If You're Going to Steal, Steal BIG.

I used to be a total kleptomaniac. I can't count how many small items I have taken through the years, from jewelry to clothes to candy, etc.. In fact, I had such a reputation for it that when a friend of mine and I would go shopping, she would go around and slyly point out items that she wanted, and then I'd come around and swipe them for her.

How dumb of me. How selfish.

In recent years, that has turned around 180º. Not long ago in the checkout line at WalMart, I asked the cashier to ring up my Pepsi twice. When she asked why, I told her that the last time I came to WalMart I grabbed a Pepsi out of the cooler while waiting in line and drank it, intending to ring it up with my groceries ... but I forgot; it wasn't until I got home late that night I realized I hadn't included it in my purchase!! Basically, I stole it without meaning to!! So this time I would ring up the Pepsi twice and it would cover it. The cashier stared dumbfounded at me. She asked me three times if I was sure I wanted to ring it up twice. She'd never heard of anyone doing this. Why would I not want to pay now for a Pepsi I took home without paying for it before? Was my soul really worth so little??

So here's what I was thinking about recently: doesn't it make more sense to steal something REALLY BIG as opposed to stealing something worth a few bucks? I mean, think of it this way: What is the price of your soul? If Satan dangled in front of your nose an abandoned briefcase with 3 million dollars in it, would you take it? What about if you knew you could get away with it? What about stealing a car - would you ever consider committing Grand Theft Auto? Most of us would say no. What about slipping a Snickers bar in your pocket on the way out of the store? What about charging a customer a bit more than you know your product is worth, or doing dishonest business?

Before I go any farther let me clarify one thing: if I steal something, that doesn't mean I'm eternally condemned. What condemns me is being outside of Christ. Similarly, if I stop stealing, I'm not suddenly going to heaven. Only those "in Christ" are in the kingdom of God ... not those who do or don't do a certain checklist of actions. Yet we are told repeatedly that thieves have no place in the kingdom of God. Does it say only thieves who steal large amounts? Nope. Stealing a candy bar or supplies from your employer counts the same eternally as embezzling millions of dollars from Enron. Dishonest is dishonest; the size of the lie doesn't matter.

So the next time you're tempted to keep the few extra bucks that the cashier handed you by accident, or when you're tempted to use company time or resources for personal use, or to slip something in your pocket or purse without paying for it, ask yourself this: Are you really worth SO little? Is the price of your soul so cheap? Would you trade a trustworthy reputation for $5? Certainly you think more highly of yourself than that.

I believe wholeheartedly that Satan is active day and night, searching for souls to devour. He sees our weaknesses and sees what works to get us off track. Why would he bother leaving a briefcase with $3M in it in front of you, when he knows you've already sold out for a $8 pair of earrings? When you steal from your boss? By falling for those cheap tricks, you show Satan, the world, and God just how little you value your own soul.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that stealing ANYthing is worth it. In fact, I don't believe that there is anything on this earth worth your soul. Many have heard the questions, "What does it gain a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what would a man give in exchange for his soul?" So you could acquire this whole entire world and it still wouldn't be enough to justify the price of your soul. How much less, then, a candy bar or pirated music?

What is your soul worth?

The Faith of an Atheist

"Faith, hope and love...

But the dumbest of these is faith."

(Summarizing a common thought of atheists)

Recently I celebrated nine years of being in Christ. Wow! Where did the time go?? In some ways I look back and it seems like it flew by - like maybe it's only been a year or two. Could my life really be that different now? But other times it feels like my life "B.C." (yes, "Before Christ") was another lifetime ... eons ago ... a vague dream that's hard to remember when waking.

So when I look back, what do I see? I can confidently tell you one thing: I have truly learned the meaning of the saying, "The more I know, the more I realize I don't know." Things that used to be so obvious to me - things I accepted about my faith and Christianity as a whole - that seemed rock-solid in my mind have become anything but solid. Now don't get scared - I'm not doubting my faith or Jesus at all. In fact I can easily say my faith and my confidence in Jesus as the Son of God is firmer now than it has ever been. I'm just talking about the application of that faith. But .... I digress. That's not where I'm going today.

I've already written about some of the things that went into my journey from being an atheist to a follower of Jesus, but of course there's no blog post long enough to describe all of it! Right now I want to dive into a topic that to me - when I was an atheist - was the worst "f" word in the world: faith. <<shudder>> What a horrible thing. What a check your brain at the door kind of trait. Who would want to be known by their faith?? It's practically like boasting about how low your IQ is.

Isn't it??

At the ripe ol' age of 24, I began really questioning my beliefs and worldview. At that point I was a "card-carrying atheist" (well, if there had been a card to carry for being an atheist, I would have carried it. I at least had the obligatory "Darwin fish" on my bumper.) I was as far left as you can imagine ... and probably a tad farther. I was convinced that if everyone in the world just put on their thinking caps for 5 solid minutes and were willing to set aside millennia of Dark Ages lore, they'd quickly realize how absurd it is to believe in some big guy in the sky just talking things into existence or destroying them. (Kinda makes you think of Tim from Monty Python's "Holy Grail" movie, doesn't it?) I mean, that's on par with thinking that I can get to heaven because I've eaten some dead guy's flesh and drank his blood, or that a bunch of strong guys from another world come across a rainbow bridge to help us poor little humans by fighting with a super-tough hammer, or that life began on earth by aliens sending tiny bacteria cells hitchhiking on a rock from space to earth ..... oh wait, that last one really is a belief some atheists (like Steven Dawkins) hold. Never mind that one.

Aren't we supposed to be in the age of science by now? Isn't it time we all give up on these crazy "grown-up Santa Claus" fantasies of God and bite down on the cold, hard truth that there is no meaning to life and that we are just one big cosmic accident?? Wanting something to be true doesn't make it true. If it did, I wouldn't have to be going to the gym to trim my rumpus; because I want it thinner it would be.

But I soon had to come to grips with my own cold, hard truth: The fact that I had come to the point of wanting there to be no God - then I wouldn't be accountable to anything beyond my own selfish agenda - didn't mean that there wasn't a God. I had been living in a way that was consistent with my world view: nothing's wrong if everyone involved consents; survival of the fittest meant I should be concerned with "me and mine" only. But yet ..... in the still, dark quiet of the night .... there was always something eating away at me. Some deep voice inside me kept reminding me that no matter how I justified it, I knew that living like this wasn't right. I knew it. But that doesn't mean I'd admit it. So I tried to drown out that voice - literally. I poured enough alcohol over that voice to drown an elephant - yet it kept whispering. And despite an ever-increasing amount of numbing self-medicating, that voice grew steadily louder. And louder. And louder. It about drove me mad. Finally I came to a breaking point - quite literally. SOMEthing wasn't adding up in my life - but I didn't know what that was. All I knew is that what I rationalized in my mind did not jive with what my heart screamed. Finally, I caved. I decided to reexamine everything. And I mean everything. What I did for a living, where I lived, who I spent my time with, my politics, my worldview, my opinions on life and death and God and afterlife and faith and all that. Everything was on the chopping block. I made a wholehearted decision that I would examine everything with as little bias as I could manage. If after investigation I concluded my previous belief, then so be it. I'd stick with it. But if I came to a different conclusion ..... then everything would change. And I mean everything.

There was one thing above everything else that was the nail in the coffin of my atheism. Once I jumped this obstacle, I had to look at everything differently. Nothing was the same. "What's the difference," I asked myself, "between me reading my science textbooks and believing it, and me listening to my biology professors and believing them -- and a Christian who reads their Bible and listens to their preacher and believes them?" At first all the justifications flooded my brain, like "My textbooks are based on fact. There are proofs. There are experiments that prove the conclusions. There's physical evidence. A Bible is just written by a bunch of guys who didn't even know each other over thousands of years. And it's full of contradictions." However, in an effort to be true to my resolve to give everything a fair shake, I kept thinking it out. Soon I realized that my Biology textbook is in its 7th edition. Why do they revise science books? It's not just for updated graphics. It's because they've proven some things and disproven others, and new theories have come out. After all, isn't it called the Theory of Evolution? The plain fact of the matter is that when I read my textbook, I believe that those experiments actually happened as they were reported. I believe that the author wouldn't lie to me and publish bogus stuff. I believe that my professor teaches me what s/he has personally seen proven. But I never saw those things. I never saw that fossil. I take what I read and hear on faith. WHOA!!!!! Did I just say I had FAITH!?!?!! YIKES!!!!! If anyone ever hears me say that, they'll revoke my atheist card!!!!

But it made sense. And I couldn't shake that thought. I walked around all day thinking, "I have faith. I've had to have faith to believe in science. That just doesn't make sense. Yet it makes perfect sense." When it really comes down to it, doesn't everything we believe in take faith? Even what we see with our own eyes and touch with our own fingers takes faith that it is real - that we aren't hallucinating - that we're not out of our minds.

The moment I realized that I've had faith all along, suddenly Christians didn't seem so dumb. (Well ok, they were still pretty dumb but not totally dumb.) After all, isn't it all just a matter of where you place your faith? Not whether or not you have faith?

So at that moment I decided to give the Bible a fair chance. I would read it from cover to cover, without going on a witch hunt or with an agenda to prove it wrong -- simply just to read it and see what all the fuss was about. After all, I'd never read it. I'd made a lifetime of arguing against its validity, yet I'd never read it. The closest I'd come was to hearing the same chapter from the gospel of Luke recited every Christmas Eve service I was forced to go to, and in printing off lists from the internet about all the contradictions. But even that I took on faith, that someone was representing it truthfully. If I read the Bible and it was a bunch of hocus-pocus, then I'd set it back down and have even more ammunition for future debates. But if not ..... if it wasn't a bunch of hooey ...... then everything would change.

And believe me, it has. Oh how it's changed. And it keeps changing .......

"Faith, fact and proof...

But the cornerstone of these is faith."

More on the most important transitions in my life:

Epiphany #1

Epiphany #2

Epiphany #3