If you follow world news, you know by now that on Saturday, Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza launched a surprise attack on Israel. My husband’s family live in Gaza and other parts of Palestine, so we are watching events closely. We have been following the situation for many years, and I have written about it several times on Patheos. In a nutshell, the resistance group Hamas initiated what may loosely be called a war against Israel. On Saturday morning, they... Read more
The pro-choice/anti-choice issue can get pretty heated, and usually ends in a stalemate, right? “Yeah, I always feel like I just wasted a bit of my life.” So if you’re going to go our separate ways at the end of the conversation, why not send them home with something to really think about? A few tidbits they won’t be able to get out of their minds? Notions that might even make them rethink their paradigm? “I’m listening.” Below are three... Read more
As part of the tug-of-war that comes with defense spending, our favorite cartoon characters – Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene – managed to make enough noise to remind us just how ridiculous the far-right can be. At the same time, they insulted thousands of American soldiers and signaled loyalty to white supremacists. All in all, just another ordinary day on Capitol Hill. Their nonsense took place on Wednesday and Thursday – hours before the US budget deadline – in... Read more
LOVE. The greatest commandment. Greater than faith and hope. And also the squishiest, most subjective, indefinable concept there is. How can God command “love”? Isn’t it something that has to be freely given? If it’s really true that Christianity is built on love, we need to grapple with questions like these. We need to examine our assumptions and interrogate our actions. What follows is not a definition or explanation of love, or an exhaustive list of actions that are and... Read more
Back in the day, we all knew that communing with God was a priority. My former (evangelical) self strove to have Quiet Time every morning (if I could stay awake), during which I would often run through a checklist of activities designed to bring me closer to God. The list usually included Bible reading, journalling, and praying my way through a number of prayer requests. I generally enjoyed Quiet Time. It gave me a feeling of closeness with God, a... Read more
I’ve never forgotten the day a Christian friend posted this cat puke status on Facebook – and he was dead serious: I woke up this morning and immediately stepped into cat puke. And I said, “O Lord, what else do you have in store for me today?” As an evangelical (which I was for 50+ years), I would have asked God the same question. Obviously that cat puke was not there randomly. Its exact location was choreographed by God, somehow... Read more
We’ve heard it said, “you can’t fix stupid.” That’s a grim assessment. My good buddy Bob gave me reason for hope awhile back when he sent me an article with a different take on the issue – from the mind of German Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, no less. Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian, and and a vocal critic of Hitler’s program. When most of the Church in Germany was silent, complicit, or even actively pro-Nazi, Bonhoeffer and... Read more
Is this water apartheid? Recent viral videos show the Israeli Civil Administration overseeing Israeli soldiers and workers as they fill Palestinian water wells with cement – in the middle of a sweltering summer, and with no reasonable alternative for the Palestinians to obtain water. Christians, we should care deeply about this situation! Is modern Israel really the apple of God’s eye, if this is how it behaves? Does it deserve our unconditional support? Are Palestinians perhaps “the least of these,”... Read more
The hate crimes cycle happens like clockwork in this country: We get news of a mass shooting that has just occurred – details are sparse. Soon, we’re told the perpetrator was a white male, and the victims were non-white. Soon, a manifesto, or a pattern or evidence of racist attitudes, is discovered, and the shooting is labeled a “hate crime.” Immediately, there are white people on social media who say “hate is hate, violence is violence, why bring race into... Read more
“Thou shalt not covet” is the theme of our final commandment (or commandments, if you’re Lutheran), and it has some major implications – for those willing to think deeply. Those of you who have been with me from the beginning of this Ten Commandments series know that we are investigating the Christian nationalist idea that if we’d only build our country on our founding documents plus Christian texts like the Ten Commandments (which, curiously, is found in the Hebrew/Old Testament),... Read more
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