And, as a result, the real dilemma is that this man who called for help isn't any closer to getting it than he was before he dialed 1-800-DrLaura.   The truth is, he was already struggling with doing what he knew was right or he wouldn't have called.  He already knew that children need both parents after a divorce just as much or more so as they needed them before the divorce.  His problem wasn't that he did not know the difference between right and wrong.  His problem was that he didn't know how navigate the distance between right and wrong in his own life and he was for asking for help.  He didn't get it.  After all, the message, and the only message, is morality.

Not that morality is a message we don't need.  There is good evidence that our culture, as all cultures tend to do, is continuing its ever-downward moral spiral.  But, Billy Graham was telling us that fifty years ago during what most of us would call "the good old days" so it might be hard to tell when we finally hit bottom.  And, the sad truth is that our roaring economy is going to be good for a lot of things.   But, one of them won't be the moral improvement of our culture.   Even a cursory reading of history demonstrates that materially prosperous cultures tend to drift away from their spiritual moorings over time.  So, to have a voice like Dr. Laura's crying in the moral wilderness for an awareness of the right thing and the need to do it is not altogether bad.  It's just not altogether enough.

Knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the ability and passion to do it is like the difference between having an automobile that is in perfect working order with an empty gas tank.  Something my sister learned the hard way in high school.  Dad gave her two dollars a week for gas.  He told her that when that ran out she should could just pull the car over to the curb until the next two dollars came along.  Now, this was back when gasoline was twenty-five cents per gallon so two dollars would go a long way toward filling a tank.  But, sure enough, every now and then toward the end of any given week, you could find my sister's 1957 Ford Fairlane parked on some side street in Brownfield.  It wasn't that the car had broken down.  Everything was in perfect working order.  It was just that the engine had no power because the gas tank was empty.  More people know what is right than do it.  More people want to do right than seem to be able to find the ability to do so.  My guess is that most of us parents would agree that our greatest fear for our children's moral future is not they that they don't know the difference between right and wrong.  Our fear is what they will do about what they know.

Dr. Laura's twentieth century Moses act, though well intended, misses the point by concluding that the message begins and ends with morality.   Giving people the rules is one thing.  Giving them the capacity to live by them is altogether a different issue.  Which is why we have both Old and New Testaments in our Bibles.  As John himself later says in this very same passage, the law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:17)  With Moses the message was morality.  With Jesus it is more.  Jesus has come as the ultimate expression of God's character.  He is the very Word of God in person.  And the message of this word is more than just morality.  It is a message of grace and truth in the form of light and power.

Now, let me say it again.  We need rules and we need people who can help us think clearly about the ever-fuzzier distinction between right and wrong.  But, that is not all we need.  One day, when I was about ten or eleven or so, I was standing in line at the Regal Theater waiting to get into the movie and I started flirting with this girl who was standing in line in front of me.  I guess that's what you would call what I was doing.  Anyway, after she had grown weary of my immature attempts to express pre-adolescent affection and had told me to stop several times she decided to send me a message I couldn't possibly misunderstand and, with her back turned to me, she picked her foot up and slammed her heel into my big toe.  I cannot tell you how badly that hurt.  In fact, during the movie I had to take my shoe off to relieve the pressure and later, at home, my dad had to perform some minor surgery to repair the damage.  Needless to say, I'll have to admit that she had asked me to leave her alone.  After she stomped my toe, I did.   Forever.  It was as if she was saying, "If you want a relationship you are going about it the totally wrong way."  I can almost hear the title of a good country and western song.  "All I Wanted Was To Hold Your Hand And All You Did Was Stomp My Toe."

We need people who help us learn when we are wrong.  But, after all the toe stomping is done, who will help us find our way to what is right and empower us for the journey and pick us up when fall on our way there?  Well, the answer to that question is that the message is Jesus and the messenger is Jesus.  The same writer who said that grace and truth came through Jesus also said, to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.

But, what is this thing about receiving Jesus into our lives anyway?   How do you do that?  Well, I think it's at this point that we need the help that only children can give us.  Jesus did tell us that only those who become like children could enter the Kingdom of God.  So, I keep my eyes on children.  They keep showing me the way to God.

I have struggled since day one with what my personal failures may have done to my children.  I've grieved and cried and lost sleep and gained weight worrying all along whether I have harmed them in any irreparable way because of whatever role I may have played in failing to keep their home unbroken.  I have done my best to do the best I could with what was left of family for my boys.  But, all along I knew there would be nothing I could do to guarantee how they would feel about me or whether they would respect me or love me.  You know, the most painful part about loving someone with all your heart is running the risk of giving your heart away for nothing in return.  Well, one night not long ago, we had gathered on the bed to pray as we do every night before bedtime.  And, in a spontaneous act that I will never forget, Cameron, my youngest, scooted over close to me, as close as he could get, snuggled in tight, put his head on my chest and said for all to hear, "this is my daddy."

I cannot speak for him and I don't know what he was thinking that night that spurred him to say that.  But, what I heard and felt him saying was, "you are more important to me than all your failures.  Our bond is unbroken.  I love you.  No matter what, you will always be my dad."  He gave me what I could never demand, a place in his life.   An openness to grow together.  An opportunity to keep building a relationship that is defined by far more than just the legal designation of father and son.

Somehow, I think that is something like what it means to "receive Jesus" into your life.  To simply open to Him that part of yourself that doesn't always understand but always loves and trusts.  To open yourself to the possibility of a relationship that never ends.

Now, I must be honest, it's not easy all the time.  It is worthy of note that the Good News isn't always good news.  Light and power can be threatening properties.  In Christ man's conscience is awakened.  In Him, the true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.  An awakened conscience is a responsible conscience.  An awakened conscience is not only able to discern the difference between right and wrong it is one empowered and responsible for becoming something other than what it might have been otherwise.  An empowered life and conscience is one responsible for changing.  That's the problem.  Note that the scripture says, He came to what was his own and his own people did not accept him.  Some people would rather die than change.  Christ came and died so that we could change.

When I was growing up, about the time I was learning that if a girl said "no" you were likely to get your toe stomped if you thought she really meant "yes," about that same time in my life I honestly thought that only Baptists were Christians and that only Baptists were going to heaven and that the Methodists and the Democrats would just have to fend for themselves.  In time, Christ's love has changed me.  I have not only come to learn that it is wrong to not love someone just because they are different than you, I have learned that I haven't begun the act of loving until I start defining what is lovable in terms other than how it compares to me.  I have actually begun to learn that as I snuggle closer to Christ His power has filled my heart and given me the capacity to actually love my neighbor as myself.  I can't explain it.  But, I know it is true.  The more I open my heart to Christ, the more I change.  To all who received him . . . he gave power to become . . ..

Well, this past week another $165 million went down the tubes when NASA lost contact with the Mars probe.  It had been sent out to scratch the dirt and sniff the atmosphere of that planet looking for evidence of life and now it's just gone.  Strange, isn't it?  We send multi-million dollar robotic space probes out there looking for life.   We want to know.  Doesn't it raise your curiosity?  Do you think there's life out there?

Sure there is.  And, how do I know?  Not because I went looking for life and found it.  But, because life came looking for me and found me.  In Christ, 2,000 years ago, God came from the Heavens to earth.  And the message was life instead of death, hope instead of despair, light for our darkness and power for our weakness.   Truth and grace!  The message is life and the messenger is Jesus!

Hallelujah!