A Mack truck is barreling down the road, about to hit your mom, you brother, your best friend. What do you do?

In 2008 on his podcast "Penn Says", Penn Jillette, of the comedian act Penn & Teller (or of Dancing with the Stars, if you're me) and an outspoken atheist, thanked a Christian proselytizer for giving him a Bible.

I used to be unsure what I thought about proselytizing because I thought it gave Christianity a bad rap -- so many people proselytizing and nowhere near enough serving others by meeting practical needs. I realized that the intention of meeting physical needs was to eventually open doors to share the Gospel of Christ, but sometimes the immediacy of its necessity escaped me. This video is a fantastic reminder of that immediacy. Convicting, for sure.

Colbert the Catholic

Okay, this one's going to be short and sweet...

First things first: This past Tuesday I found out my placement with TeachOverseas.org, and I'm going to be teaching high school in Prague!! The school is called Gymnázium Ohradní, so now you can look it up in case you're extra curious. I'm really, super duper pumped!

My friend Amanda wonderfully informed me that Rob Bell's new NOOMA video, entitled "Corner", is now out. It's created in conjunction with Compassion International (so now you know why I'm EXTRA excited about this NOOMA). Go here to see the Compassion site, and then click on the link to watch for free.

Bart Ehrman, atheist and professed intellectual, was taken to lunch on The Colbert Report last week. For one of the best (and funniest) guest-author interviews I've seen on the show, visit the show's website. For a synopsis, check out this blog. Thanks go to Justin Holcomb for sharing this story with me via his Facebook status update!

Religulous? Yeah, maybe so.

So this past Saturday night I watched Bill Maher's new documentary Religulous. I'd actually wanted to watch it for quite some time and was thrilled when two friends said they'd just bought it.

The movie, quite frankly, didn't shock me at all. In fact, I agreed with many of Maher's main points. Maher's primary thesis is that religion does more harm than good in the world, and each tradition's fight to gain followers becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy of the end times as it battles other religions, thereby sustaining hatred and war in the world.

Essentially, Maher's thesis rests in suspicion of organized religion. What good does religion do? Maher wonders. Why would I put my faith in something so hypocritical? He asks. From the main world religions in particular, Maher hears something along the lines of, "You, come lead a wonderful life with us in our truth, and then we'll make everyone who disagrees miserable in order to prove ours is, in fact, the good life!"

Many "religious" people are much less the picture of piety and instead reek of contradiction, malice, and self-importance. They haven't mastered the essence of their professed faiths and instead parade around their "correct" positions on the hot button topics of their choosing as God's finite opinions on those topics. Reinstate America as a Christian nation! Have an abortion if you want to go to Hell! God hates the gays! I pick on Christianity, but this ignorance occurs within each religion's "religious". And, of course, these examples represent the extremes. Still, all of us who associate with a religion are guilty of this sort of contradiction on some level. It is what makes Bill Maher suspicious of religion; it is precisely the subject of which we need to be aware as we seek to learn and grow in our faiths and lessen that discrepancy between what we believe and how we act.

What I am continually learning more and more in regards to Christianity, however, is how, if I am to truly abide with God through the person of Jesus Christ, there will be many fewer reasons for anyone to be suspicious of Christianity. That is due to the distinctness of Christianity from any other religion found in it revolving entirely around a relationship in which God offers to every person on Earth His unconditional love. Though I desire to live as God intended humans to live, I am not bound to a particular code of behavior, a bunch of rules, or the Jewish Law. No, I live through Christ's law only, a law of love. This is precisely where so many Christians get tripped up: they think up a law of God (for instance, one written by a gun-toting, gay-hating, anti-science, colonialist Jesus) and thereby limit God, simultaneously tainting the name of Jesus and hurting the cause of Christianity. Each Christian does it in small ways -- I know I am just as guilty of hypocrisy as anyone else -- though it is normally the big ways that make onlookers truly suspicious of Christianity.

It must be acknowledged that, even if we overcame all hypocrisy among Christians, there would still exist unbelievers whose hearts were not persuaded by the love of Christ. Bill Maher, it seems, is also one such person. Though his film mostly focused on practices and ideas overly emphasized by various religious practitioners (thereby seeming silly to onlookers) and the fault of religions to be more divisive than inclusive, Bill Maher is, at heart, skeptical of the idea of God in general. He is afraid of what happens when religions butt heads, but he is first convinced that God is a foolish idea. If God doesn't exist, then why do I need to restore my life to Him through repentence, cleansing, atonement? If I don't see Sin in the world or sins in my actions, than why would I live as if such an idea existed? Bill Maher is suspicious that religion is the real creator of evil in the world because Bill Maher the skeptic doesn't feel in his own heart a longing for a better life with the Creator.

To the Bill Mahers of the world, Christians -- even the most studied, relational, incarnational Christians -- are "like the stench from a rotting corpse." For

to God we [Christian believers] are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To some we are a scent of death leading to death, and to others, a scent of life leading to life. / This is a terrific responsibility. Is anyone competent to take it on? No -- but at least we don't take God's Word, water it down, and then take it to the streets to sell it cheap. We stand in Christ's presence when we speak; God looks us in the face. we get what we say straight from God and say it as honestly as we can. (2 Corinthians 2:15-17, HCSB/Message)

For the Bill Mahers of the world, I pray that the Lord will soften their hearts, that they may soon perceive the "God-sized hole" in their hearts, the idea at which they've scoffed up until now. I pray they may replace shunning religion with seeking relationship. I pray that their lives will be enriched because, in believing in evil and Sin, they also will experience in God's presence a greater goodness than any good they thought they knew before.

Prayer Requests for April

Hello everyone!
I would love to share some personal prayer requests for April and the upcoming months with all those willing to pray for me:

-Today is the final day of the TeachOverseas.org's Czech Republic teachers' "team formation". This means that I should know in the next day or so where I will be serving the Lord for the next several years. Please pray for the home office team as they discuss teachers' needs and "best fit" placements, that they will listen to the Lord's guidance as they place teachers. Please pray for me, that I will have peace in my heart for whatever placement I am given and that I will also trust that the Lord knows how to use me in whatever location I find myself.

-Please pray that in the next 2 1/2 months I make smart financial decisions that enable me to save some money in preparation for a summer without any income.

-Pray that throughout April I will seek out opportunities to get to know my high schoolers at Patrick Henry, Holston, and Abingdon better and to share Christ with them.

-Pray that I become more disciplined at journaling and keeping track of my Bible studies and spiritual growth.

-Please pray that I get better sleep at night (7 hours is ideal), make healthy food choices, and become more disciplined in working out (continuing spinning classes, integrating strength training once again, and starting training for a new marathon). Building upon my last blog post, it is really important to me to get to a healthy weight before departing for the Czech Republic so that there's less chance of any health issues derailing my ministry there. The above habits would help me get there (please pray that I lose 30 pounds before I leave in August), and they'd also help a healthy, more disciplined lifestyle become second nature to me.

-Please pray that I will be able to raise the remaining $3500 in support needed for the upcoming year of service. Please pray that my personal goal of raising this amount in full before July 1st will be met.

Thanks so much for your prayerful support!

Lose Weight Fast!

Several weeks ago I ran across a blog posting to Relevant Magazine. The title begged me read, as does the question whenever I come across it: Tired of Dieting?

While I like my exercise, I also really like my food, so much that my weight has gone up and down the past six years more than an actual yo-yo. And quite honestly, I'm sick of it. I'm ready to slim down to a healthy weight, thereby eliminating weight as a risk factor for potential disease, and to have the discipline to carry on the lifestyle that can maintain that healthy weight. What words of wisdom could this college kid's pen have for me to help me achieve these goals?

The words of wisdom came in the relief I found in the Biblical truth Cameron cited -- that the Lord created man to live in and love the Earth, but also to work it. "The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it" (Genesis 2:15, NIV).

How many "quick fix" dieting programs can you name? Calorie restriction, Atkins, South Beach Diet, overexercising, purging, Hydroxycut, grapefruit diet, green tea diet, Alli -- the list goes on! As a ubiquitous consumer industry, I've been convinced time and time again that I can slim down 15 pounds in 4 weeks for that wedding, that I should lose 3 pounds a week for 4 months, that the quick solution will be the lasting one. It should come as no surprise that not once did one of my schemes to lose weight fast -- to take the easy road -- work. Instead, every time I was disappointed in myself, thinking myself a failure because I couldn't stick to my plan.

The truth that quick fix diets do not work should be so obvious, and yet in the thick of it, that truth is purposefully avoided. Why should we want to work hard? We want to get the greatest output with the least input.

Here's where I found my relief, though: God intends for us to work at our lives, to apply significant effort, and more than that, he knows this ethic will give us the most fulfillment and the most joy. Genesis 2:15 of course proceeds 3:17, when work became toil for man. Work was intended all along and, with the proper attitude, can continue to be a willing, rewarding service to God that acknowledges his reign over the Earth.

So for me, I can drop all my quick fix notions because I know when those plans fall short, I will only break my own heart with my disappointment. Instead, I can work faithfully at pursuing a healthy lifestyle, pushing through the obstacles and the temptations, knowing that hard work with reliance on the Lord is the only route to victory.

It seems so simple!

Yet how often do I, like so many others, apply the quick fix mentality to every other area of my life?

I expect to get the job in the location that for me is the most comfortable, i.e. won't force me to push boundaries.

I assume my students will search me out at the high schools when I haven't yet made an appearance in classes that week.

I think I should automatically feel connected to God without spending time with Him each day.

The list goes on.

American society often acts as if it's allergic to effort. It's too privileged to work. Or it relies on the American Dream, believing that all things are possible in the Land of the Free and that anyone can climb that ladder of success, whatever the means. What American Society ignores is that there rarely are any lasting shortcuts to success, and that climbing the ladder, so to speak, is not the end goal at all. Joy comes from working because work itself is the end goal, just as God has always intended.

Thank goodness for that. Knowing it, spinning class looks so much more enticing.