Skeptical Faith

Google Image Driving across Nebraska recently, I tuned to a local radio station featuring a conservative religious program. A caller told the radio host how grateful she was for the “prayer before the marriage act” the host had composed. "Yikes!” I thought. “What better way to throw cold water on ‘the marriage act’ than to say a prayer beforehand!” My reaction is an example of the obvious disconnect between faith and sex many of us display. (Like many Catholic families, my wife and I have crucifixes hanging above the beds in our bedrooms. Some who sleep there may have a reaction similar to mine about the “prayer-before-the-marriage-act.”) Many young people identify sex as one of the areas that most turns them off about religion, but when is the last time those of us who go to church have heard the subject mentioned in a homily? Most homilists and professional religious people avoid the topic like they would a poke in the eye. All-encompassing So I’m w

Google Image Back in the day, the Des Moines Register, where I worked for 22 years, was a marvel of a newspaper. It had expert writers in so many areas, including a drama writer, a markets columnist and a book and movie reviewer, to say nothing of people who specialized in science, religion, medicine, business, the courts, government and, of course, sports. Unbelievably for such a small market, Time Magazine named The Register among the top five newspapers in the country in 1985. Like all newspapers today, however, it’s struggling. One of the best of those Register specialists was Bill Simbro, the religion writer. He covered his topic like a good reporter, looking for stories he knew would be of interest to readers. A former Methodist minister, he sought out good stories wherever he could find them – among Catholics, Protestants, Jews, cultists and non-believers. Simbro and the Register recognized that religion was important to many readers, that like all the other topi

Google Image As I age, I find it much harder to watch scenes of violence on TV or in movies. That’s especially true of period dramas that depict Nazi atrocities or the abuses of slavery in 17 th and 19 th century America. Slavery is flagrantly anti-human and degrading, a blight on humanity's soul. It deserves the old-fashioned word, “abomination.” And isn’t it frightening to realize that we treated each other so inhumanly only 150 years ago? Yes, it’s frightening, but slavery is much closer to us in time. Its modern term is “human trafficking” and though we may be in denial about it, it’s in our own back yard. A 30-something couple from a Des Moines suburb last year has been accused of kidnapping a 20-year-old woman, torturing her, threatening her and her family with death and transporting her to Virginia where they sexually assaulted her and forced her into prostitution. The two are being prosecuted on federal charges of sex trafficking and transportation of a perso

Google Image For many years before he became a branch manager of a paint and glass company, my father was a traveling salesman, and a good one. His byword, common among salesmen, was, “You have to make the sale.” You can exchange small talk with your customers all you want, ask about their families, discuss the weather and the economy, talk about sports, but eventually you have to get them to buy. And it's similar for customers. They have to decide whether to take the plunge and buy the product. Somewhere along the road in our search for God, we have to decide for or against him/her, though the choice might be incremental. Do I believe? Is there a place for God in my life? Am I committed to God? And if I am committed, what does that mean? In his famous book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis uses the analogy of a hallway off of which are several doors leading to various rooms, representing belief, disbelief, and religion as a way of expressing that faith. Not a Place t

  Google Image Back in my parochial school, we sometimes told Bible jokes - not in the presence of the nuns, of course, although they probably would have enjoyed them as much as we did. “Who is the most elastic man in history?” went a question that took liberties with the Book of Genesis. “Abraham. He tied his ass to a tree and walked up the mountain.” And we didn’t neglect the New Testament. “Why shouldn’t Christians watch TV?” Because Jesus told his disciples after a mystical experience, “Television to no man.” For the Bible-challenged, the actual quote is, “Tell the vision to no man.”   After a few years of neglect, I just started re-reading the Old Testament, now called by many “the Hebrew Bible.” Those Old Testament people were getting mixed up in my mind – the Jacobs and Isaacs, Rebeccas and Ruths - so I figured it was time to take another look Irrecoverably Out-of-Touch? I know. The Bible may seem boring and irrecoverably out-of-to