Skeptical Faith

 Google Image I’ve written before in this blog about the “spiritual-but-not-religious” phenomenon. Many who profess this preference are among the “nones,” who write or say “none” when asked in surveys to name their religious affiliation. Here are some data on the “nones,” according to a 2013 report of the Pew Research Center. ·        One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling. ·        The third of adults under 30 who have no religious affiliation (32%) compares with just one-in-ten who are 65 and older (9%). And young adults today are much more likely to be unaffiliated than previous generations were at a similar stage in their lives. ·        Mainstream Protestants have declined the most. The Catholic share of the population has been roughly steady, in part because of...

Google Image You’ve drawn so close that it’s hard to see you. And you speak so softly that it’s hard to hear you. And I guess that’s what I get for inviting you in. Because you took me at my word, and now I know that Faith is not a fire as much as it’s a glow. A quiet, lovely burning underneath the snow. And it’s not too much – it’s just enough to get me home. Cause love moves slow – Love moves slow. This is the chorus of “Slow,” a song written and performed by Audrey Assad, whom I’ve mentioned before in this blog. You can hear her sing it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OZp2UezV54 . I’ve started with Assad’s lyrics because like many of her songs, it moves me. And the point of this post is to encourage people who seek God to nourish their souls emotionally as well as intellectually. First, a word about the term “soul.” Using it violates one of the norms I’ve used in this blog: to avoid “churchy” terms. “Soul,” like “heart,” however, has taken on a secular mean...

Pope Francis kisses a disabled man Google Image Diego Neria was born a girl in Spain, but after a sex-change operation eight years ago, he’s now a man. Neria was raised a devout Catholic but many people in his parish scorned him after the operation, according to CNN News. After heated discussions with a parish priest and some others in his hometown of Plasencia, he started staying away from Mass. "I've never lost faith, ever," Neria says. "But the other thing is the rejection." So, with the help of his bishop, he wrote to Pope Francis last year and, says Neria, Francis telephoned him twice. Then came a visit with the pope on Jan. 24 at the papal residence. The Vatican and the bishop have declined comment. "This man loves the whole world," Neria says of Pope Francis. "I think there's not, in his head, in his way of thinking, discrimination against anyone. I'm speaking about him, not the institution. …But if this Pope has a ...

  Google Image Name this important person in history: He was raised in an obscure village of 200 to 400 inhabitants. He and his family were at the bottom of the social classes, even below that of the peasantry. The house he grew up in was made of stones roughly stacked on top of one another. The floor was of packed earth; the roof was thatched, built over beams of wood and held together with mud. Two or three of these shacks were clustered together around an open courtyard where much of the cooking was done. There was a common cistern and a millstone for grinding grain. Garbage and sewage was tossed outside the house into alleyways between the groups of houses. Conditions were filthy, malodorous and unhealthy. He and most residents had iron and protein deficiencies, and most had severe arthritis. Life expectancy was somewhere in the 30s. Some of you may have guessed that this describes Jesus and, according to archaeologists, the circumstances in which he lived. Odd, ...

Google Image I’m not much of a celebrity watcher, subscribing to the cliché that celebrities “put their pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us (assuming we wear pants).”   But I came across a 2012 interview of actor Mark Wahlberg, recently placed on Facebook. I think of him as a tough guy, “heart-throb” actor who has appeared in movies such as The Italian Job, The Departed, The Perfect Storm and The Fighter. He’s been getting a lot of publicity lately because of his movie, The Gambler. Judging by the critics, it needs all the promotion it can get.   Anyway, Wahlberg, 43, used coke at age 13, was a gang member and was sent to prison at 16 after having been involved in racially motivated assaults, according to the interview. Growing up in Boston, he is from a family of nine children, several of whom have also served time.   At some point after prison, he changed. Here’s what he had to say about it.   “Once I focused on my faith, won...

Google Image “Hello Lord, it's me your child. I have a few things on my mind. Right now I'm faced with big decisions And I'm wondering if you have a minute, 'cause Right now I don't hear so well. And I was wondering if you could speak up.” These lyrics by singer/songwriter Sara Groves touch on a frequent subject of this blog: God’s silence. I believe it’s one of the biggest obstacles to faith today, although the problem surely stretches back to the dawn of belief in an invisible God. If there is a God, why doesn’t he/she show himself/herself? And, ask many who have given up on God and religion, if God is unknowable, why bother? Just get on with life and do the best you can without him/her. Many who would like to believe in God, as well as many who on some level already do, are stuck on these questions. In his book, “Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief,” physician and geneticist Francis Collins – head of the National Institu...

Google Image The terrorism events in Paris have generated debates about religion and fanaticism and provide ammunition to those who believe religion is irrational and violent. The debates are a good thing, but the view about religion, I believe, is misguided.   A BBC reporter recently interviewed a woman in England who defended the brutal and lethal methods of radical Islamic groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, which appear to favor mass killings and beheadings in their attempts to conquer parts Iraq and Syria. When the reporter asked the woman, who had been accused of promoting terrorism in Great Britain, how she could justify breaking British law, she replied that she must obey God’s law rather than civil law. She seemed to apply that principle to the Middle East killings as well. It reminded me of the passage from the Acts of the Apostles in the Christian Bible in which Peter and some other apostles were hauled before the Jewish Supreme Council in Jerusalem. Council memb...