Still a Strange Way to Save the World
A Word Before Since I became an adult with my own family at the young age of 23, I began to acutely understand my fathers’ “Scrooge-ness” at this time of year. In fact, I wrote a blog back in 2018 depicting the cynical side of both his and my later experience, and my summation of it …
While Waiting for the Red Wave
To say the last two years has been like living in a Twilight Zone is to grossly understate the matter for anyone even accidentally paying attention. I’m not a politician mind you, and I don’t claim to necessarily have my finger on the pulse of everything that is going on in America’s political landscape. And …
Bad Theology Hurts People
I chose the title of my blog today for two specific reasons. One of those is clearly unimpressive, in that as I grabbed my clothes out of my drawer this morning, enroute to work this “old man” out, my favorite shirt entitled “Bad Theology Hurts People” was the shirt that said “Please, pick me”! And …
The Witness of Aged Depravity
You know I never really have had a problem with the doctrine of “total depravity”, a doctrine heralded as one of the main and first talking points of Calvinism’s TULIP. And though I won’t spend any time unpacking the acronym in the least bit, this one doctrine alone for me has not only been believable based …
What Got You Here Won’t Keep You, But It Also Will
From as long as I can remember I have been a devoted student of the holy scriptures and have been at least a half-hearted enthusiast of the church once formed from its vast body of work. In fact, even as a child I knew instinctively that there was something about this book that was both unique …
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Believing, While Getting Help for Our Unbelief
In Mark 9: 14-29, we are confronted with the story of the disciples seeming inability to exorcise a demon that had wrecked a poor young man’s life, and that had equally sucked all the belief a poor Father had of his son ever being free from it. Evidently Jesus had an object lesson he wanted to …
Forever Chasing the Wind
I guess you could say that the book of Ecclesiastes is probably my favorite book of the Bible in many respects. Perhaps it’s because I’m a contemplative soul as was Solomon. And though I cannot relate to the King’s exorbitant wealth and relative ease, I unreservedly get on board with the conclusions he came to about …
Becoming Rip Van Winkle
Rip Van Winkle is the short story written by Washington Irving in 1819. It chronicles the story of a Dutch American who meets some other guys, drinks far too much of their liquor and falls asleep in the Catskill mountains. Of course, falling asleep in the mountains doesn’t sound half bad, except for the fact that my …
Finally Leaving Church
Stealing Barbara’s line I woke up around 2:00 this morning for my first trip to the bathroom which has now become part of the old man’s unenthusiastic routine. As I tucked myself back into bed, the book by Barbara Brown Taylor entitled Leaving Church kept flashing like a neon sign on dream street beckoning me …