Think about Jesus…right now.

What is he doing?

If you’re like most people you just thought of a still-life head shot of Jesus, framed on a wall and looking into the near distance at something over your left shoulder.  His hair is conditioned, his eyes are blue, and his skin is flawless.  Clearly he uses only the best sunscreen. And moisturizer.

If you’re like many people you’re thinking of Jesus walking through a field, or standing on a hill, or strolling by a sea, or on a sea, but not an ocean.  You definitely didn’t think of him standing on a cliff, or walking up steps, or laying on his tummy with his chin in his hands, propped up on his elbows, girl-talk-sleepover style.  Because nobody thinks of Him that way.

Or maybe you thought of Jesus under a tree with a toddler on his knee, a la Santa Claus.  Because to many of us, we like the idea that Jesus is like that favorite uncle who always has a half-dollar in his pocket with your name on it.

I do a good deal of laughing.  I once heard that good hard belly laughter equates to like half a sit-up. I don’t care much about that.  I just love laughing.

Another way in which we don’t often think about Jesus is to think of Him doubled over in gut-splitting laughter.  That thought alone just made me laugh out loud.  I mean can you imagine tears rolling down Jesus’ cheeks and his wheezing out between hysterical gasps of laughter, “Stop it! Stop it! My gut hurts!”

We don’t think about Him that way because the Bible doesn’t really talk much about Jesus’ funny bone.  But there’s way more to Jesus’ life than what’s written down in the pages of the Bible.  John 21:25 tells us that if everything Jesus did was written down, the world probably wouldn’t hold all the books that would be needed.  And you’re gonna tell me that at least a big chunk of those volumes wouldn’t have been dedicated to Jesus’ supernatural humor?!?  C’mon!

What would Jesus have laughed at?  Let’s guess…

The magi.  I mean who brings a baby gold and spices?

The drowned pigs.  I don’t care who you are, demon-possessed bacon is hilarious.

Peter sinking in the waves.  I can hear Jesus now: “You shoulda seen your face, Pete! That was priceless!”

I’m not saying this to make light of Jesus or His life, or anything He did.  Quite the contrary.  I think we’d all do well to consider that Jesus way more than likely doesn’t fit into the tiny box we’ve got Him in.  And maybe if we let Him out of the confined space we’ve crammed Him into, we’d see that there’s so much more to our Savior to celebrate, revel in, and even laugh with.

I’ve said it before and feel free to chisel it on my tombstone: Those who follow Jesus are those with the greatest cause for hilarity in the entire world.  No one should be laughing more than those who’s souls have been set free, those who’s sins have been forgiven, and those who walk with the One who owns it all.

What do you think?  Am I off my rocker?  Have I gone too far?  Did my foot slip into sacrilege?

Just for fun, I looked everywhere for the worst picture of Jesus laughing I could find.  Here it is.

Some of you might already hate me for the title of this blog.  And I can’t say that I blame you.  Maybe you think I didn’t think it through quite enough.

But I did.

I learned in public speaking that you should never start with an apology. Here’s why I’m ignoring that rule:

1. I think its sometimes called for (case in point).

2. I want you to know where I’m coming from; that I’m not just stirring up trouble because I like rocking the boat. I don’t. In fact, if you know me, you might categorize me as a “people pleaser”.

3. By now, the beginning of this post is behind us, so I’m safe to apologize.

I’m sorry if what I share here offends you.  I’m simply speaking from my observations, thoughts, and convictions. You may have some views & beliefs that stand diametrically opposed to mine.  And I love the fact that you’ve read this far. And I respect people with differing views than mine. They’re some of the most fascinating people I know.

There’s been such an increase on anti-bullying campaigns recently. My own kids (I have 4) have all brought home pages, newsletters, special alerts, and even contracts complete with a line for signatures (theirs and mine) that they’ll help keep their hallways, classrooms, playgrounds, cafeterias, school buses, neighborhoods, communities, and world free from bullying.  Do I think that’s a bad idea?  (Who am I, Hitler?)  Of course I don’t think it’s a bad idea. Promoting messages that encourage kindness, cooperation, patience, acceptance, and all around niceness is good.  Very good, in fact.

But what we’re missing is a clear addressing of the actual problem.  Bullying is not the actual problem. Bullying is simply the easily targeted symptom.  Easily targeted because it doesn’t take much to make a pile of flyers with a signature line at the bottom, collect a percentage of them back, and feel like you’ve done something good.  In many ways, you have. We can hold assemblies complete with testimonials, motivators, and commitment cards and feel like we’ve really taken a bite out of the issue.  We really haven’t.  Oh, it might make a difference for a time.  But it’ll be back to how it was sooner than later.  (I heard a teenage girl say nearly these very words just a couple days ago.)

Why won’t this approach squelch the problem of bullying? Because we’re not placing the right value on the humans around us. And here’s the thing: we can’t.  We can’t value others until we each see how much we ourselves are valued. Next time you see a psychologist, ask them, “Why do people engage in bullying?” Their answer will more than likely include something to this affect: “The person bullying is themselves someone who is hurting; who doesn’t see themselves as valuable, and so they seek that sense through the denigration of others.”

Your sense of your own worth doesn’t come from you. It can’t. We can get all “Stuart Smalley” and talk to the mirror, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gone-it, people like me.”  And that’ll work for a while.  That is, until the opposing message comes in and crushes it.  And it will.  Not “if”, but “when”.  The current reality of our school systems bear that fact out loud and clear.

So where does your value come from, if not from you?  It comes when we recognize that you and I are created.  We are crafted by the creativity of a thoughtful, loving, powerful, and passionate Creator. It is when we take the Creator out of the equation that the creation has no solid place to stand.

What does this Creator say about you?  Well, to name just a few things: You are His design, His desire, His affection, His attention, a recipient of His love, His mercy, His compassion, His direction,  His creativity, His beauty, and His grace.  There are probably 100 other things that describe how He sees you, but just those–if taken to heart–should begin to shift your view of your value more than any campaign can.  When THAT Creator is heard and what He has said about you is accepted and embraced, something happens inside. Something that not only lets you believe what He says about you, but lets you treat others differently because you realize its true about them as well.

As a victim of bullying, I absolutely stand in support of anti-bullying efforts. But as someone who sees myself AND YOU as the workmanship of my Creator, I will always share that message as well.

What about you? How do you think we can best address the issue of bullying?

One of the greatest encouragements I see as a youth pastor today is the growing sense of excitement (old schoolers would call it “fervor”) in young people for the things of God.  And just so I’m clear: I’m talking about the God of the Bible, the God of heaven, the God of Christianity.  Not Christianity the religion, but Christianity that places Jesus Christ at the center of history, at the center of their worldview, and at the center of their lives.  I can see a new generation of young people side-stepping their skeptical, even nay-saying counterparts and engaging in a new, refreshing dialogue regarding the goodness and business of God on earth. It seems that being blasse’ in regards to Jesus has become passe’ among so many of the teens I see and interact with.

Case in point; my oldest son is in 7th grade and this morning he left early for school to attend his school’s Bible Club.  To the left is the pass he needed to be permitted to come to school early.  Take a look at where the Club is being held.  Last week it was room 714, but this week it’s the band room.  Why?  You guessed it: The group of students coming to a public school Bible Club was too large for room 714.

And all I want to do as an adult is to fan into an even larger flame (2 Timothy 1:6) that passion for holiness, for hilarious joy, for a life of worship, for discipline, for leading a grace-dripping life that seeks not to merely exist or survive, but to thrive in the captivating presence of God.  Don’t you want to have a hand in lifting them up, too?

What can we as those slightly older than these young people do in order to encourage their passion for God, His Kingdom, and His graciously loving work on earth?  

I wish I could have taken a picture of it.  You wouldn’t have believed what I was seeing.  I was driving home yesterday, taking the backwoodsy route instead of the highway.  I made the turn onto that backwoodsy road and almost immediately came upon a young man riding a motor scooter.  I noticed right away that the rider was sitting kind of cock-eyed; almost side-saddle.  He seemed to be struggling to keep his balance.  “Weird”, I thought.  And because of his painfully slow rate of speed and the length of that backwoods road, I had plenty of time to figure out exactly why he was struggling.

Soon after noticing his posture and awkward lean, I noticed the cause of it.  I looked down at the two wheels of his scooter and something was obviously wrong with the scooter’s frame.  The two wheels were literally leaning in opposite directions.  It was the strangest guy-on-a-scooter thing I’d ever seen.  Clearly, this rider was trying his best to drive a motor scooter that simply wanted to drive away from itself.

I’ve recently heard people quote Abraham Lincoln when he said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  Unfortunately they don’t seem to realize that Abraham Lincoln was actually quoting Jesus and not the other way around.  (Matthew 12:25)

Jesus was speaking to those who were accusing Him of casting out demons in the name of Beelzebul, the prince of demons.  What kind of sense would that make?  Like it or not, Jesus just caught the religious uppity-ups talking nonsense.

I had a great chat last night with my kids around the dinner table.  We were discussing why it is (as young people who love Jesus) they don’t get involved in the way many other kids at school talk, just for example.  Specifically, why weren’t they getting involved in the gossip, the slander, and the profanity–all of which they hear around them on a non-stop basis?  Why not give up and jump in?

Their answers were clear and filled with conviction, but what I liked most was their simplicity.  In essence, they could see just how broken that path was and they wanted no part of it.  They were saying that they’d made their decision and while swimming through their everyday life in public school was/is anything but a picnic, their decision to steer clear of a one-foot-in-and-one-foot-out approach to following Jesus is holding strong.

Because even though they are young, they’ve already seen that a house divided (in this case, a half-committed follower of Jesus) is a miserable existence.  They are by no means perfect, just as their dad isn’t perfect.  But they are clear on their decision.  And for that I’m so thankful.

They say “Indecision is the key to flexibility.”  

45 minutes.  My wife claims that’s how long I wavered between 2 pairs of sneakers in a shoe store the other day. I had tried on 5-7 pair and had narrowed that lot down to 2.  But that is where my affections began oscillating.  Back and forth I’d look at one pair, enamored with their bright splendor.  Then to the other pair, equally infatuated with their magnificentness.

I wouldn’t consider myself a “shoe guy” as in I don’t own a bedroom full of shoes.  But when its time to buy some new kicks…well…let’s just say I take that decision to the hilt of “life or death” decision-making.  I know that’s ridiculous but I own my ridiculosity.

And while riding the pendulum of shoe decisions is awfully fun, I’d like to take a swing at a conviction I have.  And this one’s going out to anyone willing to listen.  Especially you “church-goers”.

If you attend a local church, then do so.  By all means, make yourself available to serving that local church. Don’t engage when you’re willing, but disengage when you’re unwilling.  Or busy.  Or checking out the church up the road.

(Parenthetical paragraph: The apostle Paul told his protege Timothy to “Preach the Word. Be prepared in season and out of season…” That expression “in and out of season” is better translated “when its convenient and when its not” or “when you feel like and when you don’t”.  I know that was one missionary/church planter to another, but I believe we’d do well to heed the principle here.  It’s 2012 and we’d rather be entertained then edified. We’d rather be flimsy than faithful.  We’d rather see what we can get than see what we can give.)

Don’t try it for a while and then head up the street to another local church because they’ve got something you’d like more at the moment. Don’t approach your involvement in a local body of believers as if you’re bellying up to the Sizzler meat buffet and take a sampling of whatever suits your fancy from week to week.  Stop putting one foot in and one foot out.  Its fine for the hokey pokey, but truth be told: you’re aiding in the demise of your own spiritual health. 

At our church (local body of believers in and followers of Jesus), we tell people: “If you’ve come to Southside looking for the perfect church, you can look no further. Not because this is the perfect church, but because it doesn’t exist. So look no further.”

No joke, I JUST got a text message from someone who has attended our church in the past, has been gone for a while, and was asking what’s going on for students these days.  Before answering her question, I asked my own.  It went a little something like this: “Where you been? We’ve missed seeing you!”  The response was quick: “At the other church.”  They went on to say that “the other” church does one thing well and they like that, but we do something else well and they like that too.

Am I the only one who sees anything wrong with this “flavor of the month” approach to local church involvement?  I might be.  I remember a conversation I had with another local youth pastor years ago. We discussed how students float from one youth ministry to another; perhaps that meet on different nights of the week.  “I think its great.”, he said.  

But what ever happened to commitment? Whatever happened to “this is my church and I love my church”?  I’m not saying that one church is better than another; heavens no.  I’m saying there’s so much more richness when we seek out a place where the risen Jesus is proclaimed, God’s Word is honored and taught, and where God’s Spirit is alive and well leading His Church forward—and PLANTING yourself there.

No local church is everything to everyone.  I don’t even mind that there are 10 church buildings within a few miles of the one I attend.  What I do mind is when Christians waver between churches like I wavered between shoes.  “I like how these feel, but I like how those look” is easily interchanged with “I like how he preaches, but I like how they do worship music.”

I’m not about competition either. I don’t want everyone in my county to go to my church.  I want the gospel to go out, the good news to be spread, I want people to find, fall in love with, and follow Jesus. I care far less about the name on the front of the church than I do about the God who is the Head of the Church. And I know there are extenuating circumstances that keep people from regular attendance, but nothing except self-centeredness will keep people from committing themselves to serving at one local church.

Just as I did after those excruciating 45 minutes, let me beg you:  pick one and stick with it.

 

 

By the way…

I went with the Adidas.

 

My wife and I hadn’t spent the past 5 anniversaries together.  But this past June 24th, we had the wonderful privilege of not just having dinner together, but also an overnight stay at a swanky hotel.  Excited?  You bet I was!  And that might explain how while driving on our way to dinner I didn’t exactly notice the speed limit signs.  It wasn’t an area I drive in very regularly and I thought I was just going with traffic.

(Cue the flashing blue and red lights behind me.)

So, I pull over while making the year’s biggest understatement: “I think I’m being pulled over.”  Officer Whatshisname asks for my license and registration and the whole schpeel.  You know the drill.

After receiving my ticket, we head on our way to dinner, none the worse for wear.  Let me say that I think getting a speeding ticket on the way to your anniversary dinner may have sparked a bit of tension between another couple perhaps. But I married up.  WAY up.  And she was as relaxed and carefree as could be. No disapproving sighs. No awkward silence. No arms crossed, seething in frustration. Just love. Man, I love this woman.

I decided that I wasn’t going to just send a check for the ticket and be done with it, but rather I’d actually go to court. And when my day of reckoning came, the experience of that day reminded me of a wonderfully freeing truth.  (You knew it would.)

I found my assigned courtroom and shuffled in with all my fellow common criminals.  We sat down in what reminded me of the long wooden pews of my childhood church. One by one, the judge called each individual on that day’s docket and they approached the bench to converse about their particular offense.

Then the time came.

“Jeremy Varner”.  My name echoed off the chamber walls.  I approached the judge’s bench and looked up into the face of the black-robed man who held my life in his hands (or at least my license).  “Mr. Varner, are you guilty or not guilty of speeding?”

“Guilty, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Varner, I see you have a clean driving record. Would you like to take a driving school course and have your ticket dismissed?”  I’m pretty sure I responded, “That would be great!”  The judge continued “Step to your left and the bailiff will explain the details, and you’ll be free to go.”

Admission of guilt leads us to freedom.  That confession was not a sign of weakness anymore than breaking a bone and going to the hospital to have it repaired is a sign of weakness, or any more than having a busted pipe in your home and calling a plumber is a sign of weakness.  Admission of guilt is essentially a cry of “I’m stuck and helpless.”  But with God, our admission of guilt triggers the administering of His grace.  Don’t confess your guilt and He won’t convey His grace.  That doesn’t mean He’s cut you off from forgiveness; it just means you’re not taking what’s being freely offered because of your stubborn pride.

The best part of that day in court for me quite honestly was my admission of guilt.  I had no problem pleading guilty because I knew that it was true.  I didn’t argue it, I didn’t blame the officer’s equipment, I didn’t make excuses.  I just said, “I’m guilty.”

Our church choir loves to sing a particular song and while I don’t know the actual title, I do know a poignant, repeated line in the chorus: “Jesus dropped the charges.”  It’s a foot-stomping tune that revs the crowd up every time they sing it.  But if I could, I would tweak the lyrics just a bit from “Jesus dropped the charges” to “Jesus PAID the charges!”  When I admit my guilt, Jesus applies His blood.  When I openly confess I’m at fault, Jesus openly declares my freedom.