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.

This week I am in Nashville attending the National Collegiate Summit for college ministers, and I just got word that Nashville has seen its first school closing due to the swine flu.

Upon hearing this news, I went back to my hotel room to investigate the reason for the school closing, and apparently there are two suspected cases of swine flu in the state.

What’s interesting is that the school here in Nashville has not closed its doors for just one day, or even two. It’s going to be closed for 7 whole days! I’m assuming that there is a scientific reason behind this specific amount of time, but 7 days seems a bit on the cautious side.

In light of stories like this, I’m starting to wonder if this whole swine flu thing is getting overblown. Just consider these statistics:

- The World Health Organization says there are 109 confirmed cases with 1 death in the U.S., out of a population of more than 300 million people

- Contrast that percentage with the more than 13,000 people in the U.S. who have died of complications from seasonal flu since January. Seasonal flu is expected to continue killing hundreds of people a week. In total, about 36,000 people a year die from the flu in the United States and worldwide. The annual death toll is somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 (Statistics taken from cnn.com)

If anything, the pandemic we should be fearing is the old school flu that we grew up getting shots for. If the regular flu kills so many people, why don’t we see more Americans wearing masks each year during flu season?

While I don’t want to be foolish and underestimate the potential devastation of this virus, it seems plausible that the swine flu is being a little over-sensationalized.

What is ironic about the timing of this “pandemic” is that it coincided with a seminar I attended earlier today on a similar topic. Only, this seminar addressed the escalating panic surrounding church decline. In the same way that news outlets are inundating their listeners with hourly updates of the spread of swine flu, pastors across the nation are frightening their congregations with statistics about Christianity’s decline.

And just like the swine flu, it’s not altogether clear whether the statistics match the rhetoric. While I do not know the plans that God has for this country, current studies do not indicate the need for such a frenzy.

The seminar I attended was led by Ed Stetzer, the President of Lifeway Research, and his organization has conducted numerous studies on the un-churched demographic of America. His findings are quite remarkable. (You can check them out at his blog, edstetzer.com)

What Lifeway has found is that the younger un-churched generation, aged 20-29, tends to be more spiritual and more open to conversations about Christianity than the un-churched generations that are 30 years and older. Here is just a sampling of what Lifeway found:

- Does God or a supreme being exist? 81% of 20-29 year-olds said yes, while only 79% of 30+ year-olds answered yes

- Do you believe Jesus died and came back to life? 66% of 20-29 year-olds said yes, and only 54% of 30+ year-olds said yes

- “I would study the Bible with a friend if they asked”: 61% of 20-29 year-olds said yes, and 42% of 30+ years-olds said yes

In addition to these numbers, Lifeways studies indicate that there has been very little decline in church attendance over the last decade. Though there has been some decline, the numbers are not extreme.

What’s more, there has not been a significant rise in the percentage of American atheists. Currently it is at 4%, which is not much different from past trends.

All of that to say, if you ever hear a statistic that 88% of evangelical children leave the faith when they graduate from high school, that simply isn’t true. Many do leave the faith, but not nearly to such an extent.

With that in mind, why are Christians so quick to quote exaggerated statistics about the decline in American Christianity? Because fear works. Scaring people results in action, as evidenced by the number of school closings and face masks that you see around the country right now. If anything, we should have been protecting ourselves more effectively from the seasonal flu, but the media didn’t hype it up so we didn’t get scared, and we subsequently failed to act with the same measure of caution.

Now to offer a slightly less cynical perspective, pastors also use this strategy because Christians need to care about the lost more than they do. Many Christians are certainly apathetic, and if we continue in this complacency the Church will decline.

What is problematic about the scare tactic is that we shouldn’t need to sensationalize the Gospel. While we should care about the health of the Church in America and we should feel a burden to reach the lost, it shouldn’t take dramatic statistics to motivate us. We shouldn’t be waiting for the situation to reach its worst before we finally get off our butts and do something.

Regardless of the statistics, regardless of whether Americans churches are growing or dying, we should be preaching the Gospel. After all, the word “gospel” literally means “good news,” and if you have good news, TRULY good news, you spread it! You tell the world, every person around you that you can possibly get to listen, about the good news that has changed your life and can change theirs. That is the call of every Christian regardless of context or circumstances, so we shouldn’t sit back and relax simply because the numbers aren’t dire yet.

We might also consider viewing these statistics as a kind of encouragement. For those of us who labor, we have not labored in vain! God IS faithful and He IS using our hard work, so we must press on. God does not need scare tactics to compel people to care about the Gospel–the news is good enough on its own.

And as the statistics seem to indicate, the un-churched are ready to hear it.

I don’t know why, but one of my all-time favorite t.v. shows is the Haunted Destination show on the Travel Channel. It isn’t one of those “reality t.v.” shows in which people go into spooky places and get the mess scared out of them by the producers. It’s a good old fashioned show about haunted houses, mansions, prisons, etc. that includes stories of what happens there, and the theories about why.

However, as much as I love watching these shows, I have to be careful. If I watch them too late at night or when I’m home by myself, I start to get so creeped out that I have to turn the t.v. off or change it to the Disney Channel. I just can’t handle it.

(The same goes for news stories about serial killers)

The reason I’m bringing this up today is to demonstrate how powerful the imagination is, and how profoundly our imaginations are affected by the television we watch and the movies we see. This is something I’ve been reflecting on a lot lately.

Like every “good little Christian girl,” I tend to avoid movies that have sex and excessive violence in them (although my reasons have less to do with holiness and more to do with me being a wimp and/or not wanting my fiancé to be looking at naked women). But I’m starting to wonder if there should be more to the discernment process than that. Just because a movie doesn’t involve cannibalism or orgies, does that mean it’s beneficial to watch?

I started to wonder about this when I learned that my fiancé has trouble watching movies in which women are attacked. He said that it causes him to become unrealistically fearful about my safety–he starts worrying about me, wondering if the deadbolt on my door is locked, and being paranoid about my security. I have heard of a similar tendency in parents–some parents can’t watch movies in which children are attacked because it causes them to become irrationally fearful about their own kids.

That leads me back to my love/hate relationship with the Haunted Destination shows. Before watching those shows, I was perfectly fine–I wasn’t afraid of a ghost popping out from around the corner, and little noises in the house didn’t scare me. I could rest in my home in peace. But after having my mind fed with those irrational fears, I wasn’t quite as sure about the world around me. My peace had been taken away.

While this may not seem like that big of a deal, I think it demonstrates the way in which media can compete with a Christian world view. While our faith may tell us that God is in control and we have no need to fear, television and movies flood our brains with worries about terrorism and crime. It’s hard to walk in total peace when you’re bombarded with story lines based on worst-case scenarios.

And this influence isn’t limited to the realm of fear. Media affects our imaginations in other ways as well. I was talking with a student the other day who described her struggle with singleness, and how she had unintentionally filled that void in her life with romantic movies and shows. She would get so swept up in the story that she would later find herself fantasizing about it, wishing the same thing would happen to her.

The only problem was that it ultimately left her feeling even emptier than before. While she enjoyed fantasizing about romance, her actual life seemed boring and empty in comparison. There was no Noah Calhoun building a house for her, waiting for her throughout the years. There was no Prince Charming.

The result was that she found herself even less satisfied and more lonely than before.

Now I am not writing all of this as some sort of manifesto against watching movies or television. To do so would be Pharisaical. BUT, it’s important that we think through what we’re watching and how it’s influencing our mindset. For some women, this is a crucial key to guarding their hearts. For other individuals, it is a matter of viewing the world through the lens of Christ’s truth and security. The media can threaten both, so while we don’t need to be legalists, we do need to be wise.

Several weeks ago the Pope made a highly publicized trip to Africa, and while there he created a great deal of controversy. During his visit, he was quoted as saying that HIV/AIDS is “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem,” and that “a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease.”

In other words, it would seem that he told an entire continent devastated by AIDS to stop using any physical protection against it.

Now I’m gonna be honest with you–the first time I heard this story, I rolled my eyes and let out a huge frustrated sigh. This sounded like a major set-back in the Church’s “cultural relevancy” department.

However, I’m starting to reconsider my initial judgment, and for several reasons. The first is theological….

1) As a spiritual rule of thumb, it’s not a good idea to choose the most practical option, over and against a Scriptural world view. Sometimes the two options coincide, but from a Catholic perspective they do not in this instance. So in a country where millions of people are dying, why not go for the obvious answer? Why not compromise?

Well the problem is that Jesus wasn’t exactly making suggestions that could be shrugged off in real life scenarios. On the contrary, he presented his teachings knowing full well the circumstances in which we would find ourselves. When He told us to turn the other cheek and love our enemies, there was no “unless” clause.

Even if you don’t agree that the use of condoms is wrong, this principle plays out in a lot of different areas. When someone takes advantage of us financially, do we sue them, or do we “let them take our cloak as well?” If you know that your teenagers are going to drink anyway, do you continue to teach them otherwise, or do you provide them with alcohol in a safe environment? If women are going to have abortions whether it’s legal or not, is it best to legalize abortion and keep it safe?

In the face of all these questions, it can be tempting to choose the “practical” over the Scriptural.

But God’s teachings do not exist in a vacuum. They are not abstract or removed from the world we live in. They are just the opposite, in fact. God’s Word is to be our guiding compass in the world we inhabit because it is more grounded in reality than the practical options we see before us. What we see is only a sliver of the whole picture, but God sees it all. So following God’s teaching is far from being irrelevant–it is the most relevant information we have.

When it’s all said and done, we need to ask whether our choices are determined by sin, or by Christ’s victory over sin.

Now I will admit that that is a belief we often have to take on faith, especially in the face of such an overwhelming epidemic as AIDS, which leads me to the second reason I’ve started to reconsider the Pope’s position…

2. Some researchers might be providing evidence that actually supports the Pope’s stance. Even though it sometimes takes faith to follow the Bible’s teaching, those teachings are occasionally justified by real life experience. Every now and then we discover that God’s teachings may not be so out-dated after all.

On her blog, Carolyn McCulley excerpted an op-ed piece by Edward C. Green that recently appeared in the Washington Post. Green is the director of the Harvard AIDS Prevention Research Project, and is a leading advocate for evidence-based interventions. In response to the criticism leveled at the Pope, Green responded with the following:

We liberals who work in the fields of global HIV/AIDS and family planning take terrible professional risks if we side with the pope on a divisive topic such as this. The condom has become a symbol of freedom and — along with contraception — female emancipation, so those who question condom orthodoxy are accused of being against these causes. My comments are only about the question of condoms working to stem the spread of AIDS in Africa’s generalized epidemics — nowhere else. …

In theory, condom promotions ought to work everywhere. And intuitively, some condom use ought to be better than no use. But that’s not what the research in Africa shows.

Why not?

One reason is “risk compensation.” That is, when people think they’re made safe by using condoms at least some of the time, they actually engage in riskier sex.

Another factor is that people seldom use condoms in steady relationships because doing so would imply a lack of trust. (And if condom use rates go up, it’s possible we are seeing an increase of casual or commercial sex.) However, it’s those ongoing relationships that drive Africa’s worst epidemics. In these, most HIV infections are found in general populations, not in high-risk groups such as sex workers, gay men or persons who inject drugs. And in significant proportions of African populations, people have two or more regular sex partners who overlap in time. In Botswana, which has one of the world’s highest HIV rates, 43 percent of men and 17 percent of women surveyed had two or more regular sex partners in the previous year.

These ongoing multiple concurrent sex partnerships resemble a giant, invisible web of relationships through which HIV/AIDS spreads. A study in Malawi showed that even though the average number of sexual partners was only slightly over two, fully two-thirds of this population was interconnected through such networks of overlapping, ongoing relationships.

In all honesty, I don’t know enough about this topic to make any kind of authoritative statement about it, nor am I weighing in on the theological debates about condom use either. BUT, I certainly find Green’s argument to be compelling. That said, I am opening up the floor to hear your thoughts. In light of this information, what do you think about the Pope’s words–is he right on, or mind-bogglingly off base?

To view the whole Washington Post article, click here.

This post serves as the second part in a series that my friend, Joe Jones, is writing on 1 Corinthians 2. Joe will be speaking at my ministry’s worships service Tuesday night, so this post serves as a forerunner to that message.

Joe is a wise man, as well as humble–which you can gather from this picture of him.

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WISDOM: Content & Context

The term ‘wisdom’ is a big deal in Christian circles. We go to churches, ministries, and Bible-studies because we believe they offer wisdom. We pray for wisdom. We get all warm inside when people call us wise. But for all the talk we do about wisdom, I often wonder what exactly Christians mean when we talk about wisdom. I’ve asked many of my friends this question, and I found that though we talk about “wisdom” or “wise decision-making”, we rarely break from using general terms; therefore, a clear and particular definition of wisdom was hard to pin down.

I believe 1 Corinthians may provide Christians with a helpful definition of wisdom.

Paul (the author or Corinthians) defines wisdom in two ways:

First, he defines it as having a lot of what my great-grandmother called “fancy book learnin’” (1:20). It is the type of wisdom that we see in people who write and debate well. A good example of this is Ben Stein. Ben Stein is so smart that in the 90’s there was a game show in which, to win, you had to prove you knew more than Ben Stein. In reality, I’m sure there are a bunch of people out there with Noble Prizes who are smarter than Ben Stein, but I can’t pronounce their names, and they aren’t on TV very often.

The second way Paul defines wisdom is understanding the purpose of life (2:12). This type of wisdom is not simply about having knowledge, but how to use that knowledge as well. This is the wisdom we associate with Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela – Less reality television but more C-Span and CNN!

What I love about Paul’s definition of wisdom in 1 Corinthians is that Paul does NOT mark either type of wisdom as bad. Instead Paul urges people to be careful–it is one thing to possess wisdom, but quite another to be a good steward of it.
In my efforts to acquire both types of wisdom, it’s helpful to remember that I can’t discover the second type of wisdom on my own. As Paul explains, only God can reveal the purpose of life, and He reveals it to individuals who are humble enough to admit, “I know far less than I think I do.”

What’s more, 99% of my non-Christians friends that are weirded-out by Evangelicals or Southern Baptists are actually quite comfortable talking about Jesus. What they can’t stand is when Christians try to prove we are wise through our exceptional debating skills. They are turned off when we are passionate for the first type of wisdom, all the while neglecting the second.

A very famous anti-Christian philosopher once said, “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”

It breaks my heart to think that a man with such an astute definition of wisdom was inspired to hate Christianity by the actions of a few Christians living apart from a 1 Corinthians definition of wisdom.

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To read more of Joe’s writing, check out his blog at www.iagreewithjoe.com

In the past I’ve talked a lot about the ways in which the media has objectified women and given us an unrealistic standard for which we should strive. We see this subliminal messaging in the form of emaciated models and self-destructive actresses, so while it is prevalent, it’s also easy to pinpoint.

However, not all of the media’s subliminal messages are that easy to spot. In addition to promoting the sexual anorexic look, the media sends harmful messages in a range of forms, some that you may not expect or even notice.

Rather than drive this point home with a long blog that you’re probably too stuffed with turkey to read, I will today defer to a video series entitled “Target Women.” Ladyblog summarized these videos as follows:

Via the December/January issue of Bust (actual article not online):

Do the women populating commercials nowadays—those personality-free mombots who talk about Hamburger Helper as if it were a cure for cancer—seem a little off to you? Sarah Haskins feels your pain.

But instead of motrin-momming it up, Haskins writes and stars in Daily-Show-style segments called ‘Target: Women” (on Current TV’s Infomania) that amusingly mock women’s advertising.

Haskins hones in on the messages that women are receiving, and her style of satire highlights the ways in which such advertising affects us.

What follows is “Target: Women–Yogurt Edition.” I know that sounds lame, but I seriously fell off my chair laughing, and it shows just how subtle advertising can be in its attempt to seduce female consumers:

For more great videos, check out Haskin’s video about birth control commercials, which examines the industry’s tendency to talk more about regulating your period than preventing the birth of children. I’ve never noticed that before, but I would bet there are some very intentional reasons behind it.Also check out her video on chick flicks. It highlights the degree to which romantic comedies deceive women with unrealistic expectations for dating and romance.

For more videos, you can check Haskins out on youtube. She is not a Christian so I apologize for the occasional crass comment, but her work is valuable. We must never blindly consume that which the media is feeding us. Be critical. Ask questions.

That’s what it means to be a faithful woman of God, even if you do like yogurt.

Today my heart is overcome with joy for my African-American brothers and sisters. Whether or not you agree with the policies of President-elect Barack Obama, one thing is for sure–yesterday’s election was a monumental moment in our nation’s history. It brought us one step closer to healing the wounds our nation has inflicted upon African-Americans throughout our history. And for that, I am deeply grateful. 

Having said that, there is a language about Presidential elections that I find a bit worrying: this language of “hope.” We’ve heard it a lot in reference to both McCain and Obama, but I was particularly struck by it last night when I heard Oprah make the following statement during an interview,

“With Obama’s election, we can finally have hope in this country.”

(Interestingly, she then proceeded to cite some Scripture. It would seem that her theology and her politics are getting a bit conflated.)

Now as theologically problematic as I found her comments to be, I have to admit that I sympathize with Oprah’s position. There have been many moments in America’s history when we (Christians included) have stolen away hope from our nation’s minorities. And given that history, Obama’s election signals the beginning of a new era for African-Americans, an era that seems far less hopeless and impossible than it did before.

However, we must also be cautious about such language. Why? Because there is a temptation to speak about our political leaders using words that mirror Scriptural language about Christ.

If a person does not know Christ, then such language of promise, expectation and everlasting hope is to be expected, but it is not the kind of language or ideology that disciples of Christ should be espousing.

It is for that reason that we must continually ask ourselves the following crucial question, a question which quickly diagnoses the state of our hearts:

“Who is your king?”

Like the Israelites in 1 Samuel 8, we are constantly faced with choosing between an earthly king or a heavenly One. That is why the language we use for Christ is so frequently co-opted to describe worldly leaders. There is a very real temptation there. What’s more, there are many, many kings to choose from…some not as obvious as you may think.

The way we talk about our politicians and our pastors can reveal the identity of our true king. Yet the king of your heart will not always necessarily be a person. When we are enslaved to popularity, success, body image–these can just as easily set up monarchies in our hearts.

The way you live, what drives you, what you center your life around–all these things reveal the identity of your true king. And that is why you must constantly ask yourself “Who is my king?” When someone looks at your life and listens to your words, which king would they suppose you follow?

We must ask ourselves that question every day, not simply this week. The Presidential election may highlight this spiritual issue more clearly, but the reality is that we submit ourselves to earthly rulers every single day.

Live the kind of daily life that would lend an obvious answer if someone were to ask: “Who is your king?” Not only are your freedom and joy at stake, but the reputation of the True King as well.

In these final 24 hours before the 2008 Presidential Election, I thought I’d post the following video of John Piper giving his perspective. He goes straight to the heart of the issues and he does it concisely. It is a perspective that should anchor us when we feel consumed by the emotion and the fear of this time.

To view this video, click here.

(There is also a longer version on youtube if you would like to view the whole of it)

Tomorrow is election day, so I will end with a quote by Walter H. Judd, a member of the U.S. Congress from 1943-1963 :

“People often say that, in democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote–a very different thing.”

Don’t waste your vote.

I really debated over whether or not to write this blog.

In general, I don’t like to weigh in on political issues. It’s such a distraction from the things that really matter–namely, the Gospel. Government, politicians, and even policies that reflect Christian values–all these things can quickly become idols that supplant Christ.

Even so, I decided to throw in my two cents because there is an important tension within the Christian life that warrants some acknowledgment. While Scripture does push the Church to take on the burdens of the world instead of depending on the government to do our work for us, Scripture ALSO sets a precedent in which Christians are permitted to use worldly means to accomplish social and spiritual change.

For example, in the book of Acts we see Paul use the Roman political system for his own personal gain. Throughout his life, Paul spoke before government officials and appealed to the Roman justice system to protect himself when threatened with imprisonment.

Given this precedent, we learn that there are times when it is permissible to use the government to further the Gospel and the good of humankind. God created government as a means for maintaining justice in this world, so it is important that we hold the government accountable for its God-given role.

That said, we do not betray our calling or the Church’s mission when we vote. By voting, we aren’t simply handing our dirty work over to the government (though we sometimes want to), but instead offering an important perspective to a system that could use direction.

But having said that, PROCEED WITH CAUTION. It is easy to get caught up in the division that defines the political arena. And Republicans are not the only ones who create this division with faith–Christian Democrats and Republicans alike have a tendency to be excessively judgmental, painting pictures in vast generalizations and vilifying the opposing side.

This is unacceptable behavior of brothers and sisters in Christ. Do not allow yourself to succumb to this temptation.

As Christians, there is one thing, and one thing alone, that we can be sure of, and that is the Gospel. You could be wrong about McCain, and you could be wrong about Obama, but you are not wrong about Christ. And having said that, there is only one man in this world who deserves the unflinching devotion and trust that we so willingly give to mere men.

So while you listen to the candidates preach about change, remember that there’s only One who can affect real change in this world. We can vote for laws and regulations every single year, but our country will not change its direction until Americans experience a change of the heart. Get behind the man who can do that.

So yes, vote. Definitely vote. But you won’t find the man who fits the above job description on the ticket this Tuesday.