(For some reason, I don’t have a lot of memories of the show “Adventures in Odyssey.” He-man, GI Joe, Transformers? I could talk about those all day, but when it comes to Focus on the Family’s wildly popular radio drama, I got nothing. Fortunately, Jonathan Friday is here with a guest post. I promise that is not me writing under a pseudonym but actually a real live person checking in with a guest post. Enjoy.)

Stuff Christians Like: Adventures in Odyssey

Parents around the world have found twenty years of Focus on the Family’s radio drama to be thrilling entertainment – or at least, a welcome distraction on long car rides! And if you’re a Millennial whose parents really loved you, every Christmas brought packages just slightly larger than VHS clamshells, each containing six sparkling new cassette tapes!

But for some of us, Odyssey obsession goes too far. Here’s the definitive, seven-point list for knowing you’ve listened to one too many of the 700 episodes.

1. When the Holy Spirit convicts you, he sounds just like John Avery Whittaker.

Aslan, Neo, and Optimus Prime can all step down. When I look for divine qualities in fictional characters, I turn to the man who, if he was any more holy, could turn water into chocolate sodas. And when God speaks to me, sometimes I’d swear he has a mustache.

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The first two lines of my book, Stuff Christians Like are, “If you buy this book, God will make you rich. I was going to say, ‘If you read this book,’ but I’m pretty sure people who get it at the library won’t receive the same amount of awesomeness as people who buy it.”

I wrote that as a joke, but also as a stern reminder that when it comes to the book Stuff Christians Like, you should buy it in triplicate or “wheelbarrow-full” instead of getting it at the library. What you really shouldn’t do is photocopy the entire thing, a feat that would admittedly require an industrial stapler and the strength of former World’s Strongest Man, Magnus ver Magnusson. As an author, I don’t really have to worry about people bootlegging my book. Unlike music, no one can easily make a copy of the entire book. Even if they did, they would feel a tremendous amount of guilt because every Christian knows it’s ten times  worse to bootleg Christian materials than it is non-Christian.

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Someday, I need to go to Africa.

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Why?

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“Give me my fire.”

That is what my 5-year-old said at church the other night when it was time to light our candles at the Christmas Eve Eve service. (We went on Thursday night.)

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Regular Stuff Christians Like returns tomorrow, Tuesday, December 28. In the meantime, I have two quick questions I am curious about:

1. What’s the best gift you gave this year?

2. Did you travel or stay in town this Christmas?

(My brother and I gave my dad the complete series of Seinfeld and for the first time ever, we had Christmas in Franklin, Tennessee.)

How about you?

It’s Christmas Day! I hope you have a wonderful 25th.

Unto us, a child is born. The reason for the season is rescue.

It’s Christmas Eve! I gathered 16 of the best Christmas posts on Stuff Christians Like. Giving kids candles at church? We got that. Being single at church and hearing the craziest comments from people who want to get you married instantly? We got that. A hate mail mongoose? We even got that. Check out the list after the continue and Merry Christmas!

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Recently, Relevant Magazine made a prediction about 2011, the Jersey Shore and what I might nickname my unibrow. Click continue to see what they forecasted:

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Today is Christmas Eve, Eve or what I’m trying to get people to say, “The Christmas Eve Pre-Party.”

Rather than go the expected route and write about Christmas, which I did yesterday, I thought it might be time to discuss a phenomenon I find perplexing – the guy who wears shorts to church in winter.

Are you familiar with this person? If not, it’s really not that complicated of a scene to imagine. Take a freezing day, add a guy who wears shorts to church and you’ve pretty much got it. On the face of it, it’s so simple, but there are still so many unanswered questions and thoughts that need to be addressed.

Here are 16 things that go through my mind when I see “Winter Shorts Man.”

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