Faith & God

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Your Credit Report Card

“What do you mean, they said ‘No’?” We had been turned down for a new business credit card, even though our credit rating is exceptionally good. We were dumbfounded. What in the world could possibly be wrong? As it turned out, lots of things.

Our credit report was full of mistakes. The first and most obvious error? Apparently, some tired typist had combined Pete’s and my social security numbers into a new one that most likely belongs to someone else. I wonder what their report is like.

Then, the reporting company dinged us for having no major credit cards, even though our personal master card was listed on the report, and we were applying for a business card with the same financial institution! This was so inconceivable, the website provided no way to fix the problem.

And finally, information about our previous business card (and our perfect payment record) was entirely missing, even though we’d had it for years before the company that issued it went belly-up.

(There were additional errors that we were told weren’t significant, such as the zillion different ways people spelled “Holzmann.” Right.)

Unfortunately, it’s hard to run a business, even a non-profit one, without a credit card.

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Threshing Fact from Fiction: An Ignorant Christian’s Views on “Religulous” Part 2

[Don’t miss Part I of Jeremy’s article on Religulous.]

Why is faith a good thing?

To many people, the above question is an odd one. Of course faith is a good thing. Why question that? However, in “Religulous” it is one of Maher’s chief objections to religion (particularly Christianity).

The question is first raised by Maher after he asks the pastor of a small truck stop chapel how any rational person can believe in a talking snake in a garden 5000 years ago. The pastor responded by saying that, “It’s a faith thing,” to which Maher replies, “Yeah, but why is faith good?”

Maher’s argument is that a person who’s life is in danger or who is going through hard times would be justified to believe God, but for anyone else faith is pointless. His objection is that of many other skeptics: faith is unfounded and breeds comfort, but isn’t useful. I disagree.

Maher’s beliefs are incorrect for two reasons: first, he assumes that all faith is blind faith, and second, he thinks faith is not relevant. Although these two aspects of faith are inter-connected, I’ll begin by explaining the difference between faith and blind faith.

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Talking a Walk

I’ve been doing a lot of walking lately… walks with a friend, solitary strolls, birding walks, wildflower hikes, the-sky-is-blue-and-the-sun-is-shining walks. Sometimes I have a destination, but usually I’m just glad to be out enjoying nature.

God describes our life with Him as a walk. Over and over He tells us to walk in His ways. We are to walk in the light, not the darkness. We walk in the truth, not in falsehood. We walk humbly, not with pride. We are walk faithfully, obeying His commands. We walk in love.

As I was looking up “walk” to see just what God says about it, the verse that really caught my attention was  Leviticus 26:12: “I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.” [italics mine]

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Are You Bored?

Nothing to do?
Nothing to do?
Put some mustard in your shoe
Fill your pockets full of soot,
Drive a nail into your foot…

Nothing to Do, by Shel Silverstein

“I’m bored!” To anyone with small kids, it’s a common complaint, heard most often during school vacations. Of course, what it really means is, “Entertain me!” Yeah, right. My parents always suggested that I find some way to amuse myself, or else they’d assign some chores that would keep me occupied. “Or else” meant business. It was amazing how many pressing chores of my own I could suddenly think of!

Lately, I’ve heard “I’m bored!” from two less likely sources.

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English 121: Resolving Ambivalence

 

Yay! I convinced my son-in-law Jeremy to write another guest post for me. Have you experienced anything similar in your school, now or in the past?

Jeremy writes:

Nothing is worse than having to sit through a class you cannot stand, as an unfair professor can make your life a living hell. But now that an entire season has passed and I’ve had ample time to recover and even procrastinate, I feel the need to follow up on something. Several months ago I wrote a short, satirical essay [College: Where You’re Liberal or You’re Wrong] about my first college class, and how it turned out to be a waste because my professor, Mr. R, was a hypocritical bigot.

Although much of the same abuse which I discussed in that paper persisted for the remainder of the class, eventually Mr. R and I found some common ground and slowly developed a mutual respect for one another. Considering his attitude towards me and my beliefs, the fact that the two of us were ever able to see somewhat eye-to-eye is actually rather remarkable, so I (driven by the gentle, yet persistent, persuasion of my lovely mother-in-law) felt it would be good to share a little bit about how that came to be. The following is a random assortment of our exchanges which brought us to our somewhat common ground.

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Too Much Stuff

“We’d like to move to a smaller house, but what would I do with all my things?”

I looked around the once-lovely home we were visiting, and saw shelves filled with books, photographs, collections of figurines, teapots, and sea shells. End tables were decorated with candles, bowls, and more figurines, to the point where there was no place to set my mug of tea. The coffee table had a glass top, with even more “collectibles” displayed inside. At one end of the room, a set of glass-fronted display cabinets held several dozen plates, an assortment of cut glassware, and even more figurines.

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Fast Food Christianity

This church needs a drive-thru window! I couldn’t help comparing the service I was attending to the many fast-food restaurants we had been frequenting over the last few days. I was sick of burgers and fries. I wanted something more substantial, and better for my body. I wasn’t too excited about the church we were visiting either. They were going through the motions, but what I was craving was more of God.

We were on a road trip across much of the U.S.—almost 4,000 miles in about two weeks. It’s good to get out of one’s comfort zone, and experience new people and places. Today was Sunday, so we decided to sample a local church. We received a recommendation from some locals who we highly respect, and headed out to see what God was doing in this part of the country.

I’m afraid I was pretty disappointed.

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No Excuses

If you will here stop and ask yourselves why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you, that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it. —William Law.

Profound statement—one which I must admit is true.

Often times I fool myself into thinking that perhaps it was easier for the early Christians to follow Christ so obediently (despite even their problems), and that as times have changed, it has made it much more difficult for those of now days to do the same. And yet, every time I’ve relied on such an excuse, I’ve always known it to be an outright lie.

Our challenges today may be different than those of the early Christians, but we most certainly cannot say that they are more difficult, or so much more difficult, that we can begin to excuse inferior behavior. If we (myself being no exception) insist on being inadequate followers of Christ, let us not blame our current social/political/environmental/economic conditions, but own up to the fact that our lack of obedience is nothing more than flat-out rebellion against God. Blame, unfortunately, is an easy thing to relocate to where it will do no good whatsoever.

—Jeremy Gosse

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Threshing Fact From Fiction: An Ignorant Christian’s Views on “Religulous”

Jeremy, my son-in-law, reviewed “Religulous” on his Facebook page. I thought he presented some important points, and asked for permission to reprint his article here. The article is long, but I wanted to leave it in Jeremy’s “voice” rather than edit it for length.

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Few things in life create more social tension than prying into people’s religious beliefs, particularly when the prying is done on camera. The 2008 Larry Charles/Bill Maher movie, “Religulous” does just that, and certainly takes no prisoners. The movie, for those who don’t know, is a comedy-documentary in which the host, Maher, travels to various places around the world to interview people from different religions (although the movie predominantly focuses on Christianity) so he can ask them questions about their beliefs, and why they believe what they do. Maher takes a very cynical and sarcastic approach in performing this task, often leaving his victims deeply offended, which subsequently provides (or is supposed to provide) its comical aspect. Ultimately, Maher reaches the extraordinarily philosophical conclusion that all religion is bad and people who believe in any kind of religion are morons. As this is a major area of interest in my life, I decided I should watch the movie and see if Maher could change my mind.

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