Others think something like, “Unlettered bumpkin who believes in a magic man in the sky.”

Still others think Christianity is really just a way for Republicans to claim that their policies  are universally the best for everyone. It’s just a spiritual mask put over an attempt by the people in power to keep those without power forced into cultural line.

And of course, there are the judgmental, preachy, hypocritical canards that are thrown out all the time.

I would like to offer a suggestion: The reason those are the only kinds of Christians many people ever see is because the rest — the overwhelming majority — are busy loving Jesus in a way that no one expects.

A long time ago, I used to run on the cross country and track teams in high school. And in 2006, as I was getting my weight back toward where it used to be in those days, I started to think about running again.

The doctor treating the arthritis in my knees was (and still is) considered the best rheumatologist in Helena. If you live near me and deal with arthritis, you have certainly heard of her. Every doctor who makes a referral for arthritis, refers to her. Her schedule is very full, and one has to wait quite a while to get in.

What I’m trying to say here is, she is universally recognized as the leading local authority.

As I was getting back in shape, I asked her, “If I pull this off, and really lose a lot of weight, do you think I would be able to run again? I mean, really run, not use an elliptical machine, but get out on the street and run?”

“No. I would never recommend that. Once this sets in, the damage is permanent. I would never recommend that you run. You should by all means keep doing the low impact aerobic, but not running.”

That was it. A final answer. No.

Well, I kept up with the low impact aerobic, I had some ups and downs, and along the way I got to know the Lord.

And maybe, I confess, I tried running once or twice. But it really hurt my knees, and I gave it up.

Then one day, I was praying. It was a powerful time of prayer, I was really close to God. And I felt something welling up in me — the holy spirit. It felt like it was filling me up to bursting, like it would pour out. And I thought maybe I was about to speak in tongues or something like that. And then I felt a pain in my knee.

At once I knew what to do, and I reached out to place both hands over my kneecap. I prayed fervently for the lord to heal my knees. I was weeping. And I felt something like a tingling in my knee.

After that, it didn’t hurt so much when I tried to jog.

At around the same time, I took it into my head to apply to the border patrol to become an agent. When they saw my medical history, they required a letter from my rheumatologist addressing whether or not I was able to do the physical tasks required of a border patrol agent.

Including running.

With trepidation, I took the form in to my doctor, and told her that I was applying to the border patrol, and they wanted her to sign a letter about whether or not I could run.

She said, “Of course you can run. That’s not a problem.”

This is the leading local authority on arthritis, who previously told me the damage was permanent, and she would never recommend that I run again.

God heals.

Some of my best miracle stories, I do not yet have the right to tell. But there are a couple I can freely share. Here’s one of my favorites. Only about ten people in the world know it, before now.

In February of last year, I was standing in church. We were singing. And I started to feel a numbness in my fingers, accompanied by a very minor ache.

I ignored it, but it spread and grew worse.

There was a dull ache in my tricep, getting stronger and spreading up my arm. My shoulder began to ache, then numbness in my fingertips spread upward, and soon the ache was spreading into my chest.

By now, most of you probably know the symptoms I am describing — especially the middle-aged men among you. These are classic warning signs of a heart attack.

I was scared, as you might imagine.

I stood there in church, begging Gog for guidance. What should I do? Should I leave church, and go to the hospital? But I don’t have health insurance, and that’s very expensive. What should I do? Maybe it will just go away?

The answer came as a whisper in my head. “Go.”  So I went.

St. Pete’s here in Helena has (or so I am told) an urgent care center in the same area as their emergency room. So I went there thinking to go to the urgent care center, because that seemed like it would be less expensive. But when I got to the hospital, I couldn’t find the so-called urgent care center, so I asked at the desk of the emergency room where that might be.

They asked why I wanted to go, I described my symptoms, and the nurse said, “uh, for that we want you in the emergency room.”

Later on, long after the whole incident was over, I was describing it to my family doctor, who had an intern with her on her rounds that day. The intern’s eyes got wide with fear as I described the symptoms.

I mention those things to drive home the point: it was not all in my head. No medical professional who heard me describe what I was feeling suspected anything other than a heart attack.

So of course, once they got me into the emergency room, I settled uncomfortably into the clutches of modern medical care. Tests now. Tests overnight. Tests tomorrow morning. Come back in a week for some more tests. Run on the treadmill for a stress test. Wear this monitor all day for another test.

Nothing.

No. Thing.

No enzymes indicating a heart attack. No damage to your heart. Your exercise tolerance is actually very high.

Nothing.

There is nothing wrong with your heart.

No doctor has ever given me any explanation for what happened to me. Their answer is literally, “I don’t know.”

I do. In the ensuing months, I had to adapt to markedly different financial circumstances. I had to stop buying a bunch of useless junk that would never satisfy. I had to turn to God for help with my finances.

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the idea of a “clockmaker god.” He just made the universe and started it spinning, and then sits back and watches without getting involved.

You won’t sell me on it. I had the classic symptoms of a widowmaker heart attack. And then, there was nothing.

The protagonist of this true story was shot down over the pacific and survived for seven weeks floating on a raft. A not-particularly-religious man, he wrote off to hallucinations the visions and singing he heard while adrift.

His ordeal at sea ended only when his raft came ashore in Japanese territory. He spent the next years of his life in a hellish prisoner of war camp, tortured regularly, beaten, forced to see and endure things no human being should ever have to see.

Endure he did, though, to the end of the war. And at first, the story of his liberation by the American military and his new life in Los Angeles is joyous. But very soon after the liberation comes the story of the second war — the one we’re all too familiar with today in America, as so many veterans suffer the after-effects of combat.

He began to suffer from what today we would call post-traumatic stress disorder. He became violent. He was always angry.

He became an alcoholic.

His marriage was falling apart. His life began to collapse.

And near the end of the book, a chapter concludes with Zamperini’s life in tatters, his wife ready to leave him, dependent on alcohol, constantly in fights. And I was near tears to read the story of a man who survived so much, only to fall victim to it all in such a delayed fashion. His collapse was near total.

End of chapter. Full stop. And the next chapter begins…

“A young evangelist named Billy Graham got off the plane in Los Angeles.”

That was when I cried, because I knew how the story was going to end. I probably got the exact wording of the sentence wrong. I gave the book to other friends — it’s the kind of story that has to be passed on. But I still remember that moment and smile.

Mighty to save.

At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Perhaps this question is already trite among other believers, and I just missed it. I’m still relatively new at this. But a friend of mine asked it of me recently, and I find it fascinating.

What was he writing?

It wasn’t just some random activity. It was his immediate response, when they asked him what to do with the woman.

It wasn’t unimportant. When they pressed him he stood up from writing, answered them, and immediately went back to writing.

Was it her new name, that no one else knows? (Revelation 2:17)

Was it the name of the man? (If she was caught “in the act” of adultery, there had to be a second partner that they didn’t choose to bring.)

What was he writing?

There’s something about wood heat and a sleeping bag that helps me draw nearer to god. The radiant floorboards and insulation and humidifiers of a modern home make it easy to forget the beauty and power of what god made.

I love the lord, and his creation is beautiful.

He told me my problem right now isn’t the sin in my life, it’s how I deal with the sin. I get ashamed of it, I try to wrench my life and my behavior into the shape I want it in, and I get embarrassed to talk about God. What I should be doing is giving every bit of it to him, instead of trying to carry it myself. If I trust Jesus to have cleaned up every last bit of my sin, why am I trying to tie myself in knots, cleaning up something that’s already been cleaned up?

And then, he wouldn’t let me write about anything else tonight other than about having a beer with Jesus.

I pray that both of them will be strengthened to bear their burdens. I pray that Jesus will be with them and help them. I pray that they’ll be helped to govern according to what God wants to accomplish. I pray that they’ll have a miraculous revelation about life.

There is no authority that doesn’t come from God. God put Moses or David or Solomon in power, and did amazing things for his people through them. God also put Pharoah in power. Just because God puts someone in power doesn’t mean he endorses what they do, but it does mean he intends to accomplish something.

No one can read the bible and take it seriously and want what happened to Pharoah to happen to anyone they know. I can’t imagine the pain of losing a son.

I just pray that whatever God is doing with Barack Obama and Brian Schweitzer, it won’t hurt them any more than the responsibilities they already bear. Winning and losing elections, successes and failures in policy — these are part of the business. And it’s a very rare policy from either one, when I don’t believe it would be best for the country if they failed. But let those be the only harms they suffer. Being used by God for a position of authority is a risky business. I hope he’ll help both men come through it in a way that pleases him.

Since he loves every one of us, I know that the way that pleases him best will also be best for them.

(The exception, of course, are movies like Fireproof and Courageous by that church that makes movies as a ministry. But for mainstream Hollywood, my expectations are low.)

Anyway, Joyful Noise: As a movie, there were definitely some issues. Sometimes major plot stuff just seemed to appear out of thin air with no proper justification. And at first, I thought my worst fears were going to be realized, as the church choir struggles with a desire to sing more “pop” music rather than old fashioned music.

But then I began to notice the filmmakers doing something that was opposite, and appeared to be intentional. Instead of 1) giving us contemporary music to water down the “god” in a movie about a church choir, they 2) started to use the lyrics of popular music to tell us about God.

Maybe I’m amazed at the way you’re with me all the time

Maybe I’m afraid of the way I leave you

Maybe I’m amazed at the way you help me sing my song

You right me when I’m wrong

Maybe I’m amazed at the way I really need you

In the end, the movie was just a story about people for whom God is a central part of their lives. He’s there in fights between mother and daughter, in teenagers learning about love — he’s just there, and all the characters know it and live it.

That makes it a cut above most of what Hollywood produces.

It’s a great challenge to me. I struggle with impatience a lot. Some days there’s a good reason: maybe there’s a lot of work to be done before a big media deadline. Other days there’s no good reason, I just don’t want to sit for 20 minutes listening to someone say stuff that doesn’t really seem to apply to my life.

I realize the same thing again, every time I go through this: There are few things that make a person feel loved better than active listening. It’s not enough to just sit quietly. If I want to make a real difference, I have to maintain eye contact, be able to repeat back what they said in different words, and the other things that go along with placing real value on the things that come from someone’s head or heart.

Most of us probably know someone who will literally talk for half an hour without interruption. If you work in politics, I’m certain you know more than one. I know that I consider them a terrible pest, and fear their calls or visits. Maybe you do too.

Jesus can change that about me. Which is good. Because if a person prattles for half an hour and then sees Jesus in the person listening to them, that’s more valuable than anything else I might have done.