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The peaceful fruit of a simple apology

4/29/2019

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Have you ever driven yourself a little crazy thinking and re-thinking a conversation with someone you thought you were close to—a conversation in which he or she said something incredibly mean to you?
 
A dear friend—let’s call her Penelope--reminded me of this situation recently. She was in the midst of a protracted cold war with her lifelong best friend, whom we’ll call Iris. The war had begun with a minor disagreement and a few unkind words on both sides, and had degenerated into months of near-silence, punctuated by a few icy e-versations that only served to renew the hostilities.
 
Penelope is a solid believer in Christ Jesus, and generally tries hard to follow His commands as detailed in the Bible. Iris is not, which is allegedly a big part of the problem.
 
“She doesn’t know anything about forgiveness,” Penelope told me. “I’ve forgiven her, of course. But you wouldn’t believe what she said to me the other day!” Whereupon she proceeded to describe Iris’s latest insults.
 
Perhaps not surprisingly, Penelope was livid.
 
Been there, done that, more times than I care to admit. Like Penelope, I've spent my share of sleepless nights revisiting such conversations, thinking of things that I should have said, wondering how I might best get this or that point across now, without sounding too petty.
 
But some years ago, I stumbled upon the solution while studying the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18—the parable that Jesus concluded with these words: “So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.”
 
This study underscored for me how critically important forgiveness is for the Christian. And it also made me realize, no doubt with the Holy Spirit’s help, that my episodes of righteous indignation had too often been fueled by some mighty nasty words on my part, a lack of repentance over my role and my response, and a refusal to genuinely forgive. And in every case I could recall, the heart of the problem was my stubborn pride.
 
I began praying earnestly for the Lord to change me.
 
It wasn’t long before someone important to me put me to the test with a few snarky words. Wish I could say I instantly turned the other cheek. But I did not; I snapped back at her. But here’s the thing: Instead of retreating in a huff to nurse my hurt, I quickly returned to this person and apologized for being so sensitive and for snapping at her.
 
Bingo! That was the end of it. I’d completely disarmed her by taking responsibility for my role in this skirmish. Peace was restored, at the cost of a simple apology.
 
Amazingly, I was also able to leave her unkind words behind.  Never mind that she didn’t apologize for what she’d said. That wasn’t my problem; that was between her and her Creator.  
 
I’ve had occasion to test this technique several times since then. The result has always been the same: Averted hostilities. A clear conscience. And no more injured pride.  
 
Imagine that: obeying God actually works.
 
I told Penelope about this, figuring she’d immediately apologize to Iris for her part in their squabble. So far, she has not done so. But maybe she’ll give it some thought, humble herself, and extend a heartfelt and thorough apology. As long as she expects nothing in return from Iris, she'll be set free from her unhappiness over the situation.
 
And maybe, just maybe, Iris will ultimately be inspired to find out why Penelope has turned into such a humble and forgiving friend. And maybe as a result, Iris will one day become a believer herself. What a happy ending that would be! 
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God-talk? Sure! Just don't get too specific.

4/23/2019

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You’ve probably noticed that there’s a lot of god-talk going around. Everyone seems to be feeling “blessed” these days, and many are feeling “humbled”—the grander the accolades, the humbler the speaker.
 
We have, in fact, entered a new era in freedom of speech in the western world. We can even mention “god,” if we’re sure to mentally lower-case the “g.” No one will smack us down for referring to a higher power if we keep it generic. After all, generic is inclusive. Totally appropriate, because in the end, we all worship the same god, whatever we may call her. (Or her/him? Or ze, sie, hir, co, or ey ? Hmmm. let's just cut to the chase and say “them” as the latest in third-person-singular pronouns.)
                       
Really, we can say almost whatever we want about deity these days. Just as long as we don’t mention Jesus Christ, or sin, or judgment, or any other terms that are exclusively Christian. And just as long as we don’t exalt the Bible above any other “holy” book.
 
I was reminded of this the other day, when reading a Facebook page focusing on Green Bay, Wisconsin, my hometown. A man had posted a very pleasant, politically correct little essay about how everyone in the world worships the same god, whether that would be Vishnu or Allah or Buddha or any other divine being. He personally was Christian, he said, apparently unconcerned about, or perhaps unaware of, the Bible’s warnings against idolatry. But let’s not go there, folks; let’s all just agree to live in a world of permanent kum ba yah, okay?
 
I thought briefly about letting the man’s claims pass, thought a little more about how many people might read it and be swept into his way of thinking, and thought even more about the eternal consequences of such thinking. And so I wrote a straightforward response along these lines:
 
“Actually, no, we don’t all worship the same god. Christianity says Jesus is God the Son. But Islam says there’s one god named Allah and he has no son. Hinduism says there are millions of gods. Buddhism says there’s no god. And the New Age says you are god."
 
I couldn't let it go at that. “I actually researched this all for over a year at the turn of the millennium," I continued, "after finding that the scientific evidence for a creator is overwhelming. Even though I didn’t want to become a Christian, figuring that Christians are boring, I could hardly dismiss my findings: There’s not a smidgeon of evidence that any other religion is true, whereas the Christian Bible contains “many infallible proofs” (Acts 1:3) testifying to its inerrancy and divine inspiration.”
 
I then invited other members of this group to check out the evidence I’d uncovered, providing links to my own “proof” page, as well as to a page on my memoir—a 2008 Thomas Nelson book describing my intellectual journey from atheism to Christianity. I pointed out that the book is available used on Amazon for under $2, that only the publisher profits from the sale of a new copy, and that you can even find it free online at places like books.google.com.
 
What do you suppose the reaction was to my post?
 
Yup. What I’d written was apparently the worst kind of heresy. I might as well have suggested that the Vikings are a better team than the Packers could ever hope to be.   
 
“This is not the place for that sort of talk!” said someone who turned out to be the administrator of the page. “The majority of our members are NOT INTERESTED!”
 
Oh, I replied, that’s funny, because according to Pew Research, over 70% of Americans still identify as Christian. “But if that’s indeed the case,” I typed, “couldn’t they just read the first line of the original post, see that it didn’t interest them, and skip the entire thing?”
 
By this time a number of people had added their own comments, one or two supportive of my post.
 
“This is not the place for this kind of talk!” the administrator repeated. “You are just trying to reach a huge audience – we have over 14,000 members!”
 
I didn’t bother reminding him that I had nothing to gain from reaching his coveted huge audience. “But seriously,” I replied instead, “if someone’s not interested, can’t he or she just skip it and move on to the next post?”
 
“I’m not going to argue with you!” the administrator raged. “This entire post is being taken down immediately!”
 
Well, I guess he told me! And indeed, I’ve learned my lesson: the name of Jesus is no longer welcome outside of genuine Christian circles, and truth has become irrelevant.
 
But maybe, just maybe, in the 10 minutes that this post was live, one lost soul read it, followed the link to this website, and heard—perhaps for the first time—that there’s plenty of evidence proving Christianity true, and that eternal life is available exclusively by repenting and trusting in Jesus Christ. That’s my prayer, anyway.
 
If not, there’s always next time. The administrator, you see, was apparently so livid over my heresy that he forgot to toss me out.  
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Whatever it takes, Lord

4/16/2019

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​Every now and then, I hear an unbeliever say something along these lines: “Really? She gets horrible news and suddenly decides to believe in God? I’m supposed to think there’s anything to it?”
 
I guess I understand where such a comment comes from. To the outsider, it must look like the new believer is grasping at straws, desperately embracing God “just in case.”
 
And honestly, sometimes such an observation is right on. Look at all the Americans who flocked to churches in the wake of 9/11 – attending faithfully for six weeks or six months, maybe even listening attentively to the readings and sermons, until the lure of the world reclaimed their hearts and minds. They are the false converts of the world, the ones for whom the seeds of faith were planted in the stony or thorny soil described by Jesus in Matthew 13.  
 
But it’s not always the case. Some sin-hardened hearts are so brittle that tragedy is able to produce the crumbly, friable soil that invites rapid germination and deep root growth. In these cases, moderate setbacks won't do it; such hearts need to be literally pulverized before their owners will doggedly seek (and find!) the Lord in search of solace, hope, and, most important, eternal truth.
 
We see such cases reported in Scripture, from the story of Nebuchadnezzar recorded in Daniel 4 and 5 to the parable of the prodigal son told in Luke 15.
 
And, in a much less concise and profound way, we see it in stories like mine.
 
Those of us who’ve taken this difficult route to Christ are no doubt legion. Over the years I've talked with many born-again believers who turned to Christ only after their hearts had been shattered. Which is why when I pray for the salvation of unbelievers, my prayers so often include a petition along the lines of "Do whatever it takes, Lord God, to get this person's attention."
 
I ask this with trepidation, knowing full well that when it comes to saving us for all eternity, the Lord does not pussyfoot around with us. He knows precisely what it will take to get each individual's attention. And that is the course He pursues, according to His sovereign control over our circumstances, and in His perfect timing.
 
It is not always successful. Too many are busy dancing down the wide path to destruction, so absorbed in pleasure or pride that they’ll never notice the narrow gate to life. For them, the consequences are tragic for all eternity.
 
But in some instances, the result is rejoicing in heaven, as each once-lost soul is forever found.
 
And when that happens, the reward is so glorious even in this life that its catalyst – the heart-shattering event that led to repentance and belief – does not seem so tragic after all.  
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Think that atheist despises you? You may be right.

4/9/2019

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If you’re a born-again Christian who takes Christ’s last command seriously, you’ve no doubt tried witnessing to atheists now and then.  These encounters are not for the faint of heart, are they? No matter how friendly you may be, and how hard you try to capture the unbeliever’s imagination, it’s all too often a lost cause—at least for the time being. Here’s what happened during one such encounter in my novel The Song of Sadie Sparrow, starring Bible teacher Jamie and nursing-home Activities assistant Meg, an intractable atheist. 
 
​
            Jamie sat at Lucy’s desk and started chatting about a lot of nothing, as far as Meg could tell. He told her that he’d seen some old Frank Lloyd Wright letters and drawings appraised for $75,000 on Antiques Roadshow and that his sister had just gotten herself a yellow lab puppy. He then asked her how the biographies were going.
            Trying to show me you’re just a regular guy, Jamie? You are not, and you’re annoying me.
            “So tell me this,” Meg said, ignoring his question and smiling smugly. “Have you always been so perfectly self-righteous?”
            He was shocked into speechlessness, she was pleased to see.
            “Wow, Meg,” he said finally, looking into her eyes and no doubt finding hostility there. “I almost don’t know what to say.”
            “Then—”
            “No, wait. I said ‘almost.’ I’d really like to address this with you, because you have it all wrong.” He grinned at her ingratiatingly, then continued in spite of her refusal to return the smile. “Like any genuine Christian, I’m the antithesis of self-righteousness. That’s the whole point of being a Christian, in fact—we know that we’re not good people in our own right, and never will be, and that the only good thing about us is Christ living in our hearts.”
            Oh, brother. Why’d I even go here?  
            “I wish you wouldn’t smirk like that. It’s pretty rude.”
            But it won’t shut you up, will it? 
            “In fact, if you look at the subject honestly, you’ll find that it’s unbelievers who are self-righteous,” he said, emphasizing the word “self” and sitting up a little taller as he warmed to his subject. “I used to be like that. I thought I was a pretty good person, and that if there was a heaven, I’d get in by virtue of my good deeds.”
            “You doubted there was a heaven?” Meg asked casually, genuinely curious but unwilling to show any great interest.
             “I was an agnostic at best until I was almost thirty.” Jamie leaned back, hands behind his head. “I’d learned to party hard in college and didn’t quit after graduating. I sold trucking services—not the most exciting work, but it’s a super-competitive business and I did a lot of drugs in those days, uppers to get through the day and downers to get to sleep at night. Then on the weekends I’d drink to escape the pressure and to bury my anger.”
            He really was beginning to sound like a regular fellow, Meg realized. She could identify with anger, anyway, and the need to bury it.
            “I was, in fact, a very angry guy. Whenever anything went wrong, which of course is daily in the business world, I’d find someone to blame for it—my boss or a competitor or the waitress who’d blown my customer’s order the previous week. If I forgot to get a quote in, it was the secretary’s fault, never mine, because she should’ve reminded me. And I didn’t suffer in silence; I let people know they’d let me down. Finally lost my job because I had such a short fuse, and it was getting shorter by the day.”
            “And all this time you thought you were a good person?”
            He laughed. “Yeah, go figure.”
            “So you turned to Jesus,” she said, “and you all lived happily ever after.”
            “Not exactly.” Jamie flashed dimples Meg had never noticed before. “I’d gone into this dive of a bar on Bluemound Road one afternoon—it must’ve been a weekday, because I was the only customer—and was just starting to get quietly loaded when the bartender asked me if I wanted to talk about it. Turned out that he knew exactly what my problem was. ‘I used to be just like you,’ he said. And he told me all about his past, and it was like that old song about ‘singing my life with his song’—do you know it?”
            “Yes, it was a Roberta Flack song. One of my favorites back in the day.”
            He nodded. “That’s the one. So he claimed that he’d investigated the Bible on a dare with his brother, and found out that it was true. Challenged me to try it myself—said the science alone would astound me, but what did him in was prophecy. We talked about that a long time—as I think I mentioned, I was a history major in college, so I found his claims about prophecy pretty interesting.”
            Meg didn’t know what he was talking about but didn’t want to get him going on that subject. She just nodded enough to show she was listening, not enough to indicate great interest.
            “To make a long story short—and it was a long one, since I had a lot of time on my hands at that point—I took him up on his challenge, figuring I’d be able to prove him wrong fairly easily. But I failed. Instead, I found out that what he’d been claiming was the truth.” Jamie shook his head, as if he still had a hard time believing it. “To cut to the chase, I finally had to bow my heart to Jesus Christ as Creator and Savior and Redeemer and everything else these born-again types said He was. And at the same time, to address your original point, to acknowledge what a total loser I was, repent of all my rebellion against God, and make amends with the people I’d hurt.”
            He finally fell silent, his expression deadly serious.
            The wall clock said it was almost eleven, time for Meg to help bring residents back to their rooms for pre-lunch preparations. She cleared her throat.
            Jamie didn’t seem to notice. “And the amazing thing is that everything started changing for me,” he went on. “Most notably, my anger vanished. Maybe it was a miracle, or maybe it’s just what happens when you quit making excuses for yourself and acknowledge that you’re a total jerk. It really humbles you.”
​

*  *  *  *  *  *  *
        "It really humbles you,” Meg said mockingly on her way home that night. “Humble” was the hot new verb, it seemed, with every celebrity talking about how humbled he or she had been by the latest awards and accolades. But how could adoring fans possibly humble you?
            They couldn’t. It’s just another lie.
         Except that Jamie hadn’t been talking about cheers from the crowd. He’d been talking about realizing he was perhaps not quite as good a person as he’d thought he was.
            Did that make this brand of humility the real deal?
          She flipped the radio on to an oldies station and joined Jim Croce in “Bad Bad Leroy Brown.” It wasn’t her favorite Croce song, but it was better than thinking that maybe this creepy Christian wasn’t such a bad guy after all.
           
--The Song of Sadie Sparrow, pages 264-268
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A worldview's like a jigsaw puzzle

4/2/2019

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"Everything’s different when you frame your life picture in the biblical worldview.  Suddenly it all makes sense. Just about every piece of information, experience, and idea in the box of your life fits into this frame. As long as they’re thoroughly vetted, there’s no need to force these pieces, or trim them back, or throw them away.

"Sure, there are some pieces that don’t seem to fit up front. You set them aside – throw them back in with the other loose pieces, perhaps those with the same colors – until you’ve got enough to work up a new section of the picture. Or until you notice that they fit somewhere else.

"That happens to me constantly now, especially when I’m reading the Bible. I will go over a New Testament passage for the fourth time and suddenly realize, like a bolt out of the blue, that it answers some pesky question I had back in Genesis. Or I’ll do a word-by-word study of a verse that has captured my attention, and suddenly a little-noticed preposition or article will bring the whole thing to life for me.

"There are some other amazing things about the biblical-worldview frame, too. 

"For one thing, it seems to repel fear. The Bible reportedly says 'fear not,' in various ways, 365 times – once for every day of the year, if whoever counted these mentions is correct. When I take the time to view a troubling circumstance through the biblical framework, fear flees. I have no more anxiety about going broke. I no longer step on the imaginary brake on the passenger side of the car. I have, it seems, no fear of dying – or at least such a dramatic reduction in that fundamental fear that situations which once sent me into a panic barely ruffle me these days.

"It’s almost like He’s turned me into an entirely new creature."

-- from Heaven Without Her, pp 190-191
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    Kitty
    Foth-Regner

    I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, a freelance copywriter, a nursing-home volunteer, and the author of books both in-process and published -- including Heaven Without Her. 

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