Popularity vs. Pleasing God

In Galatians 1:10 Paul says, “Am I now trying to win the approval of men or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Paul makes it clear that God is the One we’re supposed to please.

Books on Preaching, Managing Time, and Sports Nanci and I Watch: Part 2 of a Q&A

In Charles Hummel’s booklet Tyranny of the Urgent, which I read as a young Christian thirty-five years ago, he said that what is urgent is often not important, and what is important is typically not urgent.

Morality, Markets, and the Audience of One: Os Guinness, Part 3

In this third and final blog post from an interview with Os Guinness (check out part 1 and part 2), Os talks about living for the Audience of One, and the relationship between calling, markets, and morality.

Mel Gibson, Image, and Character

With the recent allegations against actor Mel Gibson, there's been a number of responses to his situation that cry out for an eternal perspective. (When Gibson released his movie The Passion of the Christ in 2004, I wrote a review of the movie for our quarterly newsletter, and a follow-up response based on some of the things I said in my first article about Gibson. In both articles, I wrote, "Pray for him, absolutely, selectively agree with and support him, yes, but don't make him—or anyone else—Christianity's poster boy or spokesperson...Every time Christians get mesmerized by and try to capitalize on fame and celebrity, it ends up hurting them, biting us and undermines rather than elevates our Lord.")

Although these following principles about image and character are pulled from an article I wrote years ago about O.J. Simpson, they still prove just as true today as they did then.

Short-term Rewards vs. Living for the Audience of One

In the absence of a strong theology of Heaven and eternal rewards, the western church has been permeated by "prosperity theology," the gospel of health and wealth. We've been seduced to look only to short-term rewards of material gain, physical health and safety, and human approval.

The problem with short-term rewards is not that it's wrong to receive them, but that it's wrong for them to be our primary motivation for doing the work. If we take Matthew 6 seriously, when we offer people their name on a brick for giving to a building offering we're saying "Hope you enjoy this brick, because if this is why you're giving, the brick's all the reward you're going to get." What we're offering people is temptation—another wrong motive for doing something that God wants us to do for other reasons, for the applause of God, not the applause of men. (Winning a Gold Medallion may be a fine byproduct of serving God, but it is a terrible goal.)