Last week, my wife started a new part-time job teaching Spanish at an academy where parents send their home-schooled children to learn things most parents aren’t equipped to adequately teach. This is a Christian organization, and they use textbooks written from a Christian perspective, a particularly conservative perspective.

For example, one of her Spanish textbooks contains the story of a man who was raised Catholic but realized — after being introduced to the Bible by some Evangelical Christians — that he was a sinner and was going to hell unless he accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior. After his conversion to Christianity from Catholicism, he felt compelled to return to his village and help rescue the rest of his friends and family.

Hmmm….

I could argue with lots of things in that story, but I want to focus our attention on one thing in particular: the reason the man made a commitment of personal faith to Jesus. He didn’t want to go to hell.

I suppose lots of people fall into this category. I know it was true for me back when I was 12 and I walked that aisle at Teens Take America. I was talking with a church recently, and they asked me to tell them when and how I became a Christian. This is a common question in interviews with churches. It’s interesting that few ever ask why I became a Christian. I guess they make their own assumptions about that. Anyway, I told them about the night I stepped across the line in 1982.

Jeff Walling preached this sermon called “The Forever Factor”, and he had four chairs on stage with him that night. The chair to the far right was for people who had made a commitment and were living out their faith with a “white hot” zeal. I remember that phrase “white hot” in particular. The chair on the far left was for people who were unable to respond to the message (I think the phrase that often gets used here is “providentially hindered”). I think that meant infants and children or those who may be mentally and/or physically disabled.

Then there were the two middle chairs. The middle right was for folks who had made a commitment of faith at some point in the past but had fallen away (these were usually called “backsliders” when I was growing up). And then the remaining chair was for people who had heard the message and understood it but for some reason had not made a commitment of faith, had not turned their lives over to Jesus and been baptized.

Then Jeff threatened to call people out of the crowd, and I knew that if he called me (he was my youth minister, after all) I’d be forced to choose that last chair. I knew the story, the theology of it all. I was a sinner both by commission (the wrong things I’d done) and by omission (the right things I’d left undone). My sin separated me from God. If I died that night, I was certain I was headed for hell.

So, I walked that aisle and put my sweaty hand in Jeff’s. He led me in a prayer and baptized me that very night.

Now, there’s a lot I could argue with in that story as well, but I want to focus (again) on one central thing: my reason for becoming a Christian that night. I didn’t want to go to hell.

In my post last Thursday, I asked this question: Why is it so important to become a Christian?

Is it so important because if you’re not a Christian you’ll go to hell when you die? Is it so important because if you are a Christian you’ll go to heaven when you die?

Are those good enough reasons — avoiding hell and enjoying heaven? Is it appropriate to use heaven and hell as a carrot-and-stick approach to evangelism? Is that the Bible means by “good news”?

Recently, there was a little tree that sprouted up among the shrubs lining the front of my house. I could see it poking up through the bushes, looking like the one kid in sixth grade who’d hit his growth spurt early.

Of course, it was easy to pluck this little thing up out of the ground. Its roots had not yet had a chance to go very deep. Like cancer, early detection was helpful in disposing of my potentially problematic and unwanted growth. But it got me thinking: when exactly is a tree, a tree? I mean, there’s certainly an inherent “treeness” to even the tiniest sapling, but there’s a quantitative and qualitative difference between the little sprout I dispatched with my bare hands and the big mama tree that shades my entire front yard.

There are trees you can put your fingers around, and there are trees you can’t get your arms around. There’s a difference, but that difference is a little difficult to define. What exactly do we mean when we use the term “tree”?

If you don’t define your words for yourself — if you don’t know precisely what you mean when you use a particular word or phrase — you’re left to rely on other people’s definitions. And that’s where real trouble often begins for Christians.

What do we mean when we use that word? What makes a Christian a Christian?

If we don’t define it for ourselves, we’re left to rely on other people’s definitions, and that can be troublesome. There’s no shortage of opinions about what the word means. In fact, if you asked 100 people what a Christian is, you’d likely get 100 different definitions.

“A Christian is someone who believes in God and Jesus and the Bible.”

“A Christian is someone who doesn’t like gay people.”

“A Christian is someone who goes to church.”

“A Christian is someone who needs a crutch to get through life because he can’t make decisions in the big, bad world all alone.”

“A Christian is someone who votes Republican but can’t tell you why except that is has something to do with abortion.”

“A Christian is an uptight, arrogant goody-two-shoes whose main goal in life is to spoil everyone else’s fun.”

I could go on and on, but you get the idea, right? Some of these statements contain some truth, but none of these statements contains the whole truth. None of this defines what a Christian is. Sadly, because few people seem to know how to define the word, Christians often struggle with a serious identity crisis, uncertain about who they are, knowing mostly who they’re not.

So, I thought we’d take some time here over the coming weeks to do a back to basics kind of thing. We’re going to talk about what being a Christian means. I’m less interested in the traditional questions we often discuss (Who led you to Christ? When did you make your commitment of faith?). I’d prefer to talk about the how, the what and the why of Christianity (How does someone became a Christian? What happens when you become a Christian? Why is it important to become a Christian?).

In fact, I think that last one may be the best place to start: Why is it so important to become a Christian?

Most of the people who read this blog are Christians, so I’m going to ask a question here that I trust will be understood. This was a question posed to me recently by a search committee at a church I was interviewing, and it got me thinking about a much deeper answer than they were probably looking for. But I think this question is worth considering.

When did you become a Christian?

Now, from a purely biographical perspective, that’s easy to answer. I became a Christian in June of 1982. I was at an event called Teens Take America. Jeff Walling preached a sermon titled “The Forever Factor”, and Jerome Williams led 27 verses of “Just As I Am”. I’ve talked about it before, but is that really the answer to the question? After all, I had grown up in church. My family was steeped in church culture, and I can’t really remember a time in my life when I didn’t believe in Jesus.

There was an awful lot that came before that night in Oklahoma when I walked down the aisle. And there has been a lot of stuff that happened after that night — times when I doubted and drifted, times when I chose to do the wrong thing even when I knew it was wrong, times when I sheepishly came back to what I knew was the right thing all along. It hasn’t been a straight line — not by a longshot!

What if be(com)ing a Christian isn’t just about that one moment in time when you stepped across the line? What if you had to answer the question without referring to a specific date, location or situation? Could you do it?

Newlyweds can point to a ceremony. Newborns could point to their birth — if they could point. Homeowners can point to a signed mortgage. But at what moment does a person go from being an unbeliever to being a believer — from being unsaved to being saved — from being a non-Christian to being a Christian?

Is it an event? Or is it a process?

It’s hard to believe that one year ago today we loaded up the girls and the dog and drove out of our fair city, making our way westward, chasing a dream of building a new kind of church. We were so sure and so optimistic and so hopeful.

But things don’t always turn out the way you want.

It’s been a humbling experience, the past year, in many ways. So many things unrealized, so many dreams left unfulfilled. We’ve done our best to mask our disappointment — sometimes succeeding — probably failing more often than not — trying to hide from our kids the embarrassment and feelings of failure I’ve certainly experienced. I’ve had a hard time not feeling like I was coming back with my tail between my legs, a defeated man, a failed church planter.

Being a writer is a solitary occupation, and that solitude doesn’t do much to help those feelings of failure.

I know the facts. I know no one could have predicted the current economic tsunami that threatens to swamp the State of California. If we could have predicted it, we’d have done things differently. But we couldn’t, so we didn’t, and now we can’t so we won’t spend any more time worrying about it.

For now we move forward. Lessons have been learned (I hope). Lessons that will be put to good use wherever it is God finally reveals as our next destination.

I think I can honestly say that I don’t regret it. We did some good while we were out there. We made new relationships that will stay forever, and we deepened existing ones. I believe God had us out there for a season. I’m sad that the season wasn’t longer, but there it is.

I have an interview tonight with a church in Ohio. Who knows what’ll come of that? I had a meeting with a couple of elders from a church here in the Atlanta area yesterday morning. Who knows what’ll come of that? I had a phone conversation with a guy on the search team for a church down in Florida yesterday afternoon. Who knows what’ll come of that?

There’s a church in St. Louis, a church in Texas, churches in several parts of the country — who knows what’ll come of all that?

At the risk of stating the obvious, God does. He knew all this last year when I was driving out of my driveway. He reveals what he reveals, and I’m relatively sure he’s got his reasons.

One thing I do know: I am not the same man I was a year ago. Things are different. I think I’m more myself than I was then. I like to think I’m more like Jesus than I was then (I’m not one of those people who assume the two are mutually exclusive). As painful as the past year has been, the pain is redemptive. God has used that pain to forge compassion in me, to form a stronger character, a Christlikeness that wasn’t there before — or at least wasn’t there as consistently as it is now.

I know that I’m not who I was, and I also know that I’m not yet who I will be. God is in the process of transforming me, a process that won’t be done this side of eternity. He’s in control, and he has my best interests at heart. If I ever doubt that, I’ll just think back to a year ago.

It is quiet in my house right now — relatively.

The girls are at school. Jill is at the gym. The landscapers and yardworkers who attend to my neighbors’ lawns haven’t arrived yet. No birds are singing. No dogs are barking.

But my iPod has Segovia softly plucking and strumming his Spanish guitar. And the refrigerator is humming. And one of the ceiling fans is knocking against its chain. And the keys to my laptop make a clicking noise.

So, it’s quiet in my house; it’s just not silent.

I miss quiet. I think we all do whether we realize it or not. The world was once a quieter place without airplanes and automobiles, leaf-blowers and alarm clocks, ambulances and fire trucks.

I know nature has its own noises. Thunderclaps and such. But these are punctuation marks, not sentences.

There was a time, back before iPods and televisions and transistor radios, when the average person lived in relative quiet. I wonder if it made them a more contemplative people. It must have. Thought, deep thought, not the snorkeling skimming just beneath the surface that often poses as deep thought but the real deep stuff, requires quiet. It requires stillness.

In this age of constant noise and stimulation, we would be wise to remember that God is often silent. That’s not to say he’s non-communicative. He speaks without speaking, so to speak. An old hymn put it this way: “In the rustling grass I hear him pass. He speaks to me everywhere.” Ah, but when is the last time you actually heard the grass rustle? Or listened as the stars declared their Maker’s praise?

Going into a room in a building on a Sunday morning where music would be played was a break from the routine for millions of people in the centuries before radio and television. The rest of their lives were lived in an atmosphere of relative quiet. Their soundtrack was the song of the birds and the white noise of the wind. They left their quiet places to gather together and make noise. It was good for them to do so.

I wonder if it might be good for us to leave our places of noise to gather together and create silence every once in a while.

Our society doesn’t seem to know how to quiet itself — we are, quite literally, missing quiet — and I wonder if the church is part of the problem or part of the solution.

A friend of mine died this week, and it’s been hard for me to come to terms with. Her name was Amy Ferrante, she lived in northern California, and, she died — ironically enough — the morning I wrote the last post — the one where I talked about how I missed northern California. I spoke at an event last night in Macon, Georgia, for married people, and I had to fight off memories of speaking at a similar event at New Vintage Church a few years ago — one where my friend Amy sang and decorated and helped pull off an amazing evening with short notice and even shorter notice.

She had been a force of nature, able to pull things off that no one ever imagined possible. Optimistic. Charismatic. Dynamic. Fun. A little flighty at times. She’d forget her lyrics but manage with a shrug to charm the audience anyway.

And now she’s gone. Dead at age 40.

I know there was a time in history when this was not uncommon. Life expectancy has not always been what it is today — especially for women who died by the droves in childbirth until fairly recently. People died of colds and ulcers and accidents on the job. People had strokes and heart attacks and cancer (and they might not even know anything was wrong). Modern medicine has fostered in us a sense that things like this should not happen, but they used to happen all the time.

I have to think that the knowledge that people might just drop dead at any moment must have made people live differently.

Along with our lack of wonder, I wonder if another missing ingredient in our lives is terror — not a constant fearful attitude of hopelessness but a healthy respect of how brief our lives can be, how unsure we are of tomorrow, how fragile and vulnerable we all are. Terror may motivate us to irrational behavior, but it might also help us to “number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

I have a friend whose elementary-aged son caught the flu, went to the hospital for treatment, contracted an infection and died in a matter of days.

I know another man who contracted the H1N1 (swine flu) virus and died, his family watching helplessly as the life ebbed out of him.

On May 27th of last year, my best friend’s mother went to the doctor complaining of fatigue and shortness of breath. She was diagnosed with cancer. She died on June 13th.

This used to be normal, and I fear that the fact that it’s not normal anymore has bred in us a false sense of security, a sense that we’re all going to live to a ripe, old age, so we’ll always have time to do the stuff we really want to do.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the technological breakthroughs that enable us to live longer, healthier, more productive lives. I just wonder what it means to live without a healthy fear of our own mortality. It feels like we’re not just missing wonder; we’re missing terror as well.

I miss California.

Don’t get me wrong. I love it here in Atlanta, but there are things I miss terribly about California.

There are people I miss, of course, but I’m thinking about California itself right now.

I miss the beach. I miss the coastline, driving down PCH from Point Magu past Leo Carrillo State Beach into Malibu and on into Santa Monica. I miss the amount of stars we could see from our driveway in Camarillo. I miss watching the sun drop into the Pacific Ocean. I miss the sun being so bright you can barely open your eyes. I miss the smell of salt water and the sound of the surf pounding the sand. I miss fresh produce and fish tacos with a little lime and cabbage.

I miss northern California, too — driving across the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County. I miss the martini prawns and amazingly fresh sashimi at Gary Chu’s Osake Restaurant in Santa Rosa. I miss the wineries and vineyards of Sonoma County, the smell of the grapes ripening in the fields. I miss the hot, dry days and cool, damp nights.

I spent a lot more time outside when I lived in California. I felt closer to nature, and that closeness provides something that is otherwise missing from my life: wonder. Nothing inspires wonder like a good, up-close look at nature in all its glory.

Socrates, according to Plato, maintained the wonder is the starting point of all philosophy. Aristotle later agreed and named the sun, the moon and the stars as the primary objects of wonder.

I am tempted to suggest that wonder is also the starting point of theology. At the very least, faith without wonder is dead. When we lose our sense of wonder, theology becomes purely theoretical, unable to touch our lives in any meaningful way, and there are things about God we will fail to discover. Consider Psalm 136:3-9:

Give thanks to the Lord of lords:
His love endures forever.
to him who alone does great wonders,
His love endures forever.
who by his understanding made the heavens,
His love endures forever.
who spread out the earth upon the waters,
His love endures forever.
who made the great lights—
His love endures forever.
the sun to govern the day,
His love endures forever.
the moon and stars to govern the night;
His love endures forever.

This was written by someone who spent a lot of time outside and figured out something about God’s character and nature by simply looking around at the things God had made.

I read somewhere that, for the longest time, there was no Hebrew word for “nature”. They used the word “creation” instead. I’m not enough of a Hebrew scholar to verify this, but it makes some sense to me. These things we see do not occur naturally; rather, they are created. And, as creations, they reveal some things about their Creator. Primarily, they reveal God’s power, God’s creativity and God’s faithfulness.

It is precisely those divine attributes that cause me to wonder, awakening in me the desire to investigate further.

This is what I miss by spending all my days indoors. I’m missing wonder, and I want to get it back. But how? Suggestions?

I missed a meeting this morning.

Here’s how it happened: Yesterday, someone (or someones) launched a Denial-of-Service attack against Twitter. Facebook was also attacked, and — as a result — the site was very buggy for most of the morning.

Before I knew this was the result of some hacker or cyber-terrorist or whatever, I thought that perhaps the problem was with my computer. I hadn’t rebooted in probably a week or more, so I figured that would be where I’d start. I saved and shut everything down, and, when I got back up and running, I failed to open my iCal — which would have alerted me this morning to the fact that I was supposed to be in a recording studio at 10:00 to lend Clay Olberman’s voice to a KidJam masterpiece penned by my good friend Phil Pierce.

For many of you, that last bit will make no sense whatsoever. Suffice to say, I consider myself a victim of the cyberattack that brought down both Twitter and Facebook.

And it got me thinking.

Remember 10 years ago when everyone was worried that the internet might eat itself because of the Y2K bug? It turned out to be one of the biggest hoaxes in a long time. Computers kept right on computing with no interruption of service whatsoever. The lights stayed on, Jesus did not return, and we all went on our merry way.

But Twitter and Facebook went down yesterday — for a while. And people didn’t know what to do. How would they survive if they couldn’t tell people what they were thinking about ordering for lunch or how awesome their morning workout was or the fact that some guy on the bus smelled like old milk?

I should confess. I don’t Twitter. I do Facebook, though. And, obviously, I blog. I’m no Luddite, fantasizing of a day when the machine finally grinds to a halt, leaving us with some post-apocalyptic, pre-industrial, Cormac McCarthy-esque world to endure.

I love the interwebs.

And yet….

I do wonder what in the world we’d do if it all went away. What if the internet stopped? What if cell phones didn’t work? (BTW, my cell phone isn’t working properly — not alerting me to missed calls and new voicemails — sorry if I haven’t called you back). What if we had to go back to the way we did life in the 70s and 80s?

Does anyone remember what life was like back then with rotary phones (and no call waiting), newspapers and four television channels?

There would be some good things that might happen as a result. For example, kids would play outside more. Adults would go to bed earlier.

But there would be some bad things as well. Access to information would be limited. I wouldn’t feel as close to my sister in California as I do now.

What would you miss most if it all went away?

What would you embrace if it all went away?

Last night, George Sodini walked into a Latin Dance class at an LA Fitness outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, turned off the lights and started shooting. Police say they found 52 shell casings at the scene of the crime. Three women are dead. So is Sodini, who turned the gun on himself. At least 10 others were injured in a tragedy that defies description.

I spent some time this morning reading Sodini’s online journal. It appears to have been taken down now. Frankly, I was surprised that it was still up long enough for me to read it in its entirety.

There’s no doubt he was mentally disturbed. “Angry” doesn’t begin to characterize what he wrote; “hostile” is more like it.

But the one word that kept coming to me as I read his words is “helpless”. George Sodini felt utterly helpless to change his circumstances. He knew something was wrong with him. He was terribly lonely and couldn’t seem to make life work very well. Even when he got a promotion and a raise at work, he focused on the downside rather than the positive. He kept a list with him which reminded him of all the negative factors at work in his life, negative factors he felt helpless to avoid or overcome.

Eventually, his sense of helplessness hardened into a desperate sense of hopelessness.

Sadly, he had been part of a church for quite a while. He left several years ago, and had nothing positive to say about them at all. I don’t know what kind of teaching he was exposed to at this church. I have some theories, but I don’t want to speak too disparagingly where I have no firsthand knowledge.

I do know this: Christianity begins with a presupposition that chafes against modern culture, a presupposition that Mr. Sodini seems to have understood quite well. There is something wrong with all of us, and we are helpless to fix ourselves. We cannot solve our own problems, not the deepest and most profound ones. Certain things are beyond our ability to rectify. We are helpless.

But we are not hopeless. This is the part Mr. Sodini failed to grasp.

God is bigger than our problems, bigger than our flaws, bigger than our loneliness, bigger than our helplessness.

God promises that one day everything that is wrong will be made right, everything that is upside down will be turned rightside up again. Everything that is broken will be mended. Every hurt is healed. Every question is answered.

Odds are I don’t know that much about you. I don’t know all your fears and worries. I don’t know much about your history. But I do know that it is our destiny, more than our history, which defines our truest identity. And I know that God promises a destiny that defies description.

Because of this, we may feel helpless, but we never have to feel hopeless.

I had 72 of you respond to my survey over the last couple of weeks, and I’m breaking down the results now. Here’s what it looks like:

54 Men
18 Women

10 age 21-30
22 age 31-40
22 age 41-50
18 age 50+

4 completed High School
10 completed Some College
40 College Degree
18 Graduate School

6 Baptist
40 Church of Christ/Christian Church
2 Methodist
24 Other

30 attend church once per week
40 attend church more than once per week
2 attend a few times per month

6 attend a church of less than 100
4 attend a church of 100-200
20 attend a church of 200-500
12 attend a church of 500-1,000
22 attend a church of 1,000-2,500
8 attend a church of 2,500+

20 on church staff
24 lead small group
20 teach class
6 lead youth group
18 work with children
10 participate in missions
6 lead worship
4 no involvement
30 other

30 blog
60 FaceBook
18 Twitter
30 read through RSS feed
12 read via FaceBook

The following states are represented:

Arkansas
Arizona
California
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Kentucky
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
New Mexico
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
Texas
Virginia

And the following countries:

Canada
England
Australia

As for topics you’ve enjoyed, you left quite a diverse list. Lots of you said you enjoyed and miss the character studies I used to do when I was teaching regularly — especially the series on Moses, David and Daniel. Several of you liked the series on faith I did back in the spring (another series I was teaching through). Community is a topic you’d like to hear more about. And several of you asked for more on how to engage culture from a Christian perspective. Many of you want to talk more about church and ministry-related issues. That makes sense since so many of you are on staff or serve as lay-leaders somewhere.

By far, the most positive feedback I got was about the recent singing posts. Ironically, the posts weren’t really about singing. At least, I didn’t think so. But they touched something in many of you, and, for that, I’m glad.

I want you to know how honored I am that you read what I write. It’s hard to believe we’re coming up on five years this blog has been going. Knowing that I have devoted readers like you keeps me motivated as I continue growing, learning, reading and sharing my thoughts in this forum. Your presence has meant a lot to me as I’ve gone through a tough year. Please continue praying as I continue searching for a good, healthy church where I can use the gifts God has given me to provide for the family he’s also given me.

I realize I have a lot of lurkers still. Let me encourage you to come out of the shadows. One of the things the survey revealed is how much you really like the give-and-take discussion in the comments.

Oh, and Dave Moss won the book. Don’t worry, though. I just got a copy of a new book (not by me) that I’ll be giving away soon. Stay tuned!