I sometimes feel like a twenty-seven year old boy.

Last Friday, I shared with you all the things I’ve ever wanted to do with my life.  I’ve taken a few detours since high school.  Nothing exciting, like having a stint in dealing drugs or being a tough-as-nails biker-gang-member-turned-bounty-hunter-with-a-mullet-and-a-TV-show.  No one’s going to make a TV special about my life.  I’ve tried narrating my life, in the grocery store or while driving, but it only tempts me to spice up my day by swerving recklessly through traffic, or knocking all the cereal boxes off the shelf, like I’m in a getaway scene in a movie…a movie that takes place in a grocery store.

Most of us haven’t made those kinds of detours.  We didn’t drive our lives off a bridge.  In fact, for most of us, every turn we made, seemed like the right one at the time.  Yet, after ten years, things still aren’t quite the way we’d want them to be.

That’s what’s really frustrating. 

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Some people think God might have a slight mental disorder.  Maybe a touch of dual personalities…maybe.

I was having a very deep and intellectual conversation with a good friend recently, which does tend to happen when you are with me, and we are playing Mario Kart, and I am winning, which is always.  Hey, being better than my friends at things is just my muse.  That’s why I don’t play basketball with my friends.  I don’t feel like bestowing knowledge and wisdom on them after getting whipped at “horse.”

Anyway, the question at hand was why God seems to have a massive personality disorder.  Why does he seem like an angry, abusive, possibly-intoxicated-on-human-blood God in the Old Testament, and like a Care Bear in the New Testament.  This is a question that a lot of people seem to struggle with, and one that I’ve pondered over a lot, but until that night, I don’t think I had come up with any good answers.

However, since I was beating him particularly badly at Mario Kart, the answers I came up with were particularly good.  That’s just how God works with me.  I think there’s a verse about that…“Yea, when thee thrashes thy friend with green shells and banana peels, knowest that I am pleased with thee.”

Anyway, here’s what I came up with.

Four Reasons God May Not Be Schitzophrenic

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Last week, I talked about four not-so-great choices Christians have when it comes to sharing their faith.

Lo and behold, I realized I left something off the list.  That’s highly unusual, by my count.  And no one called me on it!  Luckily, it’s big enough to warrant a blog post unto itself.

You see, when Christians can’t find the words to share Jesus, a much easier method of evangelism is available.  All you have to do is become a walking billboard. 

Many Christians love to “express” their faith by spending their money on lots of holy Jesus themed bling blang.  I call it “Christian Crap Evangelism.”  Just cover yourself with as much Jesus memorabilia as possible, and no one within fifty feet will even have to come near you in order to know they’ll want to avoid you.

It’s weird.  Lots of people love to wear slogans on their shirts.  Some people do it so we’ll know they shop at some overpriced store.  But I’ve never seen someone’s t-shirt slogan and then went to Banana Republic, or Hard Rock Cafe, nor have I ever believed that life is good because of a t-shirt.  I wonder how many people have given Jesus a chance because of a proudly worn Christian shirt.

I’ve been in that boat before.  I’ve got a couple of Christian shirts in my closet.  But the easy marketing of Jesus with lame parodies and slogans officially makes this a not-so-great tool for evangelism.

Behold Jesus, in all his capitalistic glory…

Six Poorly Thought Out Christian Clothing Products

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Every once in a while, I’ll meet someone I went to high school with.

Usually, it’s a good meeting, if I don’t dive behind the display of Cheerios I’m standing next to in order to avoid them.  Usually if I stick around, I find the other person did something with their lives.  They turned out to be reasonably successful.  But every so often, I have to hold back the words, “What happened to you?” from popping out of my mouth.  Some people just took a…different path than I did.  Maybe they dropped out of high school and had twenty kids and got a tattoo on their face or something.  I always wondered what those people wanted to do with their lives back when we were in elementary school.  They probably didn’t want to drop out of school and have twenty kids.

But it made me think about myself.  I wanted to be a lot of things when I was a kid.  And I’m glad that for the most part, I did none of the things I dreamed of as an eight-year-old.  It made me think of all the dreams I had, and all the adults around me very kindly encouraged me in my dreams, as silly as they might have been.  I’m not so sure I would have been so encouraging to myself.  It kind of made me wonder what I’d say if I could give eight-year-old me a pep talk about career and life choices…

Matt Gives Himself Career Guidance

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Have you heard the audio tapes?

It’s likely that I don’t even have to mention the name of the particular movie star who I’m talking about.  Every media outlet has been all over those tapes like a tabloid on a photo of Britney or Lindsey’s lady bits.  And of course, our voyeuristic tendencies take over, and we eat up every second of scandal.

So now Christians are taking up the task of asking themselves the question, “What to do with Mel Gibson now that he is bonified insane?”  Just a few years ago, he was the champion of our cause with the horrifyingly accurate violence of The Passion of the Christ.  But now that it’s clear he has a real life violent temper, it’s kind of hard to embrace him as a brother in Christ.

However, as we all know, Mel is hardly the first to stain the name of Jesus by being a sinner.  From priests to televangelists to Henry VIII, Christians just can’t seem to clean up their act for long.  Yet, every time it happens, we always act surprised.  There’s so many scandals that have long since been forgotten.  Maybe before we decide how to react, we can put Mel’s situation in perspective with a little history of bad behavior among famous Christians.  

Ten Other Badly Behaving Christians

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It’s official, Christians are no good at evangelism.  Add it to the list of things we aren’t good at.

I think that’s probably been official for a while.  Greg Laruie recently said it again though, that Christians are generally unncessarily offensive, lame, and poor communicators.  It’s not something most people want to admit, though we all feel really guilty about it. 

I’ll be the first to admit it.  I’m terrible at talking to people one on one about Jesus.  I’ll gladly recommend my latest favorite movie.  And like any good evangelical, I’ll look for an opening to slip in the Savior.  And if I get that far, I’ll stumble through some half-baked “evangelism.” 

Not that I get that far too often.  Probably because an obvious opportunity doesn’t usually present itself.  People don’t walk up to strangers at Golden Corral and say, “You know what would be great?  A stranger telling me if this fried chicken is any good and that Jesus is the Savior of the world.  That would really make my day.”

I desperately want to share Jesus with other people.  You probably do too, and feel guilty that you don’t.  But I think my seminary evangelism class left me woefully unprepared to share Jesus with people. 

I think the problem is Christians don’t have enough choices on how to do evangelism.  Here’s what I mean…

Four Sort-of-Not-Great Ways to do Evangelism

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