“Knowing” is overrated. As a lifelong Christian and lifelong Muslim bound together in marriage, my husband and I have drastically scaled down the list of things each of us “knows for sure.” We’ve realized how many tenets of our received faiths are based on man-made theology – and we’ve chosen to do without them. Today, we look back at this learning experience as a great blessing and a great liberation. Here’s an example of something my husband used to “know”... Read more
Jesus flipped every norm of traditional religion to focus on faith and love. We need to do that too. Remember the other day, when I turned a couple of Jesus’ parables upside-down? The parable of the Sheep and the Goats teaches us that the ones who cared for “the least of these” inherited the kingdom. The parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector teaches us that God isn’t interested in holier-than-thou-ness, but in true devotion. Christians certainly don’t have a... Read more
Sheep and goats, Pharisees and tax collectors – let’s talk about eternity. So the other day, I was telling y’all about my husband who (like everyone else on the planet) had no control over his place of birth or his religious roots. He was raised as a Muslim in the Middle East. I had the distinct pleasure of being raised as an Evangelical Christian in the U.S. of A. I surmised, years before we met, that I had been born... Read more
What I want to talk about for the next few days has grown out of decades of experience. Our first stop will be the parable of the Good Samaritan. For 35 years, I’ve been married to a wonderful Arab Muslim man. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were pioneers for y’all. We learned firsthand how to look at people of other faiths through grace-colored glasses. (BTW, if you missed my last series on pro-life, pro-birth, and pro-choice,... Read more
Final post (for now) on birth, choice, and abortion. (Here’s Part One, here’s Part Two.) Suggestion: if you don’t have the patience to read this whole post (I know, it’s lengthy), just scroll down and look at the phrases in bold. If they make you curious, come on back and take it from the top! (And if you have lots of patience, please also read this and this on the topic of abortion.) Oh, and please subscribe to my newsletter! Let me say... Read more
A couple of days ago, I posted “Pro-birth, Pro-choice, Pro-life, Part One.” I know you’ve been waiting for the sequel. Wait no longer! Let’s pretend it’s easy for Christians to talk about contraceptives (and all that jazz). (BTW have you subscribed to Grace Colored Glasses yet?) Please don’t rush through this post. There’s a lot here to think about. I wish someone had written this years ago. (BTW, also see Part 3, and this and this on the topic of abortion. Thanks.)... Read more
Here’s a hot topic, possibly the single most divisive topic at the intersection of Christianity and politics: abortion. I used to be a single-issue voter, and as a conservative Christian that issue was (say it with me now) abortion. Baby-killing. If a candidate was “pro-life,” he/she got my vote. End of story. Once as I was walking into my polling place, I was approached by the local Dem candidate, doing some last-minute campaigning. “I’d be honored if you’d vote for... Read more
I’m very thankful now, when I look back at who I was and all I’ve learned in the roughly 6 years since everything changed – but at the time, it was lonely and infuriating. I couldn’t ignore the issue and still be honest with myself: the Christianity that I knew was, well, a failure. I’m just being real here. Christians, following a form of Christianity that I also adhered to, had been hateful and vicious. In the name of Jesus.... Read more
(In these first Grace Colored Glasses posts, I’d just like to briefly talk about how I went from law colored to grace colored glasses.) Where were we? Ah yes, the cliffhanger. What do you do when suddenly everything you thought you knew turns out to be a lie? I mean, I was taught that when trouble comes, you gotta pray harder. God will make it all better if you have enough faith. This did not feel like one of those... Read more
So anyway… At the very moment when my paradigm was falling apart, along came the book I needed to read. Not to help me put my paradigm back together, but to help me step over the debris and into a new paradigm. A bit of background: After, well, let’s say “several decades” as a conservative, evangelical Christian, always coloring inside the lines, always playing by the rules – suddenly the rug was pulled out from under me: “my community” betrayed... Read more
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