Christians know why Jesus had to die. Substitutionary atonement. Propitiation for sin. Payment for the debt we have incurred through willful disobedience.

Read just about any book of the New Testament and you’ll find plenty of Biblical backing for these concepts. For example, 1 Peter 2:24 tells us, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”

One of the most memorable emails I’ve received in my work as a journalist was from someone unhappy about a story I wrote on climate change. The reader was blunt. “I can’t decide,” he wrote, “whether you’re evil—or an idiot.” 

I confess I was more amused than angered by this email. And we ended up having a cordial exchange when I responded to the reader’s concerns. In the end, he told me he had decided I wasn’t evil—probably just an idiot—but only in the classic sense of the word, which means “uninformed.”

Last week I drove six hours to my hometown to convert my elderly aunt and to get an éclair from Wright’s Farm. I accomplished the latter, am uncertain about the former. It was a single sentence in our pastor’s sermon that broke my mental stalemate about the wisdom of such a trip: “Take a risk,” he said. 

It’s been rain-storming a lot here in Los Angeles. I’m sure the dear weather-hardened folks in the Midwest are rolling their eyes at this Southern Californian princess, but hey, LA does get pretty nasty when it rains. The lightest drizzle can screech traffic to a halt, blare “flash floods” alarms on our cell phones, and blow a flu epidemic across our very pampered immune systems. Remember: Our “winters” are sunny 63-degree days with occasional showers if we’re lucky. Anything lower than 70 degrees, and you see people lugging out their parkas, wool sweaters, and Ugg boots. 

Now that you’ve got your W-2 form in hand but are feeling increasingly guilty that you haven’t got around to your tax return yet (you still have two months to go!), take a fresh look at one of the Bible’s most famous passages about taxes—Matthew 22:15-22.

Except that I’d like to suggest here, as I have from time to time, that when Jesus delivered His short “Render unto Caesar” speech, He had something other than taxes or church-state relations in mind.

After a weather related stay of execution, the Tappan Zee Bridge on the Hudson River 25 miles north of Manhattan was dispatched on Jan. 15 by explosive charges courtesy of the Controlled Demolition Company. 

It’s pretty hard to remember something you didn’t know in the first place. That fact could, sooner or later, put a lot of people in jeopardy when they come face to face with God.

God tells us repeatedly in the Bible to remember His mighty acts. That involves two crucial steps: You have to know the acts themselves. And you have to recognize them as coming from God.