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Bearing (Bad News) with One Another

“The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one…”

Ever feel compelled to deliver bad news to a friend? If you’re like me, on the rare occasion that you act on such a conviction, doing so is never easy. One of the main reasons this is difficult is that no one likes to receive bad news, and neither do decent people revel in delivering it. Another reason is that human beings have this odd and innate capacity for denial, and we can activate it in a myriad of ways. We can reject the bad news outright. We can refuse to listen. We might also project our uncomfortable feelings outward – call the messenger uninformed, uneducated, duped, or just a flat-out liar. We can even find ways to disprove what we don’t enjoy hearing, even if the bad news that’s come to us is spot-on accurate. On such occasions, logic becomes a doomed toy suspended in a tug-of-war between two fussing sides. Continue reading →

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Colliding Particles, Colliding People

The following is a post I wrote for another blog that I often contribute to. If you’re interested in checking that one out, click here.

Flying under the radar of most of the news stories of the past two weeks is a report out of Switzerland regarding scientific experimentation with particle smashing. Over the past decade, brilliant men and women have worked tirelessly in hopes of identifying and evaluating the elusive “God particle,” a hypothesized elementary particle that would provide explanation of how the universe was formed. Known as the Higgs boson in scientific circles, its searchers believe the particle indeed exists, but despite creating trillions of particle collisions over the past decade, they have not yet been able to clearly identify it. Continue reading →

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Church and State Just Got a Little Bit Closer

In the whirlwind of moving into a new house and getting everything organized for my family, I took a little break (again) from my blog. Other than perpetuating inconsistency with my posts, I don’t regret it. The funny thing is that during the week of my last post, the country was up-in-arms about North Carolina’s reinforced ban on gay marriage. In turn, I was compelled to write about the need for compassionate dialogue between the two sides, even though I really wanted to continue my reflections on the “inner workings” of salvation with a follow-up to The Gandhi Problem. Now, a month later, I set aside some time to blog again only to be faced with another issue that’s burning hotter – and dominating more front pages – than the actual wildfires raging in Colorado right now. Continue reading →

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Can’t We Talk About This?

This week, the President of the United States gained the trust of a large group of people, lost the support of others, and further solidified his reputation as a values-destroyer to yet another very large contingent of Americans. And all of this because he expressed a personal opinion.

If you’ve been living under a rock this week and have not been paying attention to the news, I’m referring to this segment of an interview televised last Wednesday: Continue reading →

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The Gandhi Problem

I call it The Gandhi Problem.

What is The Gandhi Problem, you might ask. It is the unexamined assumption that pervades much of Christendom today, especially in the West. It concerns the abiding belief by the vast majority of Christians – especially evangelical Christians – that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is, or is going to, burn in hell for all eternity.

Yes, this post is going to wade into seemingly heretical waters. But do me the honor of wading in with me. I promise we’ll hop back out before our skin gets too wrinkly and we no longer recognize who we are. Continue reading →