Our walk of faith will not be without missteps or suffering. But still we must carry on. We can’t run from hurt forever. It’s faster than us and refuses to be outpaced. Faith is the way forward, the way out of shame and isolation. Onward! Life beckons. So, faith — in God and others — is a gift we have been given, a virtue to cultivate, that liberates us to move and love in a world filled with both pain and pleasure.

My favorite definition of faith comes from the late pastor R.C. Sproul who described the virtue as “well-reasoned trust.” I like that because it tethers our beliefs to reason. Only a fool believes that for which he has no reasons at all. But faith also transcends reason.
You likely put your faith in people who have given you good reasons to do so. You trust them. But your trust leaves room for them to disappoint you, to hurt you even. You don’t know with absoute certainty they won’t betray or abandon you. Yet you have faith. In the same way, you can’t rationally prove God’s existence beyond any reasonable doubt. Faith is required for trusting people and God alike.
In the last post, I said that faith gives us roots. If we refuse to trust anyone in this world, we will never thrive. Like tumbleweed, we will nowhere be at home. C.S. Lewis said it best in his description of the heart that refuses faith in others:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.”
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Paul, as Jewish man, would have been raised to pray daily thanking God he wasn’t a slave, a Gentile, or a woman. In Acts 16, we find these are the first three categories of people who respond to Paul’s message. Wow! Not only are these people recipients of God’s grace, they also serve as conduits for God’s grace.

One of the current joys of my life is serving alongside a dear friend, Rob Rosenbalm, in the teaching ministry of Fairfield West Baptist Church in Fairfield, Ohio. I help with the planning for the sermon series and speak there about once a month. It really is a highlight for me each month.
Rob is one of the most community-minded pastors I’ve ever worked with, serving as a chaplain to local fire departments. I’ve spoken with fire chiefs who have told me, to my face, that Rob has been used to radically change their lives. He’s the kind of pastor who spends more time with people, serving them, befriending them, and quietly filling a needed role in the community, than he does buried away in an office barricaded from parishioners. I could have made this whole series just about his life, which really is worthy of imitation.
But my purpose here is what I discovered in the passage I was recently assigned to teach.
A Diverse Line Up
Acts 16 gives a bit of an introduction to Paul’s ministry in Europe. It describes the occasion where Paul is locked up in prison and ends up singing the doors off the place. You can read about it here. In reading over the passage, I was kind of taken back by the diversity of the individuals God uses starting with Paul, for example, who used to murder Christians as a devout Jewish leader. If God can use a murderer, well, maybe we’re not too far out there to make a difference too. Amiright?
One Bible commentator noted that Paul, as Jewish man, would have been raised to pray daily thanking God he wasn’t a slave, a Gentile, or a woman. In Acts 16, we find these are the first three categories of people who respond to Paul’s message. Wow! Not only are these people recipients of God’s grace, they also serve as conduits for God’s grace.
For example, the chapter begins with a young man named Timothy who came from a mixed faith family with a mother who was a Jewish believer and a Greek father. We will later learn that Timothy often feels too young to be used (1 Timothy 4:12), can be sickly (1 Timothy 5:23), and is prone to be fearful (2 Timothy 1:7). Nonetheless, Timothy was used in amazing ways.
We also meet Lydia, a business owner from Thyatira – a place known for the production and export of fine clothing, particularly using a purple dye. Lydia is introduced as a seller of purple clothing (Acts 16:14). That could likely mean she managed the selection of clothing, the process of dying, and also the end process of customer service and sales to the wealthy, now living in Philippi where she meets Paul.
In short, Lydia was a fashionista. And she was a believer. She used the resources provided by her business to bless others (Acts 16:15, 40). Although Paul never visited her hometown, a church was eventually planted there (Revelation 2:18-19).
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God’s actions are always perfectly proportionate to his character. God’s character never changes. When it looks like God has changed in the Bible, we should explore those passages for changes in the situation: people’s attitudes, behaviors, and decisions—not changes with God’s character or being.

Have you ever seen someone so moved by emotion that you could tell their brain had kind of checked out? Maybe you’ve been there yourself. Sadly, I know I have. Whether it’s the result of anger, frustration, confusion, or despair, there’s a certain look in a person’s eyes when they’re operating on pure emotion. God never experiences this.
Changing Character?
The doctrine of impassibility describes how God isn’t controlled by passions. While I hope you have control over your emotions, at least most of the time, you can certainly relate to experiencing emotions that don’t match reality.
Think of a surprise birthday party. You walk into a dark room, and all of a sudden, a lot of people jump out at you. Your immediate response might be shock or fear, but in your rational mind you’d be elated or happy. God never experiences anything like this. There’s never a time when God’s emotions dictate his attitude toward a situation. God is never out of control.
Now, to be clear, there are plenty of passages in the Bible that talk about God having feelings. Again, this is anthropomorphic language. Passions or emotions don’t affect God the way emotions affect us. We can’t read our experience into God.
So whatever it means in such descriptive passages about God, we must keep the prescriptive passages in mind. For example, Malachi 3:6 that tells us God never changes, and Hebrews 13:8 says Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. When we see a change in God’s mood, we need to ask how this change fits with passages that say God doesn’t change. How can we make sense of the two realities — passages that say God doesn’t change and passages that describe God changing from anger to delight?
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Lewis explains that most students need the affective message more than the directive one: For every one pupil who needs to be guarded against a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. 

Recently I was driving through another state for a speaking engagement when I noticed a road sign with a rather smart message. “Littering is unlAwful!” is stated. The “unl” of unlawful was really small so that the message really read “Littering is Awful.” This state regulated sign is doing more than communicating a law. It’s seeking to form the affections of its readers.
The sign doesn’t aim to merely help people realize that it’s illegal to throw trash out of their car window on the interstate. It attempts to shape the way people feel about using creation as a giant trash can. It’s just awful. It’s one thing to regulate practice. It’s another entirely to form the affections.
This approach is deeply philosophical.
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Evangelism and disicpleship share an obligate symbiotic relationship, which, when empowered by the work of the Spirit, leads to the growth of the church. They are not enemies. They were never intended to be separated. And, like the Joshua Tree in the Mojave Desert, the church, a Great Commission ecosystem, is planted in desolate places to offer salvation.

The Joshua tree is an iconic symbol of life in the Mojave Desert. It’s a tree straight out of a Dr. Suess story or ripped from a Vincent van Gogh painting. With its porcupine-like bark, spiky leaves, and topsy-turvy-arm-like branches, it looks like a clumsy giant towering over the barren, brown, sun-drenched landscape.
For me, pictures of the desert recall movie scenes with stranded travelers or run-away prisoners covered in sweat, drowning in sand, chasing elusive visions of an oasis on the horizon. That’s why the Joshua tree stands out. In an unforgiving environment, this tree means salvation. It offers shade and nutrition to a number of desert critters. Without it, they wouldn’t survive.
But as big of a deal as the Joshua tree is, it is dependent upon something very small. While the tree gives protection and nutrition to many, it wouldn’t make it for long were it not for a particular moth. Unlike other flowering trees, the Joshua tree doesn’t produce nectar to attract pollinators. The Yucca moth has reason to help the tree out with pollination. The moth’s babies eat the seeds from the flower of the tree for food in their first days of existence before they form cocoons.
Most pollination is kind of incidental. Bees like the nectar they pick up from flowers. They just happen to take on some pollen and carry it with them to the next flower as they search for another sugary treat. To them, their pollination is a bit of a happy accident. Since the Joshua tree is sans-nectar, this tree named for salvation is need of some saving itself.
Enter scene Yucca moth.
Not only do the Joshua trees not have nectar, they have very little pollen.
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It’s a journey that can begin from anywhere, but, no matter where it is entered, it always leads to the same place, to the same person. He’s the way, the truth, and the life. I had to go to prison to be reminded of the joy of knowing Jesus. That’s really what I learned from those men there. And I’ll carry that lesson and their memories with me along this path. 

He was totally right. Adam, that is. He’s a fellow church member who told me I’d love my time in prison. He should know. He’s spent plenty of time there himself.
Adam served for several years with an organization that offered classes in Ohio prisons. When I told him I had been invited to teach a class at a maximum security prison in Texas, his eyes lit up. “You’re going to receive way more than you give,” he warned me. His infectious enthusiasm about teaching men in this context framed my expectations. And it was even better than he led me to imagine.
So, last week I had the honor of teaching a class of sophomores in an accredited college program in a prison near Houston. I had over thirty students. Several of them were Christians. All of them were amazing. It’s a program that over twenty Texas prisons participate in. Men who are accepted into the program are then transferred into the prison where the college is located, where I was teaching. When they graduate, they are then transferred to another prison where they serve their fellow inmates as “field ministers.” It’s a remarkable program.
Bigger Priorities
“I wouldn’t give up all that Jesus has done in my life for some guy cutting in line,” he said to me. This particular student became a friend during the week whom I’ve prayed for by name several times a day since I left — every time he comes to mind. I had asked him how he keeps from getting angry when other men steal from him or cut in line in the mess hall. He quickly shared that his Christian growth means far more to him than getting even or proving himself right. And he’s not a small guy who couldn’t retaliate. He’s just got bigger priorities.
A lot of the men I met will likely never leave prison. And yet, those who knew the Lord had a settled and undeniable joy that you couldn’t help but quietly celebrate. Standing in the college library with a few hundred men singing at the top of their lungs in our morning meetings is something I’ll not soon forget. Hearing them echo lyrics of how Jesus has set them free does something to you. It did something to me. I won’t be the same. I can’t unsee or unhear that. It was the soul-stirring sound of souls who have found something satisfying at the deepest level.
I’m still processing it all, to be honest. The couple who lead the program followed up with me after I got home and offered some encouragement for reflecting on the things I had seen, heard, and experienced. While I know prison is a dark place, and I know I’m probably prone to romanticize my limited exposure there, I just can’t shake the authentic happiness and humility of men who are at peace with their position, who simply desire to grow, to learn, and to serve.
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This new paganism seems to be an enterprise that traffics in terms emptied of all meaning. Soul, sacred, holiness, all are just a veneer on a sort of inescapable nothingness. This void is not well covered by jargon, regardless of how well-intended or articulate. It cannot be papered over. It can only be traversed by a transcendent love bright enough to outshine all our worldly aspirations and close enough to whisper to our broken hearts in all their futile grasping. 

The Apostle Paul tells us we’re all going to worship one of two things. We will either worship the Creator, or we will worship the creation (See Romans 1). It’s pretty simple. We will either allow the world to point us beyond itself to its source, as King David does in Psalm 19, or we will suppress the truth of God’s existence, that we all know deep down, and, in his absence worship some created thing, be it ourselves, someone else, or nature itself.
Christian author Peter Jones describes these options as oneism and twoism. Either all of reality is one thing, the Cosmos, hence oneism. Or, reality is accurately represented in the categories Paul gives us of Creator and creation, twoism. Every way of seeing reality can be boiled down to these options. Reality is either one or two. Choose wisely.
A magazine I regularly read is Aeon, a thoughtful online resource about ideas, philosophy, and culture. Earlier this month they published the article “A New Paganism: Now is the Time to Revitalise our Relationship with Nature and Immerse Ourselves in the Little Wonders of the Universe” by Ed Simon, an author who regularly writes about beliefs about God. Simon argues, in the absence of God, we need to turn our attention to the natural world to find a new expression of the sacred. This is the worldview of oneism.
Simon refernces an often quoted passage from the influential twentieth-century philosopher Bertrand Russell in which Russell says it is only upon the firm foundation of unyielding despair that anyone can hope to find safe haven for their souls. Put aside for the moment the fact that Russell didn’t believe in any such thing as a soul, an immaterial part of the human personality that survives the grave. Simon quotes him to disagree with him. Though Simon describes himself as post-Christian, he rejects the idea that a world without God need be described as nihilistic. Simon writes:
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If you’ve never read the Screwtape Letters before, I’d encourage you to grab a copy. The book consists of 31 letters from a senior demon Screwtape to his nephew, a junior demon, named Wormwood. This is arguably Lewis’s most influential work. You can read it in a month just doing one letter a day. They give powerful insights into what it feels like to be tempted in a fallen world and the glory that awaits believers on the other side. I’m staring a new podcast this month called “Mere Caffeination.”

It was a hot dry summer in 1940 in Oxford, England. That ended in July when the heavens opened up with deluge rainfalls. It must have been a wet Saturday evening when C.S. Lewis, the man who would take to speaking over the radio in the very near future, turned on his own radio on and tuned in to listen to an influential political speech. History was being made in more ways than one
“In looking back upon the last ten months we are all struck by the grace of Providence that has allowed us to succeed in our great work,” the speaker’s voice proclaimed through the crackly speakers. “Providence has blessed our great resolves and guided us in our difficult matters. As for myself, I am deeply moved, realizing that Providence has called on me to restore to my people their freedom and honor.”
Lewis admitted to being affected by the rhetoric. “I don’t know if I’m weaker than other people, Lewis said, “but it is a positive revelation to me how while the speech lasts it is impossible not to waver just a little.” Lewis wrote these words describing how it felt to hear what is described as Hitler’s last appeal to Britain to remove themselves from the war, before he promised to unleash Hell. Within a couple months it would be far more than rain falling from the English sky.
In his speech, Hitler claimed to be the voice of reason pleading for common sense. It was Churchill who was evil and illogical, Hitler claimed, referencing the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister no less than fourteen times in the address.
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He pointed them to to the rooms off the hallway, what he described as various denominations. This is because as believers study their Bibles they will develop convictions that move them beyond the minimal commitments of basic Christianity. The rooms represent different layers of shared beliefs that culminate in the kinds of nuances that distinguish Pentecostals from Presbyterians, and Lutherans from Baptists. 

C.S. Lewis has led generations through the wardrobe and into the magical land of talking Fauns, lampposts, and the benevolent lion. But Lewis led just as many—likely more—into a far more powerful place, a hallway. Yet Lewis made it clear, he didn’t desire for any of us to stay there.
This is what C.S. Lewis had in mind when he talked about the hallway in his influential work Mere Christianity. The hallway represents the entry point into the Christian faith. The hallway can be well summarized by historic Christian statements, like the Apostle’s Creed. The hallway represents those basic things every Christian must believe, those unifying and foundational truths at the heart of Christian faith.
As great as this hallway is, however, Lewis didn’t want people to stay there. He pointed them to to the rooms off the hallway, what he described as various denominations. This is because as believers study their Bibles they will develop convictions that move them beyond the minimal commitments of basic Christianity.
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