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13 years ago next month I graduated college and began “full time vocational ministry” work. Of my contemporaries who did the same, a good chunk of have abandoned that pursuit, some because they fell morally or ethically, even more because they just didn’t see the point anymore. I can think of an even larger number of “heroes” of the American church who have publicly and painfully crashed and burned – great leaders who turned out to be living a double-life. Frankly, it’s hard to have heroes anymore – and maybe we were never supposed to.

Though I work a day job to support the ever-increasing family, I still am honored to preach, teach, and otherwise participate in a local community of faith. I still consider making disciples my primary life’s work and purpose. And I’ve been thinking a lot lately about those who have left that work, especially through their own destructive choices – and how not to become one of them.

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Not a lot of time, but feeling the need to post. I have been working up the outline of a book I’d like to write (much like this blog, it will likely never reach any audience, but it’s something I always wanted to try). It’s called “Letters to Neo.” The basic idea is to frame Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus – young pastors he was mentoring – along with a few of his other words of wisdom for “overseers” in light of current American culture. These are timeless words, and they are profound in the context of the part of the Story we find ourselves in.

I’ve also been studying to teach about some of the “Hard Words of Jesus” at Redwood Hills. The upshot of both of those efforts is that I have been thinking a lot about Jesus’ ministry on a practical level – His words, His way of doing things, and how it affected the first generation of His disciples. A million deep thoughts come from that, but here’s one for today:

It’s hard to be like Jesus.

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As I prepare to share the story of how our family came to be this Sunday at Redwood Hills, I am thinking about one of the main questions we get asked a lot: are fertility treatments consistent with Christian ethics (or more like “are Christians allowed to do that kind of thing?”)? It’s a great question, and one we have spent plenty of time wrestling with. I won’t have time to go into any detail on Sunday, so I thought I would blog it here for you three readers (yes, we are up to three now ). Let me first lay some ground rules.

This is not the Law from Heaven on fertility treatments. It’s also not my attempt to help you circumvent the process of wrestling with this question. If you are facing it, you need to. To me this is not a political issue or a morality tale, it’s simply an intensely personal choice we had to apply our faith to. We hope we got it right. We did our homework. We prayed for wisdom. We believe we were heard.

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Christmas – the season of Bible movies on TV – like the one in the picture. Maybe because of that I have been captivated lately by Jesus’ take on the Law given to Moses. It is fascinating because He himself says that he has not come to destroy the law, but fulfill it. Many take that to mean that the rules and feasts and other observances of orthodox Judaism should be followed by Christians as well. Paul and the other Apostles did not. They understood Jesus’s meaning – that the law exists to be our teacher, and its supreme lesson is this:

There is none righteous.

Jesus came for one purpose – to fulfill the righteous requirements of the Law on our behalf. The Law was true, and just and good, but we were incapable of fulfilling it. The Law puts into writing the metaphysical reality of the universe as God created it – sin must be atoned for by the shedding of innocent blood. And  “when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.” The single greatest truth in all of human history.

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