Never before in my lifetime have I feared for democracy, for the rule of law, for basic truthfulness and honesty, for human decency and kindness. But the cosmic Christ still calls us to live in hope, even when despair seems strong.
The looming prophetic crisis and the urgency for truth-telling
Truth-telling is a moral imperative no matter who may resent hearing the truth, no matter who may refuse to believe the truth and no matter what people who oppose the truth may do to truth-tellers.
Grieving the state of the American church: We must snap out of our slumber
At the beginning of a new decade, I mourn the state of the church in America. The church is largely guilty of pushing people away from the body of Christ and from the full witness of Scripture.
Telling the truth or creating our own realities? (And the wisdom to know the difference)
Today, in the land of the free and the home of the tribal, “discernable truth” seems tenuous at best. Americans are locked collectively in a truth-crisis so perilous that distinguishing “fictional” from “actual realities” has become a 24/7 confrontation across every segment of our national life, churches included.
If character is ‘irrelevant’ in politics, eventually the Church will be, too
It is a confusing time, but one thing is crystal clear to me: if committing an adulterous affair with a porn star, if that kind of morality and that kind of character is “completely irrelevant” to a Church that has always said exactly the opposite, there is another thing that will be “completely irrelevant” to today’s culture — and that is, sadly, the Church.
Facts or truth? What’s keeping you grounded?
These days the words of the Psalmist keep coming to mind: “I will lift up my eyes to the hills; From where shall my help come?” I imagine that when he wrote these words, the chaos of his life was swirling around…
Separating the weapons of truth from truthiness
There’s truth, and then there’s truthiness. At least that’s what we learned from Stephen Colbert in the days of yore when he came to us on TV via “The Colbert Report.” “Truthiness” is that kind of information that sounds like…
Unarmed truth and unconditional love
The year 1964 was a difficult one for the United States. The nation had suffered the assassination of a beloved President in November of the year before. The war in Vietnam was heating up in 1964: the Gulf of Tonkin…
Bombs and balm
Recently declassified documents confirmed what many had long suspected, that former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet ordered the 1976 assassination of former diplomat Orlando Letelier, along with his colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffit, in Washington, DC. This news is of especially personal…