Skeptical Faith

On a recent show, TV host Stephen Colbert interviewed comedian Jim Gaffigan. They were talking about parenting and their faith – something that is seldom done on national network television – and Colbert commented on Gaffigan’s description of his parenting of five children. “A father’s job,” said Colbert, “is to be distant, authoritative and never quite pleased. That way, the children can eventually understand God.” He meant it as a joke, but most jokes reflect reality, and I believe this joke pretty well reflects how many people feel about God: If God exists, many people suspect, he/she is distant, judgmental and above all, impossible to understand. Maybe that view results from so many contradictory signals about God. Is he/she loving, as is portrayed sometimes in the Christian Bible and the lives of many saints, or vindictive and exacting, as is often portrayed in the Jewish Bible? Counted the Hairs? Is he/she so intimate with us that he/she has “counted the hairs o...

Google Image It was a summer afternoon, windows and doors were open, and our middle-class neighborhood in St. Joseph, Mo. was filled with sounds and smells. Trucks with screeching brakes delivered ice for people’s “ice boxes.” A fruit-and-vegetable hawker yelled something unintelligible in a nearby street. Crickets vied with cicadas for airtime. The aroma of newly-cut grass mixed with the putrid odor from the packing houses on the south side of town. I was eight or 10 years old, making the year 1949 or 50. The youngest of five children, I lived with my family in a modest two-story house on Sacramento Street. Up that street on that afternoon came an African-American man whose name I never learned. He appeared regularly in our neighborhood behind a push mower he used to cut a neighbor’s lawn somewhere farther up the street. He wore old, dark clothes and worn shoes. Though the neighborhood had long had sidewalks, he always walked in the street, seldom looking right or left, w...

Google Image There’s a certain American archbishop and cardinal, who until his dismissal by Pope Francis in 2014, had an important post in the Vatican. On several occasions, he was photographed in his scarlet robes with a “train” – the long fabric that flows from the cape around the neck, swirling at his feet and extending for several yards. Often in these photos, a cleric of lower rank is shown holding the end of the train, much like servants would have done several centuries ago for a prince. Indeed, cardinals are often referred to as “princes of the church.” When looking at such pictures, or seeing the reality in person, you have to ask yourself, “Is this what Jesus had in mind,” this Jesus who said he came to serve, not to be served; who derided how pagan leaders “lorded it over” each other; who told his disciples that “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted?” A Caste Apart? Clericalism – the inclination of some members of...

Google Image You’ve probably heard the term, “canary in a coal mine.” Since early mines had little ventilation, miners reportedly brought caged canaries into new parts of mines as an early warning system. Canaries, it is said, are especially sensitive to harmful gases. As long as the canary sang, the miners knew their air was safe. If it died, the miners, too, were in mortal danger. I’ve been watching a series on Netflix called “Chasing Coral.” I know, it’s probably not among the most popular programs, but the photography is breathtaking and the information remarkably interesting. It’s about the disappearance of coral, and coral reefs, from our oceans. Its message: the death of coral is a canary in a coal mine. Fever Temps The series documents the rapid loss of coral in places like the Great Barrier Reef off Australia where 29 percent of coral died in 2016 alone. Scientists say the kill-off is due largely to a rise in water temperature of 2-3 degrees Centigrade in just a f...

Google Image Because of the famous 1993 movie, Schindler’s List, many people know the story of Oskar Schindler. He was “ a German industrialist … and member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories,” according to Wikipedia. Early in his business life, a ccording to an on-line site dedicated to his memory, he was “an opportunist, initially motivated by profit.” He hired Jews because they worked cheap. But when he understood the intention of Nazis to exterminate Jews, he “came to show extraordinary initiative, tenacity and dedication to save the lives of his Jewish employees.” By the end of World War II in Europe in May 1945, “he had spent his entire fortune on bribes” and other expenses to save his workers. He spent more than 4 million German marks on the project – a fortune in those days. Drank Heavily His motivation was unknown. He wasn’t the Mother T...