I was sitting in my office when my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number at first, but I knew the voice immediately.

He’s a man I’ve known for a long time. I’ve learned from him. I’ve laughed with him. I’ve fought with him. I’ve respected him, and I’ve made fun of him. I’ve sat with people when his name comes up in conversation, and we’ve collectively rolled our eyes. We’ve heard stories about him and said, “That’s just like him.” We’ve told stories about him that included the phrase, “You know how he is.”

But this day there was something different in his voice. He asked me to pray for him. “Just pray for me, John,” he said. “I’ve been wrong. I’ve written things that were just plain wrong. You suffered some of that abuse, didn’t you?”

I sat silent.

“I’m sorry. I’m rambling. This morning I got on my knees and told God I was sorry. I’ve gotten so caught up in being right. Does that make sense?”

Yes, I know the feeling.

We talked for a few minutes more. We talked about how easy it is to miss the “who” of Christianity and get caught up in the “what.” We talked about how we fool ourselves into believing that we’re fighting for truth, when we’re really fighting to be the one who gets everything right – or be heard – to be respected. If we can’t be liked or loved, at least we can be feared.

He was telling me this as if I was unfamiliar with the pattern. The truth is, I know it all too well.

Christianity – at its core – is relational, not propositional. The diagnostic questions we must ask ourselves have less to do with how well we know our Bibles and more to do with how well we love the people around us. Are we more approachable or less? Are we becoming more like Jesus or more like the people Jesus criticized?

It’s strange how humbling an experience like this can be. Rather than putting me in some kind of superior position, it brought me down to the place of being a servant. Praying for him will be like washing his feet.

“Pray for me, John. Will you do that?”

Of course I will.

My sister recently sent me a text about a bumper sticker she saw in northern California: “Jesus, save me from your followers.”

What do you suppose that driver means? Which followers? William Wilberforce – without whom slavery may never have been ended? Mother Teresa – who may have personally given more aid and comfort to poor and marginalized people than any other human who ever lived? Telemachus – the monk who almost single-handedly ended the gladiatorial games?

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a follower of Jesus. So was Florence Nightingale. Handel. Bach. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Harriet Tubman. Rembrandt. T.S. Eliot. Joan of Arc. William Booth. Elizabeth Fry. Francis of Assisi. Bono. All Christians.

Are these the followers of Jesus from whom the driver wants to be saved? The very architects of modern music, art, literature, politics, prison reform, nursing, civil rights, and charitable organizations?

Probably not.

So, what’s the driver saying? Is it possible that there are Christians out there who are actually undoing the good accomplished by these heroes of the faith who have come before us?

Apparently so.

I shouldn’t be flippant about words – especially in light of what I’m about to say.

Words have power. That’s sort of stating the obvious.

Words strung together form phrases. Phrases form sentences. Sentences form paragraphs, and entire civilizations are changed forever by the force of words strung together.

We consider these truths to be self-evident….

I have a dream….

For better, for worse; in sickness and in health….

Words have power to change, to stir, to incite, to heal. Often, in ideological battles, the side with the best words wins.

Take, for example, the rhetoric in the last few decades of the “Religious Right.” They intentionally chose the phrase “family values” because opposing them might make you appear to be in opposition to families. And who wants to come out against families?

I grew up in a church that often referred to itself (and a very select few others like itself) as “The Lord’s Church.” What was being said? That the other churches did not really belong to “The Lord.” We were able to say it without coming right out and saying it – because we found a phrase that was powerful.

(Come to think of it, though, that kind of put us in a bind. If there was The Lord’s Church as opposed to all the other non-Lord’s Churches, what did we mean when we said, “The Lord’s Day?”)

In response to the Religious Right’s tactics, the Secular Left (for lack of a better term) countered with a phrase that was easy to fit on a bumper sticker. You’ve probably seen it: “Hate Is Not A Family Value.”

What were they saying? Were they really saying that people who espouse Family Values are actually hatemongers? If you even try to defend yourself, you’re also tacitly admitting guilt. That’s downright sneaky, isn’t it?

Many of us use words in this manner more often than we care to admit. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard people ask, “Would you rather be right or happy?”

Are you saying I can’t be both?

This rhetorical strategy is being used lately in the debates over the nature of truth. For example, I told you a few days ago: “I am biased in favor of truth and away from falsehood.” Do I mean by that that anyone who disagrees with me prefers falsehood to truth?

No, of course not. And yet…

I do know that there are people who prefer falsehood to truth if truth is going to require them to make a change they don’t want to make.

My point is this: Our words matter because our words have power. If words like “truth” and “family” and “hate” have this much power, what about phrases? We would be wise to avoid underestimating the power of a finely-worded slogan.

Everyone is biased. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something. So, I should go ahead and put my cards on the table.

I grew up in a Christian home. My father is a preacher; that makes me the son of a preacher man. I was always in church. Heck, I can walk most churches blindfolded. I know the feel of hard, wooden pews. I know the sound of tile floors and the smell of stale classrooms. I am very familiar with church life and church culture.

I know all the Sunday School stories of David and Goliath, Abraham and Isaac (yes, that one still bothers me a little), Jonah and the big fish (it was very important to my teachers that I remember that it was not a whale – whales are mammals, and we cannot have the biblical writers getting their categories confused). I learned to recite the books of the Bible about the same time I learned to recite the alphabet. I am steeped in this belief system. I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t on the “inside.”

As I have previously said, I believe the Christian faith is true. I believe that, in many ways, it is the only faith that is true. I desperately want it to be true. I need it to be true. It is the core of my life. Without it, my life would crumble into a million little pieces.

Stating that explicitly is not stating my bias, however.

Wanting something to be true – needing something to be true – does not make that thing true. Even so, none of what I have said thus far negates the viability or integrity of my faith. It does not prove it; it does not disprove it.  I believe the Christian faith to be true, regardless of whether anyone believes in it or not. I believe this because I believe it has been shown to be true – deep breath – in an objective sense.

Objectivity is a loaded term. For now, I am stating my bias, and here it is: I am biased in favor of truth and away from falsehood.

Now, my definition of truth may differ from yours. I believe that truth is that which corresponds to reality from God’s perspective. So, you might say I’m biased in favor of the unchanging truth revealed in the Bible. Or you might say I’m biased away from relativity. Besides, I’ve found that most people are biased against relativity when it comes to how things really are. For example, if you ask someone, “Is the stove hot?” you don’t want to hear, “Well, what’s hot for me may not be hot for you.”

So, there you have it: I am biased in favor of truth and away from falsehood.

I suppose calling that a “bias” might be a distortion of the terminology. Still, there it is. What are you gonna do? Call the linguistics police on me?

Once upon a time, I lived in Pampa, Texas – a town in the panhandle, where it is so flat that on a clear day you can see the back of your own head. It was a small town, and, as it is in many small towns, everybody seemed to know everybody else’s business. One of the wisest women I’ve ever met lives there, and I miss her to this day.

Ms. Dona, who had lived well for a good long time, once told me something about life in a small town, especially the unsavory parts of it. She said that sometimes someone messes up and sullies your family’s name. But there are three ways to deal with that. You can change your name and pretend your family isn’t in any way related to that dastardly person. You can leave town and start over somewhere else. Or you can stay put, live a superlative life and try to redeem your good name.

There are some folks in the Christian community who seem to want to opt for the former path. Let’s change our names. Stop calling ourselves Evangelicals or even Christians. Let’s be “Followers of The Way” or something like that.

I, for one, don’t like it. For one thing, the names they pick out always sound creepy – like we should all be wearing matching sneakers and waiting for the mothership to come pick us up at any moment. I understand, given some of the things that have gone on in modern-day Christian culture, why they want to do this; I just don’t care for their solution.

Others seem to just want to move on. Let’s resign ourselves to the fact that the west has become a post-Christian wasteland. It’s all secular now and beyond redemption. Christendom in the west is past its expiration date. Let’s focus all our attention on Africa or Asia.

But if Ms. Dona taught me anything it’s that wisdom lies in that third path. Let’s stay put, live superlative lives and redeem our good name. To reconnect your name with the name of all your good ancestors – the ones who worked hard and paid their bills and were good neighbors.

To do that will take courage and discernment. Perhaps most difficult of all, it will require us to learn the difference between believing right and believing well.

Once we study and discover truth, it is not arrogant to state that truth. If we know that the New Testament documents are historically reliable, it’s not a bad thing to say so, just like it’s not bad to say that gravity is a universal force at work in our world or that objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by some outside force. Saying these things doesn’t make us arrogant. But arrogance can cause us to say these things in ways that are impossible to hear.

The solution is not to deny the truths we have learned. The solution is humility. The solution is to remember that we are all saved by a radical grace; it is ridiculous to believe that any of us get saved by being smarter than other people. We all received truth from a transcendent source. Not one of us was smart enough to figure out the truth of God on our own.

Helmut Thielicke makes an interesting point in his book, Little Exercises for Young Theologians. He says that it’s easy for young theologians to become arrogant because they know more about the Bible, theology or ethics than others. He suggests that pride may be almost inevitable initially. But the antidote to this is not to stop learning. Rather, the antidote is to learn more. When it comes to learning about God, the more you know, the more you realize how little you really know. Good theology teaches humility, not arrogance, because good theology starts with grace, and then adds truth.

Maybe that’s what our apologetics need, too: a good, healthy dose of humility.

If you’re not willing to add some humility into the equation, do everyone a favor and take the WWJD bracelet off and stop calling yourself a follower of Christ.

Once we have begun to engage culture by building bridges of grace and telling the truth about ourselves, we must be equipped to carry the conversation all the way through. And by that I mean we’ll probably have to study up a little.

We have to know history better than we do. We have to know science and art history and music and literature. We have to engage in rigorous academic pursuit, understanding that we are doing no favors to the cause of Christ if we continue the anti-intellectualism that has plagued contemporary Christianity for the last century.

It would be wise to target certain fields of study and encourage our young people to pursue those areas in a targeted fashion. For example, where are the Christian artists of our time? We need Christian historians, biologists, composers, physicists and economists. By this, I do not mean people who are both Christians and professionals. I mean people who approach these fields of knowledge from a Christian perspective – seeing all truth as God’s truth and reclaiming the worlds of academia, the arts, our government, et cetera for the glory of God.

Just imagine a world where God’s redeemed community is a beacon on a hill, a shining light overcoming the darkness of our world. Think about what could be if Christians took seriously God’s invitation to partner with him in the redemption of not merely souls but culture as well. If we fought for academic integrity in our ranks with as much vigor and passion as we fight for political power, then we would be more likely to find a true seat of influence, and we would have earned the right to sit in it.

Sometimes, we don’t pursue academics because we’re lazy. Other times, maybe, we don’t purse academics, because we think that this will lead us to truths that prove we are wrong about our faith. But Christians need not fear. Study biology, and you’ll find more evidence for an Intelligent Designer than for random evolution. Study sociology, and you’ll find more evidence for natural law than for survival of the fittest. Study art and music and literature, and you’ll find Christians who understood that creativity was a reflection of God’s character and should be used to his glory. Unfortunately, you won’t find as many in the last 100 years as you will in centuries past. But we can begin to change that.

We’ve bluffed for too long. We’ve pretended for so many years that it’s sometimes hard to remember where the truth actually is. But those outside the walls of our churches know the truth about us. They know that statistics, which often prove that we divorce and we lie and we cheat on our spouses and our taxes just as much as they do. They know that our kids get in trouble just like theirs do. And they know that we aren’t everything we claim to be.

It’s time to come clean. It’s time to tell it like it is – to tell the truth about us. We did participate in witch hunts. No, not to the extent that some contend, but we were there. We did participate in the Crusades and the Inquisition. Again, the numbers are wildly inflated by postmodern historians, but it happened. We look foolish if we deny it. We look like ostriches with our heads in the sand. We destroyed statues and shattered stain glass windows in the wake of the Reformation. We burned books and cathedrals and people, and these were totally ungodly things to do.

Some of you might be tempted to think that, since those things happened centuries ago, we shouldn’t bring them up here. If you prefer, we can mention more recent events. Many of our churches sat idly by while African-Americans struggled to find equal treatment in this nation. We were the ones at the front of the bus. We were the ones with the fire hoses and dogs. We were the ones who snatched our kids out of public schools – abandoning them to the devil – and created our own educational institutions because we didn’t want “colored” kids corrupting our school system.

It’s time to tell the truth about ourselves.

We perpetrated hate crimes. We perpetuated racism. Christians did this too, and we undermine our credibility when we try to deny it.

Of course, Christians are also responsible for most of the great art, music, literature, scientific and technological breakthroughs. Christians have fed the poor, clothed the naked and housed the homeless. But we’ll never be able to prove that if we aren’t willing to own up to the serious mistakes of our past.

And that’s what I’m saying here. There are many in the non-Christian world who are ready to hear the truth, but they’re not interested in any half-truths from either side of any cultural debate. If we’re going to tell the truth, we must tell the whole truth. In doing so, we stand a greater chance of being heard.

Jesus was meek and humble and gentle and patient. But he wasn’t a pushover.

One time, Jesus yelled at people who were perverting the truth of his message. Jesus was critical of how little faith his followers had – even after they had witnessed miracles. Jesus did not flinch when he told people that if they did not change their hearts and minds, they would end up separated from God forever. When people came and asked him questions, Jesus told them the truth. He knew that the stakes were high; eternities hang in the balance over matters of truth. We dare not be trivial in our pursuit of it.

Our attempts to introduce people to Jesus will be ineffective if we do not first build that bridge. But we will still be ineffective if we fail to respond to honest questions with honest answers.

So, how could we get better at this? I’m not just thinking personally here, I’m thinking corporately. How could we as The Church (capital T — capital C) be better at telling the truth?

Perhaps we should take a refresher course in the humanity and humility surrounding the birth of Jesus as a means for understanding the grace we should be willing to extend to others.

If you’ve ever been to a spa or a vacation resort, think back to the most comfortable place you’ve ever been. Remember the warm sun and the soothing sounds, the beautiful aroma of fresh-baked bread or roasting meat over an open fire, the knowledge that everything is under control, not one thing to worry about. Have you ever been waited on hand-and-foot? There are places where all you have to do is think about a refill and someone comes out, “Would you like another drink, sir?” Oh, and it’s all on the house. And there are people gathered around you telling you how wonderful you look, how wonderful you smell, how wonderful you are.

Do you have that in your mind? Label that place “A”.

Now, have you ever been to a working dairy farm? Remember those smells and those sights? You have to watch your step everywhere you go, and you might not want to touch some things without gloves on. Have you ever seen a feeding trough? The edges of them tend to be really smooth…because of all the cow tongues that have lapped up every kernel of corn and grain and table scrap. Did I mention that cows do their business standing up…often while eating? The very fact that you would be looking at a cattle trough means you’re probably…standing in it.

Do you have that in your mind? Label that place “B”.

If you take those two places and bring them together into place “C,” you could call that one “Christmas” – the doctrine of the Incarnation. When God wanted to speak to us in ultimate terms, he did not use golden tablets or great prophets or burning bushes or shaking mountains. He came to us as a human baby, building a bridge between his experience and ours.

If you’ve ever seen someone born, you know it’s not a very noble way to enter the world. In our society, most babies are born in sterile hospital environments. Even with all our best medical technology, it’s still a pretty gross experience – body fluids, mucus, blood, sweat and screaming (and that’s just us dads!).

Strip away all the modern technologies and comforts. When Jesus was born, there weren’t any nurses or doctors with machines and medicine and clean linens. There were two peasants in a barn among the flies, barnyard animals, manure, the smell. When God was born they wrapped him in strips of cloth and laid him in a feed trough. Think of that: the Author of Life, the King of kings, the Prince of Peace lying there among the spittle, sour milk and leftover feed. That’s the Incarnation. That’s grace.

Think about this: in one moment, Jesus went from the most comfortable and beautiful place that has ever and will ever exist to one of the grossest, germiest places you can imagine. From A to B in a literal heartbeat.

Before he taught word one – before he spoke word one – he built a bridge. He came from heaven to earth to make a way for us to get from earth to heaven. That’s what we mean when we say that Jesus built a bridge. He brought us grace, and without grace there’s no salvation. Without grace there’s no hope. Without grace, there’s nothing beyond the grave except misery and punishment and the full extent of human depravity without restraint in one, unending, monotonous, tortuous eternity.

That’s where we were headed. And that’s where we’d still be headed if it weren’t for Jesus and the grace he provides. He built a bridge to make a way back for us to return to our Heavenly Father. And after he built that bridge and demonstrated its ability to return us home, then he turned on a light. It was after he came in humility, awkwardly learning to walk and talk and navigate life in our world that he asked us to humble ourselves, awkwardly learning to walk and talk and navigate life in his world. He could ask us then. He had earned the right.

Jesus. Meek. Humble. Gentle. Patient. Let’s take a cue from Jesus and earn the right to speak into the lives of our friends and neighbors – even if it takes a while.