Skeptical Faith

Google Image Since my college days, I’ve been a fan of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For those of you not familiar with him, Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian who resisted the Nazis and paid for it with his life. His decision to resist wasn’t easy. He labored over it, trying to decide between patriotism, and loyalty to his country’s government, and the demands of his conscience. Finally, it was a matter of deciding that his patriotism was really love of country and that the Nazis were destroying everything good about it. He was also a pacifist, but decided that the Nazis, and their leader, Adolph Hitler, were such a threat to humankind – doing all they could to “liquidate” Jews, gypsies, disabled people, and everyone they considered undesirable – that he joined a secret group to assassinate Hitler. He was arrested and hanged by the Nazis in 1945 at age 39. His books, “Letters from Prison” and “The Cost of Discipleship” are classics. Love the Standard In last week’s bl...

Google Image I was recently the recipient of a birthday gift – to my wife, Amparo. That is, she received the gift of an overnight stay at a nice, Colorado hotel and casino and I was allowed to go along for the ride. The hotel was wonderful and in a beautiful mountain location, but there’s not much to do but gamble. So I spent a few hours playing a poker machine. I don’t bet much so I lost only a few bucks in a couple of hours playing. But after an hour or so of sitting in front of a garish machine – carefully programmed, I presume, to allow you just enough wins to keep you in your seat – I began to be bothered without knowing exactly why. Then it hit me. The noise! Gaudy, Flashing Lights Besides the noise and gaudy, flashing lights from dozens of slot machines and similar devices – including a machine-gun like racket from every machine that pays even a small amount – music was also blaring amid the chatter of players and casino employees. For me, it was a metaphor for modern life...

Google Image Woman was made to be man’s helper, according to the Book of Genesis. But instead of helping, she gave him forbidden fruit to eat, prompting God to kick them both out of Paradise. For women, it was all downhill from there, according to the Hebrew Bible. As many of you know, I’m reading a book called, “Jesus, An Historical Approximation,” in which author Jose Pagola – a Spanish theologian and biblical scholar - uses modern scientific research to understand the world in which Jesus lived. He has a whole chapter on the status of women at the time of Jesus. For the most part, the book’s observations are generalizations, but offer an interesting background to the gospels. First, women in Jesus’ time most often “belonged” to someone, first to their fathers, then, if they married, to their husbands. If they became widows, they belonged to their sons or were returned to their fathers. They couldn’t leave the house without a man, and most often needed to hide their faces with ...

Google Image I'm a volunteer at the local office of a non-profit charitable organization. There, we often work with a couple of police officers whose job it is to help homeless people. Recently, a young immigrant family - husband, wife and two small children - came to our office for help. They needed everything – jobs, food, a place to live and gas for the car in which they were living. We were able to help them only with some of those needs, excluding the lodging. So, we called one of the officers and he was able to get them into a shelter, but only for the night. That night, I went home, as usual, to a warm bed. Late the next morning, the officer called me at home. He said he happened upon the family in a parking lot. They had had to leave the hotel and were in the car, trying to keep warm. One of the car’s windows wouldn’t close properly and they had a blanket stuck in the window to keep out the cold. “I just can’t leave them in that kind of situation,” he said. “I’ve got ...