Read the Introduction to My New Book

Draft 2.0

Apr 27, 2025

It’s finally coming together! My next book! I posted a first draft of the intro ages ago, but with oodles of rewrites and input from great friends, it’s ready for a draft 2.0 repost. Enjoy! And feel free to send me feedback.

I wanted to be Spiderman. But my sensible Midwest mother wasn’t about to waste the hard-earned family dollar on a costume. If you couldn’t wear something to school or church, what was the use? So, Spiderman wore a grubby t-shirt and the shamefully short shorts of the 80s.

I posed atop the Empire State Building—our laundry table—scanning the hectic streets of Manhattan—the unfinished basement that was the winter playground of Midwest children—for signs of trouble.[1] The sounds of my city weren’t car horns and milling crowds, but a rumbling dryer and the occasional hum of the sump pump.[2]

It turns out that Spiderman-ish dreams are genetic. Our youngest son donned his first Spiderman costume at about 3 years old and took it off somewhere around the age of 8 when it was giving him a Mariana Trench wedgie. Apparently, our webbed friend had taken to wearing capris—saves on material costs. Recently, our grandson has donned the webby wear. It’s like a family rite of passage.

woman in red hoodie and blue denim jeans walking on sidewalk during daytime — Photo by Marcos Ferreira on Unsplash

Inevitably, we all outgrow Spidey at some point, no matter how friendly, amazing, or spectacular he is. And that’s probably a good thing. Nobody’s gonna hire a thirty-year old in spandex getup, complete with faux-pecks and creepy white eyes—nobody a decent citizen would want to work for anyway. At the same time, it feels like we lost something when the costumes were sold for fifty cents at the neighborhood yard sale.[3]

Where’s the passion we had in grade school, high school, or even still in university? Many of us lost the sparkle somewhere in the treacherous hike from cartoons to cubicles. For many of us, life just isn’t what we imagined from the lofty pinnacle of the Empire State. We’ve settled. It’s not great, but “it is what it is.”

Something similar has happened to many of us who claim Christ as superhero. Does anything seem to be missing as you follow Jesus? Feeling unsatisfied, bored, listless, guilty, or ashamed about the state of your faith?

If you grew up with Christ, you might wonder what happened to the little guy who belted out “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so” while squatting on the potty trainer. If Christ burst into your life later, you might wonder where the exuberant, I-gotta-tell-everybody disciple has dashed off to.

Growing Up vs. Growing Old

To a certain extent, that slightly naïve child had to grow up; that newbie had to transform into something more suitable to life in the real world. But somehow, “growing up” didn’t always translate into something finer; maybe “you never grew up; you just grew old.”[4] I am certainly older in my faith. I’ve been a Christian for decades now, but sometimes I wonder how much I have grown up.

Not long ago, I messaged a Christian friend who had experienced repeated life challenges recently: “How are you doing?” His curt, one-word response? “Meh.” I’m intrigued by that tiny word. According to etymologists, the word “meh” may have come from the Yiddish language, but it was certainly popularized in more modern times by the Simpsons, a show known for its cynical take on the world. Oxford Languages says meh indicates “a lack of interest or enthusiasm.” Wikipedia says it is the verbal equivalent of shrugging your shoulders. “The use of the term ‘meh’ shows that the speaker is apathetic, uninterested, or indifferent to the question or subject at hand… In expressing an opinion, it means the speaker's opinion is that of apathy.”[5]

Lack of interest or enthusiasm, shoulder shrugging, uninterested, indifferent, apathetic. If you are meh about powerlifting, Harry Potter, or podcasting, that’s your business. But can Christians afford to tolerate a mindset of meh about the important matters of life, such as acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with their God?[6] Consider Jesus’ word to the churches in Revelation, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.”[7] “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”.[8] Christ’s standards are clear: Meh is not acceptable.

It gets worse. We follow a God who calls Himself “love.” We worship a Savior who said of himself, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” and “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another…” Someone once posited that the opposite of love isn’t hatred, but apathy. If that’s true, then those who embrace meh as a philosophy of life ultimately stand in opposition to our loving God; and that’s a horrifying place to be.

And yet, meh sometimes steals through the hairline cracks in my heart and nibbles away at faith, hope, and love in dark corners. We should care more about the pains of our fellow Christians than about our next Amazon purchase. We should care more about service than sports. We should care more about God’s praise than petty politics. We should care more about His name than our reputation. We should care more about our walk with Christ than our latest binge, more about the facts of addiction and hopelessness than the fiction of Tony or Ned Stark. We should be more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. But meh is often more of a persistent specter in our lives than we care to admit.

Jesus offers us so much more than meh: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”[9] Our lives do seem full, that’s for sure—often full of anxiety, frenetic activity, and the niggling sense of a meaningless grind. Maybe, when Jesus promised a “full life,” he wasn’t really talking about a full calendar or a frantic heart. By “full,” it appears he meant, at the very least, meaning-full.

Jesus himself was certainly busy; His calendar was full. And yet, His life wasn’t frenzied; it was focused. His pace wasn’t panicky; it was purposeful—even if not so much planned to the minute. He could labor so intensely that family members thought he was losing his marbles, while others named him “Glutton” and “Drunkard” for frittering his time in the company of “sinners”. But what sometimes seemed like meandering was always meaningful as he moved toward the purpose of his life, the salvation of many souls.

Meaningful. That’s what we long to reclaim. For a Christian, “growing up” isn’t accurately measured in the numbers of hours logged in a worship service or Bible study. Certainly, those are platforms where we are nourished in Word and sacrament toward maturity. But they are not, themselves, an indicator of maturity. To paraphrase Keith Green, “Going to church doesn’t make you a [mature] Christian any more than going to McDonalds makes you a hamburger.” On the other hand, “growing up” isn’t accurately measured in the numbers of hours logged in service to others. Certainly, serving offers opportunities to exercise faith toward maturity; but it is not, itself, an indicator of maturity. Plenty of folks have been ordered by judges, bosses, and parents to serve; that doesn’t make them mature. Still more, some people falsely equate age with maturity. But simply surviving 80 years doesn’t make you mature any more than standing on the Soldier Field turf makes you an NFL quarterback.

True maturity is identified by a heart that rests in Christ fully and reflects him faithfully in every realm of life. Life becomes truly meaningful when it is habitually viewed through this filter. The mundanity of daily vocation becomes an opportunity to bless and be blessed. The crosses we bear propel us closer to our Creator instead of crushing us. Frustrations with the world pry up our white knuckled grip on this life and direct our souls toward eternal matters. We delight in the joys of life without drowning in them. That is the flavor of the meaning-full life Christ offers us.

At some point along the way, we must shed the Spiderman costume and ascend the long basement steps toward maturity and meaningful adulthood. But how do we maintain our original wonder at grace, freedom, and hope while still growing up? How do we grow up and not just grow older? How do we, when necessary, transition from meh to meaningful?

Attitudes and Practices to Foster a Meaningful Life

I hope to answer such questions in this brief book about maturing into faithful followers who live meaningful lives. We will do that by considering four unhelpful attitudes toward following Jesus as revealed by him in Luke 9:51-62. See if you can spot them as you read through this challenging account:

⁵¹ As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. ⁵² And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; ⁵³ but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. ⁵⁴ When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” ⁵⁵ But Jesus turned and rebuked them. ⁵⁶ Then he and his disciples went to another village.
⁵⁷ As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” ⁵⁸ Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
⁵⁹ He said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” ⁶⁰ Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
⁶¹ Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” ⁶² Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Since ancient times, commentators have proposed that Luke intentionally arranged these 12 verses together to show us four unhelpful attitudes toward following Jesus.[10] Here is how I will label them in this book:

Verses 51-56 – The Self-Righteous Follower
Verses 57-58 – The Unrealistic Follower
Verses 59-60 – The Flaky Follower
Verses 61-62 – The Wavering Follower

My goal is to help you become a more faithful follower, progressing from meh to meaningful:

I want to be upfront with you: we are not going to spend time making lists of meaningful activities to do and worthless activities to eschew. Most Christians intuitively understand what ranks higher on the scale of meaning. Paul even wrote to the Thessalonian believers, “Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other” (1 Thessalonians 4:9).[11] You don’t need me to tell you that investing in real people is more meaningful than binging on The Big Bang Theory; or that serving seniors is more meaningful than logging seven hours on the Nintendo Switch. Normally, the problem isn't that we don't know what meaningful activity to undertake; it's that we aren’t motivated to do it. Many a well-intentioned follower dreams of all the fruitful deeds he could be doing,[12] but there is very little activity in that direction. The challenge is becoming the kind of follower who is consistently motivated toward a meaningful life. That’s why this short book focuses on fostering four key attitudes and five godly practices that facilitate a meaningful life:

Repent
Rejoice
Request
Realign
Reinforce

The four chapters of this book each follow a simple structure: First, we diagnose our problem through Luke 9:51-62; then, we find power through Christ, and finally we learn some godly practices to help mitigate meh.

I cannot promise that this process will be an easy one. It will be a bit more like surgery than sun-bathing. But I hope you will find it useful and will ultimately be encouraged and motivated by the grace of the perfect follower, Jesus Christ.

Gospel Centered

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