A Fresh Perspective

If I was asked to summarize my understanding of the Christian faith in one or two brief statements I would say this. One, being a Christian is about a journey into the discovery and embodiment of the love of God. All authentic religion is about tapping into the Divine Love and Compassion that is at the heart of everything. But what makes Christianity different than other religious traditions is the second thing I would say, namely: The Christian way into the experience and expression of the love of God is by following Jesus. This is fundamental to the Christian confession Jesus is Lord. Christians mean different things when they say Jesus is Lord (conservatives would not mean exactly the same thing as liberals or progressives like myself). However, the common denominator should be all-out commitment to follow Jesus – to model his life and live out his teachings. Unfortunately, there are a lot of Christians today, both conservative and liberal, who are not committed to actually doing ...

The sacred storywriter tells us that Moses prays, “Show me your ways, so that I may know you.” This is, I believe, the universal longing of the human heart. One ancient interpreter of the faith said, “The heart of man is restless until it finds its rest in God.”   Of course, not everyone would identify this existential angst, this missing element in our lives as a longing for God. In fact, it’s usually disguised as something else. We might think that the something that is missing is something in our marriage or our vocational career or in our friendships. We might think of something physical or material or emotional – rather than spiritual. And I’m sure there are things missing in those areas of our lives, because none of us have it all together do we? So I am not suggesting that every need, every longing, every bit of angst we experience is spiritual. But all these other longings and needs are echoes of our greatest need of all, which is spiritual. It is the need to consciously c...

The late William Sloan Coffin, when he was chaplain at Yale University , would sometimes ask students, “Who tells you who you are?” Coffin knew all too well the power of higher education to tell students who they are. I ask myself, “Who tells me who I am?” My greatest regret is that for a large part of my life my need to be somebody—to be successful, popular, and important—influenced so many of my decisions and controlled so much of my thought. My ego, attached to American ideals of success, determined who I was. In high school, I strove to be a stand-out basketball player so I would be popular. I danced to the music of whatever tune would win me applause. One Sunday in church, a girl from another high school attended my Sunday School class. Attracted to her, I asked her out and we started dating. She was not popular and I began to catch drift of rumors questioning my judgment. She was a good person—real and authentic; I was shallow and superficial, driven by ego. Wit...