One Sunday when I was a sophomore in high school, our pastor gave a sermon on baptism and invited people to come forward. My parents had not made an issue of the ordinance because they felt they had been baptized too young, and they wanted the decision to come from me. I went forward. As I knelt, my grandpa's hand came around my shoulder. It was a decision he had been praying I would make, though he hadn't ever mentioned it. My dad decided to be baptized again in the same service with me, and I remember several significant friends waiting their turns around the baptistry while I gave my testimony.

It was humbling for me to undergo something so physical in front of the whole church on a Sunday morning, something that left me wet and sputtering. It was also a moment of high commitment in front of my fathers. At the end of my testimony, I said, "I want everyone to know that I'm going to follow Christ for my whole life."

Later, I learned that some people took my statement as prideful.

I realized why they thought so -- my stomach tightening and my spine freezing at the memory of my tone of voice in speaking those words. I regretted sounding so pompous in front of several hundred people at an event I had wanted to honor the Lord. It was humiliating.

I was also angry. As poorly as my words came across, they had no guile. I meant what I said, and I understood as well as someone can at 16 that my commitment would have a price. I felt I had been willfully misunderstood by a group for which loftiness was a big negative. My feeling was (though the exact term wasn't in currency then), "Do I have to spin my own baptism?"

In Sunday's sermon, we saw Hannah's experience of being rebuked by Eli (1 Samuel 1). On top of her other humiliations, the high priest of Israel mistook her prayers for a drunken stupor. She shot back, "Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation."

Such destructive judgments can leave you hobbled by unbelief. When the people around you do not regard your searching for Christ as sincere, or worse, when they make accusations that are untrue, you can feel that your  pursuit of godliness makes your life worse rather than better. You can even feel that Christ is unreachable beyond the barrier of judgmentalism.

Some observations:

1. The admonition to ignore the people around you is not wise.

The cliché spouters would have you believe that "it doesn't matter what other people think," as if you can build a godly life in isolation.

It does matter what people think. We all know it matters, and there's no healthy way to ignore such judgments. When you get slapped with a label, you are driven to tear it off -- or to prove that it doesn't matter. You're lazy. You're too emotional. You're proud. Words like these can determine your whole strategy in life.

Hannah didn't ignore Eli judgment, as if she could rise above it. She confronted the priest's assumptions.

How can you do the same?

2. The ability to sift a speck of gold out of a pan full of mud is worth having.

I have learned a great deal from criticism, even when it's unjust. When my baptism testimony sounded proud to some, I tried to see what they saw, and hear what they heard. I tried to hear my voice without the affirmation of my emotions.

I began the arduous work -- as yet incomplete -- of finding tones that match my best intentions instead of expressing my strongest feelings.

But I learned something far more important from the blow: I can stand back from myself and evaluate. I am not imprisoned in my own point of view. Over time, this realization has given me confidence.

3. The way to deal rightly with judgmental people is to draw near to a gracious God.

Hannah chose to trust God more than God's representative. Her demand that Eli not consider her worthless was linked tellingly to her declaration, "I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord." Her sense of worth came from the fact that the Lord listened to her. She had, in other words, a relationship that trumped Eli's claims.

Nowhere is a high view of God more powerful than in nurturing a healthy view of ourselves. When individuals cultivate a deep fellowship with him -- that is, when Christ ceases to be a scorekeeper and becomes a coach -- they are able to escape the talons of others' manipulation and anger.

Small gods make small people. The living God makes large people.

4. Having seen the destructive power of reactive judgment, double-check the way you use your own influence.

Are you Eli too?

There is the poison in the pomposity I am still learning to discard.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFMcBMqE6mQ] Here is a violin master performing the Scherzo by Johannes Brahms. There are several things I respond to in Oistrakh's playing.

For starters, Oistrakh played at a time when art music didn't have to be sold. He played with a disregard for the audience that I find healthy, as opposed to camera-oriented attitude that classical performers apparently have to have today. I accept the necessity of marketing in the arts now. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

I love the economy and potency of Oistrakh's movements. I love the straightforward reading he gives here: not a lot of fooling with the tempo. And I think Brahms left us an compelling little piece.

But it's Oistrakh's tone that knocks me over. It is focused, clear, deep, and gutsy. And he uses changes of tone color and vibrato to express harmonic and melodic subtleties. Check out the change of sound he makes by lightening the bow toward the end of the second theme (1:40).

It's also comforting to know that the violin gods sweat.

I have always been partial to intimate media -- such gems as art songs, strings quartets, and drawings. I am quickly absorbed.

In part, my love of drawings comes from childhood. My dad's charcoal drawings always hung in our home when I was small, and for me his draftsmanship had a definite voice. There is also the pleasure of good paper, the tactile interest of which I began to enjoy early. Though it might seem strange, I was also taken with the colors of drawings as boy. The browns, occasional reds, and blacks I found to be not austere but warm.

Now, most of all, I enjoy the power of simple and spare compositions.

This drawing is a favorite. The design books tell me that the horizontal lines create a calm atmosphere. I sense a gentle flow toward the right of this picture. And I especially like the ease with which Rembrandt moves my eye from the darker foreground to the actual focal point of the composition, the lighter and more distant boat.

MER Christianity has changed, as you can see, not only to a new design but to a new focus. A tritone is a dissonant interval of three whole tones, an interval that needs resolution. My new focus is on the Christian life as it is lived in the tensions of society, thought, and the arts. I will post more items each week, and cover a little more territory than just the subculture of evangelicalism. More to come ...

My sermon on Sunday explored the connection between ignorance of God and unbelief. When God's people don't know his history, his promises, and the worldview he instantiates in the Bible, they cannot have confidence in him. In their worship, God becomes a mystery guest. The broad ignorance of American evangelicals about the faith they claim is well-documented. But I have many questions. Specifically, what kind of ignorance are we facing? In order to have abiding faith in God, what should evangelicals learn? And how?

Many have decried evangelicals' biblical illiteracy, which I have seen all too often. Once, at a banquet where I'd been invited to speak, I was seated next to a woman who'd been highly involved at the host church. She told me about a T.V. movie she had seen: a young man in olden times was sold into slavery by his own brothers, was taken to a foreign country, even wound up in prison, but eventually became the nation's ruler. The movie was really exciting, she said, adding brightly, "And it was based on a true story!"

There is, beyond this, a lack of doctrinal knowledge. People no longer learn a system of teaching about the faith, a biblically derived intellectual framework. Some even attack doctrine as a hindrance to faith.

Further, people lack a knowledge of devotional disciplines, which the spiritual formation movement now aims to teach. Further yet, there is a broad decline in practical family skills like parenting, budgeting, and communication -- skills that used to be inherited but now have to be taught.

All these species of ignorance populate evangelical pews. Churches are filled with men and women who are confident socially -- who smile and laugh with their friends, and who are eager to be involved in activities. Many of the people have confident political views as well. But let God become the sole focus of conversation, and their eyes show a certain retreat, a vulnerability and wariness.

So, what are we dealing with?

First, we are oppressed not such much by individual ignorance as by cultural ignorance. Regardless of what individuals may or may not know, communities don't know enough. People do not have a large enough fund of shared knowledge.

Cultural knowledge is, as the rhyming preachers say, caught not taught. It is gained in the rhythms of a way of life. A person learns the story of Joseph deeply -- learns Joseph's traumas, learns his importance, learns the Lord's providence in his life -- not because she hears about him in a class, but because in her church Joseph is still alive. He is a constant reference point, an icon of God's faithfulness in human suffering. Joseph is shared.

Cultural knowledge is not fully conscious. The bulk of it is prejudicial. It is not theoretical or abstract, but instantiated. It is not even coherent, in the sense that the community has fully untangled all its paradoxes. Cultural knowledge is gut-level.

Which leads to a second point: evangelical ignorance is not merely a dearth of facts but of emotion. Evangelicals do not recognize the significance of the Bible, of doctrine, of devotional and practical godliness -- recognize the significance at gut-level. Spiritual realities leave them unmoved.

When people do not have shared knowledge, they do not feel deeply enough.

A Christian way of life in America has been lost. Its rhythms of community are loose, and its shared symbols are neglected or sentimentalized. For a long time now, evangelicalism has been a parasite on consumerism, having little vitality or nourishment on its own. This is why evangelicals become wary when they're confronted with God himself. They do not share him; they share worldliness.

Pastors have been frantically trying to replace cultural knowledge with mere training. Give the people more facts, more tools, more tips.

In particular, pastors have been trying to make applications of biblical knowledge using generalizations. Joseph's story isn't "practical enough" as Genesis narrates it. In order to become "practical," the man Joseph has to be atomized into a series of "principles" that can be "applied" to "real situations in your life." So, keep a good attitude in hardship. Always do your best, whether you're in prison or in power. Just like Joseph in olden times. See ya next week.

This training approach is not necessarily wrong. But it won't educate the kind of ignorance we face: it won't build up a community's shared knowledge. It won't train people's guts.

If evangelicals are going to believe God deeply again, the preacher will need to address his own ignorance. He will need to explore how the Bible instantiates truth artistically -- through poems, narratives, and, yes, sermons. He will need to find how he can instantiate the same truth, bringing the Bible's instances to life with such specificity and detail that no one can ignore the implications. He will need to recover a sense of drama with God as the central character, not human beings.

In other words, evangelical ignorance results from the emotional detachment of evangelical preachers.

Early in 2007 I went to a writers conference in Colorado Springs, the home base of Ted Haggard. Haggard was supposed to have been a headliner at the conference, but a couple months prior he had become a headliner in a less positive way: he had resigned from his megachurch and from the presidency of the National Association of Evangelicals because of drug use and sexual immorality. Though he was not speaking at the conference, he haunted it.

At most meals, conversation discovered members of New Life, where he had been pastor, and gingerly probed them, finding them in various stages of anger and sorrow -- and also defensiveness. One man of Calvinistic views and Socratic habits, whose method I had the misfortune to witness over dinner, peered at a New Lifer through heavy glasses and questioned whether Pentecostalism had been the real cause of Haggard's fall.

The hardy soul under interrogation insisted New Life was going to be just fine.

In this buzz, I happened to be pitching a novel about pastoral deceit (since published as Fallen). I took it to a mentor for some feedback, an editor who lives in Colorado Springs, and after reading the first couple of pages he mused about the lightning chain of people he had witnessed saying to each other on the day Haggard fell, "Have you heard about Ted?"

Colorado Springs had been haunted for months.

It is not free yet. Two weeks ago, an article reported that Haggard was back, not at New Life, but at a church in Illinois. What are we to think about his return to preaching? The piece sampled many reactions, three of which made me realize something about the nature of unbelief among Christians.

Start with H.B. London of Focus on the Family -- a faithful man who is devoted to restoring fallen pastors, and who had been helping with Haggard's restoration. The article summarizes his view: "a return to vocational ministry in less than four or five years would be dangerous." Then London is quoted as saying, "To sit on the sidelines for a person with [Haggard's] personality and gifting is probably like being paralyzed. If Mr. Haggard and others like him feel like they have a call from God, they rationalize that their behavior does not change that call."

That kind of personality and gifting. He's wired to lead. You can see why he rationalizes his return, but . . . it's dangerous.

A negative assessment majoring on compassion. London's emphasis probably isn't reflected accurately by the article, but I wonder why the nod toward Haggard's charisma and talent is needed at all, and why his return would be dangerous rather than completely unjustified.

The statements seem tempered. What I think ought to be sharp edges of principled reasoning are blunted. As reported, they are weak.

A second reaction comes from Leo Godzich, who has met with Haggard weekly as part of the restoration process. "If all men are honest," he says, "all men are liars and deceivers. Once someone is gifted and called, that is something they generally cannot escape. . . . True redemption occurs when someone is fulfilling a destiny and purpose in their life."

Those sentences almost made me blow out a swig of coffee.

1. The doctrine of moral equivalence: all men are Haggard. Hit the gong. Not all men have systematically deceived their wives, their children, their associates, their subordinates, their boards, their constituents, and the public at large in order to cover up their behavior.

2. The notion of calling: Haggard "cannot escape" his "destiny." Get the hook and yank Godzich offstage. There's a substantial difference between "not escaping" and renewed self-promotion.

3. The new salvation: "true redemption" as fulfilling your purpose. It's trapdoor time for Leo. Down to the dungeon. True redemption is actually the forgiveness of sin, not the fulfillment of a calling that is very much in question.

This is the perversion of principles to fit a man.

A third reaction comes from the Illinois pastor who invited Haggard to preach. Chris Byrd says, "I had confidence his heart was solid, his theology is sound and the message he's always brought to the body of Christ would come forth." By what standard was Byrd confident that Haggard's heart was solid?Why should I be confident Haggard's theology is sound? On Byrd's say-so?

This is the substitution of pious avowals for discernment, again because of partiality to a man.

I constantly encounter people whose faith in Christ is in crisis. The reason is always the same: their relationships are entangled in unconfessed, unrepented sin. Sometimes the sin is their own; often it belongs to others. In order to salvage these relationships, they want to give and receive compassion. They want to have the space to change, and they want to give that space to others.

They are dancing a minuet of mercy with their partners. To keep the dance going, they have to keep Christ from cutting in. They have to redefine sin, broaden righteousness, and avoid judgment. But after years of giving and receiving vague compassion, they have relationships haunted by destruction. And when their rationalizations no longer give comfort, they want Christ to wave his magic wand and do a "work of transformation" -- which he won't do on such terms.

This is an anatomy of unbelief today.

In all likelihood, many New Lifers from that haunted 2007 conference have learned something about true redemption -- that sin, righteousness, and judgment will not be redefined by partiality, and that forgiveness is a sharp tool for healing.

My prayer is that they've gained a gospel worth believing.

Sermon audio (11-16-08): How To Pray For Our Region Much of the deadness of evangelicalism today traces to an uncomfortable fact: it is often a religion of mere words.

Families go to church, singing, speaking, and listening to waterfalls of words, but after the families return home, their lives do not change. Christians read page after page of words. They listen to still more words on the radio. They surf blogs to find more words yet. But the words have at best a momentary impact.

Sometimes the words themselves are solid. Faith is an ancient term describing a real action of reposing confidence in God, and when the term is paired with a definite article, the faith, it describes a real system of thought. But if a Christian uses such terms without reverence for the realities they describe, he will become more insensitive to truth. Solid words can't be thrown around without danger.

More often, the words are not solid, but squishy. Christian preaching, writing, and conversation reek of clichés, piles of vain phrases that stink up the mind's moldy corners. Let go is an imperative that can be obeyed with reference to dollars, ropes, and Eggo waffles. Let go and let God cannot be obeyed because it cannot be understood. Let go of what, exactly?

There are two words today that seem to have become poisonous: ought and should. They both express obligations. "I ought to read my Bible." "You should witness to your friends." But they also give a tacit qualification: should, ought to, but won't. These two words now express primarily guilt and yearning.

The spirituality of ought and should is what many Christians live out, a religion of mere words that presses condemnation deeper into the conscience without any hope of redemption. The biblical term for this state is unbelief.

How can a person be raised from such a death?

The only answer is prayer. Concerning which, some semi-random thoughts:

1. The realization that faith and unbelief describe the two roads of ultimate human destiny can be a powerful motivation to seek God. It's a realization that can move you from yearning to doing. It suggests danger and possibility at the same time -- the danger of unbelief, and the possibilities latent in prayer.

2. Here is a discipline that can revolutionize your prayers. Treat each word you say to people as if it were a promise. Treating your words as promises means screening out flippancy, evasion, inaccuracy, and lies, and placing sincerity, justice, and simple accuracy into your speech. This is a recognition that others depend on your words.

What is the connection between this discipline and prayer?

I think you'll find a strange dynamic begin once you weigh your every word. You start seeking God's wisdom, consulting him in real time. You start organizing your biblical knowledge for application, for quick mental retrieval, and you start asking God for his priorities in each situation. In short, you start to pray.

What I have just written may seem strange. But it works.

3. A high view of God can draw your prayers upward. If you view Jesus Christ as royal, unstoppable, and intimately engaged with everything that happens in this world, then your mind will be drawn toward him irresistably. This is the view of God behind statements like Colossians 3.1: "If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God."

The religion of mere words has a view of God that is low. God is not royal, but remote. Far from being unstoppable, God seems hindered by our inability to do his will. Far from feeling his engagement in the world, we seem unable to hold his interest.

To be raised up from dead spirituality, we have to exchange our mute idol -- an abstract, cool deity -- for the living God. The God of the Bible listens to us and knows us. That is why Jesus taught (Matthew 6.7-8), "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this . . ."

Sermon audio (11-9-08): The Blind Man Finally Sees The ongoing furor over Proposition 8 -- the successful California initiative banning same-sex marriage -- heats up the question of how churches should relate to society in general and governments in particular. The intensified hostility against evangelicals, pointedly expressed on picket lines and in court rooms, is focusing believers' minds up and down the state.

In our church, we have just finished studying the man born blind in John 9, the beggar who stood alone against the rulers. What are the potential applications of his example in today's California? Will Christians face persecution because of their stand on marriage? More broadly, how does the New Testament portray the relationship between 1st century Christians and the societies in which they lived?

Some not entirely random observations, starting with the broadest issue:

1. The culture portrayed in the New Testament was diverse, and idolatry and sexual immorality were mainstream, institutionalized fixtures.

Roman society had many gods, with cultic practices that varied from city to city. The idolatry permeated civic and social interactions, and no Christian could escape direct contact with it (1 Corinthians 8-10). Places such as Corinth and Ephesus were notorious, but not unusual, for their public sexuality. In 1 Corinthians, Paul dealt with the impact of this immorality on the church, issues like which sexual relationships were legal and illegal, and the common use of temple prostitutes (1 Corinthians 5:1-2; 6:12-20).

The New Testament commands Christians to look after their own purity in sex and worship. It nowhere commands them to legislate Jesus Christ as the official God of their cities, or to pass laws that reflect biblical standards. Cultural and economic upheaval is anticipated as more people follow Christ, but only as a secondary consequence of Christ's power, not as a result of direct agitation by Christians (Acts 19:21-41).

2. Christianity in the New Testament was an urban phenomenon. The apostles went from city to city, and the gospel thrived in the hustle of commerce and the competition among new ideas. Indeed, the fact that ethnic and religious identities were softened by so much cultural interaction was a major opening for the news that a Jew had died for the whole world.

3. We are living in the decaying civilization called Christendom, an accumulation of habits, institutions, and modes of thought rooted in Athens and Jerusalem. This era of decay is a monumental time in Western civilization, at the end of which a new collection of cultures will emerge with ethics, religions, and polities that are not entirely foreseeable now. In the sweep of human history, this process is normal. The Bible records many such shifts.

California is not at the leading edge of this transition. Europe is.

4. The end of Christendom is not something to celebrate.

The decay of old habits and institutions is destabilizing and even corrupting. The cynicism and decadence that we find everywhere now are signs of selfish and purposeless living, not signs of intellectual vitality. When a simple virtue like gratitude for our cultural inheritance is held up to scorn, we can be assured that other personal disciplines like courage, integrity, and fidelity have long since passed.

Declining to throw a party over the end of Christendom is not a sign of cultural arrogance. It is simple realism. All cultural decay, at all times, and in all places leads to moral confusion.

5. The fight to preserve Christendom is misguided.

Same-sex marriage is not the tipping point in the demise of Christendom. That point was passed long, long ago. (World War I might be a good candidate.) As much as we may mourn at the grave of our heritage, it is not a sign of health to try and dig up the corpse.

Again, Christians who mourn the loss of what was good in our inheritance are not wrong. But, as they mourn, they need to do the day's work. The end of governments founded on broadly Christian notions is an opportunity to change what Christendom built in error -- specifically, we can now detach the spiritual from the political.

6. Christianity can thrive in California.

Our context is more like the first century than the nineteenth, more like the societies in which Christian faith exploded than those in which it was dying. The predictions of the death of the faith in California are foolish. There is nothing happening now that hasn't constituted an opportunity for believers in the past. The faith may indeed die out here, but if it does, it will not be the result of unstoppable external forces. It will die because Christians stop believing.

7. Christians can now thrive if they will think of themselves more like the beggar in John 9 than the rulers.

Evangelicals project a sense of ownership in American society, ownership that is at best debatable and probably specious. Their populist calls to arms are all based on the planted axiom that the rightful authorities have been usurped. This is the wrong posture. We face a confident and established culture of secular priorities. The unbelievers rule. Let's be the beggars.

The beggar's individual integrity is more powerful than collective activism. His first-hand testimony about Jesus Christ is more potent than arguments about the shape of social institutions. And the beggar's suffering is for one cause and one only: the name of Jesus Christ.

I'll put it differently. When each Christian in California has the simplicity and tenacity for Christ that the man born blind had, we won't worry any longer about the death of our traditions. We will be at the beginning of a Christian counterculture.

Sermon audio (11-2-08): Simple and Stubborn On Sunday evenings at our church, I lead a Q & A session about the morning's sermon. Last Sunday, with Barack Obama haunting the auditorium, we discussed the man born blind in John 9, and the challenge of bearing witness to Christ now. A key point in the sermon (audio above) had been that the beggar was a great model: when under pressure, just repeat what you have directly seen Christ do in your life.

One question responded to that point, and got close to the heart of why I did this series on individuality in Christ.

Bob the logger noted his charismatic upbringing, from which he learned not to take people's testimonies about Jesus seriously. He said that, because of the sensationalism he saw among pentecostals, he has not talked much about his personal relationship with Christ, using objective arguments that apply beyond subjective experiences instead.

Was I saying that he should reverse course? Should he talk about his personal experiences without worrying about universals, logic, or principles? Isn't that a surrender to postmodern thinking? (Our loggers are well-read, in case you're wondering.)

Three observations:

1. The death of reason has been greatly exaggerated. Reasoning has merely changed focus.

Many fear that the postmodern person uses experience as a substitute for logic, that the only thing she respects is emotion. I haven't found this to be the case. Rather, I find that the postmodern person is rightly suspicious of extravagant claims, having once believed too many scientific studies that were biased, too many news reports that served an agenda, and too many experts who were paid to bluff the uninitiated.

Postmodern people will listen carefully to any argument that splices together from many points of view a picture in 3-D. They know that reality is complex, and that we are too easily faked out by our narrow perceptions. And they are right to raise the bar on claims to objectivity.

2. Younger Christians' apologetical shift from propositional arguments to personal experience reflects postmodern suspicion. But their reflection is inarticulate and potentially dangerous.

It's one thing to accept the postmodern challenge to show the truth of Christ from many points of view. This acceptance deals with our culture as it actually is, without compromising the Bible's radical claims. But it's quite another thing to abandon the truth of Christ, saying instead that all points of view are equally valid. While this approach certainly deals with our culture as it is, the approach does so only through capitulation.

I believe Christians can shift the focus of their reasoning without compromise, but only with careful thought about what they are doing and why. To wit . . .

3. In John's Gospel, the argument for the truth of Christ is not being made by believers but by the Lord.

The logic of the Gospel of John is founded on the testimony of individual witnesses, and the book is written with the density of a legal narrative. Each witness gives distinct and specific testimony, establishing distinct and specific facts. No single witness proves the entire case, but all of them taken together do prove it. The person who deploys all the witnesses to make his argument is Christ himself.

For example, John the Baptist comes as a witness to the light (1.6-8). His testimony is that he saw the Spirit descend on Jesus at his baptism, just as God had told him (1.31-34). "And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God." Jesus later cites John the Baptist's testimony (5.31-35). "You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth." John the Baptist was part of Jesus' larger argument. John delivered one authentic point of view.

The beggar in chapter 9 is another example. Jesus says (9.3) that the man was born blind "that the works of God might be displayed in him." The healing of the man's sight was only the warm-up for that display; the main event consisted of the beggar telling the same story about Jesus repeatedly, and insisting (9.25), "One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." From his unique point of view, the beggar was able to conclude, "If this man [Jesus] were not from God, he could do nothing."

With the ascendancy of Obama and the diverse, postmodern culture he represents, many Christians will look more frantically for killer arguments. They will want to prove the morality of the Bible and the claims of Christ within the terms of philosophy, science, and especially social science. But they will fail to find these arguments -- fail in the sense that they will not persuade the unbeliever, no matter how incisive their arguments may be.

What you can do now is just what Bob the logger suggested with his question. Reverse course. Instead of using a lingo of proof that rightly arouses people's suspicions, you can speak from within your own point of view, describing what Christ has done for you. You can put your testimony in the context of what God says in the Bible. And you can do this without fear of compromising the truth.

God will make his own case, deploying your testimony just as he deployed the beggar's. We are God's witnesses, giving testimony under pressure, as the Holy Spirit persuades the world of the Gospel (15.26-16.11).

In other words, in the culture we now face, it has never been more important for you to reflect the light of Jesus Christ as an individual.

Sermon audio (10-26-08): Aggression Against Christ In You Last week, I received an email with a video claiming that a Massachusetts man went to jail for protesting pro-gay material that his son was given in public kindergarten. The video was produced by the Family Research Council (FRC), and was sent up and down California by the American Family Association (AFA). It interested me because of the defiant beggar we are studying at our church these days (audio above).

Let's score it.

First, I'll make a distinction. I am discussing the way this story is told by the video's producers, the FRC. The Parkers, the couple featured in the video, will have said many things in the process of making it, only a few of which the producers kept in the presentation. So I am focused on the decisions made by the producers, and by those who distributed the video.

Start with the email that went out from the AFA. The subject line was, "A father goes to jail to protect his son." That was written to be scary. The implicit claim is that if one father is arrested then others will be too. The explicit claim is that the father was arrested was "to protect his son." If those claims are true, then the subject line is scary for a good reason. If not ...

Move to the video's music. The sad and scary sound of the introductory music sets an ominous atmosphere for the story. It's a not very subtle technique that lowers the video's tone to that of a tabloid piece or a negative political ad.

The narration of the story is calm. For the beginning, the producers seem to have made the sensible decision to let the facts of what the Parkers' son encountered speak for themselves. He was given a book making a positive portrayal of a homosexual household. The producers show the Parkers expressing shock that they were not informed about this book in advance, but their point of view comes across without melodrama.

So far, while I am bothered by the tabloid gimmick telling me what to feel, the video lays out its case in a defensible way. It asserts that if same-sex marriage is legal then teaching about it will come in public schools, regardless of parents' views. This is a reasonable assertion, and the tone and content of the video up to this point are consistent with it.

But the story abruptly lurches toward a shocker ending, as the subject line of the email and the tabloid gimmick announced it would do. Mr. Parker demanded an assurance from a school administrator that he would be notified before any more teaching about homosexuality, adding that until he received such an assurance he would not leave the school.

The producers show Mr. Parker saying that he was arrested, and they juxtapose comments from Mr. and Mrs. Parker making the clear assertion that he was arrested for demanding his parental rights. The producers show Mr. Parker describing the small filthy cell, and they show him breaking down. Then they switch to a voice-over of Mr. Parker giving a call to arms.

The video, in other words, tips from a reasonable assertion to a shocking one, an assertion that totalitarians run Massachusetts. If indeed a school administrator had Mr. Parker arrested for demanding parental rights -- for using his rights to free speech -- then we have a clear case of tyranny.

So what about that claim?

Here is the Boston Globe story on the incident. "David Parker was arrested for trespassing ... when he refused to leave the building until school officials promised to give him prior notification of their use of books that include homosexual characters." Arrested for trespassing.

Contrast the story on WorldNetDaily. "The dispute grabbed headlines when Parker, on April 27, 2005, was arrested and thrown in jail by school officials over his insistence on being notified regarding his son in kindergarten being taught about homosexual relationships by adults." Thrown in jail because of the gay agenda.

You're the administrator. The guy in your office escalates a disagreement by saying that he will not leave the facility until you give him what he demands. At this moment, what's the issue? And what's your decision? In an era of random school violence that has been the subject of planning and training at all levels for at least a decade, your decision is open-and-shut. He does not have the right to make that threat.

The score is: Boston Globe -- 1, FRC/AFA/WND -- 0. Whatever value the video might've had in warning Californians about the probable consequences of the failure of Prop 8 is undermined by the producers' fatal overreach. This was not a case of state aggression, but of civil disobedience. If you are a victim of state aggression, you get thrown in jail against your will. If you protest through civil disobedience, you have announced that going to jail is your intention.

Mr. Parker may make this clear when he speaks without producers editing his statements. (He comes close to doing so at one point in the video itself.) What dismays me about this video is the willingness of the producers and the activists to exploit such an incident for no other purpose than fear-mongering.

When did Christian leaders decide that propaganda was okay?

Sermon audio (10-19-08): Opposition to Christ in You Yeah, I know: it ain't over til the fat lady sings. Obama isn't elected yet. McCain could still pull an upset.

But nothing changes the fact that our country is headed for an acrimonious reckoning. The name Obama itself reflects the depth of the nation's divisions. About half the country is convinced he'll redeem America, and about half thinks he'll turn us into France. Americans are in the habit of getting pretty worked up over presidential candidates, but this year is special.

Consider a few flash-points.

Many Republicans are angry over the media's investigations of Joe the plumber. At National Review Online on Monday, Byron York reported from a McCain rally where the spectators were holding up signs like "Phil the Bricklayer" and "Rose the Teacher." The encounters between such people and reporters quickly escalated. One man said to reporters, "I support McCain, but I’ve come to face you guys because I’m disgusted with you guys." Many see themselves as persecuted.

On his Monday radio show, Sean Hannity interviewed a girl who was called a racist for wearing a McCain T-shirt to school. Her parents complained that the teachers and administrators had done nothing. More persecution.

Sarah Palin continues to divide not only the country in general but conservatives in particular. George Will, David Brooks, and Peggy Noonan have earned the ire of the grassroots right for their rejection of her populism. The ire is expressed along class lines, that these are fake conservatives because they are intellectuals, members of the media elite who look down their noses at common folk. Persecution from turncoats.

In California, the portents of an Obama victory combined with a victory for gay marriage against Proposition 8 are giving many evangelicals nightmares about totalitarian judges taking away their religious freedom. Persecution from government bureaucrats.

This election is defined less along the lines of economics, philosophy, or even race than those of class and culture. From the grassroots conservative point of view, it's Walmart against Wall Street, blue collar against white, Western Pennsylvania against San Francisco. It's Obama against Palin.

Evangelicals have spent decades confusing political causes with the cause of Christ. I have written at length about their populism and resentment, characteristics that mix a particular American identity -- predominantly rural and suburban, middle class, and conservative -- with godliness and truth. This year, many evangelicals fervently hope that populist anger will carry McCain to victory.

I think evangelicals are at a watershed.

If they invest their passion into being Sam's Club Republicans, into retaining the consumer culture that "made America great," and if they continue to link their faith in Christ and their political views, then they will be deluded about this year's reckoning.

They will interpret a McCain victory as some divine approval of their way of life, and will ignore the role their own immorality has played in the nation's decline. Conversely, they will interpret an Obama victory as the beginning of the persecution of the common American, stoking the fires of their resentment even hotter.

Neither response will advance the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, but merely intensify the acrimony.

But if evangelicals invest their passion into being Jesus' followers, into showing his grace and truth in their relationships, then they will see this year's election for what it is -- an opportunity. This is our chance to demonstrate that we care more about displaying Christ's glory than about displaying America's.

Many of the evangelicals I know are determined to make Christ the issue in their lives. They are taking steps to glorify him in their marriages, in the nurturing of their children, in their personal devotion to the scriptures and prayer, and in simple integrity. These believers understand how the sins of God's people are more significant causes of America's spiritual death than the sins of non-Christians. They also understand that their process of repentance will be full of suffering.

But they voice their sense of peace that Christ will turn them into unique expressions of his love, and that their individuality in him will become a clear, strong message of the gospel. They know that any opposition they get for displaying Christ is not opposition to their social status, or their political views, or their economic aspirations, but is the same opposition that Christ himself got when he was on earth. And they know that Christ can overcome that opposition.

To advance Christ's Kingdom, evangelicals must take one course or the other, the political or the spiritual. And the political course has demonstrably failed.

I am convinced that devotion to Jesus will help us avoid putting hope in a McCain administration, and that such devotion is the only way to face our more likely future, the age of Obama, without acrimony.

Bach plays loud above a-rhythmic freeway groansand jerk and gun shifts of shiny metal hulls, coffee in paper cups, sleep edged with thought, bodies within bodies, slaves of slaves.

Pop-rock plays sedation when florescents buzz and black phones swarm like angry bees spinning aggression from hive instinct. The office man yawns, the office girl grins and pop rock plays a love song none contend yet all believe.

But Bach plays loud a second world once heard never again possible to ignore. When a soul through a medium a hundred years old breathes a pitch that vibrates the spheres and builds the release of up looking down, I see aggression like cars-silent objects moving- and in the void I find that world still marked and living.

Pop-rock chastises imagination and straps with silk, black bands the erotic pulse to the image bed- get me home, get me laid, get me money, I'll be ok. Pop-rock sings a sex dirge where the stifled cubicle births a bored frustration.

But Bach plays loud above a-rhythmic freeway groans and jerk and gun shifts of shiny metal hulls. We close our eyes, we frantic speed. We sensual blind, we dream of dead stopping. Coffee back in paper cup, thought edged with sleep, body within body, slave of slave, I am ready to cut these weights and fly.

Sermon audio (10-12-08): Your Experience Matches Jesus I believe there are two problems in American spirituality today.

First, each person now has permission to be selfish. Our society encourages people to think, "Nothing is significant unless it matters to me." This selfishness has shrunk relationships, ethics, and even the worship of God to matters of convenience and preference, rather than leaving them as matters of right and wrong.

Second, our culture of conformity has suffocated individuality. A person seems to have no place in our society unless he lines himself up with a demographic profile. We are forced as never before to think in terms of self-presentation, whether on our Facebook page, in our professional attire, or in our speech patterns. How I appear is who I am -- no eccentricity allowed. This has meant the decline of personal uniqueness, a measure of how much we value the image of God.

The two problems are paradoxical. How can we see the growth of selfishness and the death of individuality at the same time?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian writer, was the greatest spokesman for individualism in the 20th century. He survived a term in the Soviet Gulag, writing the experiences of his fellow inmates on scraps of paper that he buried in bottles for later retrieval. In 1974, he was exiled from the Soviet Union and he moved to America. He gave a speech at Harvard on June 8, 1978 in which he described Western culture in America from an outsider's point of view.

He sketched the selfishness of the consumer society. "The majority of people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about. It has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, leaving them to physical splendor, happiness, possession of material goods, money, and leisure, to an almost unlimited freedom of enjoyment."

Yet Solzhenitsyn found the happiness of the selfish consumer shallow and even degrading. He spoke of the cold war against communism: "The forces of Evil have begun their offensive; you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?"

American society, though it was wealthy, was not the model Solzhenitsyn prescribed for his own people. "After the suffering of many years of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music."

There was a difference between the experiences of East and West. In contrast to the conformity produced by Western ease, the East, under the continual burden of oppression and death, produced deep individuality. "Life's complexity and mortal weight," he said, "have produced stronger, deeper, and more interesting characters than those generally [produced] by standardized Western well-being."

He saw conformity in all areas of American life, even in the most prestigious places in academia, like Harvard. "Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people giving their contribution to public life."

So how did Solzhenitsyn account for this paradox, the simultaneous growth of selfishness and death of individuality?

He said that the "prevailing Western view of the world" is "humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists."

The reason human beings become selfish and conformist is because they refuse to serve God.

Individuality in Christ, such as we are studying in John 9 with the example of the man born blind, allows a person's uniqueness to flower without allowing his selfishness to inflate. As we saw on Sunday (audio at the top), the man's sufferings after his healing began to match the sufferings of his Healer. In that fellowship of "life's complexity and mortal weight" with Jesus, the beggar showed a deep dissent from the authority of the world, and a deep submission to the authority of Jesus at the same time.

If we want to solve today's two spiritual problems, we have to strike at their common root, as Solzhenitsyn did thirty years ago in his speech that defied the groupthink at Harvard. We have to subvert the perspective that refuses to rise above the human.

Jazz is the jagged edge,so give me the beautiful cloth, not for edges or beauties but for threads making patterns whose colors interplay to the cut-off sharp.

Building sweetly is rarely heard, so give me dissonance that punctures the dream ahead we make when behind is blind. Hardly ever we see fully into either, and beauty is not completely born yet of frailty something beautiful.

Arguers are never solved, so give me agreers who disagree, revelers and punchy diggers who regard the soft under-belly of pose as a mother regards her child's will. They gently abuse their armor to shreds and fall tender at the tough tissue of heart.

Few things consist, so let the contradictions praise the consistent. The blind man cannot see, so let him tell of colors hidden in night. The deaf man cannot hear, so let him describe the timbre's subtle change of pain. The mute man cannot speak, so let him sign what we do not say. The dead man cannot live so let his dry bones moisten at the rain brought him by the wind.

Jazz is the jagged edge, so give me the beautiful cloth because the cloth is whole. The eyes below do not see as the Head above. So when the Head is stated, I never fear the abstractions. I already know the truth.

Sermon audio (October 5, 2008): Jesus Invades Your Experience The other day, I was riding with our old Dutch dairyman Pete in his massive red truck. Over the grinding of the diesel engine, we talked about today's young men, and Pete observed that they seem to take years to figure out who they are, and what they should be doing with their lives. "I see it over and over, even in good families. There's something missing in these guys."

His comment made me think of my three-year-old son Malcolm, a tough, thick-set package of nuclear energy. He knows what he wants and he lunges for it. He had wanted, for instance, a ride in Pete's red truck, thinking it was a fire engine, and he cried angry tears on my porch when we left. I wondered why our society dissipates boys' drive and potency, and what I need to do to ensure that Malcolm keeps a healthy sense of self and grows up strong.

The woes of boys are getting increasing comment these days, but the problem of the formless, unmotivated, needy self is everywhere. Many people seem to lack solid identities, to be unable to form healthy relationships, seem to drift from one thing to the next like so much channel-surfing through life.

In this context, a pastor's temptation is moralism. Every month or so, after surveying someone's personal wreckage, I think, "I really need to do a series on time management," or, "I've got to preach on financial priorities." I wonder whether I give enough "practical application," telling people what's what.

If moralism is a temptation as a pastor, it is doubly so as a father. It is enticing to think that I can build up my son's identity through his submission to my authority.

Moralistic preaching and parenting tries to rebuild crumbling boundaries using precepts. Thou shalt and Thou shalt not. If you allow entertainment to suck your time, then of course there won't be enough hours in the day for your responsibilities. Thou shalt turn off the T.V. If you blow your money on toys, restaurant food, and mortgage-backed securities, then of course you won't have a financial chair when the music stops. Thou shalt not go into debt.

But moralism has been the downfall of contemporary Christianity. The precepts of godly wisdom nurture life in those who already have life; but among the legions who do not, the Get a clue! method of preaching doesn't edify. The "practical applications" of moralism merely compound people's guilt.

Moralism has been the downfall of Christianity because it is not the gospel.

For the needy contemporary self, the only hope is God-focused individuality, the unique expression of God's glory in a reborn personality. As we are seeing in our series on the man born blind in John 9, Jesus himself has to invade a person's life, not merely to reset what a person does, but who a person is.

Consider an observation: Human beings cannot define themselves, but are only defined in relationship.

There are two common myths about the self. One is that you can be true to some wisdom or potential inside your personality, wisdom defined by you alone -- the Oprah storyline. The other is that you can improve yourself, work hard, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps -- the moralistic storyline. The two myths are equivalent in the sense that they both portray individuals having potential on their own.

Malcolm is growing up in a society that preaches these myths, and that requires him to invent himself according to one or the other, and sometimes both.

The reality is, Malcolm doesn't have any sense of self autonomously. His definition of who he is comes from his relationships -- and it always will. He learns about himself through the process of relating to me, to his mom, to his grandparents, to other adults in the community like Pete. His self-awareness as an adult will grow in the context of interaction. He defines himself in relationship.

If I surrender to the temptation of moralism, then I will raise Malcolm using precepts. I will portray Jesus as the person with high standards, who is forgiving of Malcolm's faults, but who is all too frequently "disappointed." Malcolm's relationship to this Jesus will teach him a sense of self that is sickened by failure.

This is not the Jesus of John 9, who heals the blind.

Jesus is Malcolm's creator, and designed Malcolm to display the works of God. All of Malcolm's traits have the potential to make God's glory visible. Because Malcolm has this potential, Jesus is invading his experiences. Jesus is not waiting for an invitation. Having paid for sin, and bringing new life with him, Jesus is able to slather Malcolm's eyes with mud and give him spiritual sight. As Malcolm is defined more and more by his interactions with Jesus, even Malcolm's limitations and faults will become visible marks of divine love.

The gospel calls for a new individuality in Christ, a uniqueness forged by loving relationship. The gospel resets who people are. I don't know if the passive, disappointed Jesus who is just waiting for people to be interested in him is the sole cause of today's unformed, unmotivated, needy self. There may be more causes than Christian moralism.

But I do know that what's missing from people today is Jesus himself.

And then there was no light.I fingered worn wood drawers- their racket open a cringe in ear, fumbled contents an echo in kitchen- for a dim protector of sight: flashlight like modernity's heirloom.

I stepped out to night of little distinction, color a nuance, shape a shade. A point of orange raging then still shows Ron smoking and his garage, I guess, open. An inclination of dark against luminescent stucco must be Madeline's hair sliding over the baby.

Sound steps in the grass. I jerk to my right. Moving in pixilated dim, a faint white smear. You out too? You out too? I believe we're neighbors by commonality's cold comfort. The white smear leaves. I'm alone on a dead road.

Back inside children clutch their toys and wide-eyed guide the beam. Midwives of the elemental, they search wavering corners for ghosts I've grown used.

Audio (September 28, 2008): Limitations You Would Never Choose I love the visual energy of the iPod ads that feature young Dionysians wired for sound and abandoned to their music.

But I don't love the spiritual energy. The ads express the dominant American religion of Self. I need to throw off restraints. Inside of me is a unique vitality that I should unleash, and if I can live in my own sonic space (courtesy of Apple) my ecstatic power will burst out.

The individuality in Christ that we are studying in John 9 is the opposite of iPod religion.

When Jesus passes a beggar born blind, the disciples ask him why the beggar is so disabled, so limited. Who sinned, the man or his parents, to bring such a doom upon him?

A pretty revealing question. The disciples assume that the beggar's suffering was caused by unrighteousness, an assumption for which they offer no evidence because they regard the blindness as evidence enough.

But they also seem to view the beggar's limitations as destroying his potential. What might he have become if it weren't for his or his parents' sin? For the disciples, potential value is all about personal power. In relation to the beggar, they see themselves as righteous and free. They have their sight, their ability to move around unaided, their ability to work for a living. Their powers are what make them vital, valuable individuals.

To be sure, the disciples feel the beggar's condition is tragic, but only from a speculative point of view.

Jesus does not see the beggar's limitations the same way. He teaches the disciples that the man's blindness was permitted so that "the works of God might be displayed in him." The man's potential, for Jesus, is not in capabilities. It's in limitations. The man's blindness and low status will offer a glimpse of God's power that will be uniquely valuable to the world.

In saying this, Jesus does not minimize the severity of the beggar's suffering. In fact, by healing the man's blindness, Jesus rebukes the darkness of this world that creates pain and loss.

But Jesus does see limitations as divine opportunities.

Consider this: the limitations around the beggar do not disappear once he is healed. They just morph. The authenticity of the man's experience is questioned by his neighbors, and he becomes a political target of the Pharisees. The man's own parents, though they acknowledge him as their son, refuse to affirm his story out of selfish fear.

In releasing the man from one set of limitations, Jesus leaves him in another set. The man is even more alone now than when he was blind.

Yet it is the man's solitude that displays God's glory for a second time, in an even greater way than the healing. The beggar's stubborn adherence to Jesus when no one else will support him speaks to us. "Whether [Jesus] is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." God uses a poor, illiterate man to rivet our attention and bolster our courage even after two thousand years. He uses the man's limitations.

According to Jesus, the limitations on your life are full of potential for God's glory. Your individuality in Christ is not just your advantages over other people, but is your whole person -- especially your suffering.

The iPod religion of throwing off restraints, living in your inner world, and releasing your Self, is a heresy against life. Life is limited. Those who want to live do not dissipate their powers in fantasy.

Instead of the Dionysian madness of fake freedom, Jesus gives us the Christian madness of real joy.

I start on a gurney's white-starched sheets and layhow he says and show what he asks and then his finger through tissue and fat digs to tension and hurt the pressure of healing.

I end to a world tilted off. Every sitting now is how do I sit? Every standing now is how do I stand? But joints can neither find comfort nor return where memory loses the force of habit.

I pray to pollutions like bottled little christs: please dissolve to block the bent structures of body- faith in alchemy through water and acid.

But pain is not the devil's servant. I swallow and yet it scrapes the vision of my proud pleasure. Pain is the finger of rebuke. Pain is the grip of love.

I started on starched-white sheets and waited for the healing to come. The healing came and the pain did not go, both.

I ended to a world tilted off, not able anymore to accommodate its slouch. I stand at a slant, my hip pinches me straight. I sit at a slump, my leg pains me walk. I walk head down passing the hidden in cowering formation of chemical ignoring while numbness spreads from the crimp in my spine. His finger is pointing. I raise my knowledge and pull straight my strength, stabbed out of groveling as if all these were merely flesh and bone.

For many Christians, individualism has become distasteful. The phrases American individualism or rugged individualism do not carry positive connotations anymore. The team player is now the epitome of godliness in churches -- the guy who doesn't make trouble. The person who goes it alone, who isn't swayed by majority opinion, who makes his or her own decisions based on inner-directed priorities is a difficult person, someone who needs to be teachable.

Which is to say, malleable.

When I was in seminary, individualism was the cultural trait blamed for the breakdown of community in local churches. People were just too independent. They didn't realize how much they needed each other.

I see similar themes among emergents, many of whom are searching for corporate identities to restore a sense of togetherness, and to discover a mission that is larger than self. For them, individualism is the beating heart of the consumer society, in which people take, use, and throw away without regard for their responsibilities.

I also hear a distaste for individualism among reformed evangelicals, who criticize a therapeutic gospel they see as too centered on the first-person singular. Self-esteem, the morphing of sin into addiction, the rationalizing of personal failings, they say, all come from a sick culture of self-love.

All of these perspectives target real problems. But they finger the wrong culprit.

In John 9, we get an extended look at a man whom Jesus heals of blindness. In almost every respect, this man is helpless: physically incapable of sight, economically destitute, socially outcast. Yet, after he is healed, we discover that he has one quality that raises him above the civil and religious rulers. He is able to stand alone. In the story, he will not yield to any form of pressure -- not to intimidation by his neighbors, nor to the status of the Pharisees, nor to the lack of support from his frightened parents, nor even to the formal punishment of excommunication.

In a new series of sermons, we will explore how Christ used this man's individuality to glorify the Father. In the process, we'll discover how individuality results from the unique way a person comes to identify with Jesus.

I believe one of the most important qualities a Christian can exhibit is uniqueness. Put another way, the greatest potential witness for the power of Christ is a Christian who refuses to conform, who does not give in to fear of what other people think. Like the man born blind, the Christian who can stand alone has the opportunity to reflect Christ's glory through a singular gem.

Churches should be nurturing individualism of this kind. It is characterized by a discerning conscience, a gut-level attachment to Christ and his power, and a willingness to stick out -- all qualities that we will unpack in this series.

To be sure, every Christian is called to the relational graces of love. The restraint of self in the interests of others is at the heart of Christian community. Those who practice self-indulgence in the name of individuality are missing the deep identification with Christ they should exhibit in their thoughts and actions.

But love is not the sum of people-pleasing flatteries.

The real culprit behind the breakdown of community, the loss of shared mission, and the growth of the self-esteem gospel is not individuality but consumerism.

The consumer measures goodness by how much can be bought for the lowest price. The Christian individualist measures goodness by how high a price Christ paid for him. The bottom line for the consumer is, "What's in it for me?" The bottom line for the Christian individualist is, "What's in it through me for Christ?" To find the safe bet, the wary consumer looks at what the majority does, but the Christian individualist looks only at what Christ does -- and sees no risk.

I don't think consumerism is individualistic at all. Consumerism is deeply conformist. If the bottom line is what's in it for me, then my assets had better be safe. And the safest thing is to be with the herd. Though we can't escape the refrain, "Be true to yourself," we see masses of people who dress the same, talk the same, listen to the same music, and drive the same cars.

For the consumer, the self to which he must be true is his demographic.

In this new series, then, we will explore the paradox that strong, healthy individuality is the expression of a life submitted to loving Christ. And I think we'll also stumble onto a greater paradox -- that strong individuality in Christ is the foundation for strong togetherness.

Here is the complete series. Sermon audio: Should a Christian Question Authority?

Sermon audio: Should a Christian Read Harry Potter?

Sermon audio: Should Faith Influence Politics?

Sermon audio: Should God Send People To Hell?

Sermon audio: Can We Live Like the Devil and Go To Heaven?

Sermon audio: Do Evangelicals Portray Jesus Accurately?