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My Open Letter To Taylor Swift

You Always Knew How To Push My Buttons

Below is an open letter I wrote to Taylor Swift after the release of her album 1989. I was thinking about Taylor today, and I thought I’d share with you what I wanted her to see many months ago when I wrote this. Here it is:

You Always Knew How To Push My Buttons: An Open Letter to Taylor Swift

Dear Taylor,

Undoubtedly, this letter will never be read by you because you are the most popular musical artist on our planet of billions, and you simply don’t have time for every little thing that’s written about you day after day. I’m okay with that. But I’m going to continue anyway, knowing that I’m really writing this for any of my readers who happen upon my blog and decide to ingest what I’ve typed out beyond this paragraph.

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Liars, Liars Everywhere

There is something inherently attractive about a lie that draws us in like an insect to the light. Sometimes I wonder why that is. Maybe it’s because most of us are skeptics by nature and really don’t want to believe the truth that’s obviously in front of our faces. Maybe it’s because most of us are stupid and we can’t tell the difference between the truth and a lie. Or maybe it’s because we all have a very real enemy in Satan who loves to fool us into believing certain variances of the truth mixed with lies (like a Cinnabon cinnamon roll from the mall laced with cyanide).

I have a tendency to believe that it’s probably all of those and more. But maybe it doesn’t really matter why we are attracted to lies. Perhaps it’s more about the fact that lies are capable of destroying anything and everything around us, including the very condition of our souls.

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The Importance of High School Popularity

It's All About Your Level of Involvement

For most kids, becoming popular while in high school is the world’s greatest achievement, bringing about unfathomable bliss. Popularity is the Holy Grail of social accomplishment and life for a popular kid can quickly decline if something happens to sacrifice public opinion within the walls of the school. It’s extremely volatile and can shift like the tide.

But now that I’m out of high school (ahem, only by a few years) and simply don’t care about the inner workings of the social ladder within, I scoff at the idea of placing any kind of value in it. To me, high school popularity is silly and I really don’t see what the big deal is about having something that is based on such shallow pretenses.

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Sleeping Disorders and Drunk People

The Issues Behind The Issues

A couple of weeks after I got married, I discovered my wife would randomly shout out words or short phrases in her sleep. Most of the time this happened, it didn’t bother me at all because the bizarre nature of her erratic vocabulary made me smile. When a person you’re laying next to unexpectedly yells, “Leave the umbrella!” you can’t help but chuckle as you imagine what they might be dreaming in that moment.

I would tell her the next morning about what she said the night before and then ask if she remembered saying anything at all. She never could recall anything that came out of her mouth and would usually laugh along with me as I described her sleepy verbal escapades.

All of the humor quickly shifted to terror, however, one night during the first year of our marriage. My wife had gone to bed nearly one hour before I did because I had stayed up late to watch a football game. After the game was over, I shut off the TV and quietly sneaked into the dark bedroom, being very careful not to disturb my slumbering bride. My eyes adjusted to the dark pretty quickly as I walked to my side of the bed and removed my socks. As I was concentrating on taking off my second sock, I heard a rustling in the sheets, so my gaze went to the bed.  I saw my wife sit straight up, forming a perfect 90-degree angle. I initially thought that perhaps I had woken her up, but the thought swiftly faded when I saw and heard what came next.

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The Ultimate Question

How Do You Deal With The Resurrection?

After saving it on my “reading list” for a couple of months, I was finally able to click on a TGC (The Gospel Coalition) link and listen to a compelling sermon by David Platt concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

There are many who question Christianity, the Bible, and Christians themselves, and I personally know quite a few in my circle of family and friends. Yet while there are good apologetics for these kinds of subjects, I always like to come back to the person of Jesus Himself. I regularly ask the question, “Who is Jesus?” or “Is Jesus Christ dead at this moment? Are His bones in the ground?”

If one can answer that question (one way or the other), the dominoes begin to fall, and other questions regarding the Bible, God, creation, and church history begin to fall in the light of the fact that Jesus is NOT dead. Platt’s sermon is excellent rhetoric to start the sway of the first domino. I highly recommend you give it a listen when you have 33 minutes free to absorb it. It will help you tremendously, along with bolstering your confidence in the risen Jesus.

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Real Christianity

Is It Authentic Or A False Caricature?

Years ago, historian A. Toynbee said, “Most people don’t reject Christianity, but a false caricature of it.” As a full-time missionary having worked with college students for quite some time now, I’d agree with that statement.

In the company I work for (Cru), we sometimes use an interview tool that does a fantastic job of getting to the heart of what people believe concerning God, Christ, and Christians. One of my favorite questions of the interview asks, “Suppose your best friend comes to you and says that they want to become a Christian but they don’t know how…what would you tell them?”

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Christians Should Listen and Love, Not Just Talk

How To Be A Good Neighbor

And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. (Colossians 4:3-6)

What exactly does it mean to “be wise in the way you act toward outsiders?” I suspect there are a lot of answers that any pastor, theologian, or spiritual leader could come up with and they would probably all be accurate in their assumptions of what that means. This is one of those circumstances where there most likely isn’t just one right answer, but many.

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The 5 Things A Christian College Student Should Never Do (Part 5)

Part 5 of 5: It's Go Time

Well, we’ve reached the final part in my blog series, The 5 Things a Christian College Student Should Never Do. I’m hopeful that these five recommendations have been both helpful and challenging to you, regardless of what year you might be in school.

If you’d like more input from me emailed directly to you about every two weeks or so, sign up for my email list and get a free e-book on The 10 Social Media No-No’s That Can Ruin Your Romantic Life, simply by entering your email on the righthand column of this site. I promise I won’t spam you.

Thanks for your willingness to read this kind of stuff. It shows a lot of maturity and character to be willing to let someone challenge you and raise the bar in your life. So with that, here’s the last thing you should never do as a Christian college student:

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The 5 Things A Christian College Student Should Never Do (Part 4)

Part 4 of 5: The Two Extremes

A life lived within the tension of what is called the both/and is…well, tense. In the Bible, Mark 12 gives us a great example of this played out when the Pharisees ask Jesus if they should pay taxes to Caesar or not (either/or). Jesus responds with, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mark 12:17) Jesus was presented with an either/or question and responded with a both/and answer. Surprise, surprise, Jesus’ response was perfect.

I share this because it helps us see that people are often comfortable with distinct and definable absolutes. Yes or no. Take it or leave it. Good or bad. And when the moral pendulum is applied to this line of thinking, we can start to see why people choose to behave the way they do when it comes to living their lives. The reason being is that it’s simply easier to push toward the moral extremes of two ends because the rules make more sense on the edges.

I’ve seen this quite often in my years of campus ministry and working with college students. That being said, part 4 of The 5 Things a Christian College Student Should Never Do takes us to a place that is often uncomfortable for believers because finding the middle ground can be complex and challenging when we are pulled toward the edges. So here it is: