The Unclad Soul

I have asked this before, but I still want to know. What does any of it mean? Why are we here? Why do we so easily give in to hate and resist giving in to love? Why is aggression okay but the way of peace is not?   Why are we all so afraid? And of what? Are we, as religion teaches, just evil at heart? Are we already ruined at birth? Is it in our DNA to make wrong choices, so that we require an outside force, God or Karma or Allah or whomever, to coerce us to do good, through threats of punishment, suffering, damnation, and hell? Are we not able to do that on our own without being forced? I believe we are. I know too many good, decent people who are not driven by evil and selfishness. But unfortunately, they are always overshadowed, especially today, by an ugly, arrogant, mean-spirited crowd of self-aggrandizers, who are bitter, angry people. People obsessed with fears and prejudices and resentments. These people are all around us. In the government. In the media. ...

Let me see if I can say this another way. HELP!! I’m trying. I’m trying like crazy to be reasonable about our country. What am I missing? What is it about our nasty national mood that seems okay with so many people? Can we agree that it’s not a good way to live if we hate others? Can we say it’s alright to try and get along with people of another race, another religion than ours, a different sexual orientation, people from other countries and cultures? Isn’t that the smart thing to do? Or, if you like this better, the Christian thing to do? Why is hate thought to be such a formidable force and love is considered weakness? What is it that makes us want to be macho, keep our guns close, to be seen as invincible, to be the badass in the crowd; while being a person of integrity, a man of character, a gentle person with compassion is seen as some kind of wimp, a pantywaist to be dismissed as a coward? I can’t get that Old Testament verse out of my head, the one where th...

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...

The firing of former FBI Director, James Comey, by president Trump has turned into some kind of alternative universe. The political arena, the media and much of the nation have lost their minds over this. Comey was not fired because president Trump is trying to cover up any ties to him and the Russians and the last election. It’s not about Hilary, either, and her ubiquitous emails. It’s not because Attorney General Jeff Beauregard Sessions told him to do it. What the firing of Comey was about is psychology 101. It’s about Mr. Trump’s gaping insecurity, his paranoia, and his not just demand but neurotic need, for total and unequivocal loyalty. When James Comey refused to comply with that, he was removed. What we are seeing is The Apprentice being played out in the White House by celebrity tycoon Donald Trump. There is no governing going on. There are no polices to legislate. Hundreds of important positions in government have not been filled. Chaos monopolizes everything. Wh...

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 ...

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...

Michael Brown “Evil is committed when clarity is taken away from what is clearly wrong, allowing wrong to be seen as less wrong, excusable, right.” – John Hartung, Physician/Author

The Semana Santa, as they call it in Spain, or Holy Week, begins for Christians all over the world soon. You know the historic story and the familiar scenes of the trial of Jesus and his final journey to the Cross. It is an epic story, a story filled with drama and cruelty and mystery and love. What is it really about? The classic Christian interpretation tells us we are all sinners lost without hope. We were born ruined, the children of the first parents, corrupted by their selfishness, by their ignoring God’s command to stay away from the Tree of Knowledge, and supposedly by their wanting to be like God. As the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve whose sin we inherited and are sure to repeat, according to classic Christian theology, we are all to be punished and sent to hell. So Jesus came to die for our ruined souls. He died in our place so God would not send us to hell. He paid the ransom for us, we are told. His physical death took care of our spiritual debt. He then rose ...