During my first year of High School in Phoenix, I randomly chose from the library a copy of the very big book, Reich,The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. I cannot at all remember what made me make that choice, but it had long-term repercussions for me that I could not have predicted. I became an amateur student of that period of European history and especially its most amazing and horrifying person, Adolf Hitler. Over my... Read more

Jeremiah is certainly the most surprising prophet in the Hebrew Bible. He is forever saying things that few if any wish to hear; he is continually offering advice and command that flies in the face of what anyone expects; he makes claims that are little less than bizarre, laughable on their face. Buy land while Jerusalem is about to fall, he says (Jer.32); remember that you are merely cracked pots, clay in the hands of the artistic creator of the... Read more

I have long found delight in the word “peripatetic”. It is true that I have for most of my life ben attracted to “five-dollar” words, a sure sign of my egregious pedantry (see?). But this word that has adorned my masthead for this blog for some time now has a rich and elastic meaning and well captures what I think I am doing when I sit down to compose my latest thinking about one thing or another. To be peripatetic... Read more

Habakkuk is one of those prophets who never quite made it into the big time, joining Amos and that noble crowd. Not only is his name hard to say and spell, there remains a fervent scholarly debate about when he was active as a prophet and even about exactly what his main claims were. I do not propose to regurgitate all that in this brief essay, but will instead focus attention, as I always seek to do, on what the... Read more

Just a few minutes ago, I received news that a long-time member of our church— he claimed that his mother while pregnant first brought him in her womb to the place over 72 years ago—has died in a Cincinnati hospital where he was admitted last week suffering from pneumonia. He was on a long road trip with his wife, something he dearly loved to do, but became ill with what he thought was a terrible cold, but was in fact... Read more

As often happens to me, I too soon found myself without something to read on a recent vacation. I leave on a trip and am convinced that I have sufficient material to last the whole of the time away. I am almost always wrong. My wife, Diana, warns me again and again that the long book I have with me simply will not fill my reading days as completely as I imagine. So, I often take some time in one... Read more

There are any number of modern religious public speakers who fancy themselves to be prophets. They and I use that term in its clear biblical sense. The Hebrew word translated “prophet” literally means “mouthpiece” or “spokesperson”. A prophet, in the biblical sense, means someone who imagines themselves speaking on behalf of God, one able, or “called” in its most religious meaning, to bring the divine word into a contemporary setting. In a world of democratic openness to practically anyone claiming... Read more

Jewish rabbis throughout the ages have loved this text, while many Christian readers have been bewildered by it. The reason for each reaction is not difficult to discern. Jewish readers of the Bible have regularly been more than willing to allow the very words of the text to guide their thinking about it, even if the road they feel called to traverse often is rich, rare, and exceedingly strange. In short, Jewish men and women are wildly open to new... Read more

I recently returned from a plane and cruise trip to and from Alaska. The entire trip began in Anchorage, whence we traveled on land for four days, and then boarded a cruise ship—Celebrity Line—for a seven day float on the inside passage from Juneau to Skagway to Icy Straight Point to Ketchikan, ending in Vancouver BC. On the trip, my wife, Diana, and I led a five-session lecture series on wilderness and its connections to the Bible. In addition, and... Read more

I know deep in my soul that I am a racist. No, I do not overtly despise persons of races other than my white one, though it is now loudly debated whether “white” represents any sort of race at all. At least, in my case, when I have to fill out one of those forms I invariably choose “Anglo” or some equivalent thereof. Now that I live in California those ubiquitous forms ask me if I am non-Latino, or Latinx... Read more