Why do some people think of religion like a sentimental blanket? They pick it up from time to time, especially at important points in their life and they pretend like it means something in their everyday lives. But when that crucial point in their life is past they toss the blanket aside and let it slump in the corner. If you don’t really believe in it, why act like you do?

If you don’t believe the things Jesus Christ preached, if you don’t do the things he commanded, why would you invoke his name when you get married or when you bury a relative? Why would you completely ignore what Jesus said? Isn’t that just like slapping him in the face? You’re completely twisting religion to make yourself feel comfortable. It’s like a blanket with holes in it. What’s the point?

I guess I don’t understand why you’d want to be so obviously lukewarm about something like that. I mean, the least you could do is fake it and act like Jesus actually means something in your life. But if at the wedding you invoke Jesus’ name and read the passages in the Bible about love and marriage, but at the reception you get plastered — what are you doing? You’ve got a plank in your eye. You’re not completely opposed to Christ and you’re not completely on his side. You’re not cold and you’re not hot. You’re lukewarm. And you’re going to get spit across the room.

Nominal Christianity is no Christianity at all. In fact, it’s even worse than no faith at all. You’d be better off cursing God and making it clear where you stand. There is no middle ground. There is no riding the fence. You can’t acknowledge God with your lips and then walk out the door and defy him with your actions.

Sin is such an unpopular word. It makes everyone uncomfortable. Either it conjures up images of wickedness and depravity that make the righteous shutter, or it stirs up feelings of judgment and rejection that make the less than righteous uncomfortable.

But I’d like to propose that our definition with sin is off. On Sunday the pastor (and you’ll have to excuse my wording — I don’t think pastor is the appropriate term for an Episcopal priest, but I’m just not used to the word priest. It doesn’t work for me) made an off-hand comment about sin. He said the original meaning in the Greek is to miss the mark. The image in the Greek is like an archer missing the target. Sin is missing the mark.

This presents an entirely new image in my mind. Sin is not a list of things that are bad and things you shouldn’t do. Sin is not defined by what is wrong; in fact, it’s defined by what is right. Rather than asking if something is a sin, you should be asking if it’s right. Rather than asking if you shouldn’t do something, you should be asking what you should do.

Some may see this as a heretical definition that’s sliding towards some form of liberal theology. But this definition is actually harder to follow. It’s more strict. You can’t feel comfortable simply because you’re avoiding the evils on your sin list. You also have to be doing the right things. Simply avoiding evil isn’t enough. You have to pursue righteousness, or you’re just as lost. You have to be totally on-fire — half-cooked won’t do.

I think this view of sin is what the world longs for. People are tired of being told what not to do. Don’t have sex. Don’t do drugs. Don’t hate. Don’t steal. Yeah, well what am I supposed to do? Defining sin as a list of don’t’s does it an injustice. You’re still missing the mark if you neglect to do the right things — you’re still sinning.

Don’t ask is it sinful to watch this movie, ask is it the right way to spend your evening. Don’t ask if it’s a sin to beat up your sister; ask what you should do for your sister.

As the confession states, “Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.”

Sin is not simply an act committed; it is also an act left undone.

I think this is what often makes Christianity a failure. What good are we if we obey the laws and respect our elders, but we don’t feed the poor and lift up the down trodden? What good are we if we sing the praises of God, but we don’t read the Bible? What good are we if we never say a dirty word, but we never say a loving word either? What good are we if we never think a lustful thought, but we never show grace to the prostitute?

Either follow God, or don’t. Be hot or cold; not lukewarm. Finish the job, or don’t even start; don’t do a half-assed job.

[In writing that last line I had to stop and think. Is it sinful to use the word “ass”? Of course that’s not the question to ask. Is it godly and righteous to use the word “ass”? I thought about this for a moment before posting today’s thought. Does it meet the standard of pure and lovely things Paul commands us to think on in Philippians? I think it’s acceptable. I’m using language to drive a point home, and I think that is commendable. Is it profanity? What is profanity? A list of words that man decided are dirty and bad? Whenever swearing is mentioned in the Bible it’s in relation to giving an oath. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Damning something, taking the Lord’s name in vain, or trying to reinforce your answer by invoking God are all examples of a misuse of language: profanity. But I don’t see how a word like “ass” or even “fuck” fits that definition. Is the word harsh to our ears? Yes, simply because society has taught us these words are bad. Society has made them bad, they are not inherently bad. Perhaps I should avoid using them, or use them rarely simply because of this argument (abstain so as to keep a brother from stumbling). But the same would go for any expression, any decent writer will tell you that. And this is my thought process. Maybe you think I’m just rationalizing my sin, missing the mark because I chose to use a word that’s somehow less holy. I guess I don’t see that as missing the mark. I’m making my point, I’m hitting the mark.]

Today is Memorial Day. It’s supposed to be a day when we remember the men and women who have died protecting this country. Somehow their lives are memorialized by barbecues, furniture blow-out sales, and fireworks. And it’s not really a celebration unless we take the day off. Amid all the Memorial Day sales, it’s hard to remember that we’re supposed to be remembering the soldiers that fought and are still fighting to protect our freedom.

Patriotic holidays easily disgust me. Now I have no ill-will towards my government, I have no vendetta, I have no conspiracy theories. My grandpa fought in World War II, facing horrors I can’t imagine and that he rarely spoke about. I respect my grandpa’s bravery and courage, I appreciate his sacrifice and service. But at the same time I question the blindness that comes with patriotism. I do not say this glibly, as if it’s a simple issue I’m just throwing out there with my simple solution. It’s one of the paradoxes of life, and every fourth of July and every Memorial Day the question comes haunting back during some montage on TV or a prayer uttered in a church service. This is a question I continually ask myself, and I’m never easy with the answers.

As a Christian, I pledge allegiance to my God before my nation. I don’t think that’s too radical of a notion. Yet patriotism quickly blurs those lines and changes that hierarchy. The blindness that follows means that my nation is not challenged with my Christian principles. The result is injustice–injustice endorsed by Christians.

For some reason American Christians think they have it all. We’ve got the right religion, and we’ve got the right country. We’re on top of the world, and nothing can stop us. We never stop to think that God and his will is higher than anything we want to do. When our country storms into battle, patriotism stirs within us and we rally to the call of battle. We don’t question what our country is doing. Bombs fall and people die, but we go on waving our flag. We never stop to think that bombs are falling on people who need God, the very people that we pray for in church. To take it a step further, those bombs are falling on our brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow Christians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Kosovo, Korea, Germany, Japan. Those Christians are praying for protection, just like we are, and someone’s prayer goes unanswered. These are the difficult questions we never stop to think about when we pledge allegiance to our flag before our God.

What’s worse is when we force God to pledge allegiance to our flag as well. Time and again Christians claim that this country was founded on Christian principles. How many times have I heard a pastor say that the Constitution was written with a pen in one hand and a Bible in the other? I question the validity of those statements, but even if they’re true, what does it matter? The Constitution does not grant preferential treatment to the religion of its writers. Our country was founded on religious freedom, not on Christianity. Anyone claiming that the religion of our forefathers grants us the power to bring Christ into the public schools is sadly mistaken. It’s simply the worst argument you can make, and holds together simply because we continue to be a nation of predominantly Christians, admittedly in name only. The argument becomes ludicrous when you imagine a nation where Christians are not the majority, something that’s not inconceivable. Rather than arguing for history, you should be arguing for religious freedom. We have the right to do this because all religions have the right to do this.

Patriotism blinds us with foolish arguments, a warring heart, and it even allows us to look away. If God has favored this nation, then why was it founded on the slavery of an entire race? If God has favored this nation, then why was our land stolen from a native people? If God has favored this nation, then why do precision-guided bombs fall on the homes of innocents? Patriotism has blinded us to the injustice the world has suffered at the hands of our nation. Blacks endured slavery because Christians refused to speak for hundreds of years. The men writing the Constitution with a Bible in one hand also had slaves waiting for them outside. Native Americans had their land and homes stolen, and they were lied to and literally back-stabbed. We butchered those people, and we continue to butcher them. Indian Reservations are the among the most impoverished pockets of humanity in America. Where’s the Christian compassion and justice that founded this country? During Vietnam we bombed Laos for no reason. We denied the fact that we were doing, and we dropped cluster bombs on villages, designed simply to kill people. Children today are still killed when they discover unexploded bombs in the fields. The injustice of thirty years ago continues to haunt us. In the 1980s we sold chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein. He unleashed them on his own people in 1988, but it wasn’t until after the Gulf War that we cared. Then and now we continue to raise a stink — but our consciences weren’t effected when we sold the weapons, and we didn’t seem alarmed when he even used the weapons. It’s only now that we have something to gain that we care. What happened to justice?

Even now the call to battle is continuing, and Americans are waving their flags and supporting their troops in the face of terrorism. This is not a threat easily dismissed, and I’m not advocating easy answers. But in the face of terrorism we must not be blinded by patriotism. Terrorism is fueled by a hatred for America, a hatred that is fueled by our unjust acts in the world. So if we respond to terrorism with unjust force, we will only be awaking the giant.

So as I remember the sacrifices made for our country, and as I appreciate the fact that my neighborhood has never been a war zone, I also realize that I don’t have the ability to forget the rest of the world. For every sacrifice a U.S. solider has made, another soul somewhere in the world has equally sacrificed. My allegiance to my country commands that I have no compassion on the sacrifice of others, but my allegiance to my God demands it.

I respect and appreciate my freedom today. I pray for my cousins, my friends in the armed forces. But I will not close my eyes as I salute my flag. I imagine German Christians in the 1930s were patriotic, but that doesn’t excuse the Holocaust.

Christians like to act like we’re not hypocrites. But we’re very good at it. We’ve learned to be Christians on Sunday morning, and maybe Sunday evening and Wednesday night as well. But eventually we stop being Christians. Maybe it’s Monday morning when the alarm goes off. Maybe it’s Monday afternoon when we’re in line at lunch, or after lunch on the phone at work. Maybe it’s when we’re walking to our car after work, passing people on the sidewalk. Maybe it’s at home when we flick on the TV, or when we sit down to dinner with our family. Maybe it’s when we take that call from mom or dad, or when we go to bed at night.

The fact is that the life Christ has called us to is nearly impossible. Loving your neighbors is pretty easy. Loving Marilyn Manson is not. Loving the guy who just rear-ended you because he was talking on his cell phone is not. Loving a family member who has hurt you is not. Loving the abortionist, the homosexual, the rapist, the terrorist, the horny 16-year-old dating your daughter–loving these people is never easy. But these are the people that Jesus commanded us to love. These are the people that Christ himself hung out with. These people could be the Samaritan in the story of the Good Samaritan.

Unfortunately, we don’t invite these people to church. We don’t sit down with them over a cup of coffee and listen to their life story. We grit our teeth and put up with them. We hold our breath and wait for the moment to pass. We think that by not out-right hating them, we’ve done what Jesus commanded. But that’s even worse than just hating them. That’s paying them lip service, that’s denying the God you claim to believe in. Jesus said that anyone who loves his mother, father, sister, brothers, children more than him is not worthy. When Jesus walks by asking for a ‘buck for luck,’ are you worthy to be in his presence?

Christianity is not easy. That’s why we have God’s grace. It transformed a Marilyn Manson into a Billy Graham. That sounds so offensive to our modern, padded church pew ears. But that was the life of Paul. Unbelievable.

Why is the modern church such a miserable failure? Jesus would shake the dust from his feet, call us whitewashed sepulchers, and weep. But for some reason we don’t realize it. We think we’re Jesus’ happy followers, when really we’re nothing but Pharisees.

I’ve known much of this, but for some reason it’s never sunk in. Recently I’ve been reading a few books that have smacked me upside the head with the revolutionary idea of what Christianity is really about (The Jesus I Never Knew, When Bad Christians Happen to Good People, and What’s So Amazing About Grace?). I’ve known that Christians are surprisingly like Pharisees, but it’s never sunk in. I’ve never realize how much of a Pharisee I am.

Christ didn’t come to condemn the world, he came to save it. Yet Christians spend their time condemning the world, picketing gays and bombing abortion clinics. Jesus said let he who is without sin cast the first stone, but we’re already laying blame, effectively hurling rocks on our own heads. Jesus said to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Anything less is sin. The bar’s pretty high and obvious that we’re all sunk. That’s the point. Yet we decide that some sins are okay, and some are definitely not. Having a beer is not good, but being overweight is okay. Premarital sex is a big no-no, but divorce is okay. Listening to secular music is not good enough, but being greedy is just fine.

The church has fallen so short of the glory of God. And that’s okay. We’re human. We’re supposed to fall short. Unfortunately we try to reach the glory of God on our own, and in turn rely on amazing pride instead of amazing grace. It should break our hearts that when someone turns away from God, they’re so often turning away from a Christian who is more Pharisee-like than Christ-like. If only that person who turned away knew that Jesus flipped over tables because of the very same thing that turned them off.

Somewhere along the way I think I completely missed the concept of grace. I don’t know if the church I was raised it completely forgot about it, or if it just never sunk in. We’d always sing “Amazing Grace / How sweet the sound / That saved a wretch like me,” but I don’t think I ever understood what that meant.

Grace is unconditional. Grace is total and complete. Grace has amnesia. Grace means there’s nothing you can do to be loved less, and nothing you can do to be loved more. Grace is actually unfair. Grace means forgiving when it’s easy, and when it’s hard. Grace means loving when it’s easy and when it’s hard. Grace is what makes Christianity so unique, and that’s why I’m so dumbfounded that I never understood this before.

Since grace is the basis of Christianity, it should also be the base of my life. It should be the base of my friendships. It should be the base of my marriage. It should be the base of my family. That is so hard to do. That’s why marriages fail, because people don’t have any grace. Grace means letting go and forgiving. That means I can’t keep score. I can’t count the number of back rubs I’ve given versus the number I’ve gotten, or count the number of hours I spend doing chores verses the number of hours my wife spends doing chores. That’s not love, and that’s not grace. That may be just and fair, but it’s not loving and gracious.

Grace means cleaning up the kitchen regardless of who cooked, regardless of who did it last time, regardless of how many plates and dishes and pots and crusty silverware there are. Grace means doing the laundry because it needs to be done, not to earn brownie points. Maybe I’m stretching my definitions here, but I’m beginning to understand what it means to love my wife like Christ loves the church. Like the prodigal son, like the woman who lost her coin. That kind of love is so contrary to what we want to do. We want to point fingers and keep score and declare who hurt who and when and use that as some sort of mirage to avoid dealing with the hurt and pain. Forgiveness is really crazy if you think about it. It seems to make sense when we’re talking about sibling rivalry. But what about Hitler? Would you forgive Hitler? Jesus Christ would. That’s so insane to us, but that’s the way God works.

And he commands the same of us. If God can forgive Hitler, if God can forgive me, then shouldn’t I be able to forgive anything as well? Even something as stupid as leaving dishes on the coffee table? When everyone else is busy looking out for number one, God tells us to look out for everyone but number one. Imagine a world if Christians actually did that.

“It’s Saturday on planet earth.” (The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey)

It’s not very often that the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached on TV. Usually you need cable so you can get some off-beat religious channel, or you have to stay up past midnight and look for the preacher sandwiched between back to back episodes of Cops and an infomercial selling a revolutionary food processor. That’s salvation for all the world, right after the law enforcement officers of Clairmont, Idaho engage in a high speed chase with a drunken mechanic. And stay tuned for the revolutionary food processor that turned one family’s dreary meals into freeze-dried fun. You’ll hear shouts of, “You have to right to remain silent,” “Go into all the world and preach the gospel,” and “The Foodco 8000 changed my life forever,” all in the same two-hour span.

Jesus doesn’t exactly fair well on television.

And then there’s Billy Graham. Right now all across the country there are one-hour blocks of time on local stations that are airing the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it’s during prime time, no less. You don’t need cable, you don’t need a satellite dish, and you don’t need the sleeping patterns of a college student. Local stations are dumping an hour of their usual network programming to show a plain and simple presentation of the gospel. That’s the Billy Graham TV Special–check your local listings, it’s on now. Granted they can’t get network TV time and have the special air at the same time on the same day across the country, like every TV show, but they work with what they have.

It’s a cultural oddity. And the strange thing is that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association usually does this four times a year. Not only that, but they usually air two specials at a time. That’s eight one-hour TV specials on major stations during prime time, all presenting the gospel. Bizarre. And Christians somehow complain that we don’t have a voice in the public square.

What I find most peculiar is how the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association decides to present the gospel on prime time TV all across the country. They usually edit together clips from recent evangelistic events into a one-hour special, complete with a few commercial-type plugs for various ministries (tonight’s was for the Billy Graham Training Center, the Cove). The basic formula for a TV Special is a few songs from two different artists that performed at one of these evangelistic events, and then one of Billy Graham’s sermons from a recent evangelistic event. Tonight’s show happened to have a few songs from Michael W. Smith and Third Day, a hymn from Cliff Barrows, and a Billy Graham sermon, all from last June’s Louisville Crusade.

Not a bad formula. But what I can’t help wondering is if it’s the best formula. Now granted I work for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association-I’m not trying to be negative here, I’m trying to be constructive. Is someone preaching for 20 minutes straight on prime time TV the best way to present the gospel? When you have over 70 channels of usually top-dollar entertainment, why would you settle for a man in front of a crowd talking for 20 minutes? Granted it’s fairly cheap and easy to do, and it certainly is effective. But is it the best method?

My wife and I kept switching back and forth from Billy Graham to “Seventh Heaven.” But I shouldn’t say my wife and I. I should say I kept switching back and forth, and my wife threatened to kill me. She wanted to watch “Seventh Heaven,” which is perfectly understandable because that’s what we do every Monday at 7:00 p.m. The only reason I wanted to watch Billy Graham is because I work for him and I was curious to see how the show came out. To put it bluntly, the only thing drawing me to the Billy Graham TV Special is that Billy Graham is a fairly captivating speaker. Unfortunately, this has more to do with the fact that he’s Billy Graham than anything he says or the way he says it.

As much as I hate to stereotype people or paint with broad strokes, it’s a fairly well-accepted fact that TV viewers watch things that are fast paced and come in small doses. Every show on TV is broken up every so many minutes with a few minutes of commercials. Even the most intense dramas don’t keep you on the edge of your seat for too long-they break to commercial. The only excpetion is movies, but then the editing is captivating enough to keep you in your seat. Have you ever seen a movie where someone stood up a podium and spoke for more than a few minutes? That’s because they know they can only keep you watching someone talk for so long. That’s why speeches on TV and in the movies are so much ridiculously shorter than they are in real life. Because on TV we have better things to do than watch some guy talk for 20 minutes.

So in short, I find it amazing that the Billy Graham TV Special culminates in 20 minutes of Billy Graham preaching. Granted it’s captivating stuff. I can guarantee you the phone centers light up with calls, people dialing that toll-free number to get some help. And it’s amazing to watch the spectacle: “Just As I Am” playing the in the background, the grandfather-esque Billy Graham imploring you to search your heart, the streams of people coming down from the nose-bleed seats. It’s emotional stuff. But is it really effective? I think if it was, David Letterman’s monologue would last a lot more than three minutes. I think the nightly news would spend a lot longer on each story, and they wouldn’t worry so much about cutting to a file clip so you don’t have to watch the news anchor fumble with their notes. I think rather than showing scene after scene of helping people, political candidates would just buy air time and talk.

But that’s not the way a television-oriented society works. We need action, drama, swelling music, shorter segments, bathroom breaks, and something to keep from reaching for the dreaded remote.

I have to give the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association credit. They’re doing what they can with what they have. They’re probably playing to a niche market. Whoever tunes in to watch Billy Graham is probably curious enough to put up with the long segments, the so-so camera work, and the boring editing, so they can get the pay-off. That’s probably what the BGEA is banking on, and that’s worthwhile. The other fact is that it’s probably a whole lot cheaper to take footage from a Crusade, splice it into an hour, and slap it on TV. Anything else would require rivaling the major networks with a television show of the utmost quality, and that doesn’t come cheap. The BGEA probably doesn’t have the financial resources to pull something like that off, so they do the best they can.

To their credit, the BGEA has recently experimented with doing something besides the 20-minute sermons. Last June they aired the recent World Wide Pictures movie, Road to Redemption. Regardless of what I think about the movie (it’s mediocre) it nails the TV audience a whole lot better than 20-minutes of an old white guy preaching. The BGEA is following this strategy again this June when they’ll be airing their newest movie, The Climb. Again, I’m not saying it’s the best movie out there, but it still beats the old white guy.

And I don’t mean that as a slam on Billy Graham. As old white guys go, he’s pretty cool. I just mean that it’s a much better fit for the audience. The BGEA is doing the best they can, and I think we have to hand it to them (since I work for them this sounds a bit self-promoting, but I have nothing to do with the TV Specials, so it’s okay). I only wish Christians across the country would whine less and support efforts like this even more. Then perhaps the BGEA could pull the 20-minute old white guy routine, and replace it with something that better hits the audience.

For the first time in my life I’ve decided to give something up for Lent. Actually I didn’t decide to give something up, my wife did. I’m just along for the ride and it seemed easier and safer to give it up as well. We decided to give up going out to eat for forty days. This is a spiritual sacrifice, as well as a budgetary god-send.

For the first time in my life I also have a rough idea of what Lent actually means. Growing up in a Baptist church, Lent is one of those strange religious practices that the kids who go to church but really don’t believe it do. These are the kids who for forty days will suddenly not do something, and when you ask about it, they shrug their shoulders and say they gave it up for Lent. It always struck me as a sudden bit of religious conviction from an otherwise atheistic person. Being a good Baptist, I always figured that Jesus had died for us and paid for everything, so there was no reason to abstain from anything, no matter what kind of spiritual discipline you were talking. Bring on the potluck.

But Lent isn’t some religious show that people put on. It’s a chance to be reminded that we are mortal. That’s what Ash Wednesday is all about. The ashes are a reminder that we come from dust, and to dust we shall return. All this material stuff around us isn’t important. Lent is a symbolic sacrifice to prepare us for Christ’s coming. Certainly people can just go through the motions with Lent, but the same is true of any other symbolic spiritual tradition, like Baptism or Communion.

It always amazes me how the different denominations refuse to understand each other, and instead of trying, just shake their heads, point fingers and accuse one another of straying from the narrow road. Maybe we should look around and notice that we’ve all lost the plot.