I don’t take issue with what Jesus said. Goodness no. He is my master. I do take issue with how his message is used. I suspect that the message concerning the widow giving her two small coins to the temple treasury, is used to beat people up until they give more. Give until it hurts and the like. There just may be a couple of things to keep in mind here. Continue reading →

Its not the clothes. It’s the attitude. As a chaplain, I have to wear a badge when I am out at the youth correction center I work at. That badge opens doors – literally. I also have a radio. Maybe, when I am wearing that badge and that radio, I feel important. Maybe it is more than that; maybe I feel more important than those poor slobs who don’t even have a badge or a radio. Badges, we don’t need no stinking badges. Continue reading →

Way back in my college days, in the dusty land of Lubbock, Texas, we went to church with a gentleman who had an interesting perception of children. He seriously, I think he was serious, wanted to have children so that he could have live in servants. Continue reading →

Ah, the old reductio ad absurdum ploy. What? You don’t know what that is either. Hold on a minute and let me Google it. I’m back. It is Latin for “reduction to the ridiculous.” It is an argument that takes a line of thought and displays it within a scenario that is designed to make the whole think look absurd. Here is an example of one that is used on me somewhat frequently: You say God is a loving God right? Continue reading →

Mothers; good mothers; have to make difficult decisions. I think this is always true, but there are varying degrees of difficulty. One year, when my family and I were on a mission trip in Honduras we visited an orphanage for special needs children. In this area, it was the first of its kind. We listened in horror as the director of the orphanage told us the stories of these precious children. These children, because they were born with special needs had been abandoned. Wait! Before we become all indignant, we may need to walk a mile and all that. The families are poor, barely existing. They already have five or six children and along comes another one who has needs that you cannot pay for. Continue reading →

If I bring up the subject of taxes does it fill you with warm positive feelings? Maybe you can feel good knowing that all of your taxes are being used for good things; things you can really get behind; things you would have contributed to anyway. Yeah right! We are adults here. We know that some of our tax money is used for evil. It was no different in Jesus’ day. Continue reading →

Anybody remember those old cartoons where there was this loose thread. It looked like it you should be able to just pluck that thing out and cast it into the bin. I blame the Great British Baking Show for the use of the word bin here. Continue reading →

My grandpa was a sharecropper near New Madrid, Missouri. Since that is not a common thing anymore, maybe I should explain what that means. He did not own the land. He was allowed to live and raise a crop on the land. His particular crop was cotton. The owner of the land received a portion of the harvest as rent. I don’t know the exact arrangement my grandpa had. But sometimes what was owed was not a percentage. Continue reading →

My grandpa was a sharecropper near New Madrid, Missouri. Since that is not a common thing anymore, maybe I should explain what that means. He did not own the land. He was allowed to live and raise a crop on the land. His particular crop was cotton. The owner of the land received a portion of the harvest as rent. I don’t know the exact arrangement my grandpa had. But sometimes what was owed was not a percentage. Continue reading →

Some things lose a sense of awe through familiarity. I think this is true of Easter. It is a conundrum. I mean, we want to be familiar with the resurrection of Jesus. It permeates everything. The Lord’s Supper breathes the story. We sing it; we pray it; we celebrate it. And once a year there is this bigger focus on the story. And it seems that every year there will be some program all chuck full of experts to talk on and on about whether the story is real. I heard one expert expertly proclaim that the Greek word soma used by the gospel writers never refers to a corpse. His theory was that Jesus was not actually dead and the gospel writers knew this and used the appropriate word. Continue reading →