A Fresh Perspective

You have heard me say a number of times, “Religion can be the best thing in the world, and it can be the worst thing in the world.” And that’s as much true of our own religion, Christianity, as any other religion. Our Christian worship, scriptures, rituals, and practices can be liberating or suffocating. Paul, it seems, wants to get that message across to the Galatian Christians, some of whom, want to shackle themselves with the lesser and unnecessary aspects of the Mosaic law. Paul reminds them that he brought to them the way of true freedom in Christ, but now they want to settle for a yoke of slavery. In our text Paul contrasts two ways of life. One way leads to life and true freedom; the other way leads to death and bondage. I am speaking of life and death metaphorically. One way is a healthy, redemptive, healing, transformative, and liberating way of life. The other is an unhealthy, non-redemptive, destructive and enslaving way of life. Paul identifies the two different ways ...

The beauty and power of sacred texts is that sacred texts can speak to us on different levels and have multiple meanings. I’m sure you have experienced this if you read the Bible devotionally. You may read a text today and find that a particular way of seeing (understanding, interpreting, appropriating) that text helps you in a particular way. Three years from now, you may read that text again, and discover something very different in the text that is a source of help to you at that point in your journey. On one level this is a text that demonstrates how easy it is for us to misunderstand God’s will because we are so influenced by “group think.” This is true of all of us in varying degrees, of course. We can be blinded to what is good and true by popular cultural, political, and religious influences. Just before this passage (a couple of paragraphs back) in the story Jesus warns the disciples, telling them to “Watch out – beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod...

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...

As long as faith just remains a belief system as it does for so many Christian people in our society we will just keep creating “in” groups and “out” groups filled with unchanged, unconverted people. Real transformation takes some major surgery, getting the head, heart, and body aligned with the inner working of the Spirit. A terrified Jewish young man was fleeing the Nazi’s who had just overtaken their small village. He fled to the door of the pastor of the village church seeking refuge. The pastor had been warned that any person or family caught hiding a Jew would not only bring the wrath of the Nazi’s upon their house but upon the whole village. So the pastor had the young man step inside, while he went to pray for guidance and read the Scriptures. As the pastor prayed and searched the Scriptures, he came upon the verse that read, “It is better for one man to die, than the whole people perish.” The pastor was certain he had the answer. Though it was hard for him to do, he ...

There is no greater transformative power in the universe than the kind of love Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13. As all the mystics tell us, Divine Love is at the heart and core of all reality. It is what connects everything together. It’s interesting how this ode to love begins: We can do some great things that benefit others, but if we do not do them in love, then our doing and giving does not change us. Even heroic sacrificial deeds may only serve to boost our ego or sense of pride, if love is not the motive or source of our actions. Paul says, “I may give all my possessions away to help the poor and even die a martyr, but if I do not have love, if love is not the source of my actions, then I gain nothing.” My sacrifices may benefit others, but they will not change me, except make me more self-righteous and arrogant. Whenever genuine love is expressed and extended to others an invitation to change is being offered. I am reminded of this rough, brawly mountaineer who live...