<

I like the show the Office. I like Rainn Wilson who plays Dwight Schrute. He is hilarious. I like Oprah. But I can't stand the false doctrine that Oprah and Rainn promote.  

I wrote my book, Why Trust Jesus? and the book co-authored with Josh McDowell, "O" God for Christians!  Sadly, some of my peers have bought into a "social gospel" so much that we often feel apathetic to speak out against religious pluralism.  The Baha'i faith that Rainn holds to may seem open minded and inclusive, but in reality is very exclusive. For example, teachers of the Baha'i faith deny the doctrine of the Trinity. They are "intolerant" of it.

Now, in my book, I commend Oprah for reaching out to the poor. That's a good work. James, in chapter one, refers to taking care of orphans and widows as "pure religion." But religion is not the "gospel" and it won't take anyone into heaven. The so-called "New Spirituality" and pantheistic books that Oprah has endorses like Eckart Tolle's The Power of Now and Rhonda Byrne's The Secret are selling just as much as the books of New Atheists. We might not watch her show, but this woman has influence.  Watch this video of Oprah and Rainn Wilson (aka Dwight Schute), If you were sitting in a chair next to Oprah, how would you respond? What would you ask her? How would you present the true Gospel?

continue reading

Maybe I’m wholly alone in what I am about to write here. Maybe I quit playing baseball too early and coached only those who are too young.

In a “meaningless” spring training game on Thursday, San Francisco Giants pitcher Barry Zito, normally a deeply philosophical former Cy Young Award winner, drilled Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Prince Fielder in the back. It was not an accident.

You see, it comes to this. Last September, when the games did count and the Brewers and Giants were involved in a wild card chase, Fielder hit a walk-off home run against the Giants. Only Fielder’s teammates didn’t walk off. They fell down.

In a preconceived celebration, Fielder rounded the bases and jumped with his 270-pound frame on home plate. At that moment, his waiting teammates all fell over backward, like bowling pins struck down at the hand of Tom Smallwood (now there’s a guy with a narrative!).

continue reading

So maybe you have seen this, but during breakfast today with my kids this little song came on featuring Jason Mraz, Elmo and the need to “open up the doors and go outside.” 

 

I have written on this in other places, but to me the heart of environmentalism is the realization that nature connects us to the heart and attributes of God.

 

This is a great little expression of that in a format my kids just loved.

Yesterday, as I made some phone calls to a couple different friends, a verse was brought to my attention a couple different times (and also through an excellent blog by John Barry "Worry is Like a Dancing Bear").  This verse has been a favorite of mine for quite some time, but this morning I went back and read it again.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?  And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?...indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.  But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  So do not worry aobut tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.  Today’s trouble is enough for today.”  (Matthew 6:25-34)

Looking back a bit farther in Matthew 6 we find “The Lord’s Prayer.”  In it, there is the phrase, “give us this day our daily bread.”  

Today, as I sit and write, I can hear the birds singing outside.  They sing in an outside where it has been cold and dark and dead for the last several months here in Idaho.  Now, we are beginning to see signs of life.  We are beginning to see some new green grass grow, and some buds peeking out of branches.  The sun has been out for several days and we have played outside.

The birds of the air are taken care of even through winter.  In the life of my family, we have experienced a winter.  But, God has been so faithful to provide us daily bread, gently bringing us along through the winter to a place where we can see some light and growth as we feel we are nearing the spring.

We do not know what God has in store for each of our lives.  However, we do know that we can trust this one who is so faithful to provide for our needs, bringing daily bread, and taking care of our needs.  

Dear God, let us not forget the winters in our lives, and let us not forget your magnificent provisions that are more than we can ask or imagine.  Forgive us of our worrying and fretting.  Let us remember these times, and be an instrument of grace to others as they traverse through winters.  Amen.

continue reading

I’ve determined there are three effective methods of getting widespread attention: death, blasphemy, and public nudity.

David Blaine and Harry Houdini, generations apart, capitalized on our fear of death by flirting with it during dangerous stunts, and in 1999 (long before Paranormal Activity made grainy realism super-scary), the marketing geniuses for Blair Witch Project pretended to release real life footage of young people being murdered in the forest. Of course, if Jimmy Hoffa or Tupac were to rise from the dead tomorrow, that might be the best stunt ever.

The death trick always works, but blasphemy gets equal press, as Salman Rushdie knows too well.  Lindsay Lohan and her Christ-ish photograph (complete with crown of thorns and arms outstretched) or Madonna’s now-classic blending of Catholic imagery and eroticism are cheap stunts that cost the public millions in itunes and tabloid subscriptions.

continue reading

I just finished a book. It’s called The War of Art, which is not to be mistaken with Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Author Steven Pressfield is a former marine, so there is a sense of warring alluded in the book, but nothing that will compel you to dust off your Risk board game. And not that many people want to play Risk anyway.

Okay, back to my point. There’s a captivating line from the book that reads, “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” If you want me to fully comprehend the whole notion of Resistance, I would suggest you buy the book, but basically, Resistance is the thing that stops you from releasing your creative work.

During a snow day I had last week, I was faced with many options. Shovel, sled, sleep, schlep, surf the Internet and many other activities that may or may not start with the letter S. The one thing I found hardest to do was “silence” the day. My Resistance was the inability to just get quiet, soak in the moment for more than a moment and actually ask God, “What’s up?”

continue reading

Recently, upon reading an article titled "International Development: Christian Reflections on Today's Competing Theory," I was struck by what perhaps thousands of people before me have come to learn; oftentimes in an attempt to intellectualize a subject, we forget the heart of it. Now, as a professor and a lifelong learner, I'm all about intellectual discussion, however, as Christians we can never be content to leave the discussion as mere theory when the lives of God's children are involved. What is the Christian response to competing international development theories? And more specifically, how does it impact that very practical business of helping those around the world? 

As with many questions of scholarly discussion, there are really two distinct camps.

I'm really looking forward to joining the ladies at Big Island Baptist Church in central Virginia March 19-20! If you're close by, join us! Click here to register.

 

Geoffrey Chaucer, the guy who might have had Shakespeare’s reputation if Will hadn’t done his thing so brilliantly, wrote this little book you might have heard about. His magnum opus is, of course, The Canterbury Tales, and its prologue reads like 13^th century reality television, a sort of Real World for Medieval England. Chaucer examines his own society in all its wacky diversity and throws twenty-seven characters together on a journey, many of them religious. They are, supposedly, going to pay homage to a slain archbishop, but it's just a set up. We're more interested in the bufoonery on display than the pilgrimage itself.

As I see it, Chaucer’s pilgrims are the perfect mirror of his society.  They are alternately perverse, holy, hypocritical, promiscuous, chaste, and hilarious. The Roman Catholic Church is the target of much of his fun, but he also takes a shot at gender roles, infidelity, body building, stupidity, and farting, among other targets. It’s a hoot, let me tell you.

In re-reading Chaucer, I am impressed by his wit. It can’t be missed. Had Chaucer’s Christian characters all been scoundrels, I would’ve dismissed him as a nasty critic, only eager to expose the religious misfits and hypocrites. But Chaucer’s genius is even better displayed in his evenhanded treatment of the world he observes. Consider this description of the humble Parson, a country pastor whose love of his congregation showcases the transformation of Christ in a perverse world:

He was a shepherd and not mercenary.