You’re never more confident in what you know than at age 16. At least that's the median range for intellectual arrogance I've experienced. Somewhere around that age well-adjusted people start to sense they may not have all the facts all the time.

During my one year spent teaching high school Bible, I had students all over the mountain of intellectual arrogance. In my Sophomore homeroom, a few guys had planted their flag on the summit.

One morning a certain young man named Cliff was assigned the devotion. Yes, I know. Assigning devotions to unwanting high school boys ain’t the recipe for spiritual insight. But that’s the way it was done.

When I asked Cliff to come forward for the devotion, it was clear he hadn’t prepared a thing. I didn’t expect otherwise, but rules were rules. So he stepped to the front of the room.

Cliff ruffled through the pages of a Bible he stole from a friend and stopped suddenly in the New Testament. He slapped his finger on a verse and looked up with a sly smile. He cleared his throat and read, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” He slammed the Bible closed and began walking back to his seat. He had done his duty and didn’t want to say anymore.

That wasn’t going to work for me. If Cliff didn’t have anything to teach us, then I had something to teach him.

“Cliff, answer me one question,” I said, stopping him in his tracks. “Since you appear to believe the meaning of John 3:16 is self-evident, what is the significance of the word ‘so’ in Jesus’ expression ‘God so loved the world’?”

“If I only touch the edge of his prayer shawl, I will get well.”  That was the logic of a large number of Israelites who encountered Jesus.  According to Mark 6:56 and Matthew 14:36, “Wherever Jesus entered villages or cities or countryside, people laid the sick in the market places and implored him that they might just touch the fringe of his cloak. As many as touched it were being cured.”  It was a nationwide phenomenon.

Personally I would have taken a different approach.  I would have wanted a more memorable experience.  Maybe a secret potion or some holy water to pour on my head for seven days would be more impressive.  If I was going to be healed, I’d want a little more showmanship than the fringe of a Rabbi's prayer shawl.

One particular woman thought the edge of Jesus’ prayer shawl could stop a 12-year hemorrhage.  It was a bold (somewhat difficult to understand) belief.  She didn’t want him to touch her head, to say a prayer, or to make a magical elixir.  She just wanted to grab a corner of his outer garment. 

At first glance, this lady seems to have an ill-conceived belief in the power of prayer shawls.  I personally think they are a fashion nightmare and have never found one with the redeeming value of healing power.  But Matthew 9:20-22 records her exceptional story.

So you lost your job because you stood up to an abusive boss. You lost a friend because you questioned their participation in certain weekend activities. Or you’re embarrassed by your squealing car because you refuse to live on credit debt.

Embodying Jesus’ way isn’t easy. Compassion, justice and faithfulness require work. You get tired because you bring a meal to a new mom, house a family in need, and give a listening ear to a hurting friend late into the night. You’re crushed because the state sends your foster child back to a neglectful mom. Or you struggle financially because you refuse to make money off of uneducated consumers and underpaid workers.

On nights you can’t hold it all together, you rant. You stare. You question and cry “mercy!” Then a well-intentioned friend says: trust God and things will get better. Jesus promised to give you rest. What do you do with that?

Maybe you hit your friend in the face. Or maybe you hold yourself back and nod like that statement somehow helped you. Or maybe you feel worse because you don’t expect things to get restful so you feel like you’re failing to have faith.

Should you believe God will make everything better?

If God works all things together for my good, then why hasn't everything seemed that great? That's a question we end up asking after someone flippantly quotes Romans 8:28. I appreciate the encouragement, but I wonder if something is lost in translation.

Is it really good that my parents got divorced? Is it good that my childhood friend was sexually abused? Is it good that my buddy lost his job? Is it good that my brother's girlfriend died in a car wreck? Is it really good that all this bad stuff is happening?

When I was younger, I didn't know what this verse meant. But I knew it didn't mean everything was good.

After the Fox News interview brought first class media hype to a religion scholar's book about Jesus, Reza Aslan's 'Zealot' hit number one on Amazon's book sales. I found his methodology for creating the Jesus of history to have fundamental flaws. So I've explained the top 10 historical mistakes Reza Aslan makes in his case for making Jesus a political revolutionary. Check out the video on YouTube: Reza Aslan Zealot book review by Bible scholar Paul Penley. 

My apologies for the late night recording of my critiques. I think the tiredness and frustration with such poor scholarship getting hyped shows through in the final minutes of the video blog. It certainly appears that Reza's personal story of an Iranian American muslim turned evangelical Christian and then turned muslim again has warranted the hype around this book more than anything new or substantive in his portrait of Jesus.

Have you ever sat through church youth lessons where the boys had to be separated from the girls? Do you remember why? Were you ever told splitting up the boys and girls was necessary for some “guy talk” and “girl talk”? In my experience, that meant only one thing—time for a lesson about lust. 

I don’t know what the girls did. I imagined them in the next room looking through BRIDE magazine, playing M.A.S.H. or picking out prom dresses. They laughed and hugged while we men stared at the floor. We were slammed in the face with our evil and unbound sexual desire. Lecturers called us adulterers and recommended gouging out our eyes and cutting off our sexually promiscuous hands (see Matthew 5:27-30). We were taught the second glance rule to keep our hearts in check. We were assigned accountability partners specifically to discuss how, when and where we acted on sexual desire in the past week. We were nearly made to believe that the pinnacle of male spirituality is the absence of sexual attraction.

Finding Sex Where It Doesn’t Exist

One of the verse bombs hurled our way was 2 Timothy 2:22. “Flee from the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.” Without fail every teacher interpreted the expression "evil desires of youth" (or “youthful lusts” in some translations) as a man’s sex drive. You needed to flee, run, scat, sprint and hurry if you wanted to escape it.

Admittedly 2 Timothy 2:22 did justify the advice to find accountability partners (“pursue… along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart”). But it didn’t quite make sense. Why would some guy fighting sexual temptation find victory by pursuing peace instead of sex? Why does nothing Paul write in 2 Timothy 2 ever mention sexual purity or promiscuity? Why doesn’t Paul use adjectives like “sensual” or “sexual” to describe “lusts” as he does elsewhere when discussing sexual desire? 

I'm a parent who shapes the character of my kids every day. But Proverbs 22:6 isn't relevant for my kids who are 5 and under. Most Bible translations say something like, "Train up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it when he is old." Parenting ministries and mom's groups have discussed this verse to no end. Unfortunately, most of them were never told what it originally meant.

"Train up a child" isn't talking about disciplining your toddler. Now Proverbs 22:15 does talk about that 9 verses later, but it uses a completely different term for "discipline" and for "child." If you go to an online Bible concordance like www.studylight.org (my favorite), you can use the interlinear Bible to find out the Hebrew word translated "train." When you look up that word, you'll find that it's used only 4 other times in the Bible as a verb and 8 times in noun form. Every use of that word refers to initiating or dedicating something for a unique purpose (such as dedicating the Temple). Corresponding words in Egyptian, Akkadian and Aramaic confirm this ancient near eastern meaning. So what?

The evidence demonstrates that common interpretations have got it all wrong. Proverbs 22:6 does not command people to discipline or teach their children a certain way. There should be no debate about whether the passage instructs parents to either teach children the way of wisdom, righteousness and life or teach them according to their personalities, capacities and temperament. Both interpretations are wrong.

Initiation Rites for Future Leadership Roles

Proverbs 22:6 actually commanded wealthy parents of great status to initiate their adolescents into societally significant roles they were to play. The word translated "child" in most Bibles actually refers to adolescent or teenage squires who would take on prominent roles in the royal court. Hebrew does have words for "children" in general (e.g., yeled), but Proverbs is specifically addressing sons with significant status using the term na'ar (see Hildebrandt, "Proverbs 22:6a: Train up a child?," Grace Theological Journal, 10-14). Proverbs 22:6 wants to make sure that such children of privilege were ushered into their responsibilities properly. Such instructions targeting wealthy children are not unusual in Proverbs. Most proverbs were wise sayings taught to wealthy adolescent males in the royal court. In fact, the immediate context of Proverbs 22:1-9 contains many Proverbs targeting that wealthy audience.

Once you know these facts, Proverbs 22:6 is better translated: "Initiate a wealthy young man into his proper role and when he is old, he will not depart from it." It's not talking about disciplining a 3-year old. So I go elsewhere for advice on that (see Proverbs 22:15 and 29:15 where parents are told to discipline and prevent their privileged children from getting their own way). Proverbs 22:6 is, however, telling me how important it is to initiate my children into distinguished roles that they will play in life.

When my kids are ready for higher levels of responsibility (in the adolescent years and beyond I suppose), I will look for opportunities to mimic the ancient royal courts and the privileged parents who initiated young squires. The proverbial principle is translatable even though the original context of courts and squires has disappeared long ago. I guess that could mean honoring my kids when they get their first leadership position or first degree or when they master a skill that can greatly benefit others. These significant rites of passage deserve personalized graduation ceremonies of sorts. No matter what specific rites of passage you might choose, the goal is to recognize and dignify every esteemed role that children take on in hopes that they will continue down that path the rest of their lives.

It is hard to follow an idea. Ideas don’t go anywhere. It is much easier to follow directions.

If we only define Jesus by who he is rather than what he does, we lose the ability to imitate him. You cannot follow a person who is just standing there being himself. If you daily imagine Jesus as a heavenly being standing in the clouds in all of his eternal perfection rather than a man on mission, you’ll be left taking clues for how to make your next move from everything but Jesus himself.

That’s why my entire book Reenacting the Way (of Jesus) focuses on Jesus’ movement. We decipher the meaning of his most mysterious actions. And we find that his actions are not superfluous connecting material between teachings. His actions were making profound statements in and of themselves. He was challenging and changing the world by what he did. And he was setting an example for all who would follow him.

If we are going to honor Jesus, we must begin to reenact his way of doing things. We must find creative ways to be faithful to his example. Jesus understood the symbolism of wine and water in his culture. He knew what pigs and storms meant to pagan regions around the Galilee. He didn’t take deformities and debilitating diseases at face value. He used their cultural significance to his advantage and took action. We must do the same today.

For the rest of this post, go to my full post on the Catalyst blog.

Philippians 4:13 says we "can do all things through Christ who strengthens" us. That doesn't mean Jesus makes you fly or win football games or get a perfect score on the SAT if you're not a genius. The Greek word "all things" is grammatically linked to the "circumstances" Paul already mentioned in Php 4:11 when he wrote: "I have learned to be content in all circumstances." His faith in Christ gave him the ability to be content no matter what he faced.

My experience has been that we don't approach life like Paul did. We normally pursue discontentment because we can't get our eyes off the desire for "more" and "better." Despite the built-in simple pleasures of life (a gift from God according to Ecclesiastes 2:24; 3:12) and the deep experiences of love, purpose and grace that Jesus embodies, we focus on what isn't good. We obsess about how we want it to be in the future, and we miss the goodness in the now.

There is "a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance" (Eccles 3:4). But it is always time to be content. We unintentionally pursue discontentment when we use God as one more reason to obsess about something "better" and "bigger" in the future. Maybe it's time to embrace what's in front of you. Take your eyes off the horizon and settle into the goodness of life you can taste right now, no matter how small that good is.