the tindog coffeehouse

I’ve been angry and bitter all week. Disgusted, really. As the Supreme Court heard arguments in a couple of highly controversial cases involving same-sex marriage, people all over the country showed their support for gay marriage on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites. But it wasn’t just non-Christians turning their profile pics red, it was many Christians as well. And that’s what pissed me off.

I know that we Christians aren’t always going to agree on everything, but the fact that so many Christians not only support same-sex marriage but endorse it just doesn’t make sense to me. How on earth can you read the Bible, claim that you believe what it says, and yet not find anything reprehensible about homosexuality, particularly when the Bible is extraordinarily clear in its opposition to it?

So I’ve spent the week fuming at my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, angry that they’ve chosen political correctness over biblical truth, and despondant over what that means for the future of the Church. If we choose to no longer identify sin as sin, then the gospel means nothing.

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I was baptized the summer before my 9th-grade year. At a Wednesday night Bible study my best friend’s dad asked me if would accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I said yes. He led me in a prayer and then told me I needed to get baptized, so that’s what I did. That Sunday at the end of the worship service, I walked to the front and told a deacon what my friend’s dad said, and the next week I got dunked.

That was it, I thought. I’m a Christian now. But I was plagued by doubts for years. I was raised in church my whole life. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in Sunday school at Oakwood Baptist Church in Lubbock, Texas, learning about Noah’s Ark from a silver-haired old lady and singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children”. Yet I had no idea what it really meant to be a Christian. I thought it was kinda like being Jewish; if your parents were Christian and if you believed in God, then that meant you were a Christian, too. I never doubted God’s existence or that Jesus died for my sins and rose again on the third day, but no one ever explained that that’s only Step 1.

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Sunday is the premiere of The Bible on the History Channel, and it looks amazing. Described as a “10-hour docudrama”, the miniseries from Mark Burnett and Roma Downey recreates the biblical narrative from Genesis to Revelation in stunning high definition. Which sounds awesome. But here’s my question: What if it’s not historically accurate?

From the previews, it looks pretty accurate. I mean, Jesus doesn’t have blue eyes, so that’s a plus. But it’s the little things, like the Magi visiting Jesus in the manger when he was a baby (which didn’t actually happen until he was 2-3 years old) or Moses’ lack of a speech impediment. Do those things matter?

Or am I just being picky?

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I’ve been reading an excellent book about the 1860 presidential election, Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War by Douglas Egerton. In the book, Egerton explains the political forces that led to the birth of the Republican Party and the eventual secession of the South. Honestly, it’s one of the best explanations I’ve ever read for why the Civil War happened. Yes, it was about slavery. But it didn’t just happen overnight. It was a long process that had been building since the end of the American Revolution. What’s even more interesting, however, is how those same forces are at work in today’s political climate.

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“We worry because we distrust God.”

– Jeff Wakefield, Hillside Community Church

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I know I need to lose weight, eat better, and exercise more. Nothing new about that. And if I’m being honest, there’s probably a million other personal defects I need to change about myself. But the whole idea of making a special resolution just because it’s Janurary 1st is flawed from the outset. The idea that “I need to do this” or “I need to change that.” The emphasis is on us, what we can fix on our own if we just set the right goals and have enough willpower to achieve them. But if we really had that power, don’t you think we would’ve used it by now?

As I look ahead to 2013, I have to admit I’m more than a little scared. There are the challenges that will come with Christy heading into her second semester of nursing school. And then there are the financial challenges that will be especially difficult for the first few months of the year. And then an enormous set of challenges at work, with my workload increasing by around 50% this year and several business trips scattered in, straining things at home even more.

I’d like to say I’ve got it all figured out, that I can handle everything ahead of us all on my own. But I don’t and I can’t. I’m gonna need a lot of help from God.

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So the world is supposed to end on Friday, which kinda sucks. But I suppose it works out well for the folks who still haven’t done their Christmas shopping yet. I’d hate to know that I spent my last days on Earth browsing the clearance aisle at Walmart trying to find just the right sausage and cheese gift set for that special loved one.

Of course, the Mayans really didn’t say the world would end on December 21, 2012. It’s just the end of a Mayan “b’ak’tun” or long count cycle that began 7,885 years ago. But the way people have been freaking out lately, you’d think the world really was coming to an end.

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