The cover art for my novel came in this morning. “Excited” doesn’t even really cover it. Hopefully the Kickstarter campaign will be up and running by Tuesday…
“God told me to…”
When Rick Perry ran for President, he said, “I’m getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I’ve been called to do.” This became something easily caricatured by his political opponents. The usual parody went something like, “God told me I’m going to be President.”
Many people who love Jesus at some point experience a feeling of being led by God to do something. But there’s a richness of meaning surrounding that which often goes unexplained. As a consequence, many people who don’t believe see the idea of “God told me to” as ridiculous.
When God leads a person to a certain course of action, his plan may be completely different from the human plan. For example, if God did call Rick Perry to run for President, his purposes may have had nothing to do with Rick Perry actually becoming President (obviously). Perhaps, somewhere along the campaign trail, there was a person who heard Rick Perry call Herman Cain his brother, and asked why. Perhaps that person learned that, often though we may fail, believers try to treat each other as brothers and sisters — as family. And perhaps that person’s behavior towards his fellow man changed because of that.
Maybe — in our hypothetical situation — that person might have been a cruel boss of a large company beforehand. Maybe he was even a racist. And maybe he made a change to his behavior that resulted in his employees of all races being treated better.
Maybe that was what God wanted. And He achieved it by leading Rick Perry into a situation where he could model brotherly love in general, and between people of different races in particular.
It’s important for believers to remember that those who don’t share our culture often don’t get what we’re talking about. Jesus is at the center of our lives, and we think about him almost all the time. Other people don’t invest that much in it. Things that we’ve thought about constantly, they may never have considered.
It’s equally important to encourage people who don’t know Jesus yet to look deeper, rather than laughing at a surface-level statement that doesn’t seem to make sense at first.
Understanding is better than mockery.
Death of Secrets
My friends, 2014 is the year I finally live out my dream. I’m publishing a novel! Death of Secrets is already written, and will be available by the end of January. Watch for a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the marketing, and Facebook and Twitter feeds for updates about the book. I’m thrilled to be finally doing this, and I can’t wait for you all to read it.
What’s it about? I’m glad you asked!
What if our government went beyond monitoring e-mail and phone traffic? What if the surveillance state exceeded anything we’ve imagined so far. What if there were no secrets at all?
Kathy Kelver is an innocent bystander who becomes a witness to murder. Mike Vincent is a Member of Congress who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. Their paths will cross as they uncover a new technology with implications so chilling it would represent the end of privacy as we know it.
Together, Mike and Kathy find themselves running for their lives as they try to save the country from the death of secrets.
Youtube Video
Go through it with them
When God looks at humans, and sees how we act, I can only imagine that it’s frustrating for him. Over and over, we make the wrong choices. We make choices that are going to hurt us.
But he doesn’t stop us from making those choices. He wants us to be free. He wants us to make our own choices. He just longs for us to make the right choice.
What do you do, when someone you love is doing something that’s not right? You can force them to stop, but that’s not what God would do. You can abandon them to go it alone, but that’s not what God would do.
Or you can walk through it with them, love them, and intercede for them.
When God saw humans choosing temporary pleasure over eternity with him, he walked through it with us. He became one of us, and endured the consequences alongside us.
It’s a good guide for us, too, when we see our loved ones making choices we don’t like. Love them, endure the consequences with them, and never leave them.
Speaking the truth in love
In Ephesians 4:15, God says, paraphrasing, “speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become the mature body of Christ.”
Now, he could have said, “Loving, we will grow to become the mature body.” He could also have said, “speaking the truth, we will grow to become one body.” But he didn’t. He said both. God said it requires both speaking the truth and doing it with love in order to become mature.
I say this because there are many Christians who believe telling people the truth about what’s a sin is the best way to love your neighbor. But if telling the truth was exactly equal to loving, I don’t believe that God would have used both words in Ephesians 4:15. God does nothing without reason. He chose to specify “telling the truth with love” rather than just “telling the truth,” and therefore I believe there must be a distinction.
Scripturally, it must be possible to tell the truth in an unloving way.
What that means for us is simple: we have to be careful how we speak. If you’re telling the truth about sin and the person you’re telling it to doesn’t feel loved, there is room to do better.
God loves the people who are biased against you.
A lot of my fellow conservatives were right in the thick of the Laura Lundquist business on twitter. All night I fought the temptation to join the piling on. In the end I kept silent, because whatever her biases may or may not be, God loves her.
Media bias consists not of individuals’s politics. We all have political leanings, it’s not possible for there to be exceptions, even among reporters. Media bias consists in the fact that almost the only people ever hired by major dailies come out of one particular culture – a culture that by and large believes the only way to hold opposing views is to be an intellectual inferior or to be uneducated.
We need to change that culture, not change one reporter. And the best way to change the culture is to act in such a way that they have no choice but to see us as real human beings, not caricatures.
Love will accomplish that, so I did my best to act with love. Funny how often the best way to love someone is just keep your mouth shut.
When you are reviled
First Peter chapter 2 says this about Jesus: When he was reviled, he did not revile in return.
That’s a pretty clear instruction for people working in politics these days. It’s pretty easy to find the Al Frankens or Ann Coulters or Rush Limbaughs or Jon Stewarts of the world mocking you. And believe me, I know: when you’re mocked, the desire to mock back can rise up stronger than anything. “I know I’m supposed to turn the other cheek, but just let me say this one little thing Lord…”
When Jesus was mocked, he did not mock in return.
We want to prove we’re smarter by putting down the other side way harder than they put us down. We want it bad. But that’s not what Jesus wants.
Why do this?
Today it’s being reported that the Sign interpretation services provided at Nelson Mandela’s funeral were completely fake. That makes me sad and embarrassed.
I used to work in the Deaf community for a few years. I still have very warm memories of the first time I held my own conversation from start to finish in Sign, with no interpreter. At my best I was a long ways from fluent. No one would — or should — ever ask me to interpret. But I always smile when I see ASL or SEE being used. We have a sign interpreter at my church. Sometimes I get distracted, watching her and trying to catch phrases or words as I remember them.
Sign interpreters — real ones — are not impossible to find. Not by a long shot. And though the cost of a fully trained and certified interpreter might be intimidating for many small businesses, it’s not even noticeable by government standards.
I don’t know what happened. I could understand zero Sign interpretation if there were no request for it. But requested or not, your choices should be between real Sign interpreters or zero Sign interpreters. I don’t know how “fake sign language” ever got onto the menu of choices.
Sin
I have trouble with the word sin. It feels judgmental. I am so much happier saying, “We all make mistakes” or “We all screw up” or even “we all do things wrong.” But as soon as I have to say, “We all sin,” I’m afraid to say that to someone who isn’t already following Jesus, for fear it will put them off.
But, as I was watching Billy Graham’s “The Cross” video with some friends last Sunday, he said something that got through to me. “The cross is an offense.” The cross is supposed to offend people.
It’s not supposed to be easy to hear, “I did morally unacceptable things, and he died because of that.” No one wants that consequence. No one wants to confront the fact that because of something I did, someone else died.
Once we know Jesus and love him, everything about that changes. Once we know Jesus, we understand it’s washed clean. All the bad stuff, all the consequences — all of them white as snow.
But before we know that, being confronted with the reality of those consequences makes us want to turn away. The word sin is offensive and judgmental for a reason. It’s part of the process of wanting freedom from the past.