Wandering Elder

Yesterday, I watched the delivery of President Bush's casket to the Capital.  It was a majestic event, with a degree of formality and precision of execution that I find almost breathtaking.  In the event is a reverence for the office  of President, not specifically the person, which reflects a grandeur and attitude of respect that seemed to also signal the vestiges of a fading ideal. Both the office and person of the President have become so uncivil that one wonders where the society that holds its leaders with respect belongs in a contemporary America that does not  respect its leaders because they seem to no longer respect the substance and the gravity of the offices that they hold. With the death of Bush, an old era passes away.  I cannot say it was a good era, and there are plenty of issues with which we can contend.  But it certainly feels as if an era of civility and honor are fading away. As I watched the precision of the military, I found that I was honored to be a pa

Stan Lee 1922-2018 Good bye, Stan, and thank you for all the great stories, heroes, and joy throughout the years. Excelsior! 

I was recently at a local vigil held in memory and honor of those killed at Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh.  During that vigil, one of the speakers said, "This is not who we are."  Speaking of the hate mongering, violent killers, the point was that the rhetoric, the anger, the racism does not reflect the populace. Unfortunately, it does . I am not suggesting that it represents the majority.  But the fact that it exists  points to the fact that somewhere, lurking, are these ideologies and feelings.  If this wasn't truly us, this would not have happened, nor would it have been conceivable. What we run into is a fallacy sometimes called the "True Scotsman" fallacy or a fallacy of circular reasoning.  It is a way of reinterpreting evidence or claims in order to prevent the refutation of a stated position.  It works like this: A Scotsman reads in the paper and sees that a terrible murder took place in England.  The Scotsman says, "No Scotsman wo

One of the issues with which I have recently been wrestling is that there are so many versions of the Christian faith.  Even as far back as the Apostle Paul, there have been differing opinions as to what it meant to be a follower of Christ. To think about this issue is, in and of itself, quite difficult, especially if one believes that there is a particular, unified narrative and theology to be found in the New Testament.  In other words, if you think that all the books of the New Testament say and think the same thing, it is hard to consider the possibility that they do not.  It is even more difficult to think that there are voices in the New Testament that are opposed to other voices in that same New Testament. Before we approach that idea, it should be demonstrated that there are different opinions  in the New Testament.  For example  we see from Matthew and Luke that there were conflicting accounts of Jesus’ birth and lineage.   If we were to go to Mark or John for clarificatio

If I were to play a football game on an Xbox, Playstation, or some other system, I would pick the Kansas City Chiefs.  Not because I am a fan (I think they wear red and white), but because when I was a child, one of my band directors had  played for them briefly.  At least that is the story I heard.  It may not be true, I don't know. The point is, because I liked that band director, I became somewhat tangentially loyal to the Chiefs.  The other reason I would pick the Chiefs is this: when I was in seminary, my roommate was a big football fan (or at least in comparison to me).  He loved football and had a copy of Tecmo Bowl, a football game for the original Nintendo system. He wanted to play, so we played and I picked the Chiefs.  He treated the game like a real  football game.  I treated it like a video game.  I wasn't thinking about rational plays, stats, or player capabilities.  So when I won the game by kicking a 75 yard field goal, my roommate was not  happy. "Yo

So, let me ask you a question.  What is your primary language? Let me ask you another question.  Why  is that your primary language? The answer is probably because it is the language to which you have grown most accustomed.  It is the language with which you are most familiar, and likely the language you have heard since early childhood if not birth. It makes sense.  The familiarity we have with the language is second nature.  We are so used to it that we can immediately pick up on accents, other languages (even if we don't understand them) and we certainly pick up when people use idioms that are slightly different from ours.  Again, this makes sense. So, let me ask you yet another question.  What is the Bible to you? I will not assume your answer the way I did before.  But what I would say is that if  you answered "The Word of God" or "Holy" or something along those lines, I would ask in response: Why  is this your answer? For many of us, the answe

In 2008,in his special It's Bad For Ya,  George Carlin said this about Lance Armstrong (who would admit to doping in 2012): "I'd like to begin by saying f*** Lance Armstrong.  F*** him and his balls and his bicycles and his steroids and his yellow shirts and the dumb, empty expression on his face.  I'm tired of that asshole." He then goes on to make a profound statement in these his opening minutes of his routine:  "I'm tired of being told who to admire in this country.  Aren't you sick of being told who your heroes ought to be?  You know?  Being told who you ought to be looking up to?  I'll choose my own heroes, thank you very much." Carlin, the Great Outsider, is one of those people who I have found to challenge my thinking over and over again while making me laugh (sometimes uncomfortably).  I wouldn't go so far to call him a hero of mine (though he kind of is), but I have found that his point is well taken and a hard one to cons

With the case of Mollie Tibbetts, the young woman who disappeared in Iowa, on people's minds, I find that I keep turning my gaze to the mailer from Harbor Freight. Bear with me. Harbor Freight, the California based hardware store, sends out pretty regular mailers.  They advertise their specials, contain the 20% off one item super-coupon, and also the small, free items you can obtain with the purchase of something else.  Pretty fun place to shop. At the bottom of the mailers, at least in the Chattanooga area, there are pictures of missing people.  Never the same ones.  And each time I get one in the mail or in the paper, I find that I am drawn to the faces at the bottom.  Because beside each face is information about when and where they were last seen. Some have been missing for over twenty years.  Some were just infants when they disappeared.  Some were children.  Some were in college.  What do they all have in common?  They are gone.  Missing.  Lost. From ti

During the 2016 election cycle and after, there were a lot of times when people would make the statement, "This is not who we are as a country." I appreciate the sentiment, but the statement clearly is not true.  This may not be who we all  are, but it certainly is a portion of the country.  The violent, racist, misogynistic, intolerant voices that have dominated the political narrative are, indeed, a part of who we are.  That doesn't mean they have to be defended, but saying that they are "not who we are" is only true in the sense that by "we" one means their own particular group. As a Christian, there are plenty of instances when I hear someone claiming Christ and then saying something that I feel is so vastly out of touch with the Christian faith that I, too, would be willing to say something to the effect of "that isn't how most Christians are" reminds me that I have heard and sometimes used that same argument for Islam.  I have s

C.S. Lewis, in his essay, "Religion and Rocketry" argues that science and scientific claims are often trotted out to attack the Christian faith.  (This essay is found in the book The World's Last Night ).  While that is sometimes the case, it is more often the position of religion to feel or perceive themselves as being threatened by science given the idea that science seeks to undermine faith, even to the absurd point of Christians condemning persons for working in scientific fields: "I feel that I am, in fact, serving God by working to preserve his creation and take care of it.  Instead, I've had conservative Christians criticize me for being involved in geology because it has incendiary connections to 'old earth' and 'evolutionist' views." ("Ann" an interviewee in David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons' book UnChristian  p. 135-6.)  It is that kind of conservative view that can prevent the hypotheticals of science or even science fict

I have long been a fan of science fiction.  Especially when it comes to science fiction movies.  I would characterize that fandom as relating to movies that were more of the 2001 persuasion as well as Star Wars than, say, Predator or, perhaps more to the point, Plan 9 From Outer Space .  While I do love a good space drama, I would point out that that sci-fi need not leave the planet or have aliens to be good sci-fi.  In fact, while it is often considered a romantic drama, Somewhere in Time  is, in fact, science fiction - the whole story is predicated on time travel!  It is a wide genre, to be sure. As a fan of science fiction, what I often enjoy the most are stories that deal with hypothetical situations that focus on the contemporary in the guise of science fiction.  Parables, in other words.  I really enjoy those that effectively call ideas, ideologies, or commonly held beliefs into question.  2001, Contact, and most of the episodes of The Twilight Zone .  Science fiction is, in

  In the movie “Avengers: Infinity War,” the on-screen villain of Thanos is depicted, remarkably, as a sympathetic character who is at once a father and a being under utter conviction of the righteousness of his cause: the annihilation of half of the universe.   It is a departure in many cases from the Thanos depicted in the Infinity Gauntlet/Infinity War comic series from Marvel Comics.   Nevertheless, it is a compelling narrative and not without a striking biblical parallel in the patriarch Abraham – in particular the troubling pericope of the intended sacrifice of Isaac. In the book of Genesis, Abraham (originally named Abram) is called by God to “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” [i]   Abraham is depicted as a devotee of God who will argue with God on behalf of Sodom, [ii] become the promised father of multitudes, [iii] and have children in his advanced age.   In particular, Abraham will father his second son,