It probably started with reading Blue Like Jazz. I used to be afraid of War Metaphor, just like Donald Miller.

"Only one more thing that bugged me, then I will shut up about it. War metaphor. The churches I attended would embrace war metaphor. They would talk about how we are in a battle, and I agreed with them, only they wouldn't clarify that we were battling poverty and hate and injustice and pride and the powers of darkness. They left us thinking that our war was against liberals and homosexuals. Their teaching would have me believe I was the good person in the world and the liberals were the bad people in the world. Jesus taught that we are all bad and He is good, and He wants to rescue us because their is a war going on and we are hostages in that war. The truth is we are supposed to love the hippies, the liberals, and even the Democrats, and that God wants us to think of them as more important than ourselves. Anything short of this is not true to the teachings of Jesus."

I agreed, and so I did my best to read the Bible and conveniently avoid certain passages. This was fine with me, because I had heard that lesson on the armor of God one too many times anyway, with all of its cute illustrations and cliche demonstrations. It was getting old.

Then, one Sunday, Carl taught on the chapter "Fighting with All His Might" from the book Holiness by Grace by Bryan Chapell. It turned out the chapter and the lesson focused on Ephesians Six, the armor of God. While Carl didn't come right out and clearly make the point that Donald Miller and I desperately wanted him to make, he did offer the most real, applicable, beautiful teaching on the passage I had ever heard. And he definitely didn't tell us to go bomb any abortion clinics or picket any gay-loving churches.

This set up some conflict for me. I wanted to be all hip and emergent or whatever and delete that part from my Bible, but Carl was showing me it was there, and it was true, and it was valid. Getting rid of it simply because some people were getting carried away with it would, like I mentioned recently, leave us equally misguided in the opposite direction. Instead, it's our job to test everything and hold on to the good, avoiding all extremes.

Fast-forward a year or so, and now it's my job to teach Ephesians 6, the armor of God, to a room full of 50 adults. I tried to pawn this one off on my co-teacher, but he was away and I was stuck with it. It turns out I'm glad I was.

. . .more to come. . .