Owning Our Faults

A few days ago, this post showed up in my email (I subscribe to the blog). In it, the author, Joshua, (who is a non-religious Jewish atheist) makes a strange assertion that took me a while to come to grips with: That the Christian Church has a history of antisemitism, that this antisemitism persists even today in many Christian circles, and that the Church refuses to acknowledge this past and present antisemitism. Finally, Josh asserts that because of this, and because of a continued reluctance on the part of individual Christians (and the Church as a whole) to consciously and deliberately take steps to rectify the past and current wrongs, he finds it very difficult to take the Church seriously as a moral authority. I dialogued briefly with him on his post and felt convicted to write about it.

There are times, I think, to argue about unjust accusations and unfair generalizations. There are times to point out that the Church is, after all, composed of fallen human beings who do their best but often stumble: There are also times to point out that the earthly church has often been hijacked by those who use it for power and to further their own selfish, hateful ends.

But this isn’t one of those times. Antisemitism was not a brief moment in the life of the Church, quickly corrected. It was not a heresy that was recognized and cast out. It was not some kind of splinter movement, or the beliefs of a few radical “Christians.” It started early, around 400 a.d., as influential writers and thinkers began to condemn the Jews and claim that their sufferings were a result of their part in the death of Christ… and then it quickly became “and they wouldn’t hesitate to kill youeither!” They were sub-human, mere beasts.  Although some popes did, indeed, speak out against the prevalent anti-semitism, many did not. The Jews were villainous beyond belief, and depending on who you asked, they were destined for perpetual slavery, practiced ritual murder, ate Christian children and drank their blood… Jews were railed against in churches and public places, driven from their homes and expelled from countries where they sought refuge, and killed by the hundreds and thousands.  And this was done by the general body of the Christian Church, sometimes with the explicit support of church leadership. And this went on, off-and-on again under various popes and in varying degrees of persecution, for over a thousand years.

We don’t like to talk about the mis-steps of the Church. We don’t like to talk about the people the church hurt and killed, the lives the church ruined, the terror and wreckage we let loose on the world when the church went bad. And perhaps that’s the reason that I never knew any of this before I got to Biola. I was never told, not at my private Christian k-8th school, not at my Sunday school, not at my church. There’s this huge, enormous, chunk of church history that we like to pretend never existed, so we don’t talk about it, we don’t acknowledge it in the slightest.

But it did exist. It happened. And while we’ve left the bloody pogroms and accusations of child-sacrifice behind, there remain the blanket-condemnations of the Jews of Jesus’ time as stupid, or greedy, or power-hungry, the ugly stereotypes of the Jewish lawyer, and a general and offensive ignorance of all things Jewish (which we nonetheless like to talk about with authority because hey, Christianity, right?).

I was lucky enough to be raised in an intelligent Christian household where antisemitism held no sway (to the best of my knowledge). I have never driven a Jew from his country, or accused him of eating a child, or blamed him for the death of Christ. I suspect most of you can say the same. The question then becomes, “Why do we need to apologize for something we had no part in? Why do we need to speak out against something that we aren’t doing wrong?”

Because Scripture tells us that we are one body, but many members. And because history, and the personal experience of Jews, tells us that the earthly, visible body of Christ has done great harm in Christ’s name. Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 12 that “if one member suffers, everyone suffers with it.” What happens to one member of the body of Christ happens to all members… and by the same reasoning, what one member of the body commits, all members are responsible for.

We cannot deny responsibility for the harm we have caused and are causing currently to the Jewish people as a whole and individual Jewish people in particular, merely because we did not personally take part. Neither can we deny responsibility to set things right, as much as it is in our power. We are not all pastors, and there is no central evangelical authority that can declare some official stance. But we all have spheres of influence in our lives (mine happens to be this small space right here). Each of us, individually, can take responsibility for the Church’s wrongs, and more importantly, we can take responsibility for setting them right.

That’s the point of this post. If we are to claim that the Church is, in fact, one body, and that the Church means something, then we must claim responsibility. As ambassadors of Christ, we must own our faults and right them: Otherwise, why should the world take us seriously?

His Name Is Alex

On my way to youth group on Wednesday night, I stopped at Rite Aid for a soda. As I walked across the parking lot, I noticed a young woman talking to a man leaning against the side of the building. I guess that I noticed his clothing had a certain rumpled quality to it, but I didn’t really think anything more of it.

I went inside, bought a Cherry Coke, and at the register, I made sure to get cash back, $20 in fives. There is a huge amount of homeless people in the Fresno area, and I like having something to give them. I exited the building and began walking through the parking lot back to my car. I looked to my right to see if the man I had noticed before was still there at the side of the building.

He was. Our eyes met for maybe two seconds, and I gave him a nod. Neither of us said anything: It was just a nod, a wordless, “Hey, man.” Then I looked away. I took a drink of my soda and walked a couple more steps, before he shouted out to me across the maybe 25 ft. which separated us.

“Thank you!”

I stopped, turned, and began to walk back towards him. He expanded: “I saw you nod. You saw me, and you nodded, like…” He trailed off, seemingly not sure how to finish it. “Thanks,” he said again.

I walked up to him, introduced myself, and asked him his name.

“Alex,” he said. We talked a bit. He had a large cut on his lip, and he rolled up his arm to show me bruises: Some “youngsters” had tried to steal his backpack (with nothing but toilet paper and toothpaste in it) the other day.  He apologized (twice!) for his raggedy appearance: I told him that nobody worth caring about cared about stuff like that (not the best thoughts on the subject ever, granted). He agreed enthusiastically, saying that there’s only one person who can judge us: Our Creator.

We only talked for a few minutes. I asked him if I could give him five bucks (although I now greatly regret not inviting him into the Rite Aid to load up on granola bars and the like). He didn’t say anything, at first. He looked shocked; he almost looked  like he was about to cry. I told him I would really like to help him out a little bit. Finally he said that he would really appreciate that.

So I gave Alex $5 and told him that I would keep him in my prayers. He thanked me, and I walked away.  And as I finished the drive to youth group, and for the rest of the night, I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

All I had done was nod to him. I hadn’t even spoken to him at first. I had looked at him, met his gaze, and nodded. And yet that one thing, that gesture, that bare acknowledgement of his existence and his humanity, was enough to cause him to literally call out and verbally and explicitly thank me.

That blew my mind. How terrible is our culture  that the obvious, commonplace thing to do is to simply ignore the poor and suffering among us? Yes, it’s always been  easier to do that, even for Christians, and it’s possible that it’s always been like this and I merely hadn’t noticed… but when what should be the bare minimum of an interaction between two people fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God becomes something rare and worthy of thanks, we have a problem.

I don’t want to end this with a “Therefore, we should…”, because that makes it sound like I have it all together and am basing my call to action on my own incredible performance. That is so not the case. It is, instead, a recognition of how far short I have fallen each and every time I have avoided the gaze of someone on the street, merely because I didn’t have any money, or because I was in a hurry, because it’s just easier not to look at them than to look at them and be uncomfortable. 

I need to do better. We need to do better. I asked him his name, which I think is important: He isn’t “some homeless guy I met at a Rite Aid.” His name is Alex, and he was made in the image of God.

On the Merits of Naming Your Main Character After a Day of the Week

The Man Who was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton, is one of the greatest books many people will never read.

After posting my thoughts on Job, I revisited Thursday. I often do this: I have it on my computer, on my kindle, and a physical copy (although that never gets used anymore). I’ve read it more times than I can count, whether from the first page to the last, or just random bits and pieces here and there. And I wanted to talk about it, because I think you should read it: Yes, you. I don’t care who you are, I don’t even care if you’ve read it before. You should read it.

He wrote it in 1908. Years later, writing The Everlasting Man in 1925, Chesterton would say, “It is impossible, I hope, for any Catholic to write any book on any subject… without showing that he is a Catholic.” Although he wrote Thursday long before this statement–indeed, long before even his official conversion to Catholicism–it is clear that this sentiment was already alive and well in Chesterton in 1908. In Chesterton’s own words, the book was “a protest against the pessimism of the ‘nineties. And though I didn’t know much about God, I was ready to stick up for Him against the jury of Cockney poets who had brought Him in guilty.”

It was the second of Chesterton’s books that I had the pleasure of reading: Manalive was the first, coming into my freshman year at Biola, and for more than a year I failed to appreciate its brilliance. Then I read it again, and immediately I knew that I had to find more of Chesterton.

We found Thursday on Amazon.com, my mother and I. “That one!” I said, and *click*, *click*, *click* and “It’ll be here in two days,” my mom said (Amazon Prime is truly a marvelous thing). And then it was there, and I read it all in one afternoon.

I still remember the first time I read it, now about four years ago.  I was sitting on the couch upstairs at my parent’s house (although back then it was also my house). It started out as a poetical dual between two poets, quickly becoming a tale of the Last Crusade, the last heroes of the world and their fight against anarchy.

And suddenly it wasn’t that, anymore.

I distinctly remember the exact moment it ceased to be a suspenseful detective story about the end of the world and became… something else. I remember the thrill — even now, chills are running down my spine as I remember it. I had been leaning–no, lounging–back against the couch, but at some point I found I had arched forward, hunched over the book, eyes racing over words and pages towards I-knew-not-what.

And then the moment… that amazing, incredible moment when everything comes together and even if you don’t understand, you knowthat there is something absolutely marvelous there, something beautiful and amazing and terrible… the book slipped from my fingers, falling to the floor, and I likewise fell backwards into the cushions, head tilting back to stare at the ceiling, breathing “holy crap” to the empty room.

And then, after a minute, I picked it back up and read the ending again. Then I turned a few pages back and finished it a third time. This is burned into my memory. I remember it clear as day: I relive it, to a lesser degree, when I re-read the book now.

You see, I can’t just tell you what’s so marvellous about it. That would be to rob you of that moment, when the book punches you right in the heart, soul, and mind. But I did want tell you to read it. I’m not going to say you need to read The Man Who was Thursday. But I think you should. I think you will greatly enjoy it. I think you will profit from it immensely. And as you read it, think of Job.

Making Christianity Delicious

Recently, our pastor spent a few minutes talking about Colossians 4:6, specifically the lines, “Let your speech be always gracious, seasoned with salt.” He brought in a box of waffle fries from Chick-Fil-A, telling us that he had ordered them without salt, just to see what they would taste like.

They were terrible.

Salt is what makes fries (and many, many other things) delicious–which is, of course, Paul’s point. Apparently, Paul felt that there was a danger of Christianity being served without salt. And it’s just as applicable today, at a time when many Christians seem content to present Christianity without any sort of flavoring at all.

Presentation. Preparation. That’s what we’re bad at. We fail to make Christianity taste good.  And this is why you’ll rarely see a non-Christian listening to Christian music, or reading Christian fiction: for the most part, it’s just not very good. The same goes for most of our public discourse, our preaching and our evangelizing. Our words lack salt and flavor, anything that would make Christianity appealing to someone who doesn’t already accept it as truth.  We have forgotten to season our words with salt, to make them (as the pastor said) “tasty morsels.”

To expand the metaphor, we throw everything together on the plate; the Trinity, Christ, creation, sin, love, heaven and hell, just kind of piled on top of each other. Then, having precariously arranged it on a dish too small for it, ill-prepared, bits of doctrine slopping off the plate, we throw it at the world and yell, “It’s good for you, darn it! Eat!”. And we don’t understand why the world sends it back and orders something else, wiping bits of undercooked theology off its face.

Colorful metaphor aside, a lot of the time, we don’t even bother trying to make Christianity appealing, and some even revel in saying things they know will offend people (the hateful entity known as Westboro Baptist “Church” is an extreme example of this mindset). I myself had to struggle with this idea for a bit. After all, isn’t it very similar to  what I’veaccused Progressive Christianity of doing: “watering down” Christianity, making it other than it is, taking away altogether that which offends, leaving only that which easily delights?

But I realized that while this is indeed a danger of which we must be mindful, there is a key difference.

I’m reminded of the cooking shows my wife’s family loves to watch, especially the ones that focus on desserts (last metaphor, I promise). The contestants, expert chefs all, are given directives and restrictions, then set loose in the kitchen. But before they’ve made much progress on their chosen recipe, a buzzer rings and a new restriction is imposed: the recipe must now include an unexpected ingredient, something not immediately suited for inclusion in a dessert (in one episode, one of the ingredients was green tomatoes).

I, not being an expert dessert chef, am often flabbergasted at how anyone could possibly make some of the ingredients appealing. I’m trying to make a delicious cupcake: how the heck can I incorporate green tomatoes into that? If I’m going to make a cupcake that people want to eat, the tomato has to go.

And yet the chefs prevail. They incorporate the strange ingredients flawlessly (more or less). They make it look good and even, if the judge is to be believed, taste good as well.

So some people simply discard that which seems to be unappealing. Some discard the doctrine of hell, and others disown the God of the Old Testament, and many liberal Christians see the exclusivity of Christ as nothing more than a barrier to the tastiness of Christianity. They cannot see how to make it taste good, so out it goes. And I would argue that the result of such a recipe is something less than Christianity.

So we must turn to the master chefs of Christianity. We must turn to those who know and love the unique taste each ingredient of Christianity brings to the table, those who refuse to part with a single doctrine in serving Christianity to people. We must turn to people like G. K. Chesterton, who demonstrated that the properly Christian life must almost certainly be a properly happy life. We must turn to C. S. Lewis, whose books are loved by children and adults, Christian and non-Christian alike. And more recently, we would do well in imitating  many of the current Christian hip-hop artists as they convey Christianity unadulterated and unapologetically to all lovers of music.

Finally, I want to deal with the immediate objection that might be raised: “Why even bother trying to make it appealing, when Paul seems to say that’s impossible?” This objection comes from 2 Corinthians 2:15-16, where Paul says that the gospel is an odor of death to those who are perishing. This is true: Christianity holds no attraction to those who resist it. But as Paul’s words and actions in other places demonstrate, words matter. Presentation matters. It is our responsibility, in so far as we are able, to make Christianity a sweet aroma to those who smell it, a delicious dish to those who taste it.

Paul, Chesterton, Lewis, and many others realize that Christianity is beautiful as well as true. Any presentation of Christianity that is not beautiful and graceful is not the full truth of Christianity– and even though Christianity will always be an abomination to those who are unreceptive, we must still demonstrate its beauty to those who are seeking it.

Dangerous Ideas: Complementarian Marriage

Since when are doctrines judged by when they go wrong, as opposed to when they go right?

There seems to be this really weird idea floating around the egalitarianparts of the internet that complementarians are just one step away (or maybe not even that) from outright abusing their wives. This was exposed by a recent post (now taken down) by Jared Wilson which sparked a truly enormous amount of controversy. Jared apologized for the words he used, which had caused pain to many victims of abuse, and his apology was accepted by many. However, it was also rejected by many as inadequate: these were offended not merely by the words, they say, but also by the (perceived) ideas behind them.

One blogger, in the comments section of Jared’s post, rejects the apology, saying, “The words used just exposed a deeply venomous truth about complementarianism… you are still causing hurt as long as you continue to “conquer” and “colonize” women.” That same commenter goes on to say that she is simply stating “the harm his words and the philosophies behind them do to women.” Look through the comments: there’s a lot more where that came from.  The complaint seems to be this: the belief that wives should submit to their husbands is, at best, a belief that merely allows abuse to happen. At worst, it encourages it.

And here, I really am lost. I mean, I can see where they’re coming from, a little bit. Does complementarianism have potential to be abused? Certainly. Does it open the door to more overt types of abuse than egalitarianism? Probably.

But it’s so much more than that! It’s so much more than what happens when it fails. Egalitarians read, “Wives, submit to your husbands” and assume that whatever complementarians say goes on in their marriage, behind closed doors it must be all forced, impersonal, dominating sex and (if the husband’s not too tired) some emotional and physical abuse of the wife afterwards. But the submission and authority is only half, and not even the most emphatic half, of what we believe to be important in marriage.

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her… husbands should love their wives as their own bodies” (Ephesians 5:25-28). That’s our responsibility. Everything we do in marriage, and I mean everything, is supposed to be motivated by self-sacrificing love. Yes, we will lead our wives, and we will, when necessary, exercise authority, but we will never approve of any instance of authority that is not motivated completely by a self-sacrificing love for the wife.

Of course, we will fail at times. We will make selfish decisions at times. But if we truly are concerned with loving our wives as Christ loved the church, we will never progress to the point that many egalitarians seem to believe is the inevitable result of complementarianism.

So the ultimate result of true complementarianism will be a husband whose guiding principle in marriage is self-sacrificing love. The wife can submit to her husband in the full knowledge that everything he does for her is motivated not by selfishness or arrogance, but by his love for her, just as the Church can submit to Christ with the same assurance. This is what we’re talking about when we defend complementarianism. This is what we think marriage should be like.

Now, I previously mentioned the possibility of abuse. And it’s true: This is a dangerous doctrine. But, then again, as Chesterton reminds us, the Church has always been full of dangerous doctrines, doctrines that have vast potential for abuse. He writes, “Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas: she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfillment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious.”

So do we want to judge a doctrine merely by what happens when it fails, as many egalitarians seem to judge complementarians? Consider the Trinity, which has been the starting point for many heresies and false teachings, tri-theism the most obvious. It’s clearly a dangerous doctrine, with vast potential for abuse and misunderstanding. Shall we do away with it?

How about the divinity and humanity of Christ? That’s an extremely dangerous idea: Get one idea wrong and you have Arianism or Gnosticism, with enormous implications for the Atonement, prayer, and theology of the body. Shall we do away with it, merely because when it goes wrong, it can go very wrong?

Of course not. We cannot judge a doctrine by what happens when it goes wrong, because our entire faith is built on perfectly balanced doctrines that, if ever unbalanced, would shatter the Church into pieces. Every important doctrine is a dangerous doctrine.

This applies equally to marriage. The idea that a marriage relationship should consist of loving submission and respect by the wife and loving authority by the husband is a dangerous idea. Chesterton reminds us that “An inch is everything when you are balancing,” and anyone can see this very clearly in marriage. The respect wains, and the husband loses confidence. The authority wains, and the husband becomes weak. The love fades, and the marriage disintegrates into tyranny. Everything must be perfectly balanced, or all is lost.

So yes, the marriage I believe Paul describes in Ephesians 5 is a very dangerous idea of marriage. If it goes wrong, it can go very wrong. But that cannot be a reason for villainizing it, because the same could be said of every essential doctrine of the Christian faith. Instead, we should judge it by when it goes right. So talk about the necessity for “equality,” if you feel that’s being infringed upon. But stop insisting that every complementarian marriage is just abuse waiting to happen. It’s uncharitable and fundamentally dishonest (not to mention ignorant).

Without Love

“If I have not love, I am nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:2

Like it says in my bio, I write on anything that strikes my mind long enough to make it onto the computer. It’s usually sparked by something in my life: In this case, it was an episode of Bones.

This particular episode features a child who’s been systematically abused by both her mother and father. As they’re being interrogated, the husband knocks the wife to the ground to stop her from admitting the abuse. Immediately, the interrogating agent yanks him upright, shoves him against a wall and knocks him out with a punch. The anger on his face is, if possible, even more angry than his punch, and as I watched it, I became angry myself. To be honest, I don’t think any person could watch this without getting caught up in it. But why?

After all, I don’t get caught up in it as much with the “regular,” run-of-the-mill murderers in the show. I don’t get as angry at the prospect of someone killing a stranger for his money, or killing their boss out of anger. In theory, beating someone isn’t as bad as outright killing them, so why am I so angry? Why does this infuriate me so much more than the “normal” murders on the show?

I think it’s this: There is something sickening about a man who assumes authority without love. There is something loathsome about a man who uses his authority to harm rather than help.

Paul knew this. He knew that when he told wives to submit to their husbands, that there was potential for men to seize upon this idea of authority and twist it. And so immediately after that,  Paul tells us that the duty of the husband is “to love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her… Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.” This is in no way of less priority than the authority and headship Paul speaks of earlier. It is, instead, of greater authority: Paul repeats himself, tying it repeatedly and explicitly to Christ’s love for the church.

And the love Paul speaks of here isn’t a mere passive feeling; it is active. Bound up in this idea of love is protection and service and self-sacrifice. This isn’t the qualification for an “exceptional” marriage: This is what marriage itself is supposed to be. This is not a suggestion, or a helpful tip, or something “extra”. This is the God-given duty of every husband towards his wife, and it’s a duty that the husband is generally specifically suited to fulfill.

So back to Bones. That man was physically stronger than his wife. He was more aggressive, better able to handle physical pain, and highly protective–all traits which were supposed to be selflessly used in her defense.  He was meant to be protective of his wife and wildly aggressive towards anything which would threaten her, using his strength and even his very body, his flesh and bones, to defend her, no matter the pain it brought him. He was meant to be willing even to die in her defense, as Christ did.

So why is my reaction, my anger, so much stronger towards the man who beats his wife and child, instead of the common murderer? Part of it is that the man is using what God gave him for the protection of his family to harm his family. He used his strength to beat his wife and daughter. The only person he cared to protect was himself, and he turned his aggression towards his own family when he was threatened.

He is inhuman. Moreover, he is unmanly. And, to be honest, all sin is inhuman. All sin is a perversion of what we are supposed to be: Misplaced passion, wrong desires, twisting and distorting what should have been good until it becomes evil. But this–this is a complete reversal, an utter and complete betrayal of everything it was supposed to be. There is nothing good left in it, when it could have been and should have been an amazing instance of theology in the flesh, a literal incarnation of the great love Christ has for His Church.

The man who beats his wife is less than a man, and I think almost everyone understands that on some level.  But that’s only a part of it. Because as I think about it, I realize there is something else in the anger. It’s the knowledge that every selfish decision on my part, every time my first instinct is to serve myself instead of my wife, is a step in that direction. It’s the knowledge that a husband could become that,  that it happens, that men who apparently set out to love their wives can devolve into that. It’s the knowledge that I could become that. It’s the knowledge that this is what happens when authority is separated from love.

And it terrifies me.

Yet, I have hope. I have hope in God, and in the love he has shown to us. I have hope that because God loves me, I can love my wife. I have hope that I can remain a man, that I can love her in leading her and serving her.

When marriage goes wrong, it goes very wrong. But when marriage goes right… when marriage really goes right, it is literally a taste of heaven on earth, an earthly manifestation of a heavenly thing, a mystery as profound and marvelous as the Israelites’ Tabernacle, covered in precious metals and sparkling with precious stones.

And that is what I strive for, every day.

Why Christians Should Tip Well

I was surfing The Gospel Coalition the other day and I stumbled across a link to this post about tipping. The author argues that there is a perception among servers, supported by his own experience, that Christians are poor tippers and just generally poor diners in general. I’d heard this before, and a little bit of digging turned up several articles referencing a study done by Cornell University. On average, Christians do not, in fact, tip poorly; individually, however, about 13% of Christians leave less than the “average” 15% tip, which is about twice the rate of a non-Christian. This means that Christians stiff their servers about twice as often as non-Christians do (not sure what I mean? This article has a good summary).

Now, the first article I linked to does an excellent job of demonstrating exactly why we, as Christians, should take the utmost care to follow up our words about the grace and generosity of God with graceful and generous actions: in this case, tipping well. So I’m not going to talk about that. Here’s the thing I don’t get: 

Why don’t we tip well?

Now, it’s true that sometimes you will have a genuinely poor experience–bad service, bad food, etc.–but that doesn’t happen to Christians anymore than non-Christians. So why do we tip exceptionally poorly twice as often as non-Christians?

I think it has to do with attitudes. I think it has to do partly with an expectation of excellence, which cuts the server coming and going; if the server is good, he’s merely fulfilling our expectations and therefore undeserving of any particular praise or reward, and God help him if he fails to meet our expectations. After all, we do our job well every day and we don’t expect any special treatment, so why should our server get rewarded extra just for doing his job? (I’ll just say this sounds more like the Pharisees than anything Jesus or Paul ever talked about and leave it at that).

Or if it’s not that, it’s stewardship: I’m supposed to be a good steward, and so I’m not going to tip well. I already paid for my meal, why should I pay for it again? Of course, this line of reasoning eventually forces us to say outright, “God wants me to hold on to these two dollars rather than give them to you,” and if the stewardship of those extra two bucks is really that important, perhaps eating out wasn’t the best decision anyway (by the way, this is coming from a guy a year out of college working and just about breaking even, supporting his wife through grad school).

I really think attitude is key here. Why are you at the restaurant in the first place? It’s not to save money; it’s not to merely sustain yourself; it’s not for any reason of utility or thrift. You are there, quite simply, to eat, drink, and be merry.  You are there to rejoice that God has provided for you, to rejoice in the abundance of creation, to rejoice in the many creative and delicious ways humanity has learned to use God’s gifts!

So act like it! I can’t remember the last time I had an unpleasant experience when dining. I’ve had bad servers. I’ve had bad food. But I haven’t had a bad overall experience since I don’t know when.

So the vast majority of the time? I’m spending quality time with my wife, my friends, my parents, my parents-in-law; I’m eating great food; I’m drinking delicious Cherry Dr. Pepper (or even better, Dr. Pepper with grenadine in it). Why wouldn’t I be generous to the person bringing me all this edible happiness? Why wouldn’t I want to make the person serving us happy as well?

That’s something my wife likes about me. She laughs at how enthusiastically I scour the menu for what I want to eat (probably hot wings, to be honest). She laughs at my excited amazement when the server sets the dish on the table. And at the end of my restaurant experience?

I have eaten. I have drunk. I have been merry. In short, I have feasted,and the feast isn’t quite over. Now, as the cap to the great time God has allowed me, I wish to extend some small token of appreciation, a bit of monetary happiness, to God’s agent in the matter. I wish to be generous, as God and so many people have been generous to me.

Some meals will go poorly. But the vast majority of the time, we should laugh and eat and drink and enjoy not only the fruits of our labor but also the lavish riches of God’s grace. And at the end of that joyful experience, will we dare to be miserly in our tipping?