Flawed Glass

  I am conversant at an introductory level with several religious sects, and with the Judeo/Christian Scriptures that guide my faith and the faith of millions of other Christians—including those whose perspective on Scripture contradicts my own. But my discoveries, almost daily, of new elements within those sacred writings confirm that I am no expert. I still have much to learn and unlearn in my journey of faith. I write as one beggar sharing with other beggars where I have found bread, and I leave open the possibility that “I may be wrong.” I have read parts of the sacred writings of several religious systems, and I find good values and ethics in all of them; indeed, there are values that appear to be universal, e.g., righteousness : an orientation of the heart that yearns for the presence of honesty, gentleness, truth, and compassion within the human community, justice : the actualization of those qualities within the community, and shalom (peace): the harmony and unity t...

Few things are more rigid than the way one understands Holy Scripture. Liberal, conservative, evangelical, fundamentalist, or atheist: all have one thing in common, viz., an unbending understanding of scripture. Each is different from the other; and all are equally unyielding. So, what happens when two or more people (or two or more churches or book clubs, or eight deer hunters sitting around a camp fire after a few beers) approach a topic with differing—even contradictory—understandings of life and faith, and both ground their understandings in scripture? Or, what happens when two or more people (or two or more… well, see above) read the same scripture and come up with differing—even contradictory—understandings of “what the Bible clearly says?” Martin Luther comes to mind. Reading through the epistle to the Romans he encountered what, to him, seemed obvious truth; but which contradicted what the church had instructed him to believe. But there it was in black and white. I had a ...

                 A recent article suggests the term, “post truth”, as a description of today’s culture. Its point is not that truth no longer exists, but that it has grown irrelevant. There is a general apathy about truth. It has succumbed to a constant wash of opinion. By the 19 th century the Enlightenment had authenticated scientific inquiry. Some authorities in the church saw science as a threat to their power, which they sustained in large measure by keeping the common people illiterate and pliable. Free thinking might lead to questions of their authority, so a vigorous science-versus-the-Bible dogma emerged. Part of the backlash against enlightenment thinking was manifest in the Second Great Awakening, a neo-Calvinist/neo-Puritan movement. Unlike the First Great Awakening's focus on predestination, the Second Great Awakening was a quasi-enlightenment movement that emphasized free will and individual responsibility for sal...

We live in a binary culture in which we divide into groups based on our disagreements. We label each other and assign moral value to each other based on the labels. And the worst thing you can do—the unpardonable sin—is to disagree with me. Areas of agreement are discounted or dismissed altogether, even when we agree about most things. Total agreement and compliance are the only bases of community. So, we fight with each other. Civil debate over issues is replaced with juvenile name-calling and judgmental castigation over even minor disagreements. Compromise and cooperation are dismissed and demonized as morally weak. Only total agreement and compliance are acceptable bases of community. I am liberal. OK, I’m very liberal, and it’s difficult for me to look through unbiased lenses to evaluate ideas that don’t line up with my own. I try to be fair and weigh the relative merits of various perspectives. But it’s difficult, especially when those who advocate for those “other” perspec...