Did you have that awkward moment when he realized that you knew that the wilting rose and cheap chocolate were an afterthought on the way home?

After repeated and blatant negligence, complete thoughtlessness and total aloofness — when you are left with the distinct impression that for much of his day, he completely forgot about you — it’s clear there is only one thing you should do:

If you’ve been reading your Bible carefully, and perhaps more so if you haven’t, you may have noticed that it says some things that don’t exactly agree with the prevailing attitudes of our culture.

The Bible’s message has, especially in the last century, increasingly come under fire for its perceived male-centric message and male locus of authority. Feminist theologians have balked, while less thoughtful potential husbands have reveled, at reading passages like, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:22)

Paul goes on in Ephesians 5 to describe marriage as an analogy for Christ’s relationship to the church. The wife, being the church, is called to submit to her husband as the church is called to submit to Christ.

I miss Christopher Hitchens.

A prolific writer and icon of 21st-century atheist thought, Hitchens died of esophageal cancer on Dec. 15, 2011.

I never met Hitchens, but I read his books and listened to his speeches and debates. He challenged me. He ensured my faith was not mindless and blind by questioning it. He drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney, but his intellect was razor-sharp and his wit even sharper.

Above all else, Hitchens’ intellectual honesty was courageous. He thought through what he believed, wrong as it may have been, and he lived it out to its logical conclusions. Without a morally authoritative god, Hitchens gladly took that role upon himself in his life and applied his standard evenly across everyone. Neither President Clinton nor Bush was safe from his criticism.

It is not uncommon, and even understandable, that we would wonder what the will of God is. I’ll even go so far as to say that, in a specific sense, it’s hard to tell. However, the whole, “No one knows the will of God. He/She/It’s just so mysterious,” argument is a cop-out that I have a hard time tolerating.

We can be very sure, at least in a general sense, what God wants, and that’s the subject of the fifth of the 5 Solas: Soli Deo Gloria. It means, “Only the Glory of God.”

I trust that you, like me, do not live under the delusion that you are perfect.

No one is. In fact, the Bible says that no one is even good.

This presents a bit a quandary. God is perfect. God is good. He is so perfect and so good that he can’t stand to be around anything that isn’t perfect and good. Psalm 5:5 says, “The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity.”

Yes, you read that correctly. God hates! Don't worry too much, though. There's hope.

Sola Fide means “Only Faith.”

Martin Luther is most commonly associated with the Reformation as a whole, and with the Solas in particular. Whether he should be is debatable, but his contribution to rescuing the idea that salvation comes by Faith alone cannot be questioned.

The next two solas are stated in Scripture most explicitly in Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Sola Gratia means “Only Grace.”

The first of the five solas is Sola Scriptura. It means, “Only Scripture.”

The idea is this: everything we can possibly know about God, our relationship with Him, the supernatural and moral living in this world can only be found in the 66 canonical books of the Bible. Everything else that makes claims regarding God, man’s relationship to God, the supernatural or moral living must agree with Scripture before it is accepted as truth.

In 313 AD, something terrible happened to Christianity: it became a legal, state-sponsored religion in the Roman Empire after Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan. Sixty-seven years later, it became the single official religion of Rome under Theodosius I. The separation of church and state is valuable primarily because it protects the church, and this new way the Roman government was now interacting with the church did more to harm it that any amount of persecution could have ever hoped to.

Happy New Year!

I love New Year's traditions. Staying up late, drinking Champagne, eating black-eyed peas and watching the ball drop are all just plain fun. Nothing beats that midnight kiss. New Year's is as close as it gets to pure celebration for its own sake, and I love it.

Except resolutions.

Christmas is finally over!

Red bows are disappearing, Christmas trees are being put to the curb and all but that one neighbor has started taking down their lights. After all the time, money and care that goes into preparing for Christmas, we let always let go of it quite easily on December 26.

You know about Santa Claus, right? Large, jolly, red suit, white beard, tiny reindeer, etc. Santa. He's got several different names, too: Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Pere Noel and Babouschka are a few.

Much of the Santa Claus myth, however, is based on a real man named Saint Nicholas.

I thought of doing this series on the gifts of the Magi because I made my youth group mad. I thought I’d play a Christmas trivia game with them last week, and one of the questions involved myrrh.

The youth group got angry with me because I suggested that embalming spices were the perfect gift to bring the baby Jesus.

The second gift the magi brought, listed in Matthew 2, is frankincense. Everyone seems to know what gold is, but frankincense and myrrh seem to throw people for a loop because they aren’t materials we really use all that often in the twenty-first century.