They Don't Know (Friday Devotional)

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

- Luke 23:33-34

Imagine you’re waiting in a line, the kind that feels like it never moves. Every few seconds you check your watch nervously—after all, you had allotted twenty minutes for this and it’s already been half an hour, with no end in sight. You think about your next appointment, the one you’re going to be late for, maybe even miss completely. You stress about whether you’ll be able to complete all your other errands for the day. But mostly, you wonder what’s taking so long.

That’s when you crane your head to get a glimpse at the front of the line and you spot the source of the problem. Some lady is dealing not only with the cashier but the manager too, trying to sort out whatever her issue is. With what seems to you like complete disregard for the people behind her, she’s holding up everybody else—including you—for her own sake, refusing to leave until her problem is resolved. Of course, she doesn’t know about the rush you’re in—in fact, she doesn’t know you at all. But far from making you more sympathetic, her ignorance only makes you angrier. She should know better.

That's how we tend to think, isn't it? When people don’t have all the information or insight into a situation that we have, when they can't see things like we do, their obliviousness is aggravating at the very least, and sometimes downright infuriating. Our response to their ignorance almost always comes from a place of judgment: we condescend, we condemn, sometimes we even take advantage. After all, why should we suffer just because they don’t know what they’re doing?

On the cross, Jesus showed us a different response to the ignorance of others, even and especially when their ignorance hurts us: not judgment, but forgiveness. A person’s lack of understanding, he says, is no reason for us not to forgive them—it is exactly why we should forgive them. “Father, forgive them,” he gasped with one of his final breaths, “For they do not know what they are doing.”

Every day you deal with people who don't understand things that should be self-evident, people who you are certain ought to know better. When faced with such people, the temptation is to lose your patience, to talk down to them, and to judge them, to see them as somehow less than you. Jesus points us to a more compassionate way, offering grace even to unenlightened, misinformed sinners.

Such mercy doesn't eliminate ignorance, but it does eliminate hostility. Forgiveness doesn't educate or discipline, but it saves. The gospel of Jesus Christ offers grace to those who deserve it the least—so may your life bear witness to that grace. For those who don't know Jesus, you can offer no better lesson.

Good Directions (Friday Devotional)

“All one’s ways may be pure in one’s own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit. Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.”

- Proverbs 16:2-3

As my friends and family can attest, I have a notoriously poor sense of direction. Put me on an unfamiliar route, even with a GPS, and I’m guaranteed to make at least one wrong turn. Tell me to head east and chances are I’ll go south. Give me a list of directions with more than three steps and you’ll see my eyes glaze over with the resigned knowledge that I’m not going to remember what you’re saying.

It’s for that reason that, whenever Lindsey and I are going somewhere together, she serves as my navigator—even if it’s just someplace in Waco we don’t go often. She’ll ask before we get far, “What way are you planning on going?” and when I tell her, she’ll pause, frown, and sweetly ask, “Is there a reason you’re not going to go [insert more efficient way here]?” Inevitably I realize that, despite my best intentions, her way is better than the one I had planned.

Sometimes I go her way, the better way, but sometimes I pridefully stick with my plan. In that regard my response is similar to how we all tend to respond to God’s commands and instructions. For believers, there is no question that God’s way is the best way, that if we follow Him we will spiritually prosper. But even understanding this, there are still times when we weigh what God wants versus what we want and, knowing full that His way is best, we choose our own route.

“All one’s ways may be pure in one’s own eyes,” warns Proverbs 16:2, “but the Lord weights the spirit.” Even when we rationalize bad behavior as necessary for some greater good, even when we convince ourselves that righteous ends justify immoral means, God sees through the mist of our justifications to our hearts. And ultimately, what He finds 9 times out of 10 is not purpose but pride, not sincerity but sin.

If you want to see godly results, Scripture encourages you to pursue godly steps along the way, to “commit your work to the Lord.” When your moral compass finds its true north in culture or materialism or personal ambition, you’ll be surprised how quickly you get lost. Better then to give yourself over to the directions of Him who is not only Truth and Life, but the Way. He won’t lead you astray.

Is VBS Still Good Ministry?

One of the greatest dangers of vocational ministry, where sharing the Gospel is not only your life’s work (as is the case for all Christians) but also your paying job, is cynicism. Ministers are privileged to see a lot of miracles, but a lot of disappointments too. People let you down, blessings become curses, and dreams become nightmares. And when you see that every day, it’s easy to become disheartened and disillusioned.

Never is that truer for me than in the runup to our church’s annual Vacation Bible School. Like hundreds of churches around the country, for one week per summer we invite kids from the community to come spend a couple of hours each night learning about Jesus through Bible study, music, crafts, and recreation. I can’t definitively tell you how long VBS has been around—Wikipedia says 1894—but I can tell you it is a firmly entrenched part of evangelical culture, as unquestioned by most congregants as the time of invitation after each week’s sermon.

But as the person in charge of planning VBS the past two years—in a small, aging church I don’t always have the luxury of a paid children’s minister or volunteer VBS coordinator—I’ve found myself cynically questioning its validity as ministry. Are the kids getting anything out of their 10 hours with us that week? Are those flimsy crafts they make actually teaching them anything about the Bible? Are the games, which so easily devolve into cries of “he’s cheating!” or “she’s not being fair!”, really anything more than ways to keep the kids occupied for twenty minutes? Are the Bible lessons, rushed through for the benefit of short attention spans, sticking with the kids five minutes after they’re taught? And the music—those infectious, peppy earworms that take over parents’ car stereos for a week every summer—is the music anything more than annoying?

To sum it all up, is Vacation Bible School really ministry, or just an outdated, irrelevant tradition that we endure out of obligation instead of purpose?

Thankfully, last year I got my answer from the best source possible. At the end of every VBS, our church always hosts a “Family Night” in which the kids put on a brief performance of the songs they’ve learned, Scriptures they’ve memorized, and stories they’ve heard, to the smiles of their beaming parents (and their camera phones). Partly due to my own concerns about the legitimacy of VBS as ministry, last year I stressed to the kids every night that this time around, Family Night would not be a performance or a school assembly, but a kid-led worship service. Their job was not to put on a show, but to lead worship the same way that the pastor, music minister, and other musicians do every Sunday.

That Thursday night, we ran through our order of service, practiced our songs, recited our Bible verse, and I gave the kids one final reminder about their responsibility for the next night—not to perform, but to lead worship. Then we dismissed and parents started picking up their kids. During that flurry of goodbyes, I overheard one little girl’s excited greeting to her Dad, as joyful and pure as anything I’ve ever heard: “Daddy, Daddy guess what we get to do? Tomorrow we get to lead worship!!!” From the look on her face, you’d have thought she’d been given a puppy.

The kids are listening—maybe not to everything said, maybe not every minute, but they’re listening. The kids are learning—maybe they won’t be able to tell you how many loaves and fish Jesus turned into food for 5,000 after Friday night, but they’ll remember he loves them. And the kids, with their childlike faith, are growing.

To every children’s minister, teacher, volunteer, and parent: VBS matters. It still works. For all its flaws and headaches, it is ministry. Jesus says we are to let the little children come to him—with crafts, games, teaching, and music, thank you for bringing them to him.

Paying the Price (Friday Devotional)

“For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”

- 1 Corinthians 6:20

The Internet has spoiled us in a lot of ways, but perhaps chief among them is the belief that everything online should be free—even things we used to be willing to pay for offline. I grew up in a family that paid for a daily newspaper subscription (and still does), and now I read news articles from the Waco Tribune-Herald, Dallas Morning News, New York Times, and Washington Post every day without paying a dime for the privilege. If I want to see a scene from my favorite movie, I used to have to buy or rent the DVD, now all I need to do is hop on YouTube. Even education, something which has traditionally cost big bucks once you leave the public school system, can be undertaken largely free of charge thanks to scores of online programs, articles, and videos (albeit without a degree at the end of your learning.)

You can tell pretty quickly where your online priorities lie by what you’re willing to pay for. When my favorite news site put up a paywall, I just started using a different site. Whereas when Amazon Prime upped their subscription cost, I grumbled…but never for a moment considered dropping the service. Some things we only want when they’re free, but the stuff we think is truly valuable is worth paying the price.

That principle can be applied spiritually as well. God thought your salvation was worth the price, namely Jesus’ death on the cross. God could have looked at a humanity stained by sin and chosen to leave us to our rightful punishment; He could have decided that we were unworthy of His love. But instead He sent His Son as a ransom for us all, paying the price we could not so that we might be saved.

When you think of your life in those terms, it ought to change things. Instead of ‘living for the moment,’ the knowledge that Jesus paid the price for your salvation ought to inspire you to live for the kingdom. Instead of glorifying yourself, his sacrifice ought to move you to glorify God. Instead of being compelled by greed and lust, the cross ought to point you toward love and generosity.

God thought you were worth saving, despite the high price. What are you doing with your salvation?

Condemnation Indigestion (Friday Devotional)

‘John answered, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.” But Jesus said to him, “Do not stop him; for whoever is not against you is for you.”’

- Luke 9:49-50

Lately, my 28-year old body has been giving me increasingly frequent reminders that it’s not 21 anymore. For example, the other night we ordered a large meat lovers pizza for dinner and I greedily devoured four pieces. That’s the sort of thing I used to do in college all the time—I could scarf down half a pizza, wash it down with a pair of Dr Peppers, and eat some ice cream out of the tub for dessert, no problem.

But I’m not in college anymore, and the difference between my body at 21 and my body at 28 is apparently starker than I realized. While I was eating the pizza, I thought it was delicious and I was satisfied. But as the night wore on, my gluttonous dinner started getting to me in a way it never used to—heartburn, indigestion, the whole nine yards. When I lethargically climbed into bed, I had to come to grips with the truth: the momentary satisfaction of my big, fatty dinner wasn’t worth the eventual consequences.

Condescension and condemnation are a lot like that. It feels good in the moment to look down on someone who speaks, thinks, or believes differently than you do. There’s a certain rush that comes from telling another person that they’re wrong or they need to be apologize. It’s gratifying when you feel like you’re better than someone else, and putting such people in their place has an almost cleansing quality emotionally.

Unfortunately, that immediate gratification tends to give you spiritual, emotional, and communal indigestion. When you condemn people, it may momentarily elevate you, but ultimately you wind up alone at the top—after all, the more people you purge from your circle, the smaller your circle gets. Exclusivity offers instant satisfaction, but it also tends to bring eventual solitude.

When Jesus’s disciples tried to rebuke a person outside of the twelve who was casting out demons in Jesus’s name, he reminded them—and us—that there are real enemies to face in this world without resorting to infighting over who the “real disciples” are. Especially in our divisive time, you can find fault in anyone—but does your condemnation help the body of Christ, or hurt it?

If you insist on only associating with people who believe exactly what you do, you’ll find quick thrills in your judgment of people who don’t meet your standards, but you won’t find long-term spiritual health. The kingdom of God has room for more kinds of people than you think—maybe your heart should too.

June Reading Log

Preaching, ethics, Philip Roth, and Daredevil...here's a look at what I was reading in June!

6 Articles I Like This Month

"Prospect and Pariah" by S.L. Price, Sports Illustrated. 36 minutes.
"Winning at the Cost of Silence" by Beth Davies, Baseball Prospectus. 9 minutes.

The most talked about player of this year's MLB Draft was undoubtedly Luke Heimlich, a pitcher with the talent to go in the first round but a guilty plea for child molestation that repelled any team from drafting him at all. The SI article does a great job explaining the complexities of the story, while the shorter piece from Baseball Prospectus writes from the perspective of a writer who was molested as a child herself.

"A Journey into the Righteous, Risk-Averse World of Faith-Based Films" by Joanna Rothkopf, Jezebel. 20 minutes.

An overview of how, why, and for whom faith-based films, which are growing in both popularity and professionalism, are made. Surprisingly objective, particularly given the loaded topic and the site that published the article.

"The Great High School Impostor" by Daniel Riley, GQ. 28 minutes.

A crazy story about a 19-year old Ukrainian who, in pursuit of the American dream, posed as a high school freshman and nearly made it through all 4 years of high school before getting caught.

"How Houston Lost Its Mind Over a Trump Shirt" by R.G. Ratcliffe, Texas Monthly. 24 minutes.

An all-too-believable example of our modern outrage culture run amok: the story of how one woman's outburst at the sight of a Donald Trump T-shirt led to a firestorm online and in a Houston suburb. Also serves as a reminder that conflict is ALWAYS best handled in person instead of on social media.

"Pay the Homeless" by Bryce Covert, Longreads. 10 minutes.

There are indisputably better ways to help the homeless than by giving them your spare change, and at a systemic level, doing so may actually contribute to poverty instead of helping solve it. But when it comes to that real-life, on-the-ground moment when a panhandler asks you for money, is it more compassionate to give what you can or to keep walking? This essay convincingly makes the case for the former.

SPIRIT, WORD, AND STORY: A PHILOSOPHY OF PREACHING by Calvin Miller

I'm always interested in a book on preaching, so this was a great find at our local used bookstore. As the subtitle indicates, Spirit, Word, and Story is not so much a manual for preachers as it as a book about the philosophy behind one's hermeneutics, i.e. how the preacher approaches his craft.

Calvin Miller, an evangelical pastor and author, organizes his thoughts based on the three parts of the title. First, he argues that the preacher's words must be grounded in the movement of the Holy Spirit, and that the preacher will not be effective if he or she is not actively engaged in regular prayer, study, and devotional practices. Second, Miller makes the important point that all sermons should be Bible-based, and provides his own tips on illuminating and applying what Scripture teaches. Third and finally, Miller advocates for the relevance and effectiveness of narrative sermons, arguing that when done well stories are more effective at conveying a message than precepts.

The meat of this book is admittedly not really treading any new ground, especially for those who have studied under narrative preachers like Fred Craddock and Eugene Lowry. However, it was a delight to read because of Miller's eloquence on the subject—as I mentioned, Miller is an author as well as pastor, and you can see why. Extremely well read, deft with turns of phrase, and able to cogently organize and deliver his thoughts, Miller is an excellent writer, and most of my highlighting in the book had less to do with what he was saying than how well he said it. Eloquence is not the most important thing in preaching, (that would be, of course, the proclamation of the Gospel), but it is important, and Miller has it in spades. I'd recommend Spirit, Word, and Story for any preacher looking for validation and encouragement in their work—it won't necessarily tell you how to preach well, but it will remind you how important good preaching is.

BOTH-AND: A MASTON READER by T.B. Maston, edited by William M. Tillman, Jr., Rodney S. Taylor, and Lauren C. Brewer

During his decades of ministry and scholarship, T.B. Maston was the unquestioned dean of Christian ethics in Southern Baptist life, a constant advocate for not only proclaiming but living out the Christian faith in every area of life. His legacy continues today through the 27 books he authored, annual lecture series bearing his name at both Logsdon Seminary and Truett Theological Seminary, and the students who sat under his tutelage for his more than 4 decades of teaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Both-And is, as the subtitle indicates, a primer for his writings, and a fantastic overview on what Baptists believe (at least officially speaking) on everything from separation of church and state to the role of women in the church to issues of war and peace. Drawn from both his books and regular articles he wrote for the Baptist Standard newspaper, each topic is tackled concisely and memorably. My copy is now marked over with blue highlighter and annotations on virtually every page, due to both the high quality of scholarship and his ability to turn a phrase—there's a quote worth remembering on literally every page.

Ours is a time when a firm grounding in Christian ethics is perhaps more important for pastors than at any time in recent memory. I'm grateful for a resource like this reader and highly recommend it for pastors and teachers, as well as laypeople with an interest in the subject.

AMERICAN PASTORAL by Philip Roth

Let's not beat around the bush—this was one of the best books I've ever read.

Philip Roth was one of those important modern authors who I knew I was going to read one of these days, when I got around to it. His death on May 22 prompted me to finally prompted me to to pick up American Pastoral, which won him the 1998 Pulitzer Prize and further secured a literary legacy that was already cemented. And I was blown away.

Ostensibly, American Pastoral is the story of Seymour "Swede" Levov, an All-American family man whose world is shattered when his daughter bombs the local post office and becomes a fugitive from justice. If that's all the book was about, it would still be worth reading...I mean, that summary interested you, didn't it? But American Pastoral, like all great novels, is about much more than just walking through its plot. It's about marriage and fatherhood, about work and leisure, about perfection and imperfection, and ultimately, about what it means to be American.

The writing is incredible, complex without being hard to follow. The characters manage to simultaneously be archetypes—the athlete, the beauty queen, the revolutionary—and fully formed, three-dimensional people. The plot progression jumps forward and backward in time, but you somehow never get lost in the shuffle. The themes are apparent without ever beating you over the head. This book, simply put, is a masterclass in creative writing.

American Pastoral is not a happy book—its three acts are titled 'Paradise Remembered,' 'The Fall,' and 'Paradise Lost' in that order—but it is a satisfying one, leaving you with indelible insights into how the United States changed between the 1950s and the 1970s, and what was gained and lost along the way. For those who like good literature, I can't recommend American Pastoral strongly enough.

EVERYMAN by Philip Roth

Well, they can't all be American Pastoral. I picked up Everyman on a clearance shelf once upon a time at Half Price Books, so after the joy of reading one of the best books (if not the best) in Philip Roth's bibliography, I decided to give this one a try. And it was...fine.

Everyman, as the title suggests, tells the story of a perfectly normal American man, narrating his life story from beginning to end in a sparse 182 pages. It turns out to be a life marked by loss—from the death of his parents to his three divorces to his fading youth, each turning point in the unnamed protagonist's life is a loss of some sort. There is little in the way of drama, just the normal ebbs and flows of a normal life. The task of the reader is to reflect upon this everyman's life and see what you can learn about yourself and the human experience in general.

In one sense this book is ambitious—after all, it is trying to sum up what life is all about through the eyes of one man, and trying to do it in less than 200 pages. But on the whole, this feels like a small book in more than just length, so subtle in its themes that you start to wonder if they're actually even there. I see what Roth was going for with this snack of a book, but I wonder if readers wouldn't have been better served with a meal.

The writing is still excellent, and despite the lack of any real plot it's an easy read (I finished it in 3 days.) Not sure I'd recommend it to someone wanting to try Philip Roth for the first time, but it was an enjoyable enough read.

WHY BASEBALL MATTERS by Susan Jacoby

With a title like Why Baseball Matters, you probably assume I loved this book. That's what I expected too. Unfortunately, this new release from Yale University Press was a rambling, redundant gripefest about 'kids these days.'

The stated purpose of freelance writer Susan Jacoby, a lifelong baseball fan, is to explain to the reader both the beauty of the national pastime and the complaints it faces, especially from young would-be fans, in the 21st century. The problems she points out are nothing new (it's too slow, there's not enough action, etc.), so as a reader you're assuming she'll shed new light on these problems and even offer solutions that will make baseball more relevant to young people in 2018. Unfortunately, virtually all of her 'solutions' boil down to "get those darned kids to put their phones down."

While quick to point out that the game has always had flaws, even in its so-called golden age of the 1940-1950s, Jacoby nevertheless comes off as a writer who just wants the game to be exactly like it was when she was 8 years old. Having promised the reader she has ideas on how to make the game culturally relevant, she instead demands that American culture must change instead of America's pastime, which...good luck, I guess?

Books like this one (and articles and podcasts and e-mail chains with family members) are typically catnip to me, but this one tread no new ground and, instead of showing me why baseball still matters, gave me a hard look at the kind of fans who prevent it from mattering today, fans who refuse to give an inch to a culture that wants more action, fan involvement, celebrity, and fun in the national pastime. I read this book wanting a warm blanket and got a bucket of cold water to the face instead. If you think baseball is perfect as is and that whippersnappers are the real problem, knock yourself out. Otherwise, look elsewhere for your summer baseball read.

SOLDIERS' PAY by William Faulkner

On a weekend trip to New Orleans a few months ago, my family and I stopped inside a tiny bookstore in the French Quarter called Faulkner House Books. Along with being a quaint little (and I do mean little) shop, the building is also a historical landmark, because in another time, when it was a boarding house, William Faulkner wrote his first novel there. So as a souvenir, I bought a copy of that book, Soldiers' Pay, and read it this month. How was it? Well, it's a nice souvenir, anyway.

Soldiers' Pay tells the story of an aviator who returns home from World War I a broken man, physically and mentally scarred by his experience. There to welcome him are a cast of characters ranging from a fiancée who found another lover in his absence, a war widow who wants to take care of him, and several brothers in arms. The overall theme of the book is that war demands a heavy price, both from those who fight and those on the homefront who must then tend to the returning soldiers.

Unfortunately, the writing in Soldiers' Pay isn't great. There are plenty of glimmers of potential (which I assume paid off in later works since, you know, he's William Faulkner), but as a whole it was a slog to get through. Several times while reading I had to adopt power-through strategies I hadn't used since the days of high school summer reading assignments. Thankfully it was a relatively short book at 305 pages, and improved as it went on and the characters were fleshed out. But if you see "William Faulkner" on the cover and think it's a classic, think again.

Soldiers' Pay is my only exposure to Faulker and critics seem to universally agree it's a bad place to start, so...oops. I'll try him again one of these days. In the meantime, my copy of Soldiers' Pay and the free bookmark that came with it make for fine souvenirs.

ESSENTIAL DAREDEVIL VOL. 3-4 by Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Gary Friedrich, Gene Colon, et al.

In the 1960s, Daredevil was basically the antithesis of the grim vigilante he would eventually become in the 1980s— he was a high-flying, witty, devil-may-care (pun intended) hero who was as quick with a quip as a punch. His book went crazy directions, with Matt Murdock (Daredevil's secret identity) once inventing and posing as his fictional twin brother to get out of a jam, only to later stage that fake brother's death.  The book was wild, exciting fun.

By the early 1970s, the era covered in Essential Daredevil Vol. 3-4, things had calmed down...and it's kind of a drag. With Roy Thomas and then Gerry Conway at the wheel, Daredevil becomes an angst-ridden hero who literally spends entire fights with supervillains thinking about his cursed love life. Indeed, some issues are arguably closer to the romance genre than action, a direction I can't imagine was received any better by readers in the '70s than it was by me. Look, I don't mind a superhero mooning over his one true love—it's part of the Marvel formula from that era—but this was too much.

So in Daredevil #87, with Marvel brass perhaps sensing that their train was off its tracks, Matt Murdock up and moved to San Francisco, leaving behind Foggy Nelson and Karen Page (a.k.a. his entire supporting cast) to fight crime alongside his new lady love, the Black Widow. The move did indeed inject some life into the book, and gave longtime artist Gene Colon, who'd been around since Stan Lee was writing the book, some new backgrounds to draw. The move to San Francisco and partnership/romance with Black Widow proved, of course, to be short-lived, but they make for an interesting read and at least give the book a revived feeling that anything can happen.

All in all, volume 4 of Essential Daredevil is superior to volume 3 because of these changes and the willingness they showed to shake things up, but neither of these books should really be considered "essential." Perfectly fine work, but nothing to write home about, like most of Marvel's mainstream '70s books. Fun, but nothing I'm likely to revisit again.