My Kinda Football Game

On February 1, the Arizona Cardinals will take on the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLIII. Like many Americans, I have a fondness for Super Bowl Sunday. Although I will probably be more interested in the commercials than the score of the game, I always find the combination of friends, food and football comforting.

Recently I read the story of another football game, however, that was downright inspiring. Check it out here at Rick Reilly’s “Life of Reilly” column for ESPN Magazine.

Love, Forgiveness, and Holiness: A Working Theory

I am often field-testing what I call “Working Theories” about life and God. If I come across an idea or concept that I think might be really profound or helpful—in my own life and as I minister to others—I make note of it. Then I begin putting it through a kind of “scientific method” process to see if it really rings true or not.

“Does Scripture support this idea?”
“Does it really ‘work’ in real life?”
“If this idea metastasized in my Spirit, so to speak, would it make me more like Christ?”
“If I shared this idea with others, would it help turn them to Christ and love Him more?”

I usually have 2 or 3 nestled in the back of my mind. Many are easily shot down and moved off the radar screen quickly. But some sit there for a while, stewing and brewing, until they sort of take on a life of their own.

Recently my current Working Theories have started stacking up. They have become somewhat interrelated, and may actually be interdependent. Like a house of cards, if one piece falls, they all might fall. So I’d really love to get your input on them, particularly on the most recent one. I’d welcome any clarity or correction! Here they are:

Working Theory on Love 1:
The vast majority of problems in the world could be solved if each person truly understood and continually experienced how much God loves them. Specifically, people (myself included) would stop being jerks if they knew how much they were loved.

Working Theory on Love 2:
You can tell how much somebody cognitively and experientially understands how much God loves them by how they love others.

Working Theory on Forgiveness:
The key to grasping how much God loves you is: realizing how much He has forgiven you.

Working Theory on Holiness 1:
The key to grasping how much God has forgiven you is: realizing how sinful you are.

Working Theory on Holiness 2:
The key to grasping how sinful you are is: realizing how supremely holy God is.

So here is my latest, least-tested theory, that I would love your feedback on:

In the last half-century or so, the church in America has seen a seismic shift in how we view God and how we represent him to the world. In response to (the perception of, at least) a previous over-emphasis on God’s wrath (which comes about because of the grave discrepancy between God’s holiness and humanity’s sinfulness), American Christians today often want to downplay the whole holiness/sin thing in favor of highlighting God’ love.

But what if doing so is actually harmful to people? I mean, beyond the obvious issue of potential doctrinal heresy in this approach. What if, even on an experiential level, by not magnifying the holiness, the utter separateness, the graphic heaviness of God in our message we were actually keeping people from feeling, from experiencing, God’s love in a transformative way?

Let me know what you think...

MIXTAPE: "S" My Life

Theme: A celebration of the first letter of my first name

Rules:

• The title of each song must begin with the letter “S”
• The title of each song may contain only one word.
• The length of the mixtape must not exceed 90 minutes
• Only one song per artist
• I must like the song
• Each mixtape must, if at all possible, conclude with a great quote

“S” My Life

1. Satisfaction – The Rolling Stones
2. Synchronicity I – The Police
3. Superstition – Stevie Wonder
4. Sledgehammer – Peter Gabriel
5. Satellite – Dave Matthews Band
6. Situation – Yaz
7. Superstar – Carpenters
8. Shelter – Lone Justice
9. Shackles – Mary Mary
10. Shine – Newsboys
11. SOS – Rihanna
12. Shaft – Isaac Hayes
13. Sara – Fleetwood Mac
14. Stay – Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories
15. Shout – The Isley Brothers
16. Shrubbery As Sacrifice – from Monty Python & The Holy Grail

Selected Commentary:
Satisfaction – When I was a senior in high school, my very generous parents gave me a brand new, slate blue, Honda Prelude si. I LOVED that car, and I cried when I drove through the rain to sell it after accumulating a decade of memories in it. This song was the last one I ever played in it…which helped me smile through the tears.
Synchronicity I – During my college years, my friend Renee and I would road trip home together in the above-mentioned Prelude, with the sunroof open and the tunes blasting. Whenever we played this song (which was often) we would sing/shout alternating lines of the chorus to each other.
Superstition – Stevie’s Wonder.
Situation – Alison Moyet = Best Female Vocalist of the New Wave era. (In case you were wondering, Best Male Vocalist of the New Wave era = Sting.)
Superstar – I don’t care what you say…Carpenters rock!
Shelter – As a film student at TCU, I dreamed of making a promotional video for Habitat for Humanity featuring this song. *sigh*
Shackles and Shine – I know I previously said I rarely include CCM songs in my mixtapes, and really, I don’t! But these two are classics and, I believe (no pun intended), stack up against mainstream pop songs. So for those of you who aren’t really into it, that’s cool…feel free to skip on down to #11. The rest of us are going to get our hands up and praise Jesus for a bit.
Shaft – My dad loved this soundtrack. I used to sit as close as possible to our old stereo console and play this song (song one on side one) over and over. Many times I would only make it through the almost-three-minute intro before I picked up the needle (ever so gently so I wouldn’t scratch the record) to start the magic all over again. I was three years old.

One final note: In real life, I have also included Phil Collins’ song Sussudio on this mixtape. However, since I have so recently subjected you to it, and I know there’s only so much Phil most of you can take, I have omitted it from the list above.

Did I miss any great “S” titles? Wanna share your favorite songs that begin with the first letter of your name?

To check out my other mixtapes, click here.

Queso Quote: What We Worship

"The character of the worshipper will always be molded by the character of what he worships.”

—Hannah Whitall Smith

Lift Every Voice And Sing

Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

My friend Melanie posted these lyrics, written in 1900, on her Facebook page today and wrote: “The words of J. W. Johnson ring truer than ever.”

Those of us outside the African-American community may not know of or appreciate the cultural significance of this song, which was adopted as the “Negro National Anthem” by the NAACP in 1919. (Late last century, “Lift Every Voice And Sing” would be entered into the Congressional Record as the official African American National Hymn.)

We may have also missed Rev. Joseph Lowery paraphrasing the third stanza in the Inaugural Benediction today. But certainly this was not lost on our African-American brothers and sisters.

On this amazing day in the history of our nation, I would like to honor not just President Obama, but all African-Americans, past and present, who by their toil, patience, suffering, and tears have made today possible.

Let freedom ring!

Missionary Couple Forgives Their Attackers

John and Eloise Bergen, Canadian missionaries to Kenya, began testifying in court yesterday at the trial of the nine men who brutally attacked them last July. The Bergens had been living in Kenya for four months, helping to care for widows, orphans, and refugees. John, age 70, was bludgeoned by clubs and machetes until his skull, jaw, arms, and legs were broken, and then left for dead in the bushes. Eloise, age 66, was gang-raped, then punched, choked with a cord, and sliced by machetes.

The couple has been waiting for months to physically heal so they can share one very specific message with their attackers:

“We forgive you.”

You can read their extremely powerful story here. I will warn you however: the specific and graphic description of the attack might be hard to take in.

I am not quite sure what to do with the Bergens. For someone like me who lives in the suburbs and has a hard time watching fictional fistfights on TV, what they have been through is impossible for me to categorize.

I do know this: I want my faith to look more like theirs. Theirs is the kind of walk with God that has been so consistent for so many years, there is simply not very much left of themselves; they are completely full of Jesus. Because only Jesus can love and forgive like that.

May God be glorified through the criminal trial. May Kenyans turn to Jesus as they experience His love through the Bergens. And may the Bergens find healing, not only for their bodies but for their souls, as they continue to walk with Him.

Jack Facts

In honor of tonight's season premiere of "24", here's a collection of things you need to know about Jack Bauer:**

• If you wake up in the morning, it’s because Jack Bauer spared your life.
• If Jack Bauer was in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Nina Meyers, and he had a gun with 2 bullets, he’d shoot Nina twice.
• Jack Bauer got Helen Keller to talk.
• Jack Bauer was never addicted to heroin. Heroin was addicted to Jack Bauer.
• 1.6 billion Chinese are angry with Jack Bauer. Sounds like a fair fight.
• If Jack says “I just want to talk to him/her” and that him/her is you, well amigo, you are in a heap of trouble.
• Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.
• Jack Bauer does not sleep. The only rest he needs is what he gets when he’s knocked out or temporarily killed.
• As a child, Jack Bauer’s first words were “There’s no time!”
• While being put under in the hospital, Jack Bauer can count backwards from 100 every time.
• Jack Bauer literally died for his country, and lived to tell about it.
• Jack Bauer’s family threw him a surprise birthday party when he was a child. Once.
• Killing Jack Bauer doesn’t make him dead. It just makes him angry.
• When life gave Jack Bauer lemons, he used them to kill terrorists. Jack Bauer hates lemonade.
• Guns don’t kill people. Jack Bauer kills people.
• Jack Bauer can stare directly at the sun.
• Superman wears Jack Bauer pajamas.
• When Jack Bauer was a child, he made his mother finish his vegetables.
• You can lead a horse to water. Jack Bauer can make him drink.
• Jack Bauer can get McDonald’s breakfast after 10:30.
• When the bogey man goes to sleep, he checks his closet for Jack Bauer.
• People with amnesia still remember Jack Bauer.
• Let’s get one thing straight: the only reason you are conscious right now is because Jack Bauer does not feel like carrying you.

**Full disclosure: I didn't write these myself...I've just collected them from various sources over the years.

Whopper Sacrifice

Thanks to Matt Mikalatos at Burning Hearts Revolution for alerting me to the WHOPPER SACRIFICE Facebook Application. For every 10 Facebook friends you “unfriend” Burger King will give you a free Whopper. Genius.

Atheists Launch Ad Campaign on Britian's Buses

Yesterday marked the launch of Britain’s first atheist ad campaign on buses. The idea was conceived by a woman named Ariane Sherine. Her plan was to place ads promoting atheism on 30 London buses. But then Richard Dawkins and the British Humanist Association got behind the campaign. The groundswell of support grew so strong that eventually enough money was donated to the cause to place ads on 800 buses!

You can read all about it in a Times Online article entitled "Richard Dawkins launches 'There is no God' adverts on buses across Britain".

I think it’s very exciting to see this kind of continued interest generated in “the God issue”. Contrary to what Dawkins has been quoted as saying, thinking is not anathema to religion. Jesus urged his followers to love God with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength. I hope the bus campaign awakens secular Brits, who might not normally ponder the metaphysical, out of their slumber in order to ask and seek the answers to the big questions of life.

An Atheist Believes Africa Needs God

I was checking out my friend Skip’s new blog (which is great, btw) tonight when I found an article he references entitled “As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God”. It’s written by veteran Times columnist Matthew Parris.

In an age where theists and atheists are often found "yelling" at each other in print, I appreciated Mr. Parris’ humility and graciousness toward Christians in general, and Christian missionaries in specific.

I’d love to hear what any of you think about the article—but I'd especially like to hear the opinions of my atheist friends and/or friends who have lived/worked in Africa.

My Kids' Quotes: Greatest Hits, Vol. 1

**Warning: graphic anatomical language below**

J1: “Mom, sometimes when you sing I kinda get an ear infection.”
……………………………………………………………

J2: “Mommy! Come look at my tinkle! It looks like broth!”
……………………………………………………………

E: “Why do people dress up in scary costumes for Halloween, like witches and mean dogs?”
J1: “You know, E…boy witches are called blizzards.”
…………………………………………………………...

J1: “J2, toast is not a toy. It’s a food. It’s a liquid.”
J2: “What’s a liquid?”
J1: “It’s something that we eat or drink.”
……………………………………………………………

J2: “J1, we need to eat food with lots of nutrients in them. That way we’ll grow up to be strong and our penises will be very big.”
……………………………………………………………

I knew it was too quiet in the house.
Me: “E, how many candy pumpkins did you eat?”
E: “1,2,3,4,5,6,7…I can’t count higher.”
(pause)
E: “Mom, my tummy hurts.”
……………………………………………………………

J1: “DADDY! Can you imagine if fire came out of my milk?”
(pause)
J1: “DADDY! Can you imagine if fire came out of your bottom?”
……………………………………………………………

J2: [While holding his bottom with one hand] “Mommy, is this where my heart is?”
………………………………………………………......

J1: “Mom, I’d like to reward the kids in my [first grade] class with my own money. You know, kids who do quality work and stay on task.”
……………………………………………………………

One night I fixed homemade chicken enchiladas for dinner.
J2: “Daddy! My testicles fainted because this stuff is so good!”
……………………………………………………………

Me: “J1, don’t eat too much snack—save room for our dinner treat at McDonald's tonight.
J1: "Don't worry Mom, my stomach specializes in french fries."
……………………………………………………………

J2: “Mommy, how come your necklace looks like an alien golf club?”
…………………………………………………………...

On the first day of the school year last fall, E was really missing her two big brothers. She came in from the family room looking like this...

She is wearing J1’s swim shoes, and carrying her MagnaDoodle. She said, “Mommy, I am going to school, too!” Then she went and got one Joe’s Hot Wheels and said, “The teachers thought I was cool, so they gave me this prize.”

Reason #857 Why God's Love Is Far Superior To Mine

“God’s love is neither conditional, nor changeable. God’s love is constant and faithful. It creates loveliness rather than looks for it.”

—Randy Pope, senior pastor, Perimeter Presbyterian Church

I Am Second

On this second day of 2009, I’d like to recommend the website I Am Second. I mentioned it on Facebook when it launched about a month ago, so my apologies to those of you who are tired of me talking about it! But I just know some of you may love it as much as I do.

The format is simple: It’s a collection of video testimonials of people whose lives have been forever changed by their personal encounters with Jesus of Nazareth. Some of the people are famous, like Brian “Head” Welsh (former guitarist for Korn), and some are as ordinary as your next door neighbor. Maybe I’m biased because I work in full-time Christian ministry, but my favorite story is from a man named Nate Larkin.

Each one has been marked for eternity by the living God, and they will never be the same.

Just like me.

My name is Stephanie, and I Am Second.

MIXTAPE: There Must Be Some Misunderstanding

Happy New Year! Let's start the year off right with a new mixtape...

Theme: Songs about miscommunication in romantic relationships

Rules:

• The story must be told in first person.
• The story must be told from the point of view of the person on the receiving end of the pain.
• The mixed signals in the relationship might stem from a variety of sources: from simple miscommunication or differing romantic worldviews, to outright deception.
• This rule is a bit subjective; but in the arc of the romance, these songs are at the beginning of the end. To borrow from the Kubler-Ross model, the person singing the song is in the first stages of grief: shock or denial. They may have jumped ahead to the bargaining phase, but the key is they have not moved into anger or depression. (We could, and might, create entire separate mixtapes for both of those phases.) At the very least the song itself mustn’t sound angry or sad.
• The length of the mixtape must not exceed 90 minutes.
• Only one song per artist.
• I must like the song.
• Each mixtape must, if at all possible, conclude with a great quote.

There Must Be Some Misunderstanding

1. Misunderstanding – Genesis
2. Poison Arrow – ABC
3. I Heard It Through The Grapevine – Marvin Gaye
4. Cruel To Be Kind – Nick Lowe
5. I Know There’s Something Going On – Frida
6. It’s Different For Girls – Joe Jackson
7. You Dropped A Bomb On Me – The Gap Band
8. Hello, Goodbye – The Beatles
9. I Missed Again – Phil Collins
10. No More Words – Berlin
11. I Want Your Love – Chris Isaak
12. Train In Vain – The Clash
13. Cuts Like a Knife – Bryan Adams
14. Fool In The Rain – Led Zeppelin
15. Smoke And Ashes – Tracy Chapman
16. “I gave her my heart, and she gave me a pen." – from Say Anything
    

Selected commentary:
Misunderstanding – This song—one of the first Genesis songs written by Phil Collins—was the inspiration for this mixtape. Collins is the master jilted lover. Therefore he is allowed two slots on this mix. (Exceptions can be made for the “one song per artist” rule as long as one recording is by a group and the other is as a solo artist.) Actually, Collins produced and played drums on Track 5, so really this mix is all about him.
I Know There’s Something Going On – Another fun fact about this track: Frida = ¼ of ABBA
It’s Different For Girls – I have always liked this typical-gender-role-switching tale that borders on bitter. Maybe there needs to be an additional Kubler-Ross grief phase: sarcasm.
You Dropped A Bomb On Me – Now there are several stellar examples of awesomely bad, early-MTV videos featured on this list, but this one takes the cake. Beyonce says the inspiration for her “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)” video was “Walk It Out, Fosse”, but I believe it actually was the Gap Band boys. You be the judge.
I Want Your Love – I could only find a live clip of this song. But that gives me the chance to tell you that I got to catch Isaak in concert a couple of years ago at The Backyard in the POURING RAIN with one of my best friends, Renee. It was an amazing show! Any fellow fans should jump at a chance to see him if he comes your way.
Train in Vain – This song was originally released as an (unintentional) hidden track at the end of The Clash’s London Calling album. Mick Jones on where the title (which is not mentioned in the lyrics) comes from: "The track was like a train rhythm, and there was…that feeling of being lost."
Say Anything – Originally I was just looking for a clip of the “she gave me a pen” quote—one of my favorites of all time. But then I found this original trailer for the movie, which includes so many classic, awkward interpersonal moments—and plenty of misunderstanding.

What songs did I miss? Anyone want to share painfully awkward personal experiences with misunderstanding?

To check out my other mixtapes, click here.