I had a few more thoughts on it as I’ve been mulling it over.

I remember being a kid and learning that Satan was called the “accuser of the brethren” (Rev 12:10). In my mind, that language combined with the imagery of the roaring, devouring lion (1 Peter 5:8), and then with the opening scenes of Job where Satan is standing before God and asking to do mean things to God’s loyal servant (Job 1 and 2).

It scared me spitless.

To be fair, when I was young, I was often unsure of my salvation. I made a decision for Jesus when I was three, and got baptized when I was seven (which was the youngest my church would allow). Yet in the years that followed, I still went up to more than one altar call, because the preachers would say that dreaded phrase: “If’ you’re not sure you’d go to heaven if you died tonight…”

As a good church kid, I knew that the phrase was coming. Of course it was coming. It was there every altar call. But it still put a knot in my stomach. I had read about people who will find out at the judgment seat that Jesus never knew them, and I was terrified of being one of those people. I figured I had better do a salvific top-off, just to be safe.

See, when I heard the language of Satan accusing us to God, I imagined God sitting at a judge’s bench, with a book full of all of my good and bad deeds, and Satan pointing out, “Aha! SEE? See here? She yelled at her brother! And look here! She snuck something out of the pantry without asking permission from her mother first!” (And Mom: sorry about that; I can buy you a box of crackers next time I’m in town.) I imagined the devil gleefully pointing out every single area of my failing, intentional or not, repentant or not, and making God aware of them.

I would picture God checking the book, and to His somber dismay, discovering that, Oh dearie Me, yes, she has indeed been naughty in all of the ways Satan says. I wasn’t quite sure what happened next, but I felt like it put me that much closer to meeting my Maker, only to discover that, whoops, you were a goat—guess it’s fire and brimstone for you.

In my late teens, I got a much better and more biblically-accurate idea of God’s emotions for us. I guess you could say I “outgrew” my courtroom imagination. I stopped being afraid that God was teetering on the edge of running out of patience for me. I stopped being afraid that I could fail at being a real Christian while I was sincerely trying to follow Jesus. I renounced a lot of accusations that the enemy had directed to me, but I never really revisited what it meant that the devil might be accusing me to God.

Yesterday I was thinking about Jesus as our Advocate before the Father (1 John 2:1). I thought of how cool it was that there’s not just someone accusing us before God night and day; there’s Someone advocating for us.

Suddenly I remembered my childhood fear—and almost laughed out loud at how absurd it was. Not to be too hard on my nine year-old self, but I was missing a few incredibly important facts about my accuser:

• He’s not the only one before God giving his perspective on my life.
• He’s a pathological liar.
• The Judge doesn’t like him. At all.
• The Judge REALLY likes my Advocate.

Back to that tweet—if, in a real-life court situation, the judge hated the prosecuting attorney and was related to the defense attorney, the case would never be allowed to go to trial. Of course the judge is going to be biased towards his son. Now obviously, the Lord God Almighty is not in any way crooked. He is completely just. He always judges rightly. He’s not swayed by bribery or well-crafted sob-stories. He can see the truth no matter who’s saying it or how lousy their motives are.

But because of this, He also knows a lying, thieving usurper when He sees one, and isn’t about to give that testimony precedence over the Son whom He loves, who is righteous altogether, and who shed His own holy blood that we might be saved.

It’s no accident that the one verse which describes Satan as the “accuser of the brethren” depicts his humiliating defeat.

Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they [the brethren he accused] overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. (Revelation 12:10-11)

If God is our Judge, and Christ is our Advocate, then our accuser is pretty well out of luck on this one.

Ever since there have been people, there have been opinions. And ever since there has been more than one person, there have been diverse opinions. Diverse opinions often clash. Harsh language is as old as the Fall. Debates are nothing new. Believers have always been urged to guard our speech, and few (if any) of us have ever maintained a clean record in that regard. It is unbelievably easy to let careless words slip now and then. History is full of well-intentioned people who needed to learn when to put a sock in it. So really, this is a very old topic.

But now we have smartphones.

Never before has communication been so instantaneous and far-reaching. It is truly frightening to me how quickly a thought can be dashed off on Twitter — what’s 140 characters, after all? — and immediately, anyone with an internet connection can see it.  Unless we tightly control our privacy settings (and perhaps not even then), we have no idea who is reading us or how they will interpret our message.

“Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles!” (James 3:5)

Has James’ analogy ever been more appropriate than in the internet age? A single lit match on the forest floor can set an entire countryside ablaze. One misplaced sentence that hits the magical combination of timing, visibility, and intrigue can go viral overnight.

In view of that, we need to ask ourselves: What are we saying?

Recently, I have seen a handful of highly visible Christian writers fumble their verbal matchbox and start fires. These are godly men and women, every one of them (if you’re familiar with them, you probably already have an incident or two in mind, and if you don’t, then don’t worry about it). Yet for each of them, when they published that one ill-fated tweet, Facebook status, or blog post — something I’m sure sounded just fine in their own heads before they hit “send” — the Christian blogosphere exploded.

Many people were outraged, and took to social media to say so. Many others leapt into the fray to defend the original authors. There were open letters everywhere — letters to the tweeters to apologize, to the detractors to stop being so harsh, to the defenders to examine their priorities, to the whole internet to just calm down and stop fighting. That, in and of itself, is not what you’d call ideal.

But what bothered me more than the gaffes themselves was what followed from the folks holding the matchbox. Tweets were clarified or deleted. Positions were defended. Trolls were rebuked. Calls for grace were sounded. While those are not inherently bad things, what troubled me most was what I didn’t see from many of them: An apology. Not even the pseudo-apology, “I’m sorry you took it that way.” Most of these situations ended with the author saying, perhaps gently, and perhaps with palpable exasperation, “Okay, okay, I deleted it. But I didn’t mean it like that.”

As a writer, teacher, and communicator — although in a much, much smaller capacity than anyone involved in these controversies — I can’t help but think that this is entirely beside the point. To be sure, intentions matter. The Lord looks at the heart. But our purest, most valiantly noble thoughts don’t count for much to our audience. All that our readers have to work with are our words. If we say something insensitive and get pushback from people who have been hurt, the response is simple: “I’m sorry.”

We have to listen to why what we said bothered people. If they protest, “I don’t believe God would really let anyone end up in Hell”…well then, that’s something we can’t compromise in or apologize for. But if it’s “You said [insert term here], and I saw that as a devaluation of my people group,” then that’s another story. At that point, it barely matters whether or not the author agrees with the connotations of that term. Particularly if there are many people with the same complaint, it’s time to back off: “I’m so sorry; I had no idea it would come across that way. I will think carefully about this.”*

If it’s “just a word,” then we don’t need that word. If we “didn’t mean it that way,” we need to expand our vocabulary to more clearly say what we mean. It’s worth taking the time to avoid inflaming preexisting wounds in others. It’s our job to be gentle, not the job of our listeners to simply get over whatever we clumsily said.

Of course, we should not shrink back from statements that the Bible is bold about. Of course, we should not be ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Of course, we are called to speak the word of the Lord, like Ezekiel, “whether they hear or whether they refuse” (Ezekiel 2:5-7, 3:11). Of course there will always be the “offense of the Gospel” — but as much as it depends on us, we want the Gospel itself to be what’s offensive, rather than our own careless or confusing language.

There will always be those who misunderstand, and there will even be those who purposefully misconstrue. There will be opponents. There will be trolls. We can’t please everyone, and we will wear ourselves out if we try. Not every criticism is equally valid. But relatively few criticisms — fewer than we might assume — are completely without merit. If nothing else, for selfish reasons it’s good to at least learn how to avoid that poo-and-fan combination in the future. But ideally — y’know — we want to learn how to avoid hurting the people we intend to minister to.

We need to take responsibility for the fact that such a thing could happen. We need to accept that the onus is on us to be clear and to be kind. We need to remember that all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds can see what we say, perhaps far more than we ever imagined. When writing to an open, global audience, we need well-aimed arrows of truth, not loose cannons of brain-dumping.

If we don’t take a deep breath before hitting “send”… if we don’t feel the weight of the dozens or thousands of eyes that will see what we’re about to say… if we don’t remember how flammable that verbal forest is… if we don’t feel the slightest trembling about our weak words representing God’s glory rightly to whoever has an RSS reader… well, perhaps we ought to think a little harder about what we’re about to do. We can’t (and shouldn’t) always prevent controversy, and we can’t always perfectly avoid causing pain, but as much as it depends on us, we can strive to live peaceably with all (Rom 12:18).

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*Note: There could be a whole other post — perhaps a series — fleshing out the difference between genuine feedback and trolling and/or silencing tactics. I’m not suggesting authors need to retreat at every bit of negative feedback, but only that sincere offense needs to be sincerely heard and taken into consideration. I also want to clarify that I am speaking much more about presentation and word choice than I am about actual content.

Modesty is, and always has been, important to me. Perhaps it’s because of my cautious nature and reserved personality. Perhaps we could find a more spiritual cause. In any case, as young as two and three years old, I was averse to showing my belly button. When I became a teenager, and a whole new world of clothing options opened to me, I was petrified of ending up in something indecent. As an adult, I now minister in contexts that regularly put me on a stage, in front of a class, or even in front of cameras — all of which require a conservative dress code.

I say this to affirm: I like dressing modestly. It’s my default. I find no “freedom” in the idea of wearing skimpier, flashier things.

Yet even so, as I think back over the messages I was taught about modesty in my teens, and the sort of messages that get blogged and reblogged today, I’m troubled. Any teaching about modesty must, of course, first define what it is. When you strip away all the lists of rules, the hemlines, the necklines, and the spaghetti straps, what exactly is modesty, and why do we care about it?

The answer to that question, almost universally, has been this: Modesty means adequately covering up your body so that you don’t cause your brothers to stumble.

I would suggest — in fact, I would insist — that this definition is a problem. A big one. There’s a lot that could be said about this, but for the sake of time, I want to focus on four reasons we need to change our reference point:

1. It treats women’s bodies — not their clothes — like the real problem.

The focus is not on avoiding clothes that are designed to attract undue attention. The focus is on making sure one’s body is properly hidden.

Although it’s usually couched in language elevating the female form, this sort of teaching ultimately talks about women’s bodies as if they are inherently tempting (and thus shameful). “God put so much beauty into women — which you should definitely save for only your husband — that guys can’t help but notice you. A little bit of cleavage, a little too much thigh, or an accented knockout figure, can trigger lustful thoughts in your brothers.”

No matter how positively this is worded, the message is the same: Your body is a problem. You’d better cover up in case someone likes what they see a bit too much. Nothing you can do can free you from being a persistent, involuntary force of temptation, so hide that part of yourself as best as you can.

This hits teenage girls particularly hard if they develop early, or have noticeably curvy figures. The more womanly their build, the more shame they feel. It’s harder to find clothes that adequately disguise everything in the first place. They are more likely than their slimmer, straighter-built sisters to get rebuked by a leader. They are more likely to feel those burning tears of shame that it will never be enough. And as someone who had more than one teenage meltdown while bra shopping, I can sympathize with that pain.

2. It makes women and girls the guardians of men and boys’ sexual purity. Male lust becomes, at least in part, the fault of women.

I don’t doubt that women can conduct themselves in a way to either help or hurt a man’s resistance to temptation. But it is deeply problematic to speak about men as if they are at the mercy of the women around them. At one level, this disempowers men, telling them that they really are hopeless in front of a smokin’ hot female body. They are not taught how to take their thoughts captive. They are fearful of every tug of physical attraction. Lust is not a sin that can be conquered, but one that is merely held at bay, that might be awakened at any time by a particularly flattering dress. This is not fair to our men and boys.

At another level, this puts a horrifically unfair burden on women and girls to try and keep their brothers’ sexual urges in check. If a man looks at me and begins thinking lustfully about me, then clearly I should have been wearing/doing/saying something different. If only my jeans were looser. If only my neckline was higher. If only I would have shown a bit more discretion when getting dressed this morning, anticipating this awkward moment. I could/should have prevented this, the logic goes.

At its most troubling extreme, this blends seamlessly into the victim-blaming which pervades the world at large. “If you didn’t want to get catcalled on the street, you shouldn’t be wearing that outfit.” “If you didn’t want that guy creepily staring at your breasts, you shouldn’t have worn that gaudy necklace.” “If you didn’t want to get raped, you shouldn’t have worn that skirt.”

In other words: That unwanted male attention? That time that man leered at you, touched you, treated you like a thing and not a person? That was your fault. Yeah, okay, he shouldn’t have done it, but really, you were asking for it. In fact, you can hardly blame the guy for getting carried away.

How are we okay with doing this to our girls? Are we really willing to blame them for a man’s lack of self-control? Is a fashion misstep (assuming there even was one) really sufficient cause to humiliate them?

We need to treat men’s lust like what it is: a problem that men have, that Christian men have the help of the Holy Spirit to overcome. Full stop. That’s it.

The more we qualify it (“Well, yeah, guys are responsible for their own sin, BUT…”), the more blame is pushed onto women, and the more men are seen as mere victims of the carelessness — or even outright seduction — of their sisters in Christ. It does a major disservice to the dignity and personhood of women, not to mention setting insultingly low expectations of men.

3. It makes men and boys the sole deciders of what qualifies as “modest”.

This is a problem, in part, because not all men have the same definition of modesty. In an older, but well-known survey, 1,600 male Christians, aged 12-50+ weighed in on what constituted “modesty”. This survey was 148 questions long. It covered everything from swimsuits, to jeans, to leotards, to cross-body bags, to bending over.

Not only is that an absurdly long list, it proved its own premise to be an unreliable mess. I’m sure it will shock no one to know that not all 1,600 participants could agree on what “modesty” looks like.

For instance, take the statement, “Wearing short skirts or mini skirts over jeans is a stumbling block.” Roughly 54% of guys disagreed with this (thus, wearing short skirts over jeans is fine), and roughly 28% of guys agreed (thus, wearing short skirts over jeans is immodest).

In another question, there was nearly an even split between guys who thought decorative stitching on the back of jeans was too distracting, versus guys who thought such things were perfectly fine.

Now, as a woman, what am I to do with this? Is 54% a good enough majority for me to wear a skirt over my jeans confidently? What about the fact that one out of four guys will still actively have a problem with it? Ah, but what if that skirt is covering up distracting decorative stitches; does that make it more modest? (Can you imagine that conversation? “Oh, see, I’m only wearing a skirt to hide those icky jean-butt decorations. So you can stop being distracted now.”)

Men’s preferences are not the same from culture to culture, era to era, or simply man to man. A man from Victorian England would have conniptions over outfits that are considered bland and frumpy today. A guy from a beach town might not blink twice at a halter top, while a guy from the Midwest might be immensely distracted by it. A guy raised in a Pentecostal Holiness congregation is going to have different ideas of modesty than a guy who grew up in a more casual tradition.

Women simply can’t be expected to meet all of those standards, all at once, all the time. Making men’s opinions the standard of modesty gives us a moving target, one that we will never be able to attain to everyone’s satisfaction. And if the only criteria is men’s opinion, we can’t even have a say in which of the conflicting voices we should listen to.

Even in addressing this, we must remember that modesty is not an issue that only women need to live out, and that only men benefit from. The way it gets talked about, you’d think only men lust, and only women can be immodest. I’ve rarely heard anyone preach against guys in Speedos at the beach, and those who do speak of how it’s “gross” — not tempting, not disrespectful, not flirtatious, but just nasty. I’ve only heard a few people dare to mention that women can be visually triggered into temptation, too. If we’re talking about modesty as a service to one another, then it needs to cut both ways.

Besides modesty being spoken of as a girls-only issue, it is primarily — and perhaps even only — about not being distracting to men. That’s the “why”. It is a sacrifice women make, a duty they perform, that overrides everything they want and feel like. It turns their bodies into a public display that anyone and everyone with a Y chromosome may judge. It has nothing to do with their value as people, or even their obligation before the Lord. It is their obligation before men — all men, any man, and only men.

I imagine it’s obvious why that’s more than a little screwed up.

There is a much higher vision for modesty to be had–one that applies universally to believers, and benefits those who embrace it in real, tangible, ways. More on that in a bit.

4. The problem with this brand of modesty is the exact same problem as the immodesty it decries. In short: It tells women that we ought to dress exclusively for the sake of appealing to men.

If I see my only value in my sexuality, being able to capture the fancy of any man who crosses my path, then I will dress in front of the mirror, asking, “What will the boys think of THIS one?” If I see my only value in my chastity, in never, EVER being “that girl” who all the guys in the modesty survey sneer about, then I will dress in front of the mirror, asking, “What will the boys think of THIS one?” And there’s nothing like throwing around confusing statements, like, “Modest is hottest”, or “Men may want to DATE sexy women, but they want to MARRY modest ones” to dig even further into that pit.

Is it any wonder this system hasn’t been working for us?

Whether I’m trying to attract all guys, be invisible to all guys, or just trying to attract the right kind of guys, this is a problem. I am putting on a performance for the eyes of men, cheating myself in the process, and leaving God entirely out of the picture.

A Better Standard

When the Bible talks about modesty for women (1 Tim 2:9), it is not even talking about sexual sin. Rather, it’s encouraging women not to dress in over-fancy, opulent ways. It’s a call for humility in one’s appearance, forgoing the showy in favor of the simple.

I think it is absolutely fair to apply this to modesty as it is more commonly defined today. If our aim is to not show off, and if we are called to purity and self-control anyway, then dressing humbly automatically means not trying to gain sexual attention by our clothes (or lack thereof).

However, I am convinced that we must change our approach to this subject. The stories of young women who have been scarred are numerous, and very real. We can do better.

Change 1 (the big one): Allowing modesty to be defined by God — not men. A major flaw in the modesty discussion today is that ever-present pressure on women to prevent men from stumbling. Men, due to that whole “living in a fallen world” thing, are sinful and inconsistent. Trying to define morality by the whims of fallen men is a constantly-shifting demand which is not only burdensome to women, but impossible for us to live up to.

Thankfully, God defines modesty much more simply: it’s humility. No matter your culture, no matter your time, dress in a way that is consistent with a humble heart of love. Only you (and trusted leaders/friends) can determine if what you’re wearing checks out with that. It’s not directly about how much skin is showing, or how sparkly the clothes are, or what shape and cut the dress is. It’s about a heart that is fully yielded unto God — a heart that isn’t wrapped up in finding one’s own glory in one’s appearance.

This is freeing for women. It liberates us from the performance mentality of having to look good enough for everyone all day every day. It frees us from the pressure to maintain the perfect public image, one that is better, flashier, or more alluring than any other woman’s. It knocks fashion off of its pedestal so that we no longer are slaves to it. It takes away our option to lean on our appearance as a source of power (or, by extension, being crushed under it in disempowerment). It makes clothing just that — clothing — lifeless things that may be fun to play around with and enjoy, but which have absolutely nothing to do with our inherent worth. It breaks with our culture’s lie that women are primarily valuable because of our sex appeal, and agrees with God’s truth that we are made in His image, of profound worth and dignity to Him.

Modesty thus becomes less about “You must not” and more about “You don’t have to”. It allows us to drop the facade and simply… be. Modesty is not a burden. It is a gift. We have something simple and concrete to embrace, rather than an endless, complex, confusing list of things to abstain from.

Change 2: Changing the focus from shame to honor. This may be news to some male leaders, and maybe even to some female leaders — but it is a dreadful thing to be called out for your clothing. Nobody (besides a handful of rebellious teens) shrugs, “Aw, rats, they caught me” when being rebuked for their clothing. It’s humiliating.

You feel exposed. You feel dirty. You feel like you’re being judged as a horrible, sleazy person. You’re one of those girls — the ones guys talk about being mad at and losing all respect for. And if you triple-checked your outfit before you left your house, your parents and friends assured you that you looked fine, and you’re really trying to do this thing right — well, such a rebuke can be genuinely devastating.

There is a way to look out for each other and cover each other without heaping shame on the person who made a misstep. Like one friend might casually and discreetly alert another one to the trail of TP streaming from her waistband, we can alert each other to wardrobe malfunctions without it being a monstrously shameful thing.

Again, prying modesty out of the the subtext of sexual temptation goes a long way for this. Saying, “Hey, you might wanna pull up your tank top a bit” doesn’t have to carry with it the weight of “EGADS, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO YOUR BROTHERS, YOU CARELESS BATHSHEBA?” It can be the harmless, mildly embarrassing “oops” that it is, and that can really be the end of it.

Historically, we have not been nearly as concerned about shielding a young woman’s heart from being crushed by shame as we have been concerned about shielding our young men from fleeting temptation. We can, and should, honor both groups, using much more care with our words.

Change 3: R-E-L-A-X. While modesty is important, it is not of life-ending, civilization-destroying consequence. The world really is not going to explode into a godless orgy because some lady’s blouse buttons gapped a bit when she stretched. We all slip up to varying degrees within the church. This is not even close to the worst thing that can happen. It’s not always worth addressing in the moment, and if it’s not a recurring problem, maybe not at all.

And, as a bonus, if we treat it like the secondary issue it is, perhaps it will become less distracting to begin with.

Change 4: Assuming that, for the most part, women are actually able to discern their own modesty. While it’s true we all can have blind spots, and we need to remain humble and teachable, it’s a myth that women just don’t understand the importance of modesty like men do. At its core, modesty is about not dressing in a way that needlessly distracts others–which, as we examined above, fluctuates greatly from culture to culture. A woman who lives in any given culture knows what it expects of her, knows what is acceptable, and knows what is frowned upon. Any woman who pays attention can usually discern if her outfit is going to raise eyebrows. We really aren’t all clueless about this. And while teenagers probably need parental input, moms can do just as well as dads when it comes to determining an outfit’s propriety.

While some basic guidelines can be helpful, and while there are plenty of situations in which official dress codes are appropriate, in general, I think we ought to trust women to make good choices about clothes (assuming they value humility). It’s really not that hard. I believe that trusting women to do right by their own bodies will do wonders for them being more at peace in their own skin. With nothing more to prove, and with no more vague pitfalls to panic over, what better context could there be for nurturing joyful humility?

Modesty matters. Modesty is good. But let’s get our reference point out of the raging cultural tide and into the unrelenting grace of the Holy Spirit. He can lead us into humility if we cooperate with Him — and it really is as simple as that.

Easter is more.

It’s more than a tradition. I’ve never been a part of a denomination that was especially liturgical. Of course we celebrated Easter, along with Christmas. I grew up knowing what Easter meant, and appreciated it. I enjoyed the holiday (including the excuse to wear a pretty dress and the expectation of a basket of candy). But I was well into my teens before I was aware of this thing called a “church calendar” and the different rituals, prayers, and practices that went with it. Being a good Protestant, it took me a while to even warm up to the idea.

However, as I was blearily getting dressed this morning (which was actually last night–helloooo NightWatch), I decided I was going to dress for Easter. I was going to dress up, and I was going to avoid wearing any black. To be truthful, I mostly did so out of a sense of nostalgia and fun.

But as I got ready for the day–thinking about my choice of attire, and thinking about what it meant–I was strangely moved by the whole thing. I thought about how millions of people, all over the world, are celebrating the same thing. I thought about two thousand years of history, where every year the saints rejoice in this defining moment of our faith. My heart swelled to think about the congregations all throughout my city that would be unified in this singular focus this morning.

I felt a part of something much bigger than myself. I felt connected to the Body of Christ. For a moment, I could see myself in the midst of a massive, historical, beautiful, worldwide people of God. I felt the weight of two thousand years of history behind us. It was powerful.

But Easter is more.

This isn’t just a story. This isn’t just a documentation of the beliefs of a successful religious movement. This isn’t just metaphorical liturgy portraying a vague sense of new life. A real Man came out of the tomb on that morning. That means Easter isn’t just a two-millennia-old event that we remember every year–it is relevant. Now. Today. The One who came to life is still alive.

As I considered the rich Christian tradition behind this truly holy day, and as I felt connected to the saints through history, even more, I felt connected to the Man who rose from the dead. Clothes are just clothes, and shouldn’t impede one’s ability to worship with a full heart. But as I sorted through my clothes figuring out how to put together a nice outfit without black in it (harder than I thought for me!), I felt overwhelmed. I was going out of my way to avoid the color of mourning–not because it would be some sort of Easter-breaking taboo, but because Jesus is really alive.

The tradition made me remember. All the liturgy in the world would mean nothing if He was dead. If all we have are a robbed tomb and some nostalgic practices, we might as well just relinquish the day to the Easter Bunny and get it over with. But this day matters, because Christ is risen indeed. He is not just one of many tragically persecuted leaders. He is not just a philanthropist who crossed those more politically powerful than Himself. His life did not end–not finally, anyway–with His crucifixion. He is declared to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead. He was never defeated. It was impossible for death to hold Him.

Jesus is real, and He is really alive.

And even as glorious as this is…

Easter is more than one Man’s resurrection. To be sure, we cannot downplay the significance of Christ’s resurrection. It speaks volumes about who He is. It validates His claims. It has implications on the way we worship, pray, and live today–He is still present with us, seeing and caring. It can, and should, move our hearts to consider that the Man we love is still alive, and will live forever.

But even so, Easter is more.

Do we understand how dramatically everything changed when Jesus walked out of that tomb?

Jesus is called the “firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18; Rev 1:5) and “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:20). That means that He is the first, but not the only person who will partake of this everlasting life. He is bringing many sons to glory (Heb 2:10). When He arose from the grave, in a very real sense we did, too.

The One who shed His blood that we may be forgiven of our sins, and delivered from Hell, is alive forevermore. He is the resurrection, and in Him, we will live forever. Beyond some sort of Nirvana-like haze–what we normally think of when we say “afterlife”–in Him we have resurrection, a complete renewal of our mortal bodies. Every one of us who love His name will live forever, in a physical frame that is glorified and made perfectly whole.

Because of Easter it is impossible for sickness, pain and death to continue forever. They have an appointed end–not in ethereal non-existence, but in glorious, unfettered, abundant life. Every believer will triumph over that last great adversary, death, because Christ is risen indeed.

Even more than this, we must remember that Jesus is the Yes and Amen, the one in whom every promise of God is fulfilled (2 Cor 1:20). Everything God has promised to His people–all the way back to David, Abraham, and even to Adam and Eve–is summed up in and dependent upon the person of Christ Jesus. If He would have stayed in the grave, so would the promises. But because He lives, the promises–those things which had seemed to lay dormant for centuries, dim and unfulfilled–are now possible.

Chief among these promises are the express desire and purpose for God to dwell with humanity, that He would be our God, and that we would be His people. Through the course of history, this has looked doubtful. If sinful people drop dead at one touch of the Ark of God’s presence–if creation is subject to decay and futility, and hills melt like wax before Him–how could the Holy One ever dwell among us without utterly consuming us?

Yet in the resurrection of Jesus comes not just the promise of resurrection for believers, but for resurrection of the whole of creation. That which groans under the crushing curse of sin now, can be redeemed. Romans 8:20-23 is as explicit as one could hope for:

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.

The resurrection of creation is about more than avoiding natural disasters and cleaning up the environment, though surely it includes that. This means something more profound and heart-piercing than we can ever fully comprehend:

In Jesus’ resurrection, “on earth as it is in heaven” is now POSSIBLE.

We are not stuck in a loop of ever-downward futility. The way things have always been is not how things will always be. When Jesus taught us how to pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, it was not wishful thinking. “Gosh, it would be nice if…”

No! This is not fantasy; it’s now possible! Apart from a resurrected Lord, creation could never be raised. Apart from a defeated death, heaven could never come to earth. The resurrection of Jesus is a raging fire of hope set to the hearts of believers in a fallen, dying world. This futility is not forever. Heaven is real, and it can really manifest on the earth in a full, unrestrained way.

God can dwell with us. We can see His face. Every tear can be wiped away. Not one promise of His will fail.

Easter isn’t just about tradition; it’s about a raised Man. And that Man isn’t just raised; He is the resurrection. Both our mortal bodies and the world we live in will never be the same–because Christ is risen indeed.

I’ve been chewing on this for a little while as I work my way through Paul’s epistles. During this project, I’ve discovered a funny side effect of getting to know the biblical authors better: I get annoyed when people say things about them that I don’t think are true. In this case, I found myself chafing at a rather pervasive idea commentators seem to have have about Paul. Many of them consider him to be quite possessive of the churches he planted.

At one level, I can see how they could arrive at this conclusion. With texts like these…

Ga 4:16-17; 5:12 Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth? They zealously court you, but for no good; yes, they want to exclude you, that you may be zealous for them. …I could wish that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off!

2Co 10:13 We, however, will not boast beyond measure, but within the limits of the sphere which God appointed us–a sphere which especially includes you.

2Co 11:5 For I consider that I am not at all inferior to the most eminent apostles…

2Co 12:11 …I ought to have been commended by you; for in nothing was I behind the most eminent apostles…

…it’s easy to walk away with the idea that Paul was a little jumpy about losing his ministry base.

Combining this idea with verses where Paul talks about not encroaching on someone else’s work (Romans 15:20 and 2 Corinthians 10:16), some commentators see Paul’s approach to apostleship as a very territorial one. They explain his sharp tone in Galatians and 2 Corinthians as a reaction to people butting in on his turf, which he didn’t appreciate. Paul had put in all the work to plant the church, the commentators reason, and so he should be the one with continuing influence and authority over the people there (and, not inconsequentially, be the recipient of their financial support).

That was his territory. Those were his churches. Those were his people. He was good and careful not to step on other ministers’ toes, and he resented it when people stepped on his and tried to reap all the benefits of his work. …Or so the logic goes.

Such a notion might fly in our modern capitalistic society, but I have the feeling that Paul would take exception to it. As John the Baptist put it a few decades before Paul, “He who has the bride is the bridegroom” (John 3:29). In other words, the Church is the Bride of Christ, not the property of the minister. A minister’s job is to be the “friend of the Bridegroom”, and it would be a grievous error to claim any ownership of the Bridegroom’s betrothed wife. It’s the reason John was able to say without bitterness, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

It is unthinkable that the anointed apostle to the Gentiles would fail to grasp this point. In fact, we know that Paul did understand it quite well. He wrote about it himself, though employing somewhat different language to do so.

At the beginning of 1 Corinthians — Corinth being one of the cities that Paul is supposedly so possessive of — Paul dismantles the idea of preacher loyalty. It’s the first thing he addresses after his customary opening greetings and prayers. He expresses dismay over the divisions and contentions among the Corinthian church (1:10-11), noting that they were splintering into factions to support their favorite teachers (v. 12). Some people claimed to follow Paul, some Apollos, some Cephas (Peter), and others, in an evident attempt to look more spiritual than the rest of the squabbling lot, claimed simply to follow Christ, rather than any mere human teachers. Paul points out the foolishness of such arguments:

Now I say this, that each of you says, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Apollos,” or “I am of Cephas,” or “I am of Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (1Cor 1:12-13)

Rather than commend his supporters against the rival fan clubs of Apollos and Peter, Paul corrects the very people showing most loyalty to him. He makes it blisteringly clear where their commitment should lie. Paul didn’t die for anyone’s sins. Paul had no power to baptize people into new life in his own name. He was actually grateful that he only baptized a small handful of people in Corinth (v. 14-17), giving less grounds for anyone to think that he was the be-all and end-all of Christianity.

Paul could care less about having a big following. He cared intensely that Christ should have a big following.

The apostle actually spends the next two chapters of 1 Corinthians expounding on this point, countering the believers’ pride in their own wisdom and upholding Jesus as the true wisdom and power of God. He chides the Paul/Apollos fan clubs as being carnal and immature, with the jarring statement that they are “behaving like mere men” (1Cor 3:1-4). He cinches his point with two analogies: farmers and builders.

Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor.

For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. (1 Cor 3:5-10a)

How… territorial? Somehow, this does not sound like a chorus of “Mine! Mine! Mine!” to me. Paul seems to be completely neutral, and even positive, to the idea of someone else building upon the work he has begun in Corinth. It’s not a reason for division or for accusations of “sheep-stealing”; it’s a sign of the unity of the Body, and ultimately, the sovereign hand of God raising up the Church by His own will and for His own purposes.

So how do we reconcile Paul’s desire to disband his groupies in 1 Corinthians with his fierce defensiveness in Galatians and his expectation to be recognized by the church in 2 Corinthians?

Fortunately, we don’t have to guess. Paul talks about it himself in those respective letters, and even hints at it in the next few verses of 1 Corinthians 3: “…But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (vv.10b-11).

Paul did not oppose other teachers simply because they were other teachers. He opposed them because they were false teachers. And by “false teachers”, it was not a matter of sprinkling or dunking in baptism, contemporary choruses versus old hymns, or whether communion was served with one loaf and real wine, as opposed to oyster crackers and grape juice.

It was a matter of whether or not Jesus’ death and resurrection really was enough to save a sinful human being.

In other words, Paul was not having a theological spat, much less a turf war. He was fighting for those churches’ salvation. It was a matter of literal spiritual life or death. Is it any wonder his tone was fiery?

Consider his explanation in 2 Corinthians 11 for his defensive boasting:

Oh, that you would bear with me in a little folly — and indeed you do bear with me. For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted–you may well put up with it! (2 Cor 11:1-4)

There is not a word said about Paul’s right to the territory. He’s not concerned about whether people regard him as the biggest name in preaching. He’s being a friend of the Bridegroom, and is fighting for the heart of the Bride to belong, not to himself, but to the Man to whom she is betrothed. His concern is not about a different preacher, but “a different spirit” and “a different gospel”. To put it bluntly, he is concerned that the church will fall away.

In fact, it is this very passion that is overriding his deep aversion to boasting. His reluctance to promote himself comes through frequently in this passage (see 10:12; 11:1, 16-18, 23; 12:1), and in the end, he ends up boasting in his weakness (11:30; 12:9), that the glory may go to Jesus. He hates having to even bring these things up, but he has a higher purpose: he is defending the Bride of Christ (11:1-4), and cutting off the opportunity of the ministers of Satan (11:12-15).

It’s a similar context in Galatians. Galatia was a province full of new believers, mostly Gentiles, who were being targeted by false teachers. The issue at stake was whether or not Gentiles must become circumcised in order to follow God — a question that would be settled very soon at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). Whether or not these false teachers were even followers of Jesus is unclear, but in any case, a very current question of the day was whether or not there was any such thing as a Gentile Christian. Paul held that there was. Others were not so sure. The Galatians were caught in the crossfire of it all and extremely confused.

When Paul wrote to Galatia, it’s clear that the discussion had moved far past a robust theological debate. Straight out of the gate, his tone was sharp — and it made plain what his burden was.

I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. (Gal 1:6-7)

Paul is not employing colorful rhetoric to try and out-argue his opponents. He did not villify the teachers because they were people other than himself. Note the usage of the same term as in 2 Corinthians, “a different gospel”. Paul does not see circumcision as a painful inconvenience that he would prefer the Galatians not to bother with. He sees it as a compromise of the very foundations of their faith. To embrace circumcision and the law would be to say that Jesus was not enough. They would be basing their righteousness and salvation on their own works, not on the free gift of grace.

Again, Paul is not splitting theological hairs. He is fighting for people’s lives. In 1:8-9, Paul calls for a curse on anyone who would preach a false gospel — be it any other minster, an angel from heaven, or even Paul and his ministry team themselves. Clearly the issue is not Paul defending his own ministry (otherwise he would never threaten himself with a curse). The issue is the true gospel, which would be welcomed from any voice that declared it.

Paul’s detailed autobiographical testimony in Galatians 1-2 could be interpreted as defending his own name — except that he already said what his core concerns were. He was burning up about that “different gospel” which sought to claim the hearts of these new believers. Instead of viewing this passage as his train of thought jumping the tracks, might we understand it instead as Paul demonstrating that his gospel was, in fact, the true one? It is not about Paul, but about Paul’s gospel which preached liberty in Christ for all who are saved by Him.

To expect Paul to approach this subject nicely is to expect him to be ambivalent about the eternal destiny of an entire province of churches. It is precisely because he was not wrapped up in self-preservation that he was able to speak with the boldness he does in this letter (see 1:10; 5:11; 6:12). Similar to 1 Corinthians 10-12, Paul admits that he does not like the tone he has to take with the churches he loves so tenderly (Gal 4:19-20). But the stakes were simply too high. The love of Christ compelled him to persuade the people away from the false teachers and to bring them back, not for the sake of his mailing list, but for the sake of their souls. They had lost hold of the truth of the gospel, and Paul was urgently calling them to heed it again.

If we read these passages and see more about the growth of Paul’s ministry than about the real human souls hanging in the balance, or about the real glory and honor due to Christ, then that says a lot more about our priorities than it does Paul’s.

Just sayin’.

Go back and re-read that if you like. Agnostic. Reverend. Yes. Seriously. As in an agnostic who is a preacher. As in, a man who runs a church but does not believe that we can know that God is real. He also doesn’t believe in any kind of afterlife.

According to this article, 1 in 6 Dutch ministers in the Protestant Church of the Netherlands self-identify as either agnostic or atheist.

One of these ministers, a lady named Kirsten Slettenaar, does not believe in the divinity of Jesus. Yet she defends this stance by claiming that, while she may be going against what the church has historically said, this position is not not changing the “real meaning of Christianity” [source].

I was flummoxed. I mean, surely it doesn’t take a doctorate-level theologian to realize that changing our understanding of Christ changes the real meaning of Christianity. But here it was, by two separate people in one article — the claim that Christianity is only tangentially related to Jesus Himself. There is even a third person interviewed whose two cents are that “The Church has to be alert to what is going on in society[…] it has to change to stay Christian.”

I couldn’t help but gawp at the article. People are seriously trying to practice Christianity while denying Christ — and not in the subtle sense of confessing one thing while secretly believing another, but in the outright, explicit denial that He was the Son of God, or that He ever existed at all, while claiming to adhere to His religion anyway.

Have we really become so dull that we don’t see the non-sequiturs we’re spouting in order to try to stay relevant?

About this time, morbid curiosity kicked in and I navigated over to Google, wondering what the general tone of the interwebs was about this subject. I typed in “Christianity is all about”, and let autocomplete suggest the rest of the sentence for me, just to see. The first three suggestions were: “love // relationship // forgiveness”.

So according to Professor Google, Christianity is all about love. Christianity is all about relationship. Christianity is all about forgiveness.

Except it isn’t, because it’s not called Lovianity, Relationshipianity, or Forgivnianity.

I’m glad Professor Google does not teach at seminaries. But at the same time, I feel worried that his intellectual buddies might be.

Christianity doesn’t mean anything without Christ as its beginning and end. Yes, He loves us and empowers us to love Him and one another. Yes, He wants to be in real relationship with us. Yes, He forgives us of our sins. But those things are all conditional on Him being who He is. If He’s not God, He has no authority to forgive us for our iniquities committed against God. If He never rose from the dead, or if He never really existed, it doesn’t matter if we think He loved us or not. If He failed to live up to the shocking and exclusive things He said about Himself, then He is not a teacher to be followed.

Without Christ, Christianity becomes meaningless. There’s literally nothing left. You can’t redefine or dismiss Jesus without cutting yourself off from the Head from whom the whole body of Christ grows (Eph 4:15-16).

In an age where “common ground” is sought at all costs, where absolute truth is frowned upon, and where popular moral relativity trumps religious conviction, we have got to be sure of not just what we believe, but whom we believe. Christianity is not about living a good life and being nice to people. It’s about Jesus the Messiah — the Anointed One — the Christ — fully God and fully Man, who really was born, really lived, was crucified, buried and resurrected. And there can be no compromise about that.

I’m also finding that a lot of people have a wrong first impression of Paul. Over years of modern proof-texting, Paul has accrued the reputation of being a lofty spiritualist. While he certainly is godly, and has intelligence and spiritual insight to spare, he is not lofty. He’s very down to earth, and he knows how to grapple with the nitty-gritty of everyday life. His pastoral heart shines through in his epistles. He’s not just writing theory — he’s dealing with the real lives of real people. To him, Christianity doesn’t need to be reconciled with “real life” — he expects it to transform and dictate the way that life takes place.

Perhaps nowhere is this more obvious than in the book of 1 Corinthians. A huge portion of this epistle directly addresses concerns which had been reported to Paul by the church in Corinth. Corinth, to put it bluntly, was a mess. It was disjointed, with people arguing over their favorite preachers (1:10-13); it tolerated disgusting immorality that put the pagan neighbors to shame (5:1-2); its members were suing one another (6:1-10); and its gatherings were a chaotic contest of who got to speak when (all of chapter 14). The whole epistle is Paul explaining what Christianity should look like in the everyday lives of this church.

As I was reading through 1 Corinthians, I was struck with chapters 8-10, which talk about the issue of food that had been sacrificed to idols. That sounds like a quaint, ancient practice that would only be relevant to the original culture. Yet I am convinced that it is profoundly applicable to us today.

To the Corinthian believers, this was a daunting and very practical issue. Idolatry was part and parcel with the Roman culture, and there was very little a Christian could do to entirely escape its influence. Vendors in the markets sold meat that had been involved in idolatrous rituals. Many cities, including Corinth, had major meeting halls in a Roman temple, so attending a normal social function with one’s neighbors and family — say, a wedding — meant coming face to face with blatant cultic practice. And the accompanying dinner wouldn’t be catered in by the local Kosher deli, either (let the reader understand).

For believers with unsaved Gentile friends and family, this was beyond socially awkward. What was a God-fearing person to do? How could they fulfill the social duties of their day without compromising their religion?

Some of the Corinthians had reasoned their way right out of the conundrum. There’s only one true God, they figured. Idols are nothing. We know that idols are nothing. They have no spiritual authority over us, and we can prove it on paper. In conclusion, idol-meat is just meat, and we can eat it without the least bit of guilt before God.

Aware of their attitude, Paul writes to them concerning the matter. He doesn’t fault anything in their logic. He actually agrees with them. Even so, Paul didn’t take issue with their theory, but their demeanor: “Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.” Going on to affirm that “We know that an idol is nothing…” he agrees with the logical case they made — while already hinting that all of their knowledge must defer to the principles of love.

He cuts to the chase in 8:9: “…beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak.” He goes on to explain his basic point: If a “weak” Christian is convinced that eating meat sacrificed to idols is just another form of idolatry, but that person sees you eating idol meat without a care in the world, then maybe that person will be emboldened to eat from it, too.

But since eating idol meat was morally justifiable, shouldn’t that be just fine? It’s not like it’s a sin or anything.

Not according to Paul. If a person thinks it’s sin — even if it’s not — and they go ahead with it anyway, it is sin. An innocuous activity done against a guilty conscience is still sin before God.

This is what stuck with me as poignantly relevant to our day. Only for us, I wasn’t thinking so much about cultic practices, but of entertainment.

Entertainment is as pervasive in our society as pagan temple practices were in Corinth (and possibly just as idolatrous, if we were to press the issue). And it certainly is an area in which believers have all manner of different opinions on what is and isn’t okay to consume. Certainly there is a line that sincere Christians can agree not to cross — say, with pornography. But short of that, people believe they can watch and read and listen to all kinds of different things. You can find Christians who think that Barney is evil incarnate and other Christians who think the Saw series is just good gory fun. You can find those who think that Mario Bros. is dark magic and those who think that Grand Theft Auto is “just a game”. The more conservative and cautious ones may think that the others are lukewarm backsliders, and the more liberal ones may think that the others are mean religious dweebs.

Now, I’ve addressed this issue before, and I am a staunch believer in the fact that entertainment is simply not worth getting defiled over. When in doubt, throw it out. I think it would be difficult to be “too safe” regarding the matter. However, I understand that there are plenty of Christians who are willing to enjoy a much broader range of entertainment than I do, and I’m quite willing to believe that many of them are sincere believers.

But it is in this very context that I think that the principles Paul sets forth can apply. For instance, I ran across a blog post the other day, and one of the commenters stated that he had written a 90-page thesis to highlight and elaborate upon the Christian themes he found present — not in a Biblical passage, not in a sermon, and not even in The Chronicles of Narnia — but Harry Potter.

Ninety pages. Over a series of secular fiction.

Now, I have never and will never participate in the Harry Potter franchise. It skeezes me out and I am plenty happy to stay far away from it. But I know a lot of people — a number of whom are my friends — who unreservedly enjoy the books and movies. I’m not about to evaluate their spiritual condition based on that fact. I’m willing to believe that they do what they do with a clean conscience, and their consumption of fictional wizardry is between them and the Lord.

HOWEVER.

I take issue with Ninety-Page Thesis Guy — not because he liked Harry Potter, and only secondarily because he considered it to have Christian themes (as opposed to “moral themes”, which I’d be much more willing to affirm). What I take issue with is his 90-page thesis. If he wants to read and watch Harry Potter, that’s one thing. But the fact that he is now on a mission to not just defend his own participation, but to encourage others to jump in with him, really, really bothers me.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Ninety-Page Thesis Guy is one of those “strong” Christians Paul was talking about, and I, as a squeamish and too serious person, am one of the “weak”. Now let’s suppose I got in a big internet debate with Ninety-Page Thesis Guy over the moral ramifications of Christians patronizing openly witchcraft-driven movies. Suppose he ran logical circles around me and talked me into reading every single one of those ninety pages of arguments. Suppose then that I snuck off to a showing of the movie at the furthest theater I could reasonably drive to, so I knew none of my friends would run into me. What now?

Maybe I would stagger out of the auditorium within ten minutes, feeling ill under the weight of my wounded conscience. Maybe I would watch with growing interest and fascination, drawn into the story, minute by minute drowning out that little persistent voice that kept piping up, “You really shouldn’t be here…” Maybe I would leave fully satisfied with the experience, feeling the tiny adrenaline thrill of finding out that what I thought was forbidden really wasn’t so bad after all.

However the situation ended up playing out, I sinned.

I let Ninety-Page Thesis Guy talk me into doing something that, until previously, I had thought God disapproved of (Genesis 3, much?). Or, if we don’t want to sound that severe, I let him talk me into breaking a commitment that I had made to the Lord as a demonstration of my love for Him and His ways. Just like a weak believer in Corinth might be made to stumble over a piece of steak, I was just made to stumble over a movie.

Was it worth it?

Paul’s answer would be a resounding and sharp “No.” In his day, he didn’t just say that the weak Christian sinned. He said that the strong Christian sinned, not just against the weaker brother, but against Christ (1 Cor 8:12). That’s serious. And no cut of meat, no movie, no music artist, no video game, no book, is worth that. Paul felt so strongly about it that he was willing to not just avoid idol-related food, but to “never again eat meat” (8:13) if it would prevent a fellow believer from stumbling.

I don’t think that the practical application of that today is to never, ever, ever look at anything that might possibly offend some Christian that you might meet someday. But I firmly believe that it does mean we don’t try to talk each other out of personal convictions — even if we think the other guy is a bit off his rocker.  Notice that Paul never once told the “weak” believers to toughen up and stop being so unreasonably religious. He told the “strong” believers to guard the hearts of the weak and to give them no cause for offense.

If my friend is unwilling to touch any kind of video game because he’s worried about what it will do to his time and compulsions, then I do not get to beg him to play this one really cool one with me because there’s nothing bad in it at all, honest. Even if there really is nothing bad in it. It’s off-limits for our hangouts and our conversations. I might play it later on my own time, but I won’t then go tell him about my high score and how much fun I had.

If my friend will not watch any kind of TV because she feels like it is compromising her covenant with her eyes, I do not get to tell her, “Well, there’s this one show that I think you will actually really like. It’s educational! It’s edifying! It made me want to go pray!” Even if all those things are true. I can’t invite her over to watch. I can’t tell her about this amazing episode that was the best thing I’ve seen all year. I have to leave it alone — her conscience demands it, and the One to whom she is accountable is zealous for her heart.

I have seen Christians try to talk each other out of their “religiosity” related to all sorts of things: Movies, books, music, apparel, coarse language, tobacco, alcohol, and more. If that’s you, I implore you: Please, please, please stop.

That doesn’t mean you can’t answer honestly if your friends ask you about something (e.g. “Interesting question; I don’t think it is a sin issue, actually”), but it means that you don’t offer your opinion unsolicited, and you sure don’t try and convince your friends that they just need to loosen up. If it really, truly is a “gray area” issue, just let it be.

Their conscience is your problem. And your conscience is my problem. Missing out on permissible things is far less detrimental than sin — let’s help people avoid the latter by being gentle about the former. It’s not about being right. It’s not about enjoying life’s temporary pleasures. It’s about loving one another, and ultimately — according to Paul — it’s about the glory of God.

“Conscience,” I say, not your own, but that of the other. For why is my liberty judged by another man’s conscience? But if I partake with thanks, why am I evil spoken of for the food over which I give thanks? Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.  (1 Corinthians 10:29-31)

So, naturally, I proceeded to watch the whole thing.

Score one for the marketing team.

At first, I wasn’t clear on what the commercial was for. There was a very pleasant, homey feel about the opening scenes. There was an interview of a pleasant, laid-back farmer, a man who seemed to emanate the down-to-earth simple wisdom of someone who’s spent a lot of time behind a plow making an honest living. “I’m John,” he says. “I have lived here my whole life.”

Aww, that’s nice. At this point, I’m anticipating an ad for either butter, sausage, biscuits, organic foods, or a documentary about organic food.

John proceeds to tell us that he and the neighbors weren’t exactly too sure what to think of Lady Gaga when she first came to town.

Hang on, what?

Now I haven’t the slightest clue what to do with what I’m seeing and hearing. Maybe Lady Gaga is releasing a new album. Like, a country album. Maybe she’s trying to prove she’s not just for the young, crazy teens. Maybe she’s doing a concert tour of rural America. Maybe farm folk are trying to prove that they really can run with the hip young kids. Maybe Lady Gaga did some kind of community outreach thing in a small town where she helped pick soy beans and milk cows and pose with a tractor or something to support local growers.

Oh, how wrong I was. How very, very wrong. Nothing could have prepared me for the fact that what I was watching was an ad for…

…GagaVille.

If you’re confused — well, let me rephrase that, because I can’t think of who would NOT be confused by such a mind-bendingly bizarre piece of digital trippiness. If you don’t know who Lady Gaga is, or why it should matter that her name is mashed up with “Ville”, allow me to briefly explain.

The Ville part is due to Zynga, a social network gaming company responsible for all kinds of personal-info-leeching time-wasters on Facebook. The most famous of these apps is FarmVille. FarmVille is a game where, unsurprisingly, you have a farm. On your digital farm, you plant some digital crops, go tootle around the internet for a while, and then come back some time later to harvest those digital crops and make some digital money off of them. Of course, if that sounds too tedious, you are welcomed and encouraged to spend NON-digital money to hurry things up a bit.

Lady Gaga is… hard to explain. She’s a rock star (as if that kind of stage name didn’t give it away). She is a rather strange rock star (as if that kind of stage name didn’t give THAT away, too). She is probably more famous for her various “unique” fashion statements that she is for her music — fashion statements that ring along the lines of, “Why let Halloween come only once a year when you can dress like it everyday?” or, “I don’t mind scaring small children,” or, “If you’re worried my dress/hairdo/accessories will poke your eye out, then just sit further away,” or, “Who says meat is only meant for eating?”

No, I’m not kidding about that last one. She has worn a dress made entirely out of raw meat. Her next-most famous stunt was being carried into an awards ceremony inside a giant plastic egg. She dramatically emerged from it wearing some kind of skimpy, shiny, yellow yolk-inspired outfit. I’m sure it must have meant something.

Anyway, unless you have been living under some kind of wonderful rock which has prevented you from hearing about these and similar shenanigans, I expect you knew this much already. What is more important to the purpose of this commercial, however, is that Lady Gaga is also making a name for herself as a humanitarian. As far as I know, this is not due to her actually having done anything helfpul, per se, but due to her having written positive and uplifting lyrics. We’ll get to those in a minute.

So returning to the narrative, there I was, with a commercial for “GagaVille” on my computer screen and my jaw in my lap. These simple farm folk started gushing about how Lady Gaga had been spreading “love” and “acceptance” and “freedom” all through their small, simple farm town (Ville). As a result, giant rhinestones began growing in place of normal crops. Which apparently was wonderful. Because I guess oversized, tacky fake bling is way more profitable than, you know, actual food.

It’s a good thing that these folks liked fake bling, because it didn’t just grow on their trees. It started appearing on the animals. The buildings. The people. It’s not entirely clear to me if the townsfolk did the decorating themselves, or if this was some kind of parasitic Bling of Doom that ate an entire Midwest farming community, or if Lady Gaga went postal on everybody with a Bedazzler. In any case, the commercial seemed to think it was a good thing.

Things continued to escalate in even more confusing, sparkly, love-acceptance-and-pixie-dust ways. Finally, at the end of the commercial, we find a bunch of people dressed like freaks and partying in the barn.

That’s just the background.

In the foreground is that kind, simple farmer John from the beginning of the commercial. His face is now adorned with rhinestones and eye pencil, he is sporting some kind of disturbingly cross-dressy lycra thing that would make your average clubber look at him a bit askance, utterly happy about all the “love” and “acceptance” Lady Gaga brought to the town. In conclusion, he smiles a little bashfully, shrugs at the camera, and says, “We’ve become quite the little monsters, haven’t we?”

It took a long time for any thought more intelligent than “Buh?!?” to form in my mind. It took even longer for my jaw to finally come off my lap. This commercial might have actually broken something in my brain.

As you would expect, those two and a half minutes disturbed me. I was so busy scrambling for something — anything — to start making sense again, that it took me a little while to put my finger on what felt so terribly wrong about it. I mean, ASIDE from the fact that somebody thought FarmVille + Lady Gaga was a good idea.

It wasn’t really about Lady Gaga herself. I mean, don’t get me wrong. The gal is weird. She is certainly not being subtle about her attempts to shock and befuddle her audience. She may not be fully sane, or she just may be making every effort to act like she’s not. She may have a demon or two (or 10,000) hanging around. I’m not about to go buy her CD and I will not deny that there’s something inherently skeezy about her act.

But let’s face it: Lady Gaga is certainly not the first performer to have (or pretend like they have) one or more screws loose. Freaky and unsettling performing artists have been around as long as the performing arts have existed. She is conveying a new and unusual brand of crazy, sure, but I think you’d have to do some work to prove that she is conveying a deeper level of crazy than anyone before her ever has. So as disturbing as Lady Gaga is in her own right, that’s not what was bugging me about the commercial.

I was also not primarily cringing about the reason “love and acceptance” came up so much, although that is certainly cringe-worthy in and of itself. See, the thing that has catapulted Lady Gaga from the status of “crazy lady in the meat dress” to the status of “Love! Acceptance! Glam! Ponies!” is a song she’s written called “Born This Way.”

If you couldn’t guess from the title, this has been eagerly taken up as the new anthem for the gay rights movement. Lest the line “God don’t make no mistakes” throw you off, let me clarify that this is not a general “Everybody’s beautiful in their own way” buying-the-world-a-Coke kind of song. It’s very explicitly about validating unbiblical sexual orientations, although people of different races and physical abilities get a brief nod towards the end, too. So it’s kind of “Yay! Perversion perversion perversion… Oh, I guess people who don’t look like me are okay too.”

And this is what gets read as “love and acceptance”.

That’s horrifying, don’t get me wrong. But that’s also not what was bugging me most profoundly about that commercial. Because as much as that sentiment grieves me and makes me all the more desperate for revival in our nation, I knew this kind of filth was out there. Where sleeping with however many people of whatever gender at whatever kind of commitment level you like is seen as an issue of social justice, of course it is going to be glorified in virtuous language. I was saddened, but not shocked by this.

After another moment or two of sorting things out, I finally figured out the thing that was eating at me the most. It was not the definition itself of “love and acceptance” — however problematic that is — it was the juxtaposition of “love and acceptance” with “little monsters.”

Now, I’m going to take a guess that “little monsters” is a song lyric, or a song title, or something, and if only I was more in the loop of pop culture it would make perfect sense to me. (Have I mentioned lately how glad I am not to be in the loop of pop culture?) What actually caught me off guard was this idea of the end justifying the means, even when the means is obviously and intentionally aberrant. It was not that “We learned love and acceptance by, you know, loving and accepting people”; it was that “We learned love and acceptance from a kooky singer who wears meat and now we are all little monsters and ISN’T THAT AWESOME?”

I don’t know if “monster” has a positive connotation in Zynga’s universe, but it sure doesn’t in mine. I can’t come up with any possible defense of the concept that learning to be more monstrous somehow increases love in a community. I can’t fathom how turning what looks like a nice, happy little farm town into a freak show discotheque is supposed to be indicative of moral progress. Yes, I know it’s just a commercial, and I know that those are just actors making a buck by reciting a script. Yes, I know that the people and places represented are purely fictional. Yes, I know it’s just trying to be funny to make me want to play the game, and in some ways, it kind of is funny.

But still.

Smart advertisers do not create ad campaigns in a vacuum. They don’t ask themselves, “Do I relate to this?”, but rather, “Will my audience relate to this?” Really smart ones do test groups and surveys to make sure they can accurately answer that question. They want their commercials to evoke a reaction of, “Haha! YEAH!”, not, “Umm… huh?” Gauging by how unbelievably popular Lady Gaga is at the moment, I’d hazard a guess that Zynga’s marketers were not too far off. They expect their viewers to be on board with their message. If they’re much good at their job, then they know that their viewers are on board.

The end justifies the means. Love and acceptance. Little monsters.

Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about the weirdest and least excusable cross-promotion to ever hit social networking. Suddenly I was thinking about the Antichrist.

At first I thought I must have really gone off the deep end this time. But I couldn’t shake it. The end justifies the means. The supreme end is love and acceptance (which translates to bald-faced immorality). Any means that gets us love and acceptance is subsequently great — even if the “means” looks like us turning into little monsters, emulating our hero who led the way in that regard.

Of course I don’t believe that Lady Gaga is the Antichrist, or even the false prophet, or the harlot Babylon, or anything else you’ll read about in Revelation. But I’m getting the same kind of feeling I had surrounding the messianic language that permeated our most recent presidential campaigns — while we are not yet looking at the biblical event itself, we can see that our culture is getting more and more ready for it. If we are expected to rally behind an openly and intentionally creepy person, because somehow doing so promotes love and acceptance, is it really that big of a stretch to see that happening on a larger, more political scale? If we’re supposed to turn a blind eye in our entertainment to things that should strike us as wrong, because of the happiness and sparkles and all that, is it really such a great leap to ignore things like, “Oh, yeah, I guess that leader kind of came out of nowhere through political intrigue, but who cares! Love! Acceptance! Rhinestones!”

Honestly, it made me wonder: if the Antichrist were to actually crawl out of the ocean with seven literal heads and ten literal horns (Rev 13), would people actually up and follow him anyway? A week ago I would have thought that not to be possible. Now I’m not so confident.

I really don’t intend to be alarmist with this. The end would be coming no sooner nor later if Lady Gaga weren’t prancing around being as weird as possible. The Antichrist will not look like any more or less of a monster just because people enjoy saying ridiculous things about love and acceptance. But I am troubled to see how willing and eager our culture is to be blind to the obvious, just so long as happy lingo is involved. It’s like the devil doesn’t even have to try to be subtle anymore.

I think it behooves us, the church, to notice these trends. Yet a mere shake of the head or a cluck of the tongue is no more profitable towards loosing revival than an inane digital farming game is towards creating utopia. We need to stay alert. We need to speak boldly and kindly about the true source of love and joy. And above all, we need to keep praying, crying out for the God of mercy to send revival to our nation.

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* See what I did there? I said, “Going Gaga for False Justice”, and her name is… oh, okay.

(As if I’m not the trillionth blogger to “cleverly” try and rip a pun off of a stage name that was clearly designed for puns.)

However, I do want to briefly share what’s been on my heart since I heard the announcement.

It can hardly be argued but that bin Laden committed crimes deserving of death. Stopping Al Qaeda is important for national security — surely all Americans can affirm this. I’d strongly suspect that, if pushed, everyone quoting Proverbs 24:17-18 (“Do not rejoice when your enemy falls”) would nonetheless agree it is a good thing for bin Laden to be taken out of commission. Many would even say this is the judgment of God on the man. I myself would agree with all of those statements.

What concerns me, though, is the wave of national pride sweeping across the U.S. in response to his death. At one level, this is understandable. But on a much more serious level, bin Laden finally reaping the consequences of his wickedness does not make this country any more righteous. Even though our enemy was evil, it does not therefore follow that we are good. I love my nation, and pray for it often, but as we’re riotously celebrating the death of this terrorist, I can’t help but think of Romans 2:1:

“Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things.”

We judge bin Laden for killing three thousand people in one day. We, as a nation, kill four thousand per day, innocent babies who die with the full sanction of our government. We judge bin Laden for stirring up Islamic youth to throw their lives away in violence. We think nothing of throwing away our own youth to fantasies of violence in video games, movies, and music (though we still manage to be surprised when they act on it). We may even judge bin Laden for his worship of demons. Strange, then, that our own country should be so obsessed with the occult and nearly completely uninvolved with the true God.

With the measure we judge, it will be measured back to us (Matt 7:2). I’m not saying we can’t rightly call bin Laden wicked, or truthfully say he got what he deserved in the end. What I am saying is that we don’t have the moral leverage to crow about it. Osama bin Laden got what all of us deserve apart from the grace of God. Before we rejoice in a sinful man getting his comeuppance, we need to tremble at the mercy of the God who has not yet given us ours.

We can be relieved the manhunt is over. We can thank God for removing bin Laden from power. But we don’t dare start gloating about how superior our nation is to him — because when push comes to shove, it isn’t. A nation whose hands are bloodstained cannot rightly judge a murderer. A nation who rebels against God cannot judge a terrorist who does the same.

As believers, we are not personally under God’s wrath. We can evaluate rightly and speak truth from a kingdom perspective. But that means we can’t be blind to the condition of our own nation. The cries coming from our lips should sound less like “USA! USA!” and more like “God, have mercy on us.” If God did not withhold His judgment from Al Qaeda forever, He will not withhold it from America forever, either. Pride — national or otherwise — is the exact opposite of what we need in this hour. We have all the more reason to ask God to send an awakening and turn the hearts of this country to Himself, to remember mercy in the time of wrath (Hab 3:2).

We need revival. We need deliverance. We need to be saved. And none of that changed with one less madman in the world. May we remain sober and watchful in this day, trusting in and glorifying God alone, earnestly interceding for the nation that we love.

In reality, there is an inherently offensive dimension to the Gospel. Self-righteous, independent humans don’t like being told they’re lost sinners who must cast themselves on the mercy of a God they’ve never seen, and thereafter obey Him. People overly concerned with being nice and inclusive chafe at the idea that there is only one Way to the Father. Naturalistic intellectuals will scoff at the idea that some God-Man will come in the sky and set up a thousand-year kingdom. God Himself, speaking of the first coming of His Son, said, “Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense…” (Rom 9:33). He knew that many pride-blinded sinners would not be willing to receive Him.

Thus, it is more than fair to say that the Gospel — undiluted and straightforward — is offensive to the unredeemed human heart. It may even be fair to say that a presentation of the Gospel that does not strike that chord of, “Wait… what?!” very well may have missed the way Scripture speaks of it.

Truth is often offensive. Messengers and leaders in the Body of Christ ought not to shrink back from being truthful for fear of bothering someone.

However, and equally importantly, not all that offends is truth. Messengers and leaders in the Body of Christ (especially the younger ones) do well to take this seriously.

One of the things that got me thinking about this was a big internet kerfuffle I recently stumbled into, revolving around the lyrics of a particular modern worship song.* A lot of people love it, and a lot of people are made to squirm because of it. I don’t care for the song much myself, but that has a lot more to do with my particular poetic bent than with making any kind of theological case out of it.

The short version of the argument was that a lot of worship leaders will refuse to play the song, or else edit out the bothersome lyrics, to avoid outcry in their congregation. The blog I was reading thought that to be a great tragedy, and was very energetically defending the song’s lyrics.

I didn’t mind that so much. Although I disagreed, I could appreciate where the writer was coming from. Everyone is different, and there’s no reason that lyrics which made me cringe would be just fine — and even deeply stirring and beautiful — to someone with a different poetic sensibility. Whatever floats your boat (as long as it’s not heretical).

What began to trouble me, though, was to see the language shift from defending the lyrics to questioning the faith, maturity, and integrity of people who didn’t like the song. The blog post moved from the subtle, and arguably correct statement, “If you have problems with a certain aspect of Jesus’ personality, you’re probably going to have problems with these lyrics” [statement paraphrased to avoid disclosing specifics], to the overt and harsh statement that, if a person was uncomfortable with the lyrics, they were “probably uncomfortable with the real Jesus” [direct quote].

The blog’s comments echoed similar sentiments. Assertions were made about whether these religious critics would also disdain certain classic hymns. People were reveling in the “discomfort” and “tension” that was so transformative to their lives. One commenter chimed in, “I love controversial [sic].” Another declared that the post was not just a brilliant defense of these lyrics specifically, but of genuine worship as a whole.

To the majority of the people in the discussion, the lyrics were not being evaluated for their scriptural basis, the glory they brought to Jesus, their ability to usher a corporate gathering into worship, or even for their aesthetic quality and nuance. When push came to shove, the plumb line was how shocking and uncomfortable they were. The fact that they made whole congregations shift uncomfortably in their pews meant that this was a great song. And the fact that other people couldn’t appreciate that offense signified not just artistic differences, but spiritual dullness, immaturity, or even hypocrisy. Some went as far as to say that a worship service that didn’t offend people must not be real worship.

All this over one person’s poetry.

I was stunned. Of all the arguments I was expecting to hear put forth, “offense = good, truthful and justified” was not one I was prepared for. But as I thought about it, I began to see how this happens quite a lot in Christian circles, especially among young people who are eager to be on the cutting edge of radical Christianity.

Lots of things are done and said under the banner of “the offense of the Gospel” that have nothing whatever to do with what that term actually means. It’s right to say that preaching truth is apt to offend people; it is not therefore also right to conclude that anything which makes people squirm is therefore preaching truth. It is right to present the truth despite the fact it might offend; it is not therefore right to present it in such a way that is designed to offend.

From preachers using swear words in their sermons for emphasis (with a halfhearted apology and an “I’m just being honest”), to songwriters using intentionally confusing and disturbing lyrics; from Christian artists making grotesquely graphic pieces to prove that they aren’t religious, to theological debaters on internet forums snarkily telling their opponents exactly where to stick their circular reasoning, offensiveness cannot become the goal. Making other people fume may or may not have any lasting fruit once the dust settles. Inciting offense is not something you’ll find listed in the Sermon on the Mount.

Though people will often appeal to biblical authors as precedence for offensive messages, one can no more build a case for being brash from them than one can build a case for being seeker-friendly. The apostle Paul said some decidedly undiplomatic things in his letters (See Rom 2:1; 1Cor 4:7-14; Gal 5:12, to name a few); but he also said that he would become all things to all people (1Cor 9:22), would never eat meat again if it would prevent a brother’s offense (1Cor 8:13) and stressed the importance of speaking the truth in love (Eph 4:12). The apostle John recorded some of Jesus’ most controversial sermons (John 5, 6, 8), but also penned the much-beloved epistle on how we ought to love one another (1 John). Jesus Himself often clashed with the Pharisees and had harsh words of rebuke for them (Matt 23:1-36), but in the same chapter mourned brokenheartedly for the soon coming destruction of Jerusalem (Matt 23:37-39). Jesus’ words sometimes offended multitudes (John 6), but people also marveled at His gracious speech (Luke 4:22).

None of these men shrunk back from speaking the truth that would cause people to recoil in offense. But none of them valued being offensive. They valued truth.

We can’t judge truth by whether or not people walk away offended. The same Gospel that saved more than three thousand people in Acts 2 got the preacher killed in Acts 7. A singular miracle and message convinced half of Jesus’ audience that He was demon-possessed, and the other half that He was from God (John 10:20-21). People left in droves when Jesus claimed to be the bread of life (John 6), but they marveled at His gracious words when He made the shocking claim of fulfilling Isaiah 61 (Luke 4). Paul’s messages infuriated the Jews of Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-9), but you’d never know it from the thoughtful reception he received in Berea (Acts 17:11).

The truth of the message did not change with how well or badly it was received. Offense is no gauge of a faithful representation of the Gospel. It is not as simple as an “if A, then B” equation.

This is challenging because it undermines our attempts to solidify concrete methodologies and/or definitions of success. A message is not necessarily a successful one if we make everyone happy. It is not necessarily a successful one if we make everyone upset. We can’t rely on being either shocking or upbeat to get the truth across. Just as Ezekiel was to speak whether the people heard him or refused him (Eze 2:7), we are to be truthful in love whether people are glad to hear it or gnash their teeth at it (Acts 2,7).

This is also good news because it means our success as a messenger of truth doesn’t hinge on the reaction of fickle hearers. God isn’t evaluating whether people walked away smiling or stinging (…well, He is, but that’s between Him and them, not Him and the preacher/author/artist). He’s simply asking if we are reaching for being a faithful witness, emulating His Son in that way. Our job is not to make sure people feel uncomfortable. Our job is to have the Word of the Lord and speak faithfully (Jer 23:28).

Offense isn’t the point. Truth is the point. If we stay anchored in that, seeking our success as defined by God’s pleasure in us as we seek to be true to Him, we will be able to be strong, clear messengers of what is on His heart in this hour.

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*I am choosing not to identify the song, partially to respect the author, and mostly to avoid having a debate about it in the comments here. The song itself is not at all the point. So if you don’t know which song I’m talking about, don’t worry about it. If you do know the song I’m talking about, please feel free to know it and have an opinion on it between yourself and the Lord, rather than in the comment box.