As we approach the Advent and Christmas seasons, I am in a forward-looking and hopeful mood. But that also involves looking back to a point in my life, not that many years ago, when hope took on a new meaning for me. The great but incredibly difficult German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in a rare moment of clarity, wrote that all important human questions can be boiled down to these three: WHAT CAN I KNOW? WHAT OUGHT I TO DO? and WHAT MAY... Read more
Despite my consistent self-description as a “person of faith,” I have been accused occasionally over the years, usually by various Christian colleagues, of actually being an atheist. I do take atheism very seriously, and have often written about how this has helped me understand and express my faith more effectively and clearly. I have regularly written on this blog about what atheists and persons of faith share in common and how they can communicate fruitfully and intelligently. I recently received... Read more
In the six-plus years that I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve occasionally been asked what a “Freelance Christian” is. I call myself a freelance Christian because I don’t believe that any particular doctrinal formulation of the Christian faith is satisfactory. This is not because I’m still looking for the doctrinal package for Christianity that fits my own eclectic faith most closely; it’s because I don’t believe Christianity can be packaged in a doctrinal statement at all. Jesus did not come... Read more
Today is Black Friday, the unfortunate beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Apparently in service to the holiday spirit of capitalism, some stores opened in yesterday’s evening hours, forcing their employees to interrupt their Thanksgivings in pursuit of increased sales. It is also the beginning of this year’s skirmish in the much-hyped “War on Christmas.” This is a “war” allegedly being waged by all sorts of non-Christians in this country, a war whose continuing battlefields include the apparent prohibition against... Read more
In early 1980, Isaac Asimov wrote something in a Newsweek article that has been making the rounds on social media over the past few months, something that could have been written yesterday. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” Asimov died over twenty-five years ago; I suspect that he would have adapted well to the internet... Read more
Today is my youngest son Justin’s thirty-seventh birthday. If that’s not enough to make me feel old, my oldest son Caleb will turn forty next March. As I often tell people, I fathered my children when I was in my early teens. But today is not about me–it’s about Justin, whom I admire as much as anyone I know. I wrote a celebration of Justin a bit over four years ago on this blog–a number of positive things have happened... Read more
I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. Matthew 25:35 Over the past couple of weeks I have posted several essays on this blog reflecting on immigration, particularly on the caravan of immigrants inching north through Mexico to our southern border. These posts have generated some interesting conversations both on my blog and on Facebook, more comments than any group of essays I’ve ever posted. One of the Facebook comment threads was particularly “interesting.” On that thread, a person developed an... Read more
The stereotype of the Type A personality has become an entrenched part of cultural lore. Originally described by two cardiologists in the 1950s as the type of person who is most likely to experience cardiac arrest, Type As are familiar to everyone. Competitive, short-fused, action oriented, no nonsense, humorless, deadline driven, boundless in energy—these are people who not only don’t stop to smell the roses, but tend not even to notice the existence of the roses as they plow through... Read more
One of my favorite features of liturgical worship is encountering familiar and favorite texts during the lectionary cycle. One recent Sunday, for instance, I read as lector from Proverbs, a selection that included the verses that I used to dedicate my first published book to my mother: “She opens her mouth with wisdom . . . her children rise up and call her blessed.” The assigned Psalm last Sunday was Psalm 127, which includes the passage I used when dedicating my second book... Read more
I began Election Day last Tuesday at the gym, riding the stationary bike for an hour. The only way I can get through the tedium of working out on an aerobic machine is to read—last Tuesday, I read the opening pages of Anne Lamott’s newest book, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope. I love Anne Lamott’s work—her honesty, fearlessness, humor, and insight always resonate deeply. The best comment anyone ever made about my writing was that my blog reminded him of... Read more
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