A 2008 survey by The Barna Group asked adults which, if any, of eight behaviors with moral overtones they had engaged in during the past week. The behaviors included looking at pornography, using profanity, gambling, gossiping, engaging in sexual intercourse with someone to whom they were not married, retaliating against someone, getting drunk, and lying. Of those surveyed:

• Twenty-eight percent had used profanity.
  
  
• Twenty percent had gambled.
  
  
• Nineteen percent had viewed pornography.
  
  
• Twelve percent had gossiped.
  
  
• Twelve percent had gotten drunk.
  
  
• Eleven percent had lied.
  
  
• Nine percent had engaged in sexual intercourse with someone to whom they were not married.
  
  
• Eight percent had retaliated against someone.
  

The results of the survey also indicated that younger generations are twice as likely to engage in immoral behavior than Baby Boomers. Younger participants were nine times more likely to engage in sex outside of marriage, six times more likely to have lied, three times more likely to have gotten drunk, three times more likely to have gossiped, twice as likely to have viewed pornography, and twice as likely to have engaged in some form of retaliation against someone.

Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your house.

—David Frost, English satirist and television host (1939—)

My friend Ashish came from Northern India to visit me in Chicago. We were eating at Gino's Pizzeria one day and ran into a youth pastor I know, along with his youth group. Just returned from Central America, they were debriefing. "So what did you learn from your trip?" Ashish asked. Student after student obsessed about the poverty of "those poor people." After they left, Ashish said, "Why do they think we're so poor?"

"Ashish," I retorted, "you are poor compared to any of those kids. It's hard to get their minds off their consumerist passions. I'm glad they experienced some dissonance."

"I'm sick of sympathy from Westerners who think we need more stuff," Ashish rebutted. "What does that have to do with our happiness? Please don't help import the consumerism idol into India."

He then told about the American group that was just with him in Delhi. "They were concerned about the bicycle I use to get back and forth to church. They told me they'd all chipped in to get me a car! That was the last thing I wanted. I think I 'rained on their parade,' as you say, when I told them that members in my church could use those same dollars to help start a micro-enterprise. They thought I was just being supersacrificial."

I recently saw Religulous, a film that's billed as the "No. 1 sacrilegious comedy in America." It's supposedly a documentary, in which comedian Bill Maher (of Real Time with Bill Maher and Politically Incorrect) travels the world asking religious practitioners questions about their faith. Though Maher makes fun of every world religion, as well as some minor ones, about two-thirds of the film focuses on Christianity.

At the beginning of the film, Maher says he's on a spiritual journey. But instead of interviewing well-known pastors or Christian academics, Maher poses complicated theological and philosophical questions to truck drivers, a Christian bookstore owner, and an actor who plays Jesus at The Holy Land Experience, an Orlando theme park.

Los Angeles Times movie critic Kenneth Turan said Maher's "reliance on skewering people who are no match for him in glibness, persuasiveness, or even intelligence finally leaves a sour taste." Indeed.

Maher makes his view clear on the Religulous website: "There is nothing more ridiculous than the ancient mythological stories that live on as today's religions." Still, I hoped there might be a few moments in the movie when Maher got sincere about seeking. So I focused on how I might answer his questions. This was an exercise in futility: I could barely string together two thoughts before Maher changed the subject.

I soon realized it wouldn't matter if Maher was interviewing the most brilliant Christian debater on the planet. He wasn't interested in contemplating faith—just in mocking religion. Richard Corliss of Time magazine writes, "Maher seems interested less in conversation than in confrontation, so his movie is less essay than inquisition."

This got me thinking: With whom am I sharing my faith? Do they really want to converse, or just argue? I thought about how the apostle Paul spent varying amounts of time in different cities as he spread the Gospel. One stop was Athens, a city full of philosophers, where people "spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas" (Acts 17:21). Some of the Athenians seemed to take Paul seriously: They brought him before the Areopagus, a powerful council, and asked him to speak.

But it doesn't seem many were open to what Paul had to say. We're told that only a few believed (whereas in some other cities, thousands became Christ-followers). Perhaps the people of Athens weren't really listening to Paul. Perhaps they were interested in educating themselves further, but not in contemplating Paul's words. In any case, Paul moved on.

[And] I think there are times when I need to move on. Some years ago, I was contacted by The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a news parody that airs on Comedy Central. A representative from the show wanted to discuss an article I'd written for Christianity Today. My first thought was, Woo hoo! What a great way to share my faith! But something inside gave me pause.

I decided to ask two trusted Christian friends whether I should return the call to the show. Both responded, "Absolutely not." They told me I'd get ripped to shreds, I'd be dismissed as a religious kook, and the message of faith I wanted to convey wouldn't be heard at all. While I wasn't concerned about being mocked, I realized it didn't make sense to take part in a show that had no interest in letting me talk about Jesus.

My time, effort, and energy are better utilized talking to people who are interested in conversations about faith. I have one friend who's been asking me questions about God for the past five years. I've shared my faith journey with her and listened to her doubts.

My friend often challenges my statements and she asks tough questions, yet I find it easy to talk to her. I know she's listening to me, and I'm listening to her—even when we don't agree. I don't know if she's any closer to believing in God than she was five years ago. But I'm thrilled that we both know each other better, and I feel privileged to participate in her spiritual journey. Every minute I've conversed with her is time well spent. …

I've added Bill Maher to my prayer list. I'm praying that God will give Maher every opportunity to recognize him. (Maybe Maher will run into Lee Strobel, Alvin Plantinga, or William Lane Craig!) But if Maher happens to request an interview with me for Religulous 2, I'll have to pass until he's open to real conversations about faith.

Condensed from Walk with Me, a blog hosted by Today's Christian Woman magazine, © 2008 Christianity Today International. For more articles like this, visit Walk with Me.

In connection with their book Is Christianity Good for the World?, evangelical theologian Douglas Wilson and leading atheist Christopher Hitchens have hit the road to debate the issues that divide the two. Wilson's son, Nate, is riding along. In an on-line update about the tour for ChristianityToday.com, Nate shared what struck him most about the first few stops in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.:

To be honest, the most interesting moments have all been outside the formal events—discussions over meals, in cabs and elevators. Both men share a love of poetry (over lunch, they gave an antiphonal recitation of "Jabberwocky"), a love of the English language and the well-turned phrase, and have spent a good ten minutes spouting favorite lines from the British writer P. G. Wodehouse to mutual laughter. And both men have a respect for each other—though clearly not for their conflicting opinions of God and the nature of the world.

At the King's College debate, Hitchens professed disdain for the biblical admonition to "love your enemies," calling it total nonsense. And yet, as he appears in Christian forums, wrangling with a Christian man, that is exactly what he is experiencing firsthand. The exchanges are heated. No punches have been pulled, and no one is pretending like the gulf between atheism and Christianity is anything but dark and profound. Yet underlying it all, there is an affection shown to him that is just as profound.

Hitchens said he wanted all his enemies destroyed. Wilson countered with qualified agreement, saying that God destroys all his enemies, but doesn't only destroy them in the traditional way, as understood by man, but also destroys his enemies by making them friends.

[In an article for Decision magazine], Samuel Kamaleson illustrates [the difficulty of submission] through a Christian folk story from South India. There are several versions of it, but here it opens with a young boy who loved to play marbles. He regularly walked through his neighborhood with a pocketful of his best marbles, hoping to find opponents to play against. One marble in particular, his special blue marble, had won him many matches.

During one walk he encountered a young girl who was eating a bag of chocolate candy. Though the boy's first love was marbles, he had a weakness for chocolates. As he stood there interacting with the young girl, his salivary glands and the rumbling in his stomach became uncontrollable, and he thought to himself, I have got to get my hands on those chocolates.

Concocting a plan, he asked the girl, "How about I give you all these marbles for those chocolates?" She replied, "Sounds fair to me."

He put his hand in his pocket, searching for the distinguishing cracks on the surface of the blue marble. Once he identified the blue marble with his finger tip, he carefully pushed it to the bottom of his pocket and pulled out all the other marbles.

As he handed the marbles to the girl in exchange for the chocolate, the boy thought his plan was a success and turned to walk away. As he began to eat the candy, he suddenly turned to the girl and asked, "Hey, did you give me all the chocolates?"

Our fallen nature persuades us to posture ourselves in the same deceptive and defiant attitude as the boy in this story. We want everything the kingdom of God has to offer. We want to have a secure sense of God's presence, we want all our prayers to be answered, we want to "feel close" to Jesus, we want to flourish in the riches of God's glory—we want it all. But we are unwilling to give up everything for it. Many times there is a "blue marble" in our lives that we seem unwilling to offer to the control of Christ. Until we can fully subjugate ourselves to God's will, our participation in God's kingdom will be limited.