Many Christian writers have written essays on the current crisis in the Middle East. While interesting, the one point that has been missed is that the current war between Israel and Hamas as well as the anti-Semitism that has followed from it both have their origin in silly and very dangerous biblical beliefs. In Genesis 17: 1-8, we learn that God got into the real estate business and gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people. I learned some interesting specifics about this gift from a trip to the Holy Land Lyn and I took five years ago. On our visit to the Temple Mount in the old city of ..read more

Whisper Ethics is a way of approaching political decision making from a Christian perspective. It is intimately related to process theology, the work of Alfred North Whitehead and several prominent Christian theologians. Process theology posits that humans are decision makers who make decisions in response to different messages that float through their awareness. There are messages from the past—memories, emotions, goals, wishes, hopes. There are messages from our reptilian brain centered around survival. These messages pertain to fear, greed, and lust among other things. There are also messa ..read more

The current war in Ukraine presents a dilemma for Christians. Support for innocent victims resulting from the Russian invasion is a no brainer. They are our neighbors. But what about the Ukrainian military effort? To support that effort only feeds the violence. The teachings of Jesus in the New Testament are quite clear. He strongly opposed the use of violence in first century Palestine. This tradition of Christian pacifism has seen considerable support over the 2,000 years of Christian history. Stanley Hauerwas argues that the church is separate from the state. The duty of a Christian is not ..read more

In the last several essays, I have written about looking at political theology through the lens of whisper ethics. Whisper ethics comes from process theology, the work of Alfred North Whitehead and several prominent Christian theologians. To summarize briefly, humans make decisions based upon different messages that float through their awareness. There are messages from the past—memories, emotions, goals, wishes, hopes. There are messages from our reptilian brain centered around survival. These messages pertain to fear, greed, and lust among other things. There are also messages from God—a sen ..read more

Abraham Lincoln was a progressive Christian. While being raised in a small fundamentalist Baptist church, Lincoln rejected the Christianity of his parents. He questioned the Bible as the literal word of God, the miracle stories as historically valid, and the belief in Jesus as a divine being. He never became a member of a church. On the other hand, he had a deep sense of the presence of God, a faith that deepened during his presidency. Lincoln’s life was also a testimony to the workings of whisper ethics. As I have stated in previous blogs, whisper ethics comes from process theology, the work ..read more

The current war in Ukraine presents a dilemma for Christians. Support for innocent victims resulting from the Russian invasion is a no brainer. They are our neighbors. But what about the Ukrainian military effort? To support that effort only feeds the violence. The teachings of Jesus in the New Testament are quite clear. He strongly opposed the use of violence in first century Palestine. This tradition of Christian pacifism has seen considerable support over the 2,000 years of Christian history. Stanley Hauerwas argues that the church is separate from the state. The duty of a Christian is not ..read more

One of my favorite books is A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar, the biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., the mathematical genius and inventor of the theory of rational behavior. The fields of economics and game theory were fundamentally changed because of his work. Sadly, underneath the brilliant surface of his life, chaos reined. Nash was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at age thirty. According to Nash, there were two voices in his head, both equally valid: the voice of reason and the voice of aliens. The voice of aliens produced persistent, scary, debilitating delusions. At one point he ..read more

The starting point for understanding how religion relates to politics is to determine how God functions in the world. Like many of you, I attribute the word God to experiences of beauty, love, and goodness that have no logical explanation. These encounters have depth. The reality of the experience is so much greater than the parts making it up. I have friends who have told me that music brings joy and a sense of peace into their lives, that it often takes them to another place. I also have friends who find a depth of meaning in church liturgy. During my tennis teaching days, I befriended a gi ..read more