Flawed Glass

  This concern may be the most difficult for me to comprehend and may be the biggest barrier in my ability to communicate with and understand people whose religious and political standards and principles are to the right of mine. Without stereotyping everyone to my right, I recall very few times when I have been able to engage any of them in a civil conversation on any topic more wide-ranging than Aunt Myrtle’s hysterectomy. And the deal-breaker almost always is selective literalism and/or selective inerrancy. We all are inconsistent and imperfect in living out our faith and all of us put greater emphasis on some biblical passages than others; but there’s a world of difference between giving emphasis versus absolutizing a verse or passage taken out of context and eliminating or ignoring other related passages. Perhaps the clearest example is the iconic anti-gay passages (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13) and the word, “abomination.” There are significant translation issues within the pri...

  I had a defining moment in the shower this morning. A lot of my defining moments come when I’m in the shower, probably because that’s one of the few places I’m not engaged in some project or on my way to the next one, and my mind has a chance to catch up with my body. Last week I finished the first draft of a book, and I’m in the process of submitting a proposal to a publisher. In filling out the publisher’s form, I’m asked for an annotated Table of Contents—basically, summarizing the book in a few sentences, chapter by chapter. With hot water relaxing my neck and shoulders, and with shampoo stinging my left eye, I pondered how to compose that annotated Table of Contents, and it came to me that, in developing the argument of the book, I had found in the Judeo/Christian Scriptures, and particularly in the Hebrew Scriptures, what amounts to two distinct G(g)od images, each incompatible with the other; indeed, diametrically opposite. If I’m totally honest with myself and with my...