TOD 12.17.07

I recently discovered that my 3½ year old is pretty much capable of memorizing anything he hears a few times. He’s memorized the Lord’s Prayer, and I figured I would teach him the Ten Commandments next. Since the Biblical wording doesn’t make any sense to him, or to many adults I suppose, I reformulated them to his level. Here they are as I teach them to Spencer:

1. Always put God first.
2. Only worship God.
3. Honor God’s name.
4. Honor God’s day of rest.
5. Obey your father and mother.
6. Protect people.
7. Protect marriage.
8. Protect property.
9. Tell the truth.
10. Be content with what you have.

Since, in my experience, only a tiny minority of adults know all Ten Commandments and in order (though many claim to honor them as vital), perhaps this list will help you teach them to your own children…as well as to yourself.

TOD 12.14.07

I see God everywhere. Not in the sense that I see godliness everywhere, but in the sense that everywhere I look I see amazing things that proclaim God to me. Even just praying on my balcony, I see trees and grass and clouds and hummingbirds, and I always think the same thing. God is a great engineer. At best we are second rate critics who can understand how these things work, but no one ever yet built himself a tree or a bird from scratch.

But for whatever reason I hadn’t connected this observation with some concerns I had about the future of my life. See, I know what God has told me, but I hadn’t seen some of it come to pass, and I was worried about it. So He challenged me with a question. “Which matters more to Me, you or a bird? And if I would put so much planning into making birds, why do you think I’d suddenly become a bad designer when it comes to your life?”

That’s one of the things I love about God. He sort of has a way of reminding me that I’m being stupid in the most loving way imaginable. If I’m His and He Is Who He Is, what am I worried about?

TOD 12.13.07

We Americans have a love affair with the cowboy hero who takes matters into his own hands and depends upon no one to solve the problem on his terms. He tries to give the villain a chance to save himself, but in the end he invariably winds up destroying him with some form of violence. And we all cheer. We want to see evil punished…badly. We crave justice, and we honor goodness. In this we clearly stand with righteousness over evil. But there’s a problem.

The problem is that most of us have only come half way. Yes, it is a major success to move from endorsing evil to opposing evil (although it’s rarely the sin inside of us that elicits our most jubilant wrath), but there is still another Testament to be known. And the single greatest hindrance to living Christ’s way of grace and redemption is the mighty satisfaction to be had in vanquishing evil. So the next time you’re enjoying a good action movie, ask yourself a simple question: does this look more like God’s work at Sodom and Gomorrah or His work at the Cross?

Love him though I might, Batman is no disciple of Christ. His God is not Triune.

TOD 12.12.07

We recently discussed the problem of how to respond when you receive a bad Christmas gift. Of course, most people are inclined to say that the polite thing to do is to lie by smiling and saying, “Thank you.” But why? Obviously, one part is that we don’t want to hurt the feelings of the one who has given the bad gift.

Not so obviously, the other part is that we don’t want to look bad ourselves for complaining or being ungrateful. In other words, we worry that too much honesty will show us to be something less grand than we lead people to believe or will make others feel less grand about themselves than they’d like. So we cater heavily to pride and embrace the moral burden of dishonesty.

But what if the bad gift were from an enemy, someone whose feelings we didn’t mind hurting and whose opinions of us didn’t matter? Then we might tell the truth. Yet isn’t there something amiss when we feel free to tell the truth to our enemies, but must lie to those we love? Perhaps our notions about truth and love aren’t quite what they should be.

TOD 12.11.07

I chose to have an uncomfortable conversation on Sunday when I went to drop our toddler off at the nursery. When I arrived, there was only one teenager whom I barely know watching just one other child besides my own. I stayed for a few minutes and then decided to take him back to the service with me, which turned out fine. But because I didn’t want to give the girl the wrong impression, I felt I should explain why I wasn’t leaving him.

I told her that it was nothing particularly against her, but that we prefer to leave our children only with other parents we know well. Since I didn’t even know her name, surely I didn’t know her well enough to leave my son in her care. She took no offense and understood my decision. I was practicing a principle I advocate: tell people the truth, especially when you’d rather not. This truth was fairly easy to say, but it surely would have been easier to say nothing. Easier, but not more respectful.

The truth may make me look bad or it may make someone else feel bad, but there must be very significant reasons for me to not pay others the debt I owe them of honesty…particularly other Christians.