Presby-Musings

Some years ago, I asked the students in a confirmation class I was teaching if they would attempt to draw a picture of what they thought God might look like.   Several of the students sketched a portrait of an old man with a long white beard.  Others toyed with the idea of God as a flash of light.  A couple of students drew ancient symbols of the Trinity.  And a handful of others simply left their pages blank.   What do you picture, when you try to conjure up images of God in your imagination?   If you're like most people who believe in God, you probably imagine God much like those students did.  And I would also wager that you tend to think of God as being "somewhere else" looking down upon us.   Richard Rohr once wrote, "The belief that God is "out there" is the basic dualism that is tearing us all apart." The idea that God is somehow above and unconnected to our material reality is a destructive notion.  ...

The churches I went to when I was a kid encouraged (strongly) door-to-door evangelism.  In fact, by the time I was in high school I was a veteran of door-to-door evangelism.  I was also a veteran of getting doors slammed in my face.   Our technique for witnessing to people when we went door-to-door was almost completely lacking in any kind of tact whatsoever.  The opening spiel went something like this:  "Hello, my name is Leon from __________Church.  I'd like to ask you an important question.  If you died right now would you spend eternity in heaven or hell?"   As you can imagine, our success rate on winning souls was somewhere between Nothing and Zero.   I think there are a lot of Christians who so desperately don't want to seem like door-to-door evangelists that they never really develop healthy ways to share their faith.  In fact, I talk to a lot of Christians, who confess that even when they have opportunities to talk about ...

Yesterday I stood on the Areopagus in the center of Athens, Greece.   Merideth and I stumbled upon the site after visiting the Parthenon and the ruins of other great temples of ancient Athens, which were built on the highest point in the center of the city.  When you stand on the ruins of the Areopagus (Also known by the Romans as Mars Hill), those temples loom over your shoulder--you can't miss them.  The Areopagus is the site where the Apostle Paul addressed some of the leading intellectuals of the city, using Athenian cultural references and their own curiosity about religion and new ideas to preach the Gospel to them.   The Apostle Paul was astounded at the number of gods that were being worshipped in Athens, and he began sharing his "new ideas" with a twist:  So Paul took his stand in the open space at the Areopagus and laid it out for them. “It is plain to see that you Athenians take your religion seriously. When I arrived here the other day,...

Football season has begun, and I feel like I can watch ESPN again.  No more boring stories about basketball, hockey and (yawn) soccer.  I am still hanging with baseball because the Cubs are winning and it's almost October.   But it's football season, which brings a tremendous amount of joy to the people in my house, and it also means I can wear my team gear as much as possible.  I'm well into the double digits when it comes to football jerseys, and I've got more than my fair share of other kinds of team wear.   My whole family gets in on this.   I sent my six year-old to school today in his Peyton Manning football jersey.  My middle son Jackson has about three or four jerseys for both the Broncos and Seminoles, and my oldest boy has a few here and there that he wears to anger his friends who are Carolina Panther fans.   Oh, and I bought Merideth two Broncos jerseys, too (but they're kind of small, and kind of sexy so she only ...

I almost met legendary guitarist and rock icon Eric Clapton last week.  I say "almost" because I didn't have the guts to approach him and say hello to him.  He was sitting in front of us on a Saturday night showing the musical "Charlie and The Chocolate Factory" in London.   It took me a few moments, but I finally decided that I was almost 100% sure it was Eric Clapton.  But I still didn't want to say anything to him.   My wife Merideth did, however.  She walked over to him, leaned down and asked, "Does anyone ever tell you that you look just like Eric Clapton?"  To which Eric Clapton answered, "All of the time," and then he added, "but I don't pay it any mind."   We did, in fact confirm through the venue staff that the guy I was almost 100% sure was Eric Clapton was, in fact, really Eric Clapton.  I walked behind him as we exited the theater, resisting the urge to reach out and touch his jean jacket in a creepy way. ...

In just a little while I will be boarding an airplane that will take me on a six hour flight from Orlando to Portland, Oregon--from the east coast to the west coast  of these United States   in just a matter of hours.   It's amazing when you think about it.  I'll get inside what is essentially a long metal tube with wings and fly across the country, just like hundreds of thousands, if not millions of other people today.   Just a little over one hundred years ago, when the Wright Brothers made that first flight at Kitty Hawk, NC, no one could have fully imagined what we are able to do today.   But here's the interesting bit... they did imagine something like it.   It would take great imagination, grit and determination to make that first flight happen.  But after that first flight--that's where the real creativity, the otherworldly kinds of dreams and visions were born.  When people began asking... What if?   I think far too ma...

I had this friend on Facebook a few years ago who got an intense amount of joy out of ticking every one off with his controversial Facebook posts.  He would argue incessantly with people, saying all kinds of inflammatory things, offended everything, never seeming to really care who he hurt.   And then I posted something on my Facebook page that he disagreed with.   About football.  You see, we had pretty divergent opinions regarding our favorite football teams--as in, he couldn't stand my team and the feeling was reciprocated on my part toward his.  So the guy started attacking me online, and we had this virtual argument right there on my Facebook page for everyone and their brother to see.  Finally, the guy posted this comment, and it absolutely infuriated me.  He wrote, "I can't believe you call yourself a pastor, and post things like this."   I'd had enough then.  I thought about all of the mean-spirited and awful things this ...

I think I just might boycott cable television news for the next five months--maybe even longer than that.  Six to eight months might do it, to be honest.  By then the election will be over, and the madness with it.   The other day I made the mistake of turning on the TV in the morning to watch the news and catch up on what had been happening since the last time I'd watched.  It took me just a few moments to realize why I'd turned it off the last time.  I can sum it up in two words: Phony Outrage.   It felt like every single person on TV that morning was filled with phony outrage: presidential candidates, pundits, politicians, reporters, talking heads...  everyone.  It seems as though there wasn't a single topic, a single story that didn't evoke phony outrage from someone.     I've noticed this same kind of behavior among Christians, lately.  It's funny how the dominant Christian voices in our culture always seem to be decry...