PublicChristian

Sometimes the pilgrimage does not go so well. Sometimes we wonder if we’re still moving forward at all.

In the tradition of pilgrimage, … hardships are seen not as accidental but as integral to the journey itself.
Treacherous terrain,
bad weather,
taking a fall,
getting lost –
challenges of that sort, largely beyond our control, can strip the ego of the illusion that it is in charge and make space for the true self to emerge.

There are indeed times when developments in our lives force upon us the awareness that we are not really in charge, maybe an awareness that we seem to have no control at all.

That awareness can be resisted, apparently. But it seems   - Continue Reading »

Obama and McCain each just spent an hour answering questions from Rick Warren, pastor at Saddleback Church in Forest Hills, CA.

I have a few apparently biased observations:

OBAMA

Obama put considerable emphasis on the actual moral priorities of Jesus, mentioning the Matthew 25 teaching more than once - Jesus’ statement that “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” He emphasized that Jesus definitely was concerned about “the least of these.”

In fact, when asked what has been America’s greatest moral failing he said it was the violation of that directive from Jesus in a number of different ways down through the years. It was obvious listening to the Fox News types afterward   - Continue Reading »

The Matthew 25 Network website features Bible quotes like

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with your neighbor, for we are all of the same body.
- Ephesians 4:25

Seems elementary, doesn’t it? Why should we have to remind fellow Christians to tell the truth about other people? But Paul had to remind the believers at Ephesus, and we have to remind the believers of America.

Because a lot of professing Christians are still parroting lies about Obama (and others), and still forwarding - and choosing to believe - those lying emails.

It also features a verse from its namesake chapter, Matthew 25   - Continue Reading »

Jesus did NOT tell his oppressed hearers not to resist evil. That would have been absurd. His entire ministry is utterly at odds with such a preposterous idea.
- Walter Wink

I. THE PROBLEM:

Jesus said to “turn the other cheek”:   - Continue Reading »

Read, every day, something no one else is reading.
Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.
Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.
It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut   - Continue Reading »

Words of Jesus, who is called “Christ.” It is from his title that we derive the word “Christian” (from Matthew 25:34-46)

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

•For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,
•I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,
•I was a stranger and you invited me in,
•I needed clothes and you clothed me,
•I was sick and you looked after me,
•I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry   - Continue Reading »

From an AP article at Yahoo News Aug 2. Obama, recently campaigning in Florida, says McCain’s campaign is guilty of cynically distracting people from the issues, a tactic which is not exactly racism. Then he said:

“What I’m interested in, ultimately, is going to be governing,” he told reporters at a morning news conference. “What that means is we’re going to have to try to get things done.”

…

He added of the Republicans’ approach:
“They’re very good at negative campaigning.
They’re not so good at governing.”

Hmm. You think?

It might be a good project for each of us - to try to summarize the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 - 7) in 209 words.

Brian McLaren has done so, in his The Secret Message of Jesus (chapter 15, “Kingdom Ethics”, p 136). Each of us would no doubt change the wording in some places or the overall emphasis. For example “The Golden Rule” is quoted in full but “The Lord’s Prayer” isn’t even summarized. McLaren undertook a difficult project, and this is worth reading and thinking about a bit.

Be poor in spirit,
mourn,
be meek,
hunger and thirst for true righteousness,
be merciful,
be pure in heart,
be a peace-maker,
be willing to joyfully suffer persecution and insult for doing what is right.

Be salt and light in the world - by doing good works.

Do not hate or indulge in anger, but instead seek to reconcile.

Do not lust or be sexually unfaithful in your heart.

  - Continue Reading »

God,
good beyond all that is good,
fair beyond all that is fair,
in you is calmness
peace
and concord.

Heal the dissensions
that divide us from one another
and bring us back to a unity of love
bearing some likeness
to your divine nature.

Amen

- Dionysius of Alexandria, A.D. 264

This is from another   - Continue Reading »

The numbers show that liberal influence is more effective in reducing abortions than is conservative influence. [This is info lifted from the Liberals Like Christ site. You can see Ray Dubuque's original chart there, about 1/2 way down the page.]

These numbers are important. They show actual results. They show which party’s impact over time is most effectively anti-abortion - and it’s not the so-called conservatives! Liberal policies, behaviors and attitudes apparently REDUCE abortions. Republican policies, attitudes and behaviors apparently INCREASE abortions. The results are similar regarding teen pregnancy.

THEREFORE: You WILL do more to reduce abortions by voting for pro-choice candidates   - Continue Reading »

The prior post (”Twillight of the Gods - Greed and Money“) mentioned increasing economic distress throughout our nation. This is for real.

I expect it will continue, though the extent to which it spreads and strengthens, and it’s impact on our international positions, are very much debatable questions.

We could be facing major tragedies in our economic life. That means major tragedies for millions of individual Americans and their families.

But we could also be moving into a time of repentance.   - Continue Reading »

I saw somewhere the other day, for the first time, the acronymn FWO’s - for “Formerly Well Off” persons.

The economic state of the USA is changing and people know it, and already there are increasing numbers of FWO’s. And maybe we - “we” as a nation that is, as a culture - deserve it, or at least asked for it.

The Bible has warned us for millenia of the deadliness of greed and the transitoriness of wealth. But we have made it the one inescapable determiner of what a person, a corporation, or national policy should do. It seems we are moving into a time   - Continue Reading »

There’s a lot of hunger in Zimbabwe -
a lot of economic distress -
a lot of political violence -
and enormous corruption.

As an American woman walks to work she carries bread in her pack, and hands it out to the begging children she passes.

Hold your hand out, child,
hold your hand out and I’ll fill it
I know it’s not much, but will it do?

  - Continue Reading »

Politics makes strange bedfellows - it’s often the lure of money and power that does it. I wonder what’s doing it in this case.

Here’s Dobson, a leading voice for “family values,” still supporting men whose unsavory characters are on public display and whose personal and political actions have done much to damage our world’s families and little to support or protect them.   - Continue Reading »

From another blessing of last week’s used book sale - one published the year after I graduated from high school.

Consider it this way: at present, the organization of American society is an interlocking system of

• semi-monopolies notoriously venal,

• an electorate notoriously unenlightened,

• misled by mass media notoriously phony,   - Continue Reading »

A man saw the whole world as a grinning skull and crossbones.
The rose flesh of life shriveled from all faces.
Nothing counts.
Everything is a fake.
Dust to dust and ashes to ashes
and then an old darkness and a useless silence.
So he saw it all.

Been there? Done that?   - Continue Reading »

[Last weekend the public library sponsored one of those huge used book sales. For less than $20 we got about 3 dozen books. One of life's pleasures! And most of them, after a week, I'm still glad we got. (Where we're going to put them is another question.)]

Here’s some good stuff from No Man Is An Island by Thomas Merton, a collection of essays.

These are the first two paragraphs of Chapter 10, “Sincerity.”

We make ourselves real by telling the truth.   - Continue Reading »

John Howard Yoder vigorously believes that Jesus’ teaching was very practical and very this-worldly. The spiritual, metaphysical, theological, religious meaning of his life and teaching - in Jesus’ mind and in the thinking of his disciples and apostles - had direct and major implications for how humans should live   - Continue Reading »

The moral issues Jesus actually paid a lot of attention to do not have a prominent place in many churches today, or in the work of many prominent religious agitators. I wonder why.

To see my short, nine-”chapter” article discussing how the Gospels present the moral concerns Jesus emhpasized, click here.

I wonder …
Whether shadows of the dead sit somewhere
    and look with deep laughter
On men who play in terrible earnest the old, known,
    solemn repetitions of history?
…
Swarming always in a drift of millions
    to the dust of toil,
    the salt of tears,
And blood drops of undiminishing war.

From Carl Sandburg’s “Momus” in Carl Sandburg, Selected Poems, p113. (Momus was an ancient Greek god of mockery, cynicism, and perpetual criticism.)

Psalm 52

1 Why do you boast of evil, you mighty man?
Why do you boast all day long,
you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God?

2 Your tongue plots destruction;
it is like a sharpened razor,
you who practice deceit.

3 You love evil rather than good,
falsehood rather than speaking the truth.
…

5 Surely God will bring you down …   - Continue Reading »

What do you do when it’s over?

One of the problems left by an authoritarian or extensively dishonest and illegal regime is this - how much do we need to talk about or otherwise “deal with” such misbehavior once the national power balances have changed?

Remember what Gerald Ford said when he became President after Nixon resigned? “Our long national nightmare is over.” Unfortunately it wasn’t. The illegalities and other offenses were swept under one of history’s bigger rugs; but the bulge remained to haunt us. It seems those same attitudes and behaviors have revisited us   - Continue Reading »

This is a pretty good “translation” of the Declaration, though she does have a couple of points of her own to emphasize that are not quite there in the original. I do recommend this for any and all who want a refresher on what the Founders were thinking as things got officially under way. (I added numbers to the list of offenses.)

Sometimes one group of people decides to split off from another group, and to become an independent country, as the laws of Nature and of God say that they can. But when this happens, if they want other people to respect them, they should explain why they are splitting off.

We think these things are obviously true:
That all men are created equal   - Continue Reading »