That's when the conversation turned to dirty jokes. Now I was poised for a come-back! However, religious or pious I was, I enjoyed telling dirty jokes - anything to fit in.

Unfortunately we didn't stay on sex long. Pretty quickly we turned to black jokes - actually, n-word jokes. Here the conversation picked up speed, with each boy one by one entertaining everyone else with his favorite joke.

Except me. I may have wanted to fit in, but not that much. I just kept silent. I was willing to be on the outside for what I thought was right.

But before I congratulate myself too much, I kept my mouth shut, period. I didn't say anything to the contrary; I didn't call anyone out. But every now and then I'd catch those wooden letters out of the corner of my eye:"As for me and my house we will serve the Lord."

It turns out that this household wasn't that different after all. Just like those teenage boys in Kansas, across time God's people have struggled to figure out how to be different without being pretentious, to be loyal to God alone without withdrawing from the world, how to be righteous without being self-righteous. Most of the time, though, I think we, we struggle just to be loyal in the first place.

But God keeps asking, time and again. God asks us, like Israel, to be a people called out, a particular and peculiar people, who forsake the gods of their neighbors for the One God who demands loyalty - service, obedience, and a remembrance of the mighty acts of salvation that brought them out of Egypt. The big problem, of course, was that Israel kept forgetting and kept forsaking and kept wavering in its loyalty. And so do we.

So Joshua says something very striking,"Choose this day whom you will serve." Choose. The choice is yours; the choice is ours. But we should know that God demands a lot when God demands loyalty.

Maybe dealing with teenage angst over black jokes doesn't feel like too much to endure. But when we read Ephesians and the command for wives to be subject to their husbands then the hairs on our neck bristle, an uneasiness settles on our gut, or a flash of anger seers through our brain. What do you mean wives be subject to your husbands? Haven't we moved past this? Isn't Christianity about equality?