Skeptical Faith

Google Image Due to time restraints caused by my moving out-of-state, Skeptical Faith blogs for the next few weeks will be, as they say in show biz, "encore presentations." This one was published in 2021. Some conservatives wouldn’t be caught dead reading the New York Times. Some liberals wouldn’t watch Fox News if their lives depended on it. More and more, we seem to be caught in a morass of conflict, seemingly arising from seeing the same reality in two startlingly different ways. And a lot of it, I believe, has to do with a lack of trust, which is both the cause and effect of the conflict. And it’s not just in politics. The lack of trust is present in families, churches, businesses, the military, the police – in virtually every sector of life. We increasingly judge each other according to our wildly different perceptions of reality. How We Feel David Brooks, the New York Times columnist who was considered a conservative until the Trump era, believes it’s not so muc...

Google Image Due to time restraints caused by my moving out-of-state, Skeptical Faith blogs for the next few weeks will be, as they say in show biz, "encore presentations." This one was published in 2015.  As a missionary years ago among the Aymara people of Bolivia, I was struck by the popularity of a statue in the church I served. It was by far the most popular in the church, which in the Spanish colonial style, was filled with often bloody images of Jesus, and of Mary and the saints. The statue depicted “Santiago Matamoros,” or St. James the Moor Killer, who according to legend, miraculously appeared in a ninth century battle in which the Spanish defeated the Moors, Muslims who ruled all or parts of Spain for nearly 800 years. Parishioners burning candles in front of the statue, I learned, prayed to this saint to intercede with God to punish their enemies – people who they believed had stolen crops from their fields or had offended them in other ways. Punitive God? Lea...

Google Image Due to time restraints caused by my moving out-of-state, Skeptical Faith blogs for the next few weeks will be, as they say in show biz, "encore presentations." This one was published in 2017.  W hy do so many people, especially the young, decline to participate in religion? The media often refer to them as the “nones” – part of the nearly 20 percent of   U.S.   adults who responded  to the question of religious affiliation in  recent surveys with a “none.”  In earlier blogs I wrote that many young people decline to go to church or otherwise participate in religion principally because religion is irrelevant to them. Obviously, there are many reasons, but I still believe that is chief among them. Religion appears to have little to do with them or their lives. But I also believe that many people, including those between 20 and 40 years old, believe religion is on its way out and they don’t want to be involved with what they and their contemporarie...

Google Image Due to time restraints caused by my moving out-of-state, Skeptical Faith blogs for the next few weeks will be, as they say in show biz, "encore presentations." This one was published in 2017.  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 one 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 a...

Google Image Looking out our bedroom window, I like watching for wildlife: birds, squirrels, rabbits, the occasional deer and sometimes a rodent or two. I sometimes think about how they are not bothered by time. They have no idea what time it is, nor do they need to know. Whether nocturnal or diurnal, the position of the sun - and perhaps some more subtle signs - tells them all they need to know. We humans, on the other hand, are slaves to time. We use all our technological savvy to measure it down to the nanosecond. America's official time, according to a recent article on the National Public Radio web site, is kept at a government laboratory in Boulder, CO. "Exact" Time And the people there help us know the “exact” time. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) “broadcasts the time to points across the country. It's fed through computer networks and cell phone towers to our personal gadgets, which tick in perfect synchrony. Humanity's ever...

Google Image Christmas is not my favorite time of the year. Don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of celebrating the birth of Jesus. After Easter, Christmas is arguably the most important holiday for Christians, and I thoroughly enjoy the church liturgies of the season, filled with the Messianic prophecies from the Hebrew Bible, the music that celebrates Christ’s birth and the apparent spirit of giving that prompts so many people to think of, and act in behalf of, others. But you have to ask the obvious question, whether celebrating the birth of Jesus is actually what we’re doing at this time of year. Is it still about Jesus’ birth? It doesn’t seem that way. On the contrary, Christmas seems to be the definitive symbol of the secularization and commercialization of society. I’ve often thought that Christians should perhaps just give up Dec. 25 to the advertisers, the extreme decorators and extreme gift givers - the people who have forgotten or simply ignore the meaning of Christmas....

Google Image I’ve adopted a practice called “Centering Prayer.” My brother, a priest in Kansas City who died in 2008, was an enthusiast and teacher of Centering Prayer but I tried it several times and could never get the hang of it. I started trying it again, first thing in the morning, a few months ago. I’ve been thinking of writing about it but am still a rookie and don’t feel ready to describe my experience in detail or recommend it to others. If you want to know more, my “teacher” is Thomas Keating, a deceased Trappist monk, who has a series of videos on YouTube. Just go to that online site and type in his name to gain access to the videos. In general, Centering Prayer is a way of attempting to come closer to God through relaxation and “emptying oneself” of all the usual thoughts and distractions, allowing God to fill the void. Practitioners recommend doing it for 20 minutes, twice a day. So far, I’m doing it for 20 minutes only once a day. The idea is to rid the mind of all th...