Monsters of the Bible

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  

A few years ago, my niece and a friend of hers were walking down a country mountain road on Halloween night.  

Five houses, all sporting jack o lanterns on their porches, were spread within walking distance from my home.  

After harvesting some candy from our neighborhood, my niece would be driven down into the valley where her grandparents lived. There the houses were more plentiful and not so distant from each other.  

This was a mountain in Tennessee where every kid, except for the Carrie Whites among us, celebrated Halloween.  

One of the locals who had been driving down the main mountain road toward the valley felt inspired by her god to turn onto our gravel road so she could tell my niece and her friend that they were going to hell for celebrating Halloween.  

It was an episode straight out of To Kill a Mockingbird where Miss Maudie had to face down with Bible verses of light and joy those fuming, disapproving fundamentalists flaunting Bible verses of gloom and doom. 

The interloper in our neighborhood did not get the reaction she had hoped.  My niece is very mouthy, and she told the lady to mind her own business.  But when my niece came back to my house, she was perturbed by the encounter.  

She was afraid.  I guess you could say the interloper did score some terror points that night.

The truth is that the woman who encountered my niece was one loony act away from being a monster.  She took the time to curse my niece with her imaginary eternal concentration camp.  

In sicker minds, that sort of piety inspires evil deeds like strapping dynamite to the body and blowing up a restaurant, or randomly shooting people, or burning imagined witches at the stake, or accusing a race of people of atrocities individuals among them never commit in order to justify genocide.  

I just saw the new Carrie.  I really liked it and would urge anyone who loves horror movies to view it.  What fascinated me was the nuanced way that Carrie and her mother were depicted that was not in the original film.  

Carrie White battles her mother with Bible verses of her own choosing to fend off her mother's Bible verse attack.  Margaret White, her mother, is clearly a disturbed woman in need of psychiatric care.  The Bible verses she prefers are in keeping with her pathology.

Yesterday, I wrote of Reverend Caldwell’s sermon that preached prayer affects the way we live.  Is it not also true that we choose the Bible verses that reflect and shape who we are?  Some choose Bible verses that curse and condemn.  Some choose verses that bless.  Some choose Bible verses that inspire murder and terrorism.  Some choose verses that heal.

The Bible verses we love shape who we are, and we shape the Bible in accordance with who we are.

These despisers are potential Monsters of the Bible.  They are not imaginary.  They live among us.  They need healing.  They must be sheltered within a greater and increasing number of us who love those Bible verses that reveal our God of love.  

Blessings…

Do You Think About That Sermon You Heard Last Sunday?

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I would like to share what I hear in church from time to time, especially sermons.

Last Sunday, our associate pastor, Reverend Loren Caldwell, preached a sermon about how the way we pray affects the way we live.  Her text she chose was one of my favorite parables by Jesus.  

It is the parable of the Pharisee who went to the temple to pray beside a tax collector.  

The Pharisee thanked his god because he was not like the tax collector, a sinner.  He attended services, gave his tithe, and obeyed Torah.  His god was pretty damn lucky to have him on his side.

The tax collector asked God to be merciful to him, a sinner.

Jesus said that the tax collector's prayer was the one God heard.

I have been thinking about how Reverend Caldwell began her sermon.  She imagined what she would do were she living in Rome, circa the first century, and how she might have a miserable life. 

She would be a woman after all, and unless she was married, or exceptionally wealthy and influential, her life would not count for much.  

She might travel to the Coliseum and make herself feel better by seeing how terrible were the lives of the gladiators who had to fight to live.

She imagined how she might be unhappy during various historical times and how she might cheer herself up by comparing herself to other people who were less fortunate.

Then, she imagined if she lived today, and she was a teenager in school who was not very popular, she might befriend someone who was even less popular just to feel superior.  

She would pray to God as she lived her life and thank God that as bad as her life was at least it was not as bad as others.  

It is so true of so many people that they measure their worth by the low expectations of others.  

For instance, a man who drops out of society, has no bank account, snorts meth and smokes dope everyday, votes not one time, yet works every day for cash so he does not have to pay taxes--he is able to look at his neighbor who lives on welfare and say, "At least I'm not that bum."

We must be able to compare ourselves to how our God of love loves us.  We are all separated from our God of love and from each other. The separation can turn into alienation, that is, a delusion that our way back to our God of love is lost forever.  

Faith says it is never lost, ever, period.  We just admit we are like that tax collector.  We're sinners and we move on with the confidence that we are accepted by our God of love.  

When we pray with that in our hearts, it changes us, sets us free to become whole.

Sometimes the shortest distance between understanding why we may be unhappy is that distance between where we stand and a mirror.  Today is a new day.  We can compare ourselves to who we were yesterday and transcend that so God can do God's work in our lives.

Blessings...

Overheard in Church

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Welcome back to me too.  I took a little break, but I am fired up to start again.  I have been thinking about all the stuff I could put into this blog, as well as how political I want to be.  Since evolution is inevitable, I suspect this ongoing public comment I write will change in accordance with my own personal and technical growth.

In Sunday School last Sunday, we began the second chapter of Mark's gospel, verses 1-12.  Our teacher asked what relationship existed among sin, healing, and disease.  

That engendered a lively discussion.  Some sins, like eating or drinking too much, can cause disease.  No one believed God gave cancer to someone as a punishment for sin.

Does prayer heal people?  No one came out firmly on that.  I said that God's healing success rate has increased substantially since the germ theory and evolution of medical science.  Another church member, named Charlie, replied that since creation God has been a God of love moving humanity toward healing.

An excellent idea that.

This is a class of interesting faith people.  Just about everyone has a MA; at least three received theirs from a seminary.  Everyone truly expresses a nuanced variation of just about any topic.  

After the opening discussion, we read the text.  There was a lot of discussion about the paralytic who was lowered through the roof to Jesus.  Who was he?  How did he lose his ability to walk?  Was it because of an accident or a sin?

What did Jesus mean when he healed him because of "their" faith?  Who were these people who lowered this man to see Jesus?  Were they friends?  Relatives?  Passersby who decided to be Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts?

I think a terrific question is what the writer meant by including this passage from the text.  The story of the paralytic seems quite generic.  A man in need of healing is brought to Jesus.  He could have been a leper or a hemorrhaging woman or a blind man.  The details of the story are rendered to set up the theological discussion between Jesus and the scribes.

Mark is very deliberate in how he crafts his narrative.  This particular pericope (passage) derives its purpose from the discussion that follows the healing.  It is a question about Jesus.  Does he have the authority to forgive sins?  

In fact, considering that Mark imagines a living Jesus of the present, and not of the past, the theology of the passage concerns an argument that may well have existed between hostile Pharisees and early Christians of Mark's day.  

Christians were telling people that their sins were forgiven by Jesus. The authority to do this was passed on to them by Jesus.  Mark, by this passage, and others, demonstrated the source of their authority.  

It seems likely to me that any antagonism between two rival Jewish sects within Judaism might include charges of blasphemy, so Mark has scribes charge Jesus of the same offense.  

We really do not know for certain the interaction between Jesus and the Pharisees since the latter were not as prominent in Jesus' day as they became after the destruction of Jerusalem.

Also, it hardly seems blasphemous to forgive sins.  Any charge of blasphemy in this case seems trumped up to serve a larger antagonism.

Indeed, Jesus may have been acting on God's behalf, but he could just as well have been articulating what everyone should know:  we are forgiven and we are expected to forgive as well.

Forgiveness is an extension of our God of love's nature.  I think I read somewhere once that forgiveness of sins would not have been considered blasphemous within Judaism.  That would not surprise me since Judaism is quite diverse.  It is the first source about our God of love.

Blessings…

An Introduction to an Introduction to Sin

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Last week, I participated in a Wednesday night Theology 101 presentation.  It was an introduction to sin, salvation, and grace.  That is a tall order to squeeze into a one hour bag. 

I was happy to see that the forty people who attended seemed to really enjoy the presentation and discussion.  Many of them offered some insightful suggestions from their own experience.

My presentation was about sin and salvation.  After hearing Ashley Williams’ introduction to grace, I began my presentation by saying that in a theology class I would spend the first hour discussing sin as it was viewed among early Christians and maybe the next generation theologians. 

In truth, we should begin with the Jewish Bible.  That would take a good hour or more.

Instead, I began with a brief concerning how fundamentalists view sin.  

I did this because fundamentalists are evangelical family members even though evangelicals prefer to distinguish themselves from fundamentalists.  All voices should be heard and considered.  

We are all evangelicals in the sense that we believe that the gospel is good news worthy to be proclaimed by our love we live.

A fundamentalist family member believes in the supernatural, in magical thinking, and gets really annoyed when we suggest that Jesus sure has done a better job answering our prayers for the sick and dying since the advent of medical science. 

Fundamentalists are stuck in Protestant Reformation theology which is magical, supernatural, and reactionary.  It reacts to Roman Catholicism and is geared specifically to damn our Roman Catholic family members. 

Fundamentalists also react to scientists and their theology is geared specifically to damn all of us who are scientific thinkers for Jesus. 

Bless their hearts.  We still love them.

Historically, fundamentalism is described as a late 19^th and early 20^th century theological movement.  In 1910, an oil man (imagine that) named Lyman Stewart financed the publication of a 12 volume sets of essays: The Fundamentals: a Testimony to the Truth.  The title itself is quite suggestive. 

Fundamentalism is said to be a reaction to modern culture.  Indeed.  Yet included in modern culture is our reliance upon scientific thinking for truth about reality.  Our science today has shown reality to be stranger and vaster than men and women B.C. (Before Copernicus) imagined.  

In response, fundamentalists reject science, or at least those aspects of science that they find incompatible with their theology, and they are compelled to imagine ways to squeeze our vast universe of knowledge into their literal interpretation of the Bible.

This explains in part why fundamentalist writers love to stick Bible verses after their propositions as if that proves their case to be incontrovertible. 

Like scientists, fundamentalists are inclined to prefer facts.  However, their facts do not come from observation, but from selected Bible verses.

Now, I’m not picking on our fundamentalist family members.  Just about all of them are the nicest people you will ever meet.  That being said, even the nicest among them still have it in their heads that stoning and burning at the stake are ordained by their god as a sociologically just way of engineering a righteous society.

Love 'em, but don't vote for 'em…that’s my advice.

In fundamentalist circles, sin is just about everything.  On the one hand there is talk of salvation and forgiveness, but on the other hand there is an inclination to legislate or keep laws that make some sinners worthy of more condemnation than others.

By the way, the best news I ever read in the Bible, since we are being selective with our verses, is the news that there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. 

So, that is my introduction to my introduction.  Next, I will present an expanded edition of my Theology 101 presentation about sin.  I copied and pasted it from a Dictionary of Theology website created by conservatives.

Blessings...

Sin in the System Originally not Original Sin

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I wish you wellness this day.

It is so 90s to say that a particular item of clothing or a particular expression is "so 50s," "so 60s," or "so 70s."  The 80s were too close to the 90s to distinguish itself as a peculiar decade at that time.

When we read the Adam and Eve story, we feel compelled to say it is "so Mesopotamian" as it explains to us why work is so hard, childbirth is so painful, and snakes crawl on the ground.  

Ancient people could not fathom the concept of anything occurring naturally, so they had to blame people for the bad stuff that happens in life.  

Who knew that huge mountain that folks lived near, where a god shakes it, or a dragon rumbles it, where the view of the sea or the nearness of the sky fills the heart with an overwhelming love of beauty and grandeur--I mean--who knew that it would be lethal and a fiery sauce come hot from Hell would pour out and kill everyone in the town?

Or that other mountain that blew everyone to atoms.  Who knew?

Surely, some terrible sinner offended a god, and everyone else who died got swept up in that god's wrath.  

In a way, yes, someone or anyone who moved beside any volcano and started a village shared a causal connection with the death of everyone else burned up by lava later.

The same can be said of floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, sinkholes, and diseases.  We are at the mercy of our planet, and we cause the deaths of our future generations if we live where nature can come crashing down like a...well, you know…just fill in the blank.

In ancient times, disasters must have been inexplicable.  Everyone alive in a town would be going about their business, feeding their goats, shearing their sheep, plowing their fields, storing their grain, and just having a good old time with maybe a few hundred other people since early cities were not too heavily populated. 

Along comes a storm that wipes almost everyone out with lightening, cloud bursts, and surging waters.  Can we not all see how those who escaped may begin to wonder "why did this happen" once they reached safety and began to rebuild their lives?

And those whom the survivors fled to would wonder why such a terrible thing happened too.  What wicked deed was done to incur such divine retribution?

Stories would be told, maybe for centuries, until they were written down.  Such disasters would be attributed to gods, that is, divine personalities made in the image of the men and women telling the stories. 

Supernatural explanations are what ancient people knew before science.  And gods, like people, punish and wreck vengeance.

It would never occur to anyone in ancient Sumer, Babylon, Jericho, or Egypt that the hydrologic cycle, the clash of low pressure with high pressure systems, rapidly moving electrons, a rotating earth, and unimpeded water flow would all join together to seemingly hurl fire from the sky, blow winds from the four corners of the earth, and raise floods from fountains of the deep.  

I wrote in an earlier post about how magical rainbows must have seemed to ancient people.  Storms too would have been experienced as something sent from heaven. 

Ancient Mesopotamian people thought up the idea that natural disasters were punishments for sin.  There are at least 700 Americans in a TV club today who believe that nonsense.  

Why is there evil in the world?  Why must toil include thorns?  Why are epidurals necessary for so many women?  Why don't snakes walk on a score of legs or four?

Let me tell you why.  Once upon a time, a man and a woman disobeyed a god.  The sin that resulted from that one act of disobedience coursed throughout the world and caused all the bad in the universe today.

Now, that would make a lot of sense back then.  

It does not make sense today however, when some would have us believe that an ancient story explains why cholera strikes Haiti in 2013 or a star billions of miles away explodes.

Blessings...

Sincerely Suffering Systemic Sin

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I am still gathering my thoughts about sin and salvation to present to a theological panel at my church next Wednesday.  

Last time, I wrote about sin in the system, and by that I meant the system of life in general.  

Today, I would like to remember Oskar Schindler who died in 1974 on October 9.  He was a great example of how the elements of good and bad can be commingled in a person of magnanimous moral stature.  

I do not know very much about the man except from what I saw from the movie.  I have the book on my bucket list of books I want to read. I do not know how religious he was.  My memory is telling me that he was a Catholic.  

Was he a believer?  I do not know that either.  An atheist could very well have been as courageous as he. 

If he was a person of faith, then he acted in accordance with the way that our God of love manifested in Jesus of Nazareth.  If not, how he saved and who he saved manifested what the story of Noah may be telling us through the centuries.

Sin runs its course.  It destroys thousands.  Some are spared, and sin seeks another way to spread in the world.

Oskar Schindler was a German citizen and a Nazi.  He exploited Jewish persecution to acquire his own wealth, and then gave it all away to save 1200 Jews.  

These Schindler Jews were spared from the atomic explosion called the Holocaust and World War II.  That explosion resulted from sin radiating within the German government.

After Hitler was elected, he could not legally murder German citizens until the law of the land changed.  Thus, he commanded the German judicial system to create laws that institutionalized his racial theories.  These were the Nuremberg Laws and they gave sin a nice new home in Germany.  

The Nuremberg Laws ensconced second class citizenship for Jewish people.  Within days Jewish people were murdered.  

Systemic sin crushes more people and destroys more lives than earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes combined--I wager.

Where do we see it in our nation?  When we look at our nation's past, we see that second class citizenship once had been a part of our legal system before and after slavery.  

Germany had to pass laws to create Jim Crow; we had to pass laws to end it.  

Where do we see systemic sin today?  We do not have to take a long view.  We do not need to squint our eyes.  It's all around.

Wars and more wars and wars in the past and wars in the present are built into our system.  We have a military industrial complex which makes a lot of people rich as long as we fight.  

Also, our economic system today makes a few Americans richer than Solomon, Midas, and the Medici combined while it makes everyone else poor or poorer.

About that economic system let me say this.  We have been arguing about the best way to run the economy since mercantilism lined the pockets of King George.  

Today, there are some within a certain self proclaimed Christian party who have a religious devotion to a particular laissez faire theory that has caused more busts than Donatello.  

People need to wake up and stop being Bible thumpers with The Wealth of Nations as if it should be inserted after the book of Revelation.

Economics is a science, not a damn religion.  It is often called the science of common sense.  I have never heard of a religion of common sense.

We should be able to set zeal aside and implement what works.  If economics is truly a science, and not a body of doctrines that preaches some weird kind of transubstantiation of labor into the presence of wealth for the so-called job creators, then we should be able to be more pragmatic and less ideological.

And please, being pragmatic is not being ideological.  We have the system we have now because laissez faire does not work.  

Do you think the Federal Reserve System was created to persecute rich Americans or was it created to fix a system that tends to fail all too often?

Redistributing wealth is absolutely necessary because there are a lot of rich people who have purchased copiously more stuff than small nations need to survive.  If you want to have your eyes opened, see the sickening movie The Bling Ring for a peek into how much wealthy people have accrued. 

Hollywood probably should not reveal the Greedy Secrets of the Rich and Famous in that way.

Today, we have a political party in our country that expertly associates tones, facial expressions, and scary music with sensible language in order to frighten people into believing that this sin infested system we have now must become even more sinful, that is, as sinful as it was when there was no minimum wage, no welfare, and no Social Security. 

Phrases like, “Fair redistribution of wealth" or "health care for all Americans" are transformed to say the opposite of what the content of those words convey.

Our fight against poverty is our greatest war today.  Indeed, it is the curse of every nation on earth wherever it exists. It is a fight not just for the sake of justice, but also to keep Americans safe from the thundering herd of poor people who might scale the secluded walls of the filthy rich and do what the French and Russians did to their job creators.

Poverty is the systemic sin we suffer in this country.  It is radiating within our economic system and our citizenry.  It drives all the stress and hardship in our educational system.  It creates fear and imperious loathing.

The good old USA needs some Oskar Schindlers dedicated to saving people rather than exploiting and propagandizing them.

Blessings…

Sin In the System

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I pray my post today makes sense and renders encouragement.

We got word yesterday that another family member has cancer.  It was detected long ago, but when it swelled into a large hard lump in the stomach, medical advice was sought and the sad news became plain.

My family has lost enough loved ones to cancer to feel as if we lost the whole world.  

It is the great mystery of mortality when a truly good person, who has done nothing but love all of her life, dies from such an inexorable disease.

Of course, there is more hope today for remission.  In the case of the person I am thinking about, the cancer may be eradicated when a part of her organ is surgically removed.  I can remember when cancer was almost always a death sentence. 

The bad news, like the disease itself, comes to us as a foreboding word that contains hope, yet that hope wanes when it becomes apparent that all the medical science and all the prayers of all the churches and people are not going to stop cancer's ravaging course. 

Those of us who grieve the loss so keenly remain and remember the life we mourn as we wend our way through our days with a new lump of non-being embedded within our hearts.

Cancer never seems to come at a good time, like when we are ninety-nine years old.  

Cancer comes as if it strikes from the sky: a mother in her fifties who could be alive to love her grandchildren, a  mother in her forties who asks her doctor to keep her alive long enough to see her daughter graduate from high school, a mother in her thirties who feels as if her life has just begun, a twenty something, a teen, a child...  

Cancer favors no time or circumstance.  

There are other diseases that are just as bad.  My saintly grandmother could be alive today, but Alzheimer's devoured her memory and vitality with the same inexorable end.  

Cancer fills us with a special dread.  That mole that changes shape on our faces or backs gives us pause.  That lump we feel rising where soreness signals a mere infection makes us hold our breath.  Those pangs clanging within our bowels spark dread within us.

Every physical I ever had felt scary before and during the process.   My back hurts a lot.  Is there such a thing as cancer of the spine?  Will my blood work indicate a clandestine infection working its nefarious end in my system?

Always, I feel that overwhelming sense of salvation when the doctor says unto me the good news, "Keep doing whatever it is you're doing.  You're as healthy as a horse."

 Cancer just feels evil even though we know it to be a natural malignancy.   

Sin spreads like cancer throughout human history.  It is a cliché, but a very useful one. 

According to Hebrew lore, it starts as an act of disobedience of a god’s commandment to refrain from eating fruit from a particular tree.  It suddenly lurks at Cain’s door then manifests itself in a murder.

It spreads with such rapidity that wickedness and violence cry out to the elohim and the Yahweh who live in the sky.  They decide to wash the world clean with water.

It doesn’t work.  Immediately, after those who have been saved walk on dry land, there is incest, and sin continues its malignant course.

Of all the people who have ever lived, we know sin’s murderous way throughout history and in our own time. 

The systematic murder of Jewish people raises a shudder of amazement within us until we realize that the Holocaust bloodbath may well be just one well spring gushing out of an open vein from the heart of hell. 

We are tempted to despair because there is something terribly wrong with people when they so inexorably perish one another.

But the news is not all bad.  There is gospel, and it has always run concurrently from another vein.

Blessings…

It's a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.

The Bible does not tell us what sin so much as show us what it is with stories, wisdom sayings, and poetry.

Modern authors do the same thing from time to time.

For instance, in her lovely book, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee writes eloquently about sin. Near the end of her book, she shows us how sin embeds itself in life in such a way that a dilemma ensues, a dilemma that moves us beyond our notions of truth, justice, and the American Way.

Sheriff Heck Tate and Atticus Finch have discovered that the recluse Arthur "Boo" Radley killed Bob Ewell, who is a racist, child abuser, and eternally ensconced literary depiction of white trash.  Boo killed Bob Ewell in order to save the lives of Atticus' children, Scout and Gem Finch, from the evil man.

Atticus Finch told the sheriff that there should be a hearing to determine whether or not a crime had been committed. The sheriff would have none of that. He told Atticus Finch that his report would say that Bob Ewell fell on the knife that killed him.

In his argument the sheriff recounted what we know is the energy of sin that began in the story, as it often does in life, with a deed, an act, a choice.

In this case, the choice was made by a lonely, young white woman who decided to seduce a kind hearted black man.  She asked him for help as he passed by her house.  He helped her, and by his choice, he set in motion a sequence of events that led to his destruction and the near destruction of two children. 

Sheriff Tate’s concern was that a hearing would cause undue attention that would subsequently cause undue suffering in Boo Radley's life.  

The sheriff said, "I never heard tell that it's against the law for a citizen to do his utmost to prevent a crime from being committed, which is exactly what he did, but maybe you'll say it's my duty to tell the town all about it and not hush it up. Know what'd happen then? All the ladies in Maycomb includin' my wife'd be knocking on his door bringing angel food cakes. To my way of thinkin', Mr. Finch, taking the one man who's done you and this town a great service an' draggin' him with his shy ways into the limelight-to me, that's a sin. It's a sin and I'm not about to have it on my head. If it was any other man it'd be different. But not this man, Mr. Finch."

The child, Scout Finch, connects the dots between protect Boo Radley and killing a mockingbird.

The discussion about the mockingbird occurred earlier in the book, at the supper table, when Gem Finch learns to his chagrin that their guest, Walter Cunningham, owns a rifle.  Walter is younger than Gem. 

Atticus shares how his father gave him a gun when he was about Gem’s age.  He says his father told him that he could shoot any bird he wanted except mockingbirds, that it was a sin to kill a mockingbird because they do nothing except sing for our enjoyment.

Of course, we see in the book that Tom Robinson, who does nothing but kind deeds for May Ella Ewell, is killed.  The effects of that sin spreads throughout Maycomb like a contagion that must be contained or it will destroy a lot of people.

There was nearly a lynching with the sheriff across the street with a rifle.  There was nearly the murder of two children.  It was a big mess caused by the simple decision of a solitary person.

That is sin.

Blessings…

What Sin Is

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  

I suppose there is nothing more certain in this world than the proposition that "all have sinned."  

The rest of the phrase, "and fallen short of the glory of God" is no less true if you are a person of faith, but it is not a proposition agreeable to all people.

I doubt if there is anyone who is willing to say, “God does not exist,” who would never say, “Sin does not exist.”  

They might discount some of the theological explanations about sin, for example, original sin, but after just a few minutes of watching the news, we can all agree there is something terribly wrong with people.

Not just the news too--look at history.

I often laugh when I hear preachers talk about the good old days when our country was a righteous nation, when we had prayer in the schools, and Bible in the schools, and Mayberry RFD flourished ubiquitously throughout the land. 

Of course, a lot of preachers suffer the damnations of selective memory.  Back when we had prayer in some schools, we had black folks in their place and white folks in their place. Americans were hanging other Americans like "strange fruit" from trees.  Women were dying from back alley abortions.  Gangs were blowing each other away on Valentines Day.  Scientists were inventing the atom bomb.

There was child abuse, wife beatings, destruction of property, political corruption, corporate greed…you know…the real America lived by real Americans.

On the other side of the planet, one of the most Christian nations on Earth was rounding up Jewish people into ghettos and then systematically sending them off to die in death camps.  

How many per day?  Was it 23,000 people murdered per day?  I heard that number in the movie Conspiracy.

If only Andy Taylor had been the chancellor of Germany…

Indeed, you can always count on the Nazis to help us make a great argument about the reality of sin.

Now, we have Syria.  We’ll always have the Middle East, it seems.

Sin does not always have to be violent.  Today, our government has been shut down by a few extreme conservatives who despise the thought that 25 million people might have healthcare in this country.  What would Andy Taylor do about that?

I sincerely believe many of these great despisers hate other people with that old hatred that has been around since 19 "Negroe Slaves" were part of the cargo of ship that arrived in the Virginia Colony circa 1600s.  

These despisers hatred, however thinned out the line of it is reaching back into the distant past, is tied to our president.

For so much hate, it would be right to say they judge him by the content of his skin...at least the historical content and not by the splendid colors of his character.

Indeed, sin is as old as homo erectus who being so like us in physically must have sinned like us in violently.  

Sin has been around since that first time a homo sapiens imagined what it would be like to bludgeon his brother to death...and then smashed his skull.

Sin never leaves us.  It is the animal within us, the flesh ripping fangs and teeth of our most primitive selves.  It drives that special ingenuity of our species, the badge of our evolution, which is our great intelligence that crafts, builds, imagines, and explores.  

Sin marks everything we touch.  Behold the beasts we were and the beasts we have become.  Homo sapiens devised tools to feed; now we engineer technologies that murder all too well.  

I believe we have not evolved from apes, but we are yet apes endowed with the evolution of reason.  We carry within our nature the intelligence to save ourselves and the iniquity to eradicate all the flora, fauna, and people that ever existed.  

I remember Campus Crusade for Christ staff members, and their literature, made a big deal out of sin.  They argued that God must exist since sin is so certain.

Well, they were right about one thing.  All of us can agree that the evidence for sin is so overwhelming that to deny it would be as delusional, according to atheists, as people who believe in God.

I heard the preacher Barbara Brown Taylor say that the word "sin" exists because it points to something in the world that happens.

Indeed.

Blessings...