We live in a world that seems to get busier every year.  Houses are more expensive.  Commutes are longer.  Jobs are more demanding.  Children’s activities are more time-consuming.  As a result, there are tens of millions of Americans who have every minute of every day scheduled for something. 

Lots of important things suffer as a result of this lifestyle, and children are at the top of the list.  For years “quality time” has been the parenting buzzword.  Maybe you only ever talk with your kid for 10 minutes a day on the way to soccer practice, but with enough wisdom and effort, you can make that conversation Meaningful.

However, quality time doesn’t seem to yield the results that a lot of parents want, particularly when it comes to religion.  It’s no secret that young people have been leaving the Lord’s church in droves.  They might be headed to a great college and a great career, but they don’t seem to be headed to heaven.  Sometimes, this happens despite everything that parents can do.  More of the time, it happens because of what parents didn’t do. 

In this increasingly perilous environment, parents are increasingly looking to outsource religious instruction to the church.  This is, after all, consonant with modern parental strategy.  You don’t teach your son to play soccer.  You pay to put him on a soccer team, and the coach does that.  You don’t teach your daughter to play the clarinet.  You pay for music lessons, and the music teacher does that.

Instruction is the province of experts, so parents want to leave religious instruction to religious experts.  It’s the church’s job to have really good, really thorough Sunday-morning Bible classes.  It’s the church’s job to organize activities, so that your kids can make good friends instead of the trash friends they’re likely to make at school.

There are two problems with this.  The first is time.  Even if you also take your kid to Wednesday-night Bible classes _and_ the monthly teen devotion, 2.25 hours a week is not enough to bring up a child in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. 

In fact, only a parent (two parents if we’re following God’s plan) can possibly devote the time to do the job right.  This can’t be an activity.  It has to be a way of life.  If you don’t have the time, parents, you need to make the time.  God doesn’t expect you to live in that house, drive that car, or chauffeur your kid around to 57 different activities.  He does expect you to teach them about Him. 

Second, when it comes to a child’s spirituality, parents are (or at least should be) the experts.  Nobody knows my kid like I do.  Because of shared DNA and shared lives, I know them.  I know the way they think.  As a result, nobody is better equipped than I am to give them spiritual guidance.  No Sunday-school teacher or youth minister, no matter how willing, can step into my place.

It’s very convenient to make the church responsible for the way our kids turn out.  That way, we don’t have to invest much effort ourselves, and if they turn out badly, we can blame the church.  However, no matter how much we might want to transfer the burden of parenting, it remains solidly on our shoulders.  No matter how much we squint, the word “church” will not magically appear in Ephesians 6:4.  The work of training our children is ours.  Either we do it, or we don’t.

Most Christians are familiar with the twin descriptions of disciples in Matthew 5:13-16.  There, Jesus tells us that we are to be both the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  However, we’re not as quick to recognize that these two commandments are in tension.  The problem is that being salty has a tendency to make us less bright, and being bright tends to make us less salty.

The key attribute of saltiness is distinctiveness.  Christians are supposed to have a different savor than the people of the world do.  If we are adulterated so that we become like the people of the world, we have lost our savor, and we are useless for God’s purposes.

Universally, dedicated Christians are aware of this danger.  They see that exposure to worldliness will make them more worldly, so they avoid worldliness as much as they can.  Even outside of the assembly, their best friends are other strong Christians.  If they can, they will take jobs that allow them to work with brethren instead of worldly people.  They home-school their children or send them to private Christian schools, with the goal or at least the result that those children are insulated from worldliness as well.  By the time I was eight, I had already heard every cuss word in the book.  I don’t think my home-schooled eight-year-old daughter has.

In many ways, all of these are wise decisions, and I think brethren make them with the best of motives.  In fact, every one of those things is something I’ve done.  However, we have to recognize that all this protected saltiness can come at the cost of being a light.

Jesus says, after all, that we are supposed to be the light of the world, and it is precisely the world from which many Christians have isolated themselves.  In the midst of my Christian friends, Christian co-workers, and educational environment in which all the adults are Christians, I have no trouble going through an entire day without saying a single word to someone who is lost.  As a result, there are high-school kids with a bunch of friends in the world who bring 10 times as many lost people to our assemblies as I do.

The point here is not that we should avoid having Christian friends and Christian co-workers and Christian-friendly educational choices.  I think it’s hard to go to heaven without the first, and the second and third are at least beneficial.  However, we must admit that all that insulation from the world comes at a cost, and if we want to save the lost, we first must encounter the lost.  Salt that has lost its savor is useless, but so too is a light that spends all its time huddling under a basket with other lights.

Usually, the story of the Old Testament is a story of spiritual failure.  However, there are times when God’s people get it right.  One of these rare occasions appears in Nehemiah 8.  Immediately before this, Nehemiah has led the people to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem, and now they have all assembled in a square before the Water Gate to celebrate the Feast of Trumpets.  In their conduct, we see three things that we ought to imitate.

They Were Attentive to the Law

This chapter is filled with evidence that the Jews of this day cared about the Law.  In Nehemiah 8:1, they tell Ezra that now that they’re assembled, they want to hear him read the Law.  According to 8:3, they listen attentively to the reading of the Law from early morning to midday.  In 8:5, they stand when the scroll of the Law is opened and bow low in worship.  Finally, in 8:8, they listen to those who are explaining the Law until they all understand it.

At this point in Jewish history, most of the people are probably illiterate.  Additionally, they likely couldn’t afford to purchase a scroll of the Law even if they could read it.  They didn’t have a building in which to assemble to hear the Law; they just stood on the pavement.  In every one of these ways, our situation is better than theirs.  Our access to God’s word is so much easier.  Is our zeal for that word equal to theirs?

They Took the Law to Heart

Nehemiah 8:9-12 reports the reaction of the people to the reading.  They weep because they understand how far short they have fallen of God’s expectations.  However, a few verses later, we find them rejoicing, taking their strength from their joy in God.  For them, hearing God’s word is both a meaningful and an extremely emotional experience.

By contrast, all too many Christians today declare (either openly or by their behavior) that the word of God is borrring.  Frankly, that says a lot more about them than it does about the word.  We can’t truly have a heart for God unless we also have a heart for His revelation.  We too should be moved when we hear or read it.  It is no less beautiful, meaningful, and powerful today than it was in Nehemiah’s time.  However, if we want to find beauty, meaning, and power in it, we first must invest ourselves in its study.

They Restored the Practice of the Law

In Nehemiah 8:13-18, the people learn from the Law that they’re supposed to be celebrating the Feast of Booths (as set out in Leviticus 23:33-44), so they cut branches, construct booths of them, and live in them through the time of the feast.  Nehemiah notes that this festival had not been celebrated correctly since the days of Joshua, nearly a thousand years before.

We too should be zealous to obey every commandment of God, especially those commandments that long have been neglected.  We must beware of the danger of accumulating our set of “Church of Christ traditions”, things that we do because we have always done them, not because we are seeking to obey God’s will.  Like the Jews of Nehemiah’s time, we must compare our practice to God’s law and unflinchingly obey Him no matter what that demands of us.

Even though I’m out of the Bible-review business, the form of the word of God still fascinates me almost as much as its contents.  As a result, it was with great interest that I read a post about Bibles from my friend and brother Ryan Boyer.  Ryan argued that just as a police officer or other firearm-wielder ought to rely on one weapon, so that they can become completely familiar with all its characteristics and quirks, so too Christians ought to rely on one Bible.

There’s a lot that I like about Ryan’s argument.  First of all, it’s emotionally powerful.  Lots of Bible collectors are Bible collectors because they’ve spent decades searching for that one perfect Bible that does everything they want it to.  Something inside us believes that we ought to have a one-and-only Bible, and I think it’s a mistake to ignore that voice.

Second, there’s much to be said for familiarity with a particular physical format.  Barring some unusual circumstance, I do think it’s wise to make our primary Bible the Bible that we use for daily reading.  An increasing number of studies have found that we better remember what we have read from a physical book as opposed to a screen.  We are physical creatures, and reading out of a paper Bible is a physical act.  The sensation of holding the Bible and manipulating the pages, plus seeing layout in a non-virtual space, helps us remember where passages are.

After having used dozens of Bibles during my Bible-reviewing days, I’ve settled on a primary Bible (a top-grain cowhide Crossway Large-Print Thinline Reference, not that I’m particular about covers or anything) and enjoy having a primary Bible.  However, there are still circumstances in which I turn to a different Bible:

- I rarely-to-never bring my primary Bible home from the church building because I am absent-minded and will end up leaving it at home, which is unhelpful.

- When I'm studying with somebody who is a Biblical novice but wants to use a paper Bible, I will use a Bible with the same layout and page numbering as our giveaway Bibles (the Crossway Large-Print Value Thinline).  That way, I can tell them, "Turn to Page 1152,” even if they don't know Genesis from Revelation.  However, this Bible isn't a wonderful reading Bible for me (the lines are too short), and it doesn't have a lot of the helps I look for in a desk Bible.

- When I'm preparing a textual study of a book, my first step is to read the book out of my six-volume Crossway Reader's Bible.  This Bible is optimized for reading and doesn't have chapter or verse numbers, so that I have an easier time following the flow of argument through the book.  However, it's tough to preach out of a Bible with no chapter or verse numbers!  Lack of chapter numbers also makes it difficult to use this Bible to keep either of my two reading schedules.

Ultimately, I believe (and I know Ryan would agree) that the word of God that matters most isn’t the word of God in our hands.  It’s the word of God in our hearts.  So far as I know, not one first-century Christian possessed a complete copy of the New Testament, but they managed just fine without it. 

That same word still saves us today, and whatever method will best get it inside us, be it a top-grain cowhide Crossway Large-Print Thinline Reference, a different translation for each day of the week, or even an e-Bible on a smart phone, that’s the method we should use.   What we are reading or studying can make a difference.  That we are reading and studying makes all the difference in the world.

I suppose it makes sense that the New Testament figure with the most to say about the afterlife is the One who had actually seen it beforehand.  I’ve known for years that the Bible records more teaching about hell from Jesus than from any other source.  It makes for an amusing rebuttal to the people who claim to be followers of a sweetness-and-light Jesus while rejecting the teachings of His mean ole followers.  Wherever they found their Jesus, they didn’t find Him in the Scriptures.

Recently, I’ve come to realize that Jesus is also the source most responsible for Bible teaching about our afterlife in heaven.  Sure, you’ve got a goodly chunk of material in Revelation 21-22, but I’m only about 55 percent certain that it’s about heaven (as opposed to being about the victorious church), and John’s efforts to conceal his point from Scripturally ignorant contemporaries also serve to conceal his point pretty well from many Christians today.  Unless you’re playing Old Testament Reference Bingo as you work through Revelation, you’re not going to get it.

Jesus, on the other hand, talks about heaven in Matthew 22:1-14, 25:1-13, Luke 13:22-30, 14:15-24, and 22:28-30.  Toss in the description of paradise as “Abraham’s side” in Luke 16:19-31, and you’ve got a considerable body of teaching that all employs the same accessible metaphor.  To Jesus, heaven is a banquet, a wedding feast.  I don’t think we’re doing the text a disservice to say that Jesus wants us to see heaven as an eternal party.

At this thought, a number of brethren become alarmed.  In our society, after all, “party” has some ugly connotations.  We hear “party” and think “frat-house kegger”.  However, even for us, the essence of partying isn’t in getting drunk and sinning.  Somebody who gets drunk by himself isn’t a party animal.  He’s an alcoholic. 

Instead, having a party is about being around other people and having fun with them.  Certainly, I would choose different companions than the boys down at Delta Psi, and I would do different things with those companions, but for all of us, a party is about companionship.

As ideas go, that one is awfully close to the Biblical concept of fellowship, and fellowship is exactly what Jesus is attempting to convey with all of his feasting imagery.  In Luke 16, Lazarus isn’t in Abraham’s bosom because they’re snuggling.  It’s because they’re reclining at table, and Lazarus is leaning back against Abraham.  In the final working-out of the kingdom of God, pauper and patriarch will celebrate together.

In No Exit, Sartre famously declares that hell is other people.  He is exactly wrong.  Hell isn’t other people.  Heaven is.  It’s impossible for us to get to heaven without loving others, and heaven will be filled with those who return our love.  The joy that we experience there will be like the joy of an evening spent with dear friends, only intensified and prolonged for eternity.  

Of course, the centerpiece of this eternal feast will be the bridegroom Himself, Jesus.  I’ve never had a conversation with Jesus, though I desperately long to, but in heaven, the yearning of every honest heart for Him will be satisfied.  Forever with the Lord, forever with His people—that’s a party that everyone should strive to attend!