Reverend Shaw Moore

I had the privilege of going seeing my little brother in Douglas County High School's rendition of Footloose, The classic tale of a young man trying to make his way in a small town who faces off with a local reverend over dancing. In the latter half of the first act, Ren and Ariel finally find themselves alone. They begin to open up to one another and connect for the first time. While Ariel is describing a little more background on the town and why it is the way it is, she points out that her father, the reverend, wasn't always the way he is now. She said that he used to be a really good pastor. At this point my ears perked up. What do the writers of Footloose through the mouth of an 18 year old girl think that it takes to be a good pastor? She said, "He used to give people hope."

I thought a lot about this. Is that all it takes to be a good pastor? It hit me later on in the show that they were on to something. I think hope is all that we need and more than just being a good pastor, this is what it takes to being a good Christian. Hope is what Jesus came to bring. Hope is the message that we are charged with carrying. Hope is why we are here.

I am not sure that sin exists on its own. I like to think of it more like cold, which is scientifically defined as not being real, but rather the absence of heat. Essentially the world is comprised of heat and less-heat. I think sin is the absence of good. Good is from God and was created by God who we know to be good. This good creator breathed his good breath into creation and then even said that it is good. Sin came in and became a divergence from this good, but, oddly enough, was somehow very much a part of a good plan. If approach to sin is to try and attack and condemn it, I think our focus is wrong. The only way to get rid of cold is to warm it up, just as the only way to get rid of sin is to offer hope of a better way.

Let's try an example, a hot-button issue that is pervasive in our society: homosexuality. The most common approach taken by the Christian community is hatred. Sure we say that we are loving and that we want to care for them, but it is a love from a far that only exists in our heads. In actuality, we think that we have to conquer this thing. We think of it as a disease that must be eradicated from our society. If we step back for a moment, however, and remember our end goals, we can't help but ask, "is this really the best approach?"

How many people will renounce their sin because of protests?
How many people will want to step foot into churches that reject them?
How many people will come to know Christ, live a true and whole life, and live with him forever because Christians set anti-gay marriage legislation?

Our goal can never be to attack sin head on, because this makes the sinner feel the brunt of the attack. The only way is to show a better way, to offer hope. We can't say, "The way you are living is wrong," we must say, "Come, let me show you a better way." For just like our savior, we did not come to condemn the world, but to save it.

Don't condemn the prostitute, but give her hope of true love.
Don't reproach the addict, but offer hope of a life free from chains.
Don't hate the wicked, but give them hope of life more full and wonderful than they could ever earn.
Give hope today.

Imaginary Friend

There are some ideas that are clearly passed on from kid to kid, like jinx or cooties. They are passed down through the ages by one child communicating to another and that second child seeing something worthwhile in them and continuing to do them.  Thus, if my grandmother, my future son, and myself all ran into the kid versions of ourselves, we could all enjoy a multicolored, folded piece of paper that, when used properly, tells us our fortunes.

That being said, I wonder how imaginary friends have withstood the years. So many children have them. Is there something innate inside each of us that tells our little minds that when there is no one to play with, we can just make someone up? Or does one kid walk up on another looking crazy, talking to no one and say to him or her self, "I want what that kid has?"

We have some family friends who have a young daughter who has an imaginary friend named "Sarah." One day she calmly walked in the living room and announced with little remorse that Sarah had died in a car wreck. The next day, she was talking to her again. Can you have a ghost of an imaginary friend?

My brother must have been a born leader. At different times, he would have an imaginary friend, an imaginary hockey team, or an imaginary choir. Is there a conceptual limit to the amount of human beings your mind can  create?

Here is a list I have compiled for the top five reasons that imaginary friends are great: (In no particular order)
1. They always share your opinions.
2. They never gossip about you.
3. They are always there when you need them and not when you don't.
4. You can tell them to do anything.
5. They are always ready to play.

Here is a list of where imaginary friends lack:
1. You can't wrestle with them.
2. You always have to carry the conversation.
3. No one else seems to see them.
4. They have all of your bad habits.
5. They bear so little impact on your actual life.

I think that sometimes, we use Jesus like an imaginary friend.
We only talk to him when we need him.
We do all the talking.
He shares a suspicious amount of our opinions.
We swear that he is there, but others see nothing of him in our lives.

In high school, I was a late-night janitor at my church. There was another janitor there named James. James was at least in his mid-fifties and had been working at the church for a long time. There were rumors that when people walked up on him working in the night, that he was always talking to himself, but I had never heard him until one night. I was asking him about something ans when I was walking away, I heard him say, "Yeah God, that Josh is a good kid." It turns out that he wasn't talking to himself the whole time, he was talking to God. Then it hit me, God wasn't an imaginary friend to him, He was real. Instead of talking to his conscience or just trying to go through life thinking for himself, James was constantly talking to God.

What if our interior monologues were dialogues with the creator of the universe. What if when we were alone or in a crowd of people, we communicated with God. What if we lived like God was no longer imaginary, but more than we can imagine. I am excited to see what happens when we try.