I'm Glad to be a Christian

I'm glad to be a Christian, not that I could really be anything else, since I was born into a Christian family in a culturally Christian world (Wisconsin and Michigan - the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions), educated and trained in the Christian Ministry. Had I been born in a Muslim or Buddhist nation/culture, that's likely what I'd be.

But I am what I am, and I'm grateful for the faith that speaks of love and forgiveness as the great anchors of life and work. Other traditions focus on similar themes, and here's where I find a great deal of correspondence with people of faith everywhere.

In all of this, I find more commonality with people of other faith-traditions than I find with Christians who discriminate against LGBTQ persons, love guns and tolerate racism, and are willing to condemn the poor for the sake of Christian Libertarianism and its dreams of unfettered Capitalism.

I wish life were a little easier for me and mine when it comes to faith and the way we live, but if history tells me anything, life has never been easy, for anyone.

To my spiritual/religious friends, thanks for all your support and vision ... not every Christian agrees with me, naturally, and some take profoundly different paths, but so it goes - glad we're still friends, nonetheless.

I'm still learning and growing, too ... who knows where it will end, though for now, I'm happy to be where I am.

I Doubt It

"I doubt it!"

Some of the best words we can ever speak, when it come to things/ideas/peoples/religions/gods that seek to convince us otherwise.

I grew up hearing all kinds of sermons, some of them even good, about the "dangers of doubt." But I always had my doubts.

I went through three confirmation classes in two different churches and declined to join the church each time, until a constellation of factors, including a cute girl, caught my attention and my faith, such as it was.

I remember how I frustrated my 6th grade Sunday School Teacher because I refused to memorize and then say The Apostles' Creed and the LORD's Prayer, because, I said, "there was no value in simply memorizing them." 

I've since memorized both, and am grateful, but grateful, too, for that 6th grade boy who had his own brand of integrity.

I remember reading a great sermon, was it by Fosdick, "Time to Doubt Your Doubts," or something like that.

Well, if we're going to doubt, it's likely a wise thing to doubt everything, even our doubts.

Though I don't doubt that the earth revolves around the sun and the universe is very, very, old. Nor do I doubt my wife's love and that of my children, nor do I doubt the fact that I'm tired right now because I got up way too early this morning.

But let me get back to the central issue - doubt is the energy of learning ... doubt clears the way for faith, which is often strangled to death by certainty. Because faith is faith, never a done deal, faith always needs doubt like a garden needs digging and weeding and pruning.

When I'm certain that the new restaurant is down such-and-such a street is likely when I can't find it. A little doubt really helps, especially if I then ask D for some help: "Where's that dadgum restaurant?" Because mostly she knows things when I don't.

Seriously, doubt is the best friend God has when it comes to working the magic of love in our lives. 

Doubt allows God to sneak up on us, and God loves doing that.

Doubt cleans out the closest of old clothing from the last decade, or the last century, or the last millennium or two. Not that we're then left with nothing; not at all, because the Spirit is continually creating new stuff - new stuff to try on to see if it fits, how it looks on us, and if others like it, too. New stuff that has connections to the best stuff from long ago, but revised, adjusted, altered to be fresh and lively.

I doubt if I need to go on any more with this ...

Reading the Text

I can only read Scripture as I read it.
With inner eyes and thoughts.
I bring a great deal of myself to the Text.

And God welcomes me.
Who I am and what I think.
For God has shaped me:

Over the years.
Through family and friends.
Teachers and torments.

So I pay attention to how I read the Text.
What is it that captures my eye?
Stirs my imagination and compels my spirit?

Fascinating, it is, for me.
What lights my fire or
Chaps my hide.

I'm inclined to believe, I hear the Spirit
Saying to me,
"Well done, and now read on!"

One World of Faith

As I see it, and perhaps too simplistically,
Christians can either remain convinced that
Only they qualify for heaven, and
All the rest for hell.

Or, "there's a wideness in God's mercy," and
All the world is invited, included and welcomed.
With all their religions, creeds and ways.
All their failures and foibles, sins and sorrows.

The first leads to only one conclusion:
Build the walls of hostility higher, wider and longer.

The second leads to some uncertainty, I suppose.
But peace as well.
Maybe the very peace that
Surpasses all understanding.

Welcoming the mystery of God's grace, that which
Supersedes.
Strange world, then, without walls.
Sisters and brothers are well all.

Let the Nations Know - Psalm 96

Faith meanderings, Psalm 96.10-13 ...

Let the nations know, the world is on a firm foundation ... "it shall never be moved!"

And when God arrives to judge the earth, earth will rejoice.

And if earth should rejoice upon God's visit, then we might pay a little more attention to the causes of such joy - in the heavens, upon the earth ... for the sea and all the life that fills it ... for the field and all that it grows ... the forests and all its trees ...

Some serious environmental theology going on here ...

Without getting too dramatic, mountain-top-removal is not bringing a whole lot of joy to God's good earth ... or to the folks who live by those shattered mountains.

Nor is clear-cutting ... or fracking ... or limestone mining in the Upper Peninsula ...

How about the laying waste of the Amazon Basin ... or the desolation of the Niger Delta ... not to mention the horrors of industrial warfare, unexploded ordinance that will pollute the earth and maim the children who "toy" with the junk left behind by the greed of the nations ...

I doubt if the field and forest and the butterflies are too pleased with Monsanto's manipulation of all things living ...

Anyway, that's enough for the moment ...

Why I'm a Liberal!

Not sure when I became a liberal.
Though some of it's in my DNA, I think.

At different points in time.
It's the only position that made sense to me.

When it comes to my faith.
My Christian Faith.

By the way, the Devil hates liberalism.
Liberalism's compassion and kindness.

In all that I know about Jesus,
He's a liberal.

No wonder the rulers went after him.
No wonder they strung him up.

"See, this is what we think of your liberal ideas."
"We'll have none of it."

Yes, I'm a liberal.
My heart bleeds for folks.

My heart yearns for the Kingdom of God.
"Thy will be done on earth."

I know and believe.
There's no need for hungry children.

There's no need for war.
There's no need to be so afraid.

In matters of faith, I'm a Christian.
And that's why I'm a liberal.

The Sunrise Within

May today's sunrise be within your brave heart.
May the ecstasy of bird song be your very own voice.
May the riotous color of a spring garden be the energy of your mind.

May all the things of this earth which bring joy, delight and peace.
Remind you of all that God created in your world within.
And gives to you today, anew.

To lighten your world.
To sing it alive.
To color it bright.

~ inspired by "The Lost" by Jones Very ( 1813 - 1880).