The difficulty and necessity of impartiality.

I will admit that I have favorite students at my job. That being said, I try my best to be impartial towards them and treat them the same under school regulations as those who tend to be in a perpetual state of trouble. It is only good to do so. For instance, I had to take the cell phone away from one of my favorite students today because she just up and decided to answer it right in front of me. I was left with little choice, really, if I wanted everyone else on campus to know that I treat everyone equally.

Her boyfriend was pretty angry, as I found out near the end of my shift. He asked what was wrong with me for taking it from her when all she was doing was "answering to say she couldn't talk." Besides the lack of logic in that statement, I decided to approach his anger from a different angle. I told about the necessity of my impartiality. "What would the other students think, watching while I let her keep her cell phone but had taken theirs?" Partiality would have been a gross act of negligence and very well could have broken the trust many students had in me. That's not to say that it is easy to be impartial; just good. Thankfully, he saw the wisdom in my ways and let go of his grudge.

I learned these lessons the hard way by letting my favorite students (or the ones who could beg the best) off the hook. It was not good, not because other students saw, but because I was being lousy with my authority and responsibility. My conviction in this area revolved around the amazing truth that God, Himself, shows no favoritism. Peter, in speaking of Jesus, says, "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right." We disdain people who show favoritism. How much more would we disdain God if He made our lives and salvation contingent upon how well we wheedled Him into treating us better than our peers? Therefore, be honorable and love all people equally.

Chasing justice

Today, I had to chase down a spray painting juvenile who decided to run through the parking long of my school. As I was running after the guy, I couldn't stop thinking of how surreal the situation was. I'm on my phone with the police dispatcher zeroing the cops in on the guy I'm tailing and he won't stop even though he knows he's going to be caught. Thankfully, I could tell by the way he acted that he wasn't yet hardened in his ways.


Regardless, my duty as a Christian at that moment was to bring a boy to justice and I realized, even as I wanted to share the Gospel of mercy with him in some fashion, that God glorifies Himself in two main ways: Through his justice and through his mercy. My job at that time was to bring about the justice of God through the position of authority he had give to me as a high school security guard. It pleases God when justice is upheld.

People tend to ignore the justice of God as a means of His glory, it seems. They want to see "God as love" as opposed to the God who, in delivering His love, also took out His wrath on His Son who stood in our place. That is how Christ glorified Himself and redeemed us. Yet, without justice, there can be no deliverance. The wicked go free and are glorified while the righteous wither away and die.

The covenant God and infant baptism.

I am a Christian of the "Reformed" tradition but in a more specific sense than most people might consider. Scriptures concerning those who are saved are unified through the will of a covenant God. He has especially extended his grace and mercy to and through families. Peter even says, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off--for all whom the Lord our God will call." We are also told to raise up our children in the "fear and admonition of the Lord." In talking about God's commands in Deuteronomy, Moses commands families to, "Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."

Thus, all things considered, I specifically believe in infant baptism as a visible sign that our children are being brought into the covenant (though not necessarily saved) because of God's covenant to us. Paul writes to the Corinthians, "For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy." Pretty awesome!

Risen from the dead.

A friend asked for proof that Jesus rose from the grave, so I addressed the question behind the question that many people are really seeking the answer to (Why does that matter?):


"Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. By faith it is understood that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. That being said, people did see Jesus rise up from the dead. More importantly, that incredible sign was not, in and of itself, enough to save those who experienced the miracle without faith. "Proof" does not fix a broken heart."

For what price will you sell out?

Everyone has a price. Every last one. We have sold out our honor and integrity in the moment to something seemingly more important. "Our word is our bond" we say, but even the strongest of us break it easily for something. That something for me has predominantly been my lust (amongst many other things). I have historically broken appointments, ignored the needs of my friends and forsaken God in order to sate it. Inevitably, I find that when I do so, my life is like a trash bag with a hole in the bottom. It's not even worthy of the stinking filth it's supposed to hold. I am worthy only to be thrown away. More so, I'm deserving of judgment and in need of forgiveness by the ones I have neglected.


In no way can I call myself better than any man and, often caught red-handed, my defensive walls go up, accusations against the other begins, and I try to defend my "phantom honor." Much like a painting that has been taken off a wall after years in one place, there is the shade of something that should be there but I cannot grasp what was lost. Foolishly, I try to point out that it did, in fact, at one time, actually exist. Pathetic! I humble myself here so that no one can call me self-righteous when I tell this story:

While working at my job, a student approached me asking for two dollars: One for himself and the other for his friend. I pulled out two, crisp Washingtons for him on the condition that he repay me. He agreed. We had an unwritten contract sealed by his word. A week passed and I asked him for my money back. He balked and suggested that it was only two dollars and was not a big deal. In a sense this was true. I didn't need the money and he knew it. Still, in response, I said:

"Money is not the issue here. The issue is your word and right now you're telling me that you're willing to sell out your word for something as minor as two dollars. If you are bought off so lowly, how can I or anyone else ever trust you for anything?"

The next time we talked, I brought this up and said that I would never speak of it again. I also let him know again that there could be no trust on my part for him. He payed me back a few months later. In any case, we are all deal breakers who thirst for honor that does not exist in ourselves or anyone else we know. Our desire for such an impossible standard is evidence to me that it does exist. Thus, what astonished me today was the realization that Jesus had no price EVEN THOUGH the exchange placed before Him was His life in return for a torn trash bag: Of infinitely less value than two dollars yet somehow greatly prized.

I write this to give us all hope. There is goodness and great love from God just for us. Though we cannot find it in ourselves or others we can find it in Jesus and it is so good. Rest in Jesus and stop trying to work hard to be good. Learn His grace more than your failings. If you can't forgive yourself for the past, ask Him to lift that burden from your shoulders. He already finished those works when He died and rose again for us.

Keeping the "relate" in relationships.

I was discussing relationships with a good friend of mine last night and we got onto the issue of deal breakers. She asked me to define them so I had to ask myself, "What sorts of character flaws are so bad that, in and of themselves, they ruin any chance of a relationship forever regardless of every other positive trait?" Philosophically, I needed a logical foundation to reinforce my question. I answered using two supporting justifications:

1) I had to determine what deficiencies I was unwilling to accept in myself to discern what I was compelled to avoid in someone. In so doing, I realized that;

2) The woman would have to be compatible with me in every important way for the best possible assurance of a LONG TERM relationship.

Thus, importantly, I should stay far away from the attraction of opposites.

To wit, I love Jesus and believe His grace, apart from works, rescues sinners from hopeless lives. Mercy triumphs over justice. Being with someone who disagreed would feel like a red-hot brand in my side. I am very good with money and take pride in the stewardship of the resources that God has given to me. Why would I choose the foolishness of being with a frivolous woman? Would a man choose to sleep under a leaky roof? I am a hard worker and find great worth in completing a job to the best of my ability. A lazy woman would be like gravel in my mouth. My political conservatism defines my view of government, so being with a woman who wants to force redistribution of wealth to "the poor" would be worse than Chinese water torture.

Put simply, to be a gracious and merciful man in marriage, responsible with my labor and its fruit, and of the belief that I have the best ability to determine how to use my life, I need a compatible woman. If I never meet her, I am content to be single because my ultimate desire for marriage is to learn to love God more and bring Him the glory of a union so absolutely amazing that even those who don't know God give Him the credit for such a miraculous affair. My relationship with Jesus is too good to squander on a terrible relationship.

My friend, thought not a Christian, found it to be a very good explanation!

Don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out.

A tolerant, open-minded, non-judgmental attitude is publicly presented as the creme de la creme of progressive secular humanism and group think. It is often represented by those bumper stickers that leave a tickle of annoyance to squirm through the back of your mind: "COEXIST" and "TOLERANCE" being the main examples wherein the letters are scrawled out as major religious symbols (i.e. the "t" is a cross, the "c" is the star and crescent). While thinking about this, I ran across a quote attributed to G.K. Chesterton: "When a Man stops believing in God he doesn't then believe in nothing, he believes anything."

...And believing in "anything" can get you killed because having true wisdom tends to shut one's mind to foolish, man-made ideologies that have no capability to save or enrich (Consider this passage from Proverbs 1). Wisdom brings life but a belief in "anything" breeds foolishness. The image below conveys the fallacy of open-mindedness and tolerance between competing and wholly different ideologies and philosophies.


I have seen quotes from Muslims and atheists that fall along the lines of "We love death more than you love life." Such people will lord their authority over those who are not willing to sacrifice their life to protect what is good and holy. Where can we find such a person? I thank God that through Jesus Christ we have such an advocate and defender. Only Jesus has the strength to save us from our enemies in this life and our final enemy which is death. All those who put their trust in Him will by no means be put to shame.