Skeptical Faith

Google Image Writing notes for this blog, I stare out the window of the retreat house at New Melleray, a Trappist monastery in northeast Iowa, at what I believe is a large oak tree that has recently shed its leaves. It stands black and naked against an overcast November sky. It seems dismal, even sad. But, of course, it has no such feelings; it’s simply doing what deciduous trees do. It has no self-consciousness. We observe it and think about it or contemplate it but it has no ability to reciprocate. Partly because of this, we say that we humans are a higher form of life. It reminds me how much greater the difference there must be between the human form of life and that of God. So much so that we can think of God only by analogy. He/she is father/mother, creator, a “person”   in which “we live and move and have our being,” says Paul in a speech recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. But that, and all language regarding God, is only analogous to what we know from hu...

Google Image (This blog was originally published in 2014. I did some updating for 2018, but it's mostly the same. That includes the wish that readers will have a thankful Thanksgiving.) I was a columnist at one point in my newspaper career, and for several Thanksgivings, my whole column comprised a list of names of people to whom I was particularly thankful. I had thought about doing that with this blog, which will be posted on Thanksgiving Day, my favorite of all the holidays. But in the interest of privacy, which is becoming a rarer commodity, I decided against it. You know who you are. You’re family and friends and the readers of this blog, including the people to whom I send weekly e-mails about the posts, my Facebook friends and the unknown number who see it on Google+ and Tumblr. I am particularly grateful to Jim Stessman, my friend and former newspaper colleague, for looking these blogs over each week and providing valuable feedback.  Not Always in the Mood ...

Google Image A priest in Colombia, Juan Jaime Escobar, is an extraordinary speaker, combining profound insights into his subjects, humor, and a keen sense of what people are actually thinking and doing. If you speak Spanish, you can type in his name on YouTube’s web site and watch many of his best presentations. In one of them, Escobar comments on our practice of replacing the God of the New Testament with the god of our imaginations. In other words, instead of us being “God-like” – for which I advocate regularly in these blogs for people searching for God – we insist that God be “human-like.” To get close to God, he advises, “We have to pluck from our minds the illusions about God that we’ve nurtured since our childhood.” The God Who Regularly Punishes Among the most difficult of these fantasies to banish is the God who regularly punishes people in this life for a myriad of infractions. We enthrone God, the judge, over the God of mercy, the tyrannical despot over the...

Google Image In her book, “Redeemed,” Heather King writes about the changes in her life when she went from being a waitress to becoming a lawyer in Los Angeles. Described as “ an essayist, memoirist, blogger and speaker” by Wikipedia, King was estranged from God and addicted to alcohol, and in telling her story and the reasons she gave up the subsequent practice of law, she provides unflattering opinions about the law and lawyers. “…The entire legal profession,” she asserts, “was so driven by the fear of not winning enough money, so intent on covering its a.., so inured to the meaninglessness of the whole enterprise, that if the truth had stood up from the jury box and waved, we would have stared for a moment in shock, then made a motion in limine to rule it inadmissible.” Disillusioned My apologies to any lawyers who may be reading this. King was obviously disillusioned by her experience as a lawyer – something that happens with many professions. But that experience and...

Google Image Mass shootings and terrorist acts against various groups of Americans come and go with such frequency that we may become immune to their horror. The latest, at this writing at least, was the massacre of 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27. According to a report on National Public Radio, “the detectives who investigated the killing reported that the gunman, once in custody, told officers that he ‘wanted all Jews to die.’" The report called this “anti-Semitism in its rawest form." Conspiratorial Thinking “Jeffrey Herf, a historian at the University of Maryland who has written widely on the anatomy of anti-Semitism, argues that particular arguments and habits of thinking underlie its power. Most important, he says, is a willingness to buy into conspiratorial thinking. "The core of every conspiracy theory," Herf notes, "is the basic notion that the world is governed by small groups of people who operate ...