The Rules of Attraction (Spiritual Edition), Part 1
January 5, 2009
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Benevolence, Boldness, Cerulean Sanctum Series, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Community, Counterculture, Creation Care, Creativity, Discernment, Dying to Self, Evangelism, Faith, Godly Character, Grace, Holiness, Hospitality, Humility, Joy, Leadership, Love, Maturity, Obedience, Oddities, Perseverance, Prayerfulness, Relevance, Simplicity Feedback : 13 comments
All the young dudes hunkered in a pack at the back of the Taco Bell, the mecca of cheap food for young dudes everywhere. Like most 19-year-olds, they took big bites and talked a little too loud for a small restaurant.
Enter two young women.
They were the classic pair one finds in many romantic comedies today. The one was a natural beauty, raven-haired and fresh-faced, like something out of Ivory Soap ad but with a green sensibility, just add Timberlands. The kind of girl one can take home to mom and on a camping expedition. One of those girls who may actually be prettier without makeup.
Where the natural beauty was curvy, her friend was all sharp angles. The friend did all the talking, and showed a great deal of smarts, as seems to be the case in this stereotype. The friend also chatted up the guy behind register and was generally pleasant. She dressed in a kind of geek chic that tried just a bit too hard.
As for the young dudes, they stymied their conversation and just stared. And, obviously, not at the friend. Nor in the volatile language that erupted shortly after they gathered their composure did the young dudes have anything to say amongst themselves about the friend. In fact, one could argue that a scientific breakthrough of enormous importance occurred in that Taco Bell, because, for a moment, a human being became absolutely invisible.
Now, in a burst of illustrative metaphor, I ask the simple question: Which of the two young women best exemplifies what Christianity should be in the eyes of the world?
As I see it, if you picked the friend, you’d be dead wrong.
That’s not what most people think, is it?
But I believe that the way the Church of Jesus Christ should appear to the world is as a winsome beauty. The Bride of Christ is meant to be beautiful. The Bride of Christ is supposed to be attractive. People should look at the Church and think, Wow!
Yet somewhere along the way, we Christians, especially in America, developed a kind of self-inflicted persecution complex where we aspired to stop being the natural beauty we were meant to be,
instead cultivating the attitude and lifestyle of the plain Jane friend. We tried—badly—to be a fashion plate, made every makeup mistake known to Man, and developed an attitude. In short, we grew to epitomize the friend character perfected in films by Rosie O’Donnell.
Should we be surprised then that no one wants to take us to the prom?
The early Church, in stark contrast, exhibited natural beauty through their love, community, and witness. That beauty attracted thousands. Whenever people saw the Church, they craned their necks to look because the beauty snatched their breath away.
So it should be with today’s Church. Instead, we’re whiny, loud, divisive, and sitting in the bleachers complaining how no one wants to dance with us.
The error that too many Christians commit is to equate the world’s lack of interest with the nature of Christianity. But neither Christianity nor Christ Himself are ugly.
We must realize that the reason none of the young dudes in Taco Bell left with the natural beauty is that she demands more. So while neither she nor her friend walk out of that restaurant on someone’s arm, it’s for a different reason than appearance in the beauty’s case. Pursuing the beauty isn’t going to be easy. None of the dudes even tries. They look, but ultimately, they can’t follow through.
The way of Christ is beautiful, but it demands everything. Thousands flocked around Jesus, but only a few could handle true discipleship. As the Scriptures say:
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
—John 6:53-66
It wasn’t because Jesus wasn’t attractive in a figurative sense. The hungry, the hustlers, and hookers longed to be near Him. Even kings and regional rulers desired to meet Him. No, it was the message, the demand, that turned people off in the end. The natural beauty has high standards.
We must be beautiful in all the ways that make the Church attractive to lost people and those in a world of hurt. We must also keep the message of the cross central. It’s that message that proves impossible to many a young dude. It should never be purposeful attempt to look like a frump. We must let the cross be the deciding factor in whether some follow and some do not, never by compromising our attractiveness.
For 2009, I think the word that the Church needs to hear concerns regaining our natural beauty, especially in America. We’ve tramped around like plain Jane, thinking this is our lot and the way to attract people to Jesus. If anything, we’ve made that belief an impediment to others coming to Christ. Instead, we must shine and make no apologies for being naturally beautiful.
For more on how we Christians can cultivate our natural attraction to the lost, stay tuned for my next post.
No Crystal Ball, No Wayback Machine
December 31, 2008
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Announcements, Benevolence, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Community, Dying to Self, Faith, Godly Character, Humility, Joy, Maturity, Obedience, Perseverance, Prayerfulness, Relevance, Spiritual Warfare Feedback : 10 comments
I remember Monday, April 7, 2008. I walked down to the creek beside our home and sat on the bridge. It was easy to pray on such a beautiful day. The cerulean sky erupted in white, pierced by the rays of an energetic sun, while a casual cloud or two drifted by, oblivious and serene. Winter had fled, replaced by a warmth that seemed to radiate from all the new life growing green around me.
And when I prayed, I thanked God that things had finally turned around. That the last several years of struggle were over. That everything in the world finally seemed right for my family. That now was a time to let down the guard, to let the watchmen rest, to know peace instead of strife and uncertainty. I thanked God with tears in my eyes. Our new dog, which had wandered into our lives a few days previous, probably wondered what kind of blubbering owner she had come to choose. I didn’t care; I was happy.
But now the dog is gone. Many things I thanked God for that sunny April day are not the same, for mere hours after I prayed that prayer of gratefulness, the world fell apart.
It seemed cruel that the weight that long crushed us lifted so briefly, only to be replaced by a devastating burden my wife and I could not have imagined if you gave us a year to write out all the possible twists and turns life can take. So it is living as dust.
As 2008 comes to a close, it ends as a year no crystal ball might have foretold.
You would think that at 46 I would have completed my growing up, but God has many surprises among His riches, and growth at this late stage would not have been one I would have guessed.
But this is what I have to say to you:
God still cares about you and me.
Sometimes the worst events in life have a wisdom of their own, even if we are not smart enough at the time of their coming to see it.
Ten thousand flaming chariots surround the ones the Lord loves.
You and I are not clever enough to chart our own way.
No one can live without the support of others.
Tough times make for tough people, but only if they learn to believe and trust the Lord.
Humility must come at the time of greatest need or else that need will go unfilled.
There are no crystal balls, no wayback machines, so learn to live in the present.
That which we fear will own us in the end, if we let it.
Each of us must walk through the Valley of Despair, though each valley is unique for each person.
Let go and let God.
I can’t tell you in detail what happened this year. Google has an elephant’s memory and never forgets. But I want to thank all of you who prayed. 
It may be a cliché to say that I could feel those prayers as this year lurched and stumbled along, but I did. And to those few who supported my family financially this year through donations through Cerulean Sanctum, my lasting gratitude goes out to you. As I said, no one can live without the support of others.
This has been a hard year for many people. 2009 promises to be even harder if trends continue as they are. The economic downward spiral will test many. Some will face, like we did, health issues that will test their mettle. (I just learned that David Wayne of Jollyblogger is facing stage 4 liver cancer that has metastisized.) Tomorrow is an uncertainty.
While some will rejoice in 2009, others will weep. But whatever happens, know that the Lord is with you and will never stop being with you because He loves you with an indescribable love, no matter what you are going through.
The Long, Dark Eternity of One Soul
December 29, 2008
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Apologetics, Boldness, Church Issues, Evangelism, Godly Character, Love, Maturity, Oddities Feedback : 22 comments
I met Douglas Adams at my first MacWorld in 1997. I was manning the technology demonstration booth for Apple when he popped his head in to ask me a question. It took all of a split second to know who he was just by sight. After all, he was my favorite author. No set of books made me laugh more than The Hitchhiker’s “Trilogy,” and humor is darned hard to write.
So there I was, starstruck.
Adams and I chatted about his upcoming computer game, Starship Titanic, and how it was taking forever to debug and get perfect. Talk shifted to upcoming Apple hardware. As an Apple Master, a sort of celebrity endorser and Mac evangelista, Adams received complementary equipment from Apple. We must’ve talked for a half hour about what was coming down the pike.
I didn’t see Adams again until MacWorld 2000. At that time, I was no longer working for Apple but did high-end Mac support for NASA as a contractor. Because I gave hardware and software advice to NASA honchos, I got to go to MacWorld. 
In the tunnel under the street that connected exhibition halls, I ran into Adams again and went up to say hello. He recognized me right away and noted my tag said that I was now at NASA. We talked about that, then I shifted the conversation to talk of a Hitchhiker’s movie. Adams told me he had just completed what he thought would be the basis of the screenplay. I was elated, but I could tell Adams was frustrated with the progress. He told me the screenplay-writing process had really taken it out of him. He added that Starship Titanic’s underwhelming sales had been a disappointment and that he didn’t want to see that happen with the Hitchhiker’s movie.
We talked until the surreal happened: Sinbad, the comedian, walked up and joined the conversation. The three of us, all above 6′ 3″, dominated the center of the tunnel as people streamed around us. But though I’m a raging extrovert and conversationalist, I met my match in Sinbad; I sensed that it was time for to me to bow out. I said goodbye and hustled on my way.
A little over a year later, Adams died unexpectedly of a heart attack.
As much as I thought I knew something about Adams, it somehow did not dawn on the me that the man was known as one of the world’s foremost atheists. (Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion is dedicated to Adams.) Looking back at Adams’s writings now, I wonder how I could have missed it.
In a way, my naïveté didn’t matter. Here was a man, like most men, estranged from God. Estranged at a level so deep that he had rejected the existence of all spirituality. There I am, a representative of Jesus Christ. And yet with that man mere months away from eternity, the contents of my last words to him were wood, hay, and stubble.
Today, I sit here typing and my soul grieves. It weeps because I am not serious about eternity. Next to nothing in my life manifests my belief that an eternal hell is real. When I look around, what scares me more than anything is that I’m more serious about hell than most Christians are. Yet my actions speak louder than words.
It seems to me that all Christians must deal with the truth that they themselves deserved hell before Jesus saved them. People may deal with it at different times in their Christian walk, but deal with it they must.
But what separates a real disciple of Christ from a DINO (Disciple in Name Only) is that the real disciple stares into the pit of hell and is so shaken by the view that all distractions in this life pale compared with working to get the Gospel out to the lost, no matter the personal costs.
I don’t think enough of us Christians are getting to that point. What else explains the feebleness of our outreach to the lost? We live as if there were no eternity at all.
Just like the atheists do.
Frailty, Thy Name Is Christmas
December 26, 2008
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Jesus Christ Feedback : 4 comments
Norovirus.
That’s what the formal name for the bug. For us and our extended family at Christmas, norovirus swept through the ranks and reduced “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” to a lot of toilet-hugging. I can’t remember the last time I got a stomach bug, maybe a decade or more, but I, and everyone around me, will certainly remember Christmas 2008.
Four years ago it was the genuine flu. My son got it two weeks before Christmas, then I fell ill. Then the family came in from other parts. It must’ve lingered because most got sick within hours of showing up, it seemed.
But nothing matched the power of this norovirus. Fortunately, it only lasted about a day, but for a day it kicked everyone like a mad mule.
God came down from heaven and lived as a man. You’ve got to believe that He picked up a virus or two while on Earth. He can identify with all our frailties, right?
That fact that God can identify with our frailties makes me love Him all the more. He knows that you and I are dust. He knows because He lived as dust, even though His body never saw decay. His living as dust makes the Resurrection all the more compelling. He is the firstborn among all brethren, and His rebirth is my promise.
Even in dust, even in the midst of frailty, there is hope.
For Jesus is not just our Lord and Savior; He is our brother.
Love’s Pure Light
December 24, 2008
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Benevolence, Boldness, Creation Care, Creativity, Discernment, Dying to Self, Faith, Godly Character, Grace, Holiness, Hospitality, Humility, Jesus Christ, Joy, Love, Maturity, Obedience, Perseverance, Prayerfulness, Simplicity Feedback : 3 comments
Darkness.
I noticed darkness more this year. The world seemed dimmer and more unfriendly. This Christmas, the most glaring effects of that darkness are the gloom hovering over the world economic situation and the lack of Christmas lights.
A couple weeks ago I noticed the dearth of Christmas lights compared with last year. People just didn’t put them up. Electrical bills are too high, I guess. Or folks suffered from the fatigue that comes when times are bad, so the lights became just another thing to do that took too much effort.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
The babe in the manger outshone the star that signaled His birth. He wasn’t just a source of light, He WAS Light.
And when that tiny child became a man, He said something radical to all who love Him and honor Him as Lord:
“You are the light of the world.”
Light gives birth to lights, and those lights will send the darkness fleeing.
If the Lord would have us honor Him as did all those who came to His cradle in those first days of His birth, He would say that He has lit the flame in us with His own lifelight, now we are to be the light in the darkness.
At this blessed Christmastime, People of God, show this dark world the light.
And Maranatha.
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