A default is a “pre-selected option.”

It is what the system gives you when you don’t specify an alternative.

The popular culture–that is to say, the culture in which you live–has its default definitions for:

Freedom.

Happiness.

Love.

Power.

Security.

Success.

Wealth.

The essential practice of Christianity is to daily challenge those cultural defaults…and replace them with alternatives that are beautiful, humane, true to life.

God can reveal those alternatives to you.

But only you can choose them.

Most Christians are aware that it is their season of Advent.

That is to say, it is the season when Christians prepare and “wait” for the arrival of the Christ.

It is the season when Christians lean in to listen for messages from God.

Us Christians would do well to remember this:

We use the expression, “That guy is talking through his ass.”

God is the only one who has ever actually done it (Numbers 22.21-39).

In the Gospel of Luke, God first sends an angel to a priest (Luke 1.5-25). A priest is a professional intermediary between God and humanity. This priest has one job…and he blows it. He fails to receive the message of God and therefore God takes away his ability to speak the message to the people.

From that point on, God chooses to speak to and through people who polite folks could only describe as unacceptable, unfit, unqualified, and unusual: An old woman, a pregnant...

I barely remember my wedding (it could be that I didn’t get a bite to eat at my own reception).

I do remember in fine detail how my wife and I used to cuddle and talk in bed for hours on Saturday mornings.

I can’t recall a single thing I got for Christmas last year. Sorry, everybody.

I can tell you what it feels like every time my four-year old kisses my cheek.

I don’t remember much about those big New Year’s Eve parties we used to throw for 100 or more people. They cost hundreds of dollars, took weeks to plan, and we didn’t get home until 3 a.m.

I do remember the friends who came from out of town for those parties. I remember how we would sit around the kitchen table and visit for hours the next day.

I don’t remember much about the first and second birthday parties we threw for my son. There were big expenses, big stress, and big work. And he seemed bored by it all.

Oh...

In marriage, it is impossible to win a fight.

If you are fighting, both of you already lost at the start.

In marriage, you will have many disagreements.

You will cajole and compromise, debate and discuss, negotiate and re-negotiate. Great partners do these things well.

Put another way, great partners know how to dance together.

Dancing together is creative tension in a safe embrace.

Dancing together is being different while also being the same.

Dancing together is beautiful to behold and lovely to experience.

What does it take to dance this way?

You want to be together more than you want to be right.

It’s a dance; not a heavyweight prize fight.

If it is a great marriage you want, then learn to dance you must.

And so it goes with a great family, a great friendship, a great house of worship, a great workplace.

Or a great democracy.

All fighters lose.

All...

Choosing Christianity is choosing the short end of the stick.

On purpose.

In a world that demands fairness, you choose what is unfair to yourself.

In a world that defends privileges and demands rights, you give them up.

In a world that sues for justice, you let your perpetrators off the hook.

The story of Jesus Christ is no comfort if you’re looking to make a case for what you think you deserve. The founder and namesake of Christianity gave away what little he had and made no effort to get more.

You can do no better if you wish to associate with him.

The cheerful choice to give up what we have and what we are owed is what makes us Christian in this world.

It is our choice to forgive, show mercy, and practice grace that is the last hope of humanity. Choosing the short end of the stick is precisely what Jesus Christ commissioned us to do. It is precisely what it means to be...

My office is a short walk from the biggest, most upscale shopping mall in Michigan. Once in awhile, I’ll take a break and a walk around the mall.

For most of my life, a place like a shopping mall inspired my aspirations. I would window-shop and, as I did, vow that I would someday be rich enough to buy whatever I wanted.

And then I would be happy. Someday.

Last week, I took an afternoon walk around the mall and what I felt there surprised me: Boredom. Exhaustion. Fear. Yearning.

Let me tell you about each of those feelings.

Boredom. As I’m getting into my forties, new stuff doesn’t seem that new to me anymore. I’ve been going to the mall for decades now and the more things change the more they stay the same. All the new stuff that promises to change things…doesn’t change anything. How much is that new smartphone really going to change my life? And they’ll come out with an even...

Twenty-sixteen feels like my best year ever.

I haven’t been my best this year. I made some big mistakes. I was a sinner or a slob over a few stretches.

My dad got cancer. Bad cancer. So did my friend, Mary, who is healthful, young, and raising two children in grade school.

My business will not make a profit this year.

I’m struggling (and failing) as much as ever to figure out how to be the husband my wife wants me to be.

We’re still in debt up to our eyeballs and we still own a second home in a bad neighborhood that is $25,000 under water.

I had to live through the 2016 presidential campaign.

How can I say 2016 feels like the best year ever?

It’s this daily discipline (started on January 1) that made all the difference: Each morning, I write down blessings and gifts for which I am thankful. The list has to fill an entire page of my journal before I can move on to the...

I think the real heart of the matter in American politics is this:

How should we, as a society, care for the marginal, vulnerable, and weak?

I believe the fuel for our anger in this country is that all of us feel marginal, vulnerable, and weak.

The spark that lights the political inferno comes from this rub: Which among the marginal, vulnerable, and weak deserves triage? When all of us feel marginal, vulnerable, and weak, it’s easy for politicians to stoke our fears into madness…and turn us on one another for votes.

Sure, we feel bad for the next person in line, but we’ll be damned if anyone takes bread out of our children’s mouths. If it comes down to me or you, buddy, well…I’m sorry.

Let me be clear as a bell: I believe the division we see in American politics is by design. “Divide and conquer” is a political strategy as old as politics itself.

Politicians win when the...

Sex is fertile ground for thinking about faith and spirituality.

I grew up in a Christian tribe that taught sex simply: It’s intercourse for married people. It’s how husbands and wives make babies and sometimes blow off some steam.

Sex in marriage was OK. And that is exactly how they put it in my Christian tribe: “OK.” As in, “God allows sex in marriage. He’ll shake his head and look the other way while you indulge in marital ‘relations.’” It’s as if God needed a way for human beings to “be fruitful and multiply” and he settled for sexual intercourse.

So, sex in marriage was just OK.

Meanwhile, sex out of marriage was not OK. It was a sin. It was the sin. It was the sin of sins. Why? Because sex was such a bad thing that the sacred institution of marriage could only just barely redeem it. So outside of marriage, sex was all hell breaking loose. Pregnancy and STDs were the least...

I’ve noticed something disturbing in myself since November 9, 2016.

It’s language. Words that drift through my mind. They seem to settle somewhere around my chest until it puffs out so much it pushes my chin and nose to a slight upward tilt.

These words…

“Buffoon.”

“Clown.”

“Con man.”

“Crook.”

“Disgrace.”

“Fool.”

“Idiot.”

“Incompetent.”

“Scumbag.”

“Sleaze.”

“Idiot.”

I can go on and it can get worse.

I am, of course, thinking these words to myself as I read the New York Times coverage of president-elect Donald Trump.

At some point this week, I actually listened to myself think. What I heard going through my mind was every bit as sinful and wrong as the behavior I was criticizing in someone else. I became what I judged. And I wasn’t judging for any good reason; only because it feels good to judge myself better than someone else.

I’ve criticized Donald Trump for his...