My first kiss was going to be epic.

It was early in the school year, and I had a plan.  Armed with as much courage as a middle schooler could muster, I shared it with some friends at the lockers before school, and much to my surprise, by lunchtime my plan had become theirs. They talked about it extensively over pizza with curled-up pepperoni that doubled as grease pools.  They mapped out the best place and the right time: just after school outside the main building in the courtyard.  I could feel the pressure rising as I left the cafeteria.

They must have sent out invitations, because by the time I got to the designated place, it seemed like “The Kiss” had drawn as much attention as “The Decision” would years later.  The only difference would be my lack of any real talent to take to South Beach.

My Grandma could barely see over the dashboard!

Adding to the growing fear was the fact that my Grandma was picking me up from school that day, and I could see her Dodge Omni, which meant that SHE COULD PROBABLY SEE ME!!  None of this was going according to plan, and when my friends started turning up the heat by telling me to quit being so scared, I closed my eyes, leaned in with quivering lips, and…

…missed.

In fairness to me, she turned her head at the last second, and what was supposed to be an epic kiss on her middle school lips turned into a passionless peck in no-man’s land somewhere between her nose and her eye.

At the time, it was humiliating.  Now, it’s just a funny story about a skinny kid enduring the shame of a failed middle school “romance.”  It’s also a really good picture of how screwy our world is getting.

In case you haven’t noticed, the tolerant are growing increasingly intolerant.

Tony Dungy (yes, THAT Tony Dungy – the one who has been hailed by many as the greatest man to walk the planet since Jesus) is being demonized because he said that he probably wouldn’t have drafted Michael Sam in the NFL draft.  Not because Sam made sure that everyone knew he was gay before the draft, but because Sam wasn’t considered good enough to be drafted by EVERY FREAKIN’ NFL TEAM except one, and even they waited until the draft was almost over before selecting him.

The statement that has gotten Dungy into so much hot water happened during an interview with the Tampa Tribune.  Dungy said that, if he were still coaching today, he wouldn’t have drafted Sam “(n)ot because I don’t believe Michael Sam should have a chance to play, but I wouldn’t want to deal with all of it. It’s not going to be totally smooth…things will happen.”

The “it” that Dungy was referring to is the media circus that is bound to follow Sam wherever he ends up trying to make the team.  Of course, Dungy saying this has turned him into the worst kind of homophobe known to man instead of possibly the best coach known to man.  It has led to vile, hate-filled social media backlash low enough to even accuse Dungy of driving his son to suicide.

You know, just the kind of thing you’d expect from really tolerant people.

It’s funny how quickly the tolerant can turn into playground bullies when you say anything even remotely opposed to what they want you to tolerate.

Need more proof?  Just consider the backlash and outcry raised against the NFL head coach who was quoted saying this: “He seems like a great guy to have on a team, and I’d be tempted to bring him in as our backup. But it’s just not worth dealing with all the stuff that comes with it.”  That coach suffered the same social whipping as one of his colleagues who made this statement: “You don’t want to put up with the circus.”

Oh, wait.  My bad.  There was no social outcry or media frenzy pointing out those coaches.  In fact, they were allowed to remain anonymous.  Why?

Because they were talking about Tim Tebow.

One creates a lynch mob, the other barely a yawn.

And both bring me back to that day outside the middle school when I leaned in for a kiss and missed.

It doesn’t take a neurosurgeon to see the failed connection between faith and culture.  Today, everyone appears to want to connect on a deeper level than just a kiss on the cheek, but the only way to do that is to risk something in order to connect.

Dungy risked something by giving an honest answer.  I risked something by leading with my lips.  The people on the other end of both of those reacted exactly the same: they turned away because they didn’t really want what either of us was offering.

There is a risk in honest conversation, just like the risk of a kiss.  But the reward is a foundation that can support the awkwardness that may follow.  In a culture that preaches the religion of tolerance and acceptance – in other words, a culture that appears to want to “kiss” everything and everyone – we may have forgotten a very simple truth about kisses: they mean something.

They are a sign of a heart and a soul that are intentionally given to the person being kissed, and when you start throwing them out like candy, they stop seeming as important as they should.  It seems odd that Proverbs 24:26 equates an honest answer with a kiss on the lips until you really start to think about how honesty is what all of us really want in our closest relationships, the ones that typically have a lot of kissing.

None of us grew up hoping to fall in love with a liar.  We didn’t include hypocrisy as part of our wedding vows.  I can’t think of a single time that someone I loved lied to me and I was glad they did.

Honesty is at the core of the best relationships, and it will be no different with the best cultures.  Sometimes the apparent acceptance of everything just masks the real rejection of something.  I want to build a life with Wendy (The B99) because she loves me enough to tell me the truth and then stay with me while I work through it.  Michael Sam’s response to Tony Dungy’s honesty was to tweet later that he’s glad Tony Dungy wasn’t his coach.

Really?  You wouldn’t want someone with the character to speak consistently and courageously about tough issues in your corner?  If Sam really means that, then I wonder if he wants to be known more as the first openly gay NFL player than as the greatest late-round find since Tom Brady.

I know this post could easily be seen as “anti-whateveryouloveandthinkIdon’t” by the people who read it, but that’s not the point at all.

The point is that if we really want the truth, we’ll hang in there when the heat rises and we won’t turn away with smokescreens about issues that don’t matter. We’ll be consistent, we’ll be fair, and we’ll be honest.  And while we may not always agree with what is said, we won’t run away from the people who love us enough to tell us what we need to hear, even when we don’t want to hear it.

Until then, we’re just a couple of middle-school kids too afraid to kiss.

Every now and then, culture and faith collide in such a way that it gives the church an opportunity to really stand out and show how following Jesus makes us different.  Sometimes we step up to the plate and knock it out of the park, and sometimes we strike out swinging.

Over the last week, I’m afraid we haven’t even swung.

Two events happened almost simultaneously that got a lot of media attention.  In a span of about 24 hours, Dan Haseltine – the lead singer for the Christian band, Jars of Clay – made some unexpected comments about same-sex marriage and the Bible, and Donald Sterling – the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers (and possibly the most hated owner of all time) – made some racist comments to his girlfriend that she made sure everyone heard.

And then, the world blew up.

Granted, it probably should have, because much of what was said was like a bomb.  It’s not my position that Donald Sterling said anything privately that he hasn’t been known for publicly.  His racist and prejudicial beliefs have been pretty well documented over the years.  And as far as the comments by Haseltine about same-sex marriages and the authority of Scripture?  Well, when the prominent front man for a respected Christian band hints at not caring what the Bible says, that’s as close to Twitter napalm as you’re gonna get.

What really got my attention wasn’t so much what was said (even though it raised some eyebrows), but what happened after what was said. From professional media to bloggers in the basement, people grabbed the keys, fired up the busses and proceeded to throw Don and Dan under them.  And before you start to do the same to me, let me say one more time: I’m not advocating that they shouldn’t be under the bus, but consider for a moment the following statement.

In a drive-by culture, assassination is valued more highly than conversation.

Let me take a minute and unpack that sentence, and then let me tell you why I think it matters.

First, our culture has grown increasingly into what I call a “drive-by” culture.  I’m not speaking about guns and drug thugs, but of talking heads and the way we’ve learned to handle conflict.  There was a day when people could disagree and actually talk about it, but those days are quickly going the way of the dinosaur.  Now it’s a roomful of “experts” spouting opinions and debating with no resolution.  It’s a 140-character missile launch of explosives but no follow-up, a comment on Facebook or a blog without sticking around to answer reasonable arguments to the contrary.

In short, it’s immature people making points when mature people would offer thoughts.  A drive-by culture offers sound bites that bite.  And trust me, it’s an epidemic that isn’t contained to your TV.  People you love and care for – friends, family, coworkers – routinely spout venom and then shrink away before anyone can call them on it.

And that’s why, in their minds, assassination is so much better than conversation.  Assassination kills.  It ends the matter and allows the person with the biggest gun or the last shot to escape without any accountability.  The basement blogger can launch social grenades from a distance and never have to get his hands dirty.  But conversation?  That’s a lot tougher, because conversations require grace, and patience, and a willingness to kill the pride that makes us want to be right.

Not surprisingly, that last sentence sounds a lot like God, doesn’t it?  Of course, God doesn’t have pride like we do, but Jesus proved that God isn’t content to stand off like a snob and simply launch a tirade against us.  In fact, the Bible paints the picture of a God who COULD have assassinated us, maybe even SHOULD have, but instead CHOOSES to have a conversation with us about our sin.

“Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18)

I love that and hate that all at the same time.  I love the fact that God chose to “reason” with me about my sin when He could have just thrown me under the bus, but I hate the fact that His willingness to do so now becomes a reasonable expectation of me towards others, and that’s where I feel that the church has struck out looking when she had the chance to get on base.

I’m not surprised at the backlash toward Sterling.  In fact, I expected nothing less.  I am not a follower of Christ who expects anybody who isn’t following Christ to act as if he or she is.  But I don’t have the option of assassinating the man, because, in His mercy, God sent Jesus to talk with me when He could have kept His distance and just condemned me.  “To whom much is given, much is required.” (Luke 12:48)

What we learned with Donald Sterling is that the world handles hard things with drive-bys and assassinations.  What we SHOULD have learned with Dan Haseltine is that the church handles hard things differently.

But we didn’t.

Almost before you could say “heretic,” the web was filled with posts from fellow believers (I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt) about how the frontman from Jars of Clay had embraced gay marriage and kissed evangelical Christianity good-bye.  Admittedly, when I first read the tweets, I thought about posting, too, but decided to wait, thankfully.  Within a day, Haseltine had posted on his own blog clarifying a lot of what he had said and giving the context behind it.  Of course, when I went back to see how many of the bus drivers from earlier had posted updates with this new information, I found none (in the days since, there have been some updates).

Instead, I found page after page of Google results littered with the casings from the smoking guns held by Christian assassins who were too quick to shoot and too slow to reason.  Sadly, that makes the church a little too much like the world and little too less like the God who calls us to reason, consider, and talk together about hard things.

Conversations don’t ignore the facts, and they don’t bypass consequences. In fact, over the next 2 verses of Isaiah 1, God included in the conversation the positive and negative consequences that await us when the talking is over and the doing begins.  What conversations do accomplish is the opening of a heart, a mind and a life to the possibility of redemption.  They allow the church to point those deserving the worst to a Savior who became the worst in their place.

So could we please, as Christ followers in a drive-by world, put down our guns and pick up the cross, and live in such a way that we talk about Jesus, point people to Jesus, and always remember the grace of Jesus that saved us when He had every right to gun us down?

That is a conversation worth having.

After spending yesterday behind the wheel for well over 9 hours, I got home last night just in time to see North Carolina State choke away a 16 point lead, but not in time to get my Thursday blog posted.  And as frustrated as I was about State not being able to hit free throws at the end of the game to pull off the upset, the truth of the matter is that – if they had won – it would have been an upset.

But when Dayton beat Ohio State, and Harvard beat Cincinnati, and Mercer beat Duke, well, those weren’t just upsets.  Those were the perfect illustration of what may be one of the most peculiar verses in the Bible.

Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom. (Song of Solomon 2:15)

It seems a little weird to find gardening tips in the Bible, yes?  And then to think that somehow it can apply to March Madness may seem even odder, right?  But stop and think about this: it’s never really the BIG THINGS that get us, is it?  Isn’t it almost always the LITTLE THINGS that trip us up?

This is a principle that applies to so many areas in life, and every time March Madness rolls around and the country jumps on the bandwagon of the latest version of “the little engine that could,” I think of this verse, because of Duke or OSU or Cincy had paid attention to the little foxes, they may still be in the hunt for a national championship.

Consider the following scenarios that I’m pretty sure you would say a BIG FAT NO to:

• Being asked to steal ONE MILLION DOLLARS from the Federal Reserve.
• Waving goodbye to your CRYING WIFE AND KIDS as they watch you jump into a sports car and speed off to a new life with a younger woman.
• Knocking on your neighbor’s front door and then BLOWING HIS HEAD OFF with a shotgun blast when he opens it.

Not only would we all say a hearty NO to those situations, we probably wouldn’t really even be tempted to say YES.

But what about a LITTLE WHITE LIE on your TAX RETURN?  Or a QUICK PEEK at a REVEALING IMAGE of a swimsuit model?  Or some JUICY GOSSIP about what your NEIGHBOR DID?

So many people say yes to those situations, and even if they don’t ACTUALLY DO them, they’re A LOT MORE TEMPTED than they would have been in the first ones.

The reason is simple: it’s easy to defend against the big attack because we make sure our guard is up.  But the smaller ones?  The little foxes?  The Mercers and the Harvards and the Daytons?  Just like Duke, Ohio State and Cincinnati, we let our guard down on the small ones, and the results are so often disastrous.

Here’s the bottom line that we all need to remember.  Long before there was Joe Lunardi and Bracketology and Cinderalla stories, God knew how the real game would play out.  He knew that we would look to him for the BIG THINGS, and yet never bother to ask him to help us with the LITTLE THINGS.

Sure, he’ll be there to help you find a job when you’re UNEMPLOYED, but if you trust him and ask him to help you develop patience, perhaps you’d find him helping you KEEP THE JOB YOU ALREADY HAVE even though it drives you crazy some days.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

The guy who wrote that was one of the guys that hung with Jesus A LOT.  The more he was around Jesus, the more he started to realize that he needed to have Jesus close to him in EVERY SITUATION, whether it was a BIG TRIAL or a LITTLE PILE.

So do we.

Want to make sure that your life doesn’t end up looking like Duke or Ohio State or Cincy?  Are you ready to stop losing out on BIG OPPORTUNITIES because you didn’t take care of LITTLE RESPONSIBILITIES?

Stop only asking God for help when you face the BIG GIANTS, and start letting him help you with the LITTLE FOXES, too.