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Are you journaling?  Maybe you’re keeping a log somewhere of your feelings and activities during the quarantine.  I will admit, I haven’t been keeping any regular record of this year’s events.  But I thought I would at least use this space to write about a few things I hope I don’t forget after things go back to “normal.” We open up our church bulletins and read the words (usually at the end of our prayer list) “shut-ins.” I’m ashamed that…

The hallowed halls of academia aren’t really known for fostering a spirit of humility. Not always, of course, but often there’s a temptation toward pride that comes along with being a notch above one’s peers in intelligence and education. James would call the smart-but-proud person a fool, or at least he seems to imply that here: “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from…

Perhaps it’s somewhat oversimplified, but I agree with the gist of what Esau McCaulley wrote in an opinion piece to The New York Times this past week: “What about the rest of us [who aren’t medical professionals]? This remains certain in the ever-shifting narrative of Covid-19: the most effective ways of stopping the spread of the virus is by social distancing (avoiding large gatherings) and good personal hygiene (washing our hands). The data suggests that what the world needs now…

Mark Twain famously quipped, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me; it is the parts that I do understand.” I’m not sure exactly how he meant that, but in some ways I agree with him. There’s a lot about the Bible I don’t grasp, but I’ve got plenty to do just to work on the parts I get. Here’s one of the parts I understand: God wants us to do what he says. You…

Sometimes we put sins into categories, probably without even thinking: “really bad sins,” “bad sins,” and “not-so-bad sins.” Sure, I’m a sinner, but none of mine are the really bad ones. I’d never commit those. Like murder. Or adultery. My sins are smaller stuff like sometimes thinking bad thoughts, losing my temper with my kids, spreading a little gossip, or being impatient and irritable. Everybody does that stuff. Sound familiar? The Christians James was writing to apparently made the same…

Love your neighbor. It just sort of rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? It’s such a nice thought, and pretty much everybody agrees that we ought to do it. Do we? Of course, we do, or at least we think we do. We know Jesus commanded it. We know we’re supposed to love everyone. James apparently thought it was a big deal. He wrote, “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor…

I took a class on the Civil Rights movement once, and I’ve often thought of something the professor told us. “We’re all prejudiced. Every single one of us.” I don’t know if you agree with him, but I think he touched on an important point. Let me reword it slightly: We’re all tempted to view people according to superficial qualities. In fact, we do it so often and so subconsciously that we might not even notice it. We put people…

We live in the world, and it’s hard to keep it from rubbing off on us. Sometimes it’s tempting just to escape it, isn’t it? Move to the proverbial deserted island or to a rural mountain in Tibet. Some believers in church history tried that route, retreating to caves, deserts, or monasteries, but it didn’t always work well. Tempting as it might be sometimes, God never called us to retreat from the world. So here we are. We live and…

Taking the Bible seriously will absolutely make you uncomfortable. Not all of it, of course. I like the parts about Jesus giving me rest and the abundant life and preparing a beautiful mansion for me. All that sounds nice. I don’t even mind the parts about being a good person, because being reasonably good isn’t that hard most of the time. But you don’t have to look far to see something considerably more difficult than that. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right…

I thought about beginning this article by discussing football in the state of Alabama.  Every year at this time, fans wearing either crimson and white or orange and blue claim bragging rights for the next 364 days.  But I’ll turn in a different direction here.  People enjoy being able to boast about things.  Whether it’s football, some other sport, or even the time we rang the garbage can with a wad of paper from 20 feet away, many of us…

One of the scariest things about faith for me is the incredible ability most of us have to deceive ourselves. Occasionally I’ve been appalled at the behavior of someone who called himself a Christian and wondered how he could ever reconcile his behavior with his claim to follow Jesus. “What a hypocrite!”, I’ve self-righteously mumbled. Then it hits me: Where are my blind spots? What sins am I committing but ignoring, or perhaps justifying? Maybe I don’t do what he…

There’s stuff to joke about, things to be flippant and casual about, to laugh at. God is not one of those things. I cringe when I hear someone refer to God as “the Man upstairs.” I’m sure most of them don’t mean anything disrespectful, but I think they’re missing something important about God. Several times in the Bible people came into God’s presence in a special, miraculous way. It scared them to death. Here’s one of those times: In the…