Dear America, Happy Birthday.

Love,

Your favorite rock 'n roll poet.

This is more important than I like to pretend.

"For by [Jesus] all things were created...all things were created through him and for him."

-Colossians 1:16

The Narrow Gate and the Praise of Men

"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." -Matthew 7:13-14

One of the most potent implications of these verses for me is that I cannot both find eternal life and please the majority of people. I have to choose whether I will walk the way that leads to life or the way that leads to applause. Choosing the right path is only the beginning, and I'll need God's grace to be powerfully at work in me for every step, but I cannot choose well until I'm sure that I must choose. And choose we all must, and will.

(HT: DAC)

What We Can Learn From Vampires

Let me be clear: I hate vampires. I hate the idea of vampires in general, and every time vampires pop up in entertainment or conversation, I hate that, too. Those who know me know that vampires are my number one fear, fictional though they be. They rank just above sharks. Just above sharks, which are real and have therefore killed an infinitely greater percentage of humans than vampires.

Here are just a few reasons why vampires are by far the most fearsome of all monsters:

1. Vampires are not obvious. They look just like us. A little pale perhaps, but who's to judge someone for being a tad pasty? The mummy is hard to miss. But vampires? If vampires were real, anyone could be one.

2. Vampires get you at your most vulnerable. Vampires have this nasty habit of showing up in your bedroom at night. You would think that if you lived in a world where vampires existed, you would learn to lock your windows. But that makes for very tame cinema. Werewolves get you at night, too, but they usually get you walking through a forest at night and honestly, what are you doing in a forest at night? You had it coming.

3. Vampires are always in control. Have you ever seen a scared vampire? Me either. Every time you see a vampire, his or her cool smirk says, "I've been waiting for you. This is going down just how I want it to. Go ahead and run; I can turn into a bat."

4. Vampires can turn into bats.

5. Vampires turn you into one of them. Death is bad enough. But turning into someone who enjoys killing others, even their own friends or family? [Note: in writing this, my hair is literally standing on end. But I've come too far to turn back now.]

6. Vampires show no mercy. They never go easy on you; they never give you a break. They always get you, and they're usually laughing when they do.

And if the post was titled "Why I Hate Vampires," I would have delivered. But it's not. Because there's something we can learn from vampires. This was a fruit of a Monday reflection back on Sunday, not a reflection on the sermon, mind you, but a reflection on the 500,000 times I had to see the preview for ABC's new series "The Gates" while watching old episodes of LOST. Vampires, I think, uniquely embody one of the most subtle and overlooked qualities of genuine evil: it's attractive. Vampires, as a rule, are uniformly good-looking. Brad Pitt has been a vampire. Tom Cruise, too. Vampires are beautiful, seductive, magnetic. They don't usually have to chase you down; they reel you in. It's my uneducated and extremely wild guess that about 80% of vampire attacks happen while kissing...the vampire. [Again, shivers. I don't ever want to write the word "vampire" again. What was I thinking??] We just can't help ourselves.

Genuine evil is like that. Most of us aren't tempted or drawn to the big stuff, to genocides or lynchings. But the evil we commit, like gossip, or anger, or lust, we don't commit because it overpowers us, but because it allures us. We believe its promises of pleasure and power. We believe its eyes are only for us, and that it will deliver all the good it promises. We get a little closer to get a better view. And we're taken. If temptation came to us like Frankenstein's monster, lurching and stumbling and gargling incoherently, we'd be safe. We'd stay clear. But it comes to us with charm and flattery, masquerading as an angel in light, promising life and plotting against it. Satan himself may play the gentleman to get close, but he'll show no mercy, either.

In the end, the only promises we can believe are God's. There are many winking eyes out there, many coy smiles. Every day is full of invitations, full of offers, full of assurances of benevolence. But the only promises we can trust are those that come from lips that were once cracked in the midday sun on a hill outside Jerusalem. The only hands whose embrace we should seek are those marked with the scars of Calvary. Only Jesus Christ has given his life for ours, and has thus proven the sincerity of his love. If he tells us to steer clear of something, let's do it. If he tells us to run hard after something, let's do it. Can't we trust him? Whatever sin promises you is a lie. Whatever Jesus promises you is just the beginning.

Help for Prayers (and Pray-ers)

Come, my soul, thy suit prepare;

Jesus loves to answer prayer;

He himself has bid thee pray,

Therefore will not say thee nay.

Thou art coming to a King;

Large petitions with thee bring;

For his grace and power are such,

None can ever ask too much.

-John Newton, quoted in D. A. Carson, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount

A Case for Good Fiction

"It must be more than thirty years ago that I bought - almost unwillingly, for I had looked at the volume on that bookstall and rejected it on a dozen previous occasions - the Everyman edition of Phantastes [by George MacDonald]. A few hours later I knew that I had crossed a great frontier....Nothing was at that time further from my thoughts than Christianity and I therefore had no notion was this difference really was. I was only aware that if this new world was strange, it was also homely and humble; that if this was a dream, it was a dream in which one at least felt strangely vigilant; that the whole book had about it a sort of cool, morning innocence, and also, quite unmistakably, a certain quality of Death, good Death. What it actually did to me was to convert, even to baptise (that was where the Death came in) my imagination....The quality which had enchanted me...turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live. I should have been shocked in my 'teens if anyone had told me that what I learned to love in Phantastes was goodness."

-C. S. Lewis, "Introduction to Phantastes"

The Awesomest Loser Ever

America loves a winner. We don't care what you do on the weekends; if you win eight gold medals in a single Olympics, Michael Phelps, we will frame a picture of you, set it on our nightstand, and kiss it goodnight (I hope I'm not the only one). Duke and the Yankees have plenty of detractors, but it wouldn't be March without Mike Krzyzewski prowling the sidelines or October without pinstripes. It's the winners who get the ovations. It's the winners who visit the White House. The winners beam and wave as confetti collects on their shoulders and "We are the Champions" blares. The losers are still kneeling on the court/track/turf, hands on head, mouth slightly ajar, still too stunned to cry. They have our respect, but our adoration belongs to another.

That's why, if I live to be 1000 (which, as I understand Christianity, is exactly what will happen), I will never get tired of Revelation 5:9-10. Perhaps more than any other text in Scripture, it demonstrates the utter upside-down-ness of the Christian message. This part of the book of Revelation is a scene in the throne room of heaven, and a bunch of mighty angelic beings are singing this song to Jesus:

"Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain..." (Rev 5:9)

"Jesus, you are so unbelievably awesome, because you got yourself killed." With stuff like this in its holy book, how did this religion ever make it to the top? How did a religion built around the veneration of a martyred rabbi even survive to 2010, much less establish itself on every continent and in every nation on the planet? What was it about this death that made it not a tragedy, but a victory to be praised forever in heaven? Read on.

"Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth." (Rev 5:9-10)

Jesus' death was a win because he did something by it. What looked to the world like just another state-sponsored execution was in fact the greatest upset, come-from-behind, buzzer-beating victory in history. When Jesus' enemies thought that they had crushed his sect once and for all by murdering its leader, in reality they had accomplished exactly what Jesus intended: salvation for his people. Rome didn't crucify Jesus against his will; Jesus offered himself to God as a sacrifice, as a substitute, in the place of untold millions who deserved the death penalty for their rebellion against God. He ransomed them, bought them out of captivity to sin and the fear of death, and delivered them to his Father so that they might be a people for God's own possession, who will reign with him forever and ever (cue Hallelujah Chorus). What looked like defeat was actually the greatest win ever, and the more we learn of Christ, the more amazing it will seem. This event, this cross, will occupy our fascination and our praise for endless ages in heaven.

One of the things that most assures me of the truth of Christianity is that it defies all the conventional wisdom. No man thought this up. Only God could have veiled the most important victory in history in the guise of its most ignominious defeat. Only in the mind of the Almighty could the face of a champion, the Champion, be that of a man struggling for breath, blinking sweat and blood out of his eyes, squinting in the desert sun, with a mouth so parched that he could barely gurgle out a prayer. The Christian message is that God himself became a man, went willingly to his own execution, and by his death gave life to all who believe. And to prove that his sacrifice was effectual, he rose on the third day to tell us about it.

What has your worldview done for you lately?