Once there was brother and sister, and they were on a vacation with their parents, driving across the country. One evening, after a long day’s drive, the family checked into a motel, and both the kids were very excited about the prospect of swimming in the motel pool. “You can get into your suits,” their …
The World Is Full of Losers
The world is full of losers, and there is no one who is not a loser. And yet, left to our own devices, we always construct religious systems based on work, striving, earning, winning. Perpetual losers, bred to the bone losers, we insist on devising and pursuing the calculus of success and winning. Jesus is …
Authority and Apostolic Succession
A number of years ago I had a number of friends who maintained that the way to argue with me was to answer yes to the first question, and then to stoutly say no thereafter. I mention this because I am about to attempt something that I think our Roman Catholic friends might want to …
Congregational Prayer Time, No Brakes
And I have frankly seen worse. So have you probably.
A Bag of Cardboard Chips
“The folks at Trader Joe’s also confront higher moral problems, such as snacks. Everyone knows that snack food is morally suspect, since it contributes to t he obesity of the American public, but the clientele still seems to want it. So the folks behind this enterprise have managed to come up with globally concerned stomach …
God the Playwright
[Speaking of God as the universal playwright] “But using the illustration of a play is offensive to us. We say that Hamlet is a fictional character, whereas we are real. It is not a good comparison, we mutter, but notice where and why we take offense. We are much greater than Hamlet, and zeal for …
For Food and Wine
Gracious Father in heaven, we thank You for the arrival of another Lord’s Day. We thank You for the fellowship we share around this table. We praise Your name for the food and wine. We are grateful for the opportunity to sing to You and prepare our hearts for worship in the morning. We ask …
AmeriCool
“We sort of take coolness for granted because it is so much around us. However, coolness is one of those pervasive and revolutionary constructs that America exports around the globe. Coolness is a magical state of grace, and as we take our drive through America, we will see that people congregate into communities not so …
God and Figures of Speech
[Speaking of Albert Barnes’ exegesis of the 2nd psalm] “The Bible tells us that God’s displeasure will be great. The literal expression refers to heat or burning, as when one is inflamed with anger. The Openness theologians would say that this is an expression of God’s anger and then haul it down to interpret it …
Believing Is Seeing
After Jesus told His followers that they must believe God since this was the work of God, they immediately asked for a sign. They were asking for a sign when the one signified by any possible sign was standing right there in front of them. And from this we learn that without possession of the …