Carl

Christmas presents us with an intersection of religious and secular stories that come from and come with a mixed bag of fact and fiction

Here are some recent news items to which I have added a few facts that seem related. Have fun putting it all together, creating your own narrative about what it all might mean, if anything. 

Fifty years ago, one prominent topic of conversation in the churches was the ecumenical movement, trying to determine what the various bodies had in common.

It is not so much my thinking that has changed over the last fifty years, as the attitude I bring to that thinking.

What a person does, the content of one's act depends on how one analyzes the situation, that is, the method by which one decides.

If you ask this question, the most likely answer you will get, is that a Christian is a person who accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior, this being the most likely answer both fifty years ago and also today.

The Jan 6th committee has done everything possible to show that Trump attempted to overthrow the government. They almost beg the undecided to look anew at the evidence and realize how close we came to losing our democracy and that it is still possible for that to happen.

The terms messiah and messianism have, of late, been resurrected in the political sphere. For some, Trump is the second messiah, come to liberate us from the devilish democratic cabal who eat children and worship satan,  thereby creating the kingdom of god as envisioned by heartless, authoritarian Republicans.

The question Who is Jesus? is perhaps the most complex issue in Christian theology, embracing, as it does, three interrelated sub-questions: who was he in his person, what did he do, and how does that impact us today?

Answering this question is both easy and difficult. The easy part is differentiating sin against God from plain old immorality, as well as from crime against society.

Fifty years ago the Christian understanding of human nature fell into two camps. The fundamentalist approach placed humanity at the apex of an unchanging universe.

Creation and the health and activity of God go together.

Even fifty years ago, whatever creation means, it does not mean that in seven days God brought the universe into being out of nothing.

About 2022 years ago a man called Jesus was roaming the countryside of Galilee in Palestine. That’s the first we know about him. Before that, nothing.

Almost 50 years ago I wrote a book entitled What to Believe?, subtitled The Questions of Christian Faith. Fortress Press had been looking for such a book, and so published it in 1974. Fifty years later, I thought it might be interesting to see how my thinking today has changed. Hence the title.

In a recent article, Gretta Vosper, of the United Church of Canada, was asked, How can you be an atheist and still be a member of the UCC?. In answering that question, she described how that church has become liberal on social issues, but also remained very conservative theologically.

This book seeks primarily to deal with the questions which any thinking person must raise about Christian faith.

Speaking of God as a “he” is pretty much in your face, but there are other distinctions to be made between the past and the present when speaking of how God makes God known.

The word matrix can bring to mind science fiction images of living in a web of illusion, but my intent here is quite the opposite, not fiction, but reality.

The word matrix can bring to mind science fiction images of living in a web of illusion, but my intent here is quite the opposite, not fiction, but reality.

The entire existence of Jesus is therefore based on a Jewish legend developed by Jewish preachers. Am I missing something?

Key to my understanding today are some observations about human life. I’ll refer to these later in the discussion about human nature, but a quick summary is in order. Following the Reformers, and adding a touch of neuroscience, it seems to me that we all become egocentric.

The dominant view in the history of Christianity is that Jesus the Christ is the savior of the world, the one and only mediator between God and humanity.

The dominant view in the history of Christianity is that Jesus the Christ is the savior of the world, the one and only mediator between God and humanity.