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Obama’s inaugural address did nothing to calm the fears of investors.  After hearing Obama’s speech, they went back to unloading stocks.  This in turn sent the Dow down more than 330 points.  Once again the Dow Jones industrial average is below 8000. 

Obama’s speech did nothing to ease concerns about our country’s struggling economy.  Personally, not much about his inauguration eased my concerns about the economy.  According to CNNMoney this was the costliest inauguration in our history.  You would think that with our debt spiraling out of control and bailouts galore to keep fiscally irresponsible companies from the bankruptcy courts, this new president and his team would try to set an example for us and keep costs down.  We’ve been in a recession for over a year.  We’re at war.  The jobless rate keeps climbing.  Businesses, both large and small, are closing their doors.  And we, the people, get to shell out for fun and games in DC. 

I would expect any president elect to seriously pare down the expenses.  This one promised us change and I was looking forward to something positive coming from his agenda.  This change appears to be something that costs a lot in the long run.  Day one expenses, more bailout money, tax stimulus promises, promises of job creation along with other entitlements.  The change I’m seeing is in the inevitable tax increases for us in order to pay for it all.

It’s cold outside and now would be a good time to have a nice warm treat.  Maybe a slice of warm homemade bread or a cup of tea and a handful of quick no bake cookies.  The first recipe is my Grandma Lawson’s Cottage Cheese Bread.  And no, it doesn’t taste like cottage cheese. Another bonus is no kneading. The second recipe is Jane Hardy’s No Bake Cookies.  Jane was attending OBC at the same time I was there, and thoughtfully shared this recipe.

GRANDMA LAWSON’S COTTAGE CHEESE BREAD

Soften 1 cake yeast in 1/4 cup warm water and 2 tbsp sugar.  Set aside

• 1 c creamed cottage cheese
• 1 tbsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg

Mix the above ingredients and beat.  Add the yeast mixture.

Add 2 1/4 – 2 1/2 cups flour to form a stiff dough.  Beat well.  Cover and let rise until double in size.  Stir down and put in greased pan.  Let rise until light.  Bake at 350F for 40 to 50 minutes or until brown.

JANE HARDY’S NO BAKE COOKIES

• 1/2 c brown sugar
• 1/2 c white syrup
• 1 c peanut butter
• 2 c corn flakes

Heat the sugar and syrup until it comes to a boil.  Stir in peanut butter.  Add the cereal.  Spoon out on wax paper or foil.

Okay, I’ve convinced myself to go in, put on the kettle and whip up some of Jane’s cookies.  And yes, I’ve had my peanut butter long enough to know that it’s safe.  It’s already half gone and no one has ended up sick after eating it. 

Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech is well known, even if it’s only for a phrase or two, but another of his speeches is as appropriate today as it was when he first told us “I’ve been to the mountain top.”

I See the Promised Land

Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy in his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It’s always good to have your closest friend and associate say something good about you. And Ralph is the best friend that I have in the world.I’m delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow. Something is happening in Memphis, something is happening in our world.

As you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?”– I would take my mental flight by Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn’t stop there. I would move on by Greece, and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality.

But I wouldn’t stop there. I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I’m named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church in Wittenberg.

But I wouldn’t stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating president by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn’t stop there. I would even come up the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

But I wouldn’t stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.” Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding–something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya: Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee–the cry is always the same–“We want to be free.”

And another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we’re going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.

That is where we are today. And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn’t done, and in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I’m just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period, to see what is unfolding. And I’m happy that he’s allowed me to be in Memphis.

I can remember, I can remember when Negroes were just going around as Ralph has said, so often, scratching where they didn’t itch, and laughing when they were not tickled. But that day is all over. We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God’s world.

And that’s all this whole thing is about. We aren’t engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying that we are God’s children. And that we don’t have to live like we are forced to live.

Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.

Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we’ve got to keep attention on that. That’s always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened the other day, and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers were on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need of a doctor. They didn’t get around to that.

Now we’re going to march again, and we’ve got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be. And force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God’s children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That’s the issue. And we’ve got to say to the nation: we know it’s coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.

We aren’t going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don’t know what to do. I’ve seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round.” Bull Connor next would say, “Turn the fire hoses on.” And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn’t know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn’t relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denomination, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water.

That couldn’t stop us. And we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them; and we’d go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we’d just go on singing. “Over my head I see freedom in the air.” And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, “Take them off,” and they did; and we would just go in the paddy wagon singing, “We Shall Overcome.” And every now and then we’d get in the jail, and we’d see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers, and being moved by our words and our songs. And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn’t adjust to; and so we ended up transforming Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in Birmingham.

Now we’ve got to go on to Memphis just like that. I call upon you to be with us Monday. Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we’re going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, “Be true to what you said on paper.” If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.

We need all of you. And you know what’s beautiful to me, is to see all of these ministers of the Gospel. It’s a marvelous picture. Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, and say, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Somehow, the preacher must say with Jesus, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor.”

And I want to commend the preachers, under the leadership of these noble men: James Lawson, one who has been in this struggle for many years; he’s been to jail for struggling; but he’s still going on, fighting for the rights of his people. Rev. Ralph Jackson, Billy Kiles; I could just go right on down the list, but time will not permit. But I want to thank them all. And I want you to thank them, because so often, preachers aren’t concerned about anything but themselves. And I’m always happy to see a relevant ministry.

It’s alright to talk about “long white robes over yonder,” in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It’s alright to talk about “streets flowing with milk and honey,” but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can’t eat three square meals a day. It’s alright to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God’s preacher must talk about the New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do.

Now the other thing we’ll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people, individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively, that means all of us together, collectively we are richer than all the nation in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That’s power right there, if we know how to pool it.

We don’t have to argue with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles, we don’t need any Molotov cocktails, we just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, “God sent us by here, to say to you that you’re not treating his children right. And we’ve come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda–fair treatment, where God’s children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.”

And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy–what is the other bread?–Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart’s bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven’t been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right.

But not only that, we’ve got to strengthen black institutions. I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown and deposit you money in Tri-State Bank–we want a “bank-in” movement in Memphis. So go by the savings and loan association. I’m not asking you something that we don’t do ourselves at SCLC. Judge Hooks and others will tell you that we have an account here in the savings and loan association from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We’re just telling you to follow what we’re doing. Put your money there. You have six or seven black insurance companies in Memphis. Take out your insurance there. We want to have an “insurance-in.”

Now there are some practical things we can do. We begin the process of building a greater economic base. And at the same time, we are putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask you to follow through here.

Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that we’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point, in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.

Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus; and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters in life. At points, he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew, and through this, throw him off base. Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn’t stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But with him, administered first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, because he had the capacity to project the “I” into the “thou,” and to be concerned about his brother. Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop. At times we say they were busy going to church meetings–an ecclesiastical gathering–and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn’t be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that “One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony.” And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem, or down to Jericho, rather to organize a “Jericho Road Improvement Association.” That’s a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the casual root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effort.

But I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that these men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, “I can see why Jesus used this as a setting for his parable.” It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles, or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you’re about 2200 feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road. In the day of Jesus it came to be known as the “Bloody Pass.” And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”.

That’s the question before you tonight. Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?” The question is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” “If I do no stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” That’s the question.

Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.

You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, “Are you Martin Luther King?”

And I was looking down writing, and I said yes. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that’s punctured, you drown in your own blood–that’s the end of you.

It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I’ve forgotten what those telegrams said. I’d received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I’ll never forget it. It said simply, “Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the Whites Plains High School.” She said, “While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn’t sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great movement there. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.

And they were telling me, now it doesn’t matter now. It really doesn’t matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night.”

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say that threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

It certainly took long enough!  Seven years ago they traded in a man of dignity, talent and honor for Jon Gruden as head coach of the Tampa Bay Bucs.  I still wonder what they were thinking.  Yes, the Bucs went on to win the Super Bowl, but that was Tony’s team.  Year by year the members of a terrific NFL team were tossed to the wayside.  Year by year Gruden’s playbook grew until it became so large it scared away some really good players.  I’m not saying that the Bucs don’t have some good players, but it’s obviously not the winning team that it once was.  Joel Glazer stated, “…we just felt that it was time for a change.”  I’m wondering why it took them so long to get that one figured out.  They dropped Tony Dungy in a New York heartbeat, but it took them seven years to figure out that Gruden was not going to take the team to the level of unity and greatness that Dungy was able to do. 

I’m looking forward to positive change with new head coach Raheem Morris at the helm.  Our prayers are with you.  Please feel free to read Tony’s books, Quiet Strength and Uncommon.  His books are better than any playbook around.

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old…or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

and the book:

The Red Siren

Barbour Publishing, Inc (January 2009)

Best-selling author of The Legacy of the King’s Pirates series, MaryLu Tyndall writes full time and makes her home with her husband, six children, and four cats on California’s coast. Her passion is to write page-turning, romantic adventures that not only entertain but expose Christians to their full potential in Christ.

For more information on MaryLu and her upcoming releases, please visit her website.

Product Details:

List Price: $10.97
Paperback: 318 pages
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc (January 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1602601569
ISBN-13: 978-1602601567

This is the first book in a series called Charles Towne Belles, and I can hardly wait for the next one.  Ms Tyndall captivated me from the beginning to the end.  And the end came much too soon.  This is not your typical historical romance.  It is much more.  It has elements of adventure and mystery as well as the thrills of the open sea.  Being a former sea person, I couldn’t help but enjoy this book about a  most unusual pirate.  Buy this book and be prepared to put your life on hold until you reach it’s end.  MaryLu Tyndall, bring on book 2 of this series ASAP.  You have me hanging and I want more.  I’m going to have to go out and find The Legacy of the King’s Pirates series.

AND NOW…THE FIRST CHAPTER:

Matthew 13: 20-21

Chapter 1

August 1713, English Channel off Portsmouth, England

This was Dajon Waite’s last chance. If he didn’t sail his father’s merchant ship and the cargo she held safely into harbor, his future would be tossed to the wind. With his head held high, he marched across the deck of the Lady Em and gazed over the choppy seas of the channel, expecting at any minute to see the lights of Portsmouth pierce the gray shroud of dusk. Another hour and his mission would be completed with success. It had taken two years before his father had trusted him to captain the most prized vessel in his merchant fleet, the Lady Em—named after Dajon’s mother, Emily—especially on a journey that had taken him past hostile France and Spain and then far into the pirate-infested waters off the African coast.

Fisting his hands on his hips, Dajon puffed out his chest and drew a deep breath of salty air and musky earth—the smell of home. Returning with a shipload of ivory, gold, and pepper from the Gold Coast, Dajon could almost see the beaming approval on his father’s sea-weathered face. Finally Dajon would prove himself an equal to his older brother, Theodore—obedient, perfect Theodore—who never let his father down. Dajon, however, had been labeled naught but capricious and unruly, the son who possessed neither the courage for command nor the brains for business.

Fog rolled in from the sea, obscuring the sunset into a dull blend of muted colors as it stole the remaining light of what had been a glorious day. Bowing his head, Dajon thanked God for His blessing and protection on the voyage.

“A sail, a sail!” a coarse voice blared from above.

Plucking the spyglass from his belt, Dajon held it to his eye. “Where away, Mules?”

“Directly off our lee, Captain.”

Dajon swerved the glass to the port and adjusted it as Cudney, his first mate, halted beside him.

“She seems to be foundering, Captain,” Mules shouted.

Through the glass, the dark outline of a ship came into focus, the whites of her sails stark against the encroaching night. Gray smoke spiraled up from her quarterdeck as sailors scrambled across her in a frenzy. The British flag flapped a harried plea from her mainmast.

“Hard to larboard,” he yelled aft, lowering the glass. “Head straight for her, Mr. Nelson.”

“Straight for her, sir.”

“Beggin’ your pardon, Captain.” Cudney gave him a sideways glance. “But didn’t your father give explicit orders never to approach an unknown vessel?”

“My father is not the captain of this ship, and I’ll thank you to obey my orders without question.” Dajon stiffened his lips, tired of having his decisions challenged. True, he had failed on two of his father’s prior ventures—one to the West Indies where a hurricane sunk his ship, and the other where he ran aground on the shoals off Portugal. Neither had been his fault. But this time, things would be different. Perhaps his father would even promote Dajon to head overseer of his affairs.

With a nod, Cudney turned. “Mr. Blake, Mr. Gibes, prepare to luff, if you please.” His bellowing voice echoed over the decks, sending the men up the shrouds.

“Who is she?” Cudney held out his hand for the glass.

“A merchant ship, perhaps.” Dajon handed him the telescope then gripped the railing as the Lady Em veered to larboard, sending a spray of seawater over her decks. “But she’s British, and she’s in trouble.”

The ship lumbered over the agitated waves. Dajon watched Cudney as he steadied the glass on his eye and his boots on the sodden deck. He’d been a good first mate and a trusted friend. A low whistle spilled from his mouth as he twisted the glass for a better look.

“Pray tell, Mr. Cudney, what has caught your eye, one of those new ship’s wheels you’ve been coveting?”

“Nay, Captain. But something nearly as beautiful—a lady.”

Dajon snatched the glass back as the Lady Em climbed a rising swell and then tromped down the other side. Sails snapped in the rising wind above him. Bracing his boots on the deck, he focused the glass on the merchant ship. A woman clung to the foremast, terror distorting her lovely features. She raised a delicate hand to her forehead as if she were going to faint. Red curls fluttered in the wind behind her. Heat flooded Dajon despite the chill of the channel. Lowering the glass, he tapped it into the palm of his hand, loathing himself for his shameless reaction. Hadn’t his weakness for the female gender already caused enough pain?

Yet clearly the vessel was in trouble.

“We shall come along side her,” Dajon ordered.

Cudney glared at the ship. “Something is not right. I can feel it in my gut.”

“Nonsense. Where is your chivalry?” Dajon smiled grimly at his friend, ignoring the hair bristling on the back of his own neck.

Cudney’s dark eyes shot to Dajon. “But your father—”

“Enough!” Dajon snapped. “My father did not intend for me to allow a lady to drown. Besides, pirates would not dare sail so close to England—especially to Portsmouth, where so many of His Majesty’s warships are anchored.” Dajon glanced back at the foundering ship, now only half a knot off their bow. Smoke poured from her waist, curling like a snake into the dark sky. Left to burn, the fire would sink her within an hour. “Surely you do not suspect a woman of piracy?”

Cudney cocked one brow. “Begging your pardon, Captain, but I have seen stranger things on these seas.”

***

Faith Louise Westcott flung her red curls behind her and held a quivering hand to her breast, nausea rising in her throat at her idiotic display. How did women feign such weakness without losing the contents of their stomachs?

“They ’ave taken the bait, mistress.” A sinister chuckle filled the breeze.

“Oh, thank heavens.” Faith released the mast. Planting a hand on her hip, she gave Lucas a mischievous grin. “Well, what are you waiting for? Ready the men.”

“Aye, aye.” The bulky first mate winked, and then scuttled across the deck, his bald head gleaming in the light from the lantern hanging on the mainmast.

After checking the pistol stuffed in the sash of her gown and the one strapped to her calf, Faith sauntered to the railing to get a better look at her latest victim, a sleek, two-masted brigantine. The orange, white, and blue of the Dutch flag fluttered from her mizzen. A very nice prize indeed. One that would bring her even closer to winning the private war she waged—a war for the survival of her and her sisters.

The oncoming ship sat low in the water, its hold no doubt packed with valuable cargo. Faith grinned. With this ship and the one she had plundered earlier, loaded with precious spices and silks, she was well on her way to amassing the fortune that would provide for her independence and that of her sisters—at least the two of them that were left unfettered by matrimony.

She allowed her thoughts to drift for a moment to Charity, the oldest. Last year their father had forced her into a union with Lord Villement, a vile, perverse man who had oppressed and mistreated her beyond what a woman should endure. Faith feared for her sister’s safety and prayed for God to deliver Charity, but to no avail.

Then, of course, there was the incident with Hope, their younger sister.

That was when Faith had stopped praying.

She would rather die than see her two younger sisters fettered to abusive men, and the only way to avoid that fate was to shield them with their own fortune. Cringing, she stifled the fury bubbling in her stomach. She mustn’t think of it now. She had a ship to plunder, and this was as much for Charity as it was for any of them.

The bowsprit of the brigantine bowed in obedience to her as it plunged over the white-capped swells. Gazing into the hazy mist, Faith longed to get a peek at the ninnies who had been so easily duped by her ruse but dared not raise the spyglass to her eye. Women didn’t know how to use such contraptions, after all.

Putting on her most flirtatious smile, she waved at her prey, beckoning the fools onward, then she scanned the deck as her crew rushed to their stations. Aboard her ship, she was in control; she was master of her life, her future—here and nowhere else. And oh how she loved it!

Lucas’s large frame appeared beside her. “The rest of the men be waitin’ yer command below hatches, mistress.” He smacked his oversized lips together in a sound Faith had become accustomed to before a battle. Nodding, she scanned her ship. Wilson manned the helm, Grayson and Lambert hovered over the fire, pretending to put it out, and Kane and Mac clambered up the ratlines in a pretense of terror. She spotted Morgan pacing the special perch Faith had nailed into the mainmast just for him. She whistled and the red macaw halted, bobbed his head up and down, and squawked, “Man the guns, man the guns!”

Faith chuckled. She had purchased the bird from a trader off Morocco and named him after Captain Henry Morgan, the greatest pirate of all time. The feisty parrot had been a fine addition to her crew.

Bates, her master gunner, hobbled to her side, wringing his thick hands together in anticipation. “Can I just fire one shot at ’em, Cap’n? The guns grow cold from lack of use.” His expression twisted into a pout that reminded her of Hope, her younger sister. “I won’t hurt ’em none, ye have me word.”

“I cannot take that chance, Bates. You know the rules,” Faith said as the gunner’s soot-blackened face fell in disappointment. “No one gets hurt, or we abandon the prize. But I promise we shall test the guns soon enough.”

With a grunt, Bates wobbled away and disappeared below.

Returning her gaze to her unsuspecting prey, Faith inhaled a breath of the crisp air. Smoke bit her throat and nose, but she stifled a cough as the thrill of her impending victory charged through her, setting every nerve aflame. The merchant ship was nigh upon them. She could already make out the worried expressions upon the crew’s faces as they charged to her rescue.

This is for you, Charity, and for you, Mother.

Heavy fog blanketed the two ships in gray that darkened with each passing minute. Faith tugged her shawl tighter against her body, both to ward off the chill and to hide the pistol in her sash. A vision of her mother’s pale face formed in the fog before her, blood marring the sheets on the birthing bed where she lay.

Take care of your sisters, Faith.

A burst of wind chilled Faith’s moist cheeks. A tear splattered onto the deck by her shoes before she brushed the rest from her face. “I will, Mother. I promise.”

“Ahoy there!” A booming voice shattered her memories.

She raised her hand in greeting toward the brigantine as it heaved ten yards off their starboard beam. “Ahoy, kind sir. Thank God you have arrived in time,” she yelled back, sending the sailors scurrying across the deck. Soon, they lowered a cockboat, filled it with men, and shoved off.

A twinge of guilt poked at Faith’s resolve. These men had come to her aid with kind intentions. She swallowed hard, trying to drown her nagging conscience. They were naught but rich merchants, she told herself, and she, merely a Robin Hood of the seas, taking from the rich to feed the poor. She had exhausted all legal means of acquiring the money she needed, and present society offered her no other choice.

The boat thumped against her hull, and she nodded at Kane and Mac, who had jumped down from the shrouds and tossed the rope ladder over the side.

“Permission to come aboard?” The man who appeared to be the captain shouted toward Lucas as he swung his legs over the bulwarks, but his eyes were upon Faith.

By all means. Faith shoved a floppy fisherman’s hat atop her head, obscuring her features from his view, and smiled sweetly.

***

“Aye, I beg ye, be quick about it afore our ship burns to a cinder,” the massive bald man beckoned to Dajon.

Dajon hesitated. He knew he should obey his father’s instructions, he knew he shouldn’t risk the hoard of goods in his hold, he knew he should pay heed to the foreboding of dread that now sank like a anchor in his stomach, but all he could see was the admiring smile of the red-haired beauty, and he led his men over the bulwarks.

After directing them to assist in putting out the fire, he marched toward the dark, bald man and bowed.

“Captain Dajon Waite at your service.”

When his gaze drifted to the lady, she slunk into the shadows by the foremast, her features lost beneath the cover of her hat. Odd. Somehow he had envisioned a much warmer reception. At the very least, some display of feminine appreciation.

“Give ’em no quarter! Give ’em no quarter!” a shrill voice shrieked, drawing Dajon’s attention behind him to a large red parrot perched on a peg jutting from the mainmast.

A pinprick of fear stabbed him.

“Captain,” one of his crew called from the quarterdeck. “The ship ain’t on fire. It’s just a barrel with flaming rubbish inside it!”

The anchor that had sunk in Dajon’s stomach dropped into his boots with an ominous clank.

He spun back around, hoping for an explanation, but all he received was a sinister grin on the bald man’s mouth.

Tentacles of alarm seized Dajon, sucking away his confidence, his reason, his pride. Surely he could not have been this daft. He glanced back at the Lady Em, bobbing in the sea beside them—the pride of his father’s fleet.

“To battle, men!” The woman roared in a voice belying her gender—a voice that pummeled Dajon’s heart to dust.

Dozens of armed pirates spat from the hatches onto the deck. Brandishing weapons, they hurtled toward his startled crew. One by one, his men dropped their buckets to the wooden planks with hollow thuds and slowly raised their hands. Their anxious gazes shot to Dajon, seeking his command. The pirates chortled. Dajon’s fear exploded into a searing rage. They were surrounded.

The woman drew a pistol from her sash. Dajon could barely make out the tilted lift of her lips. He wiped the sweat from his brow and prayed to God that he would wake up from this nightmare.

“I thank you, Captain, for your chivalrous rescue.” The woman pointed her pistol at him and cocked it with a snap. “But I believe I’ll be taking over your ship.”

I have another flybaby article for you today.  How would you like to live in a house full of males?  Pamela tells you what it’s like to be surrounded by the male gender most of her life.

For the most part I’m okay with all males in the home. Thankfully, they were added one at a time. Can you imagine the onslaught of testosterone if I were deluged by 7 males all at once! I’m lucky I don’t have worms and crickets in my pockets or ogle Victoria Secret commercials.Growing up I did have 3 brothers (besides 2 sisters) and several male uncles our age. They were very interesting. They had ideas, they acted on them, and they moved. I liked that. I moved with them. Guess I was bit of a tomboy.

We blazed our way through the tall weeds on the hillside.  We fished for sunfish in the creek. We got lost on the sheep trail along the banks. We made tunnels through the hay bales in the barn. We watched hammerhead critters grow in the trough. We stepped on black snakes, played cars in the dirt, climbed fences for apples and cherries, roasted apples under a mulberry tree and got spanked for it.

We hid in a hollow trunked sycamore tree. We buried money under the clothesline. We watched the cat have kittens under dad’s pile of plumbing pipes. We climbed the side of the chimney on the outside of the house. And we sat on the roadside to count semi’s that honked as they passed when we motioned with our arms.

We rolled a big wooden telephone line spool around the yard. We raced balls down the sidewalk. We put on a play in the side yard. We played church and we baptized in the bathtub. We jumped off picnic tables into no. 2 tubs and we poured dirt down the fuel pipe to the furnace.

We played in the sand pile until I drank it from a Pepsi bottle. We built a tree house beyond the barn. We explored the neighbors back yard and stepped on thorns. We painted posts and picked up unloved baby birds, and we poked grass blades and sticks into the outside electrical outlet then let the flap fall shut.

We melted crayons on the cement with sun rays through a magnifying glass and we pretended to parallel parked our pedal cars.  They could do things, all the boy things, and we had fun.

When my own first boy came along, Mom said I’d have to teach him how to play. So, the first thing I did was get some Matchbox cars and get down in the dirt to make roads. And I taught him to make the putt-putt sound for a farm tractor. He still remembers it with a grin. That trickled down because he then taught his brothers how to play cars and tractors.

Mom also said I’d have to get the bluff on them because as they’d get older and bigger and I’d need the “I’m Mom, and I said so” to carry meaningful weight. It’s worked. When I couldn’t out brawn them, I’d have to outfox or out maneuver them. Sometimes simply bluff.

They’ve grown. They’ve grown to repairing 4 Wheel Drive Chevy’s and outfitting International Scouts to exchanging ’68 engines for a bus engine and dreaming of a pilots license and a Nascar win.

Now, we talk cars. Mustangs, Ram Tough, engine performance and ci (I now know this is cubic inch, the size of an engine, yes, horse power is the size of the engine but this isn`t horse power. Do you really want me to explain the difference?)

Here the 9 year old says, “Type in Hemi Cuda. Yeah, that’s right, R, R, R, R, Rrrrrrr!” like Tim Allen on Home Improvement saying, “More power, R, R, R, R, Rrrrr.”

We talk Poulan, Homelite, sharpening tools and cc (No, this is not the same as ci. Let me assure you, it’s not important to the women reading this either.)

We talk garden tractors, Cub Cadets, and HEI’s (see, I’ve even learned it’s not a word, it’s an acronym)

We dispute “I’m going to get a motorcycle when I move out,” because I won’t let them have one while they live at home. I’ve buried one son due to birth defects. I do not intend to bury another, especially when it can be a choice such as cycle purchases. The oldest son’s best friend said, “I’ve never known someone to own a motorcycle without laying it down in the first 3 months.” Well, my son has owned one for 3 years and hasn`t laid it down yet. I feel like I’m on borrowed time.

We talk canine and “You don’t want to know how I get the dog to not bark at night.”

We talk politics, Rush Limbaugh, Mitch Daniels, and “if I were president.” The next to the youngest tells how when his boss passed out Obama buttons he called his brother over. “Look at this! Target practice!” The boss says, “Son, come here,” and motions with open palm to give the button back. They grin and laugh in the retelling!

We talk guns and calibers and clips and firing pins. Hubby says, “Here I’ll bring you one, it’s easy to find.” One boy pipes up, “Wow, we’re playing guns, whoo-hoo.” Hubby continues, “There`s rim fire and center fire. Where the pin hits the bullet. A center fire is a clean shot and it`s high powered.” If they ever offer to clear the table, don’t think it’s to play a board game or that they’re feeling like being helpful. No, it’s because they want to clean their guns!

No male in this house will ever tell you your blouse tag is sticking out, or that you have a run in your hose.
They’ll never tell you your skirt is twisted or that your hair is awry. That bold and less than beautiful acne on the end of your nose will never be noticed by the males in your house. You’d better learn to check mirrors frequently from all sides.

Shopping? What’s that? You want to do what???? Shopping — a word that needs defining for a man. An abstract concept. Most never learn.

There’s no one to suggest going to a bazaar, or eager to go on a yard sale jaunt. They don’t care that company walks into a messy house or that the car needs cleaned out. If there’s only one pair of clean underwear, that’s good, “what’s the problem?” They don’t get multitasking or reading body language. You can’t discuss the underlying mood of a previous conversation and it`s nuances….they take it at word value.

There’s no one here to commiserate with about PMS, the thought processes of a man, the way clothes fit or the clash of colors in home decorating. They don’t understand the bother of make-up. Nor the lure of a fine pair of shoes.

And decency must be taught. Careful here. Don’t let your mind take off. I’m talking about bodily functions. When it comes to women, they turn their heads from “nature talk” (as a matter of fact they’ve developed a code signal where they put their index finger to the center of their forehead and turn away. It means “never mind” “don’t go there” “don’t respond.”) But when it comes to themselves underwear is not partial nudity. A fart is funny. A belch can be a beautiful thing. Any tree will do. And why do you need to shut the door?

Well, it’s time for me to shut the door. Time for me to end by saying that living in my world of men has been a natural progression; one I’m used to, and I’ve been blessed with. I suffer from an overload of pride and humility that these are mine. Besides, I do get kisses and gifts of flowers and lots of laughs. And don’t forget the brawn. I get brawn for bringing in bags of groceries. And bags of groceries. And bags of groceries. “Grocery day again, Mom!”

~Pamela~

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:19-21

I just received a breaking news alert from The New York Times that a USAirways plane carrying 146 passengers and 5 crew members is now mostly submerged in the Hudson River after a failed attempt to return to the airport.  It is believed that the plane may have hit a flock of birds.  Rescues are in process right now.  You can read more about the crash here.

The Washington Post has now picked up the story and you can read more and see a video there.

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old…or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

and the book:

What Does God Want Me to Do?

Tate Publishing (December 16, 2008)

Clem Boyd has served as pastor and elder for his church, Xenos Christian Fellowship of Dayton, and has his own freelance writing business. His articles have appeared in Focus on the Family magazine and many of its sister publications, as well as in Christianity Today, Christian Parenting Today, Plain Truth, Walk Thru the Bible publications Stand Firm and Indeed, Sports Spectrum and others. Many can be found through his website. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University in 1984 and a master’s degree in biblical studies from Cincinnati Bible Seminary in 1995. He and his wife Julia have three children: David, 16, Bethany, 12 and Mark, 6. Clem’s mom Jean lives with them to complete the family.

Visit the author’s website.

Product Details:

List Price: $15.99
Paperback: 280 pages
Publisher: Tate Publishing (December 16, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1606048821
ISBN-13: 978-1606048825

ISLAND BREEZES

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I can’t even figure out what I want me to do.  Figuring out what God wants me to do is much harder.  I certainly want to do what God wants, but just how do I figure out what that is?  Mr Boyd uses case studies to help us see where we are going and how to get there.  He also has included a study guide for our benefit.  What does God want me to do?  What does God want me to be?  Give this book a chance to help you get from here to there.

AND NOW…THE FIRST CHAPTER:

Here’s a story: There was a guy who worked sixty to seventy hours a week, rarely saw his family, was a loving father and husband when he was around, and attended church regularly when he wasn’t on a business trip. He retired in his sixties, and died a year or so afterwards. The end.

For many that’s the story of their lives. Unless, of course, you’re reading these pages, which means you’re not dead. And that’s good. Because while you’re still alive there’s still the potential for change, if change is what you seek.

American life is about living large and going fast and pushing forward. How many societies get as pumped up about something so bland as ‘worker productivity’? Yet newspapers around the country will excitedly announce surges in productivity as a sign of a robust economy. Or, conversely, that things are going bad because productivity is in the toilet.

How many societies fixate on how many extra-curricular activities their kids are doing? Or agonize over the quality of those after-school commitments? And what that will mean for their future?

Many people faithfully carry out their roles as defined by society or family expectations. Even though there may be plenty of relentless pushing and moving, they get into comfortable grooves. These grooves may not be exactly satisfying or enriching, but they have the approval of others and come with a sense that “At least I’m doing something.”

These life niches come with something else that’s quite important¾predictability. Grinding, unstopping predictability. Sure, there’s the occasional hiccup in the schedule, and Joe and Susan may feel rushed now and then; but they have a certain amount of certainty. And they like that. I like predictability too .

I always wanted to be a writer. In fourth grade my best friend and I published a homeroom newspaper using the school mimeograph machine: The 104 News. Great title: straightforward, to the point. I still have a copy somewhere.

While I looked into different careers in high school and college, my path didn’t veer far from writing or communications. I attended Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, a school known for its excellent journalism program .

After college I held several writing jobs before settling as a newspaper reporter. I worked for a chain of community newspapers for several years then transitioned to a job as beat reporter with a small daily near my hometown. Things were moving along briskly. I could see my journalism career going somewhere. And then I swerved off the career path.

The choices I made in life, since those days of working as a beat writer in Xenia, Ohio, are not choices I can recommend to everyone. They’re choices that spring from who I am and the interests and values I share with my wife, Julia, a part-time family practice doctor.

I work part time as a church leader and freelance writer out of a home-based office, taking care of my kids four half days a week. I keep a schedule that allows me to respond to spur of the moment opportunities to do things I think God wants me to do with family and friends.

Not everyone wants what I have, and what I have isn’t for everyone. But this isn’t about becoming a stay-at-home dad or a telecommuter. This is about looking at life and figuring out if God’s priorities direct the action.

Life-Changing Discussion

Back when Julia and I were talking about marriage, we talked frankly about the direction of our lives. At the time I was a newspaper editor and Julia was in her third year of residency as a family practice doctor, just a couple months from going into practice.

We talked mainly about kids and childcare, but the conversation evolved into something else: being there for parents, making friendships with brothers and sisters in Christ, and the kind of atmosphere we wanted in our home. Looking back I realize we were having a discussion about values: what were Julia’s values and what were mine.

Values drive decision-making. Making lots of money and having the nicest house is a value with a capital “V.” Important decisions affecting every other area of life will flow from that. Wanting plenty of free time to support political or social causes is a value, so is raising kids to attend church or not attend church, to play sports or not play sports, visit art museums, go on vacations, or root for a favorite team.

Many people don’t think about their values, out loud at least. Their values remain secluded in the shady portions of their minds, concealed but barking orders like a marine drill sergeant¾“you will drive the nice car; you will work eighty hours a week; you will have three beautiful children”¾and on and on.

Where do values come from? The answer is simple: everywhere¾television, movies, newspapers, magazines, books, peers. Parents have a major impact on values, whether to model mom and dad’s priorities or react against them.

Other significant adults often shape values. It may be a sibling, an uncle or aunt, a soccer or football coach, a favorite teacher. It may be something they said, choices they made, or the life they lived that left an impression.

Then there’s the all-pervasive media. Does Madison Avenue really shape values? Well, it sure tries to, and not just passively, but with vigor. The billions of dollars spent on advertising each year testifies to that. I hope there’s not much doubt about that in this give-me-more consumer society.

But what about the Bible? Christians’ values should be changing and re-arranging according to what God’s truth says. This is what Paul means in Romans 12:2;

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

(Romans 12:2, NIV; emphasis added)

According to 2 Timothy 3:16-17, God breathed the words of Scripture into existence, just as he spoke the world into existence. These words are useful for “teaching, correcting, rebuking and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (NIV).

To live a life of “good works” will require a transformation of my mind. I will need to saturate myself in the truths of God; I must allow the Bible to teach me, correct me, rebuke me, and train me about what it means to live a righteous life. I should listen as Christian friends and spiritual mentors challenge me and encourage me with scriptural truth. Then I will have values that more and more reflect God’s values, resulting in a life of eternal significance.

And here’s the top value I should embrace above all others: my ultimate worth comes from the fact that God loves me and has saved me from his judgment. From God’s point of view, the biggest thing that ever happened in my life was the day I asked his Son to be my savior. At that point, I went from eternal separation from God to union with him, from war to peace, from judgment to forgiveness, from insignificance to significance, from unacceptable to accepted for all time, from creature made in God’s image to his child.

Julia and I wouldn’t even have had the what-about-kids discussion and its related subtopics unless we had begun the transformation described above. There was a significant conclusion from our discussion: the way we defined ourselves would have to rest more securely in what God said, rather than what our jobs said or significant people said. Seeing career as a variable rather than a given was the result.

There were implications for the way we viewed our stuff too. Our home, instead of a private retreat, would be a foyer for God’s kingdom. Strangers would always be welcome. Our kids would get introduced to all kinds of people and develop important friendships with adults other than family members. We would have to teach them that a house is a gift from God to be used at his discretion, even though we were the ones who lived there most of the time. Our things might get broken, scuffed up or lost. But it would all be worth it.

The Bigger Question

All this talk about re-arranging and reshuffling is dependent on the answer to a bigger question: have you been changed on the inside?

I’m not talking about going to church, singing hymns, putting money in the plate, or attending Sunday school. Have I ever asked God to forgive me because of his Son’s sacrifice for my sins? That’s the pivotal question. This might turn off some folks; they’ve heard the wacko Christians go on about this. Please don’t close the book and walk away. Indulge me for a few more minutes.

Consider the example of Cornelius. Cornelius was an extremely religious guy. He gave scads of money to the poor and talked to God regularly. Yet this man was missing something. So God sent Peter to explain who Jesus was and what Jesus did. Then Cornelius believed in Jesus and accepted his death as satisfaction of the moral debt he owed God. The whole story is delivered in greater detail in the New Testament book of Acts, chapter ten.

Had I been alive at that time, I might have assumed that Cornelius was a Christian. But he wasn’t. Something was missing in the spiritual wiring, which hearing and believing the story of Jesus resolved. Once Cornelius believed in Jesus as his savior, he received the Holy Spirit. And according to Romans 8:9, if I don’t have the Holy Spirit in my soul, I still don’t belong to God, no matter how much good I do or how nice I am.

In his story about the life of Jesus, the apostle John notes that people need to actually invite Christ, who is still alive, into their lives. He writes:

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God¾children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

John 1:12-13 (NIV)

How do I make the invitation? I might talk to God like this:

“Lord, forgive me for my wrong thoughts and wrong actions. I know I deserve hell but I believe your Son wiped out my guilt for all time, clearing me of the evil I’ve done or imagined in the past, present, and future. I ask him right now to come into my life and show me how to follow you.”

Praying that prayer will start a relationship with God that has nothing to do with how good you are or how often you attend church. This will change the eternal outcome of your life immediately. Plus, having the Holy Spirit on board will be a great help with a book like this, so you can capture and apply the most from it (see John 14:26 and John 16:13).

The Need for Change

Combinations of events and realizations spur change. It could be the birth of a child or the death of a parent or both. Maybe a person is fired or laid off or didn’t get the promotion she thought she was getting. Or she did get the promotion and the raise, but life got harder instead of better. Perhaps the kids are getting ready to leave the nest. Everyone gets wake-up calls; the real question is whether they jump out of their beds of complacency or hit the mental snooze button.

At age twenty-seven, I could not have imagined making some of the choices I’ve ended up making. My macho focus wouldn’t allow the idea of not being the big provider. Here are a few of the “ah-ha” moments and circumstances that God used to change my worldly perspective so that I might adopt his point of view.

Income disparity – One thing was very clear at the beginning of our marriage¾Julia could work part-time and still make more money than I could make full-time. If raising kids and being available for ministry were our values then we’d have to bank our money and time wisely. I began to see this would affect me.

Our kids – My son David was born in 1992. Holding him and spending time with him awakened my daddy instinct in a way that would change my life. This only heightened with the births of Bethany and Mark. I wanted to have a greater role in the lives of my children, and not just after working eight to twelve hours a day for the newspaper.

The Holy Spirit has strongly impressed me that one of my greatest Great Commission legacies (see Matthew 28:18-20) will be my children. Would I give the Lord the carte blanche to use me, along with Julia, to shape them into people who knew Jesus, loved Jesus, and wanted to give their lives to others as he had? I have come to the conclusion that, even if I were to win a Pulitzer but not be a major player in God’s game plan for my children, I would be a failure.

Plus, I must admit, I have fun with my kids. I totally enjoyed helping David build Lego villages when he was three, which he would play with for a while, then destroy like Godzilla in Tokyo. I loved pretending to be pirates on our gym set. I got a kick out of speaking for my daughter’s Ken doll and inserting life philosophy in his comments to Barbie, “Really Barbie, I like your pink convertible, but I think getting married on the first date is a little sudden. But you do look cute in your princess dress.” I’m refreshed in a deep way when I take walks with Mark in the woods near our house and we happen to see a deer cross our path. Awesome isn’t a big enough word for what these times mean to me.

Going back to school – In 1993 my love of building relationships with people for God’s purposes won out over writing about car crashes and school levy campaigns. I could work as a journalist and follow God. Who knows, I may end up covering a beat again someday. But making God-centered relationships a priority means that other things become less of a priority, and that’s how it went in 1993 with newspaper deadlines. I decided to pursue further education at a seminary in Cincinnati, which I hoped would prepare me for more effective people involvement. However, it also required saying goodbye to the journalism career ladder for the time.

Lois’ death – After seminary I began spending more time watching the kids, with my mother-in-law, Lois Sammons, covering the times I worked part time as a media relations coordinator and fundraiser for a local hospice program. But then Lois’ breast cancer, in remission five years, metastasized to her brain. She went into the hospice program I worked for and died just before Easter 1997.

I had always imagined going back to work full-time, although I was hoping I could do that through our church. I had never seen myself not doing that. But something changed after Lois died. Maybe I became adjusted to the idea of taking on more of the caregiver role. Maybe I had worked through some key things about the way I saw myself. My sense of self-worth was coming less and less from having a successful career, as the world defined it. More and more I was being fulfilled through ministry, family life and the work God had given me.

Satisfied by freelancing – After seminary I submitted story proposals to Christian magazines and eventually got my first sale with Plain Truth Magazine in 1997. By 1998 I was beginning to make headway with freelancing: I had a formal contract to produce a news insert for Focus on the Family’s Citizen magazine and landing a variety of assignments from other publications.

For me, the adventure of researching a story has always been satisfying. I love the mental piston-firing experience involved in producing a written work. E-mailing the polished article to an editor on time, especially with a tough topic on a tight deadline, produces a unique strain of adrenaline-packed contentment. Who needs a title when you’ve already got the greatest job in the world? I can think about and investigate a topic and then get paid for my research and observations. How great is that?

The availability dividend – Being available has its own upside, which is very appealing. Because of my schedule, I’m flexible to meet other guys for lunch or breakfast and talk about their lives, my life, what God is showing us, how the favorite sports team is doing, etc. This can mean that I’m actually busier at times than I would be with an eight-to-five job, but I’ve concluded that’s how God wants my life to be. And there’s tremendous satisfaction I experience because of my elastic schedule.

The Context of Significance

Most of the New Testament’s message about God’s plan is in the context of fulfilling a role I’ve been given in his worldwide endeavor called the church. The role I have to play is primarily local, carrying out numerous kinds of service with other people, especially in small communities of Christians where I learn how to love others as Jesus Christ has loved me. This is God’s main means for getting the word out about his Son to those who don’t know him (John 13:34).

God’s view of significance is through the lens of relationships¾who I’m supposed to connect with and the way I’m letting him use me to benefit others and vice versa. These relationships naturally include my spouse and children.

How many hours does the average person clock at his job: forty, fifty, sixty hours, or more? Even if my work hours are fairly reasonable, how much am I really “there” when I see my wife, my kids, or friends?

Maybe you’re the caregiver parent and see yourself primarily in that role. This is good; there should be more parents devoted to this job. But perhaps you’re beginning to wonder if God wants to expand your horizons, get you out of the house a little bit during the day because he wants you to disciple, evangelize, and otherwise care about others. This may mean taking the kids out of the house while you have lunch with some friends, or calling on a friend to watch the children occasionally while you volunteer at a homeless shelter or lead a teen Bible study. We need to ask ourselves a question at this point: Is my view of myself in Christ strong enough to permit flexibility in the amount of time I spend parenting?

Perhaps you’re retired. You’ve done your bit for the economy and you’re ready for some rest and leisure. I’ve been putting off that model railroading hobby for years, and now it’s time to get serious, you think to yourself. I’ve always wanted to learn how to take amazing photographs but never had the time. Is that the end of it? We could be on the threshold of the most significant period in our lives. We ought to ask: what does the Lord want me to do?

Students may look at their near futures as pretty much laid out for them: attend high school and finish in four years, attend a trade or technical school for two years, or go to college for four to six years, maybe pursue a graduate degree. Someone else tells you the requirements, and you just fill in the schedule blanks like a Sudoku puzzle. You have a few extra-curricular activities you enjoy. But have you ever pulled back and evaluated, from a prayerful, God-centered angle with the help of prayerful, God-centered people why you’re doing what you’re doing?

In addition to ministry and service, God’s plan is also moral. He wants to see character change, which has implications for my relationships and the effect I have on others. He wants to see the fruit of a life led more and more by His Spirit¾love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). He wants to see my choices about career and family and everything else have more and more his moral stamp. This is something he’s committed to accomplishing in me, if I’m willing to cooperate.

Some may think, “Doing more for God sounds great¾where do I sign up and not upset my current lifestyle too much?”

I’ve spent years trying to figure that out. I like my comfort as much as anyone, and yet I also want to make a difference for God that will change the substance of eternity . The quality and content of forever, mine and hopefully many others, hinges on the choices I make about the small and large parts of my ordinary, everyday reality. What will I choose?

This dilemma is similar to the one Jesus spelled out:

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

Matthew 6:24 (NIV)

In context, Jesus was describing the impossibility of devotion to God and devotion to material comfort. These are mutually exclusive.

Being more available for God’s purposes may mean taking a job with less pay. Or it might mean interrupting the flow of your current day-to-day schedule with the kids. Or it could mean surrendering that beloved retirement hobby to his timing and plan. Or looking into a course of study that your parents may or may not understand or even appreciate. Following God means taking chances; there’s no getting around the risks.

Here’s something else to consider: in American society, if co-workers think someone’s not giving 120 percent to the job it can result in a loss of prestige. Jeff Gordon, a Columbus, Ohio, internist, faced exactly this. There were fellow doctors who questioned his “commitment” to medicine because of his choice to be more available for ministry in his church and to his wife and children.

Did Jeff’s job choice suddenly make him less competent? Did he suffer an abrupt loss of medical expertise? No, of course he didn’t. But he was willing to risk the estimation of others to pursue a bigger purpose.

There are potential costs of making such a decision that must be tallied. If those costs aren’t considered, you might make choices which lead to frustration later. I didn’t understand all of those costs myself and experienced resentment and discouragement that I hope others do not experience.

I remember getting quite agitated one afternoon during graduate school when my oldest son was a toddler. I should be out there tracking down criminals, interviewing cops and detectives, and beating a deadline, not making macaroni and cheese, was how it went in my brain. I should be doing something I know how to do instead of pursuing a master’s degree where the outcome is uncertain. Who knows if I’ll even be able to earn a paycheck from this!

I was feeling negative about myself. I remember kicking a door and slamming some plates on the table and yelling at David, who was two at the time, about something really unimportant. I remember thinking that my life being over might not be such a bad thing. Inside, I was seething with anger and self-hatred and berating myself with thoughts that I’d been stupid to choose this path.

Thank God I had enough Scripture in my head, like Romans 8:1: “For there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (NIV) to realize all this self-slamming was not the way God saw me. Eventually I sat down at the kitchen table, put my head in my hands and meditated on this verse and others, prayed for God’s peace and perspective. I began to recognize the devil was involved, pouring gasoline on the fire with negative, self-defaming thoughts. I apologized to David and to God and focused on the domestic chore in front of me.

Don’t Flinch Now

The drive to be “important” is very strong. The desire to do significant work is designed into me. And so I strive and slave and try to link what I do to something meaningful, permanent, and valuable.

When I fail to do that, I find myself at a crossroads. What’s “important” in my life? Has it meant a forty-sixty hour a week job outside home with little thought of God’s priorities? Has it been about satisfying the hopes and dreams of significant others while suppressing what I think God really wants? Has it been exclusively about the kids at the expense of other relationships God wants me to invest in?

Now is the time for honest evaluation. I dare not hold back; this is not the moment to hesitate. I need to ponder Caleb’s counsel to Israel ¾take the land! But this is spiritual ground; the potential gain is even greater.

© Clem Boyd, 2008

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old…or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

and the book:

The God Question

Harvest House Publishers (January 1, 2009)

J.P. Moreland is distinguished professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology. His many writings include Kingdom Triangle. Dr. Moreland served ten years with Campus Crusade for Christ, planted two churches, and has spoken on more than 200 college campuses and in hundreds of churches.

Visit the author’s website.

Product Details:

List Price: $13.99
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers (January 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0736924884
ISBN-13: 978-0736924887

Reviews of the book:

You can seek and find hapiness.  But unless you have the Author of true hapiness as your guide, you won’t be able to tell the real thing from the fakes.  Convincingly argued and clearly written, The God Question explains how to set off on your quest and how to mark the mileposts along the way.  

David Neff
editor in chief and vice-president
ChristianityToday media group

An astonishing achievement! What happens when a world-class philosopher like J.P. Moreland turns his mind and vast life experience to the most profound question we all face? We get a spiritual earthquake capable of moving people at the deepest levels.  This book satisfies both the mond and the heart in ways that self-help or New Age books never could.  Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle, and the rest of the popular gurus of the media need to read this book to see where the deepest satisfaction, hapiness, and joy can really be found.

Craig j. Hazen Ph. D.
professor of comparative religion
Biola University

Do you know thoughtful people who are struggling with issues of faith? Whether they are athiests, or stumbling believers, or simply Christians doing some honest wrestling, The God Question may be the book to put into their hands.  Through the deepest philisophical waters to the most personal spiritual questions, J.P. Moreland proves to be a wonderfully readable guide, drawing readers towards a heartfelt embrace of the Christian faith.  Highly recommended.

Duane Litfin
president, Wheaton College

In the mid 1980s, hard evidence revealed that something was seriously wrong with the American way of life. Rumors about the problem were prominent since the 1960s, but when the evidence was published, the rumors became public knowledge, though few today know what is going on. And more evidence has piled up in the past 20 years.

Some of the causes and symptoms of the problem shape the way we approach our lives and make it difficult to face this evidence. Not long ago, I was watching reruns of television commercials of the 1950s. In one quite typical ad, a medical doctor encouraged viewers to smoke cigarettes for their health. Smoking, he assured the viewers, calmed nerves, aided one’s appetite, and helped people sleep better. This widely accepted belief hindered Americans from realizing that cigarettes actually harm one’s health. Similarly, the conditions of contemporary life make the evidence mentioned above hard to accept.

And even if someone accepts this evidence, it is very, very difficult to know what to do about the situation. And I say to you with all my heart that you have been hurt by what the evidence shows. No, it’s worse than that. You and your loved ones have been harmed, not merely hurt. In the following pages I have some good and bad news. Let’s start with the bad news. What are the problems and the evidence to which I have been referring? What are the causes and symptoms that have hindered us from facing the evidence and overcoming our dilemma? Let’s look at these in order.

Americans Don’t Know How to Be Happy

The cover story of the December 2006 issue of The Economist was about happiness. The Economist is about as far from a pop psychology magazine as you can imagine, so the topic must have been something of great concern to the editors. Based on research data from 1972 to 2006, the article concluded that people in affluent countries have not become happier as they have grown richer, had more leisure time, and enjoyed more pleasurable activities and a higher standard of living.

In 2005, the results of extensive study on American happiness were released with similar findings: Americans are on average twice as rich, far healthier, more youthful, and safer than they were 50 years ago, but they are not as happy. Since the 1960s the percentage of Americans who say they are “very unhappy” has risen by 20 percent, and depression rates are ten times higher than they were during and before the 1950s. Each year, 15 percent of Americans (approximately 40 million people) suffer from an anxiety disorder.

For decades, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman has been the nation’s leading researcher on happiness. His study released in 1988 sent shock waves around the country. Seligman studied the happiness quotient and depression rate among Americans at that time compared to those of their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Are you ready for this? He discovered that the loss of happiness and the rise of depression were tenfold in the span of one generation—the baby boomers. Something has gone terribly wrong with American culture, said Seligman, and the tenfold, short-term explosive loss of happiness and growth of depression—a factor that has continued to increase since the 1980s—is clearly epidemic. What is going on?

Digging Deeper

Without being harsh, I must say that we would be naive if we didn’t believe this epidemic has affected all of us. There is a way out of this mess, and the chapters that follow are my best offerings for embarking on a journey to a rich, deep, flourishing life. In fact, I would like you to read this book as my invitation to you for such a life—one that is brimming with drama and adventure, flowering with meaning and purpose. However, I am not interested in merely offering you an invitation. I also want to give you wise counsel that has been repeatedly tested and found trustworthy and helpful for the journey.

A journey has to start somewhere, and the best place to start this one is by digging more deeply into the causes and symptoms of our cultural crisis. We are looking for broad cultural factors that have generated a shift in the way we do life, a shift that has caused the epidemic. These factors are not likely to be things we regularly think about. If they were, most people would have made a priority of avoiding them, and that is not the case. I am not suggesting that people will reject the alleged factors once they are made explicit. Quite the opposite. I believe that once they are laid bare, most folks will experience an ah-ha moment and readily identify with them. No, in order to do their destructive work, these factors have to fly under the radar. They must be so pervasive that they are hardly noticed.

In their excellent book on anxiety and depression, psychologist Edmund Bourne and coauthor Lorna Garano identify three causes for the epidemic: (1) the pace of modern life, (2) the loss of a sense of community and deep connectedness with others beyond the superficial, and (3) the emergence of moral relativism. The increased pace of life does not merely refer to more work and less free time, though those are certainly factors. Well into the late Middle Ages, Europeans had 115 holidays a year! Besides free time, the sheer pace and speed at which we live—our language is filled with terms like “rush hour,” “hurry up,” and “fast food”—and the technology we use (including iPods, e-mail, television, and cell phones) make it difficult to be quiet and hear from ourselves. As a result, we feed off of adrenaline, our brain chemistry is not normal, and we are not capable of handling the stress of ordinary contemporary life. Maybe we were never intended to, but I get ahead of myself.

On the surface, the loss of community reflects two things: Western individualism (which is a good thing in moderation) gone mad, and the supposed lack of time required to cultivate deep friendships, especially among contemporary men, who have often been described as “the friendless American males.” On a deeper level, it reflects misplaced priorities due to a shift on our view of the good life. I will say more about this in the next chapter, but for now I simply note that we define success in terms of the accumulation of consumer goods and the social status that they and a culturally respected line of work provide. We seldom measure a successful life by the quality of family and friendship relationships we cultivate.

Regarding the factor of moral relativism, Bourne and Garano make this note:

Norms in modern life are highly pluralistic. There is no shared, consistent, socially-agreed-upon set of values and standards for people to live by…In the vacuum left, most of us attempt to fend for ourselves, and the resultant uncertainty about how to conduct our lives leaves ample room for anxiety. Faced with a barrage of inconsistent worldviews and standards presented by the media, we are left with the responsibility of having to create our own meaning and moral order. When we are unable to find that meaning, many of us are prone to fill the gap that’s left with various forms of escapism and addiction. We tend [to] live out of tune with ourselves and thus find ourselves anxious.

I cannot resist making an observation about their insightful point concerning moral relativism. The damage it does is one reason why the contemporary idea of tolerance is really an immoral, cold, heartless form of indifference to the suffering of others. The classic principle of tolerance is both true and important: We take another group’s views to be wrong and harmful, but we will treat the (alleged) errant people with respect, will defend their right to promote their views, and will engage in respective, civil debate in attempting to persuade them and others to reject their viewpoint. The contemporary idea is grotesque: We are not to say others’ views or behavior is wrong. This is immoral because it allows for genuine evil, such as racism and child molestation. We must judge the behavior to be evil before we can stop it! Bourne and Garano show us that it is also cold and heartless: If you think another is engaged in a lifestyle that is deeply immoral and flawed, the most loving thing to do is to help that person face and get out of that lifestyle. Even if you are wrong in your assessment, at least you cared enough to try to help. By contrast, contemporary tolerance creates indifferent people who don’t have the moral vision or courage to intervene in the lives of others and try to help.

We might summarize Bourne and Garano’s insights this way: First, our resistance to depression and anxiety is weakened by the pace of our lives. Second, we don’t have the relational connection we need for support and strength in finding a way out of unhappiness. And third, we lack the intellectual framework required to admit that there is a right and wrong way to approach life and to fuel the energy we need to seek, find, and live in light of the right approach. In fact, believing that there actually is a right approach seems intolerant to many.

I have spent hours thinking about these three points and how they inform my own journey. If I may say so, it wouldn’t hurt if you set the book down, took out a sheet of paper, jotted down these three factors, and brainstormed about how they have had a negative impact on you or your loved ones. Nevertheless, I do not believe that Bourne and Garano have identified the heart of the matter. We must probe more deeply.

Digging Deeper Still

Psychologist Carl Jung once observed that “neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” Jung is referring to our tendency to avoid feeling genuine emotional pain and facing real personal suffering and dysfunction by creating, usually subconsciously, a neurotic pattern of thinking or behaving that allows us to be distracted from our real issues.

When I was attending seminary, my roommate was in constant fear that he had committed the unpardonable sin, an act for which there is no forgiveness. Try as I might, I could not reassure him that he had done no such thing. One day while probing him more deeply, I realized that his real issue was fear of abandonment, loneliness, and feelings of inadequacy due to harsh treatment in his early years by his father. However, it was too painful for him to feel and face these—something he needed to do to get well. Such self-awareness would have been legitimate suffering in Jung’s terms. Instead, he projected his anxiety on something more manageable, on something that distracted his anxiety from the real issues—the unpardonable sin—and neurotically worried about this repeatedly throughout his daily life.

I am convinced that this inability to face our deepest anxieties is at the heart of why we have trouble being happy. In chapter 2, I will expose why this inability is a distinctively contemporary problem for Western culture since the 1960s. For now, I want to mention two forms of “neurosis” characteristic of many of us. Just as my roommate obsessed about the unpardonable sin, we use these two items to manage our anxiety and cope with life while avoiding the deeper issues we have trouble facing. The two items to which I am referring are hurry and worry. When I speak of hurry, I am not simply referring to the (sick) pace at which we live our lives. That’s a problem in its own right. No, I am referring to the role that busyness and being in a hurry plays in coping with our fears in an unhealthy way. People are afraid to slow down and be quiet. As one thinker put it, the hardest thing to get Americans to do today is nothing. We fear solitude, silence, and having nothing to do because we fear what will happen if we aren’t busy. What do we fear? We fear that our anxiety will bubble up. We dread feeling insignificant. We fear hearing from ourselves because we might experience pain if we do. We all have responsibilities in which we invest time and effort. But if you compare our lifestyles with folks in earlier generations, it becomes apparent that our busyness and hurried lives are avoidance strategies.

We all have worries and things that could hurt us. But the degree to which we worry is, again, symptomatic of something much deeper. When I refer to worry as a coping strategy, I am not referring to worry about a threatening situation—losing one’s job, being sick, not getting married, and so on. I am talking about worry as an approach to life. In this sense, worrying is actually a learned behavior. As dear as she was, my mother was a very anxious person who worried about everything. I lived around her and absorbed her approach to life, so by the time I was a young adult, I had learned how to worry from an expert. And now I was the expert!

What roles do hurry and worry play in your life? I encourage you to spend some time pondering this question. As a help to you, I suggest you find some safe friends or family members and ask them to give you honest feedback about this. This issue is so deep and so much a part of the warp and woof of American life that it is hard to get in touch with the way we neurotically use hurry and worry to avoid problems.

One of our main fears is boredom and loneliness, and hurry and worry keep us from facing these fears. In fact, some patterns of ideas and beliefs that permeate the arts, media, and educational institutions of our culture make it all but impossible to face boredom and loneliness. More on that in chapter 2. Here I want you to ponder an additional fact: It takes a lot of emotional energy to “stuff” our real problems and manage appropriate anxiety by the hurry and worry strategy. And given the three pervasive cultural patterns we mentioned earlier—our pace of life, the loss of community, and the emergence of moral relativism—we have a very dangerous situation in our culture.

To live the way many of us do takes a lot of energy, so we are vulnerable to addiction. Various addictions provide some form of relief from a neurotic life and offer some reward on a regular basis in the form of the satisfaction of desire, usually bodily desire. However, all such addictions obey the law of diminishing returns. The more one turns to addictive behavior, the less it pays off and the more one must turn to the addiction. It may be social recognition, sexual stimulation, drugs or alcohol abuse, eating, acquiring consumer goods, and so on. Over time, we shrivel as authentic persons, and we become less and less in touch with our real selves. Instead, we must project a false self to others—a self we wish others to believe about us, a self that is a collage of parental messages, strategies for remaining safe and hidden, and behaviors that avoid shame and guilt. The range of our free will diminishes, and we become enslaved to safety, social rules, and bodily pleasures and their satisfaction.

It’s time to summarize. For at least 40 years, Americans have become increasingly unable to find happiness and, instead, are ten times more likely to be depressed and anxiety filled than Americans of other generations. Clearly, something about our culture is deeply flawed. As a first step toward identifying the flaws, I noted the adrenalized pace of life, the loss of a sense of community, and the emergence of moral relativism in American culture. Digging more deeply, I noted that for these and other reasons, we find it hard to face our real, authentic emotional pain and, instead, opt for lifestyles of hurry and worry that allow us to cope with our boredom, emptiness, and loneliness without having to face our true situation. Such an approach takes a lot of emotional energy and, partly to comfort ourselves, we turn to addictive behaviors that increasingly turn us into false selves who no longer know who we are.

An Invitation and a Word of Concern

I have received much help from others in my own journey, and I believe I have some genuinely good news for you in the pages to follow. I invite you to read on with an open mind and heart. However, I’m concerned about something. I am troubled that you may not be willing to think afresh with me about what follows and won’t benefit from whatever wisdom is offered. Why am I so concerned? It’s because of my topic and the two primary types of people with whom I want to travel.

Beginning with chapter 2, I am going to mention the G word—“God”—more specifically, the Christian God and Jesus of Nazareth. As we will see, whenever we focus on living a rich life and face our inability to be happy, broad questions about the meaning of life inevitably surface. This is as it should be. And lurking in the neighborhood will be questions about God. It has been said that the single most important thing about a person is what comes to mind when he or she hears the word “God.” This is a trustworthy saying.

So why am I concerned? Because it is so very hard to invite someone in this culture to give this topic a fresh hearing, especially from my two audiences. The first person to whom I am writing is not a follower of Jesus. You may be an aggressive atheist, mildly agnostic, or inclined to think that religion should be a private matter and that “Live and let live” should be one’s motto. If you fit this category, you may have picked up this book at a bookstore or found it online, or a friend or relative may have given it to you. If the latter is the case, you may feel defensive about reading the book. You may feel that your friend or relative wants to fix you or to “win” in your longstanding dialogues about Christianity. If you read this book with an open mind and fresh start, and if you come to agree with some of my offerings, you could lose face, as it were. Others could say you were wrong all along and this proves it.

I completely understand such defensiveness, having practiced it myself in various contexts. But to be honest, if you are concerned about such matters, you are actually not being true to yourself. Instead, you are letting others control you. You are giving them free rent in your mind. It’s as though they are looking over your shoulder as you read, just waiting to jump on you if you come to see things as they do. My advice is that you not let others have such power over you. Be yourself. Think for yourself. Give me a hearing, and when you have read the entire book, step back and decide for yourself what you think about these matters.

Besides friends or relatives, if you fit into this first group, I actually have a deeper concern—really, two concerns—about you being defensive in reading what follows. Having talked to atheists and agnostics for 40 years, I’ve seen that many of them don’t want God to exist. In a rare moment of frankness, atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel makes this admission:

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, I hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.

Such an approach to life is hard to sustain. Influential young atheist Douglas Coupland frankly acknowledges how difficult it is:

Now—here is my secret: I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God—that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.

Fathers and Freedom

If you are an atheist or something close to it, I believe there may be two reasons why you think this way. I am sharing these with you to be helpful, not to throw this in your face. No one is here but you and me, so please see if these describe you. The first reason you may approach the question of God with anger or rejection is unresolved conflict with your own father figure. I have spoken on more than 200 college campuses and in more than 40 states in the last 40 years, and it has become apparent to me that atheists regularly have deep-seated, unresolved emotional conflicts with their father figures. To think that this plays no role in their atheism would be foolish. Paul Vitz, a leading psychologist in this area claims that, in fact, such conflict is at the very heart of what motivates a person to reject God or be indifferent to religion.

Let’s be honest. You owe it to yourself to see if this is causing you to be defensive about the topic of God. If it is, I urge you in the safety of our conversation to follow, to try to set this aside.

The second reason you may not want the Christian God to be real has been identified by Dinesh D’Souza: People want to be liberated from traditional morality so they can engage in any sexual behavior that satisfies them without guilt, shame, or condemnation. The famous atheist Aldous Huxley made this admission:

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently I assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption… For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was…liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.

If you have a vested interest in wanting to look at pornography or to engage in sexual activity outside of a traditional marriage, your hostility to God may well be a way of enabling yourself to sustain your lifestyle while flying in a no-guilt zone. I take no pleasure in saying this, and I am not trying to be harsh or judgmental toward you. The opposite is the case. I have help for you and will offer it in the chapters to follow. All I ask of you is that you give me a hearing and not allow these factors to fuel your defensiveness in such a way that you are not teachable and open to exploring these issues together.

Caricatures of Christians

My first concern about defensiveness, then, is due to the role that unresolved father issues and sexual practices may play in preventing you from facing this topic honestly and with a good and open heart. My second concern is the associations that come to mind when people in our culture think of conservative Christians, most of whom would be called Evangelicals. You may see red at the very thought of Christians. They are hypocrites, intolerant bigots, nosy members of the Religious Right who try to tell others what to do and how to think. Christians are irrational, unscientific, nonthinking sorts who will gullibly believe anything. Comparing Christians (and other religious zealots) and secularists, University of California at Berkeley professor and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich gave this warning:

The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The true battle will be between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is mere preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe in science, reason and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism itself is not the greatest danger we face.

With friends like that, who needs enemies! Reich needs to lighten up a bit. Still, you may share his opinion of what it means to be a Christian. May I suggest two counterarguments that may help you get something out of this book. First, Reich’s statement and the description of Christians in the preceding paragraph are gross caricatures that are far from the truth. It’s a cultural lie that the more educated you become the more you reject Christianity. A few years ago, University of North Carolina sociologist Christian Smith published what may be the most extensive study to date of the impact of contemporary culture on American Evangelicalism. Smith’s extensive research led him to this conclusion:

Self-identified evangelicals have more years of education than fundamentalists, liberals, Roman Catholics, and those who are nonreligious…Of all groups, evangelicals are the least likely to have only a high-school education or less; the nonreligious are the most likely. Furthermore, higher proportions of evangelicals have studied at the graduate-school level than have fundamentalists, liberals, or the nonreligious.

Sure, there are a few bad (ignorant and bigoted) eggs in our basket, but the whole basket should not be judged on this account.

Even if this demeaning picture of Christians contains more than a small grain of truth, becoming a follower of Jesus doesn’t have to make you like this. And there’s still the issue of you and your own life and welfare. You have a life to live, and if you are anything like me, you need all the help you can get to live it well. The real issue is whether the Christian God is real and can be known, whether Jesus of Nazareth was really the very Son of God, and whether the movement He started is what you need and have been looking for (consciously or not). At the end of the day, the issue is not whether Christians are hypocrites, Republicans, or whatever. The issue is Jesus of Nazareth and your life.

Familiarity

The second person to whom I am writing is a Christian who has become too familiar with the form of Christianity often present in our culture. If this is you, you may have become inoculated from the real thing. You are bored with church, you don’t like religious games, and you believe you have given the Christian thing a try and it isn’t what it was cracked up to be. In a way, you’ve lost hope. The fire in your belly has dimmed, and you despair of finding more as a Christian. You think you have already heard and heeded the invitation I am about to unpack, and you are not interested in hearing the same old stuff again. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.

Dallas Willard puts his finger on this problem:

The major problem with the invitation now is precisely over-familiarity. Familiarity breeds unfamiliarity—unsuspected unfamiliarity, and then contempt. People think they have heard the invitation. They think they have accepted it—or rejected it. But they have not. The difficulty today is to hear it at all.

I’m asking you to listen again to the invitation as though for the first time. In some cases, that won’t actually be true. You will likely read things in subsequent chapters that you have heard before. If so, I promise to try to give these things new life, to cast them in a new light. In other cases, that may actually be true. Some brand-new insights may follow. If you are a Christian who fits my description, all I can do is to ask you to read on with an open heart.

So let’s move on. You and I have lives to live. How can we get better at it? In chapter 2, we jump out of the pan and into the fire. We move to what I believe is at or near the bottom of why you and many of our fellow Americans can’t find much happiness in life. The central issue revolves around broad cultural ideas about life, reality, and confidence. The fundamental issue involves the mind and how we think about and see things. But before I can tell you that story, I’ll need to let you in on something about your brain.