Serving

You hear a lot about service these days. Kids have service projects at school, in the Scouts, or through some community youth program. People volunteer for food pantries or soup kitchens over the holidays. Social media has posts about "giving back" or "paying it forward."

But service goes way beyond that. For some people, it becomes a lifestyle. That's what Jesus called us to -- not just to do "projects," but to spend ourselves in caring for others.

It's what He did, after all. It didn't matter to Him what kind of person He was dealing with -- a poor woman, a distraught father, an outcast with a disgusting disease -- He was completely there for them, listening to them, paying attention to what they needed. And then He did what He could to meet those needs, even the ones that never found a voice: the woman's need for a new, better status in the community; the outcast's need not just for healing but for human touch (see John 4; Luke 5:12-15).

We can do that, too -- be in the moment, pay attention to those we're interacting with, meet the needs we can. It's what Jesus calls us to do.

But it's messy. If you open yourself up to human need, you risk getting dragged in to other people's messy lives. And lots of us -- maybe all of us -- don't really want to do that. It's not comfortable. We worry what might be asked of us -- and whether we'll be able to "get out of it" if we want to.

The thing about service is this: people tend to put limits on how far they'll be involved with the people they serve. And that's not bad. We have to have boundaries, or we get worn out and people walk all over us. But most people put those limits up a lot sooner than they need to -- and some amazing things could happen if they'd stretch just a bit further.

Let's take an example. Maybe there's an older man, Ed, who's about to lose his home. Medical bills and late payments have put him on the edge of foreclosure. He's in a panic, because he's never been good at paperwork, and he sure can't afford to hire someone to sort it out.

So you volunteer to look at it. You make a few phone calls, you talk to a social worker friend, you call the bank (with his permission, of course!) You find a solution. Whew! That's good. That's over with. Or is it?

Take a step back and look at your new friend. Actually, he could use a friend -- a real friend -- because he's largely home-bound. Any time the weather gets bad, he's stuck at home. He's got transportation issues. His car is twenty years old and on its last legs. But he hasn't said anything to you about it because he's very proud and independent. He'll take help from a friend -- but not from a mere acquaintance.

Go deeper. Ed is a great guy; he should have loads of friends. But his wife died ten years ago, and his only son is in the military stationed in Germany. Ed's retired, so he doesn't have work friends, and he doesn't go to church. He says hello to his neighbors, but they came here as refugees and don't have much more English than the basics.

Could you spend some time with Ed?

Not as a "service project." Nobody likes to be a project. But as a friend -- as a person you care about and want to spend time with. That's real service -- the kind you do because that's just what you were made to do. It's the kind that, ultimately, you don't even realize you're doing, because it's just who you are. Ed's needs are not the needs of a stranger anymore; they are the needs of your friend. And so naturally you do what you can.

This is the kind of life Jesus lived. This is the kind of life He calls His followers to. And God forgive us, there's plenty of proof that Christians don't always live this way. But we can. We can try. Because meeting human need is what Jesus is all about.

Written by the THRED team

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How One-Celled Bacteria Made Me Question Everything

As a young man I was gifted in science and math, so naturally I gravitated towards those subjects in college. When I first started my undergraduate education, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to be. I went from teaching, to chemistry, to pharmacy, and I'm sure I've missed a couple. But even if I didn't know exactly what I wanted to be, I was sure it would deal with science. And as I grew in my knowledge of the sciences, I found it conflicting with the creation narrative I'd brought to college with me.

I've grown up in the Christian church. With the exception of a few years in my early twenties, I have been a lifelong church-goer. And there were times when Christian leaders would say something that I went along with, but didn't really agree with. The Biblical narrative of creation was one of those things. I found many ways to justify my thinking: What is a day to God? How long did Adam and Eve live in the garden? But the facts were before me, and those facts were defined by scientific reasons for existence.

At best, I was a theistic evolutionist. I believed there was a higher power that put creation into motion, but not exactly as Genesis 1 in the Bible lays it out. How else do you explain dinosaurs and common traits between species? No, evolution and the big bang theories were clearly the answer. And when we all die and go to whatever is after life, the deity behind it all would be there to give us the details.

But the first challenge to my way of thinking happened in fall of 2005. It wasn't at church or a Bible study. It was in my microbiology class, at the University of Missouri - St. Louis. We'd gotten to the portion of the semester where we began to really study bacteria. At the risk of sounding like a complete nerd, I became fascinated by how elegant these simple little forms of life are. They are just so perfect. Their single ring of DNA allows them to adapt to just about any environment-there are bacteria that live in volcanoes, after all.

As I put that into perspective, I was somewhat hurt. If these simple forms of life -- that existed before all other forms of life -- can adapt to so many extremes, then why would they ever evolve into something more complex and less stable? Becoming a more complex and multiple-cell organism, at least to me, seems counterproductive to evolution. If you think about humans, we need our environments to be perfect in order to live.

My questions about simple and complex organisms led to many other questions, and in trying to find answers I seemed to only find dead ends. Nothing added up. The whole mechanism of evolution began to crumble in my mind. I was on hiatus from church at this point, but the things I once considered facts were looking more and more like creative constructions that people came up with to explain how we got here.

And the most important question was unfulfilled. Why? People will downplay the importance of purpose in life, but everyone wants to feel like they matter, regardless of what they believe.

This went on for about three years. I can only see the way that things proceeded as providential. I picked up a second job at the church I grew up in. They needed a night porter, and I needed a little extra cash to support my partying. After a couple months on the job, a weekly young adult Bible study started up during the hours I was working. I didn't think it would hurt to poke my head in to see what they were talking about. Time passed; things happened. Most importantly, I began reading my Bible again. And then lightning struck.

The biblical narrative reveals a very personal God -- a God that interacts with and intervenes in His creation on a constant and continual basis. The Bible reveals a God that would never sit back and watch how things unfolded. Instead, God is always proactive. He anticipates our every move, and actively participates in the process. The theistic evolutionary deity I once believed in was dead on the spot.

I continued studying the sciences. I am a pastor now, with a Master of Divinity. But my bachelor's degree is in chemistry. Some people think that science and theology don't mix, but that is a mistake. As I continued to study the world, the biblical narrative of creation came alive -- especially from a scientific perspective.

I remember chemistry videos in high school that showed two random hydrogen atoms finding the oxygen atom that they were looking for their whole lives, so that they could bond and make water. But there's so much more going on. Electrons are aligning themselves in the perfect position, and the atoms are colliding with just the right amount of force. And, this is just water. Again, simple yet elegant. Also, I can't accept that water being less dense when frozen, which allows life to exist in our oceans, lakes, and rivers, is a coincidence. It seems to me like a personal and active God made it that way. Which pointed me back to Genesis 1.

It can be hard to accept with all of the other narratives. I get that. But to me it just makes the most sense.

Written by Micah Glenn

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The Bible for Grown-Ups

What do Americans really think about the Bible?

It's tempting to think of it as a collection of stories not very relevant to our contemporary lives. But if we do think that way, we'd be missing a lot.

Every year the Barna Group, a polling organization that has an interest in religion, comes out with some fascinating facts about the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures (otherwise known as the Old and New Testaments).

The number of those who report being either "engaged" (they read the Bible four or more times a week, and think of it as God's Word) and those who are skeptical (it's just another book of human teachings) are so close that they almost cancel each other out. But the numbers of Americans who have a friendly or a neutral view of the Bible is much larger than either of the other groups. About 13 percent of Americans are hostile to the Bible, believing it was meant to manipulate and control people.

Women and older Americans are more likely to be heavily invested in Bible reading. Though nine out of ten of us own one, the way we read the Bible may be changing, with interest in online formats and Google searches growing.

More than half of us wish we read the Bible more often than we do, says Barna.

Perhaps if we did, we'd find some stories with strong, complex characters that open our eyes -- not only to the world in which they lived, but to our own.

There is Jacob, the ambitious and sometimes unscrupulous younger brother of Esau, who wrestles with a mysterious man at the ford of the Jabbok River in Genesis 32:22-32 and lives to tell the tale. We live in an age of ambition. When is it healthy and when is it harmful?

While men mostly play leading roles in the Bible, the Hebrew Scriptures offer a number of women making decisions that change the course of biblical history, from the prophet/judge Deborah in the four and fifth chapter of Judges, to the Persian queen Esther who plays an important role in saving the Jewish people (her cousin Mordecai helps foil a plot to kill the king in the book of Esther), to Mary the mother of Jesus and the outspoken Samaritan woman getting water from a well in the New Testament. These women are nothing if not smart and resourceful.

There are prophets we come to know in the books named after them, as they beg God to be merciful and hold God's people accountable for their misdeeds. Perhaps we have had someone like a Hosea or a Jeremiah in our own lives -- a person we respected and perhaps feared at the same time.

Then there are characters about whom we know very little, like the thief (the so-called "good thief") who is crucified next to Jesus and recognizes Him, even in these last moments of his own life, as someone holy. Many of us are aware of how very easy it is to go astray, in spite of everything we have been given, and find ourselves in a frightening place -- one in which we may not even recognize ourselves. Who inspires us to change our course in these dark times? Have we known people in whom we recognize a profound goodness, one that attracts us to them?

If you are one of the nine out of ten people who has a Bible lying around, you might want to follow up and take a deeper look at some of the characters mentioned here. There are many, many others. When we are prone to see Scriptures as a set of "do's and don'ts" (and there certainly is moral teaching in it), we may be more prone to avoid getting in too deep. But the moral teaching of the Scriptures makes more sense if you understand the real-life dilemmas of the people who inhabit its pages.

Once they come to life for you, they may take you places you never thought you'd go. The Bible as an adventure story? Nothing in the least bit old-fashioned about that.

Written by Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans

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