One In Jesus

John T. Willis, ACU professor and author of many books on the Bible, recently wrote,

As YOU study and meditate on the Bible and on life, be sensitive of the importance of humor, of various types of laughter. This is a powerful communication of speech.

He offers several examples of humor found in the Bible. Can you think of any others?

I’ve often suggested that Jesus, like any good rabbi, often used humor in his parables and other lessons. Can you think of some examples where his lessons make better sense if we imagine he taught with a twinkle in his eye?

Anyone old enough to remember Flip Wilson?

This is from Ed Sullivan, circa 1970 AD:

Now, in the modern church, circa today AD, we don’t say “The Devil made me do it.” We blame God. Or the Holy Spirit.

In fact, some of the worse things ever done to me were done by people claiming to have been “led by God” to do what they did. And, yes, they prayed about it. They prayed because they felt guilty, but after praying enough, they concluded that God wanted them to do the very thing they wanted to do but felt guilty about! And it’s not wrong if God tells you to do it.

I have a friend who is a Baptist deacon. He likes to say, “I’ve never seen a pastor ‘called’ to a new job that didn’t pay more than the old one.”

Well, that’s the cynical side of me. On the other hand —

I know ministers who gave up secure positions in which they were very successful to take much less money and yet do a ministry they felt called to. I know businessmen who gave up prominent, lucrative jobs to serve God in full-time ministry, make much less money and taking huge risks with their livelihoods.

I’ve known people do some of the most amazing, sacrificial, loving, truly Christ-like things imaginable — things I can’t imagine myself doing — because they felt led by God to do it. And some of these people were led kicking and screaming — not wanting to be so self-giving.

I have a lot of trouble declaring people who give up so much for Jesus frauds. I mean, I wouldn’t do what they do unless God made me do it. And if they tell me they felt compelled by God, well, that makes a whole lot of sense.

So does God lead people to do particular good things by an impulse beyond the pages of the Bible? And if so, how do we distinguish leadings that are genuine from fake leadings?

And does the Bible give any authority for your conclusion? Have you ever experience such a leading yourself — and how did you conclude it was really from God?

I just discovered this really cool Google tool called “Trends.” You can enter one or more search terms and it will pop up a graph showing how often the term has been searched either by year or location (on a map). You can limit the search geographically.

It doesn’t produce the actual number of searches. Rather, the results are scaled so that 1.0 is the average number of searches for the time period searched, allowing you to see the trend but not the numbers.

Sometimes it flags a peak in the chart with the news event that may be the cause of the peak. Cool!

Lots of search terms, such as “Jay Guin,” produce too few searches to be graphed (very embarrassing). But you can search on terms such as “Christian,” “Baptist,” “Churches of Christ,” “Methodist,” and “Presbyterian.” The trend lines are always downward, and I can’t figure why. Oddly enough, there’s a separate graph for news stories, and the denominational terms show positive trend lines. The news organizations are producing more stories and yet computer users are doing fewer searches.

So I tried “Jesus,” and the line is essentially flat. He’s not losing popularity! But “church” is downward. God is on the upswing, whereas the Holy Spirit is flat. Oddly enough, “Holy Spirit” shows a pronounced spike every spring. Do people do lots of “Holy Spirit” searches around Easter or Pentecost?

So it’s a lot of fun — and revealing.

Give it a try. Experiment. And report back anything you learn of interest. (I bet there’s some sermon material in there somewhere.)