Adam and Eve had it good! Living together (naked, no less!), in perfect union with each other and God in a garden whose name meant “delight.” No guilt, no shame, no grief, and no death.

There was only one restriction: don’t eat of the fruit of a specific tree. In a garden full of “yeses’ there was only one ‘no.’ Of course, we know how the story goes. The tempter comes and his first move is to direct their attention to the one thing they couldn’t  have.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Human nature hasn’t changed much since then. We can have a life full of blessing, but our temptation will still be to focus on what we don’t have or can’t do.  Why is it that ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are two of the hardest words to teach our kids?

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Please don't answer (unless the answer is yes)...I'm just testing this sucker to see if it works. ...

Though the vast majority of church leadership is male, the primary expressions of worship and spirituality are female. I don't love my dad or my friends by closing my eyes and raising my hands to the sky while singing, "I'm desperate for you," or "You are the air I breathe.' I can do this toward God sometimes, but at other times, I'd like to worship Him a little more actively. I don't naturally gravitate toward having quiet times with Jesus, where I simply bask in His love. My biological dad and I don't bask in each other's love. We go fishing. I'd like to go fishing with Jesus.

More than any recent Christian author, John Eldredge has tapped into this reality. He reminds us of the fierce and wild God of the Scriptures and the untamed revolutionary named Jesus, both of whom encourage men to worship as men.

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Starting in Genesis 1, God teaches us something important: God loves what He has made. He delights, rejoices, and revels in it. To be a part of God's creation is a wonderful thing, and human beings stand at the top of it all. Every other living thing in Genesis 1 is made "according to its [own] kind." Only human beings are made as an expression of God's kind--that is, in His image.

The literary structure of Genesis 1 changes at the creation of humanity. Instead of a divine command, "Let there be man and woman," we read about God's creative process and the material He used to create man and woman. These stylistic changes are to show us that human beings have a special place in creation and that they are uniquely able to relate to God and to each other.

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Against those who place little value on human life and dignity, we assert the fundamental truth that all human beings are made in God's image and are worthy of respect and protection. But against those who assign humanity an almost godlike status, we remind ourselves that our freedom is limited and that or personhood is ultimately God's gift to us.

Men were made in God's image. The Hebrew words for image (tselem) and likeness (demuth) both refer to the practice of Ancient Near Eastern kings building or carving out images of themselves in order to represent their power and authority over their far-flung empires, even if they were not physically present. These images represented the absolute dominion of the ruler over the areas he controlled.

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After college, I stumbled into the opening pages of the Bible and read the story i had often seen reenacted on the Sunday school flannel-graph board but had not yet fully understood:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:26-27).

The poetry and rhythm of Genesis 1 culminate in this declaration of God to create humanity. As part of the material, physical creation, human beings are declared to be "very good." It is a good thing to be creaturely--to be made of physical stuff. Yet for centuries after the coming of Jesus, the early church had to fight against teachings that diminised the role of the physical world and that inappropriately elevated the spiritual world.

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I read a great definition of "joy" today:

Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God's will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign." (Barbara Brown Taylor, from A Deadly Mix)

I absolutely love Jesus Christ. I don't think he is a figment or a crutch or some religious hangover. I think he is real and alive and wonderfully engaged in the world today. But, I have serious problems with the religion that bears His name. As a pastor, I have been a follower of Christ as well as a follower of Christianity. And I can't help notice there is a growing difference between the two. (Maybe that difference has always been there and I've just never seen it until now. Maybe each new generation must come to grips with this difference, as the church grows increasingly removed from its founder.)

My primary contention is this: Much of what passes for modern, western Christianity isn't of Jesus. We can (and do) lose Jesus right in the middle of prayer meetings and worship services. We can miss him in the Bible and in the church. As the Scriptures remind us, not all worship is pleasing to God, not all church services are attended by Jesus, not all teaching is sound teaching, and not all prayer is "in Jesus's name."

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