NowTHINK!AboutIt

Avoiding Hackneyed...Making Sense

Proselytes, Sycophants And Political Extremism

by Leave a Comment

Sycophantic Tendencies: Make something of nothing, make nothing of something.

Not Every Proselyte
Becomes A Child Of Hell

According to several dictionaries, a proselyte is a newcomer to some version of faith. Since no one is born a believer of any kind, everyone is a proselyte at some point.

Even if one is born into a religious family, becoming an adherent to the family altar, be it Catholic, Baptist, Hindu or whatever, is still a choice and when you make it, you are a proselyte.

Each person’s level of commitment to their chosen belief, however, is not the same. It could be very intense or quite casual. It could also be non existent.

Ronald Reagan Jr. is a good example. His father, President Reagan, was quite religious but Ron Jr. rejected his father’s religion entirely. Instead, he became an atheist and today represents the Freedom From Religion Foundation regularly in TV commercials.

If you’re religious and of the Christian variety, you probably find his commercials offensive.

Obviously, in his case, his dad’s religion didn’t stick but he still qualified as a proselyte. Instead of Christianity, he became a proselyte to atheism. Whenever he came to that conclusion, he was a newcomer to the belief that God doesn’t exist.

But the point to this post is not that you are a proselyte but where has that journey taken you? [Read more…] about Proselytes, Sycophants And Political Extremism

Has The Great Commission Been Supplanted By Politics

by Leave a Comment

Religion teaches us what is decent. Politics allows us to choose for ourselves.

Religion encourages us to believe
Politics encourages us to respect the beliefs of others.
Religious beliefs divide us into groups.
Politics unite us around shared interests.

For most of history, churches and church groups were very diverse and, therefore, divided from one another. That division had a positive effect. It kept churches from uniting and dominating society.

With consensus around a few ideas, however, that has changed. Churches have become politically rather than spiritually driven. Instead of trying to save souls – the thing they were commissioned to do – they’re trying to police souls and clean the world up.

What I’ve just described feels good to the faithful. It has the ring of rationality to it. What can be wrong with standing for the right? Anything other than opposing wrong seems too much like cowardice but regardless how courageous it may seem, that approach is not a replacement plan for the Great Commission and it won’t work. The world is not going to change for the better because we treat it with a dose of Lysol. Things won’t get better and God won’t be pleased.

Politics vs Religion

Politics and religion are both important but for two very different reasons. Neither can replace the other but there is friction between the two. They didn’t get along in the past and they don’t get along now for very obvious and acceptable reasons.

The capstone of politics, the one thing that makes it work, compromise, is the one thing churches have a long history of not tolerating. The one thing churches have done repeatedly, divide and go their separate ways (remember the Pilgrims), is the one thing governments can’t do.

But it’s not a stalemate. The idea isn’t for the two institutions to blend or mirror one another or vie. Each has an important job to do. Each needs to respect and allow the free function of the other.

Churches, however, are not comfortable with that idea. The Great Commission is the answer to their angst but it’s apparently not enough to keep them from interfering. [Read more…] about Has The Great Commission Been Supplanted By Politics

What Does It Mean To Be Godly

by Leave a Comment

It's godly to admit your not near as much like God as you desire to be.

Godly Is Defined By Neither
Tradition Nor Preference

It had been fifty years, give or take, since our Bible college days. Following college, our lives went in separate directions and only reconnected recently. The reunion had become somewhat strained.

At this meeting, we were sitting in a Starbucks sharing memories over coffee (and chocolate-coated coffee beans) and it was apparent that things were different. He was the same entertaining jovial guy and I was still me but the ground had definitely shifted.

We met in Bible college as young, gung-ho, charge-hell-with-a-water-pistol warriors intent on glorifying God which in real terms means rectifying all the wrongs in the world. We were fully committed to doing only right things and were focused on making sure everyone else did the same.

But after 50 years, the inevitable happened. We both shifted. The visions we’d entertained for a successful ministry hadn’t materialized exactly according to plan (they rarely ever do) and our life paths had taken turns we hadn’t anticipated; his for more practical endeavors: jobs, contracts, and paychecks. His devotion to church life had cooled but his conservative views had only hardened.

I had moved from a place of arrogant superiority. I no longer believed that my closest colleagues and I were absolutely right and everyone else was therefore wrong, and realized that maybe we are all a little wrong. I had also shed some of my early “thou shalt nots” so common to fundamentalist thinking, especially 50 years ago.

Jesus died for people who are wrong, not for people who are right and that includes everyone. No one holds the high ground absolutely.

Our thinking had diverged in several areas.

For my friend, Trump was the savior of US politics. I was the bad guy who didn’t vote for Trump and my disagreement was the talk of the brotherhood and a good reason to have less than enjoyable fellowship. Far less!

But there’s more. [Read more…] about What Does It Mean To Be Godly

Who Will Save Us From Religion

by Leave a Comment

A vow of poverty is a commitment to lethargy and a vow of chastity denies God's creative design.

Jesus Is All Important
Religion Is Peripheral

First of all, an explanation.

This article is about religion but you can’t talk about religion without naming specific denominations. I do that a lot here and people are bound to be offended. But the ones who won’t like this (those most closely aligned with religions) are the ones who need it most.

I wish it could be different but talking about problems with religion without naming specific ones would be like discussing a treatment for a “Disease” without naming the specific disease.

The religion I mention most is Catholicism. It’s one of the biggest and most widespread. It’s also the one with the most egregious scandals, as you will see.

Everyone is aware of the Catholic Church and, like it or not, whether you realize it or not, everyone is affected by the teachings and influence of this church. Seven of the nine Supreme Court Judges were raised Catholic and six of those are still practicing Catholics. You’ll be hard pressed to prove religion hasn’t influenced their rulings but more to the point, Catholicism has unwittingly cultivated some of the greatest scandals in modern history and there’s evidence to indicate the scandals aren’t a recent development.

Before I get into the meat of the discussion, it’s also important to note that nothing said here is aimed at Catholic individuals. I’ve known many Catholics who are wonderful people and tremendous Christians.

Catholicism is one thing, Catholic individuals are a different kettle altogether. This article is about religion, not the adherents.

Now that that’s established, the discussion. [Read more…] about Who Will Save Us From Religion

Abortion: It’s Not What You Think

by Leave a Comment

God used no less power in the creation of an amoeba as He did in the creation of a fetus.

Faith Is Important
But Only If It Is An Option
And Not An Imposition

After my wife and I retired, we did what many retirees do which is whatever we wanted. We went where we wanted, whenever we wanted and we sat around watching TV snacking as we pleased. It was great at first but the downside became apparent rather quickly.

Not having a schedule or a plan got old and we couldn’t figure out how to get paid sitting on the couch so we decided to look around for some temp work.

The casual lifestyle also caused another problem. All the snacking created a need for a new wardrobe.

About the time we were coming to our senses, my wife noticed an ad for a local charity and it seemed like a fit. It was seasonal work and it paid a little so it met our criteria. We weren’t looking to be consumed by a job so this was a way to work a bit, get paid a little, and in this case, it was a way to give back too.

We had to fill out applications which is fairly standard. What we didn’t know is the application also involved a level of scrutiny not usually associated with part-time, casual, no-skills-required work.

It wasn’t long after submitting the paperwork before we got a screening call. It was a surprise. There was no advance notice of a call and the caller abruptly hit us with two questions we didn’t see coming:

One, do you believe life begins in the womb?

And two, do you believe the Bible teaches marriage is only heterosexual?

The wording was a little different but that was the essence and it really bothered me. The questions were offered in the spirit of interrogation like the caller was daring me to disagree.

But aside from being irritated, I actually had a question of my own (more than one) which I didn’t share in the phone conversation but have thought about ever since.

  • In what way do these questions qualify anyone to do charity work?
  • If the people who do charitable work must qualify in this way are the people who receive the charity required to think this too?
  • If so, must they agree before receiving charity? Are material goods dangled scintillatingly before the eyes of the needy till they comply?

In other words, is charity provided to meet genuine human needs or is it used as leverage to force a point of view on unsuspecting but needy people?

This conversation didn’t sit well with me. I’d spent over thirty years doing missionary work in South Africa and had witnessed first-hand religious groups preying on the desperation of very needy people, providing material goods just to maintain social/religious control. That type of charity is neither biblical nor liberating.

Jesus certainly never did anything like that.

The caller and the questions came across a little heavy-handed and my wife and I decided to give the job a miss but we did go through the in-person interview which was the next step. We wanted to put eyes on the people and organization that took this approach. I wasn’t going to just call and say no thanks although I would have been in my right to do so.

This experience also provoked a deeper dive into a bothersome issue.

Abortion

In the past, I had always just gone along with the fundamentalist ideas about abortion and marriage.

Mostly.

I differed on some issues and moderated on others marginally, and had shared a few ideas about those differences with others but when it came to abortion, I had usually acquiesced to popular opinion.

Before anyone becomes too judgmental about the apparent prevarication, consider the fact that religiously, people aren’t given the option to choose freely what they think. Thinking is generally not allowed. Compliance is required. Anything else is heresy.

The phone conversation, as I said, didn’t just irritate me, it motivated me to do a deeper dive and look at the issues more closely. Unfortunately, I can’t say I came up with the absolute answer. In fact, the conclusion I came to was there is no absolute answer and that is important. We can’t just motor on in the same vein unless we can dispel every possible doubt. Uncertainty must be factored into the discussion.

The Real Question

What I realized is we’re actually asking the wrong question. The question we got was “do you believe life begins at conception?” That’s a fair question but it isn’t the right question.

The right question is at what point do you believe the fetus becomes a living soul? Life is one thing. A living soul is another. [Read more…] about Abortion: It’s Not What You Think