This month I have another video recommendation. It is a 45-minute secular documentary about Mosab Hassan Yousef, a young Palestinian man who has believed in the Lord Jesus. The documentary is encouraging for several reasons.

First, if anyone would seem to be born disadvantaged to believe in Jesus, Mosab Yousef was that person. He was raised under the influence of a father who is one of the founders of Hamas, the Islamic terrorist group that governs the Gaza portion of the Palestinian Territories and is devoted to the destruction of Israel. Mosab was at one time the leader of the radical Islamic Youth Movement of Hamas. But when he heard some truth about Jesus, his heart yielded to the Spirit. It demonstrates that anyone can believe in Jesus, regardless of their background, even those steeped in anti-Christian culture.

Since last month’s e-teaching, God’s Regrets, was such a mind-stretcher, I thought it might be good to start the year off with something less cerebral. So below are two, two-minute videos, produced by the always-sardonic Onion News Network. I don’t recommend everything they produce, but these two videos offer a thought-provoking commentary on our culture as it relates to the rest of the world. It will take four minutes of your time. I’ll say no more.

When pastors gather, they sometimes joke that if it weren’t for people, pastoring would be a great profession. Indeed, people are the reason that pastoring is sometimes so painful. However, as I contended in June’s E-teaching, Pastoring with Less Pain, Part 1 of 2, if you are a sincere disciple-making pastor, then you know that pastoring genuine sheep—those who want to be discipled and truly follow Jesus—is an absolute delight. Thus I did my best to encourage pastors to purge their churches of goats by preaching the truth. And if that doesn’t clear them all out, then biblical excommunication is in order. (And excommunication is biblical, of course.)

Most pastors, however, find the idea of excommunication to be a frightful proposition, and understandably so. Can you imagine what would happen in most churches if the pastor excommunicated someone, even attempting to do it quietly? Most likely it would result in gossip, strife, and a potential church split. If the pastor publicly explained his reason for the excommunication, he could well be accused of being insensitive, dictatorial, or face a lawsuit for defamation of character. Even though Jesus gave very clear instructions to all His followers regarding excommunication and shunning—instructions that are reinforced in the New Testament epistles—actually following those instructions seems like a way to open Pandora’s Box.

I’ve been thinking about a conversation I had not long ago with a friend who is a pastor. He shared his pain regarding some people who had recently left his church. At one time they had been loyal, enthusiastic supporters of his ministry. But their departure was anything but that. Now they were speaking ill of him to others, and it had become ugly.

It wasn’t the first time he had experienced what pastors sometimes refer to as “the Judas syndrome.” And if past experience teaches anything, it wouldn’t be the last time.

Provocative communicator Tony Campolo has been known to begin sermons with the following words:

I have three things I want to tell you. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 children died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition.

Second, most of you don’t give a sh**.

Then, after a pause to allow some inward reaction to his first two statements, Tony drops the bomb:

What is even worse is that you are more upset that I used the word sh** than you are that 30,000 children died last night.

Dear Friends,

Last month I received a letter from an enthusiastic reader who told me that he has been downloading the first chapters of my evangelistic book, Forgive Me for Waiting so Long to Tell You This, printing them, and leaving them in the men’s bathroom stalls where he works. He said they are being read, and no negative comments so far!

All genuine Christian men desire to be lust-free. To overcome lust, however, it is essential to understand what it is. To understand what it is, it often helps to consider what it is not. So let’s begin with that.

First, lust is not sexual desire. Sexual desire is God-given and thus pure. It is nothing to be ashamed of, any more than the desire for food is shameful. Allow me to elaborate.

It is always pure joy to discover more people who are focusing on the substance of what following Jesus is supposed to be all about—loving God with all our hearts and our neighbors as ourselves. These two commandments are what Jesus said are most important and what encapsulate all the rest (see Matt. 22:36-40). Being a Christian is all about love-relationships, lived out in self-denying servanthood towards God and others. There is no truth that is so simple yet so profound. People who respond to the gospel become lovers. As we will explore in this month’s e-teaching, the two greatest commandments are inextricably linked to salvation itself. So we begin with a portion of Scripture that has had many of us scratching our heads.

Luke tells us in his Gospel that Jesus was once “put to the test” by a man who was an expert in the Law of Moses, a lawyer, as they were called. He asked, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25). Convinced that he knew the answer to his question, the lawyer wanted to see if Jesus would answer correctly.

Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and so teaches others, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:19, emphasis added).

Jesus obviously believed that there were lesser commandments, as revealed in the quote above. He therefore must have also believed that there were greater commandments.