So, how are Christians to respond to this new reality? 

The response of some is to do whatever they can to mimic their surroundings.  Thus, they feel they must forgo distinctions that are out of step with the wider culture in order for Christianity to remain viable and relevant.  So, in speech and action, they seek to excise exclusive language and to avoid an uncomfortable stance on issues related to morality, gender, and eternal destiny.  Their mission, they say, is to accompany society in such a way that they have a voice in the national/cultural conversation.

Fear is one of the motivators for these Christians.  They fear being marginalized by society, so they carefully measure their words and actions in order not to alienate.  The result is that society determines what the concerns, priorities, and sensibilities of the church are to look and sound like.  And while this is in many ways appropriate and healthy, a line can easily be crossed and the church loose its distinct voice and its cause begins looking no different than that of any other club or group.  An indication that this line has been crossed is when the standards for the kind of music used in worship, the way the church markets itself, the services it offers, the subject matter of sermons, and the causes that the church undertakes are set chiefly by external forces rather than internal convictions.

The tendency of other Christians in the face of the new reality is to mount a vigorous defense of the church, to reiterate its rightful place within American society, or to redouble efforts to bolster it’s reputation and profile.  The shift underway threatens the existence of the church, and thus, these Christian feel compelled do whatever they can to secure the church’s place, protect its interests, and ensure that Christians get what they need.  The end result is that much of the church’s mission becomes the garnering of resources necessary to perpetuate who it is and to protect its interests.

Fear is likewise a motivator for these Christians.  Specifically they fear being taken advantage of by the wider society or losing what they feel rightfully belongs to them.  These fears also impact their speech and action.  They employ insider language in order to create a sense of belonging for those on the inside and exclude those on the outside.  And while this language provides a secure connection and identity for brothers and sisters on the inside, it also categorically defines the outsider.

As a result, these Christians act out their faith in sacred rather than public space.  They travel to a specific building called church to do Christian kinds of things.  They gather within havens of agreed beliefs about morality, politics, and gender.  The safety of these havens protects them from threatening, worldly influences and forces.  And while they must make necessary forays into the world to work, shop, and attend public events, it is in the sacred space that life makes sense.  Thus, mission for these Christians means attracting those on the outside to the sacred space and then convincing them to defect.

In both cases, response is not a matter of conservative versus liberal, mega versus small, rural versus urban, or Baptists versus Methodists.  Rather, in both we find two ways in which Christians of all theological persuasions and denominational affiliations and churches of all sizes and locations deal with the changing context.  At one extreme, the mission of the church is to accommodate.  On the other side, mission is to attract.

There is a third response.  Rather than being for or against society, Christians set themselves toward the mission of God.  Orientation and response are not ultimately determined by changes in society but by the unchanging and relentless purposes of God.  The mission of God rises above mere accommodation and attraction to a way of being in and for the world defined by who God is and how God acts toward the world.

Mission and missional are used by both those who accommodate and those who attract in order to describe and justify what they do.  And yet, before describing mission as what we do, mission must be understood as divine being and action.  Mission does not belong to us, rather it originates from and is defined by who God is and what God does.  Rather than accommodating the spirit and patterns of society, God is distinctively other.  Rather than submitting to a temporal, local agenda, God’s ways are higher than any person or society’s ways.  Rather than seeking to be relevant or current, God makes all things new.  Rather than protecting what is his, God gives.  Rather than looking out for his own interests, God loves.   Rather than pulling everything to himself, God sends.  God, who creates and sustains all things, so loves the world, that He gives his only begotten Son.  This is mission; this is the mission of God.

For our response to the current shift in American society to be faithful and true, it must begin with an acknowledgment of God’s mission and an alignment of our minds and hearts, words and actions with this mission.  Christopher Wright says, “it is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world.  Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission–God’s mission” (The Mission of God, 62).  Missions goes awry when the church acts though mission begins and ends with it.

The mission of God encompasses more than a few verses in the New Testament and includes more than missionaries who live and work in cross-cultural settings.  How it impacts the whole of the church is a longer conversation than this post, but I will suggest four ways in which we might acknowledge and align our lives with it.

• Interpretation.  The mission of God should guide the way in which we read and interpret scripture.  Reading the Bible, both Old and New Testament, as a missionary text about a missionary God changes everything – the way we view our purpose, God’s action in history, the end of all creation, etc.
• Inversion.  The mission of God should critique the manner in which we speak, act, and love.  If we allow it, the mission of God provides a lens through which everything is turned upside down – is inverted.
• Imagination.  The mission of God should frame the way we imagine the world – economics, race, politics, relationships, vocation – and only then will it affect our actions.  As a missional reading of scripture inverts our way of seeing reality, we can begin imagining what could be, what should be.
• Implementation.  The mission of God calls us to action.  If acknowledged and understood, the mission of God will not allow us to passively acquiesce to or quietly retreat from our culture but will demand that we respond as Christ did – with our lives.

We do not live above God’s mission, as if it is ours to control and manage.  His mission is not a program to run or resources to manage.  Mission is his words and actions of love and grace toward the world.  And while we are always the object of this mission and never the subject of its design and intent, we can become participants through God’s gracious invitation and by his empowerment.  But in order to do so, we must set aside our fears and re-read scripture, re-think our lives, re-imagine the world, and re-enact God’s glory, passion and love, in light of the mission of God.

Two defining questions …
Which mission guides my response to the changing society around me?
Whose mission gives definition to who I am and how I act?

Amazing?  Yes, the journey within is amazing because a person can arrive rather quickly at who he or she is at their core and discover the weaknesses, strengths, fears, aspirations, and idiosyncrasies that reside there.  While these can be easily hidden or covered in surroundings that we control, they are now in front of us, screaming at us.  The disruption and shock of sickness, loss of identity, separation from family, strange customs, and new ways of relating push us beyond managing and controlling to just being.  Because posturing and poising, bluffing and boasting are no longer possible, all we can do is be who we really are.

From personal experience I know this journey to self can be brutal and humiliating.  Stripped of all that props us up, masks our foibles, and protects us from criticism, we stand naked, open to full inspection.  While certainly difficult and possibly even destructive, this journey holds the potential to transform us not merely at the surface level but at the core of who we are.  Whether it destroys or transforms depends on the manner in which we travel along its course.  From what I have observed, five essentials are needed for the journey.

1. The journey is to be made with hope.  It is not just a matter of just ‘gutting it out’ in order to endure or get through something.  Rather, the journey must be made in the belief that something beneficial, good or right is to be gained.  Hope propels us beyond the twists and turns, the difficulties and pain.
2. The journey is to be made with humility.  Our natural reaction when pressed and pushed is to defend and push back because of the threat to our ways of coping and functioning.  Our willingness to yield to the stripping and refining processes makes all the difference in the journey’s outcome.
3. The journey is to be made with resolve.  Rather than a sprint quickly completed, the journey is a marathon that takes time.  Once begun, it moves from stage to stage.  Without resolve, we will not arrive at the destination; we will stop short of transformation.
4. The journey is to be made with love.  In the midst of culture stress and loss, rejection of the culture and people around us as dirty, stupid or even evil is our natural reaction.  However, rather than griping, belittling, and complaining, we can choose to love.  Love is a conscious and continual choice.  Love does not mean uncritical acceptance of everyone and everything, but it does mean that our default is to embrace all that we can.
5. The journey is to be made with gratitude.  When we are thankful for the opportunity to see ourselves as we really are and confront the things that are ugly and sinful, we can find joy in the life-change the journey brings.  Without gratitude, we loose this perspective.

Any of us can find ourselves on this journey whether we live cross-culturally or not.  As life comes undone and we are stripped of all that holds meaning, gives stability, and feeds our sense of well-being, we set off on a journey of discovery and potential that can be amazing.  It can be truly life changing, if we respond in hope, humility, resolve, love, and gratitude.

It is quite easy these days to travel to amazing places and see the wonders of the world, such as the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India, the Great Wall of China, the Colosseum in Rome, or the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.  And yet, none of these compare to the journey my friends are on.  Already, they have more than pictures to post on Facebook or a tee-shirt to wear.  They are more aware than ever before of who they are, what needs to be changed, and who God is.  What an amazing journey!

Willie James Jennings vividly illustrates the power of imagination in The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (Yale, 2009).  Imagination, for Jennings, is a theological issue and represents the chief problem for modern Christianity.  In the soil from which we gain our faith and through which we learn community exists malformed ways of seeing and explaining reality that he identifies as a “diseased social imagination” (p. 6).  Jennings’ thesis is that racism finds form in imagined social reality.  And yet, his discussion could be widen to include most of the ills of society.  Habits of the mind form us into people unable to imagine ourselves living in a world other than what is – racism, poverty, abuse, and hatred.  Religion, instead of liberating us from a diseased social imagination, often provides justification and reinforces stereotypes.

Malformed imagination can be transformed when connected to and influenced by communities that embody and nurture a different vision of people and place.  The first step is to admit that my imagination, soiled by the prejudices, biases, provincialism of my context, desperately needs to be altered.  Second, I must seek to be nurtured by writers who inform me of different worlds, teachers who challenge my assumptions, and groups of people who embody an alternative vision.  I must resist the temptation to remain with those who only imagine the world as I conceive it to be and gravitate toward those who imagine what could be.

Life comes undone when the words used to explain and describe reality loose their mooring and float from place to place, meaning to meaning.  A confused Alice cannot make sense of the new reality of rabbits, cats and queens, especially when words point to their own contradictions – black becomes white, tall becomes short, up becomes down.

Such is our own time.  Words have been commandeered to mean exactly whatever one wishes them to mean.  Perfectly clear and distinct words are massaged and manipulated so that they become cloudy in meaning or interpreted to include their exact opposite.  If we peer behind the commandeering, we see an array of personal, political and religious agendas and behind these agendas we find the intent to manipulate, control, and persuade.  While some of this play with words is blatant and crude, most is subtle and sophisticated.

One such word is friend or friendship.  It seems that friend has come to mean whatever we wish.  This is so much the case that it is hard to discern intentions when people use the word.  There is the teller at the bank who cocks his head and with a smile says to me, “Hello friend.”  I don’t even know the man’s name, but because he wants me to feel good about my bank experience, he addresses me as friend.  Or I am repeatedly asked to become a friend of my local public radio station.  While the use of friend could communicate the desire for relationship and intimacy, I think they really just want my pledge of money.  Or there are those hundreds of people who are my friend on Facebook.  For many of these people, I cannot even remember why it was that I responded to their ‘friend request’ in the first place.

In this age of virtual contact that requires little to no face-to-face interaction and a fast-paced exchange between persons that is more consumer than relationship oriented, friendship has become vacuous and empty of real and stable meaning.  Thus, friend has become exactly whatever you and I say it means.

For friend and friendship to have true and authentic meaning in both our experience and speech, we need to revisit and affirm its narrower and distinctive meaning.  In the oldest forms of the word (freond, frijojanan), friend meant ‘to love’ or ‘to favor’.  Even a modern dictionary definition restricts its meaning to “one attached to another by affection or esteem.”  Thus, a friend must be more than an acquaintance, a chum, or a fellow member of a group or club.  Friend should signify that another person comes to me and stands beside me when the darkness arrives, speaks the hard words to me that no one else will dare utter, lives alongside me through the passages of life and thus makes sense of my history, and knows the worst about me and loves me anyway.  And while a friend is the rare person who will love and favor me no matter what I say or do, he or she does not excuse my bad behavior or wink at my poor choices.  Because a friend loves me, he or she will do more than gush with nice, warm talk of friendship or just sit on the couch with me, eat chips and watch a ballgame.  A friend will make the hard journey with me toward what is good, best and real.

Too much of what goes by the name of friend today is not even ‘friendship lite’ but a form of narcissistic self-validation.  With its use, we cover up and pretend rather than live authentically with others.  Without accountability, correction, honesty, and truth, friendship becomes whatever we wish to portray about ourselves.

“Friendship,” said the old man to his young friend, “means exactly what it means, nothing less and nothing more.”

Though violence is part of Christian history, it is not the Jesus way.  Instead, Jesus inaugurates a new way in which love and peace rule rather than hate and violence.  Rather than raining fire on people because of their indifference, or taking up a sword against those who come for him, or pushing people around because they are ignorant or ill-informed, Jesus follows a completely different path – he takes a towel and cleans the feet of one who will betray him, identifies with the outcast and diseased living at the margins of society, suffers ridicule and abuse at the hands of the powerful, and dies in the place of a common criminal.  This is the Jesus way.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to follow along the same path.  To be on the Jesus way means we draw a firm and bold line and state categorically that while violence may be the choice of others, it is not the way of those who follow Christ.  And yet, living in the Jesus way is more than just refusing to be a violent person.  Violence must be addressed at its root.

Violence stems from a number of sources.  Here are three that are obvious.  First, violence comes from a sense of superiority – “we know what is right, and thus, we must maintain what is right at all costs.”  Second, violence can arise from fear – “we must do something about these people before they attack or overrun us.”  And third, violence comes about as a form of retribution – “they have it coming to them because of what they have done/ who they are.”

Superiority, fear and retribution are attitudes that lodge in the heart and can in time manifest themselves as acts of violence.  First, they appear in coarse jokes, then as angry words, and finally with violent acts.  The progression from slur to assault can be clearly seen in the treatment of Jews by Germans during the Second World War.  Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, when Jewish homes and shops were attacked and ransacked did not just all of sudden in a single night happen.  The violence of November 9-10, 1938 originated in the hearts of those who thought themselves superior, who feared those who were different, and who felt they had a right to exact retribution.  In many cases, these attitudes were condoned and fostered in churches and by religious leaders.

And still, such attitudes persist.  It saddens me to hear those who claim to follow Jesus joke about the bullying of others, or condone remarks that denigrate the humanity of certain types of people, or judge another person as despicable because of his or her race, social standing, political affiliation, or sexual orientation.  If confronted, they demur, “I meant nothing.  It was only a joke.  Can’t we laugh about these things?”  Jesus makes clear that our remarks and attitudes are not a laughing matter, as they reveal what is in our heart and are the root of what will eventually become lustful, hateful and violent behavior (Matt 5:21ff).  He says that we must acknowledge that these attitudes defile us, and thus, they must be cut off at the root before they bear fruit (Matt 15:18-20).

Shouldn’t the sins of others be judged?  Yes, but this judgment belongs to God alone.  Instead of judging, or even joking, we are to live with blessing and love toward others because of the knowledge that God blesses and loves us in spite of our sordid behavior, arrogant thoughts, and outright rebellion.  He does not bully, ridicule, or condemn us; rather, God demonstrates his love toward us, for while we are even sinners, Christ dies for us (Rom 5:8).

Lyons addresses this question with inspiring stories of those he dubs as “Next Christians,” and with the promise of what could happen through their words and deeds.  His faith in these Next Christians is boldly asserted in the subtitle on the book’s jacket, “How a New Generation is Restoring the Faith.”

The book begins by describing the reality of Christianity’s lost place in America and the negative image Christians represent to the wider society.  Lyons follows this assessment with a call for Christians to relearn and practice restoration through “a vision for a whole new way of being, living, and interacting” (67).  Those who embody this vision are characterized as being provoked, not offended; creators, not critics; called, not employed; grounded, not distracted; in community, not alone; and counter-cultural, not ‘relevant’.  The second part of the book, fully two-thirds of the whole, illustrates in turn how each of these characteristics is to be lived and how each will aid in the restoration of the faith.

At the heart of Lyons’ positive and, at times, inspiring challenge is a call for Christians to engage the society around them.  This engagement is framed not necessarily as a theological or biblical necessity but arises from “how things ought to be” (63).  He seems to say that these practices have a particular and good effect on people and society, and thus, we ought to do them.  “Common good,” or “doing the most good for all people,” (94-95) is the aim of restorative practices.  The doing of the common good, for Lyons, is found between the extremes of Christians who are “Separatists” and those who are “Cultural Christians.”  Between these extremes are “Restorers” who are neither isolated from or “blended” into culture but who are engaged, creative, focused, and counter-cultural.

The aim of the engagement of this third or middle way seems to be the restoration of Christianity, through kinder and more altruistic practices, to a place of respect and influence within American culture.  The subtle message is that if Christians will get their act together, Christianity will be returned to its proper or normal place.  While authentic service and genuine love are stated first concerns of Lyons’ restorative practices, a very close second is the healing of Christianity’s wounded image.

As I came to the end the book, I was left wondering … What if the Next Christians in America are those who are required to live as Christians do in the Sudan, China, and Indonesia – or as first-century Christians?  What if the aim is not restoration of the faith but the survival of our witness?  What if the vision is not the creation of a hospitable or friendly environment for Christian engagement but how we remain faithful as our churches and homes are being burned?  Impossible?  Certainly not.  These kinds of realities are just as possible as those associated with a Christian America.  Left unchallenged in The Next Christians is the assumption that while Christian America may have come to its end, an ordained functional Christendom has not.  In fact, it sounds as though its rehabilitation is just a matter of time.  Lyons hopes that by embracing restoration the Next Christians will be able to set “off a chain reaction that can revitalize our faith in the post-Christian century” (66-67).  We need to come to term with the fact that this revitalized faith may not be a revised, less offensive version of its past.

If we are to embrace the whole biblical story, then exile and lament, wandering and repentance, persecution and tragedy may be part of our narrative.  Possibly what we are witnessing at the end of Christian America is not an image problem, but the sins of twentieth-century Christianity – our lust for power, excesses, and arrogance – making their visitation upon our children.  The Next Christians may need to learn how to live as dispossessed, powerless captives who weep by the rivers of Babylon.  Possibly the question is not – when we get it right, will we be restored to our place within American culture?  Rather, the questions posed to us at the end of Christian America may be – when we are without place, influence, and applause, will we live with hope?  When we are rejected and persecuted, will we find that Jesus is enough?

It is obvious what this modern mindset has done to church life and missions.  Along with areas such as medicine, law, and psychology, ministry and missions have been professionalized.  Church and missions have developed a special body of knowledge that only the initiated and professionally trained can access and utilize.  And thus, the work of ministry and missions has been entrusted, or relegated, to the professionals.  The laity, in turn, go to school, marry, work, and play in the world, at a distance from the church, as experts in other areas but not in ministry and missions.  This professionalization impacts the way in which the church interacts with the world in at least three ways.

First, because of the existence of professionalized experts, ministry and missions become abstract systems to the majority of those in the church.  Theology, missiology, and pastoral care are areas of technical and theoretical knowledge for the few rather than the confessed and practiced conviction of the whole.

Second, lay people in their deference to the expert are given permission to disengage from ministry and missions.  Because ministry and missions require expert knowledge and special credentials, the laity feels incompetent or unqualified to serve.

Third, and this is the crucial point, the work of the farmer, schoolteacher, and dentist become distinguished from the work of ministry and missions.  The domains of ministry and mission are placed over against and above other domains, and judged as different and separate vocations.  Thus, while one is the work of God, and the other is just work.

Instead of professionalized systems that restrict knowledge of and participation in the mission of God, the expansion of ministry emphasized through the biblical teachings of soul competency and the priesthood of all believers must be underlined.  Instead of the faithfulness of only a select few, each believer needs to see his or her work as the work of God.  Explanation and demonstration of a vibrant theology of work in which gifts, talents, and vocational callings of the whole body are affirmed and employed in the mission of God must become the main vocation of the religious professional.

In order for the church to be faithful in the late modern age, men and women in local congregations need to find their voice in the world.  They must see their labor, sweat, and effort within the marketplace, classroom, business, field, or clinic as the work of God, and not over against or contrary to it.  Witness and service in the present, late modern age must be more like a chorus of voices, singing various parts, than a solo sung by a professional.

Questions that I am asking myself …

• Is there a place for the professional minister and missionary?  If so, then what should his or her main task be?
• Should there be more emphasis place upon and credence given to the ‘bi-vocational’ minister?
• What are the essential components of a theology of work?
• What would happen if everyone in my local congregation saw their vocation and work as central to God’s mission?

I am not as certain as I once was in my pronouncements about good and evil. Where once I had good and evil partitioned into distinct categories, my vision is now blurred by contradictions that I cannot explain. Where once I considered power and prestige as virtues, security and safety as essential rights, experience has taught me that sometimes the opposite is the case. Where once I assigned guilt and suffering based on circumstances, conditions, or culture, I now wince at the callousness and arrogance of such thinking.

What I have witnessed is that God shows up in the midst of terrible suffering and injustice. He cannot be relegated to one side of a dichotomy nor does he work only in particular arenas. And thus, because God demonstrates his power, and expresses his mercy, grace, and love throughout all reality, even pain and suffering, sickness and death, I cannot make simple evil/goodness declarations. If I do, I will surely miss him.

I do not believe God causes suffering, but neither can I believe is he on the outside of it looking in. I must resist and fight evil, and join the efforts to seek justice for the oppressed, care for those on the margins, and work for the liberation of those trapped in the aftermath of an earthquake. However, I must also be willing to see him in the wretchedness of life, the rubble of devastation, human suffering, and death. And more than merely observing him there, I must join him there.

Because God showed up in the midst of our evil and abusive world, suffered our shame and reproach, and died a cruel death, I can believe and hope for his goodness and grace in the worst of situations. Because I do not have an adequate explanation for hunger, human trafficking, and death, I must look for him in midst of these. This, for me, is reason to hope. Likewise, in the midst of my own rubble of greed, consumption, and evil desires, I long for him to be at work. This is my hope.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we must resist these voices and hold fast to an alternative vision. Instead, the voice of Jesus must order our words and actions – “whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also” … “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:40, 44). Jesus did more than speak these words, he lived them by touching lepers, speaking to women, embracing Samaritans, loving those on the margins, and suffering death on the cross.

The Jesus way confronted Peter. A lifetime of religious instruction and cultural reinforcement had taught him to hate, despise, and dismiss the Romans. And yet, God revealed to Peter another way – love and inclusion. Peter is confronted with a choice – either abandon his prejudice or deny God’s acceptance of Cornelius (Acts 10). In the end, Peter declares, “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality!”

I can disagree with another and even be on the opposite side of an issue, but the gospel does not allow me to slander, curse, strike or kill another human being. If I slander or demonize another person, be they Republican or Democrat, Jew or Muslims, black or white, poor or immigrant (legal or illegal), homosexual or disabled, then I deny the gospel. For the gospel of Jesus Christ …

* is powerful enough to transform anyone – “it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Rom 1:16)
* is for the whole world – “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16)
* unifies people – “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28)
* creates a new humanity – “a multitude which no one could count, from every nation, all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, … and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9, 10)

The gospel destroys the walls that separate the people. As the people of God, we are called to join him in the ministry of wall-demolition. For you see, while we were enemies of God, Christ showed no partiality toward us; rather he died for our sins and made a way for us to know him, his love and grace. We serve his mission not through venom, hate, exclusion, slander, curses or self-preservation but by laying down our lives for the other. This is the gospel – may we have courage to speak and live it in the midst of a polarized and uncivil society!

Part of the problem is a common opinion in the church that knowledge destroys or undermines faith.  I have heard people say …
“If you study theology, you will loose your passion for God.”
“God looks on the heart more than the mind.”
“Doctrine only confuses a person.”
“Simple faith is the best faith.”
“Knowledge puffs up.
And while many of us would deny such a lopsided opinion, our emphasis on a commitment response in contrast to our lack of attention to and opportunity for discipleship and formation indicates what we really think.

And yet, Jesus clearly makes the point that we are to love God with more than the heart (Luke 10:27).  His definition of love of God includes the mind (as well as soul and strength).  I believe he did this for several reasons.

• We are more than one-dimensional beings, and thus, truly loving God requires more than an emotional response.  Loving God requires more than a partial-person commitment. It demands our whole being.
• The heart can lead us astray.  We can actually dishonor God through uninformed actions while all the while acting with fervor and passion.  The heart is not to be trusted to act alone.
• An intellectual pursuit of God provides the necessary refinement of our misconceptions and development of our capacity to believe.
• When the circumstances of life become difficult and problems sap our emotions, it is knowledge of who God is and how he acts and the truths of the faith that can sustain us.  Feelings wane, emotions come and go, and thus, we need more than a ‘heart-tether’ for faith.

Because it is convenient to measure commitment to God by emotion, passion, or fervor in worship, we assume that if people are not ‘excited’, or continually smiling, or animated in their worship that something is personally wrong with them or there is something lacking in their love for God.  Emotions, at best, tell only part of the story, and, at worst, they can be deceptive.  In the end, the ultimate proof that we belong to and follow hard after Jesus is our steadfastness and faithfulness to him in the best and worst of situations.  Such faithfulness requires our whole person – heart, mind, and soul.

So, we must …
-actively and consistently read the Bible, both Old and New Testaments
-embrace life’s questions and not push them under the table
-avail ourselves of opportunities to gather with other believers in study, conversation, and questioning
-read the opinions of others (books, articles, commentaries)
-ask God to catch our mind up with our heart and vice-versa

If I am to faithfully face the challenges of the present day and be active in my witness of Christ to those around me, I must diligently pursue God in both my zeal and understanding.