia Air Traffic Control to get some information from them. Nothing. I had been blown so far off course I had escaped their communication area before they had intended. The wind had shifted direction, so all the readings on my instruments were wrong - they weren't calibrated correctly.

I frantically searched the horizon for a landmark I recognized - a lake, river, big city, anything, but couldn't find one. To make matters worse, it was starting to get dark, which meant more than half of the landmarks would be disappearing. Finally, I saw a watertower in the distance and headed toward it. I descended to the point I could read it, and fortunately it was a town I recognized. I scanned the radio for another pilot's voice and asked what the nearest airport was. Fortunately, they had their maps with them and pointed me toward Springfield directly to the West. I pointed toward the sun, and made an emergency landing at an airport nearly 90 miles from where I should have been. All because I decided to enjoy the flight over doing the necessary work to ensure I covered all my bases.

It's a long story to make my point, but the point is this: Far too many Christians are flying the Christian life today without the necessary landmarks. We rely on pastors, Sunday School teachers, books, tapes, and radio programs to keep us on track, but when one of those goes haywire we don't have the knowledge to be able to fix the problem until it's too late.

Every Christian needs to have a basic understanding of every book in the Bible so that they're able to orient themselves no matter the situation.

What is the point of the book of James? Why did Mark write his Gospel? What does Malachi say about God? Why is Exodus important? Is there a point to all the names in 1 Chronicles?

Will you ever need to know why the book of Hebrews was written? Maybe not. The GPS you're using may function for the rest of your life. But it may not, and it's unsafe to fly without knowing your landmarks.

Not long ago I read an article that started with the words, "Micah was written to talk about the sins of the church against God." So I threw the article in the trash. Why? Because I happened to remember my landmarks - the church didn't even exist when Micah wrote. So I made a decision to use my maps instead of rely on that author's GPS.

It's more common than you think - blatant errors in thinking by some of today's most popular preachers. They rifle through the Scriptures and cherry-pick verses that make their point without bothering to thing about the point the verses were intended to make. That's dangerous flying - you'll need to have your maps handy.

Five Things Every Christian Should Know - Number 3

The number one and two bestselling books in Christian bookstores today are by a man who denies salvation by faith in Christ and preaches that God's ultimate plan for you is to be rich and successful in this life. Number eight on the list is by a man who indicates that God is a "risk taker" who doesn't know what the ultimate outcome of His creation will be.

I don't know which is sadder; that these guys actually teach this junk, or that millions of Christians who will buy these books for Christmas this year do not know any better.

It's not "cool" to talk about theology anymore. It's even less cool to learn about it. But if Christians today want the church in America to be credible in the days of our grandkids, it's time that we start paying a little more attention to theology; it's something every Christian should know.

Think of theology as the frame of a house. Unless you're used to looking at unfinished homes, it's not always very exciting to look at the framework of a house. It's more fun to look at decorations - paint colors, carpet, and light fixtures, but you put your life in danger when you attempt to hang pictures on walls that won't stand up. Before you begin elaborating on the walls, they have to be supported. And tragically, many of the best selling Christian books today try to add decorations to your life that aren't supported by the beams of theology

There are ten aspects to the framework of the Christian faith that every Christian ought to understand in a basic way. We don't need to know everything, but enough that our walls are stable. That way, when decorators attempt to remodel our house, we know the limits of what the beams can stand. Understanding theology gives us the ability to safely make our faith personal without the danger of knocking down a support wall unintentionally. Basically, theology gives us the limits of what we can and cannot say about the most important things in Christianity.

The ten areas with which we should all be familiar are:
1. Theology Proper - This is the study of God and His attributes. Why is it wrong or a popular men's book to imply that God is a risk taker who doesn't know the outcome of His creation? Because Scripture tells us that God is sovereign, and knows all things. To say He'll be surprised by the outcome of creation means we have no future hope because God is not in control.
2. Christology - Who is Jesus Christ? The DaVinci Code was an extraordinarily popular book that threatened to shipwreck a lot of Christians. How would it affect our faith if Jesus had married and fathered children? That's a Christology question.
3. Pneumatology - The term sounds impressive, but pneumatology is the study of the Holy Spirit. When a prominent Houston pastor brags about his lack of formal training for ministry by pointing to a time in his life where he "got the Holy Ghost," what is he saying about the work of the Holy Spirit? Why is he wrong?
4. Bibliology - As I'm writing this, there is an impressive commercial on TV that promises to send you "another testament" of Jesus Christ for free in the mail. Could there be another testament to the Bible that we don't know about? How much should we trust the Bible?
5. Eschatology - Several years ago, a man published a book called "88 Reasons Jesus Christ will Return in 1988." In 1999, I drove by a church in Tulsa that was having "Rapture Practice" on Wednesday night after the service. What exactly should we expect in the future? What does the Bible indicate? And how should we live as a result? These are questions of Eschatology, the study of last things.
6. Angelology - Not long ago there was a Dallas police officer who was killed in the line of duty. They interviewed his wife on the news, and she thanked God that her husband was now her guardian angel, and would be with her for the rest of her life. On the flip side, I received a lot of questions from the teenagers I worked with about the movie "The Exorcism of Emily Rose." Could that happen to me? What exactly are angels and demons? How do they behave?
7. Anthropology - The pastor with the bestselling Christian book on the market right now believes that man is good for the most part, and only needs to unlock his inner potential to do great things for God. This is an anthropology question. In addition, the entire Pro-Life debate revolves around anthropology. Why should we protect the lives of the unborn and the mentally handicapped?
8. Hamartiology - Not to pick on him too much, but that very same pastor in Houston doesn't like to say the word "sin." He prefers "mistake," or "fault." What is sin? Can I ever stop sinning? Why do I sin in the first place, and how does it effect me?
9. Ecclesiology - How should the church function? Who should be in charge? Who do we include in the church and why do we include them? A lot of the "emergent" debate that you'll be hearing more about in the future deals with ecclesiology issues (among others). Why does the church exist, and how should it conduct itself?
10. Soteriology - Christians talk a lot about our need to be saved. Saved from what? How is a person saved? There are a lot of splinter issues in this area that are relatively hot topics right now. It's important for us to understand salvation so we don't get caught up in the debate without understanding the issue.

Fortunately, it's not difficult to begin reinforcing the walls of the house. A small committment over an extended period of time can do wonders for the strength of your framework.

When I got to college, I was a glutton for punishment. I grew up in a great Christian home, but in a church that did not major in building a framework for their members, especially the youth. (Most churches aren't good at this). Consequently, when I set foot on the campus of Oklahoma State University, I was like most college students: a sitting duck. Cults love college campuses because the students know what they believe, but don't know why they believe it; they have decorations on the wall, but the walls aren't reinforced. So cults are able to swoop in, add their own reinforcment to the students' beliefs, and jimmy-rig what the church left off.

Fortunately, a couple of Christian guys took me under their wing, and challenged me to reinforce my walls. So every day, I read a section of Basic Theology by Charles Ryrie, and began the process of understanding why I believed what I believed - reinforcing my house. And it's a process I've never regretted.

Ryrie's resource is a good one for a beginner, primarily because it's concise and paints with a broad brush. You won't get bogged down in the details, but will get a broad explanation of Christian Theology and the biblical passages that support Ryrie's conclusions. Millard Erickson also wrote a decent book on theology called Christian Theology. It's a little more heady than Ryrie's book, but also provides a little more depth than Ryrie for the person with a little theological knowledge already under their belt. Finally, I found the Moody Handbook of Theology extremely helpful as a beginning reader. It's extremely reader-friendly, and contains helpful explanations, but often doesn't discuss the alternative views to an issue, so the reader isn't exposed to the arguments of other positions.

Wherever you start, start. And never believe anything just because the book says it. Test it against your framework, which ultimately has to be rooted in the Bible. This will be on the test - every time you read a Christian book with hopes of improving your Christian life. Does the advice of the decorator stand up to the test of Theology? Or is his advice going to make the walls fall down?

Five Things Every Christian Should Know - Number 2

Harry Truman once said, "The only thing about the future we don't already know is the history we haven't already read."

That's one of my favorite quotes, because he's absolutely right. As Solomon said it, "There's nothing new under the sun." History has a way of repeating itself over, and over, and over again. For that reason, the number two thing that every Christian should know is the history of his or her belief.

Now, if you've ever studied church history, you'll probably agree with me that you tend to sleep better at night when you're studying Church history. There is no better insomnia cure than the vast majority of Church History books out there. For the first year or two that I was reading Church History books, I judged the books solely on the basis of how long they took to put me to sleep. Augustine was a 3, because it took me 3 pages on average before I was knocked out more soundly than a bear in the winter time. Martin Luther was fun, because he was a feisty sucker with a fondness for being right in the middle of controversy. Sometimes he called people rude names which was always fun to look forward to - sort of like the black-sheep relatives who tend to always say outrageous things at all the wrong times. No Mom, I won't start naming names... that kind of thing gets you blogrolled, you know.

Church history doesn't have to be boring. In fact, at times it is exhillarating. Especially when you find out that a guy was burned at the stake for an idea you've held for many years. (Uncovering that kind of situation can add some real motivation to your Bible studies!)

You tend to recognize the importance of Church history when you realize that there are very few "new" ideas out there. For almost every idea, and almost every understanding, someone has gone before us. In fact, I had a seminary professor tell me one time that I should always tread softly if I couldn't find anyone who held a view I wanted to write about. Otherwise, I was writing a recipe for disaster.

On that same token, it's fun for me to look at the various movements afoot in Christianity today, from the "charismatic" movement to the "emergent church" movement, to the "micro-church movement," and see their various underpinnings in Christian Church History. The theological ideas that are supposedly "new" today are just repackaged stuff from the past.

When the Supreme Court reviews a case it searches for prior cases that were similar so the Supreme Court can rule accurately. Shouldn't we as Christians look to how the church has handled ideas in the past in order to help us think about how to handle them in the future?

I'm not saying that every Christian should be able to quote Augustine's opinion on every subject, or that every Christian should be conversant in the life of Pelagius, Calvin, Luther, Jerome, Athanasius, and everyone else who ever graced the ranks of dead theologians. But it is important for Christians to know who came before us, and where they walked.

Throughout the history of the church, people have been willing to die in grotesque ways for the things they believed. There's a reason they were willing to lay their lives on the line; the things they wrote were important to them. And they should be important to us too.

So pick up a book on Church history. "The Story of Christianity" by Justo Gonzalez is a decent place to start. The best outcome is that you'll be more confident in your faith, and confronting the errors that repeat themselves over and over throughout history. At worst, you'll get a good night's sleep.


NOTE: Kari and I sold our house today, which is a huge answer to prayer along with a cause for even more prayer. We'll be finishing up the semester, packing, and moving - all before December 20th. Pray for us. And check back often. If Kari gives me a break from packing I'll continue with numbers 3, 4, and 5 prior to the 20th. If not, I'll see you on the 21st.