Recently, I was diagnosed with a liver disease. And while that may sound quite dramatic and serious, in the short term it really only means one thing: nearly everything I've ever enjoyed eating is now on the 'Do Not Touch' list. Having been put on a low cholesterol diet, it's been amazing to learn just how much of what we put in our bodies is pure, unadulterated garbage... and how little fun eating healthy is.

After about three weeks on this restrictive diet, yesterday, I snapped - I didn't want to eat healthy anymore. Enough fruits and vegetables; enough lean meats. I wanted grease and fat and anything fried; heck, I'm 80% I would have eaten a gym sock dipped in motor oil, so long as it was deep fried in Long John Silver's batter first. So, I went to Moser's in search of my Holy Grail of grease, and found, instead, the best of both worlds:

Totino's Pizza Rolls.

You might think that I'm not allowed to eat pizza rolls on a diet which restricts my intake of cheese and eliminates my intake of processed meats like pepperoni. You'd think that, however, because you're under the false assumption that when something says it's filled with 'double pepperoni and cheese' that, in fact, it's actually filled with pepperoni and cheese. The truth is, however, that in a serving of Totino's Pizza rolls, there are only 10 milligrams of cholesterol.

For those of you who, like I was before three weeks ago, are unfamiliar with cholesterol levels in food, I'll put it like this: 10 milligrams of cholesterol is less than half the amount of cholesterol in a single slice of cheese. And when you consider the meat and sauce, a serving should have, theoretically speaking, four to five times that amount of cholesterol.

And that can only mean one thing: despite its claims, what I ate for dinner last night (and loved every single unhealthy second of it, I might add) may be a great many things: chemical food byproducts from a lab? Pure sugar and salt? Artificial flavoring? An alien life form housed in a secret underground society beneath the Totino's building? But there's one thing it is definitely not: pepperoni and cheese.

This, of course, is unsurprising; everything is not always as it seems. And that's true in the spiritual world as well as the world of your local grocer. Jesus addressed this when He told His followers,

“Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter. On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’  But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’ – Matthew 7:21-23

While it may seem that at first glance, Jesus is asking for absolute, perfect obedience, in truth, His actual intent couldn’t be further than the normal, ‘if you don’t look like our particular, narrow theological group, you’re not really saved’ way of interpreting this passage that Christians of every denomination have held to. He explicitly says that people delude themselves into believing they’re His because they’re good at performing good works and rigorously obeying rules. And when they face Him, they present, as evidence of their valid faith, their good lives and miraculous signs; they believe in their heart of hearts that if they call themselves good, and their actions look good, then they really are good. But as it turns out, they’re no more ‘good’ than whatever is in Totino’s pizza rolls is actually ‘food.’

Only those who do God’s will are a part of the Kingdom of Heaven. And what is God’s will? That we know Him. That we love Him, and by extension, other people. That we trust not in ourselves or our own goodness, but that we trust in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for our entire lives, both today and in all our tomorrows. God’s will is that we’re His.

I don’t want to fool myself, and I don’t want you to either. It’s time we stopped approaching our faith as a beauty pageant where titles and appearances are more important than character and substance. And it’s time we all admitted the humble truth: that if we’re planning on telling God He should accept us based on our own goodness, then our plan is far away from that of Jesus.

It’s as far as last night’s dinner is from what I should be eating, no matter what the label says.

Despite the contrary evidence of the following story, yes - I did indeed graduate from Bible College. I even did so with a 3.6 GPA and was Class Orator. So I give no explanation for what I am about to tell you other than apparently, I'm a moron.

One of the more difficult tasks as a preacher is keeping straight what I preach every week. Since I've been at Ashland Christian Church, I've written and delivered somewhere in the neighborhood of 180 sermons, and so you can imagine that it's important for me to not only know what I've preached before, but to carefully plan out what I will be preaching in the future. With that thought in mind, I typically line out sermons a year in advance, and then make sure that I have study materials so that I am well prepared to write a message from God's word that's more than just inappropriate jokes, movie clips, and pop culture references (though, admittedly, there are a lot of those).

Well, in May, I'm preaching through the Old Testament book of Esther. Hers is a fascinating story of unconditional devotion and sacrifice to God, even in the bleakest of circumstances. Wanting to begin my research for that series, this week I picked up the commentary I had purchased this January for just this occasion. I opened up the book, began to read, and then discovered something startling:

I had purchased a commentary on Hosea.

Now, in case you're not familiar with the history of the Old Testament, here's all you need to know: Esther was a queen who lived sometime in the 5th century B.C, while Hosea was a prophet who lived sometime in the 8th century B.C. In other words, there's little to no relation between the two characters; I didn't even have the correct gender. This is the equivalent of having to write a paper on Hillary Clinton and picking up a biography of John Adams. Needless to say, I had to buy a new commentary.

The truth is, no matter how long I preach or how many years I'm a Christian, I will always be a moron. Hopefully I'm less of a moron today than I used to be, and hopefully, I'll be less of a moron a year from now than I am today, but still - as long as I live, whenever I take stock of how much I know and don't know, I'll be delivered a large dose of humility.

That's why I'm glad that the Apostle Paul writes what he does to the ancient church at Corinth. He explains that the educated and wise people of Greece may reject the death and resurrection of Jesus as scientifically impossible, and that the nation of Israel may reject Christ on the grounds of their pre-conceived notions about their religion. But regardless of how intelligent and knowledgeable someone is, that's not what ultimately decides what is and is not true. Instead,

...to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength. - 1 Corinthians 1:24-25

Christianity is not about finding all the answers to all of life's questions; it's about trusting that what we don't have, God does. And it's not about trusting in our own perfect doctrines and theology; it's about trusting in Jesus. And it's not about having earthly wisdom; it's about adopting God's.

That's good news for me and anyone like me - the foolish morons of the world who make mistakes over and over again. After all, that means that instead of being held back by our limitations, we're free from them. And that freedom comes from a God who loves and accepts us unconditionally, and helps us to be more than we could ever be on our own.

And with him, maybe one day I'll be able to tell the difference between Hillary and Mr. Adams.

God bless Dixie.

My problems began in junior high health class when, upon presentation with the task of labeling a diagram of the female reproductive system, I promptly passed out and was taken to the nurse’s office. The issue went from ‘kind of hilarious’ to ‘really pretty annoying’ a couple years later when a discussion of testicular cancer caused me to spend fifteen minutes projectile vomiting in my school bathroom. And from then on, I’ve had my phobia about blood and medical issues. I hate going to the doctor for any reason; I’m afraid of needles, scalpels and IVs; I can barely watch medical procedures on cheesy TV shows. It’s truly humiliating and awful, especially when it pops up in public.

With that said, I’m not sure that I can properly describe how grateful I am to a Boone County Hospital employee named Dixie. With my newly diagnosed liver disease, I’ll have to monitor my the cholesterol levels in my blood, and unfortunately, there’s only one way to test: taking blood out of my body (no joke - typing that sentence made me queasy. I’m truly pathetic). This weekend, I had to go give blood, and I was horrified as usual. I whined and I moaned and I tried to bribe the hospital to just forge documentation; at that moment, I’m positive my wife was seriously contemplating divorcing me.

That’s when I met Dixie. She wasn’t like any other phlebotomist I’ve ever met. Most people do one of two things when I tell them about my issue: they blow me off, and proceed to make me suffer as they painfully take my blood. Or, they look at me with pity, tell me they feel sorry for me, and proceed to make me suffer as they painfully take my blood. Dixie did neither of these things. She listened to me whine, nodded, and then proceeded to take my blood in the gentlest way possible. I literally didn’t know it was happening, and had she not shown me the vial afterwards (causing the room to spin a bit), I wouldn’t have even believed she’d done it. It was like the Mona Lisa of drawing blood, the Sistine Chapel of needle work; Dixie was truly an artist. That might not sound like a big deal to most people, but to me, it meant the world. And when I talked to her afterwards, she made it clear that it was no accident that I didn’t feel the needle, as she takes her craft seriously and tries her best every time to make sure each person she sticks is as comfortable as possible.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about just how small we all are. I mean, there are 7 billion people on this earth, a number that’s so vast that it’s nearly impossible to grasp just what it means. And given what the world has experienced so far in 2011, from the Egyptian riots to the tragedies in Japan, it’s hard not to be smacked in the face with just how insignificant we all are. After all, I can’t change governments or natural disasters; I can barely make it through the day to day issues I face.

That’s why I’m inspired by someone like Dixie, who cares enough about her job to do her best day in and day out. She can’t do everything, but she can do something, and she can make sure that what she does is her best. And that counts, even if it only does to a few people. There was once a disciple of Jesus named Mary who, perhaps, embodied this principle better than anyone. Shortly before Jesus’ arrest and execution, she did what she could to show Him her love: anointing his head with perfume. It was a gesture of humility and honor, and while it might not have meant much to the disciples who accused her of wasting her precious resources, Jesus accepted it as worship.

You can’t do everything, but you can do something. And when you do, you can make sure that it’s your best and that it counts, even if it does to a few people. Today, you can be a better spouse, a better friend, a better employee, a better Christian. And you will be those things when you offer your best to God, in humility and for His honor.

And when you do? The people you touch will be blessed.

Growing up in the church, there were a lot of things that bugged me. There were the five minute prayers that were actually mini-sermons prefaced with a 'Dear Lord,' and finished with an 'Amen.' There were 'Special Music' renditions by teenagers who wanted to be Kid Rock or Britney Spears, or, sometimes and most terrifying, both. There were invitations after the sermon where we'd sing 'one more verse' because the preacher 'could feel' that someone wanted to come forward to become a Christian (note: this NEVER worked).

There were lots of things, I suppose, but the worst was the made up answers in class. If you've ever been in a Bible study or Sunday School class, you know what I'm talking about: someone asks a question, and the teacher (or, in the worst case scenario, a know-it-all student) will chime in with an answer that they're pulling directly from their nether regions. You know that they don't know the answer; they know they don't know the answer; and yet, despite everyone knowing that no one knows the answer, an answer is made up, given, and treated as the gospel truth anyway. It's terribly annoying because, if nothing else, these are the answer I tend to remember above all others.

I've been thinking a lot about this phenomenon recently, as I've considered this hullabaloo about Rob Bell's new book. In case you missed it, one of my favorite authors has penned a a work in which he attempts to answer the age old question of what happens after we die. Some (okay, most) people have called him a Universalist, which in the Christian world is the political equivalent to being called a 'Socialist,' while others have noted that if you take his writing in context, he actually gives little to no answer, and instead, opens the possibility of a loving God being able to do anything He wants.

All of this has made me think about those old days in Sunday School when someone would make up an answer to a question they didn't have the foggiest idea the answer to. It seems to many Christians, that there are only two answers to the following question: 'does a faithful member of another religion burn in hell for all eternity?'

Answer A: Yes.
Answer B: No.

And thus, we have our debate/argument/knock-down-drag-out fight. But I think we've all missed the point, and that there's actually a third option that responsible Christians should adhere to:

Answer C: We don't know.

Can we guess? Absolutely. Can we theorize? Yup. Can we know for sure? No. Not at all. What we 'know,' as Christians is that God loves everyone, and that Jesus died so that everyone could spend eternity with Him, and that every person who chooses to follow Jesus will do just that. And we know that sometimes we don't recognize what Jesus is doing, even when He's doing it, and that in our finite understanding of God, that we don't have all the answers.

But we DON'T know the eternal fates of billions of other God-believing, non-Jesus accepting religous people around the world. We just don't.

It seems to me that this is a case where we need to know our place. Our job is to do what Christ told us: present the gospel to the world, so that each person who becomes a disciple of Jesus can have the peace of mind to know where they're going (not to mention will have the most fulfilling life here on earth). It's our job to offer the promise of heaven, not condemn the world to hell. And it's God's job to determine, once and for all, the fates of the souls of billions of people that He loves.

At the end of the day, then, to choose 'Answer C' is to simply let God be God. And truthfully, that shouldn't bug us in the least.

Love can be really hard.

I know that sentence is hardly rocket science; after all, anyone who's ever been in any sort of romantic relationship understands that loving another person can be one of the most aggravating emotional situations in the history of mankind. But beyond the romantic-comedy definition of love (which, of course, tells us that you can fall in love, fall out of love, and make everything okay again in the span of 90 minutes), real love - the choice to put the spiritual needs of other people above your own - is, perhaps, mankind's greatest challenge.

It stands to reason, then, that when we find the key to loving one another, we should shout it from the rooftops, tell all our friends, re-define our lives... or, at the very least, watch it on Youtube.

In the above video, we see the story of Shomari Stone, a news reporter in Seattle. As he is shooting a spot for the local news, he notices a fight break out right in front of him, and in the fracas, a man in danger of being seriously hurt. Risking his own hide, he jumps in, breaks up the scuffle, and presumably saves a man from brain damage or worse. As if that weren't enough, it's revealed that the man he saved was a Caucasian covered in white supremacist and Nazi tattoos, and the man he saved him from was an African American. 

In other words, Stone showed sacrificial love to a person who could be defined, in simplest terms, as his enemy. And he did so not for publicity or recognition, but rather, because it was the right thing to do. The reason is simple: when he saw the man being beaten to a pulp, he didn't see a racist or any enemy; he didn't see a scumbag or bad person. Instead, he simply saw someone in need who, because of his intrinsic value as a human being, needed help. And because of that, his only logical recourse was to help. He didn’t stop to think if the person he was saving was worth the trouble or deserved it; he knew that what he had done could never outweigh his need for help in that moment.

This is precisely the way God sees and treats you and me. Instead of looking at us as the sum total of our sins or as rebels, He sees us as His children; instead of seeing us as lost causes or useless wastes, He sees us as worthy of any and all sacrifices to ensure our safety. In short, His attitude towards us dictates that it is only reasonable to show us love. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the ancient church at Rome,

God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God. – Romans 5:8-11

The key to love, then, is our attitudes. The easy thing – the normal, natural, instinctive thing – is to assume the worst in everyone. It’s to allow the warts and flaws and sins of people to overshadow the truth that no matter how far they’ve strayed, they’re still, at their core, made in God’s image and worthy of respect, dignity, and love. And yet when we choose to do the opposite – when we choose to emulate the God that wants everyone to know Him – we’re faced with another stark reality: each and every person, no matter how we might initially feel about them, is as valuable to God as you are. And when we look at it like that?

This love thing can be a lot easier.

'Ghandi's in hell? He is? And someone knows this for sure? Will billions and billions of people burn forever in hell? And if that's the case, how do you become one of the few?' - Rob Bell, promo video for 'Love Wins'

Apparently, heresy isn't what it used to be.

In case you aren't plugged in with the mainstream Evangelical Christian world, Rob Bell - who until last week was simply a mega-church preacher and author - is now, officially, in the eyes of all 'good Christians,' a heretic. No longer should you listen to him or consider his books food for thought; no longer should the more than 11,000 members of his church welcome to call themselves 'real' Christians; no longer is he part of those representing New Testament teaching. Nope.

From now on, he's simply a heretic.

The answer, is of course, simple: he's asking too many questions. Questions about heaven and hell; questions about other faith groups and how they relate to Jesus; questions about how our view of judgment and punishment and grace and mercy reveals how we see God at a fundamental level. Those questions are dangerous, and to ask them is to renounce the gospel.

What's that? You thought questions were a healthy part of real faith? You thought you read in the bible that God's people - from Moses to David to Habakkuk to Paul to countless martyrs - constantly tested their faith and questioned the God with whom they had a real, honest relationship with? Well, you must have read those wrong. Clearly.

After all, Jesus is our example, and He never, EVER questioned God. Not even once.

Okay, so maybe once. But only that one time.

Except it wasn't just once.

Well, I suppose then that Jesus was a heretic too. After all, He questioned God, and asking questions is clearly heresy. That's a reasonable conclusion good religious folk could come to.

I don't know if I'll agree with what Rob Bell writes in his yet to be released book, 'Love Wins.' In fact, I probably won't know until I actually read what he says. But I do know one thing: if asking questions of God is heresy, a lot more people than just Rob Bell fit the bill. And you know what?

I hope to be counted with them.

If only we could be a bit more like Him, the world would be transformed. When I look at the Cross of Christ, what I see up there is all my s--- and everybody else's. – Bono

It can be amazing the difference between how you see yourself and how you really are. For as long as I can remember, I’ve listened to music that ‘rocked,’ falling in love with the likes of Weezer and Blink-182 and the Offspring. As I grew older, my tastes obviously changed, but they expanded into the realm of obscurity and noisiness. Basically, for most of my life, I only enjoyed a song if it was,

a.)    On the radio, or,
b.)    Not incredibly loud.

So you can imagine my surprise to see the most listened to artist on my iTunes sounds like this.I know. I’m embarrassed for me. Apparently, as some point over the last few years, I’ve turned into a pansy. The 15 year old version of me is somewhere weeping, I’m sure.

With that said, though, I couldn’t have been more excited to not only see Joshua Radin (not to mention the utterly fantastic Cary Brothers) at the Blue Note last Friday, but also, win passes to meet him before the show. It was great; we watched the band sound check, got our picture with him, and I mistakenly thought I was taller than him despite pictorial evidence to the contrary. And yet, after meeting him, I was stricken with a not so profound thought:

He was just a normal dude.

Sure, he put on a fantastic show and has written music that I listen to on an almost daily basis. And absolutely, he’s nationally known, friends with Ellen DeGeneres, and undoubtedly has more luck with the ladies than every person I’ve ever known put together. But still. At the end of the day, he’s just a guy who plays some songs and wears his suspenders like every other septuagenarian on the planet.That’s a strange thing to think about, considering the celebrity obsessed society we live in. Ours is a world where teenagers getting pregnant is considered ‘reality entertainment’; where anyone with a stylist, a batch of songwriters, and the pipes of a junior choir member can be called an ‘Idol’; where it’s ‘news’ when someone refers to themselves a drug that will ‘melt your face off,’ causing your children to ‘weep over your exploded body.’ At the end of the day, every person that we read about, listen to, and fill our time with is just like us. Lady GaGa is just a chick who wears funny outfits; Glenn Beck is just a guy with a loud mouth and a camera; Jennifer Aniston is just a girl who can’t keep a steady boyfriend. They’re all just people, like you and me.

This fact has considerable application when we're talking about the one exception to this rule: Jesus. Ask a person who isn’t a Christian why they aren’t, and typically we hear something along the lines of the church being ‘hypocritical’ or ‘judgmental’ or ‘pushy.’ And it’s been my experience that even those who have educated themselves enough to have a laundry list of theological complaints and questions have, in their past, a terrible experience with a believer that caused them to decide they didn’t want any part of what that person was involved with. And truth be told, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that each person who cites these factors as reasons to run far away from Jesus were valid. But people aren’t judgmental hypocrites because they’re following Jesus; Jesus didn’t teach us to be that way, but, in fact, taught the precise opposite. Instead, when Christians make the Kingdom of God look bad, it’s simply because they’re treating Jesus as just another man.

Instead, Jesus was, and is, more than a just a guy like you and me. He’s the Son of God, divinity who, for thirty years, wore a human body and lived in ancient Roman-occupied Israel. His teaching isn’t human teaching, but instruction straight from our Creator, and if we treat it like the opinions of a person just like us, we’ll make a mockery of the community He came to set up. And if we likewise treat Him as just a ‘wise teacher’ or ‘prophet’ or even, ‘insane liar who may or may not have actually existed,’ we completely miss the point of who He is.

The truth is that if Jesus is God and you and I and everyone else are just normal people, then it doesn’t matter how His followers have represented him; at the end of the day, we’re all equally in need of His truth. As one New Testament writer put it,

For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you. – Galatians 3:26-28

When we see what Jesus has done, we should know that He did what He did for all of us, whether or not we can play guitar, go to church, or have ever lived for Him. He loves us all, equally and unconditionally, and He wants the best for us. It can be amazing the difference between how you see yourself and how you really are…

… but it’s even more amazing to see how God sees us.