This week Daniel Radcliffe and Demi Moore--with personal demons to spare--have again shown how celebrity confessions redefine redemption for a public community. I always believed forgiveness was an act of God wherein a man’s spirit is made right again through divine mercy. Yet the new faith for a secular world has made public opinion the modern high priest: we allow you to do bad things--and then forgive you for it--as long as a self-effacing confession comes with it.

It’s Public Relations 101: If You Judge Yourself, We Won’t.  High profile confessors fare much better than high profile defenders. If you cop to your sins quickly in this country, you’re beloved. Radcliffe, who recounts struggling with alcohol as a young actor in the spotlight, humbly admits his faults this week and suddenly the public swoons over his maturity. Moore, who openly confesses a life of self-destruction and narcissism, is surrounded by supporters who wish her a safe passage. 

Recently, Mark and I had a conference call with a pastor of a large church to pick his brain on some potential writing projects. As he spoke wisdom poured out of his mouth and one of his comments struck me, “God just doesn’t seem real to a lot of people any more.” 

He believed a big reason why is due to our avoidance of suffering.

Okay – I don’t like to suffer and I’m guilty of doing my best to rid it in my life and my family’s life. I want everything to be fun, easy-going and feel-good. However, by doing this, am I missing out on an opportunity to experience God in a new and deeper way?

Perhaps I’m not alone in dodging suffering. Our culture has made it convenient for us. If something hurts, we can numb it with a pill. Our mobile and transient lifestyle allows us to escape stressful relationships. We can change churches, schools, jobs, even marriages instead of dealing with the issue.

N.D. Wilson’s new “bookumentary” DVD, Notes From the Tilt-a-Whirl, is sort of like the Waking Life of Christian apologetics films. And by that I mean, it’s full of awe, curiosity, philosophizing, and a lot of talking about ideas. Like the contemplative films of Richard Linklater (Waking Life, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset), Wilson’s film–inspired by his 2009 book of the same title–is heavy on heady, talky vignettes. It’s essentially a philosophy/apologetics education condensed into a series of 3-4 minute soliloquies and poetic riffs on huge ideas, packaged amidst images of beauty and a liturgical ambience.

The rhetorical question of “Where’s God today?” makes me ask the question “Why isn’t the Church making this clear?” If it’s our duty as Christians to show others who God is by living like Jesus—in love, kindness, and generosity—then the fact that this question is being asked reflects poorly on us, not God. We struggle with answering it because we, as Christian communities, are struggling with our faith.

An example: There is enough wealth in the world to solve world hunger and the water crisis, even in the midst of famines in places like the Horn of Africa.

Kien Lam understands big and small. 

For one year, over 17 countries, he photographed his travel adventures, creating time lapse video of the 6,000 pictures he brought home. To watch it is to experience the incongruity of big and small, to see the breadth of the globe and the tiny human stories within it. It is a montage of God’s vast, breathtaking creation mixed with the microcosms of human life. 

I love Lam’s vision. For some reason, the juxtaposition of big and small reminds me of the world God has given to me. On some days God asks me to meditate on his cosmos, and on other days he wants me mop the church floor at some extraordinarily precise coordinates in Clovis, California. I have no doubt God asks me to think big and small.

Every now and then I’m asked by a publisher to do a book review. Not long ago, Zondervan offered to send me the book Every Body Matters by Gary Thomas for free if I’d be to write a blog post about it. Well, uh…yeah! I love to read and stuff that is free. Plus the topic of the book intrigued me.

The title is a play on words – it’s not talking about everybody but every body matters. Thomas connects our spiritual being with our physical body. When you take care of your body with healthy eating and physical exercise, you’re empowering your spirit with zeal to do good work for God.

Thomas is quick to point out that he’s not promoting one to build his or her body to be admired by others, but instead to strengthen it in order to serve God.

Worry and anxiety is a driving force in our thought patterns and consequently our spirituality. We’re so concerned with deciphering right from wrong that fear becomes our ally rather than the Spirit, and fear is really the enemy.

I think it’s for these reasons that God’s very mysterious work is often sidelined. Take any round of prayers at a church and you can see this. We all want others to pray about medical conditions, but few stand up and say, “Let me pray over you and ask God to take this away.” I say this as one who is guilty of not responding correctly. Likewise, we present medical problems as something to be prayed about, but rarely have the kind of honesty that even an Alcoholic’s Anonymous group would have: “I’m John and I’m a sinner.

Gifts don’t always entail the shockingly miraculous, although that’s certainly part of the picture. The talent you may take for granted is every bit as essential to your church community as the miracle working power of someone else. There is a hierarchy of church offices, for the sake of order, but this doesn’t make anyone more valuable to God’s work than someone else.

We provide for the media empire: Most of us are obsessed with information. In a way, the love of media represents our endless search to find meaning. The news gives us something to obsess over, talk about, and pretend that we can do something about. We look to fill the gap in our beings with information, when only God can fulfill it. In our search to be informed, we’re uninformed. This disconnect is rooted in not just our lack of understanding of self, but also the Spirit. Paul makes a similar point when discussing spiritual gifts.

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:1–3 ESV).

Note: This post is completely indulgent and it could be totally stupid (my teenage kids tell me it’s probably fifty-fifty). Furthermore, unless you’re in your forties, lived in Texas as a teenager, love Jesus, and have been trolling the internet since its inception, you might not understand a word of it. Feel free to leave now, especially if you’ve enjoyed anything else I’ve written. 

     Like some of you, I’m a strange hybrid of old and young. My formative years spent in the pre-tech 1980s have now collided with my maturing years spent in the tech-saturated new millennium. I was a Bible Belt native not too long ago: big hair, big churches, big shoulder pads, and big regrets in the 90s. With perspective, I can now see what was terribly wrong with us, and yet I haven’t lost my faith in Jesus nor his Church.