Wandering Elder

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