“Assuming” when I was a kid led to somebody, usually the fifth grade know-it-all, telling us “assuming made an ass out of you and me.” Annoying as he was the kid had a point. If you just assume what you wish to be true is true, then you will often be a fool. This kind of assuming is fatal: epistemologically fatal. Growing up one learns that the same word can have two meanings and in sixth grade hilarity can ensue.... Read more
Analysis of the race: This election, like most elections, hinges on the theology or philosophy of the current President and whether the public perceives it adequate to the times. An incumbent needs a narrative of why all will be better if he wins. This is generally true in democratic elections. If the President has a theology, a sense of the divine order and people believe he has a mandate from Heaven, a message that makes sense of our times, he... Read more
Imagine for a moment that God exists. There is a perfectly good being. He loves us, not just in general, but each one of us. He loves you. He even loves me! This would be good news. The trouble, if you are a God of love, is the overwhelming nature of the divine presence. He is great and the power imbalance between His magnificence and our created nature is very great. God must allow us consent and so, though God is... Read more
Christians know we are all broken. Nobody is perfect and so no human being can be trusted with total power. Institutions are often megaphones for personal power. In noble hands, like those of Reverend Martin Luther King, great good can be done with power, but even King was not perfect so that even the best of people and their institutions need a check and a balance. No institution is so pure, no intentions are so noble, that is cannot be... Read more
If Disney is right, then “a wish is a dream your heart makes when you’re fast asleep.” If so, then nobody should base their life on dreams. Our hearts asleep are not doing the hard work of examining our own longings to see if they are just. There might be an exception. If as Plato suggested, and Joseph knew, the good God could speak to us in dreams, then these dreams might come from an undiscovered country and reveal much to... Read more
Knowing a little about something complicated is dangerous. Everything you believe can be true, as far as it goes, and you still end up clownishly wrong. When I was a boy, I thought that if I just learned all the facts about a subject, say the American Civil War, then I would know about the Civil War. Even as a child, I learned that knowing all the facts was going to be impossible, so I settled on the important facts. What facts... Read more
We are awash in goodness, truth, and beauty. All we need do is raise our heads from the muck and see the glory of the Heavens. You, with every human being on the planet, are created in the image of God and so essentially good and worthy of love. The brokenness in us, in me at least, does not take away from the truth. Things are not as they should be, but the good God came to heal and give... Read more
If any given Super Bowl were the most important game ever, they would not play it again the next year. Any given election is the same. A Republic that survived the presidency of the arch-hypocrite Thomas Jefferson can endure a great deal. So long as they allow the common man to vote, the Republic will have hope. There will always be a next most important election ever. There are more enduring questions than those that can be answered at the... Read more
Peace is a good thing, but not the only good. One handicap to Middle East peace is that peace just now, with the present regimes, leaders, attitudes, would be a false and ugly peace. We all pray for peace, but we also pray for justice. It might be better to hope for a wary and watchful tension in the Middle East than a peace bought at the expense of the rights of minorities in the region. The Ottoman Empire demonstrated... Read more
Satan’s existence is suggested by human experience and the Bible and is confirmed by reading the Times. The Times is almost surely not a particularly diabolical organ, but it does report the news and the news often shows signs of the demonic. The bad news about the world is evidence for evil that goes beyond the merely human. The Devil is a spiritual being gone wrong who could not be satisfied with goodness, truth, and beauty. This proud tyrant seizes... Read more
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