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 tha...

Google Image I recently attended a presentation on Francis of Assisi's influence on Pope Francis and his environmental encyclical by a theologian who tossed out an astonishing figure that should give us pause on Thanksgiving: 40 percent of the food in American refrigerators is thrown away. Curious, I checked on it and that isn’t exactly the case. A ccording to a 2012 report from the National Resources Defense Council,  40 percent of the food produced in the U.S. is never eaten . “The report points out waste in all areas of the U.S. food supply chain, from field to plate, from farms to warehouses, from buffets to school cafeterias,” says CNN News. But most of the waste does occur in the home. “American families throw out approximately 25 percent of the food and beverages they buy. (The report) cites several reasons, including (the notion) that food has been so cheap and plentiful in the United States that Americans don't value it properly.” Our Dai...

Google Image Readers who don’t know me can tell by my picture at www.skepticfaith.blogspot.com , as well as by what I write, that I’m no spring chicken. Although I’m blessed with good health and few family or other worries, like all people my age I’m coping with aging. Sometimes I can’t help but laugh when I look in the mirror. Is that really me? Why do I have almost as much hair in my nose as I do on my head? Why do I have so much trouble opening jars and packages? Why is it that so often the thing I’m trying to remember lies just beyond my mental reach? But are my aging problems any more onerous than what young people have to deal with? More than the awkwardness of being a teenager, the insecurity of being a young adult, the incertitude of being a young parent or parent of teenagers? Having been all those, I don’t think so. And my life has been a walk in the park compared to that of millions of people around the world. In La Paz, Bolivia, I watched kids and adults ...

Google Image The Catholic Church, to which I belong, has just finished a meeting of church leaders in Rome called the Synod on the Family. It started on Oct. 4 and finished on Oct. 25. It was the second such session, following up on one held last year. Together, the meetings were held to discuss the church’s doctrine and practice regarding marriage and the family, and make a recommendation to the pope. Topics included the church’s prohibition against reception of communion by divorced and remarried people, and “pre-marital unions.” Why should skeptics searching for God know about this? Because it touches on the subjects of religion and relevance, and illustrates again that the subjects with which religion grapples are not simple, black-and-white issues that can be solved by appeals to liberalism or conservatism, let alone our individual prejudices and preferences. A Taboo Subject? I’ve written several blogs about “God and sex,” which may make people uncomfor...

Google Image Many of you may not be sports fans, but this post is not about sports. It’s not even about my favorite baseball team, the Kansas City Royals, who – even as you non-baseball fans might know – won the 2015 World Series. Though I’ve been a Royals fan since the team’s inception in 1969, I wasn’t so much impressed by their recent World Series victory as I was by the way they won: Exhibiting qualities that I seek and that I believe are sorely needed by skeptics searching for God. Some would describe me as a pessimist. I think of myself as a realist. Had I been a member of the Royals team in the deciding game of the World Series against the New York Mets on Nov. 1 – having been shut out for eight innings by the Mets’ excellent pitching and losing 2-0 – I would have said, “Time to go home, boys. Games over. We have two more opportunities to win the series in Kansas City.” That’s not how the Royals think. It's a cliché, but they really never give up. And with a combi...