A Fresh Perspective

William Sloane Coffin, a few years before his death, wrote a wonderful book titled, Letters to a Young Doubter . At the beginning of the correspondence he asks his young friend a probing question, “Who tells you who you are?” As Chaplain at Yale for a number of years, he knew full well the power of higher education to tell students who they are.  There are powerful forces in our culture that impact and shape who we think we are. The Christian answer that I was given as a young person is that we are all sinners. Certainly that is true. I know that I am flawed and fail regularly to live up to the best ideals of humanity, or even my own best ideals. All of us are a mass of contradictions. But is that the first and foremost thing about us?  This is not what compassionate parents teach their children. Not at first. We tell them how special they are, how much they are loved and cared for, and what possibilities they have.  I find it interesting in Paul’s letter to ...

I had not thought much about the wave of Tea Party members that swept into Congress until the recent debate over the deficit and the debt ceiling. The one thing that became crystal clear is that they share no concern for or feel any obligation to the most vulnerable in our country—the poor and marginalized.   Jesus, of course, defined his mission and ministry with particular focus on the most vulnerable. He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . . to bring good news to the poor . . . to let the oppressed go free (Luke 4:18–19).  So my question is: How can one support the Tea Party agenda and be a Christian? I have no way of knowing, but I suspect a great many Christians voted to elect them to office. How is that possible?  My feeling is that many Christians have no real idea what Jesus’ mission and ministry was actually about. Jesus’ focus was on the kingdom of God (God’s new world of peace, equality, and reconciliation) coming into this world (“...

Paradoxically, my shadow side found the recent debacle in Washington entertaining, but my spiritual side found it deeply disturbing. What many have called dysfunctional government, in my opinion, is indicative of dysfunctional religion, particularly dysfunctional Christianity. Let me explain. The debate exposed a couple of extremely disconcerting realities. The wealthiest Americans pay less taxes by percentage than the rest of Americans who earn much less, and huge corporations that have made millions, even billions in profits, like oil companies, pay even less. This is not a debatable observation; it is simply the way it is. Second, the spending cuts that will be enacted will hardly impact the wealthiest Americans at all. These cuts will, however, undoubtedly take away programs and resources that aid people who are struggling to survive. This will leave them more vulnerable to the diminishing forces of life and make the possibility for a flourishing life a wishful dream with minim...