It Takes More Faith Not To Believe

I went to Israel in 1976.  Bombings could be heard on the Golan Heights.  I really don’t remember being afraid, as a long-haired, curious, adventuresome fifteen-year-old.  I do remember profound moments and memories. One such memory occurred outside the place traditionally believed to be the empty tomb—the one Jesus borrowed for a couple of nights.

Even as a kid, I remember thinking that the empty tomb really is the crux of my faith.  Either Jesus came back to life after the crucifixion or He didn’t.  If He didn’t, then all I believed about God and the central truths of Christianity were moot.

However, if He DID raise from the dead, then I had to contend with all His claims, all His promises, and His call on my life to follow Him. From the eyewitnesses who saw Him raised, to the marked change in the lives of those to whom He appeared, there are more rational reasons to believe in the resurrection than not.  Actually, when one really examines the evidence, it takes more faith NOT to believe than to believe.

Through my life, I have contended with this man, Jesus. His claims have held an enchantment and attraction for me.  His promises have sustained me.  My hope for help in this life and the promise of a life to come have been anchors for my faith.

And this whole idea of obeying Him, following Him, enjoying a relationship based on love and commitment…that one has been a process.  There have been long, long seasons where my love for Him and commitment to Him have been strong and consistent.  My love and commitment could be seen in my obedience to His commands and to what I believed He was asking me to do with my life.

We enjoyed a relationship—Jesus and me.  He’d speak through the thoughts in my mind, a tugging on my heart, instruction from the Bible, the counsel of godly friends.  And I would talk to Him in prayer.

Juxtaposed to my years of commitment and love for Him, have been the erratic times of love for myself and commitment to what I wanted to do.  Stark contrasts.

One such contrast was in the area of confidence through difficulties.  When I was living for me and living my way, all the confidence I had was all that I could muster.  It was a confidence based on my strengths, my intelligence, my abilities.  When those characteristics ran thin, my confidence plummeted.  Why?  Because my abilities  and strengths and my intelligence had limits.

On the other hand, when I was living for Jesus, in loving commitment, I had more confidence.  Why?  Because I had the advantage of His strength and His abilities.

For example:  If He can raise from the dead, He certainly can handle any challenge that comes my way.  At the resurrection, He proved that He can make a way, when there seems to be ‘no way.’  At those times in life when I look at the circumstances and conclude:  “there is just NO way!”   my confidence can remain high because the resurrection proved Jesus can make a way.

Standing there at the empty tomb in 1976, I came to realize that the resurrection really is the basis for so much of my faith.

Brad Johnson has been in the ministry for more than 30 years. He is currently a Starbucks barista and heads up lifechangecommunity.org.

Just for fun, I thought I would share with you a day of eating in the life of a food writer, yours truly, the Curious Peanut, who loves to eat well, yet cares about good nutrition. I have decided to use June 16, 2009, as my example, since it offers an excellent peek into how I usually eat.

As dull as it sounds, I tend to eat the same thing for breakfast most days, since it’s healthy and keeps the calories in check. I always start with a mug of coffee, which I make after an hour of exercise and a shower. I was a Peet’s Coffee Top Blend fan, until the company stopped making the blend. When I couldn’t find a tasty substitute, I started fiddling around with different combinations from Starbucks and became hooked on a mixture of half Sumatra Decaf and half Gold Coast, which the store blends and grinds at “7” for filter drip. The resulting brew has a rich, syrupy boldness, which I temper with a splash of evaporated milk, less fatty than half-and-half, but just as creamy.

Next comes a piece of fruit—whatever is in season—and a handful of peanuts. (Surprise, I adore peanuts!) You can’t believe how fabulous these roasted legumes taste with coffee (peanuts actually are not nuts, but a legume, like peas). The bitterness of the coffee cuts the richness of the nutty bits, which in turn, soften the acids in the coffee. I highly recommend it.

On this particular day, instead of eating a piece of fruit, I made a vibrant fruit salad for myself and my husband. I currently am writing a story for the October 2009 issue of Shape magazine on six top fruits and vegetables that fight cancer. All the research I have done has reminded me that the more fruits and vegetables you can eat a day the better. In fact, eating a huge variety of produce each day is key because red, yellow, green, blue, and orange fruits and vegetables all contain different and very valuable vitamins, minerals, and disease-fighting compounds. So, based on all this renewed knowledge, I filled our fruit bowl with cut-up mango, pineapple, kiwi, and some thawed, organic wild blueberries from the freezer (which were about to suffer freezer burn and I wanted to use up).

Around 1pm, after spending the morning writing about the cancer-fighting benefits of Swiss chard and bok choy, I made a salad. I usually eat a salad for lunch, often arugula topped with shredded carrot, some chopped fennel, some toasted nuts or seeds, like pumpkin seeds, a handful of dried fruit, such as golden raisins, and half an apple, orange or pear, and a drizzle of soy. I don’t add any oil because the nuts and seeds provide the healthy fat. On this day, however, I simply spooned the previous night’s dinner over a bed of arugula. The dinner was a big, warm salad made from arugula (yes, I love arugula) topped with celery, roasted cauliflower florets, sautéed shrimp, chopped green olives, fresh lemon juice, olive oil, grated Parmesan cheese and some chopped chives and oregano from my garden,. It made a quick, delectable lunch. For added protein (since there was only one shrimp in my leftovers), I had a few rice crackers topped with almond cheese melted in the microwave. I discovered these wafer-thin rice crackers in Whole Foods when I was looking for a cracker to serve my friend, Nancy, who is gluten intolerant. At only 10 calories a piece, these little crisps make a nifty low-calorie raft for the “cheese.” I hit upon the almond cheese one day at Whole Foods when I was looking for a soy cheese alternative. The almond cheese—I love the sharp cheddar—tastes very good, if you suspend any expectation that it’s going to taste like real cheese. The almond “cheddar” has a nice savory flavor and, most important, delivers that satisfying, gooey, rich mouth-feel. Almond cheese contains very little fat, no cholesterol, and lots of protein. If you haven’t tried it, I suggest giving it a whirl.

Riding high on my Shape article’s push to load up on produce, I had an apple for dessert. Lately, Whole Foods has been selling organic Fuji apples, which, despite having been in cold storage since the fall, have a lovely, crisp snap. Then, because I was really getting into my Shape story, I had a big mug of plain green tea for dessert. Having lived in Japan, I have tins of loose green tea sitting around the house. Experts have found that green tea is a powerful weapon against cancer, so I have recently decided to drink a cup every day after lunch, instead of my usual black tea with skim milk. I recommend the loose green leaves over bag teas, since the leaves have a sweeter, grassier flavor. High-quality Japanese green tea doesn’t taste bitter.

Around 3pm, all that healthy eating wore off. I wanted something sweet and preferably chocolate. I tried to quell the urge with a few chunks of Trader Joe’s black licorice ropes, which are really tasty, but didn’t do the trick. So, I helped myself to some Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips, which I always have on hand to add to cookies (you never know when an urge for homemade chocolate chip cookies will strike.) If you’ve ever seen those chips, you know how big they are. I must have had at least twenty. Yum!

Around 6pm, I headed out to buy ingredients for a low-fat  recipe I needed to test for the August-September 2010 issue of Cooking Pleasures, a subscription-only, national food magazine based in Minnesota. For every food article I write, I develop and test all my own recipes. Because I’d eaten all those chocolate chips, I decided to ride my bike to the market, instead of drive. It was a gorgeous, warm, golden evening, so I pedaled the long way to the market, about an eight-mile trip in all.

At Whole Foods, I found the ground bison (also called buffalo) that I needed for our  Smokey Bison Burgers, along with all the additions necessary to season and moisten the meat: whole-grain bread (to grind into crumbs to lighten the patties); scallions, smoked paprika; garlic; low-fat cheddar cheese; and barbecue sauce. I also picked up a bunch of organic asparagus to steam and serve plain as a side dish, along with a bunch of organic spinach to sauté in olive oil with minced garlic. Because we love vegetables, I usually serve at least two veggies with our dinner. And, I do try to buy organic, whenever possible.

We grilled the burgers, which tasted fantastic! Bison meat contains much less fat and cholesterol than beef, yet has the same minerally, sweet flavor. Instead of fluffy, white buns, which have little nutritional value, we put the burgers on fiber-rich toasted whole-wheat English muffins and topped them with sliced tomatoes and arugula (I know, I went overboard). For dessert, we had some locally-grown strawberries, simply rinsed and eaten plain. We also had a sliver of this chewy, honey-sweetened dried fruit and nut chocolate torte that I had recently made for a wine and cheese tasting story I’m working on for the November-December 2009 issue of Vegetarian Times.

While my work clearly influences what we eat, we still would choose a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins (mainly seafood and beans, since we don’t eat much meat), even if I were not a food writer. We simply love those kinds of ingredients and they make us feel good. But, as you can tell, we don’t deny ourselves either—we eat bread, drink wine, enjoy real cheese, chocolate, and sweets. Life is too short to miss out on such pleasures. As my husband so often reminds me, “Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

Succulents, A Green  

Alternative to Cut Flowers

With minimal effort you can’t go wrong with arranging succulents

You can use any type of vessel from teapots to old baking pans

I found this succulant on etsy.Fun Idea!

This eco-friendly succulent wreath can be ordered from Vive Terra and needs watering only every 3-10 weeks. The succulents include water-saving crassia, lichen and other unique varieties.

My family has recently surfaced from what seems like a plague of sorts. It started with a major home improvement – a floor transplant—and ended with pink eye. Between, there have been lots of other interesting events. Be thankful you’re not my BFF because then I’d have to bore you with all the gory details. Since the house is half put together, the humans are on the mend and the IRS is no longer sending us little notices, I can find time and my desk in order to post. This is something I wanted to post at the beginning of the month, but oh well. If you’ve been keeping up with Ex/Urb you know that our current feature interview is with Brad Johnson, the former pastor of a suburban megachurch who is now employed as a Starbucks barista. Brad was what I’d call locally famous here in the NW ‘burbs of Los Angeles. He had an affair, his family was devastated and he stepped down from his church post. Many people (including my dear husband) would say, “Yeah, whatever.” But if you read Brad’s interview you know that it isn’t about the details of his affair or some confessional account of what happened. It’s an interview about spirituality and even redemption. Okay, and it also satisfies some curiosity as to why he’s working at Starbucks. But let’s get back to the higher ground. It seems to me that lately many of us are questioning our faith. In tough times maybe this is par for the course. I know in the past few months whether I pick up the New Yorker and come across an article on Ian McEwan and how he now agrees with Christopher Hitchens that God is not great or whether I check my email and find a friend has sent me a link to a  Nightline Face Off on whether the devil exists, spiritual questioning is all around. In fact, I remember reading a few months ago about a survey concluding there are fewer “believers” in the U.S. now than at any other time. The poll, The American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College in Hartford, CT, found that 75 percent of Americans now call themselves Christian. In 1990, the figure was 86 percent. When I mentioned this to a friend recently, he called it a Bush backlash. Maybe.

At my house, we’re always interested in ideas about faith. My husband rented Bill Maher’s documentary Religulous some nights ago. After I watched it I spoke with my friend Steph, who was once one of Pastor Brad’s church members and is now sort of wondering about all things spiritual.  I told her how I felt after watching Religulous, which was that while many of Maher’s ideas I found interesting– and some I found extremely enlightening — something bothered me. Maher came off as picking on the least articulate believers. It’s a low blow, in my opinion, for a slick, smart television dude to ask a bunch of truckers who attend church in a trailer beside a roadside diner to defend their religion. Why didn’t he do more interviews of people like those at, say, The Harvard Divinity School? He seemed to give very little footage to really smart and studied believers. Nonetheless, as I said, Maher made some good points. Steph put it in perspective, though. She said, “I don’t want to watch Religulous. Right now I’m looking for reasons to believe — not reasons not to believe.” I think with the state of the world right now, that’s true for many of us (unless you’ve already sided with Hitchens et al).

I have a recommendation for those of you like Steph and myself who are always on the lookout for reasons to have faith in all varieties of ways. I recently came across  10 Things Your Minister Wants To Tell You (but can’t because he needs the job) by Reverend Oliver “Buzz” Thomas. Actually, I first checked out the audio version at my library. I don’t really have a minister but I wanted to hear what this Buzz guy thought my minister would tell me if I did have one and if he didn’t need to keep his job. Thomas is from Tennessee so sometimes his voice reminded me of Bill Clinton’s. Arkansas and Tennessee are close enough to share twangs and drawls, I guess. Later, I went back to the library and checked out the book, which is a very slim volume. I learned from the jacket cover that the good Reverend Thomas is a Baptist minister and constitutional lawyer. From his photo, I see he’s also kind of hot (married for nearly 30 years, father of two). I now know that some theologians have criticized the book as too glib but I’m not a theologian. In the book, Thomas addresses many of the most serious issues that keep us from believing. For example, is God really against homosexuality? Does God say women should be subservient to men? How do you please God? I liked it all but the chapter on homosexuality I found most interesting. Many of us hear so-called religious people say they’re not for gay marriage or that they don’t “condone” homosexuality because it’s a sin. Thomas explains that the book of Leviticus does mention homosexuality in an unfavorable way but also “Leviticus is filled with laws imposing the death penalty on everything from eating catfish to sassing your parents.” Thomas rightly says that if we decide homosexuality is wrong based on Leviticus, we must also decide eating catfish and a bunch of other crazy stuff is also wrong.

He also writes about how science shouldn’t be pitted against religion, how so  often the Bible isn’t translated well and how to live a right life.  My fave quote Thomas offered, though, is at the end of chapter 5 and comes from the theologian Martin Luther: Make peace with God and sin on bravely.

I take that as meaning make peace with religion. And I think maybe that isn’t a bad manifesto. Stop wondering, sin on bravely. What else can mere humans do?

My partner Mike likes cars. To be honest, he loves cars. He grew up in L.A. When the temperature heats up, there’s no place he’d rather be than on the boulevard of cars in Van Nuys, test driving Audis and BMWs and Infinities. On hot days like that, my thoughts turn to the beach with a cool breeze blowing off the ocean. While he’s dreaming of a revving engine, and ever more ways of spewing carbon into the skies above LA, I’m thinking of checking the “Heal the Bay” water quality report online and body surfing in three-foot swells.

Mike likes to lease cars, very expensive cars. I constantly tease him that he thinks “The car is the temple of the soul.” My father also loved cars, he bought a new one every two years. This was the sixties, and he drove American cars. He was a traveling salesman per se. Actually, he sold small group health insurance predominantly to cheese factories in central Wisconsin where I grew up. (a very lucrative business as you might have guessed).

My father said that he couldn’t be stuck on a country road on a cold January day in below zero temps in a broken down car. And, at that time, American cars were not entirely reliable beyond a certain mileage, so he got a new car when the old one clocked in at around 30,000 miles or so. My father said he would never be caught dead in a Ford. I currently drive a Ford Escape.

Last fourth of July I finally talked Mike into going to Venice beach for a skate and a swim before watching fireworks. He reluctantly agreed. On the way west on the 10, I noticed blue smoke billowing out of my tail pipe. “What’s that?” I asked Mike as I drove, “Blue smoke,” he said. “Blue smoke coming out of your tail pipe because you drive a Ford, and Fords are cheap.” So much for a clinical analysis of the problem. Within two miles my gas pedal wasn’t working and I was calling AAA for a tow back to my mechanic. It turns out a piece of metal had punctured my radiator, and leaked all the transmission fluid out of my engine. Had I driven another mile or two I would have ruined the engine. Thank god I didn’t. That car is paid for and I hope to drive it for another ten years. I told Mike I thought he’d cursed my Ford to get out of going to the beach with me. He looked at me with well-deserved disdain.

At that time Mike was leasing an Infinity FX 45. I called it the “Paycheck Incinerator.” A nice looking car, but not, shall we say, fuel efficient or cost-effective. Thirteen miles to the gallon in the city, and 17 miles to the gallon on the highway. He loved it. Built-in Navigation, sun roof, leather seats. A real head-turner on the highway. We usually took it out around town on weekends when we visited friends. But any time we needed to haul something, including the dog, we ended up in the trusty Ford.

Mike’s lease was due to expire this July 1 — a day I had anxiously anticipated for three years. I had in my mind decided I would do whatever necessary to talk him into a reasonably priced mid-sized car that he would purchase, not lease.

Mike usually starts shopping for cars about a year or two before he needs to get a new one. Late at night I peer into his office and see side-by-side browser screens on his computer while he’s comparing one model to the next online. When I try and talk about other subjects, he asks me if I like the lines on the BMWs better than the lines on the Audi. I tell him I don’t really care. This, in his eyes, means I may not have a completely developed soul.

Due to the current economy, and everyone’s lack of confidence, including Mike’s, he started looking at cars that cost less than $700 a month to lease. This started to make me optimistic. But I pleaded with him to purchase, not lease, and “Drive it ’til it dies.” This does not appeal to him. Driving a car ’till it’s death is not sexy. Looking at new cars is sexy.

Mike considered leasing a Subaru station wagon. When we go skiing there’s always a plethora of young, hip, athletic people tooling up snowy mountain roads in these vehicles. This by itself makes them wholly appealing to anyone who connects image to their vehicle. Mike started telling everyone we knew he was going to drive a Subaru, and suddenly the feedback was not so good. “Soccer Mom car,” they all said (not that he dislikes soccer moms, but it’s not what you want to be called). “Ugly to look at too,” one friend said. He weathered the criticism, buckled down, and went to a dealership in Santa Monica and negotiated what was a reasonable lease into something more expensive. What was going to be $219 a month lease now turned into $469 a month. That’s what happens when you go from a basic four-cylinder vehicle to a fully loaded six-cylinder vehicle. This got me to thinking….

I said “Hey, remember when we looked at the Nissan Altimas last year? They were a pretty good drive and we both liked them better than the more pedestrian Camrys and Accords. Maybe we should drive one before you sign your Subaru lease.” He agreed, so we drove to our local Nissan dealer and test drove a stripped down four cylinder Altima. “A nice car he said, but there’s no extra options, what’s the point? I need a six cylinder with a sun roof, navigation, satellite radio, leather seats, dual climate control, and one touch windows.” These options turn a reasonably priced car into a reasonably expensive car. So, we hit a wall, went home for lunch, and he called another Nissan dealer who had a vehicle he thought he might like and we headed out  to test drive it.

The minute we stepped one foot onto the Nissan lot, a salesman pointed at an Altima and said “I’m getting rid of this for only $21,000 today, have a look.” Mike looked in the interior and said he really liked the color, as well as the exterior too. I looked at the dealer’s sticker and it said it was a hybrid.

Wow, a hybrid! How cool would that be to talk Mike into a hybrid? But I know Mike, and I knew trying to convince him of anything would backfire. So zip my lip I did while that little four cylinder engine zipped us around surface streets and the freeway. “What pep this little engine has!” he said. The salesman reassured him that it had more horsepower than the standard four-cylinder.

So as you may have guessed, on that day, a person who once considered “sensible” to be a dirty word, bought a hybrid, which is truly sensible. No questions asked. Wow, what good engineering will do to make the planet a little greener, and cleaner! And, to Mike’s surprise, he’s finding out from friends and family there’s also status in driving a hybrid. Who knew?