It’s hard and exhausting when you try to get everyone to like you and to always feel as though you must fit in. Imagine going back to your middle and high school days and actually truly not caring much how popular you were or how many people liked you. No matter where you may have stacked up in the popularity scale, who didn’t actually want to be more well-liked? That’s just human nature.

The good news is that everyone is at least slightly more mature in adulthood, and the daily battle of trying to “fit in” is not quite what it once was. However, it would simply be wrong to say we still aren’t affected by this desire. We want to fit in with our coworkers, we want to be respected by our friends, we want more followers on Twitter, etc. You would be lying if you said you absolutely did not care about such things, I know I would.

One thing that I have found so interesting recently is the assumption by many that one cannot possibly be a Christian (or believe in God) and truly use their brain. Some of this comes from personal experience, and a lot of it comes from comments on the internet (I know, nothing good ever actually comes from the comment section).

For example, there are many times where I read a blog post or an article, often very well written with supporting arguments, and then in the comments people are going off about how the author needs to study more about the history of religions, or some philosophical argument, or that they are just plain wrong with no real reason why, etc. A couple of things usually stand out when I read such comments.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

-1 John 4:7

There is a difference between not hating someone and actually loving them. Just because you do not hate someone, it does not mean you love them.

I have been married to my wife for almost three years. Like many couples think before they get married, I had this idea that it was going to be awesome all the time, that we were going to be able to spend plenty of time together, that we will hang out all the time and talk.

It has become commonplace in our society to view our professional and personal lives as two separate entities. What you believe, how you think and act, and what you do in your personal life is one thing, and how you do these things in your professional life is another.

This fits right in with our culture today of compartmentalizing everything. You have your hobbies, work, spousal duties, perhaps religious activities, parental duties, you name it. Many of these responsibilities, so we think, require us to behave certain ways and therefore should be separated from each other.

But is this really the best way to live? Should our “professional” and “personal” lives really entail us to act differently depending on where we are and what we are doing?

This is a guest post by my wife Christina Dodson. You can follow her on twitter by clicking here.

Prior to getting married one of the most typical cliché things I would hear about marriage was: “marriage is all about trust.”

But what does that even mean? Trust our spouse to remain faithful?

Jesus says in Matthew 5:28,

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed
adultery with her in his heart.

If faithfulness means not even looking at someone lustfully, I think it’s safe to say we are all unfaithful- men and women alike. So what about trust is marriage all about?

One of the great things about following Jesus is that it relieves the pressure for us to be burdened by pleasing people. That is not to say Christians don’t struggle with wanting to make people happy or don’t care what people think; it still happens when we lose focus of what is ultimately important.

This does not mean that our reputation does not matter however. Faithfully following Jesus should cause people to view you as loving, forgiving, generous, etc. But this also means that there are many things we do and believe that are different than the majority of culture. With this brings disfavor among others.

Holding to certain biblical morals is certainly unpopular, and submitting your life to God rather than all of your own desires is very difficult. And if your goal is to please people, it becomes impossible. But that doesn’t mean our reputation should be of no concern.

So how does living for God’s approval but yet caring about our reputation work?

I have never been a morning person. People who get up early in the morning for hobbies like surfing or hunting make no rational sense to me. I managed to avoid taking 8 AM classes in college and consider that to be one of the best decisions I made during my entire college career. I also don’t like coffee so it’s completely up to myself to function properly in the morning.

Growing up I would always hear people say that spending time with Jesus in the morning is more beneficial than any other time of the day. But that meant getting up earlier, and when I had to leave for school by 7:15 in the morning, that was not going to happen with any amount of consistency. It wasn’t until my latter years in college that I began to prioritize spending time reading my Bible and in prayer in the morning. Regardless of how often I pray throughout the day or do other disciplines to grow my relationship with the Lord, consistent time in the morning is the time I would most recommend for those making time for consistent time with Jesus each week.

Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep

-1 Corinthians 15:6

The Bible, if from God, must be true

If the Bible truly is the Word of God, then the events that it describes must be true. This means the bible should be historically verifiable; we should be able to look back and find things that prove the Bible to be true if God wrote it (while guiding the human authors with his Spirit).

The biggest historical claim the Bible makes (with which Christianity itself depends on) is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Many people either completely avoid thinking about this topic, or simply believe that it must be false. After all, how many people have you seen come back from the dead?

One of the biggest reasons people claim to reject Christianity has nothing to do with historical or “rational” arguments, but rather it has to do with Christians themselves. To a degree, this is understandable. Christians claim certain moral standards that even they themselves fail to live up to.

To many this makes them hypocrites. And I get it- there are those (pretty much the only “Christians” who we hear about on the news) who really are quite judgmental and hateful. However, of the many Christians I know, I know an exceptionally small few who actually fall into this category.

The Bible clearly and repeatedly describes God as the maker and sustainer of all life (Genesis 1:1, Psalms 104:30, Colossians 1:16-17). Because of this, everything is his and under is dominion. Therefore, he can freely give and take from his creation as he desires because everything is his.

One of the major criticisms of the God of the Bible is God’s apparent evil and immoral killing of so many people in the Old Testament, most often through the Israelites as they traveled through the desert. For example: