Atheist Turned Believer

    I just walked through the den and found the television on with no one watching it.  As I reached for the remote, I realized one of those programs about conspiracies disguised as history was on.  In the several seconds that it had my attention, the program was discussing the Catholic church's failure to protect Jews during the Nazi regime and making it obvious that we should take a condemning attitude toward the church because of that failure.  My mind shifted quickly to more recent headlines in which the media invited us to take the same attitude about the discovery that the church had protected certain priests from persecution when accused of child abuse.     On August 20 of this year, I included in a post the idea that the church should never attempt to take the law into its own hands, that if a leader is thought to be conducting himself in an illegal fashion it is incumbent upon the church to turn that leader over to law enforcement of...

    If nobody ever reads this, that's fine.  I'm writing it for myself so that I can re-read it occasionally and remind myself of this moment.           I was cleaning the bathrooms yesterday, a rather mindless task which allowed me quite a bit of time to think about other things.  I'm not sure how I came upon this, but I remembered something interesting:     In 1990, I felt "called by God" to start a Christian television ministry.  I even quit my job and returned to college to earn degrees in theology and television production.  I earned the degrees, but I dropped the idea of television ministry one morning when I picked up a copy of USA Today on my way to class.  On the front page of this particular issue was the result of a poll, the conclusion to which was that 97% of the people who report watching religious broadcasting on a regular basis consider themselves born-again Christians who believe ...

      I've been going down a rabbit hole over the last 24 hours.  A Facebook friend shared a post by someone using the pseudonym "Millennials [redacted]" that read "Apparently the boomers are mad big time we're not having enough grandkids and like lmao look around at the world you built."  That statement has a lot to unpack, but I want to start with my own immediate response.      I didn't reply to the original post, but did respond to my friend with "Out of curiosity, do Millennials think Boomers messed up the planet, or is that just a frequently told joke?  I've always wondered, but haven't had the guts to ask."  I've gotten a couple of replies, both of which have been surprisingly civil.  One pointed out, correctly, that the government had certain economic and environmental safeguards in place from the 30's through the 80's, but those have been getting persistently eroded by elected officials in the intervening years, mak...

       I realized the other day that I left out a point in my discussion of the New Church, one that I guessed was rather self-evident but probably isn't.     In today's church - Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox - there are an awful lot of "bench warmers;" people who think of church as a spiritual gas station.  You know who you are.  You stop by once a week to fill up your tank, give the attendant a few bucks, then go back to your "real life" and hope the fuel lasts for seven days, thus having fulfilled your spiritual responsibilities.  You are a Christian, but in name only.  Might I first suggest meditating on the Epistle of James.     My second suggestion is a good deal more radical, but the reader should be accustomed to that by now.  It is my opinion (and mine alone) that within a few weeks of joining, the new church member should receive a friendly visit from a couple of deacons and elders.  During thi...