Occasionally a book comes along that really excites me. Cold Case Christianity is such a book. In case you haven’t heard of him yet, author J. Warner Wallace is a practicing cold case detective who has one of the fastest growing apologetics podcasts and websites. Cold Case Christianity is Wallace’s first book. But given how insightful it is, I hope it’s not the last!

Wallace was a self-described “angry” atheist until his mid thirties. After visiting Saddleback Church, he decided to use the Forensic Statement Analysis (FSA) to investigate the gospel of Mark. If the FSA works for suspects and witnesses, Wallace thought, why not for the Gospel of Mark? He had become a bona fide expert at judging the veracity of a statement through examining the author’s use of language. Within a month of studying Mark’s Gospel, Wallace concluded it was an eyewitness account of the apostle Peter. This was the beginning of his conversion to Christianity.

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A survey conducted by the Gallup organization in 2010 found that one in five Americans believed that “God is actively engaged in the daily working of the world and has an economic conservative view that opposes government regulations and champions the free market.”  24 So is God for reduced government, lower taxes, and a free-market economy? Is God a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent, a Socialist, or what? Does God affiliate himself with political parties or get involved in political agendas?

The Kingdom Question

If ever there was an issue of God getting involved in politics it was in the first century. The Jewish people had endured many years under the rule of or enslaved by other governments. For centuries they had been looking for their Messiah, the Christ who would lead their nation out from tyranny into a new kingdom of rightness and glory.

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Jennie Allen is a Bible teacher who is passionate about inspiring a new generation of women to encounter the invisible God. Raised in a Christian home, Jennie heard about God her entire life but not until high school did she see her need for Him. Since that time she has been teaching groups of girls and young women about her God.

Jennie’s DVD-based Bible studies are uniquely relational, interactive and dig deep quickly. Her first study, Stuck: The Places We Get Stuck and the God Who Sets Us Free was released at the end of 2011  Her latest Bible study is entitled Chase: Chasing After the Heart of God (Thomas Nelson), and it focuses on the life and psalms of David.

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Shannon Ethridge the author of 19 books, including the million-copy bestselling series, Every Woman's Battle. Shannon is also a speaker, lay counselor, and advocate for healthy sexuality with a master’s degree in counseling/human relations from Liberty University. Since 1989 she has spoken on the topics of sexuality and Christian spirituality.

Her passions include: Challenging adults and teens to embrace a life of sexual integrity, encouraging married couples in their pursuit of sexual and emotional fulfillment, counseling women who have looked for love in all the wrong places and equipping parents to instill sexual values in children at an early age.

Her newest book is The Fantasy Fallacy: Exposing the Deeper Meaning Behind Sexual Thoughts (Thomas Nelson). Shannon had contemplated writing this book for three years, but the current Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon drove her to tackle the topic now.

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It seems as though the Christmas shopping season, which officially kicked off on Black Friday, is a bigger deal than ever this year. For the first time stores opened on Thanksgiving rather than waiting until the wee hours of Friday morning to welcome hoards of shoppers. Some people, eager to be the first to snag a killer deal on a 50-inch LED television, camped out in front of stores like Target and Best Buy Best for a week.

Truth be told, I don’t have a problem with Black Friday and Christmas shopping or with people camping out on sidewalks across the nation for days in order to get a good deal. I mean, who doesn’t want a great price on everything these days?

But I do have a problem when this consumer nation is uneducated about the products they are buying such as how objects are made and where the materials to make all the products we love so much come from. Sometimes it seems that America, a country in which education is freely available to any and all who desire it, operates as one of the more ignorant, uneducated nations in the world in terms of understanding how things work globally. 

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This is a post to gently remind believers of the importance of romanticism.

Not romance. Romanticism.

If you're a follower of Jesus,  then there's a good chance you're a romantic. You ACTUALLY believe that lives can be transformed from the inside-out; that people aren't destined to blissful ignorance; that transformed lives changes culture, which changes communities which changes cities which changes countries which changes the planet.

You believe in the romantic notion that one day there will be a reckoning that will be swift, terrifying and beautiful all at once.

And if you're a follower, you've probably been a critic of christianized culture (note: not "christian culture") or of the church in general. You've probably lifted a single eyebrow in question at the hypocrisy, ignorance, or lunacy in the christianized version of churches or of society. And you've done so for the simple reason that you care. Deeply. Passionately. Because it matters. Because you're a romantic. Because God is real.

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After an acrimonious standoff between Hostess executives and the bakery labor union, our worst apocalyptic fears might be realized: Twinkies might disappear forever. Eighty-three years of children’s lunchboxes and Texas Fair fryers might not be enough to rescue the golden little fella from spongecake oblivion. 

But just because Twinkies have always been around isn’t reason enough to keep them there. Nostalgia shouldn’t hijack common sense. 

The church has had its own share of bad products which, like the the Twinkie, have been unhealthy, strangely enjoyable, and made on the cheap. I say it’s time to retire all those evangelical products that made us so happy at the time. Here’s a start:

• Children’s flannel boards with all those Caucasian Bible characters
• Pyramid-shaped photo arrangements of church staff (pastor on top, with his wing men in dark suits in descending order according to seminary degrees and paychecks)
• Padded, mauve sky-box chairs
• The badly-proofed collection of typed praise songs with the plastic curlicue binding
• Round, plasticized communion wafers
• The dual-handled pouch-bag-offering-thingie (passed down the aisle with choreographed wonder)
• My Texas pastor’s clear plexiglass pulpit with the laser-cut cross cutout
• The 3-D silver dove for my bumper
• Big screens that disappear into the big slit in the ceiling
• Hand-made banners with silk tassels
• Powerpoint slideshows (golden wheat stalks blowing? Multi-racial families smiling? Clouds billowing?)
• Black electric keyboards from Wal-Mart with pre-set beats “for the young people”
• Four Words: Bob. Tomato. Larry. Cucumber

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I recently saw a presentation that reconnected me with a secret world. It wasn’t so much the presentation – which was on England and Scotland – as it was the context and feel. I was reminded of a time past, and it is on this time upon which I’m writing to reflect.

There are a few of us who didn’t just read about Narnia, we were transported there. We remember reading the Lord of the Rings during rainy days; or The Cross and the Switchblade; or This Present Darkness; of Churchill and ten Boom. Our hearts lept and we wondered if we could rise to the challenge of life; of hearing God’s call and chasing it when it was heard. This time is contextualized by a strange type of magic, the kind that is surrounded by danger but is wild, epic and romantic. In that time and space, children and adults alike discussed their journey of faith.

A few years ago, during a Thanksgiving church service, my hilarious younger brother leans over and whispers in a silly tone of voice to both me and our older brother, "give thanks; not spanks." As is typical when I'm with my brothers, I got a bad case of the giggles and wiggles in church at his funny little rhyme.

Every day we have choices. Grumble and complain about life's spanks or give thanks.

Trust me when I say I can grumble with the best of them when things just aren't going my way.

I was doing a lot of grumbling over life's spanks upon me back in 2007. I had finished seminary, moved back home with mom and dad, struggled to find a "real" job and ended up cleaning toilets at Disneyland. One stereotypically beautiful Southern Californian day, I met up with a friend who had attended seminary with me. My sweet friend listened as I went on and on complaining about my life during that season of toilets, plungers, and a whole lot of blah, blah, blah. When I had finished spewing out complaints about life's spanks, my friend graced me with her wisdom and love and asked me one simple question that caused a radical shift to take place in my life.

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“Church is useless.”

I might have expected such a comment from my 24-year-old nephew who insists that living with his parents in the room he’s occupied since birth, whose passion is playing FPS (First Person Shooter) games and whose sole means of gainful employment is a part-time job at a local restaurant. But my nephew, as far as I know, has never said that. Though he was “raised in the church,” he doesn’t attend with any regularity. But as far as I know, he’s never said the church is useless.

Instead, the quote came from a 28-year-old—let’s call him Michael—who has a really good job, is married to a very successful marketing executive and who has nothing in common with my nephew except that he was also raised in the church.

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