You have probably heard this before, but at the risk of being redundant let me ask: Is there enough evidence to convict you to be a Christian? Could a court of law prosecute you as being a follower of Jesus Christ? Do you live like Christ? Lead like Christ? Do you respond and/or act or react like Jesus Christ would, when confronted with certain circumstances?

These are hard questions to answer if we are going to be brutally honest with our self-analysis. And the reason these are hard questions is because all of us have sinned and still do from time to time. Notice: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8). John continues, "If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us" (v. 10). However, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (v. 9).

During the Days of Unleavened Bread, we often talk about examining ourselves and our relationship with God. This year I heard a sermon by Rob Gordon of the West Coast Church of God on the First Day of Unleavened Bread that discussed Israel's motivation to follow God. Have you thought much about your motivation to follow God?

One of the primary points for Israel to follow God was they were released from bondage. Not having the Egyptian slave masters over them any longer surely was a reason to follow the God who had freed them. Christ, our Passover, has also released us from the burden of our sins (1 Peter 2:24). This should also motivate us to follow the way of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

In the past I have written a couple of blogs on the decreasing impact of religion and Christianity in the Western world and some other places. This trend has been ongoing since the 1950s in the United States (US) and is even more dramatic in some predominantly Christian nations in other parts of the world. Back in the 1950s, over 90 percent of the US population claimed to be Christian, with those numbers down to over 60-some percent claiming Christianity now.

In a 1948 Gallup poll, only 2 percent of the US population claimed "no religion." By the late 1960s, about 4 percent of the US population claimed no religion. This number shot up dramatically by 2020, when over 20 percent of the US population claimed no particular religious affiliation. Researchers believe something occurred in the 1990s and early 2000s that led to this dramatic shift. What happened?

You have probably heard of the placebo effect. The "placebo effect" has to do with a patient taking a pill that has no medical properties, yet in many cases, taking that pill leads to an improvement for a physical or mental issue. You usually hear of this effect taking place without the patient's knowledge of whether the pill had medicine or not.

Today, researchers believe the effect can occur even when the patient knows the placebo is not medicinal. "You never tell a patient it's going to work," says Ted Kaptchuk, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the program in placebo studies and the therapeutic encounter at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.