Skeptical Faith

Google Image Most of us have experienced bullies, the kids who pick on other kids in school and other places. We’ve seen such bullies smack other kids, brazenly take a kid’s lunch or call a vulnerable child an insulting name. That's injustice. But if a teacher observes such behavior and does nothing, or the teacher reports it to the school administrators and they do nothing, that’s structural injustice. If we look closely, we can see structural injustice on a large scale in our society. It’s so pervasive, however, you may not be able to see the forest for the trees. The pandemic has made it easier to see, clearly showing that structural injustice is the “pre-existing condition” that has made the nation so vulnerable. Is This About Politics? Whoa! Is this a blog about the search for God or about politics? The fact that “justice” is debated by both political parties, or the fact that most of us think only about public safety when we hear or read justice, doesn’t make it politic...

Google Image We live in an age of outrage. It’s on the left and the right. People seem to be easily appalled, shocked, dismayed and insulted, and they seem to want others to know it. Many people promote outrage, urging others to feel disrespected by some event or words. It’s common to see partisan headlines, especially in the social media, that scream, “Where is the outrage?” People seem to get off on seeing and reporting the “outrageous.” “One reason inequality today seems to thrust us into an endless cycle of outrage and revolt,” writes Tom Deignan in the National Catholic Reporter, “is because too many people on all sides have convinced themselves that whatever fresh outrage dominates Twitter on a given day is not only apocalyptic, but unprecedented.” Natural Responses? But shouldn’t we feel outrage? Considering what’s going on in society, and in our world, shouldn’t we feel indignation, even anger? Aren’t those natural responses? And doesn’t the lack of outrage signal emotion...

Google Image In watching the media coverage of the death of civil rights leader, non-violence advocate and Congressman John Lewis, I was moved by the courage shown by Lewis and other “trouble makers” in confronting the racist practices and laws of 1960s America. How many of us would be willing to defend our views in the face of hatefulness, clubs, vicious dogs, fire hoses, spitting and hitting and all the indignities foisted on people like Lewis who decided that enough was enough?   It reminded me of other courageous people I admire, like Thomas More, a lawyer, who in the 16 th century opposed and was executed by the infamous Henry VIII; Franz Jaggerstatter, the Austrian layman who stood up to Hitler’s killing machine and was also executed for his trouble; and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a brilliant Lutheran theologian and anti-Nazi who also paid with his life. Motivated by Their Faith Like Lewis, a Baptist minister, all of them were motivated by their faith. And they spoke and wro...

Google Image My friend, Terry Bruce, recently reminded me of a sort of tongue-in-cheek creed of journalists: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Those words, in fact, were on a sign a reporter had fixed to the side of his desk in the newsroom where I worked. It was a daily reminder that in writing and reporting – and in life – nothing should be taken for granted. A mother’s pledge of love, of course, can’t be “checked out” like the words of a politician or the unfulfilled promise of a corporation. And it’s not subject to the scrutiny you might expect of a scientist. Few people doubt their mother’s love, however. A mother “proves” her love through her affection, her actions on our behalf and her steadfastness, sort of like the way our relationship to God is described by traditional religion. And sort of like the way we can’t “prove” the beauty and value of art, music, philosophy and nature. Goes Beyond Faith provides a way of looking at the world and of our place ...