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Compromise Solution
Having converted Joan’s car to its cash value and needing to replace my bone-crushing sports car with a kinder-gentler suspension (as long as we drive on Oklahoma roads), we suddenly found ourselves in the market for two cars. Writing this column on science, technology and religion/ethics means that I need to walk the talk. Read more…
Christmas is coming!
My how time flies! It seems like we just started this year and it is already almost over.
This coming Sunday is the beginning of Advent. During the season of Advent we celebrate the hope that comes with the anticipation of the Savior’s birth, but so many of us get wrapped up in the hustle and bustle of holiday shopping and baking and parties and programs and decorating and … and … and … (feel free to fill in the blanks here – there always seems to be one more thing to add to the list). We are overcome with anxiety rather than joy and we anticipate the end of the madness rather than the celebration of the coming of the Christ-child. We are too busy to really take the time to remember why we are celebrating in the first place.
This year at Grace, our children and youth will be spending time getting ready for the annual Christmas pageant. While they are doing this we are intentionally taking time to build that spirit of anticipation that is meant to be felt during Advent. I would like to challenge you to do the same. How will you embrace anticipation? What brings your hope to life?
Many say that it is already Christmastime, but I say it is not quite here yet. Christmas is coming and I look forward to searching for daily reminders of that hope.
The Evolution of Religion
I have read several books on this journey. Professor Bart Ehrman’s book, “Jesus Interrupted” was among those and it turned out to be the perfect provocateur with a background of world religions developing over 8,000 years paired with the development of Christianity over the past 2,000. I will not try to reproduce the numerous insights from a three hundred page book and it would make a fabulous group study book, let me give a few key points of Ehrman’s which, by the way, are nothing new to my seminary training nor to anyone who has taken Education For Ministry. It was a good survey book for me and reminded me of some important things. Read more…
The Purpose of Religion
Religion has developed a bad reputation in the western world. A major reason for this is that certain ideologies and political opportunists have hijacked Christian religion (in the west. Same thing happens in the east with other religions.) to maintain political dominance. As a result of this all too obvious fusion of Christian religion with a particular political and ideological position, those who don’t buy the politics simply discard Christianity and religion in general as a stooge for what they see as oppressive politics. In this note, I would like to demonstrate that what is needed is exactly the opposite of what all the “I’m spiritual but not religious” and “I’m atheist because your religion is bad” claim. Read more…
Demo kratia and Ecclesia
We fled back to the Cyclades Islands to escape the oppressive 107 degree heat of the mainland cities. The islands always have a breeze and because of the blue Aegean Sea all around, the temperatures are always moderated between 65 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Here on the island of Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades, we took a bus tour of the island where you can learn about 6,000 years of civilization. One the highest mountain on the island (1,000 meters or about 3,300 feet), you can visit the Temple of Demeter.
Demeter was the goddess of grain and the harvest. People believed it was Demeter who made the crops grow each year, so the first loaf of bread made from the harvest each year was offered in sacrifice to her (sound familiar?). More broadly, she was the goddess of the earth, of agriculture and fertility (including human). She also presided over the justice of sacred law and the cycle of life and death. Her cult predated the Olympian Pantheon by centuries. Read more…