Skeptical Faith

Google Image I’ve become a fan of stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan, one of whose best routines is about “Hotpockets,” the infamous turnover containing meat or cheese that you cook in a microwave. He’s merciless in his ridicule. “I’ve never eaten a Hotpocket and said, ‘I’m glad I ate that,’” says Gaffigan. It comes with “a side of pepto,” he adds, noting that it’s especially yummy when “frozen in the middle.” But in at least one version of his routine, he says, “Let’s face it, everything’s a hot pocket.” I don’t know exactly what he meant, but one interpretation could be that we humans consistently get excited about stuff and after getting it realize it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Like addicts, we know better, but never seem to learn. We want stuff, are disappointed that it doesn’t satisfy us, and still want more. The Best or Nothing? This applies not only to “stuff,” but to money, recognition, sex, and yes, Hotpockets. Even “the best” doesn’t seem that great after

Google Image Many people feel far from God, to say nothing of religion, and never more so than at Christmastime. Though Christmas may have moved them deeply as children – and they may still get off on the lights, music and TV Christmas movies – God remains a distant abstraction, and religion appears to have nothing to do with their lives. They feel like outsiders, on the fringes of God’s love. I don’t believe that’s how God sees it. One of my favorite stories from the gospels is about a father and son, a story that’s overshadowed in most people’s minds by the much more famous father/son account of the Prodigal Son. “Tell me what you think of this story,” Jesus asks the high priests and leaders of the people in the Gospel of Mathew, according to The Message translation. “A man had two sons. He went up to the first and said, ‘Son, go out for the day and work in the vineyard.’ The son answered, ‘I don’t want to.’ Later on he thought better of it and went. "Sure, gl

Google Image As a kid I memorized a routine by comic Andy Griffith called “What It Was, Was Football.” I recited the thing any time I thought I had an appreciative audience, and in those entertainment-starved times, it was more often than you might think. The routine was about a yokel who accidentally wanders into a football game, knowing nothing about what was going on and in his “hick” accent – which I believed I had nailed – describes what he sees. Though it’s not nearly as funny as I thought it was at the time, if you’d like to hear Griffith’s account you can do so at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNxLxTZHKM8 . I recalled all this when thinking about how long it often takes to appreciate something sufficiently to embrace it or reject it, and failing that, how we simply become indifferent or hostile toward it. As in many human endeavors, it normally takes years to learn the rules and strategies of football, and only then can you learn to appreciate it. Difficult to ge

Google Image A recent news story says that leaders of ISIL, which claims to be the Islamic State, often throw people they suspect of being homosexual from the tops of tall buildings in the cities they control.   An Associated Press story describes such an execution after a brief “trial” by an ISIS judge, held on a street before hastily-gathered bystanders in Palmyra, Syria. It says the death penalty for being homosexual comes from the Hadith, or sayings of Muhammad. “The Islamic State group bases its punishment on one account in which Muhammad reportedly says gays ‘should be thrown from tremendous heights then stoned,’" the story says. One of the men in the execution described was, in fact, alive after being thrown off the four-story building and was subsequently stoned. Characteristic of religion? Skeptics searching for God may believe that all this violence is characteristic of religion, which somehow is inherently violent, or that it is strictly an “I

Google Image  As a young priest in a working-class parish on the north side of Kansas City, I was sent by the pastor to give the last rites to an elderly man, an Italian immigrant who was said to be dying. The man’s wife opened the door and greeted me courteously, but the man himself was standoffish. He seemed to want no part of me and I suspected that the visit was his wife’s idea. After the brief rite, now called the Sacrament of the Sick, the wife took me aside to explain that the man was terrified to have a priest come. To him, it signaled the end, a visit by the “angel of death.” Upon leaving, I asked about the neighbors and whether the couple could depend on them if they needed help. “We have nothing to do with the neighbors,” the wife said, and that’s when I noticed a huge picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus – a popular devotion in Catholicism – hanging in the most prominent place in the living room. Ignoring neighbors The idea of the devotion is that Je