Cost of convenient truth can be extreme 0

Last month, I was in Las Vegas attending a writing conference for war veterans when I met an old warrior from Utah who introduced himself as a Pulitzer Prize nominee. The claim was odd because I knew I hadn't seen his name on the recent Pulitzer press release.

But neither was he lying.

Like many who make this claim, he simply didn't understand the definition of "nomination." He assumed that since his self-publisher had paid $50 to "submit" his work to the Pulitzer committee, he'd been "nominated." After I briefly explained to him that the words "nominated" and "submitted" are about as far apart as "lotto winner" is from "ticket purchaser," he confessed ignorance.

"That's OK," I said. "You didn't know."

Happy to live with his mistake, he was consoled by the fact the Pulitzer claim had "sold a lot of books." The old vet knew that telling the truth isn't always convenient, but neither is it always profitable.

This was also the lesson learned by a young captain I met during one of my deployments. The young man came to my office to discuss some problems that developed with his new girlfriend during their shared deployment. The girlfriend had recently returned home, and he was anxious to follow her.

Problem No. 1 was that they'd been intimate, and General Order No. 1 forbids sexual contact in a warzone. It is a court-martial offense and punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the UCMJ.

Problem No. 2. Recently she had sent him some photos of her herself — nude photos. The same General Order No. 1 forbids possession of pornographic images.

Problem No. 3. Oh, and did I mention that his girlfriend was married? Adultery is also a court-martial offense.

Furthermore, our commander had declared constantly that crimes committed during deployment would be punishable in the warzone. If discovered, this man was looking at a six-month incarceration in our base brig.

I think I count only four problems, right? Oh, wait, it just gets worse.

The real problem was that his girlfriend's husband had found the photos and was threatening to release them to the commander. See problems 1-4, above.

"What should I do?" he asked.

I wanted to tell him that sometimes stupid just can't be fixed. Instead, I advised him much like I did the old soldier coveting a Pulitzer: "Lead with the truth."

Not wanting to see him in jail, I advised him to call a lawyer. "Tell your commander what happened before the enraged husband squeals."

With that advice, quiet erupted, and he soon left my office.

These incidents remind me of the rich playboy who offers a woman $1,000 for illicit relations.

When the woman indicated she'd be glad to discuss the terms, the playboy countered, "How about $500?"

"Absolutely not! What kind of woman do you think I am?" she asks.

"We've already established what kind of woman you are," the man says. "We're just haggling over your current price."

Like the woman in the parable, the old vet wanted to be truthful, but not if it cost him book sales. The young captain fancied himself an officer, but not if it cost him a lover.

Perhaps these stories prove the cynical adage that everyone has their price, but I suspect you'd take better council from Jesus' question: "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?"
Jesus knew that, at the end of the day, selling out who we are costs us everything.

Spiritual fitness linked to Phsyical fitness

When I entered college in 1975, I never anticipated that I'd expand beyond my 6-foot-1, 149-pound body. But even as my jeans slid from my 29-inch waist, my family obesity genes were gaining traction.

Five years after college, I was hiding 52 additional pounds behind my first pulpit. From that same pulpit, I also hid my insecurity with humor, often joking that fat preachers were so common in my southern upbringing that we hyphenated the word fat-preacher.

After wearing my fat-suit for more than a year, I read a Reader's Digest article, which suggested that if a person could alter their eating pattern by at least 10 percent, it would make a huge difference.

The article was so inspiring that I merged the idea with the biblical principle of tithing and called it my "Caloric Tithe Diet." The diet was an effort to "give back" 10 percent of my calorie intake.

For instance, when I ate a cheeseburger, I'd discard the dressing-soaked top bun. Yes, I still slammed down pizza, but instead of eating five pieces, I ate 4½.

In addition to incremental reductions of bad habits, I increased my good habits by 10 percent. For instance, I stopped searching for the closest parking place. I increased my walking speed by 10 percent and I used elevators only when climbing more than three stories. I also ate 10 percent more fruits and vegetables.

The plan was easy enough, but the results lacked drama. So, whenever I became discouraged, I reminded myself that I didn't gain the weight yesterday, so I wasn't likely to lose it tomorrow.

Nine months after implementing the caloric tithe, I dropped 39 pounds. In fact, I lost too much weight and my doctor ordered me to regain 10 pounds. Ironically, my habits were so well established that it took me a year to regain the weight.

At this point, you may be saying, "Nice story, but I thought this was a spiritual column, not a fitness column."
The truth is that spiritual fitness and physical fitness have a link. For some, overeating is about trying to fill their emptiness or to anesthetize their pain. For some overeating is a narcissistic notion that suggests everything exists to satisfy them.

For me, overeating is my futile attempt to consume my anxiety about things. Overeating is a sensual distraction of my soul that tempts me to believe I deserve more than others.

The Bible calls my spiritual issue, gluttony. Plain and simple, it's my sin and it's a humbling reminder that no mater how thin I appear outside, there is a "big boy" inside screaming to get out. That "big boy" constantly reminds me that I am a sojourner on the Faith Highway and no matter what my current weight, I need to rely on my spiritual guide.

In 2008, after 20 years of weight maintenance, my scales took an upward tip during my deployment to Iraq. Within a year of my return, I'd regained all my weight.

However, what the Air Force helped me gain in the deployed chow hall, they are helping me to lose again. After seven months of their new fitness program and my tithe diet, I achieved a 97.5 percent on my fitness test and placed in the top 25 percent of Air Force personnel. I've returned to below 180 pounds, and as most of my readers know, I've just finished my first half-marathon.

These days, I'm shopping for a new swimsuit because the old one keeps falling down. Wow, I know that's not a picture you expected in a spiritual column.

Views change, God never does

Ten years ago, I met a man in the psychiatric ICU of the hospital where I was serving as a chaplain. The man was in a real crisis as he struggled with his childhood views on how God created the world.

His views were something that a May 2012 Gallop Poll found few Americans will regularly challenge. In fact, the poll found that most people have not revised their views on evolution for 30 years.

Forty six percent believe that God instantly created man in the same form man has had for 10,000 years — a negligible uptick of only 2 percentage points since 1982. On the other side, 15 percent said that man evolved through several beta versions over millions of years and that God played no part in the primordial recipe.

Finally, the remaining 32 percent of us rely on the scriptural wisdom that says "With God, one day is as good as a thousand years …" and that God guided the evolution process over millions of years in what is commonly called "theistic evolution."

While I confess that my position has evolved little since Dr. Patterson's seminary theology course 30 years ago, it's never really given me much of a crisis. At least not in the same way it did for this man in our hospital.

He'd been raised in a fundamentalist Christian home and began his search for answers late in life. Now at 38 years old, his crisis had brought him through scores of libraries in study of philosophy, genetics, and Eastern religions.

But one day, his studies brought him into a conflict between what he learned in Sunday school and what Jacques Cousteau was finding seven miles beneath the sea.

"What should I believe?" he asked me. "My mother can't understand why I'm suddenly questioning every idea I was raised with."

The world of science didn't measure up to his faith. He was caught up in that debate on who created the universe — Big Bang or God. He quite literally couldn't decide who would be his god — science or the unscientific God of his upbringing.

He was in a real dilemma. On the one hand, he'd discovered that science only left him with more questions. That's because the more truth we discover, the more we uncover what we don't know.

On the other hand, he felt a choice for faith was a choice to abandon all he knew for certain.

So, feeling his faith had lied to him, he sought to end it all with a hose on the end of his car's tailpipe. If his daughter had not found him, we'd have never had the discussion that followed.

"It seems to me," I told him, "that science can answer the 'how' questions. Questions like 'How do land masses form?' and 'How big is the universe?'

"But faith can answer my 'who' and 'why' questions like 'Why is man here?' And 'Who put us here?'

When a scientist tries to prove or disprove God, he or she ventures out of his or her expertise. And when theologians try to explain how man came into existence, they, too, cross the boundaries of their expertise.

Noticing the man's countenance begin to shift, I finally suggested that if he continued to limit his faith to the science he knew today, then his god would become a different god tomorrow. And that kind of god quickly becomes irrelevant and extinct.

"Maybe," I ventured, "Science lets us partially glimpse the miracle of God's creation while faith allows us to trust God and not need to know the rest." And perhaps that's why the scriptures suggest, "God is the same yesterday, today and forever."

Scary plane ride had a purpose

The one thing you never want to hear your pilot tell you at 30,000 feet is, "We have a slight problem." Yet, that's exactly what I heard the pilot say about twenty-five years ago during my late night return flight.

His announcement interrupted a conversation I'd begun three hours earlier with my seatmate. Knowing I was a pastor, he confessed how he'd let his family and his spiritual life slip away during his climb up the corporate ladder.

When he wondered aloud if there would ever be a time when he could renew that spiritual connection, I responded with a question.

"Why not renew it now?"

"Now? Here on the plane?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, "God isn't a bit embarrassed."

He told me he'd think about it and we both let conversation migrate elsewhere.

After our finishing our last peanut bag, the pilot made his startling announcement. He said we'd been circling our airport for the last fifteen minutes because an indicator light suggested that our nose landing gear might not be locked.

However, he assured us that emergency vehicles were establishing a greeting party. And with that, the flight attendants reviewed our party favors like oxygen masks and escape slides.

The passengers were fairly chatty for the next ten minutes as my seatmate confessed that he'd had a busy professional life and maybe it was time for him to be thinking more about God.

As we leaned forward in a crash position, I had no doubt that it was time. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an armada of emergency vehicles whizzing past us before we slowed for an uneventful stop.

As the turbines softened and the clapping stopped, my fellow passenger asked me if I thought there was some sort of higher purpose in the two of us traveling together."

I'd like to tell you that I gave him a sage answer, but I was too busy rooting through my carry-on to replace my sweat-soaked shirt. Most of my answer was simply a nervous laugh and "Yeah, well, maybe."

When my wife met me at the gate, we hugged just a bit tighter as she asked about the fire trucks.

"They came to meet our plane." I said.

She bounced a look off me that went into the next county. The thought that she'd nearly seen my plane cartwheel through the local rice fields brought some fairly instant tears between us.

Years have passed since that incident and I can't tell you if my seatmate ever found a "purpose" for that little scare.

The only purpose I can tell you is that it helped me see how I'd been living my life straining to make a future for my young family. I hadn't been thinking about how today was yesterday's future.

I suppose that when you're young you spend a great deal of time living in the future; and when you're old you tend to spend too much time living in the past. The problem with living at the address of "Future" or "Past" is that there is never a way to relive the past, and my plane ride assured me I could never be confident of the future.

So these days, as much as I can, you can find me right here in the present. And as far as I can see, that was the plain purpose of that plane ride.


Norris Burkes is a syndicated columnist, national speaker and author of No Small Miracles. He also serves as an Air National Guard chaplain and is board-certified in the Association of Professional Chaplains. You can call him at 321-549-2500, email him at ask@thechaplain.net, visit his website thechaplain.net or write him at P.O. Box 247, Elk Grove, CA 95759.

Scary plane ride had a purpose

The one thing you never want to hear your pilot tell you at 30,000 feet is, "We have a slight problem." Yet, that's exactly what I heard the pilot say about twenty-five years ago during my late night return flight.

His announcement interrupted a conversation I'd begun three hours earlier with my seatmate. Knowing I was a pastor, he confessed how he'd let his family and his spiritual life slip away during his climb up the corporate ladder.

When he wondered aloud if there would ever be a time when he could renew that spiritual connection, I responded with a question.

"Why not renew it now?"

"Now? Here on the plane?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, "God isn't a bit embarrassed."

He told me he'd think about it and we both let conversation migrate elsewhere.

After our finishing our last peanut bag, the pilot made his startling announcement. He said we'd been circling our airport for the last fifteen minutes because an indicator light suggested that our nose landing gear might not be locked.

However, he assured us that emergency vehicles were establishing a greeting party. And with that, the flight attendants reviewed our party favors like oxygen masks and escape slides.

The passengers were fairly chatty for the next ten minutes as my seatmate confessed that he'd had a busy professional life and maybe it was time for him to be thinking more about God.

As we leaned forward in a crash position, I had no doubt that it was time. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an armada of emergency vehicles whizzing past us before we slowed for an uneventful stop.

As the turbines softened and the clapping stopped, my fellow passenger asked me if I thought there was some sort of higher purpose in the two of us traveling together."

I'd like to tell you that I gave him a sage answer, but I was too busy rooting through my carry-on to replace my sweat-soaked shirt. Most of my answer was simply a nervous laugh and "Yeah, well, maybe."

When my wife met me at the gate, we hugged just a bit tighter as she asked about the fire trucks.

"They came to meet our plane." I said.

She bounced a look off me that went into the next county. The thought that she'd nearly seen my plane cartwheel through the local rice fields brought some fairly instant tears between us.

Years have passed since that incident and I can't tell you if my seatmate ever found a "purpose" for that little scare.

The only purpose I can tell you is that it helped me see how I'd been living my life straining to make a future for my young family. I hadn't been thinking about how today was yesterday's future.

I suppose that when you're young you spend a great deal of time living in the future; and when you're old you tend to spend too much time living in the past. The problem with living at the address of "Future" or "Past" is that there is never a way to relive the past, and my plane ride assured me I could never be confident of the future.

So these days, as much as I can, you can find me right here in the present. And as far as I can see, that was the plain purpose of that plane ride.


Norris Burkes is a syndicated columnist, national speaker and author of No Small Miracles. He also serves as an Air National Guard chaplain and is board-certified in the Association of Professional Chaplains. You can call him at 321-549-2500, email him at ask@thechaplain.net, visit his website thechaplain.net or write him at P.O. Box 247, Elk Grove, CA 95759.