"Remember Lot’s wife" (Luke 17:32).

Years ago I was thinking about my fixation on a past relationship, and the Lord spoke to me about Lot’s wife. I wondered, What exactly did Lot’s wife do that turned her into a pillar of salt, and what does this have to do with me?

I did a Google search and read a couple of commentaries on the verses in Genesis. According to these, her sin was not merely looking back--but disobedience and disbelief. The angel of the Lord specifically instructed Lot and his family not to look back. Then I began to ask myself, in what ways is my tendency to “look back” and remain in the past linked to disobedience and disbelief? If God was telling me not to look back, then looking back would indeed be disobedient; but how was I not believing God for my future?

Well, to start with, since my last relationship was with someone who was everything I ever wanted in man—except that God was not the most important thing in his life--the thing I feared the most was that I would end up with someone that loves God, but that would fall short in some way that he did not. Oh, me of little faith!

One day, I was thinking about how much I would love to marry someone who likes to dance. The thought occurred to me, What if the godly man God gives me doesn’t like to dance?!? What a sad loss! Suddenly, it was if the Lord spoke to me again through the words of Jim Elliot: "He is no fool who gives the thing he cannot keep to buy what he cannot lose."

Most recently the Lord has been speaking to me through Tim Keller's book, Counterfeit Gods, and I have been incredibly convicted by the words in the first few chapters. He says, "The human heart takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them at the center of our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance and security, safety and fulfillment, if we attain them" (xiv). As a matter of fact, Keller asserts, "the greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes" (xvii).

For those who heart’s desire is marriage--what could more easily become an idol than that? 

God should be our true Spouse, but when we desire and delight in other things more than God we commit spiritual adultery. Romance or success can become 'false lovers' that promise to make us feel loved and valued. Idols capture our imagination, and we can locate them by looking at our daydreams. What do we enjoy imagining? What are our fondest dreams? We look to idols to love us, to provide us with value and a sense of beauty, significance, and worth (xxi).

What exactly was it that I was daydreaming about for months on end? Well, the specifics aren't important, but the key was that I was making marriage into an idol. 

Keller uses the story of Abraham to illustrate:

God's extremely rough treatment of Abraham was actually merciful. Isaac was a wonderful gift to Abraham, but he was not safe to have and hold until Abraham was willing to put God first. As long as Abraham never had to choose between his son and obedience to God, he could not see that his love was becoming idolatrous…. 

Abraham took that journey, and only after that could Abraham love Isaac well and wisely…. Here, then, is the practical answer to our own idolatries, to the 'Isaacs' in our lives, which are not spiritually safe to have and hold. 

We need to offer them up (13-14, 15, 17).

The day I broke it off with my boyfriend, my brother said to me, "Well, I guess you just gave God your Isaac." The only problem was, until I began reading Tim Keller's book, my willingness to "offer up my Isaac" operated as a bargaining tool: God, I gave up everything I ever wanted in a man for you; so now you owe me!

Only through Tim Keller's convicting words has the Lord allowed me to see both my idolatry and my lack of faith. According to Keller, we need to be able to say to the Lord: "I see that you may be calling me to live my life without something I never thought I could live without. But if I have you, I have the only wealth, health, love, honor and security I really need and cannot lose" (19).

Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.

Je ne suis pas Charlie: I Am NOT Charlie

Like millions of others, I was horrified when I heard about the terrible tragedy at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 7^th. In subsequent days, I spent hours watching the news and fearing for the people of France (a country I visited for a month at age 18 and came to love) as new gunmen took hostages and the violence threatened to grow. I even considered posting “Je suis Charlie” as a status update on Facebook.

That was until I heard a segment about the admittedly irreverent publication on the January 13^th broadcast of “All Things Considered” on NPR.

“Staff members say the magazine is not Islamophobic and is only fighting to keep religion out of public life,” they reported.

I am the first person to say that the journalists at Charlie Hebdo—or any other publication for that matter–have every right to mock whomever they want. You want to mock Christianity? Jesus? Be my guest. But what does this statement really mean for Charlie Hebdo? Does keeping religion out of public life end with mocking the beliefs of others or does it go further than that? 

While I share no sympathy with jihadist Muslims, and affirm the rights of the writers at Charlie Hedbo to speak—or in this instance, cartoon–freely, how can anyone expect to “keep religion out of public life”? How can a person, who holds a specific set of beliefs, keep them “out of” their life? While religion, by definition, usually refers to a set of beliefs and practices regarding a god or gods, it derives from the Latin religare, meaning to tie or fasten; literally, re- + ligāre means “to bind.” All of us, in one way or another, “bind” ourselves to certain beliefs, but if a publication like Charlie Hebdo is going to accomplish its desired goal, every person alive must “check their beliefs” at the door before entering the public square. Or is it just belief in a god that must be left behind? Non-belief in a god or gods can inform a life and influence the choices a person makes—or doesn't make–and the journalists at Charlie Hebdo are no exception. So how can my belief in God, that informs my life and influences the choices I make, be “left out”?

If keeping religion out of the public square equals not murdering abortion doctors or slaughtering journalists, then I'm all for it.

If it means silence, then they've got another thing coming. 

Je ne suis pas Charlie.