Presby-Musings

I have had more than my fair share of angry conversations with God over the years.  I'm not ashamed to admit that, even though in a former life I would have been.  God and I have had some salty one-way conversations to be sure.   I learned as a young man that not even declaring to God that I didn't believe in God would result in the earth opening up and swallowing me whole into everlasting perdition, so I feel like God doesn't mind when I get a little raw sometimes about the state of the world.   Maybe this resonates with some of you, as well.   There are moments when the brokenness of the world hits us like a tidal wave. Violence, injustice, hatred, and division scream from every screen and corner of culture. In those moments, many of us feel an anger rise up that feels holy, but also terrifying.  Anne Lamott captures this perfectly when she writes:   “I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they...

From time to time, I encounter people who identify as Christian, and as soon as they know what I do for a living, they will share in a conspiratorial way something like this:  "Don't you think that the world has just gone to hell in a handbasket?  It feels like the end times. I just can't wait for Jesus to come back and take care of this sinful, old world once and for all."  For the sake of brevity, I condensed the information those people will share into a couple of sentences, but you get the idea.  They've been taught that the world is a bad place, and full of darkness, and the best they can hope for is that at some point all of the "unrepentant sinners" will get their comeuppance.   Honestly, I understand this. At one point in my life, I bought into that way of thinking.  But I've learned since then that system of belief isn't constructive, and not at all what Jesus intended for his followers.   Some years ago, I read an amazing quote fro...

Living in gratitude is something that sounds like a great idea, and is often a whole lot easier when things are going our way.   But there are times when it's difficult to find the strength to be grateful, which is why practicing gratitude daily is something that I have been striving to do no matter how I might feel about my circumstances.   Notice that I said I'm "practicing" because I still haven't mastered it.    It’s easy to be thankful when life is good—when the sun is shining, relationships are flourishing, and the path ahead feels smooth and sure. But true gratitude is not merely a response to favorable circumstances; it’s a posture, a way of being that sees the hand of grace even during trial.  Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote:  “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your grati...

“There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.” —T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock We've all been there.   We were just asked by a friend a question that is asked more than any other question we pose to one another as human beings.  It's a question that we ask without really expecting an answer, or, at the very least, an answer that is real.   "How are you doing?" When we are asked that question, we have a choice to make in that moment, and most of the time, the choice is made without much thought.  We can respond by telling the truth, or we can respond the way that we are expected to respond by saying,  "Fine," or "Good," which is also acceptable.  God forbid that we tell others how we really feel, right?  We don't want to sound like that person we know who is always complaining, bemoaning their fate, or oversharing every time they meet someone.   But there's a world of ...

I've been thinking a lot today about loss and the impermanence of things.  I'll grant you, it's not the most cheerful of things to think about, but nonetheless, it's been on my mind.    A friend just lost his mom, suddenly and without warning.  Another friend spoke to me about a beloved granddaughter who took her life.  I've been struck today by thoughts of my mom, who passed seven years ago, and whom I miss every day.  I grieve the loss of dreams I had that dissipated and faded away.   And yet, there is such beauty in the world, and so much goodness, all of which ebb and flow in an endless cycle of dying and rising.  The impermanence of things makes me realize the precious nature of life in all of its fragility.   This is a hard thing to embrace, though.   We hold so tightly to what cannot stay. Dreams shift, loved ones leave us too soon, seasons close before we’re ready. Grief can convince us that impermanence is an enem...

My middle son, Jackson, recently informed me that the Internet was "on fire" about an interview conducted by the Nelk Boys, a group of young YouTubers, on their channel with the Israeli Prime Minister.   These young entrepreneurs have a massive following on YouTube and are what you would probably consider "alt-right influencers."  They are well-known for promoting conspiracy theories and extremist, far-right politics.   The interviews they conduct are often bizarre (they asked the Prime Minister whether he liked McDonald's over Burger King), and meant to be entertaining, but there is a darker side to what they produce as well.   Hundreds of thousands of young men in what one journalist calls the "manosphere," who watch the show faithfully, are being fed lies, toxic masculinity, and extremist political rhetoric that is shaping their worldview.   I'm often troubled by stories I explore, like this one with the Nelk Boys.  Our culture is qui...

I had a pastor friend once who had a sign on his desk that read, "God loves you, and has a difficult plan for your life."  That sign always drew a wry smile from me, but I was also troubled by the language of it.  I  grew up in a Christian culture that used the term "God's plans" pretty freely, and often in very unhelpful ways.   People in that world I lived in frequently stated that all they wanted was to discover God's plan for their life, or to do God's will, which was nearly the same thing.  Interestingly, God's plans more often resembled their own, and when things didn't go as they planned, it created some challenging theological issues for them.   Truth be told, I held onto those same notions for many of my early years in ministry.  However, things shifted for me after a serious crisis of faith in 2011, when I began to see a difference between what I thought were God's plans (which were really my own) and God's ultimate purposes.  ...

When I was a kid, I fell in love with the Bible.  I loved reading Bible stories from the comic book version I wore into tatters (I eventually replaced it about ten years ago).   By the age of 11, I  had read the Bible through cover to cover at least once.  I was on a Bible Quiz team in the 8th grade that won state and national competitions.  If there was a Bible trivia contest in my youth group or Christian school, no one wanted to go against me.  However, when I entered my high school years, I began to notice some problems with the Scripture — contradictions, stories that seemed too fantastic to be literally true, and various interpretations of God from different eras of history, among other issues.   By the time I graduated from high school, I had walked away from not only the Bible, but my faith in God as well.  It would take me a couple of decades before I would truly find my way back, and begin to understand the Bible differently....

I've been thinking a lot lately about the theology of suffering and why life can be so challenging at times.  I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing that we didn't have to go through suffering or hard seasons in our lives' journey.   However, I also know that when I look back on my life, I've grown spiritually each time I've had to go through something challenging.   To that end, author Ann Voskamp asks this powerful question:  “Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perseverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?” Those words cut to the heart of something we often forget amid our pain—our darkest seasons can become the very soil where grace grows deepest. When we walk through suffering, everything in us longs for escape. We pray for the shadow to lift, for the valley to end. But what if the shadow is not the absence of God’s presence, but the backdrop for His greatest work? Shadows only exist because the...

One of the many questions I have been asked over my twenty-five-plus years in ministry centers on the ideas of free will and God's love.   People often ask me, "What does it mean when we speak of our free will concerning God?" In other words, do we have the option to resist God's love or God's will for us?   Typically, the conversation leads to another question: "Why does a loving God allow bad things to happen to good people?"  I see these two questions as inextricably intertwined.  And I found the perfect quote from one of my favorite books from over a decade ago, "Love Wins" by author, and former pastor, Rob Bell.   “Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God's ways for us. We can have all the hell we want.”  Those words are both sobering and liberating. God’s love is not coercive. It does not manipulate or force us into submission. Love, by its very nature, must allow fo...

“It may actually be more healthy to be disturbed, confused, or searching than confident, certain, and secure.” – Mark Scandrette We live in a culture where it's hard to be certain about anything.  It's hard to know what is "real" and what isn't at times.   My social media feed is becoming increasingly inundated with AI-generated news stories, photos, videos, and the like.   For example, I've seen the same news story about famous sports figures, musicians, and actors who donated money to the families of Texas flood victims, complete with photos of the stars hugging people, all of which was generated by artificial intelligence.   Same story. Different stars. Fake photos.  Many of the people on my social media feed shared these stories, believing them to be real and wanting to assume the best about them without closely examining them.    In a world that is seemingly less and less certain, it's no wonder that these kinds of things happen mor...

When I was a kid, I didn't really want to go to Heaven, at least as it was described to me by Sunday school teachers and preachers.   They said that it had streets of gold, and gleamed with priceless jewels and all manner of cleanliness and brightness.  I used to wonder if it would be the kind of place where I would walk around worried about breaking something, like when my mom went into a shop filled with glass vases and decorative figurines.   "You break it, you bought it!' signs in these stores made me wonder if I was fit for Heaven.   And then there was the notion that was perpetuated by the church-y folk in the Baptist churches I attended that eternity in Heaven was like one long worship service where angel choirs sang, and the redeemed stood round and sang with them.  For a kid like me, these visions seemed more like Hades than Heaven.  Church was something I endured, rather than enjoyed.  I would have resonated with the words of M...

  I've been thinking a bit about prayer lately, mostly because I haven't had much of a response to the prayers I've been praying to sell my house, which has been on the market for over 230 days now.   I've got to tell you that my faith, resolve, and patience have been stretched to the limit more than once while I've been trying to hang through this season of waiting.  Not to mention, my frustration at all of the reasons why the housing market has slowed to a grinding halt, which wasn't the case before last November.   The funny thing about prayer is that you keep doing it, even when there's no discernible answer, and mostly only silence.   I pray the prayer of Thomas Merton every single day.  If you don't know it, look it up. It's a good prayer and one that I need to hear myself speak.  I also pray when I'm feeling desperate, and I have been praying out of grief over all the ills of the world.   These prayers are barely more th...

It’s the Season of Pentecost, and we are in the middle of a sermon series entitled, "A Church on Fire."  The inspiration for this particular sermon series comes from an unlikely source, a Spanish anarchist who detested the Church.   “The only church that illuminates is a burning church” - Buenaventura Durutti  Pentecost is a time for the Church to reflect on what it will be in whatever age it finds itself.  And right now in our current historic moment, the Church needs to be a light, and the only church that illuminates is on fire for the zeal of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.   Today, we will read what is perhaps the most well-known of Jesus’ parables, but from a different perspective, the story of the Good Samaritan.  When Jesus told this story, he took on the idea of identity politics, and he also expertly avoided answering a loaded question by changing the conversation.   But first, let me offer some explanations: When Our Identities Ge...

One of the many beautiful phrases used in Christian liturgy and worship is that those of us who strive to follow Jesus are "the hands and feet of Christ."   While I have loved this phrase and have employed it more than once in sermons and writings, it occurs to me that it deserves a closer examination, and perhaps a bit of imagination as well to fully comprehend just how important and vital it is.   The notion that we are the hands and feet of Christ, who we understand to be present in the world as Spirit, is one that theologians and church leaders have wrestled with for two millennia.  But it is the mystics who give us the poetry to imagine Christ more fully.   The 14th-century Christian mystic Teresa of Avila once wrote:  "Christ has no body but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours..." I suppose for me, the question about what it meant to be the hands and feet of Christ has always come down to "Why?"  Why would an all-powerful being ...

Recently, I  decided to let my beard pursue it's inclinations to be grey.   I'd been fighting the good fight for a long time with various beard washes that add enough color to cover most of the grey, but not enough to make me look like I'm completely coloring my beard.   It's a little thing, but it was liberating to me.  Like a lot of other areas in my life, I long to be free to simply be who I am.  To a point.   Despite my raised fist in the air about the color of my beard, I do actually care what people think of me.   I've discovered that I'm not the only person to struggle with conformity and the expectations of others when it comes to living authentically.  Even the most confident among us have niggling doubts about how they are perceived.   In a world filled with noise, expectations, and pressure to conform, it is easy to lose sight of who we truly are.  Many of us spend our days chasing the approval of othe...

I watched an episode of the Netflix TV series "Black Mirror" the other night that got me thinking about the afterlife.   Black Mirror is a sort of Twilight Zone for our own times, focusing on stories that reflect the current anxieties and ethical dilemmas of a high-tech future that is hurtling toward us faster than we can imagine. The particular episode that intrigued me was about a process where people who were dying could transfer their consciousness to a virtual world in a California beach town, which they could visit in any era of time they could remember.     They had the choice before they died to permanently transfer their consciousness there, or to roll the dice on what comes next naturally.   You could choose your own version of Heaven, in other words, with certainty.   I must admit, the idea of this sent my mind reeling.  Most Christians (myself included) have been taught at one time or another that the point of being Christian...

Over the past few days, I've been struck with a particular kind of grief that comes from having my faith tested in real time.  The recent floods in Texas have strained my relationship with God, and it's difficult for me to respond.   It's one thing to talk about the goodness of God and God's presence with us while suffering, and quite another to sit and wonder where God is when little children are being swept away in a catastrophic flood.   Suffering is a part of life.  That simple and profound statement is one that we all agree with, and yet when suffering lands upon us, or we witness it in others, we want it to mean something for us to endure it.  I don't have many answers to this, to be honest, but I've been thinking about it a bit, and perhaps what I have to share may be of help to some of us.   Difficult seasons in life often leave us disoriented, questioning our strength and even our faith. We may wonder why God allows pain, confusion,...