Milk is nice... I'd like a burger.

I bet if I told you that I seriously believed that Voodoo could kill people, you'd wonder how on earth I was allowed to write things and still consider myself a Christian. After all, Voodoo is just witchcraft and can't possibly work, right? I mean, all those little dolls with pins and junk, needing a hair or something from someone's body, that's surely impossible, because God said so, right?

Well, actually, Voodoo can kill people. Sometimes. I'll explain why in a minute.

The more pressing matter is this - what did that statement just do to you?

You've just heard a Christian author claim that people can die to Voodoo, and also claim that he could prove it.

Here's a guy who has written all this stuff that you probably agree with (at least part of it), and now he's sitting here telling you that voodoo can kill people? You may be wondering, "If he can claim that, what does that say about his faith? And if his faith is terrible, then what does that say about mine?"

It's a common dilemma that I think the vast majority of churchgoers face in this day and age. Many - I'd even argue most - people who go to church just show up, listen to the pastor, take everything that he says as the absolute truth about the matter, and go no further. If this was a parable, they'd be considered the seeds that fell on the rocks (Matthew 13:21-22). So what happens to them when this paragon of righteousness, the embodiment of their faith and everything that they believe, does something stupid, and ruins themselves?

I can tell you what happens.

A church down the street from my house faced this situation. They had a decent-sized congregation, an active youth ministry, and everything was going rather well... until their pastor ran off with an 18-year old girl from the youth group, leaving behind a wife and two kids and an entire congregation of people who lacked a solid foundation of faith.

Their attendance bombed. Driving past their church on the way to my own, I would see (at times) only a literal handful of cars in the parking lot on Sunday morning.

Now, it's possible that some people stopped coming just because they didn't have a consistent pastor anymore, and it's possible that some people stopped coming because they were "upset with how the church handled the whole situation," and it's possible that some people just started going to other churches, but does it really seem likely that at least 100 families would just pack up and leave, yet keep their spiritual walk completely intact? I haven't done any interviews with anyone who was in the church for that incident, but I sincerely doubt that they're all ok.

It's a shame, really, but not just because a supposed man of God just destroyed his family.

The people in that church who lost their faith due to the actions of a single man are people who will have missed out on countless weeks, months, or years of ministering to those around them because their roots were not firm. The long-term implications of this are massive. Imagine if one person way back in the beginning of the Church had decided that he didn't really believe any of it, and that there had to have been some earthly explanation for what happened? He may have only failed to witness to 50 people before he died, but how many people would they have witnessed to, and how many would their new believers have witnessed to, and so on?

It breaks my heart to hear about people who have decided that they no longer believe what they used to claim to love. Unfortunately, today's Christianity doesn't truly grasp the gravity of the situation.

Pastors are great people to know - I highly recommend that if you don't know at least two by a first-name basis that you go find some to meet - but believing in a religion because a pastor told you to is a terrible way to believe. Believing because someone told you that it was good or because someone said you'd go to Hell if you didn't or because it's the trendy thing to do in your town isn't even worthy of being called a true belief.

By the way, that thing about voodoo? Totally true. When people who truly believe in Voodoo magic get cursed by a witchdoctor, their sympathetic nervous system goes into overdrive - basically, their entire body goes hyperactive, doing way more than it should ever do. To compensate, the parasympathetic nervous system slows everything down. In some cases, the parasympathetic nervous system actually slows down the body enough that the heart stops, and the individual dies. Crazy, huh?

Anyway, back to the point.

Consider Christianity a profession. For some people it is, for others it's not, but for the sake of the point, assume that Christianity is something that you honestly want to do for your whole life, like psychology or quantum physics or dentistry something else absolutely fascinating. Assume that you plan to be successful in the field of Christianity, make a living, and support the people that you love with what you reap from your profession.

Logically, if you're serious about pursuing this choice, you'll do everything you can to learn about it. You'll buy all the required reading, you'll dig through it constantly in order to find new things to learn, you'll share what you've just found out with people who probably don't care but oblige you anyway because they can tell that you're passionate about this field...

...does this sound like the Christian faith today?

Write the answer next to that line, please.

The answer is, "No, it doesn't." It might not even sound like your own faith. I'll confess, up until fairly recently it didn't even sound like mine.

As Christians, it is our duty to spread the Good News of the Resurrection to everyone that we possibly can (Matthew 28:16-20), but how can we honestly expect to do that if we can't even commit to learning what we're supposed to be teaching, and can't bother to live like we actually care about our message? It'd be like a first-year pre-med student attempting to instruct a random passer-by in the fine art of neurosurgery, or a high schooler who just took an Advanced Psychology class attempting to give a dissertation on the finer points of Freud (a pretty important psychologist), We don't assume that someone who lacks the basic knowledge of brushing their teeth can properly perform a root canal on us, why should we expect that we can be proper witnesses for Christ if the only time that we open our Bibles is on Sunday (if even then - after all, the words might be on the big-screen, so you don't even have to bring your Bible!)?

Paul writes about this in Hebrews 5:11-6:3 and 1 Corinthians 3. He wants so badly to keep instructing people, but he can't, because they don't even have a firm grasp on the basic knowledge that they already should know!

It is vital that Christians base their faith not on the words of a faulty, mortal pastor, but on the truth that is Jesus (1 Corinthians 3:10-11). A proper foundation is the key to a sturdy building (Matthew 7:24-27), and the only way to gain a proper foundation is to ensure that Jesus is the center of your life, of your thoughts, and of your actions.

How convenient is it, then, that not only is Jesus supposed to be the foundation (and cornerstone) for our faith, but that the most efficient way to seek Him is through His self (John 1:1-5, 1:14; )?

It's stressed constantly in church that Bible study is important, that prayer is important, and so on, but the reasons for this are often glossed over with pretty, Churchy terms, and as a result, tend to roll off the backs of those who already consider themselves good Christians. The thought that always went through my head was "I don't really need to read, I know it good enough anyway."

That changes when you're proven wrong by an atheist.

I spend a great deal of time interacting with people on various forums over the internet, and it's honestly been a blessing - I never realized how completely ignorant I was about what I believed until I was confronted by someone who knew very strongly what they believed, and it wasn't what I had been raised.

I got demolished, to put it politely.

That's what happens when you don't have any roots.

Since my mom is a gardener, I've had a bit of experience with trees - planting, uprooting, and the like. One time, we planted a tree out front, and it died within a year. It then became my job, as the only male who was at home when Mom finally decided that the tree needed to come up, to pull it out of the ground. Keep in mind, this tree hadn't even been there for a year.

It was one of the most physically challenging things I'd ever done. Even after so short of a time, the tree had already begun poking out of the little sod cylinder that it had been purchased in and started setting its roots in the hard Texas soil. I finally got it out, with help from a shovel or two and a sister or three of mine, but it took quite a bit longer than I'd expected.

If you've never seen pictures of trees that have been ripped up after a tornado hits, I recommend finding some. They're absolutely incredible - sometimes, entire root systems will be just sitting above the ground, bits of mud and dirt caked all over. Those roots are why trees don't fall over unless something absolutely, impossibly powerful comes along. In order for a fully-grown tree to be moved from its place, something almost supernatural has to occur.

This is a rather appropriate metaphor for how our faith should be.

When you first buy a tree, it comes in a plastic base filled with some form of nutritious dirt. It can survive in this little plastic shell for a while, but eventually it will suck all the nutrients out of the dirt and it will die. You can't avoid it. If you want your tree to grow, you have to take it out of the plastic base and plant it the appropriate depth in the dirt.

If you want your faith to grow, you have to take it out of the plastic shell of the Sunday morning sermons and the church building and plant it in Jesus. If you don't, it will be unable to take root in the truth that is Jesus, and it will die. If you leave your faith in the little plastic bin, anyone will be able to come along, take it, and plant it somewhere that it doesn't belong - let's just say Antarctica. However, if you plant your tree in good soil, care for it, and nurture it, then with God's help, it will grow into something massive, unmovable, and absolutely amazing.

Christianity should be like a forest, not like a tree farm.