Today our country celebrates the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., who was a peacemaker, someone who could call upon the needs of the hearts of people across many different races, belief systems, and ask them to work together on the common goal of equality. It’s because of his great legacy that I agree with his statement,

“Let us be Christian in all our actions. But I want to tell you this evening that it is not enough for us to talk about love, love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.”

There are three things to keep in mind as we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and having a day off work isn’t one of them:

1. Love is a Verb

Love shouldn’t be something we just say to each other. It’s something we do every day by delivering justice to those around us. When children come to the rescue of someone being bullied, they are showing compassion and exercising justice, which is love. When a group chooses to endure harm from authorities because they are peacefully protesting an atrocity like segregation, they are supporting each other for the sake of justice, which is love. Love is something we need to remember to exercise love instead of just talking about it.

2. Justice is costly

Rosa Parks said, “Dr. King didn’t just talk the talk, he walked the walk from Montgomery to Memphis, enduring jails, beatings, abuse, threats, the bombing of his home, and the highest sacrifice a person can make for a righteous cause.” Getting laws changed isn’t easy, as many people learned in the Civil Rights Movement. We would do well to learn the same, and to refuse to be complacent in our efforts to end today’s injustices. We can take courage in the fact that the Civil Rights Movement was successful in halting the injustice they set out to end.

3. Justice is worth the cost

Those who endure injustice at the hands of others know that justice is worth the cost of revolt. Throughout history, men and women have willingly died for the sake of bringing freedom, equality, justice to the countries they held dear. Civil Rights leader John M. Perkins wrote, “The call to biblical justice in every corner of society must be sounded by those who claim a God of Justice as their Lord.” Therefore we must also make the sound heard: that justice is love in action, and it is worth pursuing.

“But let justice run down like water,
And righteousness like a mighty stream.” –Amos 5:24

Fighting between spouses baffles me. When I visit my friends, I sometimes see their parents, whom I know love each other and are dedicated to each other, bickering over petty things. One mom explained to me that she doesn’t like fighting with her husband, but that she does it because making up afterward is sweet.

A friend that I’ve known for over ten years recently told me that she couldn’t comment on my parents because she hadn’t really seen much of their relationship with each other. I asked her if she meant that they never fight, and she said yes. “My parents aren’t on their best behavior around you,” I explained. “They really don’t argue.”

Whenever I try to find a reason for this unique dynamic to the way my parents love each other, all I can find is that they are both totally self-sacrificing for one another. In other homes, a miscommunication about the food being eaten or the vehicle being driven will bring tension between a husband and wife. I’m more likely to hear, “I’m sorry, honey, I’ll do it the way you want,” than, “No, you said it this way earlier” in the discourse between my parents.

There are a couple of things to note here. One is that my parents don’t take advantage of each other. The above statement about being self-sacrificing can be used to hurt your spouse if one parent controls the other because of the submission from the first. The second point is that my parents aren’t merely civil with each other. They really like each other, and often play off of each other in clever banter.

Here’s a generalization that I see all too often: married couples don’t flirt. The way I see it, if I love someone deeply and I’ve chosen to spend the rest of my life with him, we’ll play around, I’ll let him know that I think he’s special. After joking with a friend, I’ll often add, “You know, I think you’re pretty cool. We should be friends.” It’s the same with my parents. They’re married already, but that doesn’t mean that the adventure of getting to know one another is over, much less the enjoyment of each other’s company. They constantly work to make the other person feel special, a habit that never gets monotonous.

My mom tells me this:

Giving in to the other person isn’t always easy. It’s a mutual decision to look for the positive outcome, and choose to avoid unnecessary conflict.

When this simple tip is put into practice, the list of necessary conflict grows incredibly short.

Training champions at a California camp. Shane is Training Minds Ministry's youngest coach.

Last month, my friend Shane Baumgardner gave a speech on success at Nationals to a group of debate competitors who had qualified to the championship tournament. The speech was challenging—we’re glad we recorded it (listen to the whole thing here: http://monumentpublishing.com/2011/06/success-at-nationals/). He spoke about being honest with yourself, and being honest with God.

“Can you look at yourself in the mirror after a hard week of competition and honestly say that you’ve left it all on the line, that you’ve done your best, and that you’re satisfied with the results? And, more importantly, can you turn to God and know that you’ve given Him your all, and be able to say, ‘I did everything that I could with the ability that You have given me; I’ve run the race with excellence, I ran it in a manner worthy of victory, I did everything that I could with the talent and the opportunity that You have provided me’?”

Shane is coaching at Training Minds Ministry, but he has experienced this kind of situation firsthand. He has taken top awards in debate, extemporaneous speaking and impromptu (national titles in the former two). He knows what he’s talking about.

When I am truthful with myself about my motives, my intentions, and my performance, I’m humbled. I haven’t done well, but I know that I can do better. With this realization, it’s no wonder it’s so easy to lie to myself.

Today I was reading a book by Mark Mittelberg, and he mentioned that hypocrisy is one of the leading problems people have with Christianity. It’s statistically proven—something about the way we conduct ourselves delivers the message that we don’t really believe what we say we believe.

In other words, if speaking the truth in love and loving our neighbors is a command, why don’t we do it more?

The image of looking myself in the eye and being honest with myself and with God has come to mind every single day since Shane brought it up. I know that I can’t always say to God and myself that I did my best each day. In fact, I usually can’t do so. That’s why being honest is so crucial: if my own shortcoming is a blind spot for me, I’m stuck at a standstill.

Honesty leads to clarity. Only when I’m being truthful with myself am I able to see my situation for what it is, and, with God’s help, change for the better.

Part 3 of a 3-part series of Cynthia's award-winning oratory speech.

Part I | Part II | Part III

So far we’ve gone over the fact that underdogs make great main characters in stories, and that they’re made of courage. All of that is well and good when we’re talking about Zelda and Lord of the Rings, but what does an underdog’s plight look like in real life?

Barna published a book a few years back entitled UnChristian: What a new generation really thinks about Christianity…and why it matters. The book was based on national surveys of non-Christians, and the shocker was that most people who knew Christians said they were hypocritical, too political, and out of touch with the world. Christianity looks bland to observers. Our faith has become a ritual, a religion, simply because we don’t challenge ourselves.

I sincerely believe that average people, especially Christians, need to be more ready to face conflict like underdogs ready to conquer. It is because of comfort zones that so many people live what they would call boring lives.

Francis Chan addressed this issue of comfort when he preached using the visual aid of a balance beam. Literally, the pastor prepared by setting up a gymnastics beam on the stage where he was going to speak. After removing his shoes, Chan mounted the beam and explained that many Christians tend to, instead of doing crazy stunts, hold on to the beam. Clutching the beam, he proceeded to say that we often live as safely as possible.

Keep in mind the image of someone straddling a balance beam. A gymnast risks falling so she can show skill – it would be strange to see the opposite: risking skillful performance for the sake of safety by clinging to the beam. Yet this is what so many of us do with our lives. When a comfortable position in life is found, we tend to hold on to it, losing sight of what courage can do for us. Kids in my generation are taught by our parents, “if it hurts, don’t do it.” I just have to wonder if that’s the key to living a powerful life. When I look at my favorite stories, the heroes and heroines are those with the highest stakes, the greatest adversity. What makes them heroic is not clinging to comfort, it’s in striving to conquer the giants that their stories include.

Donald Miller wrote, “If the stuff we are doing with our lives wouldn’t make a movie meaningful, it won’t make real life meaningful either…Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in…People love to have lived a good story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen…Part of me wonders if our stories aren’t being stolen by the easy life.”

All it takes to make my life into a great story is realizing that I have a story waiting to be told, if I’m courageous enough to embrace it.

Part 2 of the 3-part series from Cynthia's award-winning oratory speech.

Part I | Part II | Part III

Click here for part 1.

A few of my friends have convinced me to read the stories behind the popular Nintendo game series The Legend of Zelda. The storyline follows a young boy named Link, who has to fight many adversaries and work through complicated puzzles to help save Princess Zelda and prevent the villain, Ganandorf, from gaining access to the triforce, an item that provides the ability to completely destroy the world.

The reason I bring up the story of Link and Zelda is because the games present an interesting makeup for the hero, the villain, and the damsel in distress. You see, all three of these characters possess one part of the triforce: Power, wisdom, and courage. Princess Zelda, in her wisdom, carefully hides the keys to finding her part of the triforce. Ganandorf seems always to be winning, his power is unrelenting in his attempts to destroy Link. Link’s counterattack is using the simple virtue of courage. Courage allows Link to keep facing the challenges before him, and, if you’re good at the game, he wins in the end.

Last time we discussed the fact that underdogs are always the main character. The stuff heroes are made of is courage, and we could all use a little bit of it. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courageous people fear, but they aren’t ruled by fear. Our hero presses on even when he is convinced that all is lost. He is willing to get outside of his comfort zone, to face death, and to refuse credit for his sacrifices.

J.R.R. Tolkein explained this well in his conclusion to The Lord of the Rings. The character Eowyn insists to the king that she can go with his army to fight for Middle Earth. After Eowyn claims that she fears neither pain nor death, the king asks her, “What do you fear, Lady?” To which she replies, “A cage. To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.” You see, lost comfort is not what is to be feared. The true fear ought to be the life that goes unlived. Interestingly, Eowyn goes on to kill a monster and play a major role in the climax of The Return of the King. She didn’t have to face death, she only had to face her fear of death, and in so doing demonstrated the courage and success of the underdog.

What are your favorite most courageous movie characters?

This is Part 1 of a 3-part series captioning Cynthia's award-winning oratory speech.

Part I | Part II | Part III

Stories inspire us, they remind us of great truths in a way that straightforward speaking cannot, and they allow us to share in the adventures of another person, fictional or not. A story has four main elements: there’s the setting, conflict, climax, and resolution. Between the conflict and climax, a character faces difficulty, self-doubt, and challenges. But without the conflict, there would be no buildup to the climax, and, therefore, no story.

The main character in every great story is an underdog. Underdogs are easy to relate to and sympathize with, and we love them because we feel like their stories are a possibility for us, too. For me, underdogs are fascinating because I meet average people every day. I don’t, however, see great stories — real, inspiring, non-fictional stories — on a regular basis. This is because most of us don’t realize that we are passing up potential stories when we refuse to embrace conflict in our lives.

Blake Snyder, a successful screenwriter and bestselling author, offered the following checklist for a solid main character in his book subtitled The last book on screenwriting you’ll ever need. He says, “Tell me a story about a guy who…

• I can identify with.
• I can learn from.
• I have compelling reason to follow.
• I believe deserves to win and…
• Has stakes that are primal and ring true for me.”

I would even say that it’s impossible to be a hero without being an underdog. That sounds like a generalization, but think of superheroes—they all have nemeses and weaknesses. Every Sports hero had the odds stacked against him and an opponent who made it seem impossible to win, and every artist had to break the trends pressing him. The great story places a character in a situation that lives up to what G.K. Chesteron said: “A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth.” Others must have to have failed in the attempt to do what the hero succeeds at in the end, the stakes must be high, and the hero has to doubt himself in the face of the challenge, because effortless heroism isn’t heroism at all.

But we don’t want to emulate the underdog merely because he in unlikely to succeed, but because he takes the challenge before him and conquers it. We all love tales that astonish us, and though when listening to a story we’ll try to guess the ending, we don’t always want to be right. There’s something satisfying about a twist ending, something we didn’t expect. When watching a race, the audience takes their eyes off the expected champion to watch the rookie catch up, and they cease breath as he passes up the predicted winner. When expected to fail, the underdog turns the tables and earns center stage.

More than anything else, the plight of the underdog is a story of hope to those of us who think we’re average: success is attainable.

What extraordinary things make a hero? Who are the heroes in your life?

In my favorite book, A Little Princess, Frances Hudgson Burnett tells the story of a girl named Sara Crewe. While surrounded with wealth, Sara was like a princess. She did well in school, wore fancy clothes, was kind to everyone, loved the outcasts, and was pampered in every way.

Ravenous: (adj.) Extremely hungry, devouring or craving food in great quantities.

Because of her pampered life, Sara wondered if she could continue to be princess-like if her riches disappeared. She was determined to always be a princess on the inside, no matter what happened.

Then Sara’s father died just after losing his entire estate in an investment dealing, and she is left at the cruel mercy of the instructor at her boarding school -– no family, no money, and plenty of work.

In my favorite chapter, Sara finds herself hungry and running errands through the streets of London. She dreams of food with a feverish hunger and happens to find a four-penny piece on the ground outside of a baker shop. The situation is simply too good to be true, but as she begins to walk in, she sees a small beggar child on the side of the road.

“This,” Sara says to herself, “is one of the populace. All the kings and queens, when they were poor and driven from their thrones, shared with those worse off than themselves.” And though faint with hunger, she buys a bag full of buns and gives five out of six of them to the other girl. A beautiful picture is painted here – a ravenous child sharing with one even hungrier than herself.

There are two conclusions I draw from this tale:

1. Always serve others. In my personal life, this is one of my weaknesses. Too often I forget that I need to be selfless as Sara was. She was starving, but willing to share what little she had. I have a lot more to be thankful for, but sometimes I don’t want to share or I have other plans for what to do with my time. There is no beauty in selfishness.

2. I’m ravenous – and that’s how it should be. Jesus said this to the not-so-good Samaritan: “Whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst again.” And it’s very true. We are filled with the Holy Spirit – nothing else is necessary. God continues to satisfy in new ways. My God loves surprises. He loves to see us pray about the questions we have for Him, to discover Him in ways we never saw before. Psalm 23:5 makes sense in this way: “…my cup runs over.”

Phil Joel wrote, “To have found You, and still be looking for You, is the soul’s paradox of love…You fill my cup, I lift it up for more.”

God wants us to be ravenous for Him, that He is more than capable of filling us up, and we are to pass His love for us onto others.

My mom received a note from a lady who had met me at a conference. I barely remember her, but I remember that day. I had only gotten one hour of sleep the night before and was praying for strength just to get through the conference. I didn’t really want to meet anyone, and I wanted to get home! To my surprise, the author of the note thought I was full of joy and helpfulness.

Here’s my sister and me holding some babies at a celebration in Fort Collins.

See, Lydia and I helped with her newborn baby. Personally, I have only a vague memory of it. The note said I was “Christlike” and “gracious.” But I certainly didn’t feel that way at the time.

That passage where Jesus talks about not letting your right hand know what your left hand is doing has always confused me. One of my favorite theologians, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, meditates on this in The Cost of Discipleship:

“From whom are we to hide the visibility of our discipleship? Certainly not from other men, for we are told to let them see our light. No, we are to hide it from ourselves…we must be unaware of our own righteousness.

“…The Christian is a light unto the world, not because of any quality of his own, but only because he follows Christ and looks solely to him…If you do good, you must not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, you must be quite unconscious of it. Otherwise you are simply displaying your own virtue, and not that which has its source in Jesus Christ…the genuine work of love is always a hidden work.”

You know what I think? Amazing. God (not me) touched someone’s life. I wasn’t even aware of my own actions. I was behaving so that my right hand didn’t know what my left hand was doing. Come to think of it, we’re at our very best if we never realize that we even did a good work. I was just moving along, tired and praying for strength, and unbeknown to me, God’s graciousness won the day.

Bonhoeffer concludes with this:

“If we become conscious of our hidden virtue, we are forging our own reward, instead of that which God had intended to give us in his own good time.”

I’ve already received my full reward for what happened at that homeschool conference; it’s out in the open now. Perfect. Jesus said that those who parade their good works have already gotten praise from the world, but what is done in secret and is seen by God will be rewarded openly by Him. If I would have known what my right hand was doing, I would have likely been all puffed up and proud about it, and that would have been my reward. Far from perfect.

Sometimes God likes to teach me things with a hint of irony.

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words… After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take ‘good’ for instance. If you have a word like ‘good,’ what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well—better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good,’ what sense is there in having a whole string of useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning, or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still…in the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words—in reality, only one word.”
~George Orwell, 1984

I thought of the above quotation as I flipped through my little brother’s elementary school workbook containing this definition of literature: fiction vs. nonfiction. I wondered what the writer had been thinking to use fiction and non-fiction as a realistic comparison rather than fact and fiction or truth and falsehood.

It is worth noting that we are taught in school that it is expected to use words that are not as precise as they should be. How very different are the words ‘ungood’ and ‘bad’ in meaning; how much more different are ‘nonfiction’ and ‘truth’. When one walks into a classroom today, “truth” is a foreign idea while it is the very thing that Jesus said sets us free and must be stood for.

This is a warning: let us never water down the importance of strength in the words we use. What would the world be like if the word ‘love’ is replaced with ‘unhate’?

If a glass spills what it contains, what “spills” out of you when you’re “bumped”?

Several times I’ve read about Christians who answer with love and forgiveness to their killers as they are being killed.

Have you ever thought that if you were in this situation, you would be just as strong?

I think that if we in the free world ever consider ourselves facing arrests, loss of family, and physical pain, we think that we would be bold with our actions and witnessing.

But would we? We almost love comfort enough to lose our faith if the stakes are raised.

What I’m trying to say is that we all contain something. No matter what circumstances I’m under, I’m always going to spill my contents wherever I am.

I’m faithful in little and much or I’m not faithful at all.

There’s no way we can get rid of the junk inside of us. And if we’re bumped, we spill what we contain.

God says that He can take away a heart of stone and make it new again if only given the chance. And if we’re firmly rooted in the Vine of Jesus Christ, we will become more and more like Him – bold, kind, and obedient. Graceful.

When I’m put under pressure, I want grace to pour out of me.