A Fresh Perspective

Dr. Diana Butler Bass is a church historian and a keen analyst of present day Christianity and culture. She has written a number of books, several of which I have found quite helpful. She recently wrote a piece that appeared on the CNN opinion page, part in response to recent events and part as an analysis of where Christianity is today in our country. The piece was titled, “The of God of Love had a really bad week.” She began the piece by noting the crowd chant, “Send them back,” at a recent political rally. She discusses how the deep divisions that are tearing our country apart right now are being felt and played out in churches all across the country. She talks about this in the context of her own family and shares that she has not spoken to her brother since the incident at Charlottesville where a white nationalist ran his car through the crowd killing one and injuring 19 others. After that incident she and her brother had argued about white nationalism and racism, and haven’t t...

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...

A few years ago three Canadian neuroscientists at the University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University who published their research in the Journal of Experimental Psychology discovered that as people make more money and feel more powerful physical changes in the brain occur that make one less empathetic towards the people around them. They found that a special brain area, known as the mirror system, is filled with cells that activate when you carry out an action, like opening the door or walking across the room, or when you watch someone else do that action. It’s part of how we get inside other people’s heads. And because what we do is linked with how we feel or what we want, the mirror system is what helps us empathize with another person’s motivations and struggles. What they discovered is that those who feel more powerful and more well-off show far less activity in the brain region that helps us feel empathy. In other words, as one climbs the social ladder, as one grows i...

In this paragraph in Paul’s correspondence with the church in Corinth Paul returns to an earlier theme where he contrasts the foolishness of the world with the wisdom of God. Here the point he makes is that the church expresses the foolishness of the world in their boasting about human leaders. Paul’s response, I think, is wonderfully creative and constructive. He basically questions why the Corinthians would want to sell themselves short. In their greedy attempt to claim the biggest slice of the pie, what they don’t realize is that the whole pie is already theirs. Paul says, “Everything is yours. We all belong. We are one people. And no one has more than anyone else” (see 1 Cor. 3:21-23). Unless you are familiar with Paul’s view of God’s new creation Paul’s words here may seem strange. Paul heralded Christ as the mediator and representative of God’s new creation. God’s new creation breaks down all kinds of barriers and brings us all together as one. Paul speaks of this new cr...

A minister was walking out of the church one Sunday after the morning worship service and noticed a bulletin with some writing on it that had been tossed aside in one of the pews. His curiosity got the best of him, so he picked it up and read it. One of his parishioners had apparently been inspired to poetry during his sermon. This member had scribbled out on the worship bulletin: To dwell above/ with the saints we love/ Oh, that will be glory!/ But to dwell below/ with the saints we know/ Well, that’s a different story. Paul chastises the congregation at Corinth for their divisiveness. They were creating factions around certain leaders. It was all about their own egos and their need to shine brighter than the rest. So the congregation was pervaded by in-group/out-group divisiveness rooted in their own egos and petty jealousies. Paul calls them babies (infants). Though he does say they are babies in Christ. In other words, he wants them to know that even though they are acti...

What does it mean to be spiritual? There is, of course, no one answer to that question. Such a question doesn’t solicit an answer like, “What is 2 plus 2?”   Our text raises the question today because Paul writes about being spiritual and being unspiritual. Based on Paul’s words here and the text in Matthew I can say three things about a healthy spirituality. Now, what I have to say is not any more exhaustive than what Paul says to the Corinthians is exhaustive. So, what can we say about being spiritual by looking at these two texts. The first thing I would like to say about being spiritual, is that authentic, healthy spirituality is rooted in gratitude. Paul writes, “Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God” (2:12). I think anyone who is spiritual, anyone who is being led by the Spirit understands that all of life is a gift, that we are alive because of the generosity and goo...