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“Always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.” (1 Peter 3:15)

Christian, do you know why you believe what you believe? It is easy to take for granted that the things I learned in Sunday School are true. But if I am confronted on the street or in the classroom about my faith, must I confess, “I don’t know why I believe it?” or can I say, “I know why I must believe it”? People who are not Christians don’t have to struggle with these questions. They can go on and believe whatever they want to. Usually people who do not go to church give one of the following four answers about religion in general.

1. I don’t really think religion matters anymore. It’s old news. Give me something new.

2. Religion is irrelevant, because Science has really proven all I really need to know anyway.

3. There are so many different religions, really, who can know what’s right?

4. I am going to practice my own faith my way. I don’t need the church or organized religion.

Dear reader, I am not going to try to persuade you to become a Christian in the few short paragraphs I have here available to me. If you are not a Christian, then there’s nothing I can say that you probably haven’t heard before. If you aren’t a Christian in America, you’ve probably been approached by countless preachers and Christians to try and convince you otherwise. But you’ve demonstrated you just aren’t going to bow to that kind of pressure. You’ve got all the answers, right? You’ve got it all figured out, right? Why do you need religion? Aren’t you living happily and joyfully on your own without God? Well, perhaps you might give this author another opportunity, not to convince you of God, but to ask you some honest questions.

1. Doesn’t religion matter?

2. Is it possible for science to have all the answers?

3. Can all religions be true?

4. What is your faith apart from the Church?

Religion has become an issue in the issue of national security. The people who piloted airplanes into the twin towers on 9/11 were motivated by religion. The men who took young girls from their parents in order to marry them in Texas were motivated by religion. When David Koresh and his band at Waco were burned to death, they did so because of religion. Even if you don’t have a religion, your life is affected by those that do. That doesn’t mean that any of those religions were right, but because religion matters to some people, it impacts us all. On the other hand, the Sisters of St. Francis built St. Elizabeth hospital, which saves thousands of lives from ill health was established because of a religion. The women’s shelter in Frankfort, Rainbow Haven, was established because of religion. Thousands of men and women, even some of your neighbors, spend their Sunday mornings in this Church, because of their religion. Religion, even if it doesn’t matter to you, matters to people you know. It has contributed in saving the lives of people you know. Does religion matter?

Many put their faith in Science as the answerer of all questions. If anything is worth knowing, then science will be able to establish it as fact. Yet anyone that has a passing knowledge of science will tell you that science is limited in its scope. Science can only theorize a general truth based on visible, tactile evidence. This evidence comes from multitudes of experiments. For any “truth” to come from science must be the result of a repeatable series of experiments. It is based on probable chances, approaching virtual zero, to establish such truth. For example, a certain model of car will be tested for its ability to survive a crash. A number of experiments will be performed, involving different kinds of impacts, to test the car for survivability. When you finally buy that car, you will never be able to buy a car that has been tested, but a car that was built the same way. Even if every experiment “proves” that that car is safe, it is merely a good chance that the car you drive will protect you in an accident. You don’t know if your particular car is the exception to “rule.” So it is with all “truth” obtained from science. It is a probability of truth, rather than absolute truth. Can science have all the answers?

Some religions are better than others. Certainly, no one would advocate Naziism is better than Buddhism. Yet all religions have something to say about where we came from and where we are going. The reason there are so many religions is because they all differ on one or both of those two points. No two religions can both be true, because in some point or another, they are mutually exclusive. In essence, the one who examines religion must make a judgment call between two religions, whether he believe one or the other. He cannot possible believe both, unless he doesn’t believe in any of them. Can all religions be true?

One who takes his religion out of the church perhaps does the most damage to himself. Some religions would encourage self-awareness and personal discovery, including Christianity. Yet, self-awareness and personal discovery will only take you so far, since you are limited in your perspective and ability. You will eventually run out of things to talk to yourself about. You need interaction with someone else. You need other people, at least to give you an objective opinion. You need other people to practice things like, oh, say, love and kindness and helpfulness and so forth. What is your faith apart from others, like the Church?

I ask you to consider these questions. Feel free to write in some answers, your own answers, to these questions. Please, carefully consider your responses. Your eternity depends on it, because you have to be right.

I had the privilege of attending the Town Board Meeting last month. I was curious about what was going on in town, so I decided to drop in on Town Hall on a Monday Evening. I was not disappointed. I had taken my 7-year-old son with me, but he didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I did.

It seems that the most pressing problems in our community has to do with eyesores, those properties that nobody cares about. According to the Town Board, these are usually properties that the owners have simply left to fend for themselves, and houses make very poor caretakers. Houses cannot mow their own grass, or keep kids from wandering around inside of them doing who-knows-what. Though the town has tried to enforce local ordinances about keeping one’s yard and property in decent condition, the owners not only have not cleaned things up, but also have yet to return to town.

Thus, we have eyesores as next-door neighbors.

What others might not know that these eyesores are problems. They create places for kids to hang out and potentially injure themselves. They are places where drugs are likely sold and exchanged. They provides homes for vermin and lost animals, and by result, cause one to hold their nose as they pass by. The real trouble is, its easy to point to these eyesores and say, “There’s the real trouble about this town.” That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Tearing down buildings and cleaning up properties are only taking care of symptoms. They aren’t the cure. We could tear down every building in town and level the entire town to dust, but the real problems, the real issues at stake would not have been touched.

Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.”¹ The real issues, he says isn’t what you see on the outside, but what’s on the inside.

Sure we’ve got houses that look rundown, smell, and are eyesores. But if we were to come to your house, and look inside, would you qualify? Would the inside of your house be free from the clutter and the odor that your outside claims to be? And even more importantly, if we were to look inside your heart, would the same stench and disgust revile our nostrils, or the same vermin inhabit your thoughts and desires?

You see, it’s easy to look at someone else’s house and say, “That’s an eyesore!” But it is very difficult to lay that same standard to our heart, and feel proud of it.

The Apostle Paul once wrote, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”² I’ve sinned. I’m sure you have too. We’ve all done something or several things that make our souls an eyesore to our Creator. That once beautiful structure called a human heart was filled with wonder at God, at the things He has made, but now is filled with hurt, with suffering, with hate and malice. We are surely an eyesore in the eyes of God.

But God wasn’t content to leave us that way. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”³ God sent His Son, one who knew how to clean up the eyesores, who came himself, lived as one of us, and shed his own blood for the eyesores of our souls, so that our eyesores would be beautiful again: not perfect, but at least presentable.

It will take some elbow grease and some hard work to clean up the eyesores in our community. But to clean up our soul is far easier. Simply embrace the Christ who has come to save us by believing that He is the Savior and Lord of our “house.” Repent of your sins and confess His name and Lordship before men. Be immersed into Christ and live for Him, and so receive His gift of His Spirit, his Presence to move in to your soul and help you live, and clean up the messes that happen along the way.

Your friends at the Church welcome you this Sunday to join us in our “house-cleaning” we do every week. A quick broom to the soul never hurt anybody. Won’t you come?

1 Matthew 23:27

2 Romans 3:23

3 John 3:16-17

At last! School has resumed, and the kids are back on schedule, which means my schedule can become a little more regular. My hope is that your schedules also become more regular. Yet this is also the danger of falling back into the regular schedule, as we get so busy doing the same thing every day we miss the wonder that God surrounds us with. Remember what God said about our schedules? “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.’ You don’t even know what tomorrow will bring – what your life will be! For you are a bit of smoke that appears for a little while, then vanishes.” (James 4:13-14)

You only have to change the terms just a little bit, and you can put your schedule right in there. We try to plan ahead, put dates on calendars, and so on. But James’ caution is this, “Instead, you should say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ (vs. 15) James isn’t talking about lip-service here, or a phrase to write on your calendar. Rather, he says that not acknowledging the Lord in your day-to-day is akin to “arrogance. All such boasting is evil.” (vs. 16)

You are driving along to the store to pick up supplies for family coming in that evening, plans that you made weeks ago. You come across someone in trouble, a car is broken down and they need help. Your family is on their way. Your plans would have to change if you stopped to help. What would you do? Most people just drive on, because their plans have priority over other’s problems. How would you answer the Lord? Would you pass up the opportunity to bless others to keep your own schedule?

As we re-enter the season of schedules and schools, don’t forget to leave your schedule open for God to work through you. Don’t get so busy that you have no time for kingdom work. Your eternity depends on it.