Faith Challenges: It Ain't All Comfort

God's plans and strategies often don't seem to make any sense. When we hear the terms lame and strong in the same sentence, we might think of physical therapy. That's about the extent of the ways we would associate those terms. Being lame is something we equate with being weak. It refers to muscles or nerves that do not work as they should. It presents us a picture of physical failure, limitation, and the inability to perform as we would like or expect. In Micah's day, it was a death sentence for most. How do you take a group of powerless people and transform them into a strong nation? The Bible is full of texts telling stories of God accomplishing his purposes in unexpected ways, using strategies and people who seem sure to fail. Time and time again, it would appear that what God has planned is doomed to failure. How can an old, barren woman hope to become a mother? How can a band of slaves escape bondage to the world superpower? How could that same band of escaped ...

We don't always get our “druthers.” There are some things that life just not present to us the way we would prefer. I want a world without cancer. I want a world without strokes. I want a world without dementia and Alzheimer's disease. I want a garden that does not grow weeds. I want a world without war, violence, racism, greed, and famine. I want a Bible that tells me exactly what I need to hear with no contradiction, wavering, or uncertainty. I want God to play by my rules and accept my priorities. I can keep dreaming. We all can. At the end of the day, however, we have to deal with the reality before us. We don't get to live in Neverland. This is the world we have, and we have to accept it as it is. Today's passage is one of those texts that makes me uncomfortable. Deuteronomy expresses the legal code of Ancient Israel. In some places, it does a good job of presenting God and God's will in a way that Jesus would find acceptable. In other places like this cha...

We are hard-wired to feel compassion on an individual level. We see needs around us and are moved to offer a meal, a pair of shoes, a shirt, a pair of pants, a coat, or a sleeping bag and willingly offer them to meet an individual's need. At least momentary needs within our grasp are elements we readily and willingly address. In so doing we often fail to address the larger issues that bring people to those conditions from which they may seek escape and the comfort of our band-aid compassion. The Bible is an ethical document in many respects. It is a compilation of ethical documents that are religious but advance very specific ethical teachings. We can't say the Bible is always consistent, for it includes various streams of thought which come from diverse traditions within the bounds of a Yahwistic faith. What we find ourselves having to do is read these various streams of doctrine, ethics, and tradition to determine the higher standard among them and so apply that to our liv...

Why were we so concerned with the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. that it resulted in his being shot 50 years ago? Why did we allow our fear of black people being granted equality to grow such that a bomb went off at a church in Birmingham? Perhaps it is because of the same fears that lie behind police violence against people of color, fears we have not yet effectively addressed. Perhaps it is because of the same tensions that cause us to blame the poor for their poverty and the victims of crime for the crimes against them. Perhaps it is because of the same political forces erected to limit the education available to people of color and the poor. Perhaps it is because we have not yet accepted that rising to the top of the heap means stepping on others to get there. Perhaps it is because we fear that an honestly level playing field will take away the advantages we grant to the white and the wealthy. Perhaps it is because we are afraid deep down that whites...

In light of today being Maundy Thursday, we would do well to pause in reflection of how Jesus spoke about violence, as well as how he responded to it in action. In Matthew 5:39 Jesus tells us that: 1. violence does not end violence; 2. his followers are not to engage in violence, but in a manner that calls those who practice violence to assume responsibility for it; 3. there are better ways to address violence and aggression; 4. he continues to speak of loving one's enemies and doing good towards them; 5. answering violence with violence escalates conflict and allows the perpetrator to continue aggression with new justification; 6. Jesus recognized a principle of Family Systems Theory, that aggression comes from the reptilian brain, and to overcome it we have to shift the interaction to engage the mammalian portion of the brain: we must change the tone of the encounter; 7. in context, Jesus speaks of loving our enemies instead of seeking retrib...

The liturgical calendar likes periods of preparation. In Advent we mark off four weeks to prepare ourselves for celebrating the importance of Christmas and the coming of Jesus. Ash Wednesday kicks off a period of six weeks of preparation for Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter. We don't do preparation all that well, but there is wisdom in that history of preparing ourselves. We want to run directly to Christmas and Easter, skipping over our need to pause and reflect on our own lives and our dependence upon God's provision we celebrate on those high holy days. We set aside forty days of preparation in memory of Jesus taking 40 days to fast in preparation to being his three years of ministry. There is nothing specifically special about 40 days. It was just a round number used in Biblical times to express something like a month. For Jesus, it was a time to focus. It was a time to determine priorities for his ministry. It was a time to focus on being present with God and al...

Why does the US far outpace every other developed nation in rates of gun violence? What makes us so special that our per capita gun violence rate is 3x higher than the next developed nation? Why do we have more mass shootings than Yemen in a time of war? -Is it a mental health problem? It would seem that women and men of color are not affected like white males. Maybe it's something in our water supply that Canada and Spain don't have. -Is it a societal ill based on bad parenting and discipline? We are the only developed nation with the symptoms of gun violence, mass shootings, and school shootings. Are we that much worse at child discipline and parenting skills than the Europeans and Aussies? -Is it a result of Hollywood and video games? The rest of the developed world watches the same shows and plays the same video games. They don't act out the same way. The Japanese traditionally watch much more television than we do. -Is it a result of the US abandoning God ...