Jesus’ Greatest Hits: Tears of Anger?

‘Jesus’ Greatest Hits’ is a series about the life of Jesus. Some people think these stories are fictional. I say that the stories are too profound, too counterintuitive and too incisive to have been made up by a first century mind. Each week I will discuss one such story or saying of Jesus that I believe point to the supernatural aspect of the life of Jesus Christ.

In this week’s edition of Jesus’ Greatest Hits we will be exploring a famous section of the Bible, where it describes Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead.  Obviously the skeptic will immediately take issue with story’s truthfulness itself, seeing that it is one of the biggest miracles performed by the man Jesus, but I don’t intend to defend that part of the story here.   Instead I want to look at a subtler part of the story.   This section makes the narrative convincing to me.   I don’t see why someone, if they were inventing a god, would invent him this way.   Jesus is so counterintuitive in so many ways, I cannot reconcile Him being the product of a man. 

Allow me to set the scene:

Jesus gets word that his friend Lazarus is deathly ill.  Instead of dropping everything and going to him, Jesus stays put with his disciples for a couple of days.   Jesus knows that Lazarus has died, and tells his disciples.  Then when they finally go to the town where Lazarus lived, they find out that he has been dead for four days.   It says, "When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. ³⁴ And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵ Jesus wept.” – John 11

It is easy to just gloss over these verses.  But just take a moment and reflect on this scene.

Jesus sees Mary in deep agony.  She just lost her brother.  Think about what it would be like to lose yours, or maybe some of you have.  She is hurting bad.   The English Standard Version translation that I took this excerpt from says that Jesus was “deeply moved in his spirit” and “greatly troubled”.    I looked into what these phrases mean.   

This “deeply moved” thing that Jesus was experiencing wasn’t a slight grief, or a pity, or a sigh of compassion or a “there, there Mary” kind of thing.   In the Greek it is a much stronger word meaning that he was powerfully checking his emotional state.   He probably made a visible effort to choke back the tears that were about to pour from his eyes.  Have you ever seen a man do this?  Have you ever seen a man make that initial but hopeless effort to hold back tears that are suddenly and powerfully welling up from deep inside?  This is what Jesus was doing when it describes him being “deeply moved in his spirit”.  

There is something else going on here.   There is also another connotation to this phrase, “deeply moved”.  There is a connotation of anger.  In fact, some translations will add that “a deep anger welled up within him” (New Living Translation)  I think that Jesus’ emotional state here was two-fold, obviously the deep hurt at Mary’s pain, but also an anger at the situation.   Remember, this is the Eternal Creator of the Universe.   He is angry at death.  He is not okay with it.  Not even a little bit.   Frankly, it pisses him off.  He knows it doesn’t have to be this way.  He knows that we could’ve chosen life and we blew it.  This is the righteous anger of Jesus.  It’s deep, it’s emotional, and I think he feels it now when he sees his children in pain.   Jesus says, ”Follow me.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  I can save you from this.”

It also says that Jesus was “greatly troubled” .  The Greek word here for “troubled” means “shaken” or “stirred up”.   He must’ve been very shaken by this incident because the next verse, the shortest verse in the Bible is one of the most profound things ever in a story.  “Jesus wept.”  -John 11:35

I don’t think this was a few tears inconspicuously streaming down the side of his face.   When I think of someone weeping, I think of a loud wailing or sobbing.   Jesus was a man’s man, but this situation took a toll on him emotionally.   Jesus was not Spock.  This passage does not portray a stoic man totally in control of his emotions towards his friends Mary and Martha.   No.  This passage shows that our God loves us in a-- dare I say-- reckless manner.   He loves us despite our rebellion.  He is moved when we suffer.  Deeply.   Even more than that, this passage shows us that he suffers with us.  He knows how you feel.  He’s been there.    Isaiah said that Jesus would be a “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”     You can be sure that if you are depressed or in agony or anytime you feel like God is far away, He is right there with you, He is suffering with you, and He has never been closer.

Our God is a God who weeps. 

“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit “  - Psalm  34:18

 

Answering Atheist Arguments: The Bible is Unreliable, it Was Written by Christians!

The Reason Rally has inspired me to write a new section on my blog.   Every Tuesday I plan on looking at a common atheist argument and responding to it in a quick paragraph to show why it doesn’t work in the argument against Christianity.  Atheists, especially the ones I met at the Reason Rally, use a lot of strong and angry rhetoric.  Quite often it is just to score a rhetorical point, but can be easily refuted.  Here is the inaugural edition of Answering Atheist Arguments.    (Nice alliteration there huh?)    These are not arguments for Christianity, these are just simple refutations of arguments against Jesus.

At the Rally on Saturday, I found myself talking to someone about the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus.   As I begun to explain why I think the gospel books in the Bible are reliable he interrupted and asserted, “You can’t trust what it says in those books of the Bible because they were written by Christians!”

Really?

Why does that mean they are unreliable?   Can I get away with such poor reasoning? 

Imagine if I was talking to someone about why I don’t believe global warming was real and I said, “Well you can’t trust the scientists who report on global warming, they all believe global warming is real!”  Certainly you would tell me that this is a silly reason to not believe in global warming, and you would be right.  The fact that the people recording the historical events of the resurrection were Christians does nothing to show its reliability or unreliability.

Further, let’s just imagine that the resurrection did happen and YOU witnessed it.  You knew Jesus before, you saw him get murdered, and then you saw him again alive.   Wouldn’t you follow Jesus and be a Christian at that point?  Would the fact that you became a Christian mean that you were now unreliable in the question of whether or not he did resurrect?  The authors of the Bible didn’t start out as Christians.  They only became so after they saw the evidence for the resurrected Christ.

As you can see, this argument against Christianity fails right out of the gate.

Reason Rally Review

As some of you are aware, I attended the Reason Rally yesterday in Washington DC.  My goal was to observe the event, and talk with some of the attendees about why I think Christianity is far more reasonable than atheism, secular humanism and other non-theistic worldviews.   I talked to a good amount of people, most of them very willing to discuss the issues.   For the most part, the attendees I met were quite cordial, which is what I was expecting.   What was surprising was the content of the speakers.   Logic, reason, and just overall manners were in short supply.   The speakers were generally pretty weak from a rhetorical perspective, not to mention their arguments were all extremely shallow.  Standard fare for the run of the mill, popular atheist thinkers.

The typical straw men that you usually hear atheists argue against were knocked around like piñatas.  “Christians are flat earthers!  Christians don’t let their kids get medical attention!  Christians are responsible for the atheistic Hitler killing the Jews!”   I guess that kind of thing is a lot easier than say, debating a real scholar like William Lane Craig eh Dawkins?   But again, all this went down exactly as I expected.

There were a few things that surprised me.

First, the people I spoke with all have an irrational, illogical and almost religious blind faith in the ability of science to answer all of life’s questions.   In one conversation, we eventually got to questions about objective morality.  The man I spoke with agreed with me and said that objective morality does exist.   I asked him,

“So how could morality be objective, without a transcendent moral law, something outside of ourselves,  in which to ground it.”

He folded his arms and grinned as he assured me, “We don’t know right now, but don’t worry, science will figure it out.  We’ll know one day.”

Talk about blind faith.  This statement is illogical and impossible.  It’s like saying, “Don’t worry, one day I’ll learn to smell with my eyes.”  It’s a nonsense statement.  Science will NEVER be able to give you morality.    It is not a scientific question.   Science tells you how things work.   It will never tell you if you if a certain act is moral or not.   Consider this disgusting yet truthful admission from Reason Rally headliner himself, Richard Dawkins:
“….there was a well-known television chef who did a stunt recently by cooking human placenta and serving it up as a pate, fried with shallots, garlic, lime juice and everything. Everybody said it was delicious. The father had 17 helpings. A scientist can point out, as I have done, that this is actually an act of cannibalism. Worse, since cloning is such a live issue at the moment, because the placenta is a true genetic clone of the baby, the father was actually eating his own baby’s clone. Science can’t tell you if it’s right or wrong to eat your own baby’s clone, but it can tell you that’s what you’re doing. Then you can decide for yourself whether you think it’s right or wrong.”

Classy Dawkins, classy.  But at least he is being consistent.  Science cannot and will not ever be able to show you the moral content of anything.

It baffled me that atheist after atheist was paraded out on stage, with no basis to ground the existence of morality, and proceeded to tell me all the things that I “ought” to do and, How I “should” treat people.  ...Huh?

There was one lady in particular, Greta Christina.  Her entire speech was all the reasons she was angry as an atheist.   This list included all the typical complaints:  “I am angry because of 911, I am angry because Catholic priests have molested children, I am angry because women in Arab countries live in bondage.”

I wanted to say, “Lady, I am right there with you. That stuff makes me angry too!  But as an atheist what right do you have to be angry about it?  Isn’t it just your opinion versus theirs?  Further, how do you know you’re right?”   I asked someone in the crowd about this, her response was:

“I don’t need a book to tell me that I shouldn’t hurt a child.”

Bingo!  I agree 100%.  Everyone, including atheists, knows right from wrong.  Just because they deny they were created in the image of a moral God, doesn’t do anything to change the fact that they were.   The moral law has been hard-wired into our brains.   What is the atheist explanation for this?

I actually heard atheists on stage saying that we should live by the code:  “Treat others, as you want to be treated.”    This statement was followed by raucous applause as if it was some amazing insight that only atheists truly understand.    I am all about this morality, but let’s get real here…..these are the words straight out of Jesus’ mouth.  They weren’t even rewritten for effect.   Yes, JESUS CHRIST was quoted and promoted at the “largest gathering of seculars” in the history of the world.

A major theme at the Reason Rally involved promoting Christian morality while disparaging Christianity itself.   This is non-reason at its very best. 

One of the stated goals of the Reason Rally was to change the way people view atheists in America. Honestly, I truly did come away from the Reason Rally with a new viewpoint on atheism.   Atheism, at its core, is a religion.   Just another in a long line of false religion. The only unique thing about this religion is that there is no god to worship…instead they worship a system of study, namely, science.  False religions all inevitably have one or more of the following hallmarks:   They are either (1) unlivable in a consistent way (2) historically untenable (3) intellectually dishonest or (4) inherently based on blind faith.   Atheism is all of these.   To be an atheist, you must consciously ignore much about the human experience, for example, the existence of good or evil in the world.   Either that or you must live inconsistently, for example, acknowledging good and evil for what it is, yet not acknowledging any way to objectively distinguish between the two.

One goal of the Reason Rally, that I heard when I went there but was not stated on the website, is that they want to eradicate religion, including Christianity.  Fortunately, with as weak an alternative as they have offered, we don’t really have much a reason to worry any time soon.

An Inconvenient Truth: Reason Rally Edition

I will be traveling to the Reason Rally in Washington DC this Saturday to minister to the people that attend.  Our group intends to give out free water, books, and other materials to anyone who wants them.   We don’t intend to demonstrate against the rally.  We do intend to have reasonable discussions with whoever is willing (if anyone is willing) about the reason for the hope that we have in Jesus.

The ironic truth is that the group that decided to put this rally on, and everyone who publicized it, and the speakers, and all the attendees, have unintentionally drawn attention to a major evidence that suggests that atheism is false, and God in fact exists!   Everyone is talking about it, though not everyone has examined it.  The Reason Rally is promoting the existence, and importance of… well, reason.  Without even knowing it by acknowledging the existence of reason they have given up tremendous  ground to those who believe that God does exist.   There is no way to sufficiently explain the existence of reason, without first acknowledging a transcendent, self existent, rational Mind, God.

I realize this is quite the claim, but lets think about it for a moment.   How does rationality come from non rationality?  In other words, most atheist would argue that there is nothing super-natural in the universe, that everything can be explained by natural/physical causes.   How then, can rationality be explained? 

Now before you say, “It evolved” think for a second about what the universe was like in the beginning.   If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that the universe came into existence before biological life came into existence.  So the belief is that before this point reason did not exist, but that the lifeless chemicals of the universe somehow reacted with each other and evolved and eventually created reason in humans.  Here’s where I no longer agree.  I have a few questions:

1. What is the chemical composition of reason?
2. How much does reason weigh?
3. What does reason smell like?

These are obviously all nonsense questions in the real world  because reason does exist, but is IMMATERIAL.  It has no chemical composition, mass, or smell because it is not physical, and yet it exists.  Its very existence violates the worldview of the majority of the speakers, organizers and attendees of the Reason Rally.  Furthermore, chemicals cannot analyze things to establish if they are true or not, all they do is react to each other.   That’s clearly not what’s going on when we reason.

So the atheist, if he is to be consistent, must reject the existence of reason.   He cannot do that, because then why should I believe an argument that does not stand to reason?   So instead, the atheist must intentionally choose to be inconsistent and irrational.  They must assume God exists, to argue that He does not exist.  They take a seat in His lap, in order to slap Him in the face.

Now Christians do have a way to ground the existence of reason in a consistent way.   The God who is there is the Mind that is self-existent.  He is eternal.  He is the architect of reason, logic and truth.  This is the God we believe in.  We are able to reason because we are specially created in the very image of this  Great Mind, God. (Borrowed from Frank Turek)

So you can see that promotion of the Reason Rally inadvertently promotes a good reason to affirm the existence of God.    No matter what Dawkins, PZ Myers or Bill Maher say they believe, they continue to use and promote a tool that can only be explained by the existence of God.  It is by definition an irrational position.

Now as far as the stated goals for the event itself, as a Christian, I can and do stand in solidarity with my secular countrymen.   The stated goals being:

1.   To encourage secular Americans to “come out of the closet”. 

2.    To dispel stereotypes.

3.    Legislative Equality.

I can affirm each one of these, even though I don’t really think they are big problems. (The possible exception being  goal #2. I do think the word atheist does have a certain stereotype attached to it.)   I want to know who the atheists around me are and I want to reason with them.  I want them to have legislative equality and I want to love them as neighbors.   I also want them to meet Jesus.  All of these are consistent for a Christian.

I want to take the organizers at their word that these in fact are their goals, though I do have my suspicions.  The Reason Rally, in my opinion, tipped their hand when they invited the Westboro Baptist Church, (the “god hates f-gs” nuts) to the event.   The ugly truth was revealed.  This isn’t about reason at all.  This is about the speakers and organizers of the event just wanting a forum to bash religion in a public and loud manner.

I do not believe that the attendees share this same agenda.  I think they truly are going to be there for the stated goals.  It is these people that I am interested in and stand in solidarity with, even as I try to get them to see the truth that can be found in Jesus Christ.

Please pray for me this Saturday.   And please pray over the Reason Rally.

“Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.”      - Colossians 4 : 5-6

http://www.truereason.org/

Jesus' Greatest Hits: Before Abraham was, I am.

So I have been thinking a lot about how best to continue my blog series on the evidence for Jesus.  It seems like forever since I last posted on the subject.   I decided that instead of summarizing the rest of the classical evidence for Jesus, that I would take a different approach.   Besides, many have written long and extremely scholarly books on the subject, and I am no scholar.  

My approach will be to comment on certain things Jesus does and says in the Bible (specifically, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).   Not everything of course, but rather things that in my opinion are so unique, weird, or outrageous that they hint to the fact that there was something supernatural going on with this man.  These are passages that when I first read them, I had to put the book down and just contemplate the question.  It is the most important question.   “Who on earth is this Jesus?”   For the sake of this series, I am going to call these passages, Jesus’ Greatest Hits.

The first Greatest Hit I want to explore is found John, Chapter 8.   As per usual, the Pharisees are confronting Jesus, because they hate that people are following him instead of them.   The Pharisees were the most devout Jews of the time; they were the strictest of the strict, super religious, and corrupt to the core.  They start insulting Jesus, claiming that he has a demon and is crazy.   Eventually it comes to a head, and they ask him point blank, “Who do you make yourself out to be?”

The Pharisees took great pride in being direct descendants of Abraham, the ancient man who the whole nation of Israel descended from….so Jesus responds:

⁵⁶ Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”

⁵⁷ So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”

⁵⁸ Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

Wow.  What a strange sentence.  Before Abraham was, I am.   It is truly unbelievable what he is implying here.  There are three amazing implications.

1.       He is implying that he existed before Abraham, despite obviously being in his thirties.  To give you some perspective, according to Jewish genealogies, at the time Jesus said this, Abraham had been dead about 2000 years.  Roughly the same amount of time between now and when Jesus said this.  So obviously this is quite the claim.

2.       Why didn’t he just say, "I existed before Abraham", or "Before Abraham was, I was".   The sentence he actually says, instantly sounds strange to us when we read it.   What’s going on here is remarkable.  He is the only person that can utter a sentence like this, because he is claiming to be eternal.  He has no cause, he never came into being the way Abraham did or all of us did.  He is making a claim that he simply exists without beginning, without end.   It’s a mind bending concept.   Think about it for a second.   Before, Abraham was, I am.

3.       Lastly, he is claiming to be God.   Way back in the book of the Exodus, when Moses asks God what his name is, He responds: “ I AM WHO I AM, Say this to the people of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.” Exodus 3:14   Again, he could’ve just said, I’m God.  Instead, he amazingly just says I AM.  He simply exists.  He necessarily exists.   He is the God who is there. 

The Jews he was talking to knew exactly what he meant…because the next verse says that they all picked up stones to kill him as a blasphemer.

Maybe it’s just me.  I just love that verse.  It’s a supernatural claim.  He could’ve said it another way, but he said it this way.  He said it in a way that frankly, is too ridiculous for a human to make up.   This is the kind of verse that makes me believe that the incident happened exactly as it was written.  It makes the story more reliable.   This is the kind of verse that just makes me stop and think, Wow, it really is true.

Let me know what you guys think of it?   If you want to read the story, it’s in the second half of John 8.

Friday Thoughts

Two quick thoughts today.

Lent

Last night I had dinner (Drunken Man Noodles, delicious) with  two of my friends who knew me before I became a Christian.  I really do miss hanging out with them (I had not yet seen them in 2012) and I had a great time.  Whenever we get together these days they’ll  typically ask me a few questions about how the “Jesus game” is going.   Last night I got a question that I wasn’t ready to answer and I think I missed out on an opportunity to share the message of Jesus.

The question was simply, “What are you giving up for lent?”   

My answer was an abrupt, “I don’t do that.”  

The conversation continued, and I missed out on sharing a truth with my friends.   The idea of “giving up something for lent”  is not a bad one.   It is, however, a religious ritual that does not show up in the Bible.    In other words, it’s a practice created by humans as a way to honor God.  

I don’t have a problem with Christians who do it, so long as it is not looked at as a requirement to please God, or to be a good Christian.   The reason why I do not take part in the practice is because, for me, it is already a struggle to separate the idea of the grace of God saving me just because he loves me and wants to, and the idea of me trying to earn God loves through good behavior.  I see no reason to further complicate and blur these two totally opposed ideas in my life by partaking in rituals like these.

I cannot stress this enough.  The Bible teaches that there is NOTHING you can do to earn favor in God’s eyes.    Living a “good” life is worthless when held to the standard of perfection….the requirement for heaven.  Faith  in Jesus, the real Jesus who lived and died and rose from the dead, is the only way to God.  Lent has nothing to do with it at all.   Not even a tiny bit.

That’s the answer I wish I had last night.

Calvinism Debate

Lately I have been reading some books about the theological merits of Calvinism and Arminianism.   In the interest of full disclosure, I tend towards the Calvinist side of the debate and as I read Arminian theology I tend to aggressively question everything in my mind to the point where sometimes I find myself physically shaking my head  involuntarily at the more vexing statements. 

This morning after a particularly confusing reading session I was transferring  at the subway station from Union Square from the N/R line to the 4/5 to Grand Central, all the while trying to make sense of what I had just read, and there was a street preacher.    He was ranting and raving in the usual street preacher style, but this morning he had a message that seemed directed at me.  His voice reached an urgent and forceful pitch:

“What’s there to argue about?   What is there?    There is one message people!   The message is that Jesus Christ died for you sins.  He died and rose again, for you and me.   Why are we dividing our churches…what’s left to argue about?”

Now I do think theology is worth talking about.   After all, if you ask Mormons if Christ died for our sins, they would say yes, and they are not Christians.  Theological distinctions are important to hash out.  At the same time  I think this guy has a good point.   There’s no sense in getting worked up about so many things that that Bible doesn’t speak of as essential.   Lets instead spend our energy and emotion on figuring out how to spread the true message of salvation to a world that desperately needs to hear it. 

That message is Jesus.  Jesus is God.   He lived among us and he died on a cross as payment for the sins of the world.   He resurrected  (he physically came back to life) on the third day.  He did this that whoever believes in him will not die in their sins….but will live forever in heaven.    Let’s use our time spreading this message and arguing against messages that deviate from this. 

Besides, it is this point that is everything.   What’s left to argue about?

El Salvador, Fear and Loathing, and the Body of Christ

I’m finally back home after an extremely busy couple of weeks.    I spent time in La Libertad, El Salvador and Las Vegas, Nevada.  Two places that could not be more of a contrast in lifestyle.  For those who are interested here is a brief summary of my thoughts on both trips.

El Salvador was a successful trip.   It was different from Ethiopia in many ways.  For one, the country as a whole is nowhere near as poor as Ethiopia and it’s obvious.  Some sections of the country looked like they were right out of suburbia here in the states.  NOTHING about Ethiopia is even close to the states (except the obnoxiously pristine US Embassy/fortress).  All that said, there are still many people in extreme poverty in El Salvador.

Movement as a group took on three separate projects while we were in La Libertad.  First, the team of women and I visited Remar Orphanage and painted the inside of one of the boys dorms.   The children of Remar were fantastic.  We loved every moment we were there.   Second, the men on the team spent the week building ramps for a brand new skate park for the city.  Third, the whole group helped a pastor in San Diego, who runs a feeding program out of his own pocket, for the poorest of the poor children in his area.   The week we were there, he had run out of food and would have had nothing to give had we not shown up.  He is an amazing man.  Truly a man going all out for Christ.  Check out a short video of what we did there here.

More about the trip later.  When I got back I had one day in NYC to recover with my wife, and then I was immediately off to Las Vegas where my office was celebrating our business success in the second half of 2011.

Vegas bills itself as Sin City, and this is true.  But really its not really about sin in general, its specifically about  glorifying yourself.   It’s about living like a king, if only for a short time.  Money in Vegas can literally buy you anything fairly easily: rooms like palaces, women, entertainment, the highest of quality in food, clothes and art.  All the things the Preacher in Ecclesiastes tried until he could try no more and eventually found no pleasure in.  Seriously read Ecclesiastes…you’ll be surprised its in the Bible.

The thing about Vegas is that the activities  that you do there seem fun and even harmless while you are there.   This is also my experience as a person who lived the Vegas lifestyle for most of my life.  Try living that way for extended period.  Try never being able to experience the difference between a stripper being all over your for a tip, and the touch of woman who truly loves you.  Try never being able to tell the difference between your friends, and those who like you because you’re rich.   Or worst of all, try training yourself to drink to contentment long enough, until you see your life as figuring out how to pass the time between nights of drunkenness that you only partially remember.  

These are all the paths I was on before I met Christ.   If you would have asked me before, I would have told you I was having fun.   When I got a chance to look back on that lifestyle now, it broke my heart.   It all seemed so silly.  People in deep fear and loathing.  People all around who refuse to  face life as it truly is and would rather pretend they live in Caesar’s Palace, or in a land of Pirates.  It’s a childish existence, ironically called “Adult Entertainment”.  This lifestyle is vanity, it’s a striving after wind.   In other words, if this is how you live, you will constantly be chasing something that you will never, ever get in this way.  Whether that something is contentment in sex, money, alcohol or drugs is irrelevant.    Its hopeless for you if you keep trying like this.

Life is better than what most 20 something’s in NYC think it is.   As a Christian, my job is to get that message out, and show people how much more rich, pleasurable and fun life really is.  Getting wasted on the weekends, when you really step back and think about it, is not fun.  Its childish.

Lastly, I wanted to just give a quick shout to my brothers and sisters who went to El Salvador with me.  I have honestly never met a group of people like this before.  Everyone was just so humble, encouraging, loving and just flat out hilarious.   I’ve never seen a group so ready to spend themselves for others.  

The men on the team all fought off an awful stomach bug, while working in 90 degree, super humid heat for a whole week to eventually deliver, what we were told, were the best ramps in the entire country.   I didn’t hear a single complaint the entire time, except that we wished we had more time to build even more.   The results of the skate park build?   God used our work, and he saved dozens of young El Salvadorean skateboarders.  My brothers are solid men, it was awesome working with them.

I spent most of my time with our team of women. I cannot put into words how amazing this group of ladies is.  People these days try to caricature Christian women in two ways.  1) The GCB woman, pretty much a hypocritical woman, more promiscuous than average, while at the same time leveling harsh judgments on everyone else.  Or 2) The uptight, old fashioned nerd, who thinks holding hands is dirty.

The women that were on our team are nothing like either of these ridiculous caricatures.   They are beautiful, stylish, funny and warm.   Most importantly, they too were willing to work hard, in intense heat, fighting stomach problems and with no complaints.  Not a SINGLE one.

In a time where many women choose to  emulate the outlandish and  unattractive behavior showcased on reality shows or Chelsea Handler, these women courageously stand apart.  Each of them truly personifies the  Proverbs 31 woman.  Especially my lovely wife Brittany.   (No offense ladies)  I have grown to love my sisters.  All them are special and I was honored to get to know them better over the course of this trip.

Where in the world did these people come from?   Why are they willing to spend their time, their money and their bodies for people they’ve never met.  The Lord taught me what the church is on this trip.   The bible teaches that we (believers) are the body of Christ.   That’s what these people have in common.   That’s why they act the way they do.  They come at life from a different perspective than unbelievers.   Left to our own, the men and women of our team would be just like everyone I saw in Vegas. They would be chasing contentment in various worthless things, just like I did. 

Instead, they have Jesus.  Through them, Jesus works to meet the needs of the poor and widowed and the orphans.  Through them Jesus works to draw others to himself.  Through him they get to participate in Jesus’ mission to change hearts.

Thank you so much to my Movement family.  Thanks for making me feel at home and for teaching me so much on this trip.