FINDING HAPPINESS

How do you find happiness? Apparently, more and more young Americans are finding less and less of it each year. At least that’s the opinion of author and political philosopher J. Budziszewski, who has had a ring side seat to rising generations as a professor for thirty-four years at the University of Texas at Austin.

In a recent World Magazine interview, Budziszewski (pronounced Bud-a-Chev-ski) says college kids are running in to the “hedonistic paradox” much sooner than previous generations. Hedonistic paradox is the title for the law of diminishing returns as applied to pleasure. The professor explained, “If you pursue truth and friendship for their own sakes, you will enjoy pleasure. If you pursue pleasure for itself, pleasure recedes and you are likely to find pain. Eventually you burn out … so many of these young people have started in on hedonism so young, and thrown themselves into it so thoroughly, that the paradox kicks in very early.”*

Budziszewski’s words struck a nerve because I had recently finished a sermon series on the book of Ecclesiastes whose author, King Solomon, knew more about the pursuit of pleasure than anyone. Solomon went after pleasure with the intensity of Peyton Manning dismantling an NFL defense. He had more sex partners, more and bigger parties, more financial success, more fame, and more of everything else than most of us could imagine. His conclusion? It’s emptiness, the vain pursuit of a slippery breeze.

So again, how do you find happiness? How do you find happiness that won’t burn you out and leave you in pain? Here are a few of the answers I’ve found. It has less to do with how and much more to do with who.

The who begins with God. Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you.” C. S. Lewis said, “Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second things.” I’ve found this to be true. When my relationship with God is first, every other pleasure is enhanced, like eating dark chocolate with black coffee, the combined experience is better than either one alone. Every good thing is a gift from my loving Father and I enjoy it more knowing it came from him. But when I put pleasure first even the good things are diminished.

Worship, the abandonment of all concerns and self-thoughts in praise and adoration, fills me with happiness and peace. Ditto prayer that has said all that needs be said and that does not end with “amen.”

The “who” continues with others: I’m never happier than when I’ve made my wife smile or laugh, than when I see her or my children flourishing in their gifts (she is always happy when she is creating beauty). Seeing others flourish, family, friends or fellow-believers fulfilling the calling and expressing the gifts the Creator gave makes me happy.

Communicating truth, whether in the pulpit, in a song, in this blog or face to face, telling the eternal truths of Scripture energizes me. I’m doing what my Father created me to do, and like Olympic runner Eric Liddel said of his gift of speed, “When I run, I feel his pleasure.”

Sex with the wife of my youth, sex without shame and without fear, absolutely certain that our intimacy and vulnerability with each other is protected by covenant loyalty and blessed with innocence by our Creator, makes me deliriously happy.

The where and what include motorcycle riding in the mountains on a spring day, especially with friends. I find myself singing thanksgiving songs as I throw it through the curves.

A good meal with good friends, helping others solve their problems mechanical or spiritual, these things give me joy.

All the above accompanied by beautiful music performed with excellence, or just music all by itself.

All of these things are gifts from the hand of a kind creator who gave us this promise:

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ John 7:37-38.

If you thirst for happiness, if you long for joy, go to him and drink and you will never thirst again.

*J. Budziszewski: Generation disordered. Q&A | The sexual revolution has left many college students with empty lives, but there is a longing for something more. By MARVIN OLASKY “Off the grid,” Sept. 5, 2015.

THE PARABLE OF VANNA WHITE

Vanna White needed a new transmission. I guess I should explain that.

Tradesmen often name their trucks. The maintenance crew I worked with in the early nineties was no different. The ancient, white Ford Econoline 150 panel van that the carpenters used was so reliable, doing the same simple tasks day after day, well past her prime, that they called her Vanna White. Only now her transmission was slipping. It was time for a rebuild.

I put her on the lift, removed the big automatic tranny, dismantled it, cleaned it out, installed a rebuild kit in the old case, and hoisted it back into place; a six or seven hour job. Then I filled it with transmission fluid and took it for a drive. It slipped, right between first and second gear.

So I did it again, looking carefully for mistakes; and it slipped again. So I did it again. And again. And again. And again. It kept slipping! I was ready to quit!

Now let’s pause this parable and ask a question: Is there some part of your spiritual life that isn’t working? Are you continually disabled by a slip into sin whose source is invisible to you? Have you gone over the details again and again, tried as hard as you can to solve your problem, and failed?

Good. Coming to the end of our resources is the best place we can be because only then are we ready to receive the power to overcome the “sins that so easily entangle us.” The Apostle Paul explained it as the difference between living in the “flesh,” translated “sinful nature” in the NIV, versus living in the “Spirit.” (See Galatians 5:16-25). Jesus spoke similarly in John 6:63 when he said, “The flesh counts for nothing. The Spirit gives life…”

Everything about us, our bodies, our minds, our emotions and personalities, were permanently weakened by the power of sin. We “slip between first and second.” Until the day we physically die that power will remain. In fact the only way to conquer the power of sin is through death. That is the beautiful thing about the gospel. In Christ we did die, not a physical death, but a spiritual one. We died with him to the power of sin. When the Holy Spirit baptizes us into Christ his death and his resurrection become ours in spiritual fact (See Romans 6). The trick is to learn how to live in the power of those things.

Remember Vanna White? The sixth time I pulled the transmission from the old van I remembered another Ford E 150 in our fleet. The engine had died and we junked it, but not before pulling all other usable parts, one of which was the transmission. Automatic transmission casings are cast with hydraulic control circuits critical to their operation. If the case cracks in the right place, a place invisible to the naked eye, those circuits will leak under pressure and the transmission will slip. I pulled the new parts out of Vanna White’s original transmission case and installed them in the one from the van that had “died” and Viola! No more slipping between gears!

The problem most of us face in overcoming sin is that we try to stuff new parts into our old life. We need new parts in a new life. Because of the presence of the Holy Spirit within us we can overcome by exchanging our life with Christs. Only when we have given up on trying to improve ourselves by our own will power are we able to begin operating in the power of the Spirit. Only when we have exchanged Christ’s life for ours are we able to know his power to overcome.

KOINONIA IS SHARED LIFE

KOINONIA IS SHARED LIFE

2015

Speed skating is a Dutch sport. It originated in the 14th & 15th centuries when people figured out how to make a blade run on the ice. They began skating on their frozen canals as a form of transportation. Then, like good sports everywhere, they figured out how to race with skates.

The Dutch are true fanatics of speed skating. They all wear orange. They paint their faces. They wear funny orange hats. They even have their own band called “Little Beers” that travel with them to each event. Every ice rink is home field advantage for the Dutch because their fans go to every race in Europe. Nobody tells the Dutch that they have to go to the speed skating races. They go because they love it. They love the sport. They love each other loving the sport. They wouldn’t think of missing it.

The Dutch speed skating fans are a good metaphor for the Christians in Acts 2: 46-47 who “met together every day in the temple courts, breaking bread and eating together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.” Nobody had to tell them to meet together every day in the temple and eat together from house to house. They spent time together because they loved Jesus together. They loved each other loving Jesus. They wouldn’t have thought of missing it.

The Greek word used in Acts and throughout the New Testament for the life they were sharing is Koinonia, often translated “fellowship.” Koinonia means “sharing in common.” They shared a common life: a common table, a common purse, a common set of values, and a common love for one another. Most of all they shared Christ and what he had done for them. They were eager to share what he had done for them with others.

The kind of love that builds a body of believers isn’t just a human love. It isn’t “affinity group love”, a love built on commonalities of education, income, race, outlook or profession. It’s supernatural love. It’s an affinity built on the Christ we have in common, the salvation we have in common, and the continuous life-change we are experiencing together in him.

There are some hurdles to building this kind of community. It requires vulnerability, enough transparency to talk about what God is doing in our lives. That takes trust. It also requires belief that we are just as needy before God as the neediest person in the church. That takes humility. Finally, it takes commitment, the determination simply to show up and be part of what is going on. That takes, sacrifice; maybe not as much as painting your face orange and riding trains all over Europe to shiver while others race, but sacrifice nonetheless.

As churches grow in size it becomes more and more important that they build those connections with each other. Some churches do it with small groups on week nights, others through Sunday school programs and various Bible and book study ministries. Whatever your church does I encourage you, as you gather, to build the trust that enables vulnerability, to share with others what Christ has done and is doing in your life. Acts reports that as the early church did this, “the Lord added to their number daily, those who were being saved.” I believe that as you build koinonia in your church, he will do the same.

What THE BUTLER Did For Me

Not long ago my neighbor, Ralph, an African American man for whom I have deep respect, and I were chatting in our back yard. We usually talk about our kids or joke with each other about our geriatric joints and other ailments with him always having the last laugh. “Just wait till you’re seventy. You ain’t seen nuthin yet!” But that day I had more on my mind. Something in the news, or in my reading, made me want to understand more about his life as a black man in America. At seventy-odd, his is a longer experience than mine.

“Ralph, one day I want you to tell me what it was like for you as a black man in the American south in the twentieth century,” I said.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Atlanta.”

Ralph’s face clouded a bit, something I’d never seen before, and he said, “Well then, you know … you know.” And that’s all he would say.

But I didn’t know, not from the inside, the way I wanted to know.

I was four years old when the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which desegregated the schools, passed. I grew up in the turmoil it precipitated among the races; especially in the schools I attended in the Atlanta suburbs. I’m sure my family would have been considered racist by the standards of today, but we didn’t consider ourselves so. We didn’t march with Dr. King or anything like that. But my father had stood up for the right of a black man to join his Southern Baptist Church in 1957, and my mother was always kind to the black people we met.

Desegregation didn’t affect me until I reached middle-school age, in 1973. From then until I graduated high school my experience of desegregation was one of upheaval, disorder, disruption, and danger. Knowing what I do now, I can’t say I blame the black kids of that generation for the anger and aggression they displayed toward us white kids, but it wasn’t conducive to the development of a sympathetic attitude either.

Time moved on and so did I. I became a follower of Christ and became committed to racial reconciliation. But I still couldn’t say that I understood the African-American experience with any depth. I knew my story, but I didn’t know theirs, not with empathy.

Then, via Netflix, I watched the bio-picture LEE DANIEL’S THE BUTLER (2013), starring Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, a man who rose from the cotton fields of Georgia to become butler to eight presidents in the White House. THE BUTLER is loosely based on real-life White House butler, Eugene Allen, who retired in 1986 after thirty-four years of service. It is to the racial turmoil of the time what FOREST GUMP was to the Viet Nam War, a comprehensive narrative of one powerless man’s journey through a world fraught with legalized oppression, naked cruelty, and blind hypocrisy. I saw through Cecil’s eyes, the bitter brutality of racist southern farmers and the lordly arrogance of hypocritical politicians and business men. I’ve known men like that, I thought. I winced too at the quiet carnage of condescension, remembering women with saccharine smiles, as dismissive of black personhood as they would be a soiled napkin.

I’ve also known men and women like Gaines, servants with such self-mastery that they could be “invisible in the room,” even when the people they were serving tossed off thoughtless insults that would have enraged me. That was the films greatest impact, Gaines’ ability to rise above the bigotry of his employers with a dignity that revealed his inner nobility, and their shabbiness. His commitment, even his joy, in performing with excellence the most menial tasks brought honor to everything he did. (1 Peter 2:12).

Through his relationship with his oldest son, who became a freedom rider and later a congressman, I also learned the inner conflict many older black men and women had with the civil rights movement. They knew in their bones that the cause was just, but they hated the disorder it brought and feared the predictable backlash.

Finally, the film helped me understand on a visceral level, why the majority of African-American men and women felt obligated, if not compelled, to vote for Barak Obama to serve as president. It just makes me wish Ben Carson had been running against him instead of McCain or Romney.

LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER, is not a bio-pic in the strict definition of the word. “While the movie The Butler is set against historical events, the title character and his family are fictionalized,” states director Lee Daniels. “We were able to borrow some extraordinary moments from Eugene’s real life to weave into the movie.” I hope everyone, black and white, who did not live in that era, will watch the film and share what they learned. It will go a long way toward building reconciliation.

If you want to know the real history of Eugene’s life, visit http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/the-butler.php.

STOP THE SHOOTINGS

Trauma. Pain. Innocent and young lives lost, those left behind forever wounded, all because a psychopath with a gun decided he wanted to make a name for himself. Who among us does not feel the clawing grief? Who among us doesn’t want to end it? Other nations have managed it, or at least slowed it down. Why can’t we?

Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Charleston, the Navy Yard, and now Roseburg—the list is too long. I wrote a theology of resisting evil in 2013 attempting to address the problem. Find it here: http://www.fccsobo.org/rwt-blog-39101. I stand by that theology, but it’s not enough. The mass shootings keep happening, showing no signs of slowing down. We need to stop them. Perhaps we need to reconsider? I decided to do that. I hope you find the results helpful.

Two Controlling Considerations
Because there’s a lot of noise about this, we need to boil it down to the essentials with two considerations.

First, we need to compare apples to apples. These are mass shootings of four or more defenseless people, often children, in a confined space with few exits like a school room, a church, or a movie theater, often in so-called “gun-free” zones. Conservatives like to point out that Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, yet suffers one of the highest gun related murder rates (59 murders and 362 gunshot victims in September alone). I don’t disagree. But we’re not talking about armed robberies and drug deals gone bad, crimes of passion and the like. We’re talking about the unprovoked massacre of undefended innocents, “soft targets” in military jargon.

Second, we live in America, not Australia, not Canada, not the UK or any other place. We are the first nation on earth where the right to bear arms is specifically written into our founding document. America was born with a gun in its hand for good reason. We tasted tyranny early on and spat it out with the conviction that we would never knuckle under again. The Founders believed, and many of us still agree, that an armed citizenry is the first defense against violent oppression on a personal as well as civic level. Conservatives will point out that there are more violent crimes prevented by law-abiding gun owners each year than are ever reported in the press, and none of them receive the media attention given to mass shootings on soft targets. True enough, but were we candid we would also admit that this isn’t 1776. It isn’t even 1940. This is 2015 and if we think a few modern minute-men with AR 15’s and homemade mortars are going to stop a determined government with M-1 Abrams Tanks, F/A 18 Hornets, smart bombs and Reaper Drones, we aren’t just mistaken, we’re deluded.

Two Questions
That leaves us with two questions, one short-term and one long.

First, taking seriously the biblical worldview that we are fallen creatures prone to personal evil and political tyranny, what is the fastest way to stop the shootings, the most expedient method to halt the mass murder of soft targets without cashing in our constitutional rights?

Second, what long-term, systemic changes can we make that reasonable people on both sides of the debate would agree on?

Two answers are offered, one by the radical left, the other by the radical right. One calls for a total gun ban, the other for almost no changes at all. Neither is adequate for the short or the long term. Neither is politically realistic. We need to find something in the middle that will address the short-term reality as well as the long-term need that everyone can agree on.

Three Factors
Workable solutions must address the combination of three contributing factors that have emerged in the analyses of multiple mass shootings. (I’m leaving Islamic jihadists out of this discussion because their motivations are different, but some of the solutions will apply to them anyway).

First, these places are soft targets. They may have had defensive strategies in place: instant notification systems, lock-downs, gun-free zones and the like. But as we’ve repeatedly witnessed, these systems are inadequate.

Second, the shooters are almost always fatherless, mentally unstable, emotionally wretched, narcissistic, cowardly, suicidal-yet-vengeful young men. Some (all? we don’t know) of them have been on and off of psychiatric medicines that have known violent side effects, especially when discontinued cold-turkey. They have easy access to weapons, are almost always fascinated by the instant fame of previous shooters, commit their crimes at the end of a slow, bitter burn of self-justifying resentment, and often broadcast their intentions ahead of time on social media.

Third, America has a woefully inadequate mental health care system for such people coupled with equally deficient involuntary committal laws for those with serious mental illnesses. Many of us voted this state of affairs into existence when we voted for Ronald Reagan, who led the charge in the dismantling of state mental health hospital systems in the 1980’s.* We did it for humane reasons, as many of the things that happened in those institutions make the VA look like Mayo Clinic. Further, any law that makes it possible to commit people against their will is vulnerable to abuse. But the law of unintended consequences prevails and we are paying a steep price. Would that these young villains could have been institutionalized before they imploded.

Short and Long-Term Solutions
Boiling it down to the essentials makes the following solutions seem pretty obvious:

Short-term: Harden the targets. These shooters are cowards. The ones that haven’t killed themselves almost always run when confronted by armed defenders. Hire ex-military men or women who are trained in close quarter combat with civilians present. We have thousands of them available at this point, after the Iraq war. And take down the ineffective gun-free zones—they are like red flags to raging bulls. If we aren’t going to hire armed resource officers, we at least need to let the teachers who are willing to take the responsibility, be trained and armed. This is a solution that has a proven track record.**

Also, let’s take it on ourselves, and ask the media to cooperate, never to publish the name or face of one of these shooters. It only encourages copy-cats.***

Long-term: It’s time to raise the responsibility level for gun buying. The smartest thing yet among ideas from other countries is that anyone who purchases a gun needs to have a reference from at least one other responsible adult, preferably two, who has known the buyer for at least five years. Yes, the Newtown and Roseburg shooter’s mother’s helped them obtain weapons. But more family and community involvement is better than more government involvement. We do this with driver’s licenses. In Virginia, a family member can request that the state reclaim the license of a minor. An instructor has to sign off before a new driver can take the state driver’s test. A family member, doctor, EMT, or peace officer can also recommend reexamination for a driver’s license for anyone of any age. In many cases, family members know more than any background check can uncover. Those of us who demand our rights need to up our responsibility levels. This is the least we can do.

Also, we need to change involuntary committal laws and improve our state-run mental health systems. We need better laws and systems that family members can access in a mental health emergency. This will take time and money, but it needs to be done.

It’s time to stop mass shootings of innocents in soft targets now. We may find that if we take the short-term steps, we won’t feel the need for the long ones. But we should take them anyway. We owe it to the victims and to our country.

Notes:

1*. http://sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas_d.html
2**. William M. Landes, University of Chicago Law School, November 1, 1996, Latest Revision October 19, 2000.
3***. Guns, Mental Illness and Newtown, By DAVID KOPEL, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 17, 2012.

WORLD RADIO: NPR FOR CONSERVATIVES

OK, I admit it, I enjoy National Public Radio (NPR) and I’ve listened to it for decades. I’ve listened to it for so long that I know who Bob Simon is and what happened to him. I’ll just stand here for a minute so my conservative friends can lob their rotten tomatoes …

Feel better? Good, now let me tell you why NPR scratches my information-junkie-itch and what I’ve found to replace it.

NPR does a lot of things very well. From Morning Edition to All Things Considered, Car Talk to The People’s Pharmacy and This American Life, among others, NPR succeeds with its breadth of topics, in depth reporting, and its literate reporting staff. But more than anything else I appreciate its tone. Unlike its commercial, conservative competitors, it isn’t bombastic, crude, repetitive, personality-driven or sensationalism, but rational, reasonable, and somewhat understated. The problem, and it is a deep one, is that you can’t listen to NPR without noticing its Darwinian, post-modern, secular-humanist point of view. (Did I leave any out?). I am increasingly sickened by its total commitment to the politically correct party line and pretty much anything contrary to the biblical world view. It’s reporting on the Planned Parenthood videos sounds like public relations work by the priestesses of this modern Molech. As Juan Williams said in 2010, when he was unceremoniously fired from NPR for mentioning his reasonable fear of Muslims on airplanes, “To say the least this is a chilling assault on free speech. The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy.”

Enter WORLD RADIO and its daily program, The World and Everything In It, a thirty-minute daily broadcast available to download on your smartphone or listen online. The World and Everything In It takes the best of NPR, its tone, its breadth, and its intelligence, and presents its news and commentary from a biblical world view. It is refreshingly honest about this, unlike NPR, which pretends objectivity as it promotes the PC party line. Its contributors and regular guests include Cal Thomas and John Stonestreet, along with weekly interviews with thinkers and policy makers from all walks of life. WORLD RADIO is also committed to journalistic integrity. They do the hard work of chasing down the facts, verifying them, and reporting them without gloss. Like the magazine from which it grew, WORLD RADIO doesn’t shy away from difficult stories. It will report corruption and failure within Christianity as well as without, yet without the rancor and insensitivity found in some other publications.

WORLD RADIO is part of World News Group, which also produces the monthly World Magazine and GOD’S BIG WORLD for kids. They also sponsor the Hope Awards for effective charity. Like NPR, it is a non-profit, which works in its favor. It doesn’t let its advertisers shape its content. Yet unlike NPR, which slurps at the tax-payer-money-trough to fund its budget, WORLD doesn’t whine. They do offer an opportunity for forward thinking Christians to contribute to the further development of world class journalism from a biblical point of view. I urge you to check them out, and become a regular reader and supporter.

SOUL TRAINING

I recently took up Cross-fit training for two reasons: I was overweight and out of shape. I could tell that there were things I should be able to do with ease, even at fifty-five, which wore me out. I’m now in better shape, (but I’m still a bit overweight).

The point is that I’m not ready to give up being an active person, but I knew that if I didn’t do something about it I wasn’t going to have any choice; the cardiovascular ability wasn’t going to be there. I had two basic problems with personal fitness: a sedentary job and a diet full of sugar. I needed to get off my duff and change the way I ate.

Derek Wright, of Hard Target / Krav Maga, the gym where I work out, writes:
“Back in 1822 the average person ate only 6.3 lbs of sugar per year, compared to 130 lbs of sugar in 2012. That’s more than 20 times as much sugar in our modern diet! No wonder we are bigger than ever… some form of refined sugar is included in virtually every single processed food … it’s important to cut those processed and packaged convenience foods out of your diet.

Cutting sugar from your diet is easier said than done. Once it is a part of your daily diet, cravings strike, causing you to eat it even more frequently … even the diet soda you’re sipping is making it harder for you to reach your goal weight. While the diet soda itself doesn’t contain calories, it has been proven to cause cravings for sugary foods.”

Who hasn’t tried to lose weight and failed? The reasons always go back to a poor diet and lack of exercise. We eat too many convenience foods, which are full of unhealthy calories, and we sit when we should stand, ride when we should walk, and relax when we should be working out.

A similar phenomenon can happen in our spiritual lives. It’s one the Apostle Paul warned his protégé’, Timothy, about in 1 Timothy 4:7-8.

“Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training has some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”

In a spiritual sense, Paul was warning Tim away from “convenience foods for the soul,” i.e. godless myths and old wives’ tales, and urging him to spiritual exercise.

Spiritual convenience foods clog the shelves today, just as they did then. The feel-good spirituality that teaches that God is more interested in our happiness than our holiness comes to mind along with the gospel of success, and some of the more spectacular doomsday predictions.

These things are distractions. They aren’t preparing God’s people to take on the demands of following Christ in a culture increasingly hostile to the gospel. They aren’t preparing us to deal with unethical behavior in business, professional, and church settings. They aren’t helping us lead our families wisely and well as they face corruption in schools and social environments.

With that in mind I offer four tips for training your soul.

First, build strong, transparent relationships with godly friends. Find a few people who are committed to obeying Christ no matter what, and commit to meet regularly to discuss the Scriptures, sharpen and pray for each other.

Second, commit to regular intake of solid food: read scripture, study hard books, things that force you to work your mental muscles. Turn off the T.V., put down the smartphone, and learn to think biblically about life.

Third, learn the art of listening prayer. Be still before the Lord and tell him that you are listening, that you want him to lead you and that when he does, you will obey. The Transforming Friendship, by James Houston, is an excellent resource, along with many others.

Fourth, master your time. Jesus was very intentional about time. He talked quite a bit about God’s timing. He did things at certain times and did not do other things at certain times. He did not allow himself to be blown about, to drift with the currents of the times or the whims of his disciples or followers or even his enemies. His no was as ready as his yes. He was very much the master of his schedule. Learn to be the master of yours.

In the coming years it is going to be more difficult to be a committed follower of Christ in this country than at any time in the past. Spiritually flabby, unfit Christians will not be up to the challenge. Time to do some serious soul training.

ALPHA: The Anti-Sales-Pitch Gospel

It is called the Rule of Seven and it was developed by marketing expert Dr. Jeffery Lant. It is one of the reasons that Christianity has become so distasteful to so many people in western civilization.

The Rule of Seven states that, “to penetrate the buyer’s consciousness and make significant penetration in a given market, you have to contact the prospect a minimum of seven times within an 18-month period.” My dad, who sold life insurance among other things, summarized it thus: “It takes six NO’s to get a YES.”

I can remember my seminary professors making similar statements regarding evangelism. I don’t fault those men. They were simply trying to obey Christ’s command to make disciples with all the energy and expertise they could muster. But their methods, so closely modeled on the most effective sales strategies of the twentieth century, only alienate people today. All of us are so tired of being “sold,” so fed up with being approached as prospects with Pay Pal accounts, instead of people with problems and needs, that anything that smacks of marketing, anything that treats us like just another “YES,” is insulting. We mute commercials, hang up on phone solicitors, mass delete our inboxes and even slam the door when the Girl Scouts come cookie calling. (OK, that’s hyperbole. I don’t know anyone who isn’t a sucker for a seven-year-old selling Slim Mints).

Add to that the political stench that follows evangelicals like the dust cloud around Charlie Brown’s friend Pig-Pen, and one wonders why anyone would ever be interested in the message of Jesus.

The Alpha Course is the antithesis of those things. That’s one of the reasons the church I lead is offering it for the fifth time since 2011. First, The Alpha Course is completely apolitical. More importantly, it isn’t built around a sales pitch of the gospel. It is a course, Christianity 101 if you will, founded instead on two fundamentals: Process and Community. Learning is a process that happens best when we learn in the presence of friends. This is what makes Alpha so enjoyable and encouraging. No one is pressured to “buy” anything and all questions are welcomed in a community of friends who’ve gotten to know one another through shared meals and laughter.

Alpha is for everyone. If you’ve been a church member all your life, you will enjoy it. If you’ve never entered a church or considered Christianity, you will enjoy it and come away enriched with new understanding and new friends.

Find an Alpha Course near you by visiting http://www.alphausa.org.

SING OVER ME: Dennis Jernigan’s Journey

“How did this happen? What did we do wrong? Why didn’t we see it coming?” These and many other questions hound the parents of children who go off the rails in one way or another, none more so than the parents of children who “come out” as gay.

Dennis Jernigan’s parents did not learn of his immersion in the same-sex world until he had been delivered from it, but his autobiography, SING OVER ME (Innovo Publishing 2014), should be read by anyone who wants to understand how it happens and how same-sex attraction can be overcome.

Jernigan, whose songs and hymns are known and loved all across the evangelical landscape, has had over twenty years to heal and consider his life’s path, and tells his story in a way that is transparent and mature. Familiar patterns emerged as I read the chapters; patterns parents and loved ones should take note of, especially when raising artistically gifted and sensitive boys.

Rosaria Butterfield says that all sexual sin, hetero or homosexual, is predatory and she’s right. Jernigan’s story bears that out. Some of the forces that channeled him into same-sex attraction include: Adult male predatory behavior that initiated confusion, curiosity, self-doubt, and a fixation on sexuality in Dennis as a very young boy; bullying and being made to feel different from other boys; an untutored journey through puberty; homophobic hostility from other men that made it feel impossible for an adolescent to discuss his confusion with those who could’ve helped him; powerful identification with major female authority figures at critical periods in his life; more sexual predation and manipulation as a young man by trusted adult males who used him instead of helping him. The list is longer, but you get the point. It all leads to a confusion of identity that is sexually expressed.

According to Jernigan, many people feel trapped in the same-sex world and want to escape, but don’t know how. For Dennis, the path out of homosexuality wasn’t as complicated as the path in, but it was no less difficult. It too has a pattern, one that has nothing to do with man-centered schemes like “dating for the cure,” where people with same-sex attraction date the opposite sex in hopes it will effect an inward change. It won’t. In fact, the people who emerge victorious over this attraction find that the victory isn’t about sex; it’s about identity and love.

“It suddenly became apparent to me,” he writes, “that since childhood I had believed a vast number of lies about myself, lies planted in my mind concerning my sexual identity, my worth, my talents, my personality, my character, and everything about me … I could no longer trust anyone from my past to help me because I reasoned they were in the same predicament as I was. In that moment, I decided I would go to the Word of God, the manual, and to Father God Himself in intimate prayer and worship—not to discover who I was but rather to discover Who He was!”

Jernigan replaced lies about himself with truth and walked in the light about his problems with his fellow believers. He found acceptance, understanding and a commitment to walk with him among a few close Christian friends, and notably, he discovered the power and freedom of Spirit-led worship.

Not surprisingly, some people have condemned Dennis for this forthright autobiography, accusing him of trying to reinvigorate a waning music career by “coming out” in this way. But as the legal threat for refusing to celebrate homosexuality grows it becomes increasingly important for others who struggle with same-sex attraction and identity to hear from people like Dennis, and gain hope. May his tribe increase.

SUCCESS UNDER STRESS 3: Courage

Moral courage is often harder than physical courage. We will invest ourselves deeply in worry about the 92% of things over which we have no control in order to avoid the pain of dealing with the 8% that we can control.

Alan Loy McGinnis was a psychologist and author who wrote a few good books. In one he tells about a business man who was stressed to the max, worried about all kinds of things, until the day he analyzed his anxieties and realized that:
 40% were things that would likely never happen.
 30% were past decisions that were unchangeable.
 12% were unimportant criticism from others.
 10% were health related, but his health was generally OK.
 8% were legitimate worries that he could actually do something about.

I imagine most of us can identify with that. The problem is that lingering 8% usually requires some kind of moral courage.

For many of us, moral courage is harder than physical courage. We will invest ourselves deeply in worry about the 92% of things over which we have no control in order to avoid the pain of dealing with the 8% that we can control. Like the business woman who will waste hours and hours trying to fix a computer problem she knows nothing about when she really needs to pay somebody to fix the computer and fire the secretary that is alienating her clients. She’d rather cuss the computer than confront the secretary. It takes less courage.

The Apostle Paul’s protégé, Timothy, was in a situation like that. The church he led had serious problems. Heresy was brewing in the pews, some of the elders were caught in sin, there was disharmony and competition in the membership, and disruption in the worship service.

The Apostle’s instruction for dealing with these problems was no doubt difficult for Timothy to hear: “Tim, you are the pastor. You have the authority to deal with these difficulties. Use it.”

The Apostle wrote: “Command certain men not to teach strange doctrines … Command and teach these things … Command the rich not to be arrogant.” (1 Tim. 1:3; 4:11; 6:17-18 emphasis added).

Tim the timid needed to become Tim the courageous. Pastor Timid needed to be Pastor Fearless.

But it isn’t just Pastor Tim, is it? Moral courage is a prerequisite for anyone in leadership, especially anyone who decides to be a Christ-follower in this world.

Courage is the strength to take a risk, to persevere, to face danger, fear or difficulty. Moral courage is one of the keys to success in high stress. It’s what Timothy needed to ‘take command’ of a difficult situation. And it’s what we need to take command of ours.