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
We’ve been making our way through the Ten Commandments (full series here) to see whether Christian nationalists are correct in their hypothesis that a nation built on America’s founding documents and ruled by the Ten Commandments would make us great again. Last time, we looked at some of the lies that our founding fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and white Southerners told themselves about Black people. These were not harmless, little white lies (pun intended), but lies designed to rob Black people of... Read more
Christian nationalism calls us to merge our national founding documents with Christianity’s “key” documents. The Declaration of Independence (et al) meets the Ten Commandments (et al). Christian nationalists claim that America, ruled effectively by both sets of documents in combination, would make America great again. We’ve been making our way through the Ten Commandments (full series here) to see whether they are compatible, and whether a Ten Commandments-based country would really be a Christian nationalist’s dream come true. We’re almost... Read more
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