There’s a lady in her late twenties in my small group. This past week she shared how just over a year ago her husband died of cancer. And shortly after that (to further compound the situation), her mom died of cancer.

In our discussion about finding contentment in God, she offered the following wisdom:

I prayed for healing. And the way I figure it, he will either be healed here on Earth or healed in Heaven.

Here is a person who has found contentment in death.

In elementary school, I remember riding the bus to a local Baptist church. I don’t know how long or how regular, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of years and only semi-regularly at best.

But the bottom line was that I didn’t really have much of a church background growing up.

That was until my junior year of high school. I started attending the same Baptist church’s youth group because some of the guys from my tennis team attended and it was fun having something to do.

And plus they had a ping pong table (I’m serious, that was one of the reasons I went).

Although I was there for social reasons, I was also indirectly learning about Christianity and what Jesus was all about.

I learned . . .

• Christians have sex.
• Christians do drugs.
• Christians get drunk.
• Christians like to tell you how much Jesus loves you.

After about a half year of being told about the life transforming capabilities of Jesus and how much Jesus loves me by the same people who did the things above, I had learned all I needed to know about Jesus and Christianity.

Christianity was nothing more than a label people gave themselves.

It was no different than me calling myself a jock or a band nerd.

So after about half a year of a lot of hypocrisy, the ping pong table and social venue wasn’t compelling enough for me to keep going. I had learned all I needed to know about Jesus and it wasn’t worth my time.

When Christianity became a label was the first spiritual milestone I can remember.

And it stuck with me for a couple of years.