More Church Signs of the Times

I’m probably going to be accused of not having a sense of humor. Just warning you up front before I write this post. I do have a sense of humor. I laugh a lot, in fact. But I’ve been doing some thinking and there is a time and a place in which it’s good and proper and right to be funny, and other times....not so much.

I wrote a post recently about appalling church sign finds and the little game we play in our family to spot and collect them. Here are a couple more we’ve seen since that post, and then I have something to say.

“Are you at the center of God’s worship?”

I think this is the worst one I’ve seen yet....ever. I don’t even know what they are trying to say here. Face value it is blasphemous and appalling. I can’t even think of a way to take this that is good. I better not be at the center of any worship. I better be worshiping God first, foremost and only. Are they trying to say that worshiping God should be the center of my life? If so, they mangled it. Somehow, though, in our self-actualization and contemplative naval-gazing, self-absorbed, demand and expect and think you deserve your best life now culture, I suspect it’s as bad as it looks face value. Truly terrible.

“Be friends with Jesus. Use Faith-Book, the Bible.”

As we were driving along a highway we drive quite often close to home, I happened to see the other side of the ‘cold butter’ sign I drive by and mentioned in the first church sign post. This is what was on the back. Sad to say, in comparison, the cold butter sign is better. Wowza. Thinking about this one since I saw it yesterday is what got me pondering what I want to say in the rest of this post and for which some people will probably think I have no sense of humor. So be it.

We live in a culture that increasingly shakes its collective fist in the face of God. In a time when the church desperately needs to be a prophetic voice in the midst of a Romans 1 culture of spiritual blindness, we laugh ourselves into irrelevance. The seeker-driven, best life now, felt-needs focus of the church is a foolish mess. If it makes me a complete idiot to say I believe that, then so be it. We wonder why our churches are so filled with false converts that studies show large percentages of our youth are leaving the faith, yet we scream foul and pitch fits when our culture rails and gnashes their teeth and threatens to boycott when the Bible-influenced Christian beliefs of a Chick-fil-A president are gently stated in answer to a question. Why should our culture take us seriously when we don’t even seem to take the faith seriously? “Be friends with Jesus. Use Faith-Book.” Really??? 

I grew up in a solid, Bible-believing church. It was one of the better ones in the SBC, by all accounts. And yet, as I was listening to Todd Friel the other day on a ‘Witness Wednesday’ episode where he shared some encounters he had talking with random college students as he visited their campus and compassionately struck up conversations with them, I put my head on my kitchen counter and wept. In that episode, he ran across a couple of Christian kids who, though sincere, couldn’t articulate the gospel when he said, “Say I’m not a Christian. Why should I be a Christian?” The best one kid had to offer was along the lines of, well, Jesus has made my life so much better; I see what it’s done for me to be a Christian. When Todd came back and said that his life is fulfilled and he’s happy already, why would he need Jesus, the kid didn’t have a good answer. Todd gently then suggested that what the kid had forgotten to mention was that he’s a sinner and needs a Savior. Repentance is what was missing. And the reason I wept at my kitchen counter while listening is because I realized that had Todd run across me as a college kid, I would have answered exactly the same way that kid had, and I would have been just as confused about how to properly explain the gospel. And it’s really so simple once we get over our self-esteem and self-centeredness and realize that the gospel message is not that we can have our best life now. The gospel message is that we are wretched sinners who have broken God’s law and cannot earn His forgiveness no matter what we do. But God, who is rich in mercy, demonstrated His love to us while we were yet sinners and Jesus died for us, took the wrath which we deserve as He died on that cross. And now God commands that we repent and put our trust in the One He sent, namely Jesus Christ the Lord. 

I loved Jesus, wanted to follow Him and put my trust in Him, live for Him, as a college student. But I don’t think the gospel message was spelled out for me in such a consistent way as I hear Todd Friel teach it on the Wretched Radio podcasts I listen to now. I am so thankful to my loving Savior for pointing me over the years as I’ve grown in the direction of good preachers who consistently preach the gospel soundly, biblically, rightly, and that by hearing it preached well I have come to understand and repent and fully trust in Christ alone, and that the faith God graciously allowed me to express as a child has been realized through the sound preaching of His word. I am saved by His grace alone. 

Repentance is what is missing from so much of our ‘gospel’ proclamation in so much of our evangelical preaching today. We teach a message of having our felt-needs met, having better lives, fixing our self-esteem (loving ourselves better), and though repentance is mentioned, it isn’t often enough and strongly enough stressed and fully explained why we need to repent and from what. Had someone asked me back then if I was a good person, I would have proudly said, “Yes.” I didn’t fully comprehend until much later how wretched I really am. The righteouness in which I am growing is due to the work of the Holy Spirit in me through Jesus Christ my Lord, not because I’m good enough in myself to get there on my own.

I’ve been listening to Alistair Begg preaching through the book of Amos recently. He said this in the podcast I was listening to yesterday, and it struck me in light of my thinking about these things, “Religion without repentance leaves men and women in a perilous place. It affirms them in their rebellion, and it is a very large part of much of the proclamation in our western world today.” And later in the same message he said this, “Repentant-less religion eats out the soul of our society.”

So, back to the church sign nonsense. I know that a cutesy phrase on a church sign probably isn’t the whole of the message that church teaches. But I think that we better be much more careful of the message we are sending to those who drive by and see it. That church sign is a public face of our church. If we’re so casual and silly about our Savior on the sign, are we really going to be sober-minded about Him in our preaching and teaching and what we’re passing on to our children? Sure, I can laugh about funny things, but I don’t think the Church’s face to the world is a funny thing. Our culture is more and more antagonistic to the truth claims of Christianity. We need to be about the business of teaching the gospel well - especially within the church to our children so that we and they can be salt and light by knowing and understanding and sharing the faith outside the church.  Instead of trying so hard to be ‘cool’ and trying so hard to get them to ‘like us’ because we aren’t really all that different, let’s focus on knowing and teaching the gospel well. That’s what our fist-shaking culture needs from us. Not another ‘Reclaim America’ type of rally (I have a whole other post brewing on that subject, just so you know), but a church that is in awe of our Holy God and who would fear to trivialize Jesus, who should be most precious to us indeed. Have we read Revelation?? The vision John saw of the risen Lord Jesus Christ would never have allowed him to say such trivial things about Jesus as we cutely put on our church signs. Jesus is the Friend of Sinners, but He isn’t our buddy and boyfriend. He is the Friend who is closer than a brother, but we must never forget that He is the Lamb who was slain and to whom all the Redeemed will forever sing Worthy is the Lamb for all all eternity.

Could we please rethink the cutesy, silly, irreverant and sometimes outright blasphemous church signs (not to mention the posters/t-shirts/cups/junk we see in Christian stores and on Facebook and e-mail chains that are usually followed by ‘like and post if you love Jesus’)? For the love of a world that is dying and going to hell, can we not be more serious about what we present to the world? For the love of the Savior who died to redeem sinners and make us free from sin, could we please be more careful with how we represent Him before the mockers? Is that really a laughing matter?

Our Long Night Last Night

We had a long night last night. After repeatedly telling Rachel day after day after day to stop hugging the dog, he doesn’t like it, I know you love him but the best way to show him you love him is not to hug him when he doesn’t like it, Roscoe finally had enough of her ‘love’ and snapped and bit her in the lip last night around 6PM. I’m so thankful Drew was home and that he is super calm in a crisis, because I saw all that blood and went into panicked momma mode. Drew got her cleaned up, then calmly looked at me and said, “I think we need to take her to the doctor, you know, make sure we get it cleaned well enough.” Trying not to panic the 6-year-old. “Getting my keys,” I said.

If I ever am tempted to complain about the hospital at Ft. Knox again, I’m going to stop myself. The ER staff were wonderful - kind, compassionate, professional, and reassuring to the 6-year-old and her momma. They let us sit in a private waiting room so we weren’t out with the contagious people and, as the man who checked us in said, “So she doesn’t have people staring. She’s probably self-conscious enough already.” They got us back pretty quickly, and as scared as Rachel was, she amazed me by how brave she acted through the whole ordeal. The attending doctor looked at her lip and said that the dog took a little chunk out of her top lip and there wasn’t a way to stitch it, so she had another doctor come in for second opinion and they agreed to call the plastic surgeon at Kosair Children’s Hopsital in Louisville. As soon as she said, “It’s not really too bad, but she is going to scar, but let’s call the plastic surgeon and see if we can minimize it,” I started crying. I’d been holding it back, but I just looked at my beautiful little girl trying so hard to be brave and cried.

While waiting, I got a text from Rachel’s best little friend’s mom telling me that they just found out they are moving to Indiana, so they won’t get to be in class together this year after all. Her little friend’s heart is breaking, could they get together this week to say their good-byes? I didn’t have the heart to tell Rachel her friend is moving away with what she was going through right then. I’ll have to tell her this morning, though, and I’m dreading it. A lot.

After the call to the plastic surgeon, we were told that the best course of action was to transfer us to Kosair. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was to put my little baby girl into that hospital van and tell her I was going to get my car and follow. Drew was home with the boys, so I had to drive behind rather than in the van with her. She was scared, but she nodded bravely. My heart broke during that whole long drive to Louisville until I met her in the hallway at Kosair.

While waiting, my phone battery died, so I wasn’t able to text or call Drew with updates. Had I known we were going to be driving to Louisville I would have charged it that afternoon. Lesson learned, always charge phone once it gets to half power, because you just don’t know what the day will hold.

After a long wait and several different doctors and nurses looking at her lip and sending pictures to the head plastic surgeon on call, the decision was made to send us home with some special cream and bandages and we will be calling this morning to make an appointment for her to see the plastic surgeon on Tuesday, per last night’s instructions. 

Because my parents read this, I want to reassure you and let you to know it doesn’t really look as bad as it sounds as I wrote this. The worst is right on her lip and she is doing fine this morning, but I think she’s finally learned why we’ve been so adamant about leaving the stupid dog alone.

You all probably know how much I hate driving. Well, with my phone dead, my GPS picked this, the worst night ever, at midnight in downtown Louisville on streets I’ve never driven in my life before, to decide not to work. I got turned around and spent an anxious 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get to the interstate, but finally found the signs that got me there. Then I drove home through the construction and really, really, really dark roads with no phone and a very tired kiddo in the back seat. That was scary. The good thing is, at that time of night, there isn’t much traffic out there and we got home at 1:30 AM. 

One thing that really broke my heart was when she wanted to know what she looked like with the bandage on her lip, so I took a picture with my phone before it died and showed her. She said, “Everyone is going to hate me. They’re going to laugh at me. Don’t put that on Facebook, Mommy! Get rid of it!” I assured her that we all love her no matter what, no one is going to laugh, we’re all just sorry it happened to her, and of course I wouldn’t post that to Facebook. How sad is it that she sees me on Facebook so often she would worry about that? So, no, I’m not sharing pictures here. Conviction from the mouth of my 6-year-old. Lots of things needing to change around here.

As I drove along behind the hospital van last night, I kept pleading with God to help her not to be afraid, and thanking Him for His mercy, because it could have been so much worse. He has my little girl in His hand, and I’m grateful.

God is good. All the time.

Church Sign and Bumper Sticker Theology

It’s become a fun little game in our family whenever we’re driving anywhere to look for and notice church signs and/or bumper stickers....the more abominable the better to add to our growing collection of wretchedness. Some leave us scratching our heads wondering what, exactly, is meant, some leave us sad and/or disgusted by the triteness or abominable theology, and a few leave us saying, “Okay, that was pithy,” or, “Yeah, that was pretty good.”  In an effort to limp my blog along another day and share the joy, I’ve compiled a few of our most recent finds to share. If I comment, my comments are in purple italics. Some probably need no comment as they could stand alone in their wretchedness. My opinion, for what it’s worth: I think when we try to be too cutesy with our church sign/bumper sticker/T-shirt theology, it makes us seem silly and dumbs down the majesty and beauty and seriousness and importance of our message. Y'all know, I hope, that I love to laugh and I'm not against funny things. But Christians ought not to be silly about the faith. It doesn’t really make us more culture-sensitive, it just makes us silly. Like I said, my opinion.....So, having said that, enjoy. Or not.....

“Cold church is like cold butter...It doesn’t spread well.” 

What does this mean? No AC during the church meeting this summer? (That was snark, if you missed it). Yeah, yeah, I guess I understand what’s meant, but sounds goofy and makes you wonder who they're lecturing.

“America is free. So is salvation.” 

Urg. On a lot of levels. Just, urg.

“Jesus died for Myspace in Heaven.”

Yes, ‘myspace’ was one word. Blurg. In an effort to be trendy, it’s just dumb. Does anyone even use Myspace anymore? I don’t know, but the sign is dumb, dumb, dumb. Myspace, Facebook, social networks basically feed our inner narcissist, and yes, I see the hypocrisy of that comment seeing as I’ve been as guilty as anyone else about my overuse of Facebook and I recognize the temptation to get too hung up on caring too much what other people think of me that it feeds. So let’s just baptize that insidious self-centeredness with this silly sentiment on a church sign. Worshipping Jesus isn’t all about me! We are too prone to that kind of thinking. Getting off the soapbox now.....

“Laughter is music for the soul.” 

Kind of apathetic about this one. Not bad, I guess, just not sure what it means, exactly.

“Come inside. We’re prayer conditioned.” 

Doh!!!! I can’t even read this one without hearing it in a cheesy, mocking tone in my head. In fact, we have a friend from our Florida days who I just picture saying this in that cheesy, mocking voice. He was really good at it. Think Brian Regan if you’ve ever seen his stand-up comedy routine. I hear it in his voice, snarkily, in my head.

“Be ye fishers of men. U catch them, He will clean them.”

Urg. Face palm. And yes, it was ‘U’, not ‘you.’ Even my inner grammar nerd was tweaked, thanks a lot.

“Beth Moore, ‘Free’ simulcast.” 

Yikes.

“God reigns, the Son shines.”

We actually had to miss our turn off the highway just so we could turn around in the parking lot to see this one. Worth it? Punny, punny, punny....

“People are lonely because they build walls not bridges.”

Barf. Psycho babble AND guilt right there. If I had been feeling lonely but had NOT been building walls, not so sure I’d feel welcomed there, I’m sayin’. 

“The Ten Commandments are not ten suggestions.”

Yeah.....

“Lost? Free directions in the Bible.”

Sigh.....

Then there was the one my husband saw and told me about and we actually called in to a radio show, but now we think he remembered it wrongly. He originally told me it was, "You need sin screen for the Sonshine," which made no sense, but which I didn't question because we've seen so many horrible ones and that's the one we called in. Later he remembered it as, "You need Sonscreen for sin burn," equally wretched but makes more sense in a goofy church sign kind of way. I asked him which it really was, and he honestly doesn't remember, maybe he saw both. Maybe. Nothing much surprises me anymore where evanjellyfishism is concerned.


These next ones aren’t church signs, but they fit here somehow, too:

Saw this sign on a roadside Fireworks Tent before July 4th: “Church Fund Raiser,” and my husband and I started laughing so hard, and I don’t even know why it was so funny. It just seems like an odd thing for a church to sell for a fundraiser. 

And I saw this today, (In case you can't see it well, it says, "It's the God in me."):

Not exactly sure what it means, but it’s got a New Agey, Oprahific kinda feel that made my eyes cross and I just had to take a picture. Shudder.

And now I’ll end with the few church signs we’ve seen recently that weren’t abominable or wretched or puke-cutesy:

Any sign that simply listed the service times, we liked a lot. Simple, informative, good stuff.

“We love because He first loved us.”

Nice. Biblical, even. (1 John 4:19)

“Jesus is King of Kings.”

Truth.

“Hebrews 13:15-16.”  

Of course, then I had to look it up to see what it says: ‘ Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” 

“No man ever spoke like this man. John 7:46.” 

I liked this one best of all the church signs we’ve seen recently.

And there you have it. Happy Tuesday, y’all.

Thankful Thursday

I seem to have forgotten that I have a blog, and that I enjoy writing it, and that I enjoy reading other blogs. Or maybe it’s just been summer. And a HOT one at that.

Seeing as it’s Thursday, how about I write a Thankful Thursday post to remind myself that I have a blog and enjoy writing here?

I’m thankful for pomeganates. What an interesting and delicious and beautiful fruit it is.  My mom taught me how to cut and eat one last Thanksgiving, and I’ve been searching the grocery store ever since in the hopes they might some day have them in our produce section. Yesterday they did! I was tempted to do a dance of joy right there in the store. My boys were excited to see the pomegranates come home, too. They LOVE them. Here’s some pictures of my pomegranate fun: 

Such a pretty fruit, don't you think?

All those yummy little jewels!

I’m also thankful for air conditioning. It’s been over 100 degrees here several days during the past few weeks. Whew. Our upstairs AC unit, on what was supposedly the hottest day of the year, decided to quit blowing cold air. It got HOT, HOT, HOT upstairs. I’m thankful we have two units and the downstairs is cool. We’ve been calling for a week now and finally have an appointment tomorrow to have the upstairs fixed. Long story, not going to complain here, though. I’m just thankful we have any AC at all. In a world where there is so much poverty, I really feel selfish complaining when we have one working unit in the house. That’s an inconvenience, not a crisis.

I’m thankful for the ministry of Truth for Life, Grace to You, and Wretched Radio. The teaching I hear daily from these resources has been precious to me. I really appreciate the instruction I’m receiving in the gospel, and words just can’t express how thankful I am for the impact it’s having on my own life and on how I’m growing in teaching my children. 

I’m thankful for an app I found for my iPhone called Run5K. It was an 8 week program that helped me to learn to go from a non-runner to being, well, more of a jogger than I ever have been in my life. I finished the program, heat and hilly neighborhood notwithstanding, and I’m trying to get into better shape. All this hilly running is even helping me to strengthen the muscles that are helping my knee to not hurt quite as much as it has for the past 3 years. Nice. Now if I could just see some of the weight come down. You’d think with all this jogging I’d lose a few pounds, wouldn’t you? But I’m thankful to be feeling healthier, and to have reached a goal I’ve never been able to reach before - being able to run (slow, but more than I've ever done before) for exercise outside. My husband likes to run, and he’s really patient and slows his pace to run with me once in a while and is very encouraging in my effort to learn to do this hard thing.

Most of all, I’m thankful for the gospel and that God delights to save sinners, of whom I am a most wretched one who is most grateful and joyful to be saved by His grace. I am thankful that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and He ever intecedes for His people. 

Romans 5:8

“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Lasting Encouragement

Hebrews 10:24-25

“24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” 

Romans 12:15

“15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”

Philippians 2:4

“4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

This morning I was cleaning out that drawer we have where we stuff things when we don’t know what else to do with them or are too lazy to take the time to find a better home for them. I know I am not the only person who has a drawer (several) like that, am I? Anyway, most of what I found in there went straight to the trash bin, having stayed in the drawer long enough to outlive its urgency or even my remembrance of why it went in the drawer as opposed to the trash bin in the first place. 

Near the bottom of the drawer, however, I came across a stack of cards that caused me to pause, take them up, sit down, and read and remember, with a few (just a few) tears as well. These were cards that had been sent after the last miscarriage, that fourth and final one. Upstairs in the very bottom of my night stand, there are three bound stacks of cards that I’ve kept, but somehow, with this last one, because we were in the midst of getting ready to move and I was so tired, so very tired, this little stack didn’t make it to my little safe place and had ended up here in the junk drawer, waiting the time I’d find them again and remember.

And what that made me think today is this: How thankful I am for the caring friends who took the time to send a card or a note, even when they really didn’t know what to say. How thankful I am for the Body of Christ, who encourage each other, who weep with each other when we weep and rejoice with each other when we rejoice. How thankful I am that our gracious God puts the lonely in families - and isn’t that what the Body of Christ is for those who believe and trust in Jesus - a family? How thankful I am for each card and the scripture included, which encouraged me at a difficult time and stirred me up to the good work of trusting my Savior, even when I was hurting so. Because what each of those cards and the messages written in them had in common was that each of those friends encouraged me in the Lord - pointing always to Jesus, the Savior of my soul.

Even our realtor here, who is also a sister in Christ, sent a note of encouragement after Drew had to call and tell her that we no longer needed that extra bedroom in the house, was there anyway to go back to the drawing board? So, what I’m thinking about today as I remember my caring friends is how good it is to send a card, say a prayer, make a phone call or even a visit when someone comes to mind. Those friends, sisters in Christ, who sent cards, or called on the phone even when they had no words but just called to let me know they cared, helped in that way to encourage and helped me (and Drew) to bear a heavy burden. So, I’m hoping that my providential stumbling across those examples of sweet encouragement will help me to remember next time I think about sending a card or offering encouragement to not merely think about it, but to do it. Because the encouragement offered goes beyond just that moment, but lasts for years, as my little tucked away bundles of cards can attest. 

Radically Reading

I have something I’ve been thinking about a great deal, and I’m not sure how to make sure I say this in a right manner. It is hard to know how not to come across pridefully, and I’ll confess to you that I struggle with that sometimes. But there really isn’t any room for pride when we’re talking about God’s incredible grace, is there? 

First of all, this is a post that is aimed at professing believers in Jesus Christ. Here it is, and please hear from me, not legalism that would have you check a box to do a duty, but a concerned and caring friend, okay? What I’ve been pondering is how much I wish my brothers and sisters in Christ could learn what a blessing it is to read and study God’s word. How much I wish that instead of crying and pleading and looking in Christian book after Christian book and from speaker after speaker and source after source for a ‘deeper’ sense of belonging to Christ or more, more, more in our experience of worship that instead we would feast on the word of God and find satisfaction in knowing Him and in the grace of a steady, daily growing in sanctification as we fill our minds with His word and begin to grow in discernment as the Holy Spirit uses His word to transform our hearts and minds and lives to the image of Christ, as we learn to obey His word. This is not wispy mystical stuff, and it doesn’t, poof, just happen to us after we really, really pray hard for it.  It does take effort and commitment, though, and it really is a work of God in our hearts. We can't obey His word if we don't know what it says. We can't recognize when error is being taught if we don't know the truth. I say this is a post for professing believers, because I don’t want to be misunderstood here. What I pray for you, my friends who may read this post, is that God in His mercy and grace would open your heart so that you may have ears to hear, eyes to see, faith to believe and obey His word and trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with God. 

When I read the book Radical, I remember thinking that of all the things David Platt has at the end of the book as part of the radical experiment, I was surprised by ‘read the Bible all the way through.’ I was surprised that this has come to be considered ‘radical.’ That grieves me, I’m sad to say. Is it really so radical for a Christian to read God’s word all the way through once, not to mention that one could even do it, say, consistently? Don’t we want to know it and learn to obey it? Isn’t one evidence of a saved person that they have a growing hunger and thirst for God’s word and for His righteousness? Have you ever read Psalm 119 and pondered whether that kind of zeal resides in your heart? Have you ever wondered why a quick little devotional thought or verse for the day not read in context doesn’t seem to change your life? I am not saying I’ve arrived at some super spiritual height and I’m not saying there isn’t much room for growth in my life because that's not it.  I am just a wife and mom who desires to love and obey Jesus, but I want to worship and love the Jesus who is, not some Jesus from my, or anyone else's, imagination. What  I am saying is that there ought to be an ongoing and growing hunger for God’s word in a believer’s life, yes? That’s not radical, is it? 

It’s so tempting to make excuses about time and not being able to read the Bible all the way through prayerfully, and I have to tell you that one of the things that just hurts when I hear it is when a mom or dad laughs about not having time to read the Bible through, and others all say knowingly, “You have kids.”  I know that the challenges of parenting small children can change when and how we have time to read the Bible, but please don’t let that be an excuse. I say that, not as a judgmental legalist, but as someone who has seen the fruit of time spent in God’s word, reading it and thinking on it, and who truly desires the same for my brothers and sisters in Christ. I can testify and really want to encourage you that if you ever start reading the Bible through, making it a daily habit to spend time with God through prayer and the reading of His word, you really will begin to see your thinking become more biblical. God is extremely kind in this. When reading and understanding the Bible becomes very important to you, it’s really amazing the gradual growth you’ll see when you look back. I don’t say this because I came to this because I’m so smart to have figured this out on my own. No, humbly, gratefully, I tell you that I know that it is only because God my Redeemer put a hunger in my heart for His word that I am so thankful for, and I can’t imagine not reading it often now. I am extremely thankful for the godly influences along the way in my life who have encouraged me the way I hope to be encouraging you in this post.

And, yes, I have kids, too, busy ones. And they were even younger when our pastor in Indiana first challenged us to read the Bible through and the fire was lit in my own heart.  And how I needed God’s word filling my mind and training my thinking then, during one of the hardest years of my life. How I need it today, too.

I remember how excited I was when I read the Bible all the way through and for the first time really read for myself all those Bible stories I thought I knew frontwards and backwards after years and years of Sunday School, and I read them in the context of the whole redemptive plan of God and how my heart began to rejoice as I saw those stories, not as isolated moral lessons, but as a great tapestry of God’s grace. 

And now I pass the encouragement on to you, my friends. Spend time reading the whole Bible with an eye to see what God has told us about Himself. We in this country are so blessed to have access to the Bible in abundance. What wealth we have! Let us not squander it by letting that Bible sit unread on the shelf while we replace actually reading the Bible ourselves with chasing after what other people say about the Bible. Let us not dishonor the God who created us and redeemed us to Himself by neglecting, or worse by lauging away our neglect of, the Word He has graciously given us. May I encourage you to spend more time reading the Bible itself before reading another book about the Bible? It is so very worth the time spent. 

Saturday Morning Laughs

I love all of my children, and I’m so thankful I get to be their mom. They all are gifts from God, and I’m thankful. They all also have taught me much about how sinful my own heart is and how impatient and selfish I actually am, which does wonders for helping me learn to ponder the amazing grace of the gospel and our amazing and loving Savior. Having to share day in and day out with people in your home for whom you are responsible to teach the gospel in a real and daily way really can expose your heart as you take seriously the Word of God.  I’m thankful for this, too.

Something else my children have done, though, is to teach me to laugh more, even when they don’t mean to be teaching me anything.

There are days I’m convinced we just needed our third child. She’s six-years-old, intense, creative, and funny, and she just makes me see life differently, in a good way most of the time. All my kids are intense, by the way. We are an intense kind of people in this home. My husband’s favorite phrase is, “Lighten up, Beck.” That’s why I’m so glad for the laughter, too. 

Which brings me to this morning. I almost never sleep in. I am not a night owl, and am pretty much an ‘early to bed, early to rise’ kind of girl. Most weekdays I’m up at 5AM. That’s just how I am. I do my best work in the morning. And now that I'm 40+, I also seem to have developed an annoyingly persistent habit of waking up in the wee hours of the morning with my brain on full tilt, but that's another post.

Anyway, we slept in today, and it was nice. Sometime along the way this morning I heard my daughter wake up and begin playing in her room before I drifted back into that nice, sleeping in kind of doze. A little later we heard her whimpering just outside our door, and we asked her what was wrong. She came in, tears on her cheeks, and said, “I’m hungry for breakfast.” To which we said, “But why are you crying? You know we’ll get you breakfast, right?” And she said, “But I was hungry, and you were still sleeping, and I was hungry, and I thought now you were nocturnal.You were still sleeping.”

And I started laughing. And yes, I was laughing at her, not with her, because she wasn’t laughing. Forgive me, but I laughed and laughed while her little tears kept flowing until she finally grinned that sheepish little grin she has sometimes. That was just funny. Y’all, I looked at the clock and it was only 8AM.

Such sluggards we are. Sluggards who got up at 8AM and gave our little early bird some breakfast so she wouldn’t continue to think we’d somehow become nocturnal.

I’m still laughing......

Don't Mess With the Sauce!

Dear Chef Boyardee People:

I have happily used your pizza sauce for YEARS because I like it. A lot. It brings back happy memories of my childhood and pizzas made at home in bygone years, and I’ve been pleased to share those memories by bringing them forward and baking pizzas with your delicious sauce for my own children. We pretty much all agree that when we are craving homemade pizza, it is the sauce we are remembering fondly.

However, imagine my dismay when shopping at my local grocery store this week and there were no cans of delicious Chef Boyardee pizza sauce on the shelf where until a few days ago it happily was always to be found. Not to be deterred, I opted to buy the Chef Boyardee Pizza Maker kit, because I knew the sauce is contained in that box. All seemed well and good until I went to make my pizzas tonight, a joyous Friday tradition in the Sweet Tea household. When I opened the can of “Pizza Maker Sauce”, the name of which probably should have clued me in, I realized it didn’t smell exactly right. I thought, “No, surely they didn’t....” and proceeded to swipe a taste on my finger from the lid. 

You did. You went and changed my sauce.

Why, I ask you, did you take something that has been providing deliciousness for years, and go about changing it? And you know what? I don’t like the new flavor nearly as well. It doesn’t have that special something that was in the old sauce, and has a new something that I just really don't like.

Why go about changing a good thing? Do you remember the “New Coke” debacle? I do. Didn't turn out so well, and when they brought back "Coke Classic," it still wasn't the same Coca-Cola we had known and loved, but apparently they thought we were too dumb to notice, and now my kids have no idea what once was. Well, now I find myself unwittingly in the midst of a pizza sauce debacle, and I am sad. I am letting you know that there is now nothing to prevent me from leaving your trusted brand and embarking on a journey to find a new favorite elsewhere. Sadly, my Chef Boyardee sauce seems to be going the way of so many other old favorite items that have left us for the land of “new and improved” which is usually none of the sort.

I will eat my pizza tonight with some sadness and nostalgia for what was, and hope that perhaps this sauce change is a fluke or something. 

If it is not, then I am sad to say that I see no reason to continue what has been a happy friendship for so many years. 

Sadly,

Rebekah

Chief pizza maker and cook in the Sweet Tea household

Contemplation

"One thing have i asked of the LORD,

that will I seek after;

that I may dwell in the house of the LORD 

all the days of my life;

to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD

and to inquire in his temple."

Psalm 27:4

I’ve been pondering this for some time now, and my heart is heavy. I’m going to try to approach this topic as gently as I know how, but this is, honestly, something I have spent time praying and crying about, so I’m not trying to gin up controversy or be a jerk or call anyone out or be hyper-critical or anything. These are the kinds of posts I always post with shaking fingers and some nervousness, but here it is.

There is a....I don’t want to call it movement, but I’m not sure what else to call it.... among the evangelical circles in which I run, in real life and online, toward a kind of ‘Christian’ contemplative type of prayer. It’s a subtle thing, and in many cases the ideas I’m struggling with are not introduced with any malicious intent or intent to deviate from truth. They are introduced with the best of intentions. However, good intentions aren’t the standard. Uzzah had good intentions when he reached out his hand to stop the Ark of the Covenant from falling from a moving ox cart, and you can read what happened in 2 Samuel 6. 

Here is my heartbreak: I am afraid that in desiring a more consistent or deeper prayer life, we too often get distracted looking for an intense experience with God and seeking some kind of emotional experience with Him and we deviate from hungering for and seeking God. Scripture tells us over and over to seek God, but doesn’t focus on seeking an experience or some emotional, highly personalized, mystical or romanticized feeling, or a certain kind of mood that we are so prone to seek, but we’re told to seek to know Him. There is a difference. I’m not sure I am expressing myself well, but there is a difference. 

I think, sometimes, that well-meaning Christians are getting tripped up by subtle word usage. To contemplate isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if by it you mean to think about God’s word, to study it, to learn the meaning and implications of what you are reading, to learn to think carefully about how to apply it to your life and to repent when the Holy Spirit, through the Word, opens your eyes to areas where you are not living in accordance with His Word and to obey it as one who loves God. That kind of contemplation, if you will, is good.

However, there’s something called ‘contemplative prayer’ that has other connotations and baggage that aren’t so much good. Start searching around the internet for ‘contemplative prayer’  or ‘centering prayer’ and you find that it’s a whole different kind of contemplating being encouraged. It’s way beyond the scope of this post to get into all the ways it is rooted in ‘New Age’ thought and Eastern mysticism, but that in itself ought to give us serious pause. If you do a search, there’s lots of good and bad information about that. What I wanted to focus on here is a more narrow scope, mostly focusing how a sincere attempt to become a better pray-er, for lack of a better term, can sometimes get off track if we fall into the ditch of being too desirous of a certain mood or emotion or experience. 

I sincerely believe that it is a good desire to want to be more committed to prayer and to want to see your church become more of a praying church. We need to pray. As believers it’s so important to have a vital prayer life, privately and corporately. I get a little frustrated with some of the discussion I hear about prayer, though. Why do we have such a hard time grasping prayer? We either reduce it to a time of listing all the ailments that we know about from close friends and family to far distant people and spend the whole time praying people out of heaven, so-to-speak (I’m not saying we aren’t supposed to pray for sick people, just that this is not ALL we’re to pray about), or, in the genuine spark of recognition that this is not really all prayer is meant to be, we get creative and try to incorporate all the senses in an experiential, highly personal, ultimately too inwardly focused exercise. Another movement I see in the evangelical camp is one that seems enthralled with ‘creativity’, but unfortunately there’s not a lot of discernment coming alongside it. (This website is chock full of the kind of stuff that I’m talking about but definitely not endorsing, if you want some context.) Both extremes end up shallow and empty and devoid of the power we say we seek in prayer...and miss the mark, I would argue.

The thing is, in order to worship God, we ought to be focused on who God is, His attributes, and what He has done. Worship means to ascribe worth to someone or something, to acknowledge the worthiness of the object of our worship to be worshipped. It’s about God, not about us and what we can get out of it or experience in it.

Of course, rightly informed worship, grounded in God’s word and focused on His attributes and marvelous grace will ultimately cause emotions to well up in us as our affections are stirred to love and glorify God. I’m not against emotions or a mood that is affected by true worship. I’m often very emotional while worshiping. It’s not that we worship coldly in a vacuum. What I’m disheartened by is an attempt, no matter how well-meaning, to manipulate emotions or generate a certain mood through overly creative experiences and too much focus on ourselves and our senses and how we feel.

I think in our desire to seek an experience, we get too inwardly focused, too focused on me and how I feel and my supposed ‘worth’ and what this means to me, and then we begin to pray in a way that, ultimately, is more about us than it is about God. We begin to focus on the wonder that is us, rather than taking our focus off of ourselves and turning in wonder, awe and praise to the One who has saved us, redeemed us, reconciled us to Himself, turning in worship to the One who has lavished such grace in not consuming us in our sin but in cleansing us from our sin by bearing the wrath that we deserve. I am convinced that we do not think often enough and deeply enough about the fact that we deserve wrath. We were wretched, poor, blind and hopeless....But God, in mercy and grace, sent Jesus to bear the wrath we deserve in our place and in grace and mercy to clothe those who in repentant faith place their hope in Him in His righteousness to worship Him and honor Him forever more. And we dare to sit in contemplative introspection and think about the wonder that is us? 

I think sometimes we are too willing to take poetic license with how we write and sing and talk and think about God. I’m not saying creativity and poetry are wrong, and I know some people are just artsier than I am and more in tune with their creative side. But. We have been given God’s word, and we need to make sure our creativity and poetic license don’t violate it or point our affections at ourselves rather than Him. 

When Jesus gave us the model prayer, He didn’t instruct us to ponder how gifted we are or how we feel about things or how we can forgive ourselves. Take a look at that prayer again, and think about it, if you will. (Matthew 6:8-12) Where is the focus? How we feel? How gifted/talented/creative we are? No.

When Isaiah saw God, he did not then contemplate how wonderful or gifted he (Isaiah) was. He did not then sit and contemplate the amazing creation that was himself. No. He saw himself for the wretch he was before Holy God. “And I said, ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!’” (Isaiah 6:5) And when we rightly think about it, this is what we know ourselves to be. Not a wonder, but a wretch. And, friends, this makes God’s grace all the more amazing, as we contemplate it. When you really start to think about how awesome the gospel is, how incredible Jesus’ statement from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” you can’t help but be moved emotionally, and you can’t help but be moved to worship HIM rather than sit there taking in deeply how wonderful you are. He loves us not because we are wonderfully lovable, but while we were yet sinners He loved us in all of our wretchedness and died on the cross and bore the wrath that we deserve, and by the grace of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, through faith in Christ alone, declares us righteous. That is how He has demonstrated His love for us. Because Jesus bore my wretchedness on the cross, bore the wrath I deserve, I stand before Him, clean and righteous and holy. Think long and hard about that, and I am convinced you will begin to pray.

The more I think about this and look at prayers in the Bible, the more I’m convinced that the prayers God will hear are not those that focus on how lovable we are. The prayers we need to be seeking to pray are those that focus on our awesome, incredible God and that ask for things that would bring honor and glory to Him. We desperately need to turn our focus from ‘What am I getting out of this? What is my blessing?’ to ‘What pleases my God?’ 

Then we can be freed from the tyrannical discontent of seeking a romanticized, highly personalized, heightened emotional mystical feeling and freed to seek our God, through the precious and glorious grace He has offered us in His Son. We are freed to rest in His forgiveness and grace. We are freed to feast on His word and have our prayers informed by rightly dividing the Word of God and to know Him, and that we may learn to pray rightly for others - fellow believers and the lost - that our love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment; so that we may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 2:9-11)

Friends, we don’t find that by looking inward and being awed by the wonder that is us. We find that by denying ourselves and looking up at our Savior and savoring the grace that He has so richly lavished on us while we were yet sinners, and savoring the blessing that through Jesus Christ we are declared righteous and able to stand in His presence and boldly approach the throne of grace. Let's not open the door to deception. Let’s not settle for the cheap imitation of manipulated emotion and self-focused, romanticized notions of worship. Let’s dig into His word, and with renewed minds fixed on Jesus Christ, pray from a heart that is regenerated and transformed by the power of Him who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself. (Philippians 3:21)

What's On Your Nightstand - April 2012

It’s What’s on Your Nightstand time again over at 5 Minutes for Books, and I thought I’d share a post this month to try to limp my blog along for another day. As to what I’m reading these days, I’ve once again gotten myself into the position of juggling several books at once. I’ll start with recently finished on my list here:

Recently finished:

The House at Riverton (F) - Kate Morton. I believe I may have mentioned once or a lot how much I enjoy the Downton Abbey series. This book takes place in the same time period and has much the same ‘feel’ as Downton Abbey. I enjoyed it very much and look forward to checking out other books by this author.

Levi’s Will (F) - W. Dale Cramer. After my recent post complaining about Christian books that I find frustrating and dangerous, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention I’d stumbled across this one that I  enjoyed. I read somewhere that, though the book is fiction, it is similar to the author’s father’s experiences having grown up Old Order Amish and left that life behind. I enjoyed this book, and, again, look forward to exploring more titles from this author.

Radical (NF) - David Platt. This was a challenging book, but very gospel-centered. I appreciate how it encouraged me to think about the evangelical Christianity in America and evaluate whether my thinking and living is biblical or whether it is more informed by the ‘American Dream’. Like I said, challenging, but a needed challenge, I believe.

Currently reading:

V is for Vengence (F) - Sue Grafton.  I’ve followed private detective Kinsey Millhone through Grafton’s alphabet series for years and still like the books. Caution for some language, however.

Worship (NF) - John MacArthur. Taking my time reading through this book, and appreciating it very much. Also challenging.

The Transforming Power of the Gospel (NF) - Jerry Bridges. This was being offered free for Kindle not too long ago, and I got it for the Kindle app I have on my phone. I am also appreciating this. I really am thankful for the many gospel-affirming books and resources available and I don’t think I can ever get enough encouragement to think through how the gospel affects all areas of life. It has been very helpful to me in my walk to keep filling my mind with these exhortations to know the gospel and to grow in Christ. 

Speaking of resources for learning to apply the gospel and saturate your mind with it, I found a resource I’ve been really enjoying listening to lately, and this is as good a time as any to mention it and put in a plug for it. It’s ‘Wretched Radio’ with Todd Friel. Really liking the daily radio program. Check it out at www.wretchedradio.com.  I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Okay, back to reading.....I believe I mentioned somewhere along the way how much I enjoyed The Hunger Games trilogy and enjoyed the discussions it has sparked with my boys.  Here is an excellent review I read this morning, and I found myself nodding in agreement as I read. I especially liked his points #1, 6, and 7, but I agreed with the whole post. I think it is true that an engaged and thoughtful parent can read and have fruitful discussion with his/her kids as they read books together - even if the books don’t have a Christian worldview. My boys and I discussed the very same things he mentions in that post and it was a good thing. 

Anyway, that’s what I’m reading around here these days. Please visit 5 Minutes for Books to join in and see what other participants are reading. 

Waiting....

My husband has been in Washington, D.C. for an Army training class since January 2 of this year. That's basically four months away from home except for three short weekend visits.

But it's a good day today. He's finished and on his way home. And this time he doesn't have to leave again at the end of the weekend. Woot!

After four months of parking in the middle of the garage, I had the boys clean out his side of the garage and made sure to park way over on my side. Leaving room for him in the garage and in my heart. :-)

Praying for his safe travels tonight.

Some Things I've Been Thinking About Recently

I don’t even know where to start with this post. I have several issues I’ve been mulling over to address, but I suspect it will be much too long a post, and I’ve never been very good about breaking these things down into a blog series. This is a potentially touchy subject and lots of potential for misunderstanding and y'all know I don't like to drum up controversy or step on toes or stir up hornets' nests or make people mad at me, but, I've had this stuff rolling around in my head for a long time now and just need to work out my thoughts, so here we go.

Here’s the thing. I am becoming completely disillusioned with the evangelical subculture. Don’t hear that wrong, okay? Hear the rest of what I’m saying before jumping to a wrong conclusion.

The thing is, the more I grow in my walk with Jesus, the more I appreciate the depth and breadth and scope of the amazing gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the more I realize just how holy and awesome our God is, the less I like what the subculture of evangicalism has done with watering down the gospel and trivializing it and becoming so much like the world that the world either can’t see any difference or thinks we’re sort of a shallow wanna-be of the world’s coolness, or on the other hand sees us as mostly a political lobbying group. 

That sounds harsh. It is. That sounds judgmental. You better believe it. I am being judgmental. With a capital J. I’m examining the subculture in which I have been steeped for most of my life and I’m finding that it is wanting at best and dangerous at worst. And I am not being snide, snarky, or gleeful with this. I am writing this post with a profound amount of sadness. Because this is the culture and subculture in which I am raising my own children, and I find it so hard to find that sometimes I have to shelter them even more from things within the fold than from things without. I wish you could see how much sadness these thoughts bring me, my friends.

Let me give you a little bit of context for where I’m coming from today. I grew up in the church, was saved at a young age, and as I look back over the years and some of the influences that surrounded me and pulled at me from various sides, I am speechless at the mercy and grace God showed me in sparing me and/or rescuing me from all kinds of ditches, pitfalls, and error that so easily could have taken hold on my thinking. Only by His grace do I have the love for His word and hunger to know Him and His word and hunger for righteousness and truth that I have today. And looking back, I can say that I was blessed with a lot of good teaching, but there was a lot there that wasn’t good along the way, too. Thank God He has spared me from error and is still leading me through the mine field that evangelicalism has become. 

I just finished reading the book, Radical, by David Platt. I had heard a lot of good things about that book and seen that quite a few bloggers I appreciate had spoken well of the book, but until our Sunday school group decided to read it together, I had never before seen the subtitle, which is, “Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream.” Intriguing, yes? Challenging book. I am still processing it and I sent it back with my husband to read when he was home this weekend. I want us to begin praying about our own blind spots in this area. Though I had begun thinking along these lines already, I found that I had many blind spots where I’ve bought into the American Dream and not even realizing where my thinking was actually detrimental to a committed Christian walk that surprised and grieved me as I read. In fact, I would have agreed that the seeker mentality all the rage in our churches is too self-centered and would have self-righteously patted myself on the back about that, without seeing how very self-centered so much of my  thinking still is. I find that I am hungering for a gospel-saturated, Jesus-exalting worldview. I find that it is good to examine ourselves to be sure we are in the faith and to search the scriptures and know what is true. I recommend the book, highly, by the way.

So, back to what I was already processing before I read the book. I read this post a while back. You’ll need to read that post to understand this next paragraph. Here’s what I’ve been pondering since I learned about the fictional “Becky” target market, and what I wish the marketeers would get. I used to be ‘Becky’ until I got so sated with the shallowness that was Christian radio that I finally just turned it off. I’d rather listen to secular music than stupid songs about lost car keys being the stuff that drives me crazy. Honestly, that sappy love song to Jesus stuff may be what the fictional Becky ‘wants’, but you know what she (and I) need? Music that takes our minds off of us and our self-centered little selves and points us to Someone better and higher. We need the gospel. We need to have our appetites whetted for the majesty of who God is, and, yes, reminded that sin is offensive to Him. I need to be reminded of His holiness and love and grace, not in songs that sound like a teenager mooning in a lovesick way, but in the depth of true worship.  Those are the songs that really feed our souls. Because if you want the honest, heart-wrenching truth, I am so self-centered all on my own, I don’t need happy, clappy, shallow junk. I can be shallow all on my own. I need something to point me away from me. And you know what else? Life, real life, isn’t happy, slappy, clappy romantic pie-in-the-sky all the time. That just doesn’t hold up when life happens. That doesn’t hold up when life happens and I'm feeling like I'm drowning and I’ve hit the wall and want to scream. What I need is the gospel, and lots and lots of it. I don’t need to be encouraged in my self-centeredness. I need to focus on who God is. But, you Christian radio people go right on marketing to that fictional Becky who doesn’t want any of that theology stuff, and I’ll just steer way clear of your stations. 

Told you this would be a long post.

That’s what I’ve been pondering writing about for a while, but here’s what got me grieved enough to finally get the post written. I went into a Christian bookstore the other day. I may have mentioned this before, but I have been growing more and more frustrated with Christian books in the past few years. It isn’t that there are no good ones. It’s just that you have to wade through so much that isn’t good to find it. 

So, anyway, I was wandering through, kind of mindlessly browsing the shelves when I stumbled upon the Young Adult section. And had to take a picture. Here are a few pictures, and you tell me if at first glance, if I had not told you where I was, would you have assumed these were Christian books?

Now, I guess in a way I’m doing what I got frustrated with someone else for doing when I heard them criticize The Hunger Games in a way that, in my opinion, missed it because he admitted he hadn’t read the book but was speaking from a review he had read, that also, in my opinion, got it wrong, because I am pretty much judging these books by their covers and what I read when I looked them up online later. I haven’t read any of these books, so take what I’m saying for what it’s worth. Maybe I've just been burned by being too trusting before and maybe they aren't what they look like at face value, but from appearance, I'm very wary. But at least let me finish the point I wanted to make, please.

Here’s my quibble. Some of those books even looked kind of interesting, while some looked downright awful (horrifying) when I read about them. BUT. Remember that I was standing in a Christian bookstore. Just by the fact that this is where they are, there is an implied stamp of approval plastered on those books that they are A-okay for a Christian kid to read. I mean, as a mom, I want to think that if my kid picks a book from the shelf of the Christian bookstore, should be a wholesome thing for him to read, right? Well, when I went and read about some of those titles, I thought, I don’t even want to fill my head with that creepy stuff, I sure won’t let my kids read them. (Hmmm....Twilight is all the rage, guess we probably can't write about vampires, what to do, oh....let's make our immortal characters angels! That should make it okay! SERIOUSLY?) (And Tim Challies has a good review of the original book that last picture is based on.)

Full disclosure, I and my kids read all the Harry Potter books and all three of The Hunger Games books and liked them and found much to discuss about while reading them. I’m not usually a knee-jerk kind of parent.  But I'd have a problem with them being on the shelf in a Christian bookstore, too. 

I am not even saying I wouldn’t let them read ANY of the books in my picture, nor am I saying anything about the fact that they are out there at all. I'm also not saying that Christian fiction books have to have a formula gospel or can't deal with heavy topics, but a lot of these had eerie, spooky, occult, or paranormal type elements that I think are unwise to be focusing on. I’m not even saying no one should ever read any of these books. I am saying if you read them, don’t assume they are something Christians should read without any discernment or without concern. And a couple of them, maybe I am saying it would be better not to be reading them, at least, if what I read about them is an accurate portrayal. What I take issue with is, why from Christian publishers? I purposely haven't mentioned the name of the bookstore, because, honestly, I think the problem lies with the parent company and the fact that I really wish Christian publishers would give more good stuff to the bookstores to work with than with the individual store I visited.And I looked, these books are published by Christian publishing companies, so I can see why the bookstore might think they're okay.  Why do our YA shelves look just as dark and disturbing as the local secular bookstore or public library YA bookshelves when we should have something SO MUCH better to offer? Shouldn't we look different? My kids heard what I said to my husband about the books, and later we were at the public library. My middle son came to me and said, "Mom, you know how you said all the books at the store were all dark and stuff? Well, it's the same kind of stuff here in my section." Shouldn't it bother us a little bit that our shelves look just like the world? Aren't we supposed to be the people of light, not darkness? Shouldn't we look different? To be honest, when I read about a couple of those books, I thought, “And I’m a bad Christian mom for letting my kids read The Hunger Games?? Really?? This is more dangerous than what they encountered in that.” 

At least with Harry Potter and The Hunger Games and other books we’ve read together, I knew what the issues were we’d need to address. Honestly, I believe it is better for my kids to read those things with me and have the discussions we’ve had than to read a bunch of creepy stuff that’s got a Christian label on it and could do a lot more to damage their thinking because you assume if it’s “Christian” it’s okay. I’d rather they read secular stuff and learn to discern as they read than to confuse themselves with really bad theology in “Christian” books. It is HARD to write Christian fiction without running into some ditch or other. There is so much bad theology I find in a lot of "Christian" books it makes my head hurt. And it makes me weep. 

I am not saying this just to be overly critical or shrewish. I am saying this because I am deeply, profoundly SAD. I am sad that, though I grew up in the evangelical subculture and really was saved at a young age, I am not sure I really apprehended the depth or richness of the gospel until fairly recently, and I wish we, as a movement, would get back to being passionate about the truth and not so interested in following the world's fads. I am extremely thankful that for some reason God, in His mercy, chose to make me dissatisfied with the steady diet of shallow and error-prone stuff that makes up so much of evangelicalism and led me to good teaching amid the rubble. 

I don’t know if this made any sense, and sometimes I feel like maybe I’m just too picky or that I am just completely out of sync with, well, just about everyone. I get so frustrated when Christians knee-jerk about things like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games (or worse, try to' redeem' them by forcing a Christian reading onto them that was never intended rather than learning how to read intelligently), but stuff that is, seems to me, way more dangerous gets not a word said, not a notice or blip on the radar screen. I know not everyone who reads this will agree with me. But I weep when I see how much harder it is getting to find the meat amid the bones. So many, many bones to spit out these days among things that identify as “Christian”. 


And I didn't even show you the pictures I took of the devotional books for girls.......