Irwin family Christmas morning breakfast, December 25, 2008. Photo by Bethy Irwin.

Ask me what my mom, Debbie Irwin, is all about.

My answer: “Sweet rolls.”

From scratch.

You see, Mom used to make a special breakfast for our family every Sunday morning. She always made it from scratch.

She made sweet rolls, applesauce muffins, banana bread, coffee cake, pumpkin bread, zucchini bread, and many other yummy carbohydrates.

Sometimes, she baked on Saturday nights.

Sometimes, she got up at 5 a.m. on Sunday mornings. She baked and got ready for church while the rest of us slept.

In our family, one thing was as sure as the sunrise: We ate a special made-from-scratch breakfast every Sunday morning before we pulled ourselves together and went off to church.

In fact, we ate breakfast together as a family every day of the week. The only exception was Saturdays. On Saturdays, my sisters...

Photo by Ana Cernivec on Unsplash

On Labor Day, I can’t help but think about my granddaddy.

He didn’t finish high school, but after his service in the U.S. Army, he went on to work on the railroad for about 40 years.

Granddaddy did not get rich, but he earned enough to give his family a comfortable life. He earned enough to save and share.

Granddaddy used some of his savings to pay for part of what it took for my sisters and me to go to one of the best private Christian universities in the country. Our education and experience there formed our faith and prepared us for our careers in the helping professions.

And even though Granddaddy died 19 years ago this week, the pension and savings he earned still support my grandmama to this day.

Granddaddy believed in hard work, but he also believed in organized labor. He knew that his legacy and standard of living would not be the same...

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Here are the words that sum up my feelings about my life from childhood to my late 30s:

I wish for more.

I wished to be more, do more, have more.

I always felt like I was missing something.

When I was in my teens and 20s, I thought I was missing a better job, a girlfriend or wife, better looks (which would help with the girlfriend or wife), passion/romance/sex (which required the wife that I did not have), and all kinds of other things like a graduate degree, a sporty car, and…wit.

I wished for more God. I wished to feel that I was living the “abundant life” that Jesus talked about (Gospel of John 10:10). I prayed all the time. I read my Bible every day. I spent time with Christians who yearned like I yearned. I went on adventures that I thought would make abundant life spring up within me.

A few times, I thought I got close to what I was trying...

Photo by Jeremiah Higgins on Unsplash

I’m sure someone wrote something like this somewhere before.

If so, I haven’t read it.

So, I’m not plagiarizing (if any of this sounds familiar).

But I may be led by the same Spirit that inspired someone else to write the same things.

Our Christ did not plant his church in the world to make nations great (or great again).

The church of Christ does not belong to a human nation, nor does a human nation deserve the allegiance and loyalty of the church of Christ.

Christians are loyal to the kingdom of our Christ. We pledge allegiance to that kingdom alone. We believe that that kingdom is independent and stands apart from the nations of this world.

Therefore, our priority is always the kingdom of our Christ.

A kingdom that lives among all peoples of the Earth.

A kingdom without borders.

This is the kingdom–the only kingdom–for which we...

Photo by Vera Davidova on Unsplash

These days, a lot of people are talking (or shouting) about “mandates.”

Should the government mandate less or more?

While Christians may be citizens of the United States by birth or naturalization, we choose to be subjects of the kingdom of our Christ.

As subjects of that kingdom, we hold ourselves to its mandates above all.

So when the world fights about the mandates of its governments, Christians can be calm and cool. We just have to focus on living “up” to the mandates of our Christ and our Christ gives us only one simple mandate.

If we obey that one mandate, our Christ promises that all will be well.

What is that single, simple mandate?

When the Pharisees heard [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the...

Photo by Roberto Sorin on Unsplash

If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them–Jesus of Nazareth, Gospel of John 13:17

Blessedness–the happiness and favor of God–is not a reward that we get later when God counts up all of our good deeds in this life.

Here in this verse, Jesus did not say that the blessedness will come to us on “some glad morning when this life is o'er.”

No, the blessedness of which Jesus spoke is present tense: You are blessed if you do “these things.”

The happiness and favor of God–the essence of heaven–is here and now and you can be in it.

How?

If you do “these things.”

What things?

Washing feet.

After [Jesus] had washed [his disciples’] feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord–and you are right, for that is what I am. So, if I, your Lord...

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

In part one of this series, I quoted political strategist Christopher Rufo:

We have successfully frozen their brand–‘critical race theory’–into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category. The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ We have de-codified the term and will re-codify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans–Christopher Rufo, from a March 15 Tweet, describing how he is helping politicians and pundits weaponize critical race theory

I ended my first post on critical race theory with this line:

For now, my appeal is this: Love your neighbors. Love them by being careful about what you...

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

Awhile back on my Facebook page, I said that I was writing something about critical race theory.

I told the truth, but what started out as one blog post turned into drafts of five posts.

I write to think. So, the more I wrote, the more I thought.

The more I thought, the more I wrote.

Here’s what it was like for me:

I went to college in Searcy, Arkansas. I had a friend, Chris, from California.

Chris asked a girl for a date. Rather than take her to the local coffee shop in Searcy, he planned to drive her two hours away to Memphis.

This was the 1990s. Nobody had GPS or mobile phones. Chris got someone to scribble directions to Memphis on a scrap of paper. He borrowed a car, picked up his date, and hit the road.

But Chris missed a turn. He kept going on the four-lane highway until it turned into a two-lane highway. Then a two-lane...

Photo by Dmitry Vechorko on Unsplash

“I don’t make a damn! I don’t make a damn!”

Is he singing what I think he’s singing? I thought to myself.

I strained to listen.

“I don’t make a damn! I don’t make a damn!”

Yep, I thought as I girded my loins for the “teachable moment” that was upon me.

My eight-year old, Daniel, and I were walking the dog. Daniel drifted into his own thoughts and fell a few paces behind me. I was lost in my own thoughts until I picked up on what he was singing to himself.

“I don’t make a damn! I don’t make a damn!”

Parents, you can guess what happened next.

Daniel knew he was caught. He tried the old “it’s about a beaver dam,” but he threw it at me like a hail mary pass when the game is already lost.

So, we had one of those talks. I told him (again) how Jesus taught that a person is what comes out of him (Gospel of Matthew 15:11).

“Damnation is nonstop...

The worst thing you can say to someone is: “You shouldn’t feel that way.”

Nothing takes away a person’s personhood faster than someone like a guardian or hero figure or teacher telling them not to feel what they feel.

Human being is human feeling.

I am barely holding back tears as I sit alone in a coffee house. I don’t want the barista to see a grown man “ugly crying” at the table in the back.

And I don’t want to “ugly cry” because I’m afraid I would drown in the feeling. It’s so big that it makes me feel small. Like I’m little again.

As I sat here trying to figure out what to do with all this fear and sadness, these words came to mind: “Man of sorrows.”

He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering (sorrows) and acquainted with infirmity; as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account (Book of Isaiah 53:3).

Christians...