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7. It is a sin to do less than your best. It is wrong to do [merely] well.

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10 ). But be careful. Sometimes the “best” is a B+ sermon and spending time with your child. In other words, “best” always involves more decisions than the one you are making at the moment. That one means many other things are being left undone. So “best” is always the whole thing, not just the detail of the moment.

Bill Piper, Things I Have Learned (John Piper, ed.)

I was in Toys R Us with the family a couple weeks ago when I saw this abomination on the shelves: Your Best Life Now: The Game!

It occurred to me: if Joel Osteen deserves a board game, there are plenty of others who ought to get on the horn with Endless Games. Here’s a few for starters:

• Desiring God: The Game!
• Don’t Waste Your Life: The Game!
• Mere Christianity: The Game!
• Of The Mortification Of Sin In Believers; The Necessity, Nature, And Means Of It: With A Resolution Of Sundry Cases Of Conscience Thereunto Belonging: The Game!

Any others?

Let me tell you about a most wonderful experience I had early Monday morning, March 19, 2007, a little after six o’clock. God actually spoke to me. There is no doubt that it was God. I heard the words in my head just as clearly as when a memory of a conversation passes across your consciousness. The words were in English, but they had about them an absolutely self-authenticating ring of truth. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God still speaks today.

—John Piper, The Morning I Heard the Voice of God

Read the article — the whole article — to get the answer to the question in my title.

I just took this quick test titled Are You Right or Left Brained?.

I was mildly surprised… but I guess these results befit a software engineer who blogs about things like theology, philosophy, worldview, and apologetics while lamenting his lack of quiet time to read and practice on the bass guitar.

You Are 55% Left Brained, 45% Right Brained

The Left Side of the Brain The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you’re left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet. The Right Side of the Brain The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way. If you’re right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art. Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Christianity is a personal religion in that we are personally related to the God of the universe and are part of his personal family through his love and redemption, and have a place in his personal plan that his his plan for his kingdom that we can personally participate in, and we can be personally empowered to make a personal impact for the cause of Christ.

That’s personal.

But that is not, by and large, how the concept of personal Christianity is understood in our culture today. Nowadays, personal means it’s all about me. And it’s all about my feelings.

If you doubt that, just look at the hymnody that has taken over much of evangelicalism. And you will see that the large majority of it is a celebration of our personal feelings in relationship with God. And there is very little any more, quite frankly, about God. It’s about the Christian and the celebration of the feelings and the experience that we have with him.

Worship is supposed to be “worth-ship,” that is, ascribing worth to God, and there certainly is a place in our hymnody for testimony of what God has done in our life.

But I was at a church this last weekend, and listening, as I spoke there, and I was listening to the music, and it suddenly occurred to me that even those songs that were celebrating our feelings were not testifying to what God was actually doing in our lives. I’m convinced, and you can think about this, you don’t have to agree with me on this particular point, but you just think about this. I’m convinced that the songs were there not to celebrate the feelings everyone was having. The songs were there to create those feelings. And many of the people in the audience were not having those feelings. And they were trying to get them.

I promise you, if your worship is focused on you and your feelings, you will walk out of the church bummed out more often than lifted up. But you can’t lose if your worship focuses in on the excellencies of God.

And whether you walk out feeling great or lousy, you have still ascribed worth to the God of the universe. And you have worshipped well.

— Greg Koukl, Never Read a Bible Verse (Ambassador Basic Curriculum Course 2)