Why Did Peter Sink‪?‬ "He stretched out his hand and caught him, and said to him, 'Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?'"

Some of life’s tests may have already passed you by, but another will come, and even if you responded poorly in past tests, you can react differently in the future. You can change. Lady Gaga is wrong: she was not “Born this Way.” She was not born wearing a meat suit and starved for fame; she chose that path. She was born with an amazing talent, yes, and I enjoy her songs. But the meat suit did not form on Lady Gaga in the womb, that was a bolt-on after-market addition.
Likewise, you were not born a drunk or sex obsessed or not-good-enough or quick to anger or food-crazed. You allowed all that to happen. You chose those patterns, just like I did. God did not make you surf porn or drink Jack Daniels or post mean comments online. We are being guided to that idea, however, that we are “born” in these states, which is the greatest lie our world today is selling, with massive reach and power through media.
While you may have done bad things in the past, and yes, we are fallen creatures, we also have free will. If you are convinced that you can’t change, that you can’t control what thoughts enter your mind, then you have lost what it means to be human.
We are the gatekeepers of our thoughts. While we are born with the instinct to do the wrong thing, we don’t have to do the wrong thing. We choose it, and we do so because someone or something is suggesting and inviting us into temptation. That is the job of modern marketing, in case you were unaware. The notion to pick up your phone and go to a porn site is a thought that you allow to enter your consciousness. Because you are convinced that it’s harmless, that it doesn’t hurt anyone, and that it’s natural instinct, you have walked your free will right into the trap. The choice is made, but a different choice could have been made. There is nothing “natural” about picking up a phone and looking at nude people having sex. There is nothing so objectifying and cheapening to human beings than to see them as nothing more than gyrating pleasure monkeys who can titillate your base desires. And there is nothing so damaging to your existing relationships than to satisfy your need for interaction with images on a screen, while real people who want love and respect sit in another room, occupying the same house or apartment as you do.
We can rip out the old thoughts and plant a garden of good thoughts that lead us to Christ. But first you have to choose it. What you have been told is that you were “born this way” because the entertainment and advertising worlds transmit that thought to you constantly, because you are a consumer, a customer. You are not a person to them. Convincing you that you do not have free will is a full-time job. You are a data point, a row in a database, an object. They will never try to remind you that you were made in the image and likeness of God and that you have free will. They will never tell you that what you are searching for is rest, for peace, for something to fill the emptiness you feel on Sunday nights. If they tell you that, you will likely stop pursuing the accumulation of goods and services and achievements. They want you walled in with your fear and pride, because then you receive their transmissions. What you receive, what you allow to enter your thoughts, becomes what you believe. If you doubt this, sit quietly in a room with no sound, no phone, no book, no TV, and see what thoughts enter your mind. What enters your mind will be telling: a song, an insult, an idea, a political issues, an issue at your kid’s school, a grudge, a product, a TV show, a news story that irritated you. Distractions will come because the thoughts you allow in are what your mind and soul are gnawing on.
To be free today, to be the curator of your own thoughts, you must take action. It requires effort. Believe it or not, a lifetime of pop-culture and subliminal messages can be boxed up and moved out. But you have to take action.
The best way to

The reason Jesus tells this to Nicodemus is because poor Nic doesn’t know that his perceived strength is his weakness. Nicodemus in the Gospel is like the “Fridge” in Jumanji. He lives in a position of power and status in the world. The Pharisees cannot “enter the kingdom” of God, they cannot put the jewel in the mountain and yell Jumanji! because they believe they have no weaknesses. You can’t be healed unless you understand your limitations, your weaknesses, your failures. No one with the snakebites in the desert with Moses can be healed until they know that they cannot save themselves. No one in the desert knows how pathetically weak they are unless a snake has bitten them. No one knows that they cannot save themselves unless they reach a level of suffering and pain that has no solution beyond that of a savior beyond understanding.
Jesus says, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” (Jn 3:13)
The Israelites’ snakebite can be seen as literal or a metaphor - take it however you like. Either way it works. Because I didn’t find my weaknesses, not really, until I felt helpless. I would’t even admit weakness until I reached a point where a savior was needed, where my own efforts and outside human help couldn’t provide any comfort or healing. This is strange contradiction, the one that you see in the desert, in the conversation with Nicodemus, and yes, even in Jumanji. This realization happens in hospitals and in churches and in recovery meetings around the world every day. Unfortunately, this light doesn’t come unless we suffer, unless we have pain.
We are going to have pain either way. But you can ride it out to the end, to the last breath, never admitting weakness. It’s a choice that you make. The suffering, we think, is to be blamed on God, but when we are successful or comfortable, we never once think to thank God. We only want a God that makes life easy. That’s not how it works. God wants to draw us toward him. Signs and clues and breadcrumbs are everywhere once you start to look, but for me, it took the full snakebite treatment. Because without it, I would not have turned. I would not have looked at the bronze serpent on the pole unless I felt desperate for help. I would never have asked for help. I would never had believed that strength was my weakness, and I never would have come to the light.
“For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.” (Jn 3:20)
For context, this quote is near the end of the Jesus’ discussion around with Nicodemus being “reborn.” I’ve gone into that at some length in other episodes, but there’s a side of this discussion that fits here, that goes with the strange scene in the desert with the snakes.
Creation is painful. You cannot make new wine without cutting the vines and crushing the grapes. Birth is painful. There is no question that birth is an ordeal for both mother and child. Anyone who has even been bedside at a birth knows this is a fact, that the pain and suffering of childbirth is second to none, and yet…and yet the moment a baby is born there is so often the onset of uninhibited love. I realize there can be more suffering, medically and mentally, but when a healthy baby and mother unite, there is a joy that cannot be hidden or recreated. This is the type of joy that nothing else in life can match, or even come close to in comparison. Creating a new life takes immense pain to break through to joy. New life cannot come forward without pain.
This is what Jesus is telling Nicodemus, and it’s what is happening in the desert, and of course Jesus is talking about the spiritual birth, not physical. He says multiple times that you must be born in the

I’m going to do something annoying. Or rather, I’m going to do something that I found annoying when I was fallen away from belief. This won’t be annoying to those who have faith, but it will to those who don’t. I am going to take a non-Christian movie and talk about it in terms of Christian redemption and rebirth. That’s the annoying thing I’m going to do.
As I said, this won’t irritate everyone, only some. Those in the choir won’t mind, but those outside the church will find it irritating.
While I was cavorting in the fields of unbelief, after falling away from faith, if I heard someone interpret a movie as a Christian film or explain how a character was a “type” of Jesus figure, I cringed. During that time, I felt that the Christians encroached on pop culture by twisting characters and plots into parallels that didn’t actually exist. I felt the Christians were desperately trying to remain relevant in a culture that had moved on. Furthermore, I felt that the pop culture should not be interfered with in this way. Now I see irony in this reaction. When I believed that I had no religion, I was offended that the art and film of secular culture was being somehow attacked.
Every hit movie that came out would soon result in some Christian “zealot” interpreting the story as a suffering and redemption plot that explained why we needed a savior. (Notice how we only call religious people zealots, but we reserve the term for when they observe their actual beliefs? We never call secular people zealots, even though they follow their set of beliefs openly and browbeat others who don’t as wrong. This may also have to be a topic for future episodes.)
In particular, I recall this interpretation happening with the movie, The Matrix. As soon as Christians watched this movie, articles about the parallels between Neo and Christ emerged. The Christians seized upon it, borrowing the movie’s success for use in evangelizing sci-fi fans.
This irritated me a great deal, mostly because the parallels were obvious, but I didn’t want to admit it. Let’s look at the high points, without going too far into it. The name Neo is a scrambling of the word “One.” Neo is the savior of the world. His sidekick girlfriend is named Trinity. The place they are trying to get to is called Zion. The ship is named Nebuchadnezzar. There’s a small band of believers, a betrayal, and an evil force. There are demonic agents that can appear and disappear. There is a death and even a resurrection. There are so many other Biblical references that it doesn’t take a genius or even a stretch of the brain muscle to map the Matrix movie to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
Christian writers have always looked for signs of Christ in works of art, and will always do so, just as atheist and humanist and scientist and communist writers will try to do the same for their worldview. For every author that supports Christianity, there is another trying to tear it down. All is fair in love and war, but also in ideology and propaganda, as every side will have defenders that cross lines of decency and employ every logical fallacy and stoke fears like a furnace. Not every debate is as charitable and honest as say, Jimmy Akin vs. Bart Ehrman, where we get to see the best of the defenders sparring in kindness and putting forth their best argument.
Let’s get started. In the next few episodes, I’m going to talk about the movie Jumanji! (the 2017 version) and the character named “Mouse” Finbar, and somehow I’m going to tie that over to Moses and Nicodemus.
Anyone annoyed yet? I hope not. I have a long ways to go. Let’s get going.
In the movie, Jumanji!, four high school kids of different cliques are magically brought into a video game where they must survive by collaboration to escape. Jumanji (2017 version) is where The Breakfast Club meets The Hunger Games. In fact, it’s worth pausing here to mention that if you want to write a hit

How many times and in how many ways does Jesus say, "What difference does it make if you gain the whole world but lose your soul?" How many ways does he say, “the last will be first”? He just can't say it enough. It’s everywhere in the parables and the miracles. Lazarus, the woman at the well, the Gerasene demoniac, the blind, the deaf, the withered hand, the tax collector, the many lepers, the widow, the wedding guests, the salt of the earth. And he never, never says you just have to turn back for a little while, he says, "By your endurance you will gain your soul." He means endurance in faith, in fidelity to God. A permanent turn is needed. Daily orientation is the ask. But believe it or not, it becomes less difficult the more you play the game of interior conversion. The magic happens one day, when you no longer want to turn away. You want to remain turned, and you completely forget about the old ways.
This is not like endurance in a marathon, or perseverance at work, or dedication toward achievements, or leadership in family life. This is endurance in turning toward God all the days, right up to the last day, to the end of your life, to the final hour. Knowledge, money, and self-mastery do not give you any endurance for this task. They usually turn you the wrong way. 
Seven hundred years ago, in Book 1 of the Imitation of Christ, the author says something that our modern ears don't want to hear, since we hold knowledge so dearly today: 
“As for knowledge, it comes natural to all of us to want it; but what can knowledge do for us, without the fear of God? Give me a plain, unpretentious farm-hand, content to serve God; there is more to be made of him than of some conceited University professor who forgets that he has a soul to save, because he is so busy watching the stars. To know yourself—that means feeling your own worthlessness, losing all taste for human praise. If my knowledge embraced the whole of creation, what good would it do me in God’s sight?” (Book 1, “Imitation of Christ.”)
Seven hundred years later that same conclusion can be found. What good is all this knowledge if I can't answer the bigger questions about life itself? What good is Google if there is only how and no why? If I know everything about the world, what good is that knowledge to me if I am without meaning? What good is money if I can only buy more stuff? In other words, what good does it do me to gain the whole world if I lose my soul in the process?
There is no way to turn back while our eyes are glued to phone and computer and TV screens and our ears only hear voices from the current culture of disbelief. If you are hung up on politics or gossip, you will remain turned away, indifferent, starving for meaning while your bite closes down again and again on only air. How difficult it was for me to break away from the trance of modern distraction and vice. I think of the movie The Matrix, where the computer cursor types out to Neo, “The Matrix has you.” It has us all. We believe we have the control, the power, that we are the rulemakers of our own lives. But that’s the trick. We are the controlled, the ruled, the servants of a sad and depressed culture, stroking our ego with beer and porn and memes and videos, pretending we’re not desperate for something more. As the old saying from Charles Baudelaire goes, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.” The only way to break free is to shatter the illusion that you have control, and that will free your head to turn. The only way to freedom is through obedience to God, and the only way to the kingdom of heaven is through the Cross.
If you are angry at Christians, as I once was, about a rule that they follow, you might want to ask them, why aren’t they angry about the rules. How can religious people be so happy with so many rules? You can be assured that every Christian has vices, that there are rules that he wants to break.

The solution is so simple and yet it seems like a mountain that cannot be crossed. The solution is so basic that it almost seems absurd. And yet it is the solution, the only answer, and it's what St. Therese knew so well, as did St. Matthew: 
"Unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." 
To turn.
“Unless you turn,” it reads. The word turn shattered my assumptions. I often would see a crazy Christian on the street corner yelling, "Repent!" and thought “What a nutcase.” The word “repent” has so many strange connotations for me of people who seemed a.) to be insane, and b.) to mismatch the message of Jesus as I understood it. But to turn - this sounded different. To turn my life, to turn my mind, to turn: wait…what does that mean? To turn means to re-orient the direction I was facing. That made more sense. Repent sounded like fear-based correction. "Repent and avoid the fires of hell!" In “Repent for the end is near!” I can hear that old-time Jonathan Edwards in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God delivering hellfire and brimstone to a country church in the year 1741. You have to love a good Calvinist sermon for the fire it can light under people. But that never motivated me. You’d think it would. Fire hurts. The pain of burns is worse than anything I’ve experienced. But that message wasn’t really Good News to me. That sermon could never cause me to turn. I could not even hear that message. In fact, it drove me away, and so it was the opposite of persuasive, it was repulsive. Hellfire sermons are powerful to some people, but that’s not the honey that draws this fly into the Church door. No, that message was vinegar. Good behavior driven solely by fear seemed an absurd path to salvation, and once again, seems to make us more like dogs than humans with intellect and free will.
Comedians like George Carlin and the New Atheist writers latch onto that notion of "You will burn in hell for all eternity and your flesh will boil and melt and you will scream forever, but…remember, dear child, that God loves you." Modernity mocks this idea, and just as God has been reduced to an optional Santa Claus, the devil has been reduced to a Halloween costume or horned clown with a pitchfork, to the detriment of millions of people’s faiths.
By luck, I am just dumb enough to have hit bottom without having the terror of a fiery hell. By luck, I found hell. And only then did I return to the Gospels, but this time with proper guidance and a study Bible. Then I found something deeper than that old fear-based motivation of avoiding hell. To become fully awake, I was struck on the head repeatedly, as I had been dense to the meaning of "repent" for most of my life. It means to turn back to God. To turn away from sin. How does someone turn back to God? You just do. You turn your thoughts, your heart, and your mind.
It’s difficult to explain. You can’t turn until you are ready. You can try anytime you like. The old saying of “You can lead a horse to water but can’t make him drink” works well here. You cannot turn until you are ready and listening. Turning does not work until your mind becomes open. Turning sounds so easy from people that have turned already, but for those not ready they will feel like their spine and neck are fused together. Ideally we could all just have Jesus stick his fingers in our ears and say “Be opened,” like he did to to the deaf mute dude in Decapolis. Barring that miracle, we can try to “Be open” by effort, by asking God for willingness to be willing. I have come to believe that this “openness” is the single and only question on the entrance exam to getting accepted into Christianity 101 and starting on the journey of faith.
There’s the Gospel story about the prostitute who is washing Jesus’ feet while he was at a dinner party with the Pharisees. This surely created a scene by her behavior and her very presence in the room. I susp

It's funny that so many people say they'll try anything. "I'll try anything once." They will eat any food, try crossfit, try hot yoga, pilates, therapy, support groups, meditation, fad diets, essential oils, herbal medicine, surgery, intermittent fasting, drugs, mountain climbing, buying boats and cars and RVs and motorcycles, second houses, threesomes, foursomes, every kind of strange sex imaginable, tattoos, piercings, mutilation, more horsepower, more acres, a thousand bottles of wine and whiskey, younger women, older men, hunting exotic animals, deep sea fishing, gossiping, inhalants, designer drugs, cliff-jumping, extreme sports. We will try anything. Anything at all. But we will not try one thing. Many of us will do anything, except for one thing. There is one thing we will not try. We will refuse to try turning to God. We will not try prayer. No way. Not a chance will we try that one thing.
Why?
Because it’s different from all of those other activities. The reason we won’t try it is because of the word control. Because it means letting go of something else. What is that thing we can’t let go of? It’s called the self. Because letting go means we are no longer in charge, no longer in control. We've been told we create the way ahead, we create our own reality. Me. You. I.
I get to be the one who decides how my life plays out. I get to pick all the things. I am in charge.
I used to say: "I'll try anything once." But not prayer or faith, or an honest reading of the Gospels using a study Bible. That I would never try. I would try anything except peering into my own heart and possibly facing the fact that maybe, just maybe, I was wired for God. Hell no, I won't go there. Not there. Anywhere but there. Like Sam-I-Am in Green Eggs and Ham, I will do anything, but not that one thing. No, never. No way to that one thing that could actually help. Absolutely not.
I was too afraid to ask for help, to need God, to want God in my life because it meant that I might be wrong about my wager that God was not real.  
Here’s another saying: "If it doesn't kill you it will make you stronger." We are fooled by our own "strength." We think strength is what we need, when what we need is to admit our weakness in order to be free, in order to be strong. Our human strength quickly fades. Only an illness or an accident, which is one day coming for every one of us, on a day that we do not know, either of these is all it takes to sap our glorious strength. Anyone who exercises regularly and then misses a week of that exercise know how fast muscles atrophy and weaken. Anyone who feels strong today can surely remember the last bout of the flu they fought off where it made them a puddle of weakness.
My social media feed teems with wonderful stories of people overcoming obstacles, striving to be better, hurdling disabilities, and doing amazing things - These are inspiring and courageous stories. I love to read them. Getting a degree, running a marathon, hitting a sales goal, climbing the ladder. Outstanding. There are so many terrific stories of people’s lives. But never, not once, do I see anyone mention God or a blessing or a grace that helped the person achieve that of which they boast. I was the same in my pursuits of writing or triathlons or accolades at work. Always we hear about the power of the person, the drive of the achiever. We are instructed that only the achievers’ grit and skill earned the prize, and maybe some extra motivation or anger came from someone who told the winner they couldn’t do it, so they climbed that mountain to prove those naysayers wrongs. Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, in his Hall of Fame induction speech mentioned the names of those who had snubbed him or denied him along the way. Even in his success, Jordan was holding onto that list of names, using it as motivation to anger him, to drive him, to strive, to win, to achieve. And wow did he ever achieve. In this world, he ha