Today marks my fifth wedding anniversary. I can honestly say I am more in love with my wife today than I was five years ago. Here are some reflections on marriage five years later. In another five years, I may look back on this list and realize how naïve I was. I hope not though.
“In sickness and in health” can really foul up your “for richer or for poorer.”
You will forget your wedding vows, but you’ll never forget your wife’s smile.
Sometimes the lowest points in life are the highest points in marriage.
If you want to realize how selfish you are, get married. If you’d rather not know that about yourself, stay single.
If “I love you” is the foundation, “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you” are the bricks and mortar.
There’s no better way to learn your spouse’s heart than to pray together.
Sometimes it’s more about commitment than love.
Men and women are different. Not wrong, just different.
Men and women think differently. Not wrong, just different.
Men are visual. If it is round and curvy, it has our attention. Women are aural. They like to hear themselves talk. Consequently, they will get mad if we’re looking at that which is round and curvy while they are talking.
God laughs when you make plans.
You don’t need kids to be a happy family.
There are always new things to discover about each other.
Five years ago, it was fascinating to me just to watch her sleep. Five years later, that hasn’t changed.
Okay, that’s enough being mushy for at least another five years.
Sometimes I’ll come across a link that I just have to share. This one is a blog from someone who actually “gets it” more than most Christians do. (And he isn’t one.) It appears some religious folks were having a cookout and then Jesus showed up, but he showed up more in the blogger’s actions than in the church people. Intrigued yet? Take a look.
Did Jesus, who had a hand in the creation of man, command us to do something anatomically impossible? We are told in the Sermon on the Mount that if someone strikes us on the cheek, that we need to turn the other cheek and get ready to be hit again. What happens when I run out of cheeks? I only have two. Is it ever appropriate for me to fight back?
Some of you say the answer is no. You’re going to tell me that fighting back will hurt my witness or that Christ withstood a scourging and a crucifixion and didn’t do squat about it, and if he can do all of that for me, I should be able to take a few hits on this earth. You’re also going to remind me that Jesus said we could expect no less than to be beheaded for following Him. To that end, I agree with you. But I don’t think Jesus intended for us to be passive 100 percent of the time. I agree that if the world beats us down and takes all we have and leaves us with just the shirts on our backs we should offer them that, too. I understand that persecution is inevitable and we should handle it with grace.
But what about when it isn’t the world? What about when it is from within the church? How many times can we turn the other cheek when one of our so-called brothers or sisters has decided to lay the smackdown on us?
How long do we have to be nice and at what point do we start demanding accountability? My wife has worked for a couple of Christian organizations. One of them didn’t like that she was taking anti- depressants and told her to hit the road. Doing that is illegal, but we’re not supposed to sue other believers, so we took it and went away.
Now that she’s been diagnosed with a chronic illness, her current employer has asked that she re-consider her employment. No doctor has said she can’t work, and her illness is covered under Americans with disabilities. I don’t have another cheek to turn. Besides, wouldn’t throwing up our hands and moving on send the message that it’s okay for Christians to act above the law?
Where did we get the idea that being a Christian means we always have to be nice? Is it because Jesus told us to love one another? Doesn’t love sometimes correct? Is it because Jesus went to the cross passively?
Might I remind you that the same Jesus who went passively to the cross, upon seeing his fellow Jews in the Temple making a mockery out of the sacrifice ordained by His Father, made a whip and unloaded a can of whoop-ass all over his Father’s house. Jesus took it from the world, but he held the religious accountable.
I’m tired of being nice. I’m tired of just letting people who claim the name of Christ judge people, treat them horribly, act unethically, break laws that even the worst of secular companies follows, all because they think they are “different” or “set apart.” Wrong is wrong. I’m tired of people thinking they are right to do wrong to others. I am tired of phony accountability, where we open in prayer, sit in a room and talk about how we were hurt, hold hands and sing kum-ba-ya, pray again and forget anything ever happened.
Christians who break the law should face due process. We are still held accountable to the laws of whatever land we live in. Christians who wrong other Christians should face church discipline, and Christians who watch all of this going on should stand up and do something instead of just saying, “Well, I’m sure God has something better planned for you. I’ll be praying for you.”
For the passive onlookers who sit and watch the injustices committed by modern Christianity, let me ask you a question… Would Jesus do that? Would he ignore the fact that some of his people are oppressing others? Or would he raise a stink and drive them out?
It may “hurt our witness” to stand and fight when we feel it is the right time, but do you have any idea how much more it hurts our witness when people see our leaders acting unethically and we do nothing about it?
I joined a Facebook group today. I don’t know why I did it– I think they’re dumb, but on occasion one will catch my eye. This one was named “Being A Christian Does Not Mean You Have To Be Cheesy.” Great title. It basically mocks the subculture Christians have created for themselves. We have our own t- shirts, music, bumper stickers, products, etc., and a lot of times if you’re not into all of these fine products, other Christians will kind of look down on you for it. It’s a good thing to point out, but that isn’t what caught my eye.
They’ve posted pictures of various “Christian” products. I’m not going to go through all of them (if you’re interested you can join the group,) but I will throw my opinion in on some of them, because they’re so off-the-wall they should be shared. Let’s start with the T-shirts.
“God Wants You To be Saved!” So… First, we have another fine example of snatching someone else’s logo so we can make God look cool. I’m really not sure he needs our help on that. He’s done more awesome things in the universe than YouTube. Maybe he appreciates the help… I don’t know.
For those who have been trapped in a Christian bubble for so long they’ve started to prune, let me run down what someone who isn’t a Christian might think when they see this.
1.) Christians are un- original. They have to copy someone else’s logo.
2.) Christians are only interested in getting people “saved.” They don’t care about me as a person.
3.) Saved from what? Is a flood coming? Global warming?
4.) The person wearing this shirt thinks YouTube is evil. The shirt implies that they think people who watch YouTube are going to hell.
5.) If someone wearing this shirt approaches me, I need to run because all they want to do is try to save me and stop me from watching videos on one of my favorite websites.
My advice: If you want to instantly stop bearing any fruit and see to it that only Christians talk to you, wear this shirt.
“Jesus- Life’s Problems: One Solution- It’s Just That Easy” Can I have whoever designed this T-shirt’s life? Clearly they haven’t been living in the real world. Maybe if we swapped lives, I could sleep better at night. To someone who isn’t a Christian, this shirt is about as convincing as saying, “Because the Bible says so.”
Let’s stop playing childish games. Jesus is not a magic pill you can take to make all of your problems go away. He’s a savior not a sedative. Do you want to know what Jesus really is? He is a real person who really lived. He is a real God who came to earth as a man because life was so hard and so bad that we couldn’t take care of our problems by ourselves. It required God leaving his throne and coming to clean our mess with his own blood. If the world’s problems are so big they can only be solved by God himself shedding blood, we can expect that nothing will be easy.
In fact, Jesus says that in this world we will have trouble. He will give us peace, and hear our prayers and give us strength, but life is not easy. There is no magic Bible verse you can turn to that will fix all of your problems. If you need a sedative take a sedative, but don’t cheapen the message of Christ by trying to make him some sort of magic pill.
“Jesus is My Car Insurance” You stupid, stupid moron. Get off the road before you kill somebody. When you rear-end someone because you had both hands in the air listening to praise music with your eyes closed, try explaining to the driver whose neck you just broke that Jesus will be providing the funding for their car and their medical expenses.
You will find yourself in debt and in prison, which is probably going to be quite a shock, but a necessary learning experience for you. What is the point of this anyway? Are you saying that Jesus is going to comphensate for your poor driving skills? Has he now become an excuse for not learning how to drive? It really isn’t cute or funny. This has to be lamest Christian product I’ve ever seen.
“Jesus Hates It When You Smoke!” The next time you’re ready to have a Holy Smoke, this ashtray is for you. Where do I begin? Okay, first of all, if Jesus could forgive an adulteress and the people who nailed him to a cross, I’m pretty sure he’s not fuming with rage over someone’s decision to light up.
The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about what Jesus thinks of smoking, but I can tell you some of the things he hates. He hates it when his people turn his father’s house into a den of theives. He hates it when people are judgmental and when they go around the world to win a convert but won’t help their neighbor who is struggling.
The point of this product is obviously to produce guilt in any of your friends who smoke. If a person smokes they have an addiction. Addictions are serious and people really struggle with them for years. Instead of judging your friend who is addicted to something, how about loving them and encouraging them? Isn’t that what Jesus would really have you do? The truth about Jesus and smoking is this: Jesus loves you if you smoke. Jesus loves you if you drink. Jesus loves you if you commit adultery. Jesus loves you if you’re gay. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Is it just me, or does modern Christianity seem obsessed with spiritual gifts? Churches hold classes and seminars on discovering your spiritual gifts, we have tests we can take to tell if we’re a leader, a teacher or if we have the gift of hospitality. Books are written on them, sermons are preached, and sometimes churches will question someone’s calling until it is backed up by the results of the almighty “gift test.”
Then, we tell each other what our gifts are, and we go out into the community using our spiritual gifts. We argue amongst ourselves about what is a gift and what isn’t based on Scripture. We argue over if speaking in tongues is a gift we should all have, some should have, or if there was a divine expiration date set on this confusing gift.
I think we might be missing the boat. Here’s why. Take a look at 1 Corinthians 13:1-3.
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
My point? Ask most Christians what their spiritual gifts are, and they’ll probably be able to tell you. If they can’t, ask them if spiritual gifts are important and they’ll say “yes.”
Ask someone who is not a Christian if Christians are people of love and they will say “no.” Collectively, we’ve flunked the love test. If I have a gift of service and go to a soup kitchen and look down on the homeless and do not love them, I’ve missed the entire point of serving. If I see the meal I make for my friend who just had surgery as an obligation and rush through it and do not really love my friend, I’ve missed the point of a gift of hospitality. If I lead, but think the people I lead are fickle, immature and clueless and I don’t have compassion or understanding for them, I have no concept of the reason God gave a gift of leadership.
We don’t love. We don’t love the world and we don’t love each other, and love is the primary characteristic followers of Christ are supposed to be known by. Instead of teaching about gifts, let’s go to church and teach and learn about love. Let’s master love.
You know what I’m willing to bet?
I bet if we truly learned how to love, we would have compassion for the people we are called to, and we would through that love for a certain group or type of person discover what God has called us to do. Once the calling is discovered, the gifts would be revealed. We wouldn’t need to take a test, it would be evident by the tug of God on a compassionate heart that breaks for other people.
I spend most of my day editing in some form or another. By the time I get home in the evening, I’ve had enough of words, so it takes something special to pique my interest enough to actually read a book. Right now, I’m reading two books. It’s taking me a while to get through them because I don’t devote a great deal of time to reading, but these books are so good and rich that not only am I reading them, I’m writing about them. They are “unChristian” by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, and “What Was I Thinking?: Things I’ve Learned Since I Knew It All,” by Steve Brown.
The premise of this book is that Christianity has an image problem. It does. I could have told the author’s that before they went and did all that research, but I’m glad somebody bothered to actually do the research to prove it. The authors are from the Barna research group, and have spent years interviewing non-Christians to find out what their perception of Christianity is.
The results? The majority of the people interviewed don’t have a problem with religion. They don’t have a problem with God or the Bible. They don’t have a problem with Jesus, in fact they think he’s a pretty likable fellow. Their perception of Christianity though is that the majority of Christians act in ways that are, well… unChristian.
The book points out that the church as a whole is known for being anti-gay, too political, and more concerned with making converts than with loving people. It’s a must-read for Christians. It’s eye-opening, even for a cynic like me. I will warn that it is a bit hard to read because it will break your heart finding out how Christians are perceived and what kind of message we are sending to the outside world without even thinking about it.
Steve Brown is a great American. He’s in his 60′s or 70′s and is, as he puts it, an old preacher who is tired of religion. I’ve heard him preach on several occasions and it is the most authentic, and most meaningful teaching I think I’ve ever heard. The reason is, he has learned life-changing truths about God through experience.
Chapter titles for this book include, “God is a lot bigger than I thought he was,” “People are a lot worse than I thought they were,” and “People are a lot better than I thought they were.”
This book also addresses some of the issues Christianity needs to deal with. In one section, entitled “The Bible is not a magic pill,” the author talks about how so many Christians just tell people who are hurting to read the Bible and think that is going to solve all their problems. Then, he goes on to talk about how a lot of Christians have made an idol out of the Bible. I’ve often thought that myself, but I haven’t really had the courage to say it. It needs to be said though.
This book, like all of Steve Brown’s books is incredibly eye -opening. If you really want to see the Christian life in a new light, you can’t miss this book.
In the last three months I have become terrified of God.
It all started with a trip to the emergency room. I was functioning relatively normally one evening when all of a sudden the chest pains started up and then my lungs hurt when I tried to breathe. It felt an awful lot like a heart-attack and the fear of dying before age 30 made me hyperventilate all the way to the hospital.
The drugs calmed me down enough to realize I wasn’t dying. About three days later, I had a bit of a cancer scare, but they were able to rule that out. Turns out I suffer from a condition I can’t pronounce that is activated by stress. So, I’m having to make lifestyle changes and learn how to manage stress.
Just when I thought I had it handled – we joined a gym, I was putting in less hours at work, and the pain was gone – my wife had to take an unexpected Saturday trip to the ER. It was horrifying watching my wife lay in a hospital bed, with needles and tubes and an IV bag. She looked weaker than I had ever seen and every time the medication wore off she was in horrible pain. I thought I was going to lose her and the thought alone left me twice as terrified as I was when I was in the same boat.
After about five days, they diagnosed her with Crohn’s Disease. It’s going to be an uphill battle for both of us. Half of what she eats will make her sick and during the flare ups, she won’t have any energy. There may be surgeries and hospitalizations ahead. It’s bad news. If there’s a bright side, I haven’t found it yet.
As I said earlier, the whole experience has left me terrified of God. Not mad at him. Just terrified. I have seen his awesome power and I’ve realized what was head knowledge before. God is big and mighty and powerful and man is small and fragile.
Life hurts right now and it’s hard to pray. When life is bad, it is so hard to really believe that God is good. Ironically, this experience has brought both of us so much closer to God. Doubts and unanswered questions force faith and trust. Despite the turmoil, I feel comforted.
It reminds me of a line from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. One of the kids asks the beaver if Aslon, the great lion, is safe. The beaver’s response is “Safe? ‘Course he ain’t safe! But he’s good!”
Life hasn’t been “safe” in the last few months. Every time my wife or I turn around, one of us is in the hospital. Just when we think life has settled down, the storm gets worse. Safe is not a word I would use to describe it. But, even though it is hard to see at times, I know God is good. I can see it in the friends who have called, written, visited and helped. I can see it in the meals people have sent. I can see it in the number of people who have been praying for us. I can feel it in the way my wife and I have grown to love each other even more than we ever thought possible because of these setbacks.
Still… I’m terrified. I think this is what Paul means when he urges fellow believers to work out their salvation with “fear and trembling.” I have certainly known fear and I have known trembling these last few months. I have met a God who is infinitely more powerful than I ever thought. But I’ve also met a God who is concerned for my deepest needs even when I don’t know what I need.
“God Wants You To be Saved!”
“Jesus- Life’s Problems: One Solution- It’s Just That Easy”
“Jesus is My Car Insurance”