This morning in my quiet time in the Word, I was reading in Acts 9. The “prescribed” reading was only from verses 1-19, but I just couldn’t stop there. I was enjoying so much the telling of the birth of the early Church and specifically the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus. And like never before, my eyes tripped over the words “something like scales”. This was the description of what happened to Saul’s blinded eyes (God has caused his blindness for 3 days) when Simon came (sent by God–go figure) to heal Saul and restore his vision. We’re told that “something like scales” fell from Saul’s eyes. What can this mean? Well, file all of this under “best guess” because even Luke (the author of Acts) wasn’t quite sure what to call it and he was a doctor! Luke’s best wording was “something like scales” as in “I’m not quite sure, but it reminded me of scales.” And in our era of “Biggest Loser” and our obsession with weight, we might imagine two bathroom scales falling from Saul’s eyes with a metallic sounding “clunk” on the ground. But the scales that were more likely falling were like that of a fish. And believe me, I know a thing or two about fish scales. I grew up in Cape May, NJ which is the 2nd largest fishing industry town on the East coast. And not only did I grow up fishing (I caught my first fish while sitting in my stroller next to the ocean with a toy fishing pole, no joke), but I worked for 2 summers at “A & J Fish Market”. Yep, I know fish scales. I’ve been covered in them. And let me assure you that scales don’t just fall off. I’ve even had to pick scales off of my skin after a long shower in which I scrubbed and scrubbed. So, perhaps that is why I was intrigued with the idea of “something like scales fell from his eyes.”

To all those who have yet to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior of the world, there is something undoubtedly covering their eyes; “scales” so to speak. These scales might be disguised as many different things. Scales can be self-absorbtion, intellect that can’t “logically” reconcile the concept of faith in the unseen, the pursuit of earthly gain, the desire for notoriety on any level, pain of loss that would cry out “there is no God”, or any other number of things. But no matter what it is, the fact remains that God calls to each of us, just as He did to Saul who was the most well-known Christian-hater there was at that time. God pursues people. But not all people either know that He is pursuing them or ever pursue God to the point of total embrace of His love, grace, forgiveness, and power.

So, while I was reading in Acts this morning, I heard God asking me for permission to point out the scales when they arise in my life. To be sure, I am a follower of Jesus and this decision is life-long. I have found Jesus to be true, to be real, to be alive, and to be everything that surpasses anything I would ever need or want. In Him I have forgiveness of the wretched person I am, I have peace even when life is pelting me with questions and trials, and I have hope for today, that He will use even me to touch the life of someone else with His love. And beyond hope for today, I have hope for all of life’s tomorrows, including eternity. I will spend it with Him, just as He intended from the beginning.

To those who might ever read this and find it far-fetched or confounding, I suppose I would say that God alone can release the scales from your eyes. And I don’t say that in a condescending or judgemental way. If you know me, you know that I know I’m no better than anyone. I simply have seen what kind of person I am and have seen that that person needs a Savior. And I have found that Savior in Jesus. And no matter when or where, I pray that every person might come to know Him even better than I do.

Just in case anyone caught my mention in my obnoxiously long post a couple days ago about my unexplained swollen nose, I thought perhaps an illustration might help….

I’m thankful that today it seems to be subsiding. But still, I have no clue what happened to it that it would have swollen like that. Weird. A question for the ages, I guess.

In a related piece of my history, I had my nose broken in high school. Imagine a freshman Jerry Varner, skinny as a stick and under the normal intimidation of being a freshman in high school. Tommy Reid was one of our basketball team’s star players and we were in the same gym class. It was the section of the semester where we learned basketball, and in a gym class game, I foolishly agreed to play zone defense, only seconds after learning what zone defense was. So, Tommy Reid enters my zone, jumps for a rebound, and true to Tommy Reid form, came down with the ball with elbows flailing. One of the elbows came around and landed squarely on the bridge of my nose. For the next few days, I wore a metal “I” on my face to hold my newly reset nose in place. My almost immediate and unwelcomed nickname? Robo-Nose.

For the record, Tommy Reid felt really bad about it and was really nice to me.

Now, after reading/digesting/cogitating on this one, you might land somewhere different than where I did. And I just want to acknowledge that that’s okay. I think anyone with Jesus in their heart and a love relationship with Him goes to heaven—no matter what they think about the issue of Saddleback’s recent small group promo postcards.

Take a second, and look them over by clicking here. And if you’ve got the stomach for it, read the comments that follow the postcards. At this writing, there were 33 comments so far.

The comments were a range of reactions, but one thing was clear: not one person who was responding/reacting to the postcards was a non-Christian. What I mean by that is, every one of them was coming from a “biblical” perspective, citing Scripture to back up their stance. Fair enough.

And while I have commented in Josh’s blog before, I decided to steer clear of commenting on that one. Instead, I chose to bring my thoughts to my own blog and in doing so, try to link you to me, me to you, you to it, and it to us.

First off, Saddleback is a big church. I’ve been there. It’s big. It’s big in just about every visible sense. Lots of people, lots of building, lots of staff, lots of resources, lots of guts. It’s big. Now, big isn’t necessarily good. The Third Reich was big and look what it accomplished. Auschwitz was big. So, don’t think that I think that big is necessarily healthy or even good. But let’s just acknowledge the fact that Saddleback is big. Rick Warren is big. Doug Fields is big. Josh Griffin is big. Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry is big. Purpose-Driven Life is big. It’s all very big.

And in the bigness, the leadership and/or creators of the postcards on Josh Griffin’s blog have a certain amount of bravado in which they operate. I’m not sure bravado is the right word, but it sounds good in my head, so I’m using it. Honestly, what I mean is that when you’re that big and prominent, you have to know (and they do) that most everyone is watching. And I’d also like to point out that edgy promos such as the small group postcards have likely added to their bigness. In a word, Saddleback is an envelope pusher. Love that or hate it–its true. They are innovative, forward-thinking, and even (dare I say) progressive. But from what I’ve seen, not progressive in the way that word has been used; not in a way that is rocking the boat for the sake of rocking the boat. But instead, progressive in a way that is willing to pass or fail, but no matter what, is going to try.

So, if you have read or scanned the comments in the comment section below the small group promo postcards, there are some that are scathing, and some that are gentle, and some that are diplomatic. But I’d like to draw us back to the point that every person who comments proports to be speaking the truth in love for the most part. Some comments even quite devoid of love all together are touting that they are speaking the truth in love. Those are the comments I found most dismissable, since they seem to be authored by self-sanctioned rock-throwers. It’d be laughable if it weren’t so sad.

We’ll give an account of our actions–every one of us–to God and I wonder if we might hear something like, “I sent you out into the world to love all people into my arms. Instead, you argued over postcards.” Now, I know I’m leaning a little toward overdrama here, but if we as followers of Christ can be more passionate about loving people back into the arms of Christ than we are about correcting each other…well, I’m pretty sure we’d be better off.

And I guess some reading this would throw a yellow flag and say, “Hold it right there, Varner. We’ve got to call sin what it is!” I agree with that, but I honestly can’t find anything in those postcards that constitute “sin”. Off-color? Maybe. Distasteful? To some. Out of line? It’s debatable.

My question I guess is: #1: Did the postcards work? Did they have the desired outcome? Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m not a “by any means necessary” kind of pastor. I feel like I have a good grasp on boundaries. I’m not saying let’s offer teens free pot for coming to our worship services. But since these postcards are debatable in their appropriateness (evidenced by the many comments), can we simply call the issue one of those “non-essentials” and move on?

After all, Saddleback (in sending these postcards) has stayed quite true to its form: edgy, gutsy, and (usually) successful in its endeavors. But as one who has heard both Rick Warren and Doug Fields speak, they speak more about their own failures than their successes. This tells me 2 things: they’re relatable and they’re human.

For the record, when I first saw the postcards (especially the last one), I laughed. I thought they were funny, clever, and I wasn’t offended by them. Personally, I don’t think they’d be right for MY ministry context, and so I wouldn’t use them, but again–this is Saddleback we’re talking about. Not that they get any special treatment from God, you’ve just got to understand that this is many times the “envelope-pushing” they do. That’s my opinion and I totally respect every person who formulates their own opinion, especially those who try and use Scripture as their guide.

This is just a long post, but I can’t apologize. If you’re still reading (and there’s no gun to your head) then you obviously don’t mind. If you’re not still reading, then I don’t even have to finish this sentence.

We had a great afternoon at Maymont Park today.

I know hundreds of thousands of people had a sleepless night last night; tossing and turning over what choice we made for our afternoon activity yesterday….drumroll, please……

We chose Inflation Nation! And today, we’re actually moments away from our departure to Maymont Park and I hope to post pics from that later.

And now for the apology:
The post right below this one is obnoxiously long. Sorry to anyone who fell asleep in the middle of it. My friend Scott Marshall once told me that the first rule of blogging is to keep it brief, or people won’t read. Here’s to you, Marshall. I miss you.

(He’s not dead, just in Missouri.)

To get to Scott’s blog, see the sidebar of my blog.

I’m on vacation this week….sort of. Technically, I’ve taken time off from the office and ministry-related responsibilities….kind of. But we haven’t actually gone anywhere like out of town or anything. It’s what has become known as a “staycation”. And that’s fine with me. Sometimes the rigors of travel can have their own built-in tensions. So, this time I’m just fine with laying low.

One idea that we had was to go camping overnight. Someplace relatively close that could offer some recreational options like biking, hiking, and other outdoorsy stuff. However, the last time we went camping as a family, my wife was pregnant with our youngest, Hudson. And the tent was quite full, as I remember, even without him. So going camping would necessitate buying a new tent that would house us. Ordinarily I’d be perfect fine with going tent shopping. I’m not much of a shopper unless we’re going big. And since we never go big, I’m not much of a shopper.