Love Not Fear

Our lock-in theme this year was "Peace on Earth: Beyond the Bumper Stickers". As some preparation, I asked the youth the week before what Biblical references they thought of when they hear "Peace on Earth". Beyond the usual thoughts (the Nativity, e.g.), two rather unusual references came up: the story of Noah's Ark and the Book of Job. I want to take a minute and document what y'all meant by those, since I think their pretty amazing. I Noah's Ark and Peace At first, when 'Trumpet16' suggested Noah's ark as a story about peace, I wondered (briefly) if she hadn't been suckered in by the soft and fuzzy version of the story that gets told to very little kids. The nice boat ride with the cuddly zoo and the nice man with the long gray beard (who didn't allow card gambling -- he stood on the deck....). Of course, I know her too well to think that for long. Here's what she had in mind: The "peace" part of the story is at the en...

Sarah is the first of novelist Orson Scott Card's "Women of Genesis" series. Card is best known for his science fiction (for example, the exceptional Ender's Game ). He is an excellent writer, and a devoted Mormon who is not afraid to allow his characters to take their beliefs seriously. I wish I could recommend Sarah , but I'm afraid I cannot. While Card is great at picking good words and putting them in the right order, there are deep problems with this book. Most notably is the near-Superman character and capabilities of Abram/Abraham and Sarai/Sarah. They make no mistakes. Well, Abraham makes one rather big one but he soon sees the error of his ways. Abraham somehow has a fully-formed Mormon belief, including the Christian concept of the sacrifice of a Son by his Father, even generations before God gave God's name and the Law to Moses. Sarah can do anything, except have children. (And then, of course, she does that.) This is even true in what is almost un...

So we're into the Christmas season officially now that we're past Thanksgiving. One thing that always strikes me as odd this time of year is how many people seem to have confused God with Santa Claus. In a way, I guess I can understand the confusion. The famous editorial "Yes, Virginia, There I a Santa Claus" reads pretty much the same if you substitute "God" for "Santa Claus". (Except the part about the fairies. I never did get that part anyway.) Neither God nor Santa Claus can claim to be readily available for interviews on CNN. Still, it's amazing to me how much confusion there is. For example, some say God is a man with a long white beard. That's Santa Claus. I've never heard of anyone saying that God lives at the North Pole and wears a red coat, but if they do, well, now you know. Some say that God has a special affinity for little people, that God somehow treats children better than adults. Again, that's Santa Claus. (The g...

We talked about this week before last, but I wanted this on the blog too, especially for folks who weren't there. I think Halloween has the potential to be an incredibly effective, meaningful, and joyous Christian festival. Now, most of the times when you read a statement like that, the proponent is imagining re-styling Halloween into some kind of "Fall Festival", scrubbing it clean of all ghost stories or anything scary, and maybe using it as some kind of "morality tale:" a variation on the Christmas-time song "you better watch out." That's not what I'm advocating. I think that there is a great Christian witness in sitting in a dark room and telling ghost stories. I think there is something more than morality to be gotten from October 31. (Not that there isn't morality there: just look at any pre- Scream horror movie and watch who gets massacred first, and who makes it through.) Halloween, more than any other festival, is about story-tell...

I read yesterday that during the chaos after the hurricane, a number of people, hungry, thirsty, and dying at the New Orleans Convention Center, tried to cross the Crescent City Connection (bridge) to the high-and-dry West Bank, where they hoped to find food, water, and, perhaps, help. They were met by Gretna Police who halted them with bullhorns and gun shots over their heads. It wasn't about race, or cruelty, according to the police. It was about law and order, since there were probably looters among the crowd. It was about Gretna not having the resources to support this huge mass of people. "If you wasn't there," said the police chief from Gretna's neighbor Westwego, "shut your mouth, because you don't know." A while back, I remember that a West Bank church tried to install a large lighted sign saying "JESUS". The church neglected to check the city ordinances, however. As it turned out, the display was much larger than the allowed sign s...

Well, it looks like all our youth are safe and more-or-less OK. Thanks to God. There are a couple of things I'd like to mention, because goofy theology always seem to come up whenever anything terrible like this happened. The first stupid idea is that the people who suffered these kinds of calamities do so because God wanted to prove some point, or punish somebody. God doesn't work that way. God never works that way. People who start saying that Katrina, or 9/11, or AIDS or what have you is God visiting judgment on the victims usually don't know any of those victims. If they did, they wouldn't say such stupid things. You, the Northminster youth, know people who have lost their homes (though thankfully not their lives) and you know what nonsense this "God got them" theology is. For a biblical reference, see, e.g., John chapter 9, where Jesus heals a man who is born blind. Before doing this, however, he dismisses as nonsense a question about who's fault the...

If any members of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Slidell/Pearl River read this, please add a comment below or e-mail me at this address (I'm not sure when I can reach my other e-mail addresses.) Our family is fine. We're in Greenville, MS staying with relatives. We're praying for all of you. I've opened the site up for anyone to post comments, at least for now.