Bridging the Divide

While it is a bit of an oversimplification, there are essentially two perspectives within institutional Christianity. One says that belief is a matter of memorizing facts, scripture, and doctrine. Success in this view is like passing a final exam. Entering through the gates of heaven in this view involves taking a test on an IPad.…

Moral Bankruptcy?

I haven't written in a while because I have been thinking about the current world situation. From a spiritual perspective, we seem to be in a period of moral bankruptcy stemming from all moral questions being profoundly oversimplified. The cause of that reductionism is neither on the left or the right alone. Rather, it's everywhere.…

The Arrogance of American Imperialism

This is a brief description of how American Imperialism works: It is not a pretty thing at all. America decides she needs something from another country. That country isn't particularly interested in giving us what we want, so American finds a pretext to invade militarily. We invaded Iraq because we lied and said there were…

Original Sin

Funny how Original Sin, a dismal doctrine that suddenly appeared from the quill of Augustine in the fourth century as he tried to explain away his own compulsive sexual behavior, really is a lot more about original blame. Even today, humans seem obsessed with guilt and blame. From mass shootings to weather events to viruses,…

Logical Consistency

It's almost always a good idea to be logically consistent. When we forget that we almost always head down an ill advised path. We hear countries talk about going to war to achieve or preserve peace. For reasons that I can't begin to comprehend, that makes sense to some people, yet we don't hear about…

Raise Your Hand if You Don’t Have a Body!

It seems like a silly title, doesn't it? Despite that, to one degree or another, most spirituality and religion has encouraged adherents to deny that they are embodied and refuse to acknowledge the needs that come with embodiment. Whether it's fasting, sleep deprivation, celibacy, dietary restrictions, self-inflicted abuse of different kinds, human sacrifice, or any…

What is getting ahead?

Americans tend to view getting ahead as acquiring more stuff. Houses, cars, furniture, appliances, vacation homes, boats, motorcycles, and more define where we believe we stand measured against other people. As Roxy and I were taking our walk today we met two little boys and their mother. The boys asked if they could pet Roxy,…

Forming my What?

I get a number of emails each day that are sale notices for ebooks. Yesterday I happened to glace at one of the descriptions of a book that read, "...the Church contributes to society by forming the conscience of people." I almost fell out of my chair! If that's not a line straight out of…