The Unclad Soul

My Huckleberry Friends I have returned from a trip to the country where I spent glorious days with my son Luke, my daughter-in-law Tawna, my granddaughter T’Lee, and the dogs—Maggie, Trapper, Finder, and Poncho. We fished, we ate, we talked and laughed, we rode around the stunning ranch, we breathed clean fresh air. We even played golf one day at a little 9-hole course down the road. Well, Tawna and I did. Luke managed the snacks and drinks on the golf cart. As I drove out of the ranch to return to Dallas, I passed on the road an Amish couple in a horse drawn buggy. They gave me a friendly wave and I waved back. There is a solid Amish community in the area. They live mostly quiet lives. They follow strict standards of Christian morality and family life. They are a peaceful people. Hard working and immensely gifted craftsman and builders. The women are talented quilt makers and seamstresses as well as devoted mothers. Some have their own businesses. Some are teachers within the Am...

It is a sad conclusion on my part that religion today is failing us. It has, historically, had a shady past creating some of the most brutal and oppressive acts on human life in spite of whatever good it has produced. But today, worldwide, it is often the fuel of cruel prejudices, hatred, and violence. The wars of the Middle East all have their origins in religious disputes. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iran, religious clashes and the refusal to honor other beliefs, often just other interpretations of their own beliefs, have led to the slaughter of millions of helpless people. Today, Evangelical Christianity, in our own nation, has become one of the most confusing, deceptive, shallow and self-serving belief systems anywhere. The hypocrisy of modern Christianity has swallowed it whole and left it a mocked and rejected object of derision. Clearly, there are exceptions. But a wide-spread image of religion in our world today is one of withering decay. I grew up in the...

A fundamental truth in the teachings of Jesus was that the wicked are not as dangerous as those who pretend to be righteous. In fact, the only group that Jesus ever publically rebuked, and he did it more than once, was the Pharisees. Their self-righteousness and religious intolerance of anyone breaking their rules angered Jesus because he saw it as a mockery of the love God had sent him to live and share. The recent vote at the global United Methodist Church conference, which affirmed and tightened its ban on same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian clergy, is, in my opinion, a sad continuation of the Pharisees of old who used their faith to exclude and judge others. Let’s not forget that Roman emperor Constantine, who converted to Christianity and hailed himself as bringing it to Rome, was a more than compromised leader. He had his own son killed and boiled his wife in hot water. And yet he remains in history an icon of Christianity. The Crusades, which lasted 200 years,...

I fight like crazy these days to refrain from cynicism. I am by nature a pretty pleasant person. I want to see good in everyone. I love to laugh, to feel joy, to delight in life. I try to manage my anger, take a deep breath, and stay calm. It doesn’t always work. For instance, I’m thinking now how I would rather watch every tedious moment of the entire Royal Wedding than to have had to watch five seconds of the celebration of moving our American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and listening to Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress pray. I have thoughts on that. But I’m holding back. They are not kind thoughts. They stir in me that image that Nick Lowe sings about, “The beast in me is caged by frail and fragile bars.” I’m trying to hold the locks in place. I have Jewish friends that I cherish. I honor them and their faith. Judaism is a historic system of beautiful beliefs. But what has gone on in Israel under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu is something I find grossly offen...

The election in Alabama yesterday to replace Senate Republican Jeff Sessions ended another high profile, tawdry political race, one that reminds us of how far our political system has fallen into disgrace. Roy Moore, a controversial evangelical firebrand, a man who had twice been removed from office as an Alabama Supreme Court justice, for blatantly ignoring federal laws, and who reportedly was banned from a mall for spooking teenage girls, and who was accused by various adult women of having made inappropriate advances toward them when they were teens, centered his campaign, unbelievably, on Christian principles. Moore made a career of using religion to bolster the support of Christians for his political ambitions. And for years it worked. But apparently many voters got tired of the hypocrisy and the manipulation and rejected him. Including a large number of Black voters who courageously stood up to Moore’s shoddy politics that were often prejudicial and intolerant of minorit...

I have confessed here before that I was in a career I often didn’t understand or felt suited for. I was a Baptist minister for more than 20 years. I met some loving, beautiful people in those years. I dedicated babies. I watched toddlers turn into teens and I loved them all. Some of them I married with spouses I thought were perfect for them. Many are still together with children of their own. In my last congregation, I spent nearly 14 years with people I adored. Some of them are still my closest friends. There were, of course, tough years, times when my own search for an authentic theology and philosophy of ministry clashed with the long-held traditional beliefs of some of our church members. By the time I arrived at my last congregation I no longer had any interest in building huge numbers, baptizing people in some kind of competition with other churches, and creating worship that was hyped, emotional, something similar to cheerleading and entertainment. That was not for me....

The earthquake near Mexico City this week has been devastating especially since they just had one a couple of weeks ago, in the southern part of the country. The death count continues to rise as more of the rubble is being cleared away. When I was a young minister in my first congregation years ago, people in my conservative rural church would have seen this, and frankly, all of the hurricanes and other natural disasters happening so frequently, as a sign of what was called “the end times.” Back then, I would speak about the “Rapture,” when Jesus will supposedly appear in the sky and magically, mysteriously, all true Christians will disappear from earth, ascend, invisibly, to meet him in the sky and then be transported to heaven while everyone else left here will suffer unbearable torment and eventually die and go to hell. My congregation loved this stuff and I have to say there was a sort of excitement in telling them all of the incredible details of this dramatic event, ...

Science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov once wrote, “Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”   It’s a valid appeal. I grew up assuming a lot of things that turned out to be wrong. For years, I failed to scrub those assumptions so I could see more light. Born into a conservative Christian home where church was everything, I was taught a simplistic viewpoint of the world. People were sinners but they could be saved from their sins if they accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. All it took was a simple prayer of faith and miraculously Jesus would come into your heart and you would be a new person. No one told me that even if you did this you would still have to work at being good. I assumed, believing what I was taught, that you just automatically started doing the right things, since Jesus was in you and he was basically running the show. Somehow, though, I kept bumping into myself. The fait...

In case any of us have forgotten, the Jesus of Christmas was a Jew. He was born one, lived one his entire life, and died one. He had no intention of starting a new religion (Christianity). His life as a teacher and healer was to do something good within Judaism, within the faith he had known all of his life. He did not die for the sins of the world. This was something his followers and the writers of the New Testament later ascribed to him. He died because he challenged the powers of the Roman Empire. He died because he threatened the Emperor’s influence, by promoting peace between people and nations, and not war and dominance. He died because he preached economic and political justice, which people were starving to hear and experience, but which those who governed thwarted. We forget these things. Or else we have never considered the real facts around the life of Jesus. But Bible scholars, theologians, archeologists, historians and solid researchers have known these things fo...

Domestic gun violence with mass murders of innocent unarmed people. Refusal to pass any meaningful immigration reform. Glaring unjust economic inequality. Unquestionable racial discrimination. Blatant disrespect for the office of president and the function of government. These are vital national issues Republicans perpetuate and will not face. Why do Republican candidates want to be president anyway? Why do Republicans in Congress want to serve? What is it Republican governors, mayors, and elected state officials want? Why are they there? I mean, what possible good do any of them want to do for the country? They refuse to cooperate with president Obama and Democrats. They demagogue. They patronize. They pontificate. They incite discord and often hate. They dismiss the constitution. If they dislike a law they just ignore it. They either distort the truth or outright lie about the economy, about immigration, about abortion, about Planned Parenthood and all the other social and moral i...

The Supreme Court decision last week to prevent any state in America from denying the issuing of a marriage license to a gay couple remains controversial. The ruling is being misunderstood by many and twisted into something it isn’t by others. In spite of the fact some politicians, religious people, and conservative media pundits keep alarming everyone that the world is ending there is nothing in this ruling that in any way threatens religious liberty.  Heterosexuals will not be forced to marry a gay person. Heterosexuals will not be forced to attend a gay wedding. Heterosexual ministers will not be forced to perform a gay wedding in their church or anywhere else. Heterosexual marriages will not be invalidated. Life will go on as usual only now no state in this country can deny a gay couple from obtaining a marriage license. And county clerks cannot deny them because they say it goes against their religious beliefs. That does not matter. It is the law and they will follow ...

The country woke up this morning to more madness. A white, apparently deranged young man in South Carolina, killed 9 people at a Bible study in a historic Black church. Police are calling it a hate crime. More details will obviously come in but here is what is undeniable. Our country is out of control. We have lost our way and it is not by accident. We as a people have chosen to allow our nation to be violent, hateful, prejudiced, bigoted, unjust, and inhuman. When this young man is caught, if he does not end up shooting himself in some cowardly panic, let the psychiatrists do their analyses. Let law enforcement prescribe the punishment. Let those who want to coddle him because they’ll say he’s insane do so. Let the gun lovers make excuses for him as they always do. Let the whites clamor on about mixed messages and make their phony allowances for him as they will. But here is the reality. This guy is the product of an unapologetic racist society. He is the result of our primit...

In Cormac McCarthy’s pulverizing novel, “The Road,” we enter the final years perhaps months or days of civilization. The world is a burned out place of depressing despair, the result of climate change ignored, the waste of precious resources, the rape of the land and its beauty, the viciousness of marauding wars, and the cruel cold inhumanity of people, the end result of human beings diminished to their most primitive drives—violent, savage, diabolical. A father and his young son are on “the road” to basically nowhere. They are just trying to survive and to hold on to the slightest thread of humanity left in them. Everything is dead. The waters of the ocean are black. Plants and flowers are all gone. Animals lay decomposed in their bleached skeletons everywhere. Ashes cover the earth. The sky is a dismal grey haze, a withering glare of menace. It is cold. Dirty snow falls. And the man, unnamed, perhaps in his 40s, stops at one point to reflect on what once was. He looks around at ...

Easter approaches with its egg hunts and colorful dress and the festivities of people celebrating bunnies and cashing in their Easter coupons on online shopping and at the mall. Holy Week is here too with its shadows of darkness, its Last Supper where cowardice and betrayal transcend devotion and trust. The disciples never really understood what Jesus had in mind. Many of them still don’t. I often worry that all of his teachings on kindness and generosity and love remain on the Cross beaten and dead to his followers; all of those wise and difficult truths; all of those calls to deeper living crushed by selfishness and fear, by greed and prejudice and the lust for power. The governor of Indiana and his legislative devotees have passed a brutal law primarily against the LGBT community shallowly disguised as “religious freedom.” Arkansas legislators came up with an even more appalling law with even worse prejudicial intent. Why are these discriminating laws necessary? We ...

The murders in Paris last week were an example of the moral deafness in the world today. No one is listening to anyone but themselves. The Islamic fanatics who carried out the killings supposedly did so to punish those who insulted their religion. The innocent people in the Jewish market that were shot to death just happened to be in the way of the broader act of vengeance going on at the Paris magazine house. But the magazine, “Charlie Hebdo," was itself deaf to the sensitivities of Muslims. Why mock Muhammad again and again? Why taunt Islamic extremists with cartoons and articles the magazine knew were provocative and insulting? Of course they had the freedom to do it. But why use their freedom for those purposes? Someone once said that knowledge comes from study and wisdom comes from observation. Those two important characteristics are missing all over the world today. I think I’m pretty safe in saying that most of the people in America who hate Muslims hav...

The failure of the Staten Island grand jury to offer some semblance of fairness regarding the death of Eric Garner is an outrageous act of incompetence if not just outright criminal. The notion that there is some unbending legal structure that prevents grand juries from at least proceeding with a trial of police officers has a demoralizing effect on society. If police officers are exempt from the laws they have been hired to enforce then justice is lost and the whole purpose of obedience to the laws of our nation is meaningless. Grand juries that refuse to hold those in law enforcement accountable, including state prosecutors, reveal a level of misconduct that is simply unacceptable. Street protests, shutting down traffic and commerce peaceably, and other responsible acts of demonstration are all protected by our Constitution. In a free society citizens have the right to express their exasperation over what they believe to be injustice. And I support all responsible effort...