You’ve Been Left Behind

You know, after I wrote this flowery message last week defending Christian business owners, some knucklehead had to prove me wrong. From various pages on their web site:

You’ve Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends For Christ. Imagine being in the presence of the Lord and hearing all of heaven rejoice over the salvation of your loved ones. It is our prayer that this site makes it happen.

We all have family and friends who have failed to receive the Good News of the Gospel. The unsaved will be ‘left behind’ on earth to go through the “tribulation period” after the “Rapture”. You remember how, for a short time, after (9/11/01) people were open to spiritual things and answers. (We are still singing “God Bless America” at baseball’s seventh inning stretch.) Imagine how taken back they will be by the millions of missing Christians and devastation at the rapture. They will know it was true and that they have blown it. There will be a small window of time where they might be reached for the Kingdom of God.

We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time. You can also send information based on scripture as to what will happen next. Each fulfilled prophecy will cause your letter and plea to be remembered and a decision to be made. “WHY” is one last chance to bring them to Christ and snatch them from the flames!

We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the “Rapture” of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

Let Jesus Pay It

If you’re not familiar with The Wittenburg Door, it is a Christian comedy and satire magazine. While it sometimes bends a little too liberal with its theology for my tastes, I enjoy some of the non-comic articles and interviews, as well as their position as a watchdog of the televangelist movement. The name of the magazine is a misspelling of the Wittenberg Door that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses upon, which sparked the Protestant Reformation.

To me, this story exemplifies one of the challenges to witnessing to non-Christians. I’ve posted a few articles now on how Christians witness through their business, as well as an example of a Christian who witnessed in a graceless manner and got in trouble for it.

I received a piece of hate mail on that article that I have long since deleted, but the essence of the message was that Christians in business are abusing religion to make a profit. I’m not sure I agree with that opinion, although I do wonder sometimes if some Christians who overtly advertise themselves with crosses and Ichthys symbols are doing so.

Anyway, it’s no wonder that a false belief about Christians such as the one in this story is pervasive in the culture. It is difficult to share the truth with love to people that only know about Bible-beaters and judgmental Christians. Here is an example of a Christian who was able to share the truth with someone, yet was knowledgeable enough with the Scriptures not to roll over and take abuse from this customer.

What Did He Say?

I don’t think there is much for me to add to this. May we all cultivate such a longing to spend time in God’s Word.

Because our son Steve spent most of his teen years connected to a cell phone, it was a bit of a shock for us when we couldn’t talk with him for long periods of time after he joined the US Navy. First at boot camp and later while he trained as a hospital corpsman, we endured long periods of time without any communication. So it was a treat whenever we finally did hear from him.

After one of us would get his call, the first question from the other was always, “What did he say?” We hung on every word to hear how he was doing, what he was thinking, and what the Navy was planning for him.

It’s natural to respond like this to the words of those who are important to us. We eagerly anticipate hearing from them. Are we like that with the Word of God? Are we eager to communicate with Him—to look carefully into His Book to ask, “What did He say?” Unlike the infrequent calls from a son in the military, God’s words of encouragement and guidance are always available to us. We just have to listen.

Why We Like Superheroes

The summer’s here, which means there are three or four films out this season based on comic book characters and superheroes. In fact, I think I mentioned to a few of my classes that I wrote a script for our Vacation Bible School play this year, and it’s entitled “Jesus Is My Super-Hero”. So, what’s the fascination?

Forgiven!

In the business world, we are generally held accountable by someone for our actions, whether it is a supervisor, a customer, or a colleague. Wouldn’t it be nice just to turn only to God, ask Him for forgiveness, and simply go on our merry way when we do something wrong? This devotion from Our Daily Bread demonstrates that while God is our ultimate authority here on Earth, he is not our only authority.

Pride and Arrogance

I added a link to the left to Lessons for Leaders. It’s played every week on Moody Radio, and they have transcripts in PDF format on the web site. Here is one of their devotions:

Is there any human quality more distasteful than pride and arrogance? Maybe you’re proud to say that you’re very humble. But before you get too impressed with your humility, listen. Nancy Leigh DeMoss has listed these evidences of pride:

Anytime, Anywhere

I don’t know if society has even been so concerned about staying “connected” as we are now. My wife used to work in the closing department of a local home builder, and she had to carry a Blackberry and a Nextel with her after hours in case somebody’s closing fell apart at the table and the title company or the customer needed to contact her. Between 5 PM and 8 PM every night, I would hear that thing go off and swear someday that I would pitch it out the window.

Well, now that I’m an adjunct and most students contact me through e-mail, I am the one now who is constantly obsessed with whether or not there are any wi-fi hotspots wherever we go so that I can stay connected with students. For the most part, none of you ever email me anyway, so you either don’t have questions or clearly don’t need to talk to me as much as I seem to need to talk to you. It’s fortunate when I take the family to Panera Bread for dinner that I have access, because after I take 5 minutes to check my e-mail and find out there are no new messages, I spend about 30 minutes on Yahoo! Games.

Whether or not you need to stay connected to your cell phone or your e-mail, we can never forget that we have an eternal connection with God, which is Christ Jesus. You don’t have to check for the location of a hotspot ahead of time to contact Him. You don’t have to check how many bars you have, worry about the signal strength, or check how close you are to a cell tower to reach Him. You don’t have to worry how many minutes you have remaining or how much battery life you have left to keep the connection going. He is there for you 24/7, without a break, on nights, weekends, and Federal holidays. That’s a better connection than you can get with any help desk, cell phone, or laptop on Earth.

Let’s Hear It for the Rules

There have been many debates in the legal system in recent years discussing whether or not it is appropriate to post the Ten Commandments in public buildings as an example of a historical code of law. I think for the most part that this has not been allowed when it is a government-sponsored display, but it made me think. Does our worldly society seek to make the Ten Commandments irrelevant?

I don’t know why, but deep down inside we have an aversion to people telling us what to do and what not to do. Wanting to dump the rules and “go it on our own” implies that we think we know what is best and that left to ourselves we can manage life in good and productive ways. But you and I both know by experience that this is not always the case.

To keep us from the self-destruction of bitterness, He has a rule about forgiving and loving our enemies. To keep us safe from the treachery of dishonesty and deceit, He has told us not to lie and to live instead for what is true. In fact, when you think of it, all of His rules are really for our good. Just take a look at the Ten Commandments. Life works better when we don’t lie to each other, steal from each other, or take each other’s life. We are all better off when we don’t covet each other’s property, sleep with each other’s wives, or gossip and bear false witness against our neighbor. How ridiculous is it that we are trying to put the Ten Commandments in the dumpster in our society? Who’d want to live in the chaos of a world where things like lying, stealing, cheating, sleeping around, greed, and bitterness are the norm? Did I hear you say that we are almost there?

How many songs do we have on our iPods or how many television shows and DVDs do we watch in our regular viewing diet where lying, murder, adultery, greed, and envy are celebrated? The more these are celebrated in our entertainment media, the more we become desensitized to the wrongdoing associated with them. I’m afraid that CSI is such a popular show that solving a murder has turned into a clinical procedure where the victim is mocked at some point and life and death are treated like plot points that need to be achieved in the story.

When I was a kid, one of the scariest and goriest movies you could watch was A Nightmare on Elm Street with the horror villain Freddy Krueger. Now, those movies are chump change compared to such films as the Saw series and Hostel. The amount of nudity and obscene language on television is way more prevalent than it was even a decade ago. As we continue to let these media into our heads, we become desensitized to their negative effects, and we allow the world to influence us more than God’s word. We must always be vigilant to keep this from occurring.

A Place Fit for a King!

My wife and I are friends with a couple who take a weekend to clean their home from top to bottom every couple of weeks, only to find themselves taking another couple of weeks to tear everything up again and requiring another weekend to clean the house. The cycle continues.

I hope that we do not treat our “home” for Jesus in the same way. As this article illustrates, Jesus resides in our hearts–not physically, but through the Holy Spirit–and that location is necessary in order to soften our hearts so that He can remake us in His image. What kind of living space are we offering to our Lord?

Tell ‘n’ Show Slide Design

This is probably a strange topic of discussion, but “bad PowerPoint” has become somewhat of a hobby of mine. I attended the Midwest Scholars Conference over the winter, and I discovered there that my classroom PowerPoint slides were bad, and not bad in the good way either. I have since tried to reformat my slides into something a little less “bad”, but it is difficult to keep from bulleted lists, which are apparently a no-no because they get too wordy. The problem for me is that I look at bulleted lists and notice that they look clean and organize, but they apparently don’t facilitate learning very well.

Anyway, I think the last example on this page about the components of a presentation may finally break my overuse of the bulleted list. Perhaps while I have these few months off this summer, I may be able to utilize some of these concepts in my hundreds of slides containing bulleted lists. We’ll see. However, if you are planning on putting together a presentation for class, there are plenty of ideas and references on Ellen Finkelstein’s page you can use. I’ll try to get some more up here as they become available.