Do you remember your child’s pictorial dictionary? The very first ones contain images of people, places or things that can be named: girl, father, doctor, astronaut, church, mountain, house, playground, ball, hat, Teddy bear, night light. Picture dictionaries for older…
Two kinds of people see good and evil two kinds of ways
It turns out that once again, there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who believe most everything can be classified easily as good or evil, and those who believe it’s not that simple. Pew Research reports that…
Pew study offers some surprising insights to American views on suffering, salvation, heaven and hell
New research on American beliefs about some of faith’s hardest questions highlights both the nation’s biblical illiteracy and the chasm between what various Christian traditions teach. And it holds a few surprises about how people in the pew actually believe…
Booing Trump felt good, momentarily: the hidden danger of giving undue attention to evil
The common exhortation of “Don’t look away” reminds us that a lack of vigilance can make us oblivious to the ways in which our political environment can change us for the worse. But an ironic danger lurks beneath the surface.
Silence in the face of evil: learning from an obscure schoolteacher who urged Karl Barth and other theologians to stand in solidarity with the Jews in Nazi Germany
If I thought Nazi-era Germany was an aberration I could probably move on; but in Donald Trump’s America, who can think that? The Church of Jesus Christ is confronted by an anti-Gospel once again. The German Church never acknowledged her complicity with the National Socialists, and the white churches of America are equally resistant to truth.
Nonviolence and a different future with God
“Deliver us from evil.” Most Sundays we pray these words, but rarely do they sound the resonance we hear in these anarchic days. Evil seems unrelenting, incapable of exhausting its ravenous power. Who can withstand its voracious appetite for destruction?
Retweeting mercy in the midst of darkness
In her July 10 message at the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber retells the story of the Merciful Samaritan. The message is timely, coming as it does on the heels of a week —…
Who will save your soul?
You know what they say: “Be careful what you wish for!” Truer words were perhaps never spoken when it comes to today’s Hebrew text from the book of Job. Today is week three of a four week series called, “Losing…
A visit to Treblinka
We arrived in the city of Treblinka with some trepidation. Our drive had taken longer than expected so we were anxious to get off the bus and see the memorial. We drove passed the city limit sign. We drove through…