You know, we can have a lot of fun taking personality tests on the Web. In recent weeks I’ve found out what great world leader I’m most like (John F. Kennedy), what classic movie I am (“Schindler’s List”) and who I’d be in 1400 (a Lord, see post below). These may not necessarily be things to be proud of, but they’re not as bad as being an expendable wine taster, Josef Stalin or “Dude, Where’s My Car?”

Actually, the movie I most identify with right now is “The Incredibles.” Here’s why: besides being hip, smart and fun for the whole family (like me), the movie has an interesting premise. In it, superheroes are forced by society to go underground and live anonymous lives, hiding their super powers. One family in particular struggles to keep a low profile as well as deal with the more mundane issues of daily family dynamics.

It wasn’t much of a stretch for me to see the allegory between the lives of the superheroes in the movie and the lives of committed Christians in our own world. The superheroes made the rest of the world uncomfortable with their powers and lifestyle and were forced to appear “normal.” In the same way there is a great deal of pressure from the world for Christians to keep their faith and spiritual gifts undercover so as not to make others uncomfortable – even though in both examples these gifts have the power to “save” the world.

What gifts or “supernatural” powers am I talking about?

I don’t want to hash doctrines and parse scripture here, but there are certain motivational or relationship gifts outlined in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4 and 1 Peter 4 that I think most Christians will recognize. Simply, God has gifted believers with certain special abilities to both bolster our local fellowship, influence the world around us for the better and to serve the causes of truth, justice and righteousness. Do you know what your secret identity is? Are you Exhorter Man or Giver Girl? Maybe Super Server? Actually I made up those names, but the attributes are among nine gifts identified in this Spiritual Gifts test.

It will take you about 20 minutes to complete and I assure you the results will have a more profound affect on the way you see yourself and those around you than finding out if you would have been a Knight or a Knave. (I may have one or two doctrinal quibbles with the test itself, but I think it’s basically sound and includes a useful analysis on how to make the most of your gift and what spiritual “kryptonite” you have to be on-guard for. Personally I came out with Exhorter, Giver, Teacher as my three strongest gifts).

A couple of other similarities between “The Incredibles” and real life: even the kid Incredibles had special abilities, and that’s true for us as well. We’ve seen specific gifts at work within our daughters from an early age. Finally, the greatest enemy of both the superheroes in the movie and for Christians today (indeed, of all time) is an imposter who offers counterfeits of the real thing in the hopes of leaving the world at his mercy. If you’re a believer and haven’t had the time or boldness to examine what “super powers” God has given to you, I strongly urge you to use this test as a starting point and then look for ways to develop these gifts in your family, congregation and community.

Remember, as Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

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“Right is still right, even if nobody is doing it. Wrong is still wrong, even if everybody is doing it.”

– St. Augustine.



Minnesota Vikings Head Coach Mike Tice appears to have stepped on his whistle, admitting to having scalped Super Bowl tickets. This is likely to lead to scrutiny from the IRS, a significant fine from the league and possibly the loss of his job and even his pro career. It’s not too unlike what happened to his friend, former high school coach and Viking defensive coordinator George O’Leary who was fired shortly after being hired as head coach at Notre Dame when it was discovered he lied on his resume.



Whether they were aware of it at the time or not, both men jeopardized their dream jobs for what seemed like harmless, short-term gain.



Have you ever struggled to do the right thing on your job or in your business while it seemed like everyone else was getting ahead doing the wrong thing?

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When I came downstairs Friday morning things were pretty much as I expected. Faith was working her way steadily through a box of tissue and Patience had her head buried in her arms on the dining room table, crying. What I had feared had come upon me. Now what?

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Sunday service was just coming to a close when a migraine headache jabbed a greasy thumb into my eyes. Over the years I’ve come to know this partial blindness, and its accompanying light show when I close my eyes, as the precursor to the main event and the warning that I’ve got about 20 minutes to get to my prescription medication.



That’s not hard to do since I usually keep my pills in my briefcase and keep my briefcase in close proximity in much the same way as the president keeps the nuclear “football” nearby. In a way, my pills are kind of a nuclear option themselves since, while they’re very effective in returning my eyesight and blocking pain, I know the tradeoff is going to be about six hours of feeling comfy but completely wiped out and listless.



This time I stopped as I fished the bottle out. We had sung that day of God’s faithfulness, His desire and ability to heal. The teaching had included 2 Corinthians 4:7 about our treasure being in earthen vessels (ourselves) so that the excellency of God’s power can be seen to be of him and not us. I believed those words, or did I? I turned to see our pastor still collecting himself on the podium. I told him what was happening and without hesitation he took hold of me and began to pray. I don’t remember much of the words he used as I focused on the sensation I felt in my stomach and the light show on my eyelids. As he prayed, the lights – as usual a pretty blue and yellow Aztec pattern – began to diminish, then flare, then diminish to a short thin line. When I opened my eyes after “Amen” the blind spots had moved to the periphery of my vision. By the time I got out to the parking lot they were completely gone. No headache, no nausea, no pills.



This was great, I was elated, but now I had a new problem. Driving home it occurred to me that I should post what had happened on my blog. I don’t use the word “Ack!” a lot, but I’m pretty sure that was the first thing that came into my head after the blogging thought. After all, I thought, I’m trying to establish my voice and credibility in a fledgling blog scarcely two weeks old. While a good blog shouldn’t be afraid to rattle people’s doctrines or challenge their perspective (in fact, that might be the whole point) did I really want to go so far “out there” so soon? I mean, if I wrote about a healing I’d experienced today, some might think I’d write about handling snakes tomorrow. At the same time, this was something very meaningful to me, and if you can’t blog on what’s meaningful in your life then the rest of your posts become meaningless.



I tussled with the idea a bit and set it aside. It gradually began to seep into me, however, that my reaction was more about me and my fear of what others would think of me. As a blogger, that kind of thinking is crippling; as a Christian it is deadly. Before I started this blog I went back and forth for a long time over whether or not to begin. My concern was that I would be giving in to a desire to glorify myself (even if I got just half a dozen readers a day). Early on I even wrote out a question to myself asking how I would judge whether this blog was a success or not. I thought I had nobly come up with the answer that this would be a success if I could show not how clever I am (ok, not just how clever I am), but how God and Jesus Christ could be part of a normal life and influence the way I looked at myself and interacted with my family, my church and the world around me. And here was my first test. Don’t you just hate pop quizzes?



Well, the lepers Jesus healed didn’t just say “thank you” and walk off in a dignified manner worried about what people were going to say about them. So here it is. I don’t know what I’m going to write about tomorrow, but I can assure you that it won’t be about handling snakes.

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(About “Filings”)

Every parent either knows – or feels – by heart the words to the “Sunrise, Sunset” song in “Fiddler on the Roof”:

Is this the little girl I carried,

is this the little boy at play?

When I hear this the memory that flashes in my mind is not that of carrying either of my two daughters up to bed, or of piggyback rides. Instead I think of a family photo a few years ago. In it my girls – then about 10 and 5 – and I have been wrestling. I am standing and in each hand I’ve got an ankle of one of the girls and I’m holding them both upside down and off the ground, not unlike a proud poulterer holding up a couple of prizewinners at the State Fair. Imagining the picture now I can still hear the shrieks and giggles.

At this point in their lives – and for this moment now permanently frozen on film – I am Dad the Undefeated and, in their eyes, larger than life. Meanwhile, in the moments that I write this, the next line from that song is passing through my mind: “I don’t remember getting older, when did they?” If asked to reenact the scene today my response would have to be, “One at a time.”

As I flip through my mental photo album the girls seem to grow suddenly in a series of jerks and jumps. Of course I know they are really changing everyday, judging by the continuous trips to the shoe store and cries of, “But I just bought you those pants!” I also can’t help noticing in this album that as they are getting bigger, I seem to be getting – perhaps ever-so-slightly – smaller.

Once when my oldest was very little and concerned that we might be imminently attacked by bears in our own front yard, she was greatly comforted when I assured her that if any bears came near her I’d grab them and twist their noses. Today the same promise still stands regarding boys, not bears, but it’s clear that my powers are coming more into perspective. While there are times when it may seem, in my daughters’ eyes, that I can still rise up and blot out the sun, I cannot stop it from moving across the sky. I am shade, however, standing between them and the heat of the world. I will continue to do so as long as I can stand.

Of course, brute force has always been of limited application. To be a proper protector my defenses have had to be – and must remain – more subtle. Jesus once told his disciples that it was better for them that he go away. His meaning was that his power both in their lives and in the world would ultimately be much greater by his living in them rather than with them. I don’t construe this to mean my girls are better off without me, but rather that I must devote my time with them to preparing them to live on fruitfully, just as Jesus did in his three years with the disciples. The time together already seems all too short.

When they were little, their well-being depended on instant obedience to my authority and that of their mother. It was not expected or accepted of them to ponder whether or not we meant what we said or whether our instructions supported their personhood or hurt their self-esteem. “No,” “stop” and “don’t” could keep them from a boiling pot, a busy street or a strange dog. As they get older they are still at risk from natural forces, careless strangers and unpredictable human animals interested only in their own gratification. “No,” “stop” and “don’t” might still have an effect, but it’s better to teach them the underlying reasons and standards for moral conduct so they can also work out the “Yeses,” “do’s” and “go-for-its.” In that way my influence can carry on a lot further than my authority will ever be able to.

For my influence to be effective, however, I have to keep learning and examining myself both for my own benefit as well as theirs. Like it or not, my life will be a standard that my daughters will use to judge men on in the future and I want to set the bar pretty high with no apologies to the young fellas coming along. Perfect or not, it is mine to carry. On one level my girls may see me as “Dad of Dads, Keeper of the Remote and King of Rude Noises,” but they should also know at a deeper level that I have laid and will lay down my life for them. As they grow older I hope that they will not settle for any man who will not do the same, even though the kind interested only in the “lay down” part may be all too common.

If you have daughters I think you know what I mean, and I hope you, too, are preparing yourself and them to live by your influence and that of Jesus while submitting to the authority of God. If you have sons, I pray that you are preparing them to a similar standard and helping them grow into their own responsibilities.

And if you have sons that may be hanging around my daughters, you might want to warn them about that nose thing.

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Note: Filings will be an ongoing section of this blog where the posts focus specifically on issues of Christian life. The name comes about because “filings” are the natural by-product of Proverbs 27:17: “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”



Stones Cry Out posted earlier this week some observations on Ron Sider’s book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, based on Sider’s own article about the book that appeared in Christianity Today’s Books and Culture.



According to Sider, there is little statistical evidence to show that the lifestyles of evangelicals in America are much different from those of the rest of the world around them. In areas such as divorce, promiscuity, tithing and more, separate surveys by the Gallup and the Barna organizations show evangelicals are virtually the same as their neighbors when it comes to what we’d call virtue. (Be sure to go over to Stones and read the post and the related comments).



I don’t know Sider’s overall philosophy, agenda or the fruit in his life, or the way the questions were worded by the Gallup and Barna organizations, but this is worth each of us examining ourselves. Does my behavior line up with my beliefs? What would someone observing my behavior think my beliefs are? Does my life give people an opportunity to draw closer to God, or turn away because I have nothing better to offer them than what they’ve already got? Am I renewing my mind, learning to know God through his word, even if it puts me at odds with the conventional reasoning (of any flavor) that’s around me? Can it be seen in me?

Update:

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