The Ark of the Covenant Returns to Israel. David dances. Uzzah dies. Based on Paul Troger’s Altenburg Abbey Frescoe.

It was a transitional era. After Moses and Joshua, the judges God raised up had done their jobs, more or less, but toward the end things got way out of hand. You and anyone who ever went to VBS knows the story of Samson, at least the PG-rated version. Given his history you might be surprised to learn that he was one of the Judges of the tribe of Israel. He was a wild one, but at least he was a “strongman” and he did deliver Israel from the Philistines—at considerable cost to himself.

Samson was followed by Eli, the high priest of Shiloh. Eli seemed to be a pretty good Judge, but not such a good father. He had two sons, Hophni and Phinehas. (For the sake of the story I was hoping that their names were Joel and Ethan, since Eli, being a priest was known as a “cohen” and so his sons, also priests, would be the cohen brothers. No offense to Joel and Ethan, I love their movies.)

Anyway, Hophni and Phinehas regularly demonstrated their unworthiness to inherit dad’s role as the high priest and Judge. Appropriating to themselves the best cuts of meat from the sacrifices and similarly “appropriating” the women who served at the temple gate are not recommended ways to curry favor with Yahweh. Long story short, the cohen brothers accompanied the Ark of the Covenant into battle against the Philistines and lost it, along with their own lives and the lives of 30,000 others. When Eli heard the news he fell over backwards in his chair and died from a broken neck. Shortly afterward Phinehas’ widow gave birth to a son and named him Ichabod in honor of the lost Ark. Ichabod means “the glory of the Lord has departed,” which is why it rarely makes lists of popular baby names.

Obviously things were not going well in Israel. The priesthood was corrupt. People were chasing after false gods and the Ark of the Covenant was in the hands of their enemy. Israel thought the Ark itself was the source of their strength—as opposed to, say, the One who parted the waters, delivered them from Egypt, provided for them in the wilderness, and brought them to the Promised Land. But as humans tend to do, they conflated the sign of the Covenant with the One who made the covenant in the first place. The Ark was not God. Even as the place where Yahweh chose to meet with Israel it was mostly a tangible, powerful reminder of His presence among them.

By this time Eli’s protege, Samuel, had developed quite a reputation as a prophet, which isn’t that hard to do when you’re getting your information straight from Yahweh himself. So the job of high priest and Judge fell to him. Now Israel had God and they had Samuel, a prophet who had the ear of God, which is what the name Samuel literally means. Under his leadership and God’s well-targeted thunder, they even managed to defeat the Philistines. For the time being. As the story goes, “The hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel.” But they still didn’t get the Ark back. That comes later.

Samuel did a decent job and he seems to have been a better judge than Eli. But perhaps he, too, was a little lacking in the fatherhood department. He also had a couple of sons—one of whom was actually named Joel—but these cohen brothers were pretty much as despicable as Eli’s sons. In his old age Samuel, in a serious “senior moment” appointed his sons as judges over Israel.

The elders, remembering the previous sons of a Judge, had a different idea. Hoping to make Israel great again, they went to Samuel and reminded him how old he was and how bad his sons were. They told Samuel their big idea: they wanted a king—a strongman—so they could be like all the other nations around them. The word “elder” seems to overestimate their maturity. Their sentiment was more like that of an adolescent who asks mom and dad for a particular brand of jeans so they can be like all the cool kids.

In defense of the elders, pretty much all of the Judges clearly had “issues,” and in human terms, a king would have seemed a better solution. Feeling the pain of rejection like Hillary in 2008, Samuel pushed back. After all, God was King, Samuel was Judge and all should have been right with the universe. But God told him to get over it—It wasn’t him; it was Him—so give the people what they want. Not because what they wanted was right, but because God often gives us our way to set up a teachable moment so we can learn that his way was the right one all along. If only we weren’t such slow learners.

So Samuel said, “It’s all good, man,” and told them all to go home. There is no mention of a nominating convention nor a search committee to vet candidates for vice-king.

Better Call Saul.

The KJV describes Saul as “a choice young man, and goodly: and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.” Goodly? I think that means good-looking. The second part is awkward, because if I break it down it suggests to me that the tallest person in Israel could stand shoulder to shoulder with Saul. But from his shoulders he was higher—so he must have had a big head. I’m no Hebrew scholar but the text also does not appear to describe the size of his hands.

Tall, big-headed, and handsome, Saul was the scion of a rich guy named Kish who is described as “a mighty man of power.” I don’t know if he made his money in real estate but he was at least rich enough to have servants and donkeys, which is how Saul came to meet Samuel in the first place. Apparently a few of Kish’s donkeys had wandered off and he sent Saul and a few servants to track them down. Some helpful folks along the way advised them to go see Samuel, the prophet, or as prophets were called at the time, the seer.

God told Samuel in advance that the king of Israel would be dropping by the next day and guess who shows up. You can imagine the scene. Saul walks up to the seer and asks if he has seen his donkeys. Samuel responds by telling him not to worry about the donkeys, they’ve been found, but… “Oh, by the way, you are about to become the king of Israel.” It probably sounded to Saul a lot like Karl Rove telling George W. Bush he was going to be president while the rest of the kingdom was still off in Florida looking for missing ballots and dangling chads. Both Saul and “W” were probably “astonied”—one of my favorite King James words—but at least their dads were proud.

And so Saul became the first king of Israel. He was chosen by lot the next day. How’s that for coincidence? Saul was something of a strongman, having “slain his thousands” as a hit song of the day proclaimed. He was also not the worst king of Israel in spite of going off his rocker out of jealousy over David who had “slain his tens of thousands.” Same song. And people think rap encourages violence.

Still, Saul was no Indiana Jones since he didn’t bring the Ark back even after the Philistines tried to send it back like a hot potato. It seems the enemy had grown tired of it causing problems for their people, like boils and sores and they were particularly irritated by the way “the Ark” kept knocking over the statue of one of their gods, Dagon, night after night. Even if, as some suggest, that story is a “my God can kick your god’s butt” scribal addition, it always makes me laugh. Suffice to say the Ark did not fully make it back to Israel until David’s reign and the process was not pretty, especially for a guy named Uzzah (Pictured above—on the ground.)

Generally speaking Saul did what kings do, just as Samuel had unconvincingly tried to explain to the elders.

“Here are the policies of the king who will rule over you:
He will conscript your sons and put them in his chariot forces and in his cavalry; they will run in front of his chariot.
He will appoint for himself leaders of thousands and leaders of fifties, as well as those who plow his ground, reap his harvest, and make his weapons of war and his chariot equipment.
He will take your daughters to be ointment makers, cooks, and bakers.
He will take your best fields and vineyards and give them to his own servants.
He will demand a tenth of your seed and of the produce of your vineyards and give it to his administrators and his servants.
He will take your male and female servants, as well as your best cattle and your donkeys, and assign them for his own use.
He will demand a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will be his servants.
In that day you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord won’t answer you in that day.”
1Sam 8:11-18

Looks to me like there was a whole lotta takin’ going on. Taking sons. Taking daughters. Taking servants. Taking fields and vineyards and cattle. That’s what kings do. They eat. They drink. They take things. And they break things—starting with campaign promises, of course.

As we celebrate the 4th of July with fireworks, the ritual baby-kissing and handshaking of politicians between bites of roasted ears of corn and barbecued ribs, and the annual festive conflation of the Constitution with the New Covenant in too many churches, we should reverently remember those who sacrificed their lives for our American freedom.

But please keep this in mind as well:

Whether your preferred strongman comes as a hyperbolic rich guy with a self-caricaturing coif, or as a strident woman in a pantsuit who probably overuses ALL CAPS in her email, you might want to pray God isn’t just using your choice as a teachable moment for the nation. Or maybe you do want to pray that way. Like Israel, we still have a lot to learn.

It has been over a year since I added anything to the blog. This seems like a good time to break the drought. It was written for her memorial service.

Ecclesiastes 3:4 says:
“[There is] a time to weep
and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn
and a time to dance.”

This might be a time to do all of those things at once.

If I was any good at dancing, I might even do that. Despite (or perhaps because of) the potential injury to the decorum of this occasion, I think Lois would approve. I suppose I could break out into a weak version of the moonwalk, but as Lois’ told me once of Michael Jackson, “I cannot believe people think he’s a good dancer. That’s not dancing. Give me Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly.” Then she got a dreamy look on her face and slipped into a brief moment of reverie.

I am Lois’ stepson, although I am convinced we are more closely related than that. In many ways she has been more like a true, second mother for which I am very thankful. I have only known her for 15 years since she and my Dad married. Even then I knew her only through email and a few visits to Georgia each year. Most of you know her far better than I do, but in August of 2010 I received a package from her with (in typical Lois fashion) a carefully planned agenda for this memorial service. Knowing full well the risk she was taking, she asked me to speak “a few words of reflection.”

The reason for her planning was that she had been diagnosed with a very serious cancer and having defeated that profane disease three times before, she fully expected this time to be different. In February of 2011 she declared that she was fed up with treatments that kept her feeling worse than the disease and asked Dr. Lahasky to stop the treatment. He did, with the proviso that she might only have a few weeks or maybe a few months left.

She was right, this time was different, you might say the disease finally got her—five years later. But for those of you who know her well it is better to say that she has now defeated cancer four times. After her final diagnosis no one would have blamed her if she had, as it might have been described in the 18th or 19th century, “taken to her bed.”

But not Lois. Not by a long shot.

I remember the first time I met her. She was delightful, intelligent, as charming as any Southern Belle (if she needed to be), romantic but with an edgy sense of humor. Over a couple of glasses of Zinfandel she and I and Barbara–one of her art teachers from Kennesaw State–and my Dad, talked into the late hours about literature, and poetry and art, a little philosophy and even a dash of theology. My Dad, a consummate engineer, with an engineer’s sensibility, said toward the end of the evening that he had no idea what we had been talking about. But he enjoyed it nonetheless.

I learned that evening that her father, a successful surgeon, had dissuaded her from pursuing a career in art. That was also something she and I had in common. I remember after my first couple of inglorious semesters in college explaining to my dad that I wanted to look into going to art school. That turned into our biggest argument ever.

So I was even more delighted that he was marrying a wonderful woman who was also an artist. I thought of it as poetic justice.

Ephesians 2:10 says,
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Most versions use the word “handiwork;” some use the word “masterpiece.” The Greek word is “poiema.” [poē-āma] That should sound familiar to you. It is the root of the English words “poem” and “poetry.” So you could translate that verse as, “For we are God’s poetry, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Lois is the embodiment of that verse—one of God’s better poems—and that is why she could not simply “take to her bed.” Creatively, the last five years of her life were among her most productive. She continued to do her artwork, focusing on drawing and especially on the beautiful hand-made books and constructions she loved to create, each of which tells a meaningful story. As if those stories were not enough she produced an inspiring book of devotional writings in the Fall of 2010, at the peak of her struggle with the treatment for her cancer. She even published a book of poetry in 2013 and continued to write what might be enough material for another couple of volumes.

Like most artists, despite having won many awards, she was a little frustrated that she did not sell more of her work (but only a little). She looked at much of the art in galleries that does sell today and much of the poetry that does get published and shook her head. I even remember from time to time sending her images of my own work and her response was often, “Very nice, it looks like the kind of stuff that people would want to buy.”

I’m still not sure if that was a compliment or a critique.

If her work was out of step with the contemporary art world it was always in step with God’s true purpose for beauty in the world. One of my favorite contemporary artists, and one that Lois liked in spite of the abstract nature of his work, Mako Fujimura, in his recent book, Silence and Beauty, quotes the Japanese novelist, Yasunari Kawabata:

“When we see the beauty of the snow, when we see the beauty of the full moon, when we see the beauty of the cherries in bloom, when in short we brush against and are awakened by the beauty of the four seasons, it is then that we think most of those close to us, and want them to share the pleasure.”

That is the point of all her work. Lois wanted people to share the pleasure. The pleasure of knowing a loving Creator, in whose image she and every one of you are created. The pleasure of knowing a Creator who spoke so vividly to her in the beauty of his creation. She could, as the poet William Blake described, “see Eternity in a grain of sand; and Heaven in a wildflower.” And having seen that beauty she wanted others to see it too.

In The Message, Eugene Peterson’s poetic paraphrase, Psalm 96: 11-13 says:

Let’s hear it from Sky,
With Earth joining in,
And a huge round of applause from Sea.

Let Wilderness turn cartwheels,
Animals, come dance,
Put every tree of the forest in the choir—

An extravaganza before God as he comes,
As he comes to set everything right on earth,
Set everything right, treat everyone fair.

What she was able to see during her life, even if it was, “as through a glass darkly,” she is able to see clearly now. And that is what she wants you to see.

I could stop here. But if you would indulge me a little more time, I’d like to revisit that verse from Ephesians, especially the part that tells about the good works God has created in advance for each of us to do.

Lois did not fully begin her career as an artist until she was in her fifties. As I understand it, she began a little before she retired from nursing. She had been a good daughter and acceded to her father’s wishes that she not go to art school. Perhaps if she had gone to art school her name might be one of those names we read about in Art History books. Perhaps not. And she would be the first to explain to you why that is not so important.

Medicine is not so far from art as some might suppose. The works that doctors and nurses do are rightfully called the “healing arts.” To nurse someone back to health after injury or sickness is a restorative act, an kind of art that brings one of God’s creations back to the beauty He intended. But to do that requires that you are able to see that beauty even when it is hidden in the moment of illness. Just as she could see the beauty in nature even though we live in a fallen world, marred by sin, she was able to see that beauty in her patients. Perhaps without even realizing it she was always doing those good works God had prepared in advance for her to do.

The following is from her devotional writings; a reflection on Ecclesiastes 9:10.

“The hospital is a place where death is a common visitor. He pays no attention to visitor hours or “No Admittance” signs. Sometimes people are expecting him and he passes them by. Here is a story illustrating that:

Many times on the Orthopaedic floor, there would be a few empty beds available to patients with other health problems. Admissions would then send a patient to that room until a bed opened up on the proper service.

On one occasion the night nurse gave the morning report saying a particular patient had been admitted to the floor with pulmonary problems. They had worked all night trying to help him breathe, but he was in poor condition. After the morning assignments were made, the nurse who received this man as part of her days work, went to check on his condition. She found his family standing by the bed, helpless to do anything and worried about his condition. His physician had seen him earlier and gave the family little hope. He told them he had surgery all morning and would return to see him after he was finished.

His assigned nurse assessed what she might be able to do to alleviate his distress and found that if she used a suction tube every few minutes it would stimulate his breathing until his doctor could return. She sent word to the charge nurse that she would not be able to leave his bedside and to divide the remainder of her assignment to give to others on duty that day.

She stood by his bed holding his lower jaw forward with both hands which opened his airway and then suctioned his throat at intervals. She could not change her position, nor leave him even for a moment. She clearly saw her responsibility and, in spite of her discomfort doing this, she did not waver. After several hours the surgeon returned and newly appraised the patient’s situation. He placed an endotracheal tube in the man’s throat, called for respiratory therapy and had him moved to another service.

Several weeks later, that same nurse was working and heard her name called, summoning her to the nurses’ station. To her surprise, there was the man she had spent so much time with some weeks ago.

He smiled and said, “Do you remember me? I am the man you helped to save and I wanted to say thank you.”

“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all your might.”
Ecclesiastes 9:10

The nurse in the story is not identified. I never asked Lois about it but I doubt she chose to keep the nurse’s name private in order to avoid a HIPAA violation. I think it was out of modesty.

Lois was proud of her work as a nurse. She was proud of her artwork and her poetry and her friends. She was even more proud of her family, her children, her grandchildren, and even those of us who were blessed enough to have been “grafted in” to her family. But this pride was not hubris. It was more like the innocent pride of a little child who has received a special gift from her father, and in her delight, she wants to share it with everyone.

In being a wife and mother, a friend, a nurse, a poet and an artist, she completely understood the significance of the work prepared in advance for her to do. And she did it all with all of her might.

No doubt she still is.

What follows is a reflection spurred on by a blog post from Richard Beck, who always challenges me to think more deeply than I am ever comfortable with. His post can be found here, but it is not for the faint of heart—it talks about things like universalism, and (oh my!) Rob Bell.

Sometimes I think we hang on to the concept of free will at our peril. (Maybe I should have warned that my post might also not be for the faint of heart, Don’t shoot. I’m just thinking out loud.) Is it possible that the idea of free will is a defense mechanism that tries to keep our own self at the center of our universe, a way of fending off the true God who rightly owns that cosmic real estate—among his other vast holdings (for example…everything)?

Now any self-respecting discussion of free will inevitably leads to someone saying something like this: “God gave us free will because he wanted us to be free to love him. Without free will we would just be robots and robots only do what they are programmed to do.” That is probably right, and I am not arguing that free will does not exist or that it is not an important component in what we know as love. But there a couple of things that bother me with the concept. First is the idea that love is a choice and only our will is needed to act on it, and second is the idea that we are not robots. I’ll address the question of choice before getting into whether I think we might actually be robots.

I always thought there was something bloodless about the notion “love is a choice,” despite the fact that smug little epigram has the air of a self-evident statement. You hear that admonition when someone says, for example, “I don’t love my wife/husband any more.” The response is often, “Suck it up, bucko. Love is a choice, you simply have to make the choice and eventually it will be true.” I’m sure that sometimes works. It is occasionally possible to overcome a lack of passion through gritting your teeth and accepting your obligation—what philosophers call “deontological ethics.” But think about it, do you want to be loved by someone who does it out of a sense of duty—especially if they refer to it using ridiculous words like deontological, which sounds as painful as a root canal—or do you want to be loved by someone who loves you as you, not out of duty, but passionately and completely, head over heels? You know, the way God loves us. I thought so.

Just so we are clear, I am not dismissing the value of duty or obligation. I am merely pointing out their insufficiency compared to love. See the story of the prodigal son.

Our choices are always going to be motivated by our desires. Why act at all except out of some sort of desire? Even when we make the choice to go against some seemingly urgent but wrong desire (Step away from the dessert buffet.), it is because of a deeper and more significant desire that we hold to be ultimately more important. The problem is that we no longer, as Jacques Ellul described Adam, have a heart which “beat[s] in rhythm with the heart of God…” (To Will and To Do, 1969, p.5) Our affections are not just out of synch, we are obliviously playing John Cage, while God is playing Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. We are conditioned and determined by sin and the consequences of our own and other’s actions. Very few, if any, of our desires are in accord with the heart of God. So even if we have free will, we will be exercising that will to execute the programming instructions of disordered desires. What could possibly go wrong?

Here is where we begin to understand our robot-like nature. And no, that was not what God had in mind originally. We did it to ourselves.

St. Paul described the problem about as well as anyone ever has. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” Rom 7:19. There is very little “free” will in our behavior. No, we are not robots, but we do act like robots, conditioned like Pavlov’s beagle to behave in all kinds of ways, no matter how much we try to fast-forward through the commercials. Even when we do something that has the appearance of being good, we are often so conflicted in our motivation that we suspect we did it for selfish reasons. And we probably did. Bad robot!

According to behavioral psychologists and some neuroscientists we may think we are free, but we are mistaken. That’s more biblical than you might expect. Thanks to the Fall, our own sin, advertising and the determinisms (physical and spiritual) of the world, we are held in captivity. Paul again: “I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me” Rom 7:23. We cannot clearly conceive right desires, much less act upon them. It is only through the direct intervention of a loving God that we can even desire to be free from those captivities.

God describes that intervention in terms that sound like a heart transplant: “I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh” Ez 11:19. (The Lord really loves a good metaphor; at least I hope it’s a metaphor.) Beck argues, “God can’t just change our affections overnight without that being experienced as a volitional assault upon us.” Volitional assault is psychologist-speak for a violation of our free will. I suppose he could, but that would be as messy as a heart transplant. The process Beck describes sounds more like God sort of sneaks the changes in over a long period of time so that we don’t reject the new tissue and flatline just as he is ready to close up the incision.

I could argue that it is still a violation of our will, regardless of how long God takes to do it, but that’s not my main concern here. Theologically correct or not, I can think of a few wills that need to be violated, mine included.

Whatever process the Lord uses, and however long it takes, I welcome it. At least I have reached the point where I want to welcome it. In becoming free, even by small increments, on most days I can increasingly cooperate with God in his project to turn this bad robot into a human being. It is a process, not an event that occurred in the moment of asking Jesus in, nor when I was baptized, nor at any of the other ritualized milestones of spiritual life. It is ongoing and not likely to end soon, but in eternity I suspect the transformation will seem to have occurred “in the twinkling of an eye.”

Robot @triplee

Last week and this week, my Twitter devotionals have been brief reflections on this verse:

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)

Now I don’t know about you, but while everything we know about Jesus is glorious, there are some things that really appeal to the little kid in me. When I was in the first grade, like everyone who has ever been in the first grade, I was in a play. I have no idea what it was about and I’m not sure I knew what it was about even then. I had no lines. I played the part of a cloud. It wasn’t exactly the lead role, but then I was no Ron Howard or Justin Timberlake either. And I didn’t care.

My mother, an instinctively creative woman, made me a white cape to wear for the part. Naturally, as any self-respecting six-year-old boy with a cape would tell you, I wasn’t just a cloud. No sir, I was “SuperCloud.” Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound—you know the story. And with great power comes great responsibility. Like the responsibility to wear the cloud cape to school. Unfortunately my first-grade peers did not share my enthusiasm for the cape, so I was teased mercilessly the one and only time I wore it to school.

But seriously, when you read in Acts 1:9,10 that Jesus just sort of rises on a cloud (yep, a cloud) into the sky as he is talking to his disciples and two men in white robes (see my costume, above) tell them not to worry because he’ll come back the same way, and you know that someday you will be like him, how cool is that? Kind of makes you want to break out into “I Believe I Can Fly“? Or, if you’re not a fan of R. Kelly, how about “I’ll Fly Away” by Albert Brumley.

Look at John 20:19. The disciples were hiding from the authorities, the doors were locked, and Jesus came and stood with them. Catch that? Doors locked? He either walked through the wall or just teleported himself in. How cool is that?

The Jesus with superhero powers is found throughout the New Testament—and the Old Testament for you fans of theophany. He walked on water; healed blind, lame and crazy people; raised Lazarus from the dead; fed more than five thousand people with a few loaves and fishes; and (among my personal favorites) turned water into wine. How cool is that?

Now back to 1 John 3:2. “We shall be like him!”

I’m going to be able to teleport, and walk through walls, and fly and I won’t even have to wear my cloud cape? How cool is that?

Well, it is very cool, but Jesus reminds us often that while miracles are nice, they aren’t that big a deal in God’s economy. Despite my enthusiasm, I am reminded of Paul’s admonition to stop thinking like a child 1 Cor13:11. And when he said “Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks ask for wisdom,” 1Cor 1:22 I don’t think it was intended as a compliment.

So what is bigger and better than the miracles?

We shall be like him. That is what is bigger than a miracle. I’m not talking about walking through walls here. Let the next sentence sink in before you read further: We shall be like him who is without sin.

This may sound harsh, but sin is who we are. The prophet Jeremiah told us “the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick… ” Jeremiah 17:9. Some people think Jeremiah was eventually stoned to death. We don’t really know, but you can be certain he didn’t make a lot of friends saying things like that.

In the 6th century a Pope Gregory 1 came up with the definitive list of the Seven Deadlies: pride, wrath, lust, gluttony, envy, sloth, and greed. Apparently there were eight before Greg did a little editing. In 2008, the Vatican graciously updated the list adding seven more ways to run afoul of God(?) in the modern world. These helpful new additions include genetic modification, experimenting on humans, polluting the environment, causing social injustice, causing poverty, becoming obscenely wealthy, and taking drugs. (I sure hope that does not include antihistamines.)

At the age of 19, several years before a falling apple revealed to him the secret of gravitational attraction, Isaac Newton discerned the gravity of sin and made a list of 48 sins  he had committed. Some of them seem harmless enough, “Making pies on Sunday night,” “Squirting water on Thy day,” and “Missing chapel.” Then again, we also learn from his list that he punched his sister, struck many, and threatened to burn the house down around his mother and father. It appears that one of the greatest scientists in history had anger management issues. Intelligence does not exempt one from sinfulness.

One helpful Interweb source has catalogued 667 specific sins from the Bible. I have no idea why they didn’t stop at 666, since they do state that it is not a complete list. Superstitious, I guess.

If you want to do your own research, here are a few popular lists just from the New Testament: Matthew 5:28-32; Matthew 19:18-19; Mark 7:21-22; Romans 1:26-32; 2 Corinthians 12:20; Galatians 5:19-21; Ephesians 5:3-7,18; Colossians 3:5-8; 1 Timothy 1:9-10; and Revelation 21:8. If after reading those lists you still don’t see yourself, you can go ahead and read the first five books of the Old Testament—the Pentateuch. Start with “Don’t eat from that tree!” in Genesis 2 and read all the way through Deuteronomy. Pay close attention to Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:11, “Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together.” My mother would hasten to add “Thou shalt not wear stripes and plaids together.”

Suffice to say, we’re doomed. Every single one of us. That includes Mother Teresa, Pope Francis, Francis “I did it my way” Sinatra, Bono, you and me. All of us. Even those well-intentioned souls who drive Priuses with the COEXIST sticker on the bumper, commit murder in their heart when someone in an SUV cuts them off in traffic, or votes for a political candidate they don’t support.

But we shall be like Him. If we are in Christ we will, one day, be like the only person who has ever lived who was without sin. The picture of him in Scripture will become a family portrait as we “become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many.” Romans 8:29  Rather than defined by our sin, our character—like his— will be defined by these words: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Galatians 5:22,23

That is the bigger miracle. The one the world thinks is even more preposterous than someone rising from the dead. How cool is that?