I don’t do this very often, but today I am unabashedly stepping onto a soap box. Bear with me.

Tonight I went out to dinner with my fiancé and we got into a conversation with our waiter about tips. In the course of our conversation we discovered that he’s been keeping a record of the tips he’s received and the people who tipped him. All for the sake of research, he’s recorded age, race, nationality, family status, and even the type of credit card (apparently people with Master Cards tip considerably more than other credit card users. Go figure!)

In addition to these fun facts, our waiter also said that he always asks off on Sunday, not because he’s observing the Sabbath but because the church crowd tips so poorly. Apparently it’s quite remarkable–even though there’s a significant surge of patrons around lunch time on Sunday, the rise in customers hardly benefits the waiters at all.

But what’s even worse are the Christians who don’t leave any tip at all, and instead leave Gospel tracts. Our waiter told us about receiving little cards that look like they’re from the game Monopoly and read “Get Out of Hell Free Card.”

Now I won’t go so far as to say that God can’t or won’t use this method of evangelism, but on behalf of all the waiters who are working hard to earn money for school, their family, or simply to make ends meet, don’t be cheap and then stamp Jesus’ name on it.

As disciples of Christ, we have been given abundant grace and immeasurable riches, but we are also walking, talking reflections of that same generosity. I know a lot of you don’t have extra money to tip extravagantly (I’m one of them!), but if you can afford to eat out then you might consider ordering less so that you can tip more generously. Otherwise, you are literally taking money out of the pockets of people who are serving you, since their income depends upon their tips. As Christians, we should be engaged in the reverse of that scenario–even when we are being served, we should still be seeking to serve.

And regarding the Gospel tracts, you might consider engaging the waiter or waitress in conversation before you hit them with drive-by evangelism. Ask them how their day is going, how they like working there, or whatever comes to mind. You will be surprised by how many waiters and waitresses will open up to you–after all, most people don’t care about their personal lives. As far as the average customer is concerned, a waiter is their personal servant for a meal–nothing more, nothing less.

But your waiter is not just your personal servant–he or she is a child of God, intentionally created and dearly loved by their Heavenly Father. Treat them accordingly.

No matter where you are or what you’re doing, your actions must reflect the divine image of those around you, and the divine character of the God you serve. God has been generous to you, even at a cost to Himself, so go and do the same.

If you ever take a class in Church History, there is one famous story that you are sure to read about: the childhood story of St. Augustine and the pear tree. It goes like this:

Little Augustine lived next door to a house that had a pear tree in its backyard. Nothing about the pear tree was appealing or enticing at all–it was kind of wilted looking and the pears didn’t taste particularly good. (Which I can relate to–I hate pears)

There was nothing about this tree that one should be jealous. But one day Augustine and his buddies got bored with their regular games, so they devised a plan to break into their neighbor’s yard, shake the pears out of the tree and steal them. And that’s exactly what they did–they made off with a truck load of pears.

And when they had accomplished this plan, did they eat them? Did they sell them for money? Did they throw them at Augustine’s little sister? No. They dumped them out, let some of the pigs eat them, and walked away. They wasted them.

As Augustine reflects on this incident in his book Confessions, you’d think that he’d chalk it up to teenage delinquency. I think we all know plenty of little boys who would pull something like that. But Augustine doesn’t make that move. He instead summarizes his motives this way:

It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error–not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in [God] to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself.

In other words, he sinned for the sake of sinning.

In telling this story, Augustine highlights something about human nature that we often overlook. He reminds us that we are so profoundly broken that we do evil just for the sake of evil. And that is a concept that the modern mind struggles to understand, if it does not resist the idea altogether.

Today, everything is someone else’s fault. Even when we are the perpetrators of a wrong, it’s only because we were victims at some other time. A woman is promiscuous because her dad didn’t love her. A man beats his wife because his dad beat him. A girl has an eating disorder because the culture tells her she’s fat.

This victim mentality serves as a kind of escape clause in the face of taking blame. Yes, I may have done something wrong, but I can ease the blame by displacing it onto somebody else.

Well I began to question the validity of this perspective as I myself made some poor life choices. I found myself compromising in my dating life in some pretty major ways, all because of the need to get attention, acceptance and love from guys. And as I made these decisions, I started to ask myself, “Why am I doing this? Have I been missing unconditional love from my dad? Did I have a dysfunctional relationship with my parents or a boyfriend that caused me to be so insecure? There must be SOME reason from my past that I am acting this way. Someone did this to me!”

But the reality is, none of that was true. I have a wonderful relationship with my parents, and even though I had some rocky dating relationships early on, it was nothing that would have destroyed my entire self-esteem.

The real reason I made those decisions, the real reason I sinned, was because I was a sinner, and that’s what sinners do. I’m not broken because someone else broke me–I contribute to my own brokenness every day. Not because I’m a victim of someone else’s wrongdoing, but because sin is enjoyable and it makes me feel good in the moment. Like Augustine, I like to sin.

Many of the mistakes I made were done to satisfy my twisted desires. I wanted to feel good, have fun, indulge my anger, my lust or my pride–all the while knowing that those things were wrong, and doing them anyway. That said, girls aren’t promiscuous JUST because they’re insecure, but because sex feels good to them. Teenagers don’t shoplift because their parents aren’t providing for them, but because of the thrill of getting away with it.

While there are indeed times when our behavior stems out of past experiences, it’s important that we take responsibility for our own decisions. Sometimes, we do broken things because we are broken people.

And this is crucial to remember, not only because it will hold us in check when we’re tempted to excuse away our bad decisions, but because it impacts our relationship with God. If we believe that we’re all victims of someone else’s sin, then God has no right to hold us accountable when we act out. If we are mere victims, then we make God out to be unjust. He’s placing the blame on us while we believe the blame lies elsewhere.

What’s at stake is the very character of God. How we see God, and ourselves, will determine whether we repent or reject God when we are held accountable for our decisions.

Keep this in mind the next time you act out in anger, pride, or lust. It’s not your mom’s fault, your dad’s fault, your spouse’s fault or your kid’s fault. While any one of those individuals may have influenced you or tempted you, they’re not the ones who pull the trigger. So don’t underestimate your brokenness. Not for the sake of self-loathing or deprecation, but for the sake of truly comprehending just how much God loves you. When we truly understand our sin, we begin to understand God’s grace.

This is an old post, but when I went to the gym yesterday and saw a dozen girls who were 10 pounds underweight killing themselves on the treadmill, and THEN I felt insecure about my own size, I decided it was time for this reminder. This is something that we women all need to hear on a regular basis…

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Right now I’m in Atlanta hanging out with my 10 year old cousin, and we’ve been having a blast! We’ve gone to Stone Mountain Park, Lake Lanier Water Park, and last night we had a “Camp Rock” sleepover with one of her friends.

(In case you don’t know what “Camp Rock” is, it’s a movie that debuted on Disney last night starring the Jonas Brothers. And if you don’t know who the Jonas Brothers are, then you are hopelessly uncool and I’m afraid I can’t help you.)

My cousin and uncle live in a suburb of Atlanta that is so idyllic it makes me feel like I’m living in the 50′s. All the houses are perfect with nicely manicured lawns, all the kids are friends with each other, all the parents hang out together, and they all go to the same school (which also happens to be amazing–it’s nice and it’s safe and the teachers are wonderful). Oh, and everyone is pretty…even the dads.

And that’s exactly why I’ve always loved coming here to visit. It’s always been the kind of place I wanted to raise my family. However, I’m starting to wonder if it’s not quite as perfect as I always thought. I’ve started to notice something during this trip that I hadn’t noticed before. It first grabbed my attention a couple days ago at my cousin’s swim meet, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since…

I was standing near the pool waiting for my cousin’s race to begin, when I noticed three women standing in front of me. What caught my attention was that they all pretty much looked the same–thin, athletic, toned bodies, blond hair, manicured hands and feet, and cute outfits. From the back, they almost looked like teenagers–but they were in their late 30′s or early 40′s.

As I observed these women I started to feel a little insecure about myself. Not only were they in better shape than I am, but I wondered if I’d be able to make my body look like that after I’d had kids. These women didn’t look like they’d actually given birth to human children! They instead had the bodies of 18 year old girls.

Well I decided to start looking around at the other people nearby so that I would stop feeling so insecure about myself, but to my dismay I saw exactly the same thing. Actually that’s a lie–some of the women were brunettes. But they were all skinny, toned, and cute. There were a couple women who had, well, women’s bodies, but they were the exception to the rule.

At first I thought, “Is this what lies ahead for me? Does the quest for model-like bodies never end?” But then I comforted myself with the idea, “This probably isn’t normal. I bet it’s just this neighborhood. Surely there can’t be many communities like this one.”

I was wrong.

The next day my cousin and I went to the water park, and I saw more moms with breast enhancements than I ever thought possible. They were as skinny as rails and you could see the muscle tone in their stomachs. Again, not all of the women looked like this, but there were enough of them to be noticeable. After all, this wasn’t Los Angeles–this was an Atlanta suburb! What is going on here??

Well I think I found a possible explanation…

USA Today recently ran a story revealing that more and more women over 30 are struggling with eating disorders. It explains, “Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia have long been considered diseases of the young, but experts say in recent years more women have been seeking help in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and older.” The article then cited the following distressing statistics:

In the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park, Park Nicollet Health Services’ Eating Disorders Institute saw 43 patients ages 38 and older in 2003 — about 9% of its total patients. For the first six months of this year (2007), the institute has treated nearly 500 patients 38 and older, about 35% of its total.

The Renfrew Center, a network of treatment centers in the eastern U.S., said about 20% of the 522 patients treated at its Philadelphia center in 2005 were 30 or older. In 2006, about 13% of the 600 patients were in that age group.

Body image is no longer the concern of teenage girls alone. Women of all ages are feeling pressure to look a certain way and to fit a particular mold. And it’s no wonder! It’s not as though you spend years feeling a certain way about your body, and then suddenly wake up one day feeling fine. In fact, the pressure is bound to get worse as your body fights the effects of age. If you give in to your insecurities now, and if you believe the lies that society tells women about their bodies, then you are sentencing yourself to a losing battle.

Now it’s not as though I think that all women are doomed to be overweight once they have children, so we should embrace obesity. It’s important for us to take care of our bodies, eat healthy, exercise, and maintain our beauty as a gift to our husbands.

BUT, there is also a degree to which we should celebrate our bodies the way God made us. The fact of the matter is that having children requires us to sacrifice our bodies. We’ll get stretch marks and we’ll gain weight in areas we never gained weight before. Our bodies will bear the marks of bringing a new life into the world.

Yet those marks that we so despise are actually marks of beauty! God created the gift of life, and women get to serve a blessed role in that process, so whatever God calls good, we must also call good. Fight the message that our culture sends women to look a certain way. Take care of your bodies, yes, but rejoice in the journey of life, and all the sags, bags and bulges it brings along with it. Our culture may reject those signs of aging as being ugly and undesirable, but Scripture reminds us that “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”

*In case you’d like to read the whole USA Today article that I cited above, you can check it out here.

Facebook in Real Life:

(This video comes from a British comedy group called Idiots of Ants)

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I still remember the first time I heard about Facebook. Some college students were explaining it to me, and in their minds it was really just a socially acceptable way of stalking people. I, of course, thought that sounded really weird and vowed never to join Facebook.

Well about 4 years later I am a Facebook junkie. I’m on it all the time, and I definitely stalk people….not in a creepy way, but in a “I need to find better things to do with my time” sort of way. I’m quite certain that if I tallied up the number of hours I spend looking at other people’s photos each week, I could have attained another educational degree by now.

But aside from the enormous time suck that Facebook is on our lives, there is something that concerns me even more–how self-involved it has become. While Facebook is a great means for keeping in touch and it has other valuable purposes as well, Facebook tempts our self-absorption with the opportunity to create a space that’s “all about me.”

What results is a near shrine to the self:

These are pictures of my happy life. These are fun facts and interesting quotes that make me so unique. And here is my relationship status, which I change every time my dating life undergoes the slightest alteration. And don’t forget my Facebook status, which enables people to follow MY EVERY MOVE.

There’s a part of me that wonders if this behavior is a result of living in a paparazzi culture in which the intimate details of celebrity lives are splashed all over the internet. There’s an extent to which we emulate those individuals we idolize. It’s like creating our own personal celebrity.

But on a more basic human sin level, Facebook (and Twitter as well) has largely become an altar for our pride. Again, it’s not that any of these technological innovations are inherently bad–they can all be used in the service of God. But are they most of the time? No. They are used in service to us.

I was talking to a friend the other day who was telling me why she got off Twitter. Apparently she was following a few people, but her phone was vibrating all the time with these updates, updates which were frequently pointless and a waste of her time. And not only that, but the updates started to make her feel bad about her own life, and her singleness in particular. Many of the updates went along the lines of “Out on a date with my beautiful wife” or “I am so lucky to be married to such a wonderful woman.”

While I don’t doubt that the Twitterer was trying to honor his wife, I can’t help but wonder if there was also a little pride mixed in as well. When I examine my own motives in using Facebook, I find they are often competitive. I want people to know how good and happy my life is, so I post photos to essentially brag about it. And if I’m going somewhere or doing something that I think will make people envious, it goes straight to my status update.

The reason this competitive spirit can be so subtle is that we describe this behavior as simply “sharing with friends.” It wouldn’t be weird for me to tell my roommates where I’m going over the weekend, especially if I was excited about it. What might be weird is if I called up all my friends simply to tell them that I was vacationing in Florida for a week. They would probably wonder why I was calling just to tell them that. They might even feel a little put off by it. Yet in some cases, that’s essentially what Facebook does.

And in doing so, we can use Facebook in ways that not only alienate others, but tear others down. In case this idea sounds a bit abstract, think about it this way–Consider the Christian woman who spends hours getting ready for church in the morning so that she can look perfect. She not only does this to look nice for church, but feel confident and to feel better about herself. Yet in doing so, she sends a message to all the women around her who did not put that much time into their exterior, and do not look as good. The women who look up to her will suddenly find themselves feeling insecure, like they don’t measure up.

We can pull off this same phenomenon with Facebook. The more time we spend glamorizing our lives and broadcasting the things that make us look good, the more we convey to others where our real security lies.

So while I don’t think we should all swear off Facebook, and there are certainly Christ-centered ways of using it, I personally am not a great example of that. This is an area in which I must constantly check my own motives, especially given that hundreds of people can be impacted by such public choices. If you’ve spent any time “stalking” other people on Facebook then you KNOW other people are stalking you, so when they visit your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter, what are they REALLY learning about your life? What message are you sending? What is truly the center of your life?

The best rule of thumb for this, and really all areas of our lives, is to ask the following question: “In posting this, writing this, or spending countless hours following others who do, am I loving God and am I loving my neighbor?” If you cannot answer a definitive yes, then it’s best not to do it at all. That might sound harsh, but it draws a dividing line between real friendship, real Christian community, and a way of relating to others that is inherently fake.

This past weekend my fiancé and I attended a retreat for engaged couples who are preparing for marriage. At the beginning of the weekend we were presented with information about our culture’s stance toward marriage, and we heard one statistic that I found particularly compelling:

90% of American young people believe that premarital counseling is a good thing to do, but only about 35% would actually consider doing it.

I was not given a source for this statistic so I honestly have no way of verifying its accuracy, but based upon my own experience I am not surprised. I have talked to a lot of couples, Christian and non-Christian, who respond warmly to the idea of other people doing premarital counseling, but when faced with the option to do it themselves, they opt out. Why? Because it sounds good, but not necessary. Only couples with “big problems” need that stuff.

I think this decision stems from two different causes–gross naiveté on the part of the couple, or flat-out denial. Either they have no idea how hard marriage is, or they have some inkling that their relationship isn’t healthy but they don’t want to deal with it. They’ve already decided to get married, they’ve paid for the food and the band, and there’s no turning back.

That’s why some churches have begun offering pre-engagement counseling. At first I thought this was a weird idea–as a single person, even a dating person, I actively avoided talking and thinking about marriage. No need to count my chickens before they’ve hatched, right? I was attempting to guard my imagination, and more importantly my heart.

The problem with my thought process was that it underestimated the momentum of the wedding planning process. Once you begin planning a wedding it’s like you get on board a giant locomotive and there’s no way to stop it. Had I realized that Ike was not the man for me, I cannot imagine the pain and hardship of canceling the wedding, or even just delaying it. Aside from the financial loss, it would be humiliating and emotionally devastating. In the short-term, it would seem much easier to just go through with it.

Which is why it’s so important for young couples to begin seeking godly counsel BEFORE the train gets going. Married couples already have the odds stacked against them, so given the soaring divorce rates you’d think engaged couples would be sobered into seeking every resource possible. When one in two marriages fail, doesn’t it make sense to ensure that you’re NOT on the wrong side of the statistics? Wouldn’t you rather do the hard work of confronting your issues and asking the tough questions before you get married, instead of hoping for the best?

Unfortunately, this type of reasoning rarely takes place during engagement. While some couples DO break off their engagement, many choose to ignore the warning signs because they are blinded by the prospect of getting married. The end is in sight so they delude themselves into thinking that marriage will fix everything, even though marriage statistics would indicate otherwise.

So if you are in a serious dating relationship and the topic of marriage arises, I would encourage you to seek counsel BEFORE the proposal. Prior to taking on the 300 pound gorilla that is wedding planning, make sure you’re moving forward wisely and soberly. Even in dating it is difficult to have clear vision and an objective perspective, but if you are hesitant to have an outside opinion weighing in even NOW, then that’s a red flag.

Don’t hope for the best, don’t count on the other person to change, and don’t ignore the input of your friends and family. Breaking up with a boyfriend or fiancé is hard, but being in a bad marriage is much, much harder.

I’ve recently found myself in a number of situations in which preachers and Christian speakers were conveying what, I would call, “half of the Gospel.” By this I mean that they teach parts of the Gospel perfectly, even brilliantly, but simultaneously fail to mention key parts of the Gospel. It’s not that these teachers were saying anything wrong, but they were not conveying the whole truth either.

Now this has always bothered me, but I was willing to look past it. After all, God IS love, so it’s great to hear a sermon on loving the poor and caring for the needy. And God IS a God of holiness and judgment, so it’s important to learn about the severe implications that His character has for our lives. Because God is infinite, it would be impossible to encapsulate all that He is into one sermon. And so I rationalized that these messages about “half the Gospel” were ultimately ok. Hearing half the Gospel is better than hearing none of it at all, right?

But recently I’ve started to reconsider this position. In fact, I began to wonder if “half” the Gospel is really even the Gospel at all. For instance, is the Gospel kind of like Math?–I may not know all there is about Math and its abstracts concepts of calculus and algebra, but I know how to add and subtract, so I can definitively say that I know Math.

In the same way, if I only learn one part of the Gospel, can I then claim that I know THE Gospel? Or if I preach just one part of the Gospel, can I then say that I have actually preached “the Gospel?”

The answer to this question is a resounding “no.” The Gospel is not at all like Math in that sense. The Gospel is instead more like a cake. As a friend of mine so cleverly put it, if you only have half the ingredients of a cake, you don’t have a cake at all. You have a couple eggs and some salt, but that’s not a cake–that’s scrambled eggs.

And that is what we get when we only preach half the Gospel–we get a scrambled eggs theology that ultimately looks nothing like the Gospel we find in Scripture.

Some of you may be thinking this is a bit harsh. After all, if God is love, and we preach love, are we not still teaching the heart of God? I would argue no, because preaching God’s love without God’s judgment is to fundamentally misunderstand God’s love in the first place. God’s love is so radical because of the judgment that we deserve. He is a righteous, holy God who has every right to condemn us, yet He does not.

Thus to preach a Gospel of love without judgment is to domesticate God into some sort of warm and fuzzy deity in the sky who is devoid of wonder and fear-inspiring awe. It is also to make the cross utterly incoherent. Why would God let His Son endure such a gruesome death if not for his sense of justice?

What’s more, you have to look at the implications of “half the Gospel.” Yes, Jesus cared about the poor, but if our ultimate goal is to feed the poor and clothe the hungry without ever addressing people’s spiritual needs, then what are we left with? Say that we were able to clothe everyone, feed everyone, and heal everyone, would that change eternity one bit? No. Scripture tells us that life on earth is but an instant compared to eternity, so we would be laboring to make one instant better, while ignoring the glaring blind spot of peoples’ eternal needs. As Derek Webb puts it, we would ultimately be clothing corpses.

In this way, half the Gospel is not really the Gospel at all–it is either secular social activism, or Pharisaic religiosity, but it is not the Gospel. For that reason, keep your eyes and ears open for these speakers of half-truth. And more importantly, make sure your life preaches the whole truth, because half the truth is actually little more than a dressed up lie.

Last night I was reminded why I quit watching Grey’s Anatomy. I decided to tune in this week because I heard one of the main characters might get killed off and that sounded entertaining. But I was disappointed. Not only did no one die, but I am now certain that the writers are intentionally producing a morally subversive show.

Now I know a lot of you who are reading this right now are obsessed with Grey’s. I am not writing this post today as a diatribe against your favorite show, so hang with me as I explain my thought process. I promise there’s a point.

To begin, I spent almost the entire length of the show in a state of total fury. My roommate and I had to restrain one another from throwing furniture at the t.v. as the characters delivered some of the most ridiculous, morally backwards lines that I have heard in a long time.

Two of the characters “got married” by signing a post-it note of their vows. It was meant to be a kind of romantic gesture since they “didn’t have time” to get married in a legally binding way. Later in the show, a different character left her husband because he asked her to be around the family more instead of advancing her career. The female doctor nobly shed tears as she declared her husband to be a “weak man” for giving her such an unreasonable ultimatum.

In both of these scenes the music swelled in the background, signaling to the viewer the deep and meaningful significance of the characters’ actions. I rolled my eyes.

What really bothers me about these plot lines is the way they ennoble destructive decision-making and morally bankrupt behavior. A selfish mother and wife is hailed as a brave pioneer for women’s rights in the workplace. Two people who are too busy to even make public vows are somehow expected to do the hard work of making an entire life together, just because they signed a post-it note, on a whim, and decided to call that a wedding.

The title of the episode was “Here’s to Future Days.” It should have been called “Here’s Why Our Nation’s Divorce Rate is So High.”

Watching this show makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills. The moral compass isn’t even on the dial. But like I said, the purpose of this post is not to cast judgment on those of you who are faithful watchers. While I think Grey’s Anatomy symbolizes a lot of what is wrong with our culture today, that also means we should pay attention.

Grey’s Anatomy is popular today, not simply because it has compelling story lines, but but because it dignifies, if not exalts those lifestyles that characterize a large portion of Americans. In today’s culture, it is not uncommon for couples to co-habitate before marriage, or for marriages to crumble for the sake of career advancement. It happens all the time. And in Grey’s Anatomy, viewers find an affirmation of their lifestyle.

That said, the Christian response to shows like Grey’s is not to boycott them. In contrast with my gut reaction, we are not to throw bricks at our television sets and write letters of complaint to the stations that air them. Nor should we passively watch these shows, explaining it away as our one “guilty pleasure.” Instead, we need to study them.

When we watch popular television shows, we are given a glimpse into the morality of the secular mind. It is a kind of lesson about the worldview of our day. And rather than simply reject this alternative perspective, we must seek to understand it. If we can figure out how and why Americans buy into the moral principles these shows portray, we can establish some common ground for conversation. Rather than isolate ourselves from the culture, we build bridges for communication.

Now I am not letting you off the hook for watching total trash just because you like it. If you aren’t careful, the shows you watch will shape you more than you will ever realize. BUT, there is an extent to which we must engage the culture and have a sense for its spiritual pulse. It’s almost like studying a foreign culture before you embark on the mission field. If you go overseas but subsequently stay in your home, refuse to learn the language, and never adapt to the country’s customs, you will reach no one.

It is the same with American culture. You can live in the U.S. your entire life, but if you hide away in a Christian bubble you will have just as much in common with your neighbors as you might with villagers in the mountains of Tibet.

So if you watch Grey’s I’m not gonna tell you to stop, but do be aware of the morality they are selling, and pay attention. Chances are your classmates and co-workers are eating it up with a spoon, so engage the perspective and figure out how to respond to it. Like any diligent missionary, we need to learn the language of our culture so that we can use it to share the message of Christ.

At least once a week, I consider dropping out of ministry.

I’ve heard Mark Driscoll refer to this kind of weekly day-dreaming as “bread truck Mondays”–every Monday he wakes up and thinks about quitting his job and driving a bread truck. Why? Because driving a bread truck gives you just enough distraction to be stimulating, without requiring you to really think at all.

I cam sympathize.

For me, there is a myriad of reasons why I consider quitting ministry on a weekly basis. Some days I’m burned out, some days I feel overwhelmed, and some days I feel unappreciated. And then there are the days when someone blesses me out and calls me everything short of the anti-Christ–those are the days when my friends and family have had to actively stop me from running away and never coming back.

But the MAIN reason that I often consider quitting the ministry, the one reason that I would ever seriously give heed to, is this: my motives for doing ministry are wrong.

There is a misconception that Christians get into ministry to resist the rat race of the secular business world. It’s well known that ministry doesn’t pay well, plus ministry is all about helping people, so it would seem to attract those individuals who are denying the temptations of the American dream. To go into ministry, we must be intentionally forsaking the idols that so many Christians chase after in the secular realm.

This is false.

For many, ministry is merely a Christian version of the worldly ladder of success. While that is not the primary reason that most ministers pursue their vocation, there comes a point at which the lines become blurry. You DO want to reach the lost and you DO want to love the world for the glory of God, but you also want to do it BETTER than everyone else. You want to be great. You want to be remembered as having done something truly remarkable in your generation.

Some ministers veil this desire with language about “doing something great for the Kingdom of God.” They don’t want to look back on their lives and regret their mediocre life’s work. They want to know that they left a mark on the world.

And while I don’t doubt that many of these ministers’ motives are pure, I must admit that mine often are not. I have that exact same passion–I want to do something truly great for God–but I am frequently measuring “greatness” according to the world’s standards, not God’s.

In doing so, I make the strenuous climb up the Christian ladder of success–I put pressure on myself to have a booming ministry, to be a great speaker and a writer, and to compare myself with those who do it better. And when I fail at these things, I feel like an inadequate minister. It doesn’t matter that I spent the whole week meeting one-on-one with students and teaching them to love Jesus more. That sort of ministry isn’t impressive. That sort of minister doesn’t get articles and books written about them.

If all you’re doing is meeting with students and your ministry is small, then you would seem like a pretty mediocre minister. You have the kind of ministry that many pastors would “despair at the thought” of spending their lives leading.

So it is on these days when I feel the pressure to out-perform my teammates, to be the best, the most successful, and the most original minister, writer, speaker and thinker–those are the days when I consider quitting. I think about leaving ministry behind and working at Subway, not because ministry is too hard, but because my call has gotten so thoroughly mangled. I think about quitting the ministry to intentionally take a job in which there is no ladder of success, and purge myself of the desire to serve God for any other reason than my sheer love for Him.

And maybe one day I will. For now, I am learning to be ok with mediocrity–not laziness, not complacency, or apathy–but mediocrity according to the world’s standards. Maybe I won’t have a ministry that the world judges to be a tremendous success. Maybe I won’t be able to tally up thousands of people who prayed the sinner’s prayer because of me. Maybe no one will remember me when I’m gone.

But those standards are not to be found in God’s economy. Sure, God wants all people to experience salvation–you see mass conversions all the time in Acts. But not everyone is a Paul, and God only asks that we do the best we can with the gifts we have. We are to love others radically, we are to speak boldly about Jesus, and we are to live a life that testifies daily to the Gospel. Nothing less, but also nothing more.

So even if you are mediocre according to this world, such a label does not matter as long as you are a good and faithful servant to God. This is hard for me to remember as I stand in the shadow of so many successful pastors and writers, but it is in those moments that I am reminded that worldly success, even when it’s achieved in a Christian context, will all be burned away. The big church buildings, the millions of books–they will all pass away come eternity. Those things can certainly be effective tools for God’s Kingdom, but they do not distinguish the sheep from the goats.

Shortly after getting engaged, my dad gave me and my fiancé a book entitled “His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage.” The book is written by a seasoned psychologist and marriage counselor, Willard F. Harley. His driving point is that most marriages end in an affair when either one or both of the spouses are not meeting one another’s fundamental needs.

After having read through about half of the book, I’ve noticed that one of the main patterns in the author’s stories of infidelity is marital complacency. As the years go by and small issues remain unaddressed, gaping holes develop within the marriage. This may be due to apathy, or just ignorance, but regardless of the cause there is a clear absence of much-needed marital maintenance.

And it’s easy to see why this happens. Many single people, women in particular, have a tendency to see the wedding day as the end game. For women, it’s almost like a race to the finish line–once I get married, I can die a happy woman. I remember times when I actually had the thought, “If only I were married–then I would be happy.” Marriage seemed like the magical element that would make everything else better in my life. If only I could just grab hold of it.

But this short-sightedness has consequences for marriage down the road. Married women who think they’ve accomplished their ultimate goal have no motivation to continue trying afterward–they stop taking care of their bodies and they stop making the effort to look nice for their husbands. And men are just as guilty–they will stop romancing their wives or going the extra mile to make her feel special or beautiful, like he did when they were dating.

All the things that made their dating relationship a success are now noticeably absent from their marriage.

It’s as if they got married and then hit “Auto-pilot.” Their mentality is that “we’re married now, and that isn’t going to change, so the hard work is behind me.” Many of these couples view marriage as a kind of permanent condition that does not need maintenance–kind of like a tonsillectomy.

Now this mentality is not true of all married couples, nor is it even the catalyst for all cases of adultery. Sometimes infidelity is simply a matter of sin–broken people do broken things. But the reason I bring up this scenario is that it’s an excellent metaphor for the Christian life.

In the same way that some married couples say “I do” and then spend the rest of their years coasting on their married identity, Christians do the same. We pray the sinner’s prayer, get that out of the way, and then live out the rest of our lives however we want, knowing that we’ll always be “saved.”

That is why so many Christians have a relationship with God that looks more like a neglected marriage than a life-giving romance. We’re like a lazy wife who gets married and then immediately begins living the way she wants to, regardless of her husband’s opinion or desires. Now that he is “hers” for good, she uses her husband to get what she wants or to meet her own needs, but she has no concern for his. Or if she does fulfill some of his desires, it’s simply to keep the peace, not because she loves him.

I think we’ve all seen marriages like this. The wife doesn’t take care of herself, she nags her husband incessantly, and we all feel sorry for the guy. He seems more like a prisoner of war than a husband.

In this kind of environment, the relationship whithers. It devolves into two people living together with no relationship between them other than shared possessions. As a result, the husband may eventually wander off, but the wife may do so as well–she will seek meaningful relationships elsewhere since she isn’t getting it at home.

What she fails to overlook is that her marriage would be fulfilling if she would just put in the work to make it so.

And that is how we treat God. We say “I do” on that day of salvation, and then we let our spiritual lives go. We may “co-habitate” with God, keep Him at arms length so that He’s around when we need Him, but there isn’t any real relationship at all. We delude ourselves into thinking that praying the prayer was all it took, instead of understanding that it was a commitment.

We forget that the phrase “relationship with God” isn’t figurative, nor does it imply a mere knowledge of Him. The term “relationship” is to be taken quite literally.

And just like the neglectful wife, we will also seek fulfillment elsewhere as the intimacy of the connection slides into oblivion. We aren’t getting anything from God, so we find other ways to satisfy our desires, all the while blind to the ways we’ve neglected the relationship. If we would only put in the work, then we’d benefit from it.

My pastor once said that “Salvation is by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.” This is a point we too often forget. A relationship with God is no more sustained by complacency and neglect than a marriage. Saying, “I do” to God carries the same degree of commitment and work as a marriage vow, so it’s time we stop shrink-wrapping the Gospel into something less than what it is. If we fail to do this, I fear we will see more and more instances of spiritual infidelity. When our hearts check out of this divine marriage, our actions are soon to follow.

More often than I would expect, I hear break-up stories from my college students that will go something like this…

Alex and Sarah have been dating for 2 years, and even though they’re only 19 years old, they’re already talking about marriage. Everything seems just perfect! Then one summer Alex and Sarah are apart for a few months, and during that time Sarah finds a guy that she likes better than Alex, so she hooks up with him.

Alex and Sarah eventually break up, and Alex is left completely heart-broken. But strangely enough, if you ask Alex about Sarah he still maintains that she’s a nice girl. Even though Sarah has totally crushed Alex and treated him badly along the way, he says that she really is a “good Christian.” She may have made a mistake, but she’s still the most amazing woman he’s ever met! And what’s even more miraculous is that he was able to forgive her almost as soon as she told him the bad news. That’s how much he loves her.

Whenever I hear this story, I feel somewhat conflicted about how to respond. After all, we ministers are supposed to encourage forgiveness, not warn against it. However, this poor guy is setting himself up to get hurt again, and I can’t encourage him to do that either.

So the question is, what is really going on here?

The problem in Alex’s thinking is that he’s failed to draw a distinction between forgiveness and trust. One of the best examples of this difference can be found in the life of Joseph in Genesis 44. After having been betrayed by his brothers and later reunited with them in Egypt, Joseph’s brothers don’t recognize their successful younger sibling. So Joseph decides to send them on a little misadventure. He frames them for stealing and threatens to throw one brother in jail, all the while observing their responses.

After leading them through this trickery, Joseph discovers that their hearts have indeed changed, so he reveals himself to them and they all live happily after.

The story has a very happy ending, and is especially encouraging to read when we go through the dark times in our lives, but what was up with the deception and manipulation at the end? Was that really necessary? It seems like Joseph was almost toying with his brothers just to get back at them.

While I cannot know the heart of Joseph, I suspect there was a lot more to his motives than simple vengeance. On the contrary, Joseph was testing them–not to determine whether he should forgive them, but whether he should trust them. He was learning whether or not he should let them back into his life, but that is a very different matter from forgiveness.

We know that Joseph had forgiven his brothers because of his response that “what they intended for evil, God intended for good.” His forgiveness was based not on their repentance, but on God’s love. This tells us that Joseph wasn’t acting out of a twisted desire for retribution, but out of wise caution as he took the time to determine whether they were trustworthy.

And this brings us back to the case of Alex and Sarah. When I hear stories like theirs, I wonder if Alex is confusing forgiveness and trust–he may think that he’s forgiven Sarah, but what he’s really experiencing is a desperate desire to get her back, which is leading him to trust her prematurely. He is sure that she’s still a nice girl, and odds are that if she came back wanting to reconcile, he would let her. That does not, however, mean that he’s taken the time to determine if she is trustworthy. On the contrary, his actions reveal that he hasn’t learned anything about her character at all. Nor has he grappled with the hard work of forgiveness…he’s just temporarily blind to it.

Forgiveness and trust are two very different things. While God does call us to forgive everyone, He does not call us to trust everyone. Before we put our confidence and vulnerability in someone who has hurt us, we must first determine if they will be responsible with that vulnerability. And this can only be determined over time.

The problem is that many people will be quick to trust, under the guise of being forgiving. From the outside, it would seem that they’ve already forgotten the injury, but in reality they are naively trusting and hoping for the best. If any forgiveness has taken place, it is based on a hope that the person can change, not based on the sovereignty and love of God.

The distinction is this: forgiveness is based upon God, but trust is based upon the individual. Because God never changes, the command to forgive does not change either. But not all individuals are trustworthy, so if someone breaks your trust, be slow to trust them again. That is something they must earn.

Now there are two different ways that we go about this whole forgiveness process wrongly. The first is what I described above–we think we have forgiven someone because we are so quick to trust them again, but that doesn’t mean forgiveness has actually occurred. Usually that kind of forgiveness is conditional–you have forgiven them under the condition, or at least hope, of reconciliation. But when that reconciliation does not happen, the true nature of your forgiveness will often reveal itself in the form of jadedness or long-festering disdain.

Or, the “forgiveness” is actually just a devaluing of yourself. In romantic relationships in particular, individuals are quick to “forgive” because they don’t think the injury was really all that bad. They are sure that this person is the one for them and that they won’t find anyone else who will love them more, so they “forgive” them, sometimes even thinking that they may have deserved it. This is NOT forgiveness. The only reason forgiveness is even necessary is that a REAL injury has taken place, so a quickness to forgive should not be based on a belittling of the wrong or an underestimation of what you deserve–it should instead be based upon the infinite healing and love of God in the face of these wrongs.

The second error we make is the opposite of the first: Refusing to forgive under the guise of refusing to trust. Though we have not actually forgiven the individual, we hide our anger behind the excuse, “I just can’t trust them anymore.” And while it is fine to wait before you trust someone again, this lack of trust does not legitimize a heart of bitterness or rage. Withholding trust is an intentional action based on wisdom and prudence–refusing forgiveness comes only from a selfish desire to hurt the other.

If someone has hurt you, you will likely find yourself in one of those two places. For some of you, you have been wounded beyond measure and this will be a long process of forgiveness that will take years to mend. For others, you have been wounded but you are so quick to trust that you are foolishly running right back into throes of danger. In both cases, I would encourage you to read the story of Joseph. It provides us with much needed hope during times of great darkness, but it also reminds us of the importance of caution when our hearts tempt us to act unwisely. The God of Joseph is the same God of you now, so be sure that you actions are determined by His unchanging, faithful character, not your circumstances.