A Thought About Christ’s Virgin Birth (December 24, 2006)

Did Mary bear for decades the secret of the virgin birth?

A speculative line of thought occurred to me the other day - mere speculation, that's all - but if true, it might explain a few things.

Pregnant Mary and Joseph took off from the town of Nazareth, traveled to Bethlehem where Jesus was born, then went to Egypt and stayed for maybe a year or so before returning to Nazareth with their toddler. By the time they got back to Nazareth, it is possible (if not likely) that one of Jesus' brothers or sisters had already been born or was on the way. Soon they would grow to a family of at least nine (Mary, Joseph, Jesus, his sisters and four brothers mentioned in Matthew 13:55-56).

When they first left for Bethlehem, only one Nazarene, Joseph, knew - along with Mary - that her pregnancy had occurred without sex. (And he only believed that because an angel visited him - Matthew 1:20). The rest of the townspeople certainly assumed that either Mary and Joseph had "jumped the gun" or that Mary had been unfaithful to him and somehow he had made his peace with that.

I used to think that "No one believed poor Mary's story" - but lately it occurred to me, "Did she even tell them anything about it?" She told her relative Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah (Luke 1:39ff), who had had their own miracle with a late-in-life conception of John the Baptist. But why would Mary bother telling anyone in Nazareth about the visitation of Gabriel, or the report from shepherds in Bethlehem about angels in the sky, or the visit some time later of Eastern wise men? Who would have believed it, any of it? Her neighbors thought she was a fornicator. If she were to start telling them these stories they would also have thought she was nuts.

I bet she kept it to herself. Did she tell Jesus' brothers and sisters about his extraordinary birth? Did she tell Jesus himself? Scripture speaks of Mary "treasuring these things in her heart" (Luke 1:19,51). Perhaps that is the only place she treasured them.The heart quietly guards what the mouth cannot speak.

In time her husband died (Joseph is never mentioned after Jesus turned 12), aging Zechariah and Elizabeth also died, shepherds in Bethlehem and wise men in Iraq passed on or were not heard from, and this young widowed mother of at least seven had to figure out some way to make a life for herself and her kids in run-down Nazareth.

I can easily imagine the story of Jesus' remarkable birth lying dormant in this one widow's heart until there emerged a group of people who would believe it - the apostles of Jesus, who had witnessed his resurrection. They, unlike the Nazarene mockers, would be equipped to accept her story as Elizabeth did more than 30 years earlier. Like (if you will excuse the reference) Lara Flynn Boyle in Men in Black, who believed Will Smith's report of an alien because she had just done an alien autopsy herself, or like Professor Kirk in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, who believed Lucy because he himself had been to Narnia, so the apostles - who had seen Jesus walk on water and rise from the dead - would alone have been able to receive with reverent credibility the account from Mary about the birth of her Son.

Skeptics today make much of the fact that no account of the virgin birth occurs in the gospels of Mark or John, and that Paul never mentions it in any of his 13 epistles. I have never found any significance whatsoever in these supposed "omissions." But if an explanation is needed for them, might it be that the full story of Jesus' birth was not generally known until Luke and Matthew sat down with septuagenarian Mary around A.D. 60 and recorded her recollections? Luke's account transparently gives the events from Mary's perspective. I think he interviewed her. I don't know how much the other disciples knew, or when they found out. Jesus' death and resurrection mattered a lot more to them than his birth did. Who knows how long Mary kept quiet, and, when she spoke up, to whom? She may have been like Rose of the film Titanic, who waited 70 years to tell the story of Jack Dawson.

I may be wrong about this - as I said, it's all speculation - but if I am right, then I owe this insight to some very painful personal circumstances. I am a divorced man. Just writing those words, and continuing now, requires summoning more emotional energy than normally lies at my disposal, and stifling something like nausea and an urge to - what? - scream, cry, sleep, run away? It is like I want to do something but not this.

Old friends of mine, fellow missionaries and pastor colleagues still don't know that I'm divorced because I haven't told them. It hurts too much to talk about it. Not because I am ashamed or guilty - the fact is, I was a good and faithful husband to a wife who renounced Christ, coldly told me she was divorcing me and there was nothing I could do about it, and left me to pursue a godless lifestyle. But except for those close to me now, who know both me and her, I always think, "Who else is going to believe me when I tell them how it happened?" The first minister who was contacted about my "case" advised the church I was pastoring to discipline me, because obviously I must have done something wrong. My sister said that when she told friends that her preacher brother was getting divorced, they would respond, "Oh no! What did he DO??" She would set them straight ("He didn't do anything! It's his wife!"), but my heart still crumbles because I fear that their knee-jerk response is the one I'll hear the rest of my life. I hate it, I don't want to hear it, and I know that when the issue comes up I'll defend myself, which will just provoke the reaction, "Why is Paul being so defensive?"

So I do what I guess Mary did, and just keep my big fat mouth shut. The day will come when I tell old friends and they will ask "Why didn't you tell me sooner?" and I'll shrug and say, "It hurt too much. You have no idea. I am innocent, but I don't know how to get anyone to believe that."

God knows our secrets, the pain of keeping them, the perhaps greater pain of making them known. Among the thousand sorrows of the Blessed Mother of Jesus, I think she knew that pain too.

Disappearing Into A Big Church (December 17, 2006)

From time to time I run into an acquaintance who was active in a small church years ago until he left it for a big church where he does nothing but attend Sunday services.

I've encouraged him to get involved at the place he goes to now, and I hope that the next time I see him I can confirm that he has begun contributing to that church something more than a warm body in the pew and a check in the offering plate. He does not know that he represents to me a practice that I find infuriating: that of gifted believers withholding their service from churches that could use them by disappearing into megachurches where their presence is redundant.

Just once, when someone talks about leaving a church to begin attending another, I would like to hear an unselfish, service-related reason for it. I would like to hear a rationale based not on how it would benefit the mover but on how it would benefit the church he is moving to. For example:

"I'd love to teach a Sunday School class to teenagers, but my church already has several outstanding teachers and there is no opportunity for me to help in that way."

"As an accountant, I feel a duty to find a church that can use my services as treasurer."

"My current church has so many skilled musicians that they don't need me as a worship leader - I should probably find a congregation that could use my musical ability."

"Having raised my children and loved my husband I feel that I am in a position to mentor young married women - but my church has no such women for me to work with."

"I qualify as an elder according to 1 Timothy 3." (Rare commodity!)"My current church does not need the spiritual leadership that God has equipped me to provide - perhaps some other church does." (Yes! It does!)

And so on.

Few people attend the same church their entire lives - most Christians, at some point, will make a move to a new fellowship. When it is your turn to do so, please let thoughts of service govern at least part of the decision about where you end up. Even when church-shopping, you must obey Philippians 2:4: "Each of you should
look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others."

Long Engagements And Expensive Weddings (December 10, 2006)

Next year I'm scheduled to officiate at a wedding whose price tag is reaching upwards of $40,000.

It's no skin off my nose. In fact, I'm part of the price tag. They're flying me out and paying my expenses. That is fine by me - I'm happy to be of service.

At the same time, it gives me opportunity to collect and communicate some thoughts about why I find expensive weddings spiritually dangerous. As a minister I am obligated to warn fellow believers about the perils. Here are two:

First there is sexual danger. Christians must preserve their virginity until marriage lest they violate Hebrews 13:4: Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. I know human nature. Delaying sexual gratification can be difficult for two people who have the hots for each other. And if they have already decided to get married, and can practice birth control to avoid the shame of pregnancy at the altar, and if their premarital union would not be condemned by parents or friends or society - then what on earth, other than the fear of God, is there to stop them?

All engaged Christians must choose between postponing sexual pleasure and rebelling against God's command. What an expensive wedding does is either prolong postponement to the point of weariness or provoke defiance of God through fornication. That is because such weddings cannot happen next month. They take many months (or years!) to plan. A friend of mine who photographs weddings tells me that his services are booked far, far in advance. The same goes for the reception halls.

Would I be revealing too much about the passionate strength of my own desires to say that if, 21 years ago, someone offered me a $40,000 wedding for the price of postponing sex with my bride-to-be for 12 months, I would have laughed in his face and said, "No WAY!!! What kind of deal is that? Are you crazy?"

It may be that engaged Christian couples who put off their weddings for years until they can get the right reception hall simply have superb righteous self-control. Or maybe they have very weak sex drives. I have no problem with that. But there is a problem if they choose fornication over submission to God simply because two years is "too long to wait." If that is your temptation, then go get a license and give me a call and we'll do a shotgun wedding next week. Of course that will stun your friends and relatives, but it is better to shock them than to anger God!

A second danger of expensive weddings is simply financial. Can you afford it?

By "afford it" I mean "while maintaining your other financial obligations, including tithing 10 percent of your income to the local church." If you go into debt to finance a big wedding, then you are merely a fool. But if you pay for a big wedding while holding back your tithe, you are a villain, for you have robbed God to throw a party for yourself. Such financial sin must be unthinkable to all Christians. Weddings - despite cultural insistence that they be lavish spectacles - are not exempt from the rules of modesty and prudence that govern all Christian expenditure. The Bible insists that we give charitably and support the work of gospel proclamation. If we fail to do that, but find funds for expensive weddings (or other costly things the flesh delights in), then we dishonor God.

The Apostle Paul wrote, "Be angry, but do not sin" (Ephesians 4:26). A paraphrase of that verse captures my attitude toward $40,000 weddings: "Have an expensive wedding, but do not sin." If the price of your wedding spectacle is sexual sin or financial irresponsibility, then you must repent, and scale back to a wedding that is quicker and more affordable.

The Pride Of Those Who Think They Can Fix Anything (December 3, 2006)

In September of 1939, Senator William Borah reacted to the news that Hitler had invaded Poland by saying, "Lord, if I could only have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided."

Do you know any Borahs? They are the ones who could have fixed the problem, any problem, if only the bumbling fools who always make a mess of things had just cleared out and let them handle it. When tragedy strikes, they immediately help by saying, "Here's what I would have done." They are confident of their ability to persuade bad people to see reason. A few words from their golden lips would have set
everything right - all that was needed was the opportunity that circumstances or incompetent powers denied them.

Senator Borahs materialize like vultures on carrion every time there is a disaster. The 9-11 tragedy produced thousands of them; locally, several tend to appear at the site of every failed marriage, every divided church, every hospital sickbed. "I could have solved this. It never would have happened to me. They should have done such and such. Too bad I wasn't here."

The Bible's prototypical Borahs are the friends of Job. One of them, Eliphaz, lectured his stricken friend, "But if it were I, I would appeal to God; I would lay my cause before him." (Job 5:8). Eliphaz thought he would be vindicated in a trial before the Lord - unlike Job, who obviously had failed terribly (how could he not have failed, given how badly things turned out?). It does the heart good to see
Eliphaz get his comeuppance at the end of the book.

Desperate people sometimes long for a Borah who actually has the power he claims. They say, "I know I can't handle this, but YOU can. Please talk to Hitler. You can stop him." But if Hitler hasn't yet listened to anyone reasonable, he certainly won't listen to Borah. When the rich man in hell begged for Lazarus' ghost to be sent to save his brothers, he was told, "If they do not listen to Moses and the
Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead." (Luke 16:31). Lazarus will not succeed where Moses has failed. Nor will Jesus.

Some evil is eternally recalcitrant. It is not coldly pessimistic to note that - it is just true. Maturity demands acknowledgment of the fact that, where we cannot win evil over, we must simply oppose it. It will certainly end in tragedy, but - second-guessing Borahs notwithstanding - it can end no other way.

Tongues: A Modest Proposal

I have a strange desire that some of you might find really inappropriate. I wish I could be Protestant Pope for a day just so that I could declare with unquestioned authority what will be the church's position on tongues. Everybody would have to listen to me as I pontificate from the chair and settle the matter once and for all - and if anyone chooses to buck the policy he'd be guilty of defying the infallible word of the Pope!

Here in a nutshell is the problem with "tongue wars" today. The Southern Baptist Convention (for example) forbids its missionaries to speak in tongues even in private. This policy disregards a command of Scripture: "Do not forbid speaking in tongues" (1 Corinthians 14:39). When Pastor Dwight McKissic criticized Southern Baptist policy, telling students at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in August that he himself prayed privately in tongues, the trustees met on October 17 and voted 36-1 to "prohibit professors or administrators from promoting charismatic practices, such as private prayer languages." (Christianity Today, December 2006, p. 17).

What part of St. Paul's "Do not forbid speaking in tongues" do these 36 trustees not understand?

Scripture teaches that tongues must not be forbidden, but they must be regulated. They are like erotic love: not prohibited (heavens no!), but restricted absolutely to the covenant of marriage. Plain restrictions on the use of tongues in public worship are found in 1 Corinthians 14:27-28: "If anyone speaks in a tongue, two - or at most three - should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God."

Walk into just about any Pentecostal or Charismatic church though, and you'll hear unregulated, uninterpreted babbling all around you. It is a mess and a nightmare and an embarrassment to uninitiated visitors. What part of "at most three...one at a time, and someone must interpret" do these Charismatics not understand?

Paul spoke in tongues more than anybody (1 Corinthians 14:18), but it appears he only did it in private. In public he preferred five words of real language to 10,000 "words" of ecstatic babble (1 Corinthians 14:19). Tongues were of limited public use because they only benefited the speaker and God (1 Corinthians 14:2,4,28). That made them appropriate for private prayer but a bad fit for corporate worship where everybody is supposed to participate.

But why bother speaking to God, even privately, in the "nonsense" language of tongues? Well, it is not exactly nonsense. Tongues are vocal but non-verbal expressions of joy, lament, praise, despair, gratitude, or whatever else might be in the worshipper's heart. On occasion they do the job better than words. We're all familiar with the concept when it appears in other forms. Cab Calloway randomized "scat" syllables to express exuberance; Frank Sinatra "do-be-do-be-do-ed" his seduction; my father whistled his contentment, and most of us groan our pain, sigh our pleasure, and "ugh" our disgust. Even at tongue-less Faith Bible Church, we go "la-la-la-la-la" for a while in one of the choruses we sing. In the spirit of 1 Corinthians 14:27, I hereby interpret that tongue to mean that we are happy to praise God.

Speaking in tongues is no big deal - neither angelic nor demonic. Some people have the knack for it, some don't. See 1 Corinthians 12:30: "Do all speak in tongues?" (No. The answer's no.) Those who don't have the knack (or gift) can probably learn it if they want to, and can add tongues to their private worship repertoire if it suits them. I've never bothered with it. Then again, I've never bothered with a lot of things (like "dancing before the Lord" - 2 Samuel 6:14) that are just great for those who can do them right.

To both Southern Baptists, who forbid what God allows, and to Charismatics, who indulge what God restricts, I say, "Oi vay. Ay yiyi. Jiminy Crickets." Which interpreted means, "Speak in tongues privately all you want, but if you're going to do that in church, the rules of 1 Corinthians 14 will be strictly enforced."

New Testament Standards For New Testament People (November 12, 2006)

The name of King David has been coming up lately in discussions among evangelicals. It always does whenever a leader falls as badly as Ted Haggard did recently. The template for the discussion seems to be that great men of God often stumble into adultery and other crimes when they let their guard down. It is understandable - they have all these pressures from being so great. Satan has put a big target on their backs, and tempts them a lot harder than he does you or me. When they fall, the important thing for us is to love them, and, despite our disappointment, forgive and restore them. We're not saying Haggard's sin was o. k. - it was bad of course - but so was the sin of King David. So let's forgive him and show how much we care for him.

Here's my problem with that.

It implies that nothing has changed with the coming of Christ and the giving of the Holy Spirit to the church. It suggests that despite the cross, despite new life in Christ, despite the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, despite the inauguration of the Kingdom, we really should not expect our leaders and shepherds to behave any better than Old Testament kings and patriarchs.

I reject this pessimism. There is a fundamental change between the Old and New Testaments. The standard is higher now that Messiah has come.

Consider for example the sins of lying, stealing and adultery. Old Testament leaders lied often: see Genesis 20:2; 26:7; 33:13-17 and 1 Samuel 21:2 for lies of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David. Jacob was a thief (Genesis 27:35), Judah picked up a prostitute by the side of the road (Genesis 38:15-16), and David was an adulterer (2 Samuel 11).

But when you get to the New Testament, where do you see lying, stealing or adultery among the apostles of Christ or other church leaders? I can only find one lie, and that is when Peter was reduced to desperate prevarication in order to save himself from death by torture - Mark 14:66-72. (The other liars, Ananias and Sapphira, died
on the spot - Acts 5:1-10). There was only one thief among them, and it was Judas the Betrayer (John 12:6). As for adultery, there is no record of any apostle or church leader cheating on his wife. On the contrary, the unnamed adulterer of 1 Corinthians 5 was kicked out of his church, and repeat offenders were said to be shut out of the kingdom of God! (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 6:19-21).

After the resurrection of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the church, just what sins do you see among the apostles and church leaders? Well, Paul confessed to coveting (Romans 7:7-8). Peter refused to eat at a Gentile table (Galatians 2:11-12). John Mark turned back from a dangerous missionary journey (Acts 13:13). Compared to Old Testament iniquity, this is pretty tame stuff! Yet though these sins were relatively minor, they were dealt with severely: Paul agonized over his covetousness (Romans 7:14-24); he rebuked Peter to his face (Galatians 2:11,14); and he refused to give John Mark a second chance (Acts 15:37-40) until much later in life (2 Timothy 4:11).

That was for lesser sins! When it came to major transgressions, the New Testament response was "Die" (Acts 5:5,9); "May you and your money go to hell" (Acts 8:20); and "Hand him over to Satan" (1 Corinthians 5:5).

I'm really fed up with Old Covenant indulgence of New Covenant sin. I don't want to hear King David's example invoked next time we have on our hands one of those stinking preacher-adulterers like Ted Haggard, Gordon MacDonald, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggert or Rev. Jesse Jackson. Enough is enough! The New Testament rule is in Ephesians 5:3: "But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people."

Endure Hardship (November 5, 2006)

Jesus said, "He who endures to the end will be saved" (Matthew 10:22).

He said "endure," not "float along on a cloud enjoying Your Best Life Now." Sometimes the Christian life demands endurance. I have often found that when I counsel distraught believers, my words amount to little more than variations on the theme, "Keep going." It is like that brutal quote from the film Platoon, where a squad leader says to a wounded soldier: "Take the pain."

Lately I have been in contact with a couple friends whose spouses belong to that ever-growing list of "demon-spawn-who-claim-to-be-Christians." (Boy there are a lot of those now, aren't there? Last week we added sodomite Ted Haggard to the list.) One faithful spouse said (I paraphrase), "I DON'T understand why things have fallen apart for me while things go so smoothly for my spouse!" I have heard this before. Years ago a pastor friend of mine, beleaguered by a hostile congregation, said (though at least he could laugh about it), "Why are they doing this to ME? I mean, there are all these pastors who are lazy or manipulative or addicted to porn - I could understand if THEY got this kind of opposition, but why in the world is this happening to ME?" We laughed together, but there was probably some pain in it.

Yet another wounded friend, responding to the Haggard scandal, wrote, "I read that Haggard The Horrible's wife issued a statement that she is standing by her man, and I think, 'Oh that's rich. The crystal meth-snorting PERVERT has a faithful loving wife, while I, a model husband (not bragging; it's just true) get my guts ripped out and plastered against the wall by a user [female dog].' It isn't right."

No, it isn't right. But what do you say?

For what it is worth, my biblical go-to guy in these situations is John the Baptist - my hero, my patron saint. John went from preaching to thousands to languishing alone in Herod's dungeon after courageously denouncing Herod's sin (Mark 6:18). There he became so discouraged that he doubted his faith, sending word to Jesus asking if he really was the Messiah (Luke 7:20). It must have driven John nuts to have his grand audience reduced to a single individual, Herod, who "liked to listen to him" (Mark 6:20), but who never repented. Surely at some point the thought crossed John's mind, "Why does SCUM Herod get to lie on a bed of ease while I waste away in prison? This isn't right!" Then he gets his head chopped off on the whim of a girl. (Mark 6:21-28).

But John was a holy man of whom the world was not worthy (See Hebrews 11:38). He was the greatest of all those born under the terms of the Old Covenant (Matthew 11:11). And the joy he now experiences in heaven is so great that none of us could bear it - only the soul of humble John is big enough to embrace the delights that God grants him in the presence of Jesus.

You probably don't have it as bad now as John did in his earthly life. So keep enduring.

Signs Of Revival (October 29, 2006)

Our hardworking committee has fixed a time and a place for a church-wide retreat: August 10-12 at Turkey Run State Park in Indiana. I rejoice. Turkey Run is one of my favorite places - I take the boys there about once a year for hiking and canoeing.

And the date is perfect! It is during the time of the Perseids meteor shower, which usually peaks in the early morning hours of August 12. Every year for the past five years I have wanted to go to some isolated spot far from Chicago to view it, but there has always been cloud cover, or a full moon, or I've had duties the next day which prohibited a middle-of-the-night excursion. Hopefully in August of 2007 I'll get to see the shooting stars I've missed for half a decade. I look forward to the pre-dawn sky-gazing already.

I'm grateful that our committee has made plain that the purpose of the retreat is not mere recreation but renewal: as individuals and as a church we want to draw closer to God. This is very good indeed. Every church has its strengths and weaknesses - one of our weaknesses is that we have tended to be better at assembling people for social events than spiritual ones. A retreat for the sake of pursuing God's will is exactly what we need.

But how will we know, at the end of it, if we have been revived?

I have three measurement criteria that will help us move beyond the subjective "That was so refreshing!" to the objective "That benefited our church and its ministries - we have moved closer to God." My list:

Prayer
I've pushed the Wednesday night prayer meeting for years now, but sadly it is still the case that I am the only member of Faith Bible Church who attends it. Will August 15, 2007, be the date on which my prayers are answered, and long-time members join with newcomers to praise God and offer their requests?

Tithing
I remain deliberately ignorant of what individuals give, but it is not hard to calculate that our weekly offerings still do not add up to 10 percent of what our people earn. Will August 19, 2007, see a dramatic spike in the church's income?

Hospitality
Someone indicated to me a while ago that Faith Bible Church was simply not ready to respond to my pleas to invite visitors into our homes. Will that change in the fall of 2007 after our summer renewal?

I choose to have high hopes and demonstrably fulfillable expectations about the results of next year's retreat. Of course, it goes without saying that if anyone prefers to get revived and renewed ahead of time, that's fine too.

Grieving Children (October 22, 2006)

I don't know what grief counselors do. Every time there is a tragedy at a school, the news media report that grief counselors have been made available to the students. I always wonder, "What in the world do they say to the kids?"

In the film The Shadowlands, C. S. Lewis' brother Warren berates him for not talking to his stepson, Douglas, whose mother, Lewis' wife, has just died. (I don't know if the scene has any basis in fact.) As I recall the dialogue, Lewis, in grief himself, says, "I have nothing to say to him." Warren won't let him off the hook. He shouts, "TALK to him!" Lewis obeys, and stepfather and stepson meet together and cry.

On a few occasions I have been asked to speak to distraught children. Though I talk for a living - it's what I do - it seems that this particular duty is one of many that reveal my inadequacy. In discussing one hard case with a pastor friend, he said, "I wouldn't know what to say." I thought, oh no. If he doesn't know what to say (and he's really good at this), then who does? A stanza from the dark theme song of M*A*S*H came to mind:

A brave man once requested me
To answer questions that are key
"Is it to be or not to be?"
And I replied, "Oh why ask me?"

Jesus made a point of welcoming children who were brought to him. "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." (Mark 10:14). I don't know what he said to them. The text says that he took them in his arms and blessed them. Maybe he did not have to say a whole lot. I wonder if in that crowd of parents there were young widows whose lives felt ruined, or single dads whose wives had become whores. Was it all joyous, or did bereaved and wounded parents turn tear-stained faces to the Lord and say, "Would you please bless my child"?

Greet and bless hurting children. It is easy to bypass or overlook them, because you don't know what to say. Even so, speak to them. It may help.

Hospitality Works (October 15, 2006)

I'll never forget the Sunday when I was 13 and I went with my Baptist parents to visit a Christian Reformed church. We were looking for a new church and somebody had recommended this fellowship to us.

After Sunday School several people (deacons!) stepped out into the parking lot to smoke cigarettes. (Baptists don't smoke - our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.) Then during the service the pastor baptized a baby! I thought, "Obviously we're not coming back here next week."

Then in the car on the way home Mom and Dad shocked me by saying how happy they were with the worship service and the people. We went back the next week, and the week after, and became members. How in the world did Baptists wind up at such a non-Baptist church? Because the Word of God was faithfully preached and the people were unbelievably nice to us from the moment we stepped in the door. We were invited into their homes immediately.

Eight years later as a missionary trainee with Wycliffe Bible Translators, I arrived early one Sunday morning at a large evangelical church in Grand Forks, North Dakota. I hung around the narthex and went to Sunday School and the service. Not one person so much as said "hello" to me the whole time. Just before I left I was washing my hands in the restroom when the person at the sink next to me greeted me and we talked and I thought "Finally! Someone here has the courtesy to greet a visitor." But then he told me he was a first-time visitor himself. I never went back.

Two years later I arrived with my wife in Urbana, Illinois, and, out of some obligation, we visited a church that we had no intention of going to long-term. But we were greeted kindly and were immediately invited to a member's home, and that is the church we attended for the duration of our stay in Urbana.

Twelve years later when I was pastoring a church in Melrose Park, Illinois, I took a phone call from a middle-aged woman in the neighborhood who was distressed about some spiritual issue. We talked and I read to her some Scriptures. I invited her to come to church on Sunday, and she surprised me by saying she had visited before, but... "But what?" I asked. "I don't want to offend you," she said. "No, no, please, speak freely," I said, as I thought, Oh boy, what did I do now?

She said, "Well, the people of your church are so unfriendly!" and my heart sank through the floor. I knew she was right. More than once from the pulpit I had spotted visitors sitting by themselves in the pew, and afterward they would file out by themselves as church members gathered in their groups and planned where they would go for lunch.

When you're stung by a fair criticism it is hard to know what to say. I probably answered her along the lines of a commercial I've seen lampooning bad cell phone companies: "That is a problem and we're working on it!"

Be hospitable. I preach hospitality because it is good and right and sweet and pleasant and honoring to God. I also preach it because, frankly, it grows churches.

No Excuses For Inhospitality (October 8, 2006)

When I was installed as pastor of Faith Bible Church, I was asked what I expected of the congregation. I said, "I'll keep this simple and say just one thing: hospitality. When people visit the church, I want you to welcome them into your homes and take them out to lunch."

I know that I might have asked for other things, or given a list of "Top 5" or "Top 10" priorities, or mentioned an all-encompassing theme like "love for the Lord" or "devotion to Christ". But I made a deliberate decision to be specific. I wanted to give a quantifiable goal, something unique to my values (what you wouldn't necessarily hear from any pastor), something easily remembered, something we could look back on and ask, "How have we done in this area?"

That was three and a half years ago, and if I had to do it again, I would give the same answer. As Solomon asked God only for wisdom, so I ask the congregation only for hospitality. No one should be able to visit Faith Bible Church more than three times without being invited into our homes or out for lunch. Ideally this should take place on the very first Sunday the person visits.

Hospitality is hard for some people to practice - maybe even a nightmare for the very shy. But I will not for that or any other reason back off from my demand for it. Next week, Lord willing, I will give my rationale for this priority. This week I'll just speak to some common objections.

1) "My spouse refuses to have visitors in our home."
Then try inviting the person out for lunch at a neutral location.

2) "I live far away."
Ditto.

3) "My house is a mess."
Ditto. Or clean it. Or bite the bullet and invite them over anyway. Maybe their house is worse than yours.

4) "I'm single."
Then it may be difficult to invite a couple or family, and inappropriate to invite someone of the opposite sex. But you're ideal for inviting singles of the same gender.

5) "I value my privacy."
Shame on you. Stop valuing your privacy.

6) "I'm a social misfit - I can't imagine anyone wanting me to host them."
Welcome to the club. My social confidence is about a 2 out of 10. Look, sometimes social misfits visit the church. Maybe God has specially equipped you to connect with them.

7) "I just started attending here myself."
Great! That means that you haven't learned any of our bad habits.

8) "I serve the church in other ways."
Great! I thank God for you. Now start serving the church this way too.

9) "After the service on Sunday I'm busy/I work/there is a football
game I want to see."
Make an appointment with the visitor for later in the week.

10) "I just don't have the money to take someone out to lunch."
If this is your hindrance, then ask me, even at 12:10 PM on Sunday, and as surely as the Lord lives, with God as my witness, if I have it I will give you the money to take someone out to lunch that afternoon. And if I don't have the cash I will loan you my credit card. I'm serious.

Be hospitable.

The Duty Of Public Reproach (October 1, 2006)

A seminary professor of mine was involved in a church discipline case and was disturbed that the elder board had determined to keep the matter quiet, handling it themselves. In relating the story to us he quoted 1 Timothy 4:20: "Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning."

The professor had a point. The Bible says that sinners are to be rebuked publicly. When was the last time you heard of a church member being publicly rebuked for grotesque sin? Maybe never. We're literally afraid to obey this command. Maybe the disciplined member will sue us! Maybe he will retaliate by splitting the church, gathering to himself sympathizers who hate church leaders for being so mean and puritanical. To rebuke a sinner is to open a can of worms - it is so much easier to leave the can sealed and move it off to the side.

That is what dozens of Roman Catholic bishops did when they learned about sexually abusive priests under their jurisdiction. They just quietly moved them to other parishes. What they needed to do was rush to the chancel at first opportunity and announce, "I'm sorry to say that Father So-And-So is a sick evil pedophile. We rebuke him in the name of the Lord. He is being defrocked."

How many thousands of boys would have been saved from subsequent abuse if the Catholic Church had done this, if it had just been willing to rake its creepy perverts over public coals of shame? St. Paul was right - others take warning from such examples. Some then will refrain from abuse not because they fear God or love holiness but because they are terrified of public condemnation. This is a good thing.

I don't mean to pick on Catholics; Protestants can be just as bad. I just finished a truly awful book, Broken On The Back Row by adulteress Sandi Patty. Multi Dove- and Grammy-Award winning Patty cheated on her husband with a married man, divorced him, lied to everybody about the affair for years, then married the man she had the affair with! Her church "dealt with" the issue privately (though it never, and still has not, excommunicated her for the adulterous remarriage. See Mark 10:12: "And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.").

The leaders of Patty's church finally brought the matter to the congregation only when Christianity Today published the story of Patty's infidelity and lies. Then the pastor had the gall to rebuke CT for "gossiping"! If I were I to speak to him, I would say, "Friend, the problem here is not CT's faithful publication of the truth. The problem is adultery, lies, church-complicit cover-up, and your ongoing defiance of Mark 10:12."

Public reproach is as much a church's duty as is public forgiveness and restoration.

Loss Of Salvation (September 24, 2006)

"Can someone lose his salvation?"

I was asked this the other day. I've been asked it before, and will be asked it again. It seemed good to write out a response.

I have come to believe that the key word in that question is the word "someone". Who exactly is the "someone" whose security of salvation we are questioning? Presumably "someone" here is understood to be "someone who believes in Jesus." But clarification is needed. Do we mean someone who believes in Jesus with living faith or dead faith? James distinguishes the two in James 2:14-17:

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

James says that faith without action is dead, and when he asks the rhetorical question, "Can such faith save him?" the answer is no. Even demons have dead faith, according to verse 19 of that chapter. And they're damned. (See Jude 6.)

So now the question is, "Can someone who believes in Jesus with living faith lose his salvation?"

I have one more thing to clarify first. By "believe" do we mean believe permanently or temporarily? For example, when Paul told the Philippian jailer, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31), suppose the jailer had asked, "How long do I have to believe before I can go back to my pagan religion?" Would Paul have given him a safe time period? Believe in Jesus a day or two, or a month, maybe 10 years - and that ought to do it? Or was it understood that the man was being called to permanent faith?

I don't think it is debatable that this, and all biblical invitations to believe in Christ, are invitations to believe in him permanently. What is debated, though, is whether it is possible to believe in him temporarily. Frankly it bothers me that this is considered controversial, since Jesus spoke directly to the issue in Luke 8:13 in the parable of the sower and the seeds: "Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They
believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away." Any who think it is impossible to "believe for a while" are met with a Scriptural rebuke in the plain words of Christ.

Now I feel hat the question we started with is answerable. "Can someone who believes permanently in Jesus with living faith lose his salvation?" Absolutely not. All such people are children of God and eternally secure. Nothing can separate them from the love of Christ (Romans 8:35-39). They hear the voice of Jesus, follow him, receive from him eternal life, and nothing can take them out of his hand. (John 10:27-28).

The (Only) Reason You Should Not Sin (September 17, 2006)

Sin displeases God, and that is the only reason you should not do it.

A study from Focus on the Family claims to show that teenage virgins do better later in life than teenage fornicators. Interviews conducted over 20 years with more than 7,000 people show that those who still had their virginity at 18 wound up making more money, having fewer divorces, and getting more education than those who had lost their virginity by that age. Lead study author Dr. Reginald Finger said, "It is very much as we suspected - that adolescent virginity has a significant impact on well-being in middle adulthood."

So what?

It seems that the point of the study is to show that virginity is good for you. It is in your best interests to refrain from sex while young. You'll be richer and happier in the long run if you abstain now. Don't you want what is best for you? Of course you do. But I believe it is morally poisonous to make that a motivation for doing right.

First of all, because a nasty existential backlash can occur when our lives do not line up with statistical probabilities. Case in point: me. A friend of mine lost his virginity at 17 and had to marry his pregnant girlfriend. I kept my virginity till my wedding night and married in the Lord. How have things turned out for my friend and me two decades after our wedding ceremonies? His wife is a faithful helpmate and loving mother to their children; my wife renounced Christ and left me so she could go pursue a godless lifestyle. As for the financial yardstick that Focus on the Family uses to help determine "well-being in middle adulthood," my friend is doing well; I am not.

If I had let the prospect of middle-adulthood happiness motivate my chastity as a young man, then I suppose I would now be bitter against God precisely to the degree that I had expected him to reward my obedience. But I am not bitter, and I am not resentful. (I may be a sad lonely wreck - but that is not the same as being bitter.)

Secondly, regardless of how things turn out for us individually, it is still not right to make self-interest a motivation for being good. Suppose we lived in a very different statistical universe. Suppose young fornicators generally had happier marriages, longer lives, better jobs? What if Focus on the Family's study gave the "wrong" results? What would they say to young people then? (I imagine they would burn the results.)

These questions are not merely hypothetical. Twenty-four years ago I heard a Romanian pastor explain how he warned young converts that if they trusted Christ their lives would get worse. "The secret police will have a file on you," he said. "You may not be able to continue your university education. You won't get a good job - you may have to work as a street sweeper." He told us that many responded, "I know that. But Jesus died for me. How can I do any less than suffer for him?"

That is the kind of motivation for goodness that we must instill in our young people and retain in our own hearts. Obey God not because you believe it will make your life better. Obey him even when you know for a fact that it will make your life worse.

Ministers Must Never Lie (September 10, 2006)

Yesterday I recommended to a relative that she try to get her pastor fired.

It takes a lot for me to say that, because as a pastor I'm sympathetic to my brothers in the vocation. My instinct is to take their side. I know the frustration of trying to keep people attending your church when they could go elsewhere; the fearful realization that you've got no job skills to fall back on if the ministry doesn't work out; the weekly panic of having nothing original to say for Sunday's sermon. People who complain to me about their pastors may be surprised to hear me say, "Well, in his defense..." or, "I had a similar situation myself" or, "I'm not sure you're being fair to him." Just as the Roman Catholic Church has been suffering a plague of pedophile priests, so the evangelical church has been reeling from predator congregations. I know one church that has evicted four good pastors in eight years! Pastor-killers need no encouragement from me.

So a minister has to screw up royally for me to say, "Get rid of him." What my relative's Reverend did wrong (among other things) was lie. She has caught him in several lies now, including a whopper last Sunday. A while ago he refused to take a prayer request for a missionary, explaining, "I don't pray for people I don't know." But when introduced to a missionary a couple days ago he exclaimed, "It is so good to meet someone I've been praying for!" Jerk. He is incompetent in several ways, but for me the lying is - all by itself - a covenant breaker. Tell him good-bye.

We all sin, of course, and to demand sinlessness on the part of your pastor is sinful. You have to put up with the fact that he's a little vain, a little lazy, a little controlling, a little gossipy, a little hot-tempered. Nobody's perfect, and Jesus is not available to pastor your church.

But there are limits. We all know that you can't have a pastor who goes around seducing the ladies. What I'm saying is you also can't have a pastor who lies. Better that he should steal from the offering plate (though that's bad too) than that he should bear false witness - whether in the pulpit or out of it.

Why do I place such a high value on honesty relative to other virtues? Because the gospel depends so crucially on it. We preachers declare to people that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of God who died for sinners and was resurrected the third day, who reigns in heaven and who reigns in our hearts. But if we are found to be liars in other things, who is to say we are not lying about this?

Of all the sins committed in the early church, there was only one recorded that resulted in an immediate, divine death sentence. That was the lie of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. Other sins could be rebuked and repented of (for example, Peter's racist lapse in Galatians 2), but lies could not be tolerated at all. When you are facing death by lions in the Roman Coliseum for the stand you have taken for Christ, you are not encouraged to hear an apostle confess, "I may have exaggerated a wee bit when I said I saw Jesus alive after his crucifixion." The apostles stood on the truth in the face of death. We who preach their message must stand on the truth in the face of life. Why believe us otherwise?

Pity Is Not An Insult (September 3, 2006)

The duties of charity and grace usually involve extending tokens of good will to those who are in need. But on occasion they also involve receiving such tokens from people who want to give them.

What sparked this thought was an article I read about all the hatred directed at Jerry Lewis by certain disability activists. For 40 years Lewis has conducted a Labor Day telethon to raise money for a cure for muscular dystrophy. His telethons have raised $1.35 billion. I think that most people with MD are grateful for his work. Utah Assistant Attorney General Steve Mikita, who has the disease, says, "He is worthy of a major, major pat on the back for a job well done." Sophie Mitzel, whose 7-year-old son Logan has a form of MD, says, "I don't know where we'd be without the tremendous help of Jerry Lewis."

But then there are the MD protesters who hate the fact that Lewis regards them as objects of pity. For about the last 15 years they have appeared at telethon locations across the country on Labor Day to register their offense. "Jerry Lewis has got to go," says Mike Ervin, founder of the mockingly titled "Jerry's Orphans." "The telethon gives a negative message about people with disabilities," says Laura Hershey, organizer of "Tune Jerry Out."

Can't they just say "Thank you"?

I think Lewis makes an excellent point when he says, "They want me to stop the telethon because I make them look pitiful. What is more pitiful than this?" Exactly! MD is a pitiable condition. But some people's pride makes their stomachs twist into knots of spiteful malice when they find themselves the objects of another's charity.
"Don't you dare pity me!" they say - as though pity lessened them, robbed them of dignity. It doesn't. Pity that is gently given and humbly received ennobles both the giver and the recipient.

The other day I heard about a relatively young man named Mike who, when he found out he had a serious disease, rounded up friends and told them about it and said, "I don't want anyone to pity me." Why not, Mike? You caught a bad break. Some people will need to pity you. Let them do that. Let them ache for you and offer their help. Your most courageous act now will not be to brush aside their charity, but to receive their grace with grace. Even Jesus was willing to receive - even asked for - the alert company of disciples on the night of his sorrow. (Matthew 26:36-40). But they were too tired to help.

Thank God for good souls like Jerry Lewis, who, at 80, is somehow not too tired to plow through another 22-hour telethon, motivated and energized by pity for the unfortunate. Pity is a good thing. A good thing to give, and a good thing to receive.

Kind Gestures From Simple Souls (August 27, 2006)

My son Peter works as a mentor for retarded kids at his school. (It is only partly a humanitarian gesture - he also does it to get out of gym.)

He told me yesterday that when he met the young black Down Syndrome girl that he would be working with, she looked at him and said, "You're sweaty." It was not an insult, just a statement of fact. He explained that he had had to run through the halls to get to class on time. She paused for a second, and then began furiously waving her hands in front of his face in order to create a fan to cool him down.

What a sweet act of grace on the part of this simple girl! Perceiving the discomfort of a boy she had just met, she waved him a sign language that said, "Let me make it better for you." In words my mother loved to quote from Mark 14:8, "She did what she could."

When my niece Rachel was two (yes, just two), she saw my mother weeping over the loss of her husband. Rachel ran to the couch where my mom lay and beat her tiny fists against the cushions, shouting, "Don't cry Nana! DON'T CRY!" Nana laughed through her tears, and enjoyed a moment's comic relief from sorrow. Just a year or so later, by which time Rachel understood that people weep when loved ones die, she went with her parents to the funeral of a man who had suddenly passed away. In the car she asked concerning the widow, "Did Judy cry?" "Yes," my sister answered, "Judy cried." When they got to the funeral parlor Rachel walked up to the woman, pulled a jelly bean out of her pocket and said, "Have a jelly bean, Judy." She did what she could.

Do what you can. It is a lesson I preach at myself when hitting walls of discouragement over problems I cannot solve, griefs I cannot alleviate, sicknesses I cannot cure, sinners I cannot set straight. "What's the use?" the devil whispers to me. "You can't fix this."

No, I probably can't - but that does not mean there won't be an opportunity somewhere to offer a "jelly bean” of grace. Thank God for simple souls and children who do what they can, heedless of the limits to what they can accomplish. When Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus with expensive perfume, it was, strictly speaking, a wasted effort. What exactly did it accomplish? I don’t know! I guess Jesus smelled really nice for a while. But that wasn't the point. Jesus said, "She did what she could," and "wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her" (Mark 14:9).

Do what you can, and though your deeds will not be recounted in an inspired Gospel or an uninspired Pastor’s Page, God will remember them. God delights to remember every cup of cold water that kindness ever poured.

Drunkenness And “The Real You” (August 20, 2006)

You're only yourself when sober.

Within days of Mel Gibson spewing drunken anti-Semitic comments at a police officer, a thousand newspaper columnists invoked the Latin proverb, In vino veritas (In wine there is truth). Their point was that when you're drunk the "real you" comes out, uninhibited by surface formalities and pleasantries that normally cover your core. In this view, Mel Gibson is, at heart, a Nazi - and only his deceptive sobriety kept us from knowing that.

Well I think that is stupid.

Every last one of us will say and do and think abominable things when our brains are disordered by alcohol or dementia or sudden impact. Do those disorders unveil the "real us"? Of course not. My saintly mother lived in fear that if she got Alzheimer's she would say bad words. She never did, but if she had - if in advanced age she began saying for the first time a word she dreaded, the scatological word beginning with "sh" - then I would have been a cruel idiot to conclude, "So THAT was my real mom! All this time I thought she was discreet and modest and gentle, but NOOO. 'In senility veritas'."

Everybody should take into account the fact that our brains can be impaired as easily as our bodies. For all I know, if you got Mother Theresa good and senile and she would start saying, "Screw the poor. They make me want to puke."

When I was in high school a friend of mine collapsed with a brain aneurysm and almost died. As he recovered in the hospital and I visited him there, a mutual friend warned me, "Don't let him talk about girls." This most gentlemanly young man had been saying lewd things to the nurses. Thankfully he got better and the "real" Keith came back. For that matter, "real" men come back every morning when their alarm clocks ring - for in uninhibited dreams of the night, chaste men fornicate.

The inhibitions that we associate with wakefulness and sobriety and health are good and they are real. Even if it is true that they merely "cover a corrupt core," then it is the duty of every good man to thicken that cover, and keep his inner corruptions from emerging as outward disgraces. If you will permit the bawdy analogy, we all stink when we fart, but the "real us" is not the internal gas but the discipline we exercise not to release it in a crowded elevator.

The real scandal with Mel Gibson is that he got drunk in the first place. There is no excuse for that. The biblical rule for Christians is that we may drink, but not to the point of inebriation. Drunkenness opens wide the window to a thousand sins, and either makes us bad or reveals a badness we should have stifled. Be inhibited. Be yourself. Be sober.

Charity That Does Not Enable Sin (August 6, 2006)

Give to the worthy poor.

A recent Chicago Tribune story carries the headline "Church tells Katrina mom it's time to go." St. Paul United Church of Christ in Palatine provided a 23-year-old woman and her three fatherless children with a nice home to live in for a year after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their house. They also provided her with a car, clothes, furniture, food, and thousands of dollars cash.

Now the year is up, and the church needs the house back for its intended use as a parsonage. But the woman doesn't want to go, and she has taken her case to the media. "I have three little kids," she says. "They don't deserve to be put out on their behinds."

She's right. The kids don't deserve to be put out on their behinds. They deserve to be adopted by loving parents and freed from the clutches of an irresponsible woman who fornicates, gets pregnant, expects others to shoulder the consequences, and responds to loving charity with a bitter "It's not enough - why are you being so mean to me?" Her expectation seems to be that the church will provide her with free everything forever. Poor kids. They need an adult for a mom. A dad would be nice too.

The church, despite its goodwill and sacrifice, is being made to look bad. It is not bad, of course. I applaud the good people of St. Paul UCC for their patience and kindness. They know what it is to do good and then get kicked in the teeth for it. An uncharitable church would never feel this pain.

Still, I believe there are biblical guidelines that can help good people avoid getting kicked in their charitable teeth - and also help them to alleviate suffering without enabling the kind of behavior that caused the suffering in the first place.

First, insist that the recipient of charity do whatever he can for himself. Israelite farmers were not commanded to bundle up food and deliver it to the poor. They were to leave the edges and corners of their fields unharvested so that the poor could go and pick up the grain themselves (Leviticus 19:9-10).

Second, take care to distinguish the more from the less needy. In 1 Timothy 5:3-16, St. Paul divides widows who should receive help from those who should not in part by gauging their relative need. Childless widows over 60 had it the worst, so the church needed to give them money. Younger widows had the resource of remarriage, and widows with grown children had the resource of relying on their offspring. The church was forbidden to help widows with capable sons because that would enable irresponsibility on the part of neglectful children.

Third (and oh how politically incorrect this is!), help the worthy poor. Paul told Timothy to give aid to aging, childless widows only if they had done good works and been faithful to their husbands (1 Timothy 5:9-10). Imagine that! The selfish, the fornicators, the lazy and the malicious would be turned away with a polite "No."

When a centurion's servant fell ill (Luke 7:1-5), Jewish elders begged Jesus to go help him, saying, "This man deserves to have you do this." Deserves! What a rare word that is becoming. It would be good to remember it, because character matters when it comes to determining whom to help. There are more needy people than you can count, and you cannot help them all. Try to help the deserving ones first.

God Bless The Building Manager (July 30, 2006)

Blessed are those who work behind the scenes.

A few years ago at my former church I came down from the pulpit one Sunday a bit discouraged because I could tell people just weren't with me that day. (It is not hard to tell when hardly anybody is paying attention.) Somebody reassured me later that it wasn't that the sermon was so dull, but that the temperature was so hot. It was high summer and the church had no air conditioning. I was relieved to hear that explanation, and bought it eagerly. Of course it wasn't my fault! Who can preach so compellingly as to overcome the stifling opposition of a sanctuarial hotbox?

Air conditioning matters. It matters spiritually. A veteran missionary friend in Colombia told me that when Wycliffe Bible Translators got AC in their offices at the mission compound in Loma Linda, everyone's productivity suddenly skyrocketed.

When Faith Bible Church’s AC went out on Sunday, I thought sadly, "This is going to kill Vacation Bible School this week." Our volunteers' hard work stood to drown in a sea of triple-digit heat.

But it didn't. The AC got fixed. It got fixed because one of our members took a day off work on Monday - with whatever consequences he'll have to bear for that - to spend more than 5 hours at the church to make sure the repairers could get the unit working again.

Thanks Lenny!

The Courageous Confronter (July 23, 2006)

A Christian author friend told me that he wants to title his next book, No Balls: What's Wrong With Church Leadership Today. The title is a shock, but no more so than a statement St. Paul made to the Galatians: "I wish that those who insist that you be circumcised would cut off their penises" (Galatians 5:12).

Shocks are needed to make strong points sometimes. Paul used colorful language because he was fed up with Judaizers; my author friend wants to write No Balls because he's fed up with clergy. Specifically, he has talked with countless pastors, elders and deacons about coming to his aid in a grievance he has against a fellow believer, but all save one have politely refused to get involved. (I know the details of his grievance, and it is airtight. It isn't a murky "he said/she said," but a spiritual war with Gabriel on one side and Beelzebub on the other.)

How is any sincere Christian supposed to obey Jesus' command to "take one or two others along" (Matthew 18:16) to rebuke an offender if all the "others" turn coward and squeak, "Pray hold me excused: I cannot come"?

I emailed my friend that I did know one pastor who, when he discovered that an old friend was dumping his wife for another woman, dropped everything and got on a plane so he could appear on the man's doorstep early the next morning and let him have it. Now there's a pastor who can look down (ahem) and say, "Yup. Still got 'em both." I'm sure the adulterer's wife appreciated his eagerness to confront the creep who was making her life a nightmare.

I've got two teenage boys, and I hope that as they grow up they will be men and not eunuchs. Like Job, I worry that they might sin. What if I die and am not around to hold them accountable? I have told them, just in case, that if (God forbid) either of them ever pulls a stunt like so-and-so, then the other must fly half way around the world if necessary to appear on his brother's doorstep at dawn to rake him over the coals of righteousness.

Who else might be willing to perform the manly duty of rebuke? If my friend is right, the sad answer is, "Not enough pastors these days."

So You Received Jesus Into Your Heart? So Have Many Apostates (July 16, 2006)

Evil makes cynics of us.

I know it has made one of me in an area that can be nearly fatal to a preacher: conversion. I call people to faith in Christ. It is what I do, and I am convinced that I would be disobedient to do anything else.

So why don't I get all excited about "decisions for Christ"? Because experience keeps teaching me the fragile and untrustworthy nature of such decisions. I trust in Jesus, but I do not necessarily trust in the steadfastness of those who say they have received him.

Here's a short list of those who have eroded my faith in people' ability to persevere: Charles Templeton, evangelist colleague of Billy Graham, became an outspoken atheist. Roy Clements, once one of England's most respected evangelical ministers, is now living with a homosexual lover. The minister who conducted my wedding also left his wife and announced that he is gay. I know two Wycliffe missionaries - one of whom translated the New Testament into a Colombian indigenous language - who left their wives and the Lord. My Arhuaco Scripture co-translator (about whose faith I once wrote glowing tributes), walked away from Christ. My ex wife, who once dedicated her life to missionary service and who encouraged me to enter the pastoral ministry, is now a cold-blooded apostate.

And time would fail me to list all the people I know who once received Jesus but who now live such reprobate lives that no one would ever guess they were once people of faith.

I have been fooled so many times by so many people that I am forced to acknowledge the hard truth that I cannot tell who will persevere in the Lord and who will not. If Charles Templeton can fool Billy Graham, and Wycliffe missionaries can fool their colleagues in Colombia and Brazil, and Roy Clements can fool the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and my wife can fool me, then who can't be fooled by
whom?

That which I have learned about the heart's inconstancy is what keeps me from saying to any new convert, "You have just been saved eternally - welcome to the family of God!" These words of encouragement are actually a prophecy that is both arrogant and naïve. Only God knows who will persevere and who will not. I don't know anyone else with access to that foreknowledge.

That is why I preach perseverance so much more than I do conversion. I don't care any more how you started - I care how you end up. Just as St. James said, "You believe that there is one God? Great - even the demons believe that," so I might say, "You received Jesus into your heart? Great - so did Larry Flynt." (The publisher of Hustler magazine was briefly "born again" in the '70s.) The mere decision to follow Christ really puts you on no better spiritual footing than that of Judas Iscariot. He decided to follow Christ too - for a while.

Excuse my cynicism. Of course I know there are legitimate conversions, and I know that I must not let grief over false brothers spoil my joy over true ones. But just as we must take our sufferings and let them make us patient, so we must take our disappointments and let them make us wise. Here is wisdom: something is begun, but nothing settled, when a man says, "I have received Christ." From that point forward we must preach perseverance both to him and to ourselves until on our deathbeds we can say, "I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have kept the faith." Then into God's hands we may commend our spirits.

Detecting The Aroma Of Christ (June 25, 2006)

"You must be believers!"

It was a bold guess on the part of my friend and colleague, Haitian minister Franco Valdemar. He had been eating lunch in a Chinese buffet when he walked up to a booth of four gentleman and told them that he figured they had to be Christians. I asked Franco if it was because he had overheard them talking about the Lord, and he said no. It was just the way they interacted with each other.

It turns out he was right, of course. One of the men was a minister, and he eventually invited Franco to his church to talk about his work in Haiti.

Franco's good guess reminded me of the time I walked into a barber shop and the barber immediately asked me (kind of loudly), "Are you a minister?" I said yes, and asked how he knew. He said, "Felt the Spirit!"

Of course there are natural explanations for ESPOCP (Extra Sensory Perception Of Christian Presence). Maybe Franco actually had heard the four lunch-eaters mention Jesus but did not consciously realize it. Maybe that barber asked every stranger with a tie who walked into his shop during work hours the same question he asked me.

But I suspect you could cull enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that there really exists a spiritually detectable "fragrance of Christ" (2 Corinthians 2:15-16). I asked Franco if strangers ever pegged him as a Christian, and he said "All the time." A colleague of mine in Florida, who wears no ministerial dress whatsoever, once asked, "Do I wear a sign around my neck that says 'Pastor' or something? How do they know?"

My favorite of these stories involves a friend of a friend who walked into a cabin in Alaska where a motley crew were gathered. A man there said to him, "As you came through that door I perceived that you had no pretensions or guile. That means one of two things. Either you've done a lot of acid or you're a born-again Christian." He had not done any acid.

The other day I saw a bust of Lenin. Look at any picture of him and you can't miss the "frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command" that Shelley's traveler saw in Ozymandias. If I had never heard of Lenin, I think I could just look at his face and say, "Whoever that is, I'll bet you he doesn't love Jesus."

Here's praying that your love for Jesus creates within you a holy joy that practically oozes out your pores, and provokes the occasional question, "Are you a Christian or something?"

“Unconditional Love” Is Unbiblical Nonsense (June 11, 2006)

An article in Sunday's Chicago Tribune says that Jane Adams' philosophy of social engagement "was rooted in her commitment to the message of unconditional love in the teachings of Jesus."

What message of unconditional love in the teachings of Jesus?

I can't find "unconditional love" in the words of Jesus or anywhere
else in the Bible. But that phrase has become so entrenched in
religious vocabulary that just about everyone, Christian and
non-Christian alike, assumes it is biblical. It isn't. Jesus taught
that God's love is conditional, and he himself exemplified conditional
love in his dealings with men.

In John 16:27 he said to his disciples, "The Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God." If the Father's love were unconditional, this statement would be meaningless or false. The doctrine of unconditional love would have to remove the "because" from that verse and make it read, "The Father himself loves you whether or not you have loved me and have believed that I came from God."

In John 15:10 Jesus said, "If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love." This is straightforward. Remaining in the love of Christ is conditioned on obedience to his commands. That's what the word "if" means! The word "if" introduces a condition. If (now there's a condition for you) our Lord's love were unconditional, he would have said "Whether or not you obey my commands, you will remain in my love.

In John 14:21 Jesus said, "He who loves me will be loved by my Father." If God's love were unconditional, that statement would read, "He who loves/hates/ignores/whatevers me will be loved by my Father." Again, the words of Jesus, as given, are as transparently conditional as they can be.

Jesus said, "Whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven" (Matthew 10:33). I cannot see how being disowned by Jesus is consistent with being loved by him. If someone were to say, "But this too is love! When Jesus banishes eternally from the presence of God those who disown him, that too - if we could only understand it - is just one more tender act of his unconditional love," I would answer with C. S. Lewis' memorable line, "Don't talk damn nonsense."

When Jesus calls Herod a fox (I.e., "rat", "weasel" - Luke 13:32), when he calls hypocrites children of the devil (John 8:44), when he denounces the Pharisees with scathing woes (Matthew 23:13-33), when he blows off his own family(!) - Luke 8:19-21 - he is not loving them. Love is when he calls his obedient disciples his friends (John 15:15). Love is when he washes their feet (John 13:5).

More than once I have received kind comments from people who thanked me for preaching God's unconditional love, and I don't know how to respond. I don't correct them. They're being nice. In fact, they probably understood me just fine - the problem really lies in the fact that they don't know what the word "unconditional" means.

So why do I make such a fuss about the dictionary definition of this word? Don't I have better things to do than play semantic games, and insist on the proper usage of the word "unconditional"?

I'll tell you why I fret about this word. Words condition thoughts. Careless words distort truth. Words that are used imprecisely by one generation are taken literally and at face value by the next, with devastating consequences.

I believe one possible result of this relentless jabbering about God's "unconditional love" will be more sin - and hence, less of God's love. Already I'm getting tired of sinners who defy God's commands but who still believe that he loves them anyway. Given today's homiletic unclarity, why shouldn't they believe that? They have been absorbing that sound-bite about God's unconditional love into their bloodstream like a nicotine patch. It has taken the edge off their natural craving
to be loved by him. Why yearn for that? Why adjust behavior in order to obtain it? The preachers have been telling them that God's love is already theirs, in abundance, and nothing they can do or fail to do will add to or detract from it.

I would rather they hear again and again the fearsome but biblical admonition, "Stop sinning, or God won't love you."

Brag About Your Kids (June 4, 2006)

I like it when people brag about their kids.

I know that such bragging provokes rolled eyes and bitter backlash from those who find it unseemly. I wouldn't say that they're jealous, but I do think that they are too sophisticated for their own (or anybody's) good. If people consider you insufferable for going on about what a great thing your kid did, nuts to them. When Johnny gets sent to a juvenile detention center, share it quietly at prayer meeting - but when he wins the city-wide violin contest, tell everybody! I'll be happy for you.

I got an email from a friend saying that his teenage son "hit his fifth out-of-the-park home run on Saturday, in addition to nailing two base stealers at second and third (while playing catcher) AND he was the game-saving pitcher who set up an unassisted double-play to end the contest." Wow! Wish I could have been there. That must have been great.

I bragged back about my son Peter, who hasn't a single athletic accomplishment lurking anywhere in his body, but who can read upside down. When he was in first grade I noticed that when he read, it did not seem to matter at all to him how the page was situated. I tested him on this ability the other day, handing him (upside down) some unfamiliar reading material with big words in it. He read it fast and clean and without a pause. Dang! (Now if they only gave out college scholarships for that.)

St. Paul bragged about his "son" Timothy ("I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare" - Philippians 2:20), and God bragged about Job ("Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil" - Job 1:8). The best thing to brag about concerning your children or protégés is their righteousness. Hopefully they'll give you lots of opportunities to talk them up that way. Then, when my friend's son attracts the attention of professional baseball scouts, and my son blows the lid off the SAT, you will be able to trump us both by saying, "My son is kind." That wins.

Thank You For Attending Church (May 28, 2006)

I just want to say thank you to everybody who went to church this past Sunday.

You didn’t go as a favor to me, or for the pastor of whatever church you attend. That’s fine - thank you anyway.

Some of you had to overcome real obstacles to go to church. Maybe you worked 60 hours last week, and Sunday morning was when you really wanted to rest. Maybe your pastor preaches long, slow-paced sermons that bore the drool out of you. Maybe you can’t stand the music - they sing old hymns but you like contemporary, or vice versa. Maybe your family makes it hard for you to get away on Sunday (that is when they schedule their brunches!). Maybe, heaven forbid, some demon with the title “Reverend” abused you years ago and you never wanted to step foot in a church again.

You had lots of reasons not to go, but you went, and I thank you. May I tell you a good thing that your attendance accomplished?

It encouraged a minister. On the afternoon of Sunday, May 21, someone asked me how my day had gone. I said, “OK,” but then listed by name about a dozen people who for whatever reason were not in church that morning, and said that I would have felt a lot better if they had been there. The next Sunday evening, May 28, someone else asked me the same question and I said, “Real good! Sunday School and the Worship service were about as full as they get.”

Did you know that you rejoiced a minister’s heart when you attended? If not, know it now. I think I can speak for all ministers in this. Every warm body in the pew is a sentry against a demoralizing spirit that seeks to incapacitate a man of God.

I must be careful here. I don’t want people to go to church to please me (or any pastor), or because they fear a clergyman’s disapproval if they don’t go. If I induce guilt in those who neglect worship because they discourage me (or “reward” attenders with assurances that they delight me), then I have taken dangerous a step toward spiritual corruption. Church is not about me. Forget me, forget all ministers.
Go to church because you love God. Go because you want to express that love by obeying his command to “neglect not the assembling of yourselves together” (Hebrews 10:25). Go because you fear God, and fear the consequences of denying him your part of the collective worship that is his due.

And for my very small, insignificant part, thank you.

Corrupt Evangelists? Maybe They Don’t Believe In God (May 21, 2006)

“I think they’re atheists.”

That was my mother’s succinct appraisal of televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert in light of their disgraceful behavior that became known in the late 1980s. Bakker and Swaggert funded lavish and decadent lifestyles by swindling pious people out of their money. And they were moral deviates: Swaggert hired prostitutes; Bakker slept with a secretary and then paid her a six-figure sum of hush money. (She didn’t hush.)

Of all the analyses of Bakker’s and Swaggert’s corruption (to which we can add that of Benny Hinn, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and all the pedophile priests), my mother’s brutal observation made the most sense to me. When she discerned that these men were atheists, she was not insulting them with a carelessly derogatory label. She was not saying, “Atheists are bad, so anybody who does something bad must also be an atheist.” She knew, and I have known, quite a few atheists who were kind and genteel and restrained and respectful.

What she was saying was that no man who actually believed in God could possibly do what Bakker and Swaggert did. The distance between their verbal profession of faith and their physical transgression of deed was too great a span for reason to tread. Look at it this way: If a man says, “I am a pacifist - I hate all use of violent force,” we could still understand it and grant him a pass if, when mugged, he kicks and struggles and swings away in the passion of self defense. But if while claiming to be a pacifist he trains with Michigan militia groups, and hordes automatic weapons in a basement whose walls are adorned with posters of Paul Wolfowitz that hang over stacks of “Soldier of Fortune” magazines, then we’d be fully justified in saying, “I don’t think you’re a pacifist at all.” If he responded, “Yes I am! Though, I must admit, there may be a little inconsistency between my belief and my practice,” we might say, “A little?”

1 John 3:3 says, “Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself,even as he [Christ] is pure.” In context, “this hope” refers to the expectation of seeing Jesus in the afterlife and being like him. That contemplation is a purifying one because it both scares us away from sin and attracts us to the delight of everlasting fellowship with Christ. But when a man loses (or has not) the faith that he will see
Christ or answer to God, it should not surprise us at all to find him defrauding widows and mating with whores. Why not? What is there to stop him - conscience? Most men have little trouble overpowering that shabby little resister when there is no fear of God to give it substance.

Acting Holy When You Don’t Feel Like It (May 14, 2006)

"If you act normal, they'll never know!"

My mother discovered this secret early in life, and passed it along to her children as a coping mechanism for the eccentric. Mom wasn't crazy, but she was unique - Christopher Walken on a good day - and she knew that wearing weirdness on your sleeve was not always the best way to make comfortable the people around you. So, like a foreigner keeping quiet to mask an accent, Mom conscientiously did what she could to blend in.

It did not always work. For some reason she thought it was funny to pretend to be dumb as box of socks, and more than once we said to her, "Uh, Mom, I don't think anybody knows you're kidding." Her deadpan delivery was a little too disciplined at times - as though she felt a wink might spoil the joke.

But mostly she blended in, and I appreciate that. Surely it was an effort at times. But why shouldn't it have been? I have come to believe that resisting some natural currents in our personality is part of what it means to be human, and much of what it means to be holy. Those who simply give in to every impulse and instinct are rude
and dangerous and crazy. They are like animals, and no fun to be around.

Mom's dictum, "If you act normal, they'll never know [that you're nuts]" has a natural analogue in, "If you act holy, they'll never know [that you're evil]." I do not advocate hypocrisy - wearing a façade of holiness while you bury murder victims in your basement - but I do urge the discipline of doing what is right even when your nature rebels against it.

That is when holiness counts most, I think. Holiness is most pure precisely when it is an act - a conscious decision, a violation of our nature, a self-thwarting of preference. You don't have to command me to enjoy General Tso's chicken - I can't do otherwise! But you do have to command me to be kind and pure and diligent. For those virtues I have no choice but to "get into character" like a stage actor who has struggled to learn his lines.

It is not wrong for weirdos to observe normal people and try to imitate them as best they can. Nor is it wrong (far from it!) for sinners to observe Christ and try hard as they can to be like him.

Loneliness Stinks (May 7, 2006)

Some years ago I was asked to fill out a survey that was part of somebody's research project on loneliness. I had no idea how to answer most of the questions, because they seemed to assume that loneliness was a thing we all experienced occasionally. (E.g. "When I feel lonely, I am more likely to (A) eat food, (B) phone a friend.") How do you answer that when you have never been lonely?

A friend of mine once said, "Being alone does not mean you are lonely" - and that pretty much said it for me. I never regarded solitude as a burden, and often sought it deliberately.

But I am older now, and things change, and once-welcomed solitary interludes have become dreaded spells of inactive longing. Only now do I understand from the inside something C. S. Lewis wrote about in A Grief Observed. After his wife died he said that he wanted people to be around him but not especially paying attention to him. "Just let me be here while you go about your business." Lewis had been a bachelor until well into his 50s, and had always treasured his solitude and made magnificent use of it, until it was thrust unbidden upon him. Then it was hard, and he needed the comfort of company.

Today as I write this I have a sense of settled joy because both my sons are home and sleeping in their beds. They are not doing anything at all, except maybe snoring, but it is good just that they are there. Peter should be in school; when I got him up this morning he said he didn't feel well and wanted to stay home. He's not sick. Normally I'd kick him out the door and tell him to get his lazy butt to school - but this time I relented and called in for him. He's exhausted today because he stayed up all night talking to his older brother who I picked up from college yesterday for spring break. Fair enough. Just for today, stay. Sleep it off and we'll do something together this afternoon.

On the ride home from college Ben mentioned that he sometimes found it hard to have meaningful conversations with people who had never experienced trouble. (And he is only 18 - little does he know how much more trouble awaits him!) I know what he means. It is so hard, probably impossible, for a sheltered person to gain the kind of depth that makes him a worthy partner for discussion. In reflecting on this I realized that, in years past, if someone had told me about his or her loneliness I suppose I could have slammed the discussion shut with "I actually like to be alone." While true, that would have been neither empathetic nor helpful.

But I can do better than that now, I think. Having felt for the first time the scars of loneliness I cannot jest at their wounds. It is good to be around people. And it is not good - as God said after making Adam, and as I can affirm from experience - it is not good to be alone.

The Spiritual Tortoise And The Zealot Hare (April 30, 2006)

"Fab Freddy" was the top physics student at the University of Illinois in the early 1980s. I never met him and don't even know his last name, but I have invoked his example many times when lecturing my sons. I heard about Fab Freddy from my friend Bill, who was a physics student at the same time. Bill was one of the finest mathematical minds ever to graduate from my high school, but in college he was no match for Fab Freddy. No one was. Fab Freddy aced every exam without bothering to study.

A few years later, as Bill was getting his Phd, I asked him about Fab Freddy and was shocked to hear that the genius had flunked out of the Physics Phd program! How was that possible? Bill explained that Freddy was so gifted that as an undergraduate he never had to work hard, and he assumed that he could carry that same breezy confidence into graduate school. But the Phd program was so demanding that even an Einstein would have to study. Fab Freddy never made the adjustment, and students he formerly ran circles around sped by him.

Fable became fact as Bill the Tortoise got his doctorate and went on to Fermilab, and Freddy the Hare never even crossed the finish line of an advanced degree (as far as I know.)

It is possible that in real life Freddy got things turned around and now chairs the Physics Department at MIT. But I'll take as a morality tale the slice of the story as I know it: Fab Freddy's great beginning and tremendous talent could not guarantee success, because they were not supported by the virtues of discipline and perseverance.

I tell this story to my sons mainly as an academic lesson, but I also apply it to spiritual life. Secure endings matter more than spectacular beginnings. I have seen the flash of white-hot zeal from an "on-fire" Christian burn out like a match, and have now come to prefer the type of believer who resembles a consistent, slow-burning
coal that lasts through the night.

Steady progress in the faith is possible if you simply maintain a consistent pace. Shun the overconfidence that assures you that you can manage ok without ordinary disciplines. Remember Fab Freddy. Pray daily, read the Scriptures, go to church, partake of the Lord's Supper and repent of known sin. Do this until you are so old that your mind cannot connect thoughts, your eyes cannot discern print, your legs cannot bring you to church, your throat cannot swallow and your will cannot rebel. Then you will cross the finish line in the time your Lord has ordained, and receive the reward that he will delight to give you. Slow and steady will win the race.

Therapists Or Friends? (April 23, 2006)

One of my favorite pieces of folk wisdom comes from Crocodile Dundee. When the Outback croc-killer's love interest tells him that a friend has sought help from a psychiatrist, he says, "I didn't know she was nuts."

"Of course she's not nuts!" she responds. "People go to a psychiatrist to talk about their problems. She just needed to unload them - you know, bring them out in the open."

Then he asks, "Hasn't she got any mates?"

That is a good question. Maybe this woman should talk to her mates (friends) - unless, horror of horrors, she just hasn't got any. Is it that she is unwilling to talk to them about painful things? Are they unwilling to listen? Are they too cruel to sympathize, or too foolish to say something helpful?

I sometimes wonder what in the world people did with their problems before wise counsel became institutionalized in the therapeutic professions. Did "people issues" remain unresolved for millennia until psychiatry came to the rescue in the mid-20th century? I doubt it. I bet people used to talk to friends more often. Nowadays, those friends are quick to say, "Get professional help." Friends have been intimidated into thinking that they are too dumb to speak wisely, and they have been tempted into delegating the responsibility to listen to those who get paid for it.

Dundee's girlfriend answered him, "You're right. I guess we could all use more mates. I suppose you don't have any shrinks at Walkabout Creek?"

"No, back there if you've got a problem you tell Wally. Then he tells everyone in town, brings it out in the open. No more problem."
Very good, very good. Wally's method is brilliant. Not all gossip is malicious - sometimes it is the kindest therapy, since the weight of a problem dissipates when it is carried on the shoulders of many. Counselors (and pastors) are bound by rules of confidentiality, which can greatly limit their effectiveness. But a chatty friend like Wally might be the best thing that ever happened to your problem. If you're
just plain nuts, then by all means go to a psychiatrist and get some Risperdal or Depakote or Zoloft to set your brain chemicals aright. But if you have ordinary troubles, I recommend finding a Wally who will cheerfully relay your "issues" to a community of caring friends. Certainly they will listen, and probably they can help.

Serve Where You Are Competent (April 9, 2006)

Have you ever been asked to serve in an area you stunk at?

I have. When I was in seminary the associate pastor of my church had the bright idea of organizing a day of sport games in the park for kids. Then he made the mistake of putting me and two other seminary interns in charge of it.

The other interns were great guys, but neither had kids of their own and neither had a clue about how to work with them. And none of us knew anything, anything at all, about putting together a day of fun and games in the park. That would have been o.k. if, despite our inexperience, at least one of us had good instincts for that work. None of us did, and the thing flopped. The kids wound up scattering around the park, and I think more than a few just wanted to go home.

That incident has become a life template experience for me: it instructs me in the danger of hammering round people into square holes. Round people don't fit in square holes. When you stuff them in there they get annoyed and even the holes get frustrated. When King Saul sought to cover David with body armor for his fight with Goliath, the young man wisely demurred. "I just need my sling," he said (or something like that). He knew what fit him and what did not.

After Melissa talked about her mission work in Taiwan on Sunday, it struck me how well-suited she was to the job of running a VBS, making friendly contacts and conducting home Bible studies. The joy of a good fit shone from her face. On the other hand, when a married father of two told me he might go to Mexico for a short-term mission trip, I raised a red flag. "You speak no Spanish," I said, "and your duties will consist of...handing out tracts while an evangelistic troupe does street drama? Why exactly do they need you for this?" This man has a professional skill that I'm sure could be put to use somewhere. But from what he told me, the Mexico trip would demand nothing more of him than what a child could perform. My fear is that, unless he is given opportunity to exploit his skills, he might wind up as frustrated as those emergency personnel who went to areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina and were given the job of handing out fliers.

But I could be wrong. One of the things I wish I were better at is being right more often.

May God enable you to serve him in the things you're good at, sidestep the things you stink at, and perform just enough of those "jobs that anyone can do" (Jesus washed feet!) to keep you humble without causing you to think, "You know, maybe my service time could be better spent somewhere else."