Dear Governor Huckabee, I will vote for you in the general election if you get the nomination of my party and are running against Secretary Clinton, but you are my fifth choice in the primaries. Since my family is deeply pro-life, pro-marriage, and pro-justice, this might seem odd. You are a singularly winsome communicator. You were a successful two-term governor. You care about the poor and the working class in ways that few other Republicans articulate. I know you are... Read more
Grace Lee Whitney, actor and Star Trek star, is dead. She was eighty-five . . . older than my Mom and older than my Dad. I did not know her, but I hear she had a hard life. The ugly side of the industry that breaks the laws of God in order to commoditize sex and turn women into objects harmed her deeply. She made some bad choices too . . . and then made some good ones. I don’t... Read more
Yesterday Houston was so like Los Angeles that I sat without shoes with Dad on his back porch and learned that “like” is not “same as.” The mosquitoes came and they feasted . . . twenty or more on each foot and somehow I noticed nothing until bedtime. And then the itching began, impossible to ignore, initially pleasurable to satisfy, but fundamentally insatiable. Cream helped some, but I itch. I itch now. And yet I should not keep scratching. My... Read more
A lot of people get called “Nazis,” but very few of us know what the insult means. Americans my age and younger (most of us!) know the Nazis were a vile German political movement that killed at least six million Jews. If we have watched any classic movies or Indiana Jones, then we know they were worth hating. In fact, so many people fling Hitler into discussions that the argument has a name: reductio ad Hitlerum. The rule in our house: if... Read more
I know how to hold any view in Evangelical churches and remain in good standing. This process of passive aggressive dissent is so effective that in the hands of a winsome person it can be used to allow “good standing” while doing almost anything and believing almost anything. The exceptions will be actions or beliefs that are viewed as vile by both the Evangelical culture and the Democratic Party. These beliefs or actions will be condemned and you will be unable to get any... Read more
I am thankful that my mother taught me about all of reality. She never pretended every prayer got answered the way I wished and I knew, given our finances, there would never be a pony for Christmas. She did not pretend that she had all the answers and modeled Socratic questioning long before I had a clue that Greece existed, let alone Socrates. Mom told me that the world was a big place full of complications and part of reality... Read more
Once when holding a child that had died, I prayed for the child, for my wife, and for my own pain. Edmund St John Reynolds was dead and remained dead. Hope and I kept hurting, but prayer worked. My prayers for my baby boy were answered with a “not yet.” He did not live as I wished him to live, but he will live again on the last day. My prayers for my boy were answered by creating something new... Read more
Nobody was ever damned simply by hearing an idea. This kind of magical thinking is forbidden to Christians or we would have to rip parts of the Bible out (Judges) that describe ideas that caused wicked actions. Being wrong and acting on it matters. . . being wrong? That can be jolly if one uses care and uses the wrong idea combined with the dialectic, and divine Revelation to become right. We are too hasty to think that we must act when... Read more
History shows that there has never been an atheist# regime that was not horrific. There have been and are dominantly theistic regimes that are good places to live relative to the times. This is a pragmatic reason to worry about atheist# regimes. Such worry, and the fact that theism has been successful in creating decent regimes might make a rational person hope that theism is true and atheism# is false. All things being close to equal in terms of argument,... Read more
Anti-theists are sending Christians to labor camps in China and killing us in North Korea, but there is good news: Anti-theists# in the United States are positive they will not kill Christians if they ever get power and I believe them. There is no evidence that American anti-theists will ever develop a mass movement of anti-theists capable of exercising power. Anti-theists as individuals have had power in the United States and will have power, but there is no reason to think this... Read more
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