Bird in the Garage- sound familiar?

I have a garage with an automatic door opener. I opened the garage to get the car out so I could get the lawn mower out to take care of the two week's worth of grass I had from vacation.  I had left the garage door up. This garage has two windows at the back of the garage.  When I brought the mower back after finishing the mowing, there was a bird beating against a window in the back. I watched for several minutes. It was a good size bird. I kept trying to get out of the window. It would back up and fly into the window. Finally, I decided I had had enough so I got a broom and got between the bird and the window and swung at the bird. It turned around saw the wide open space where the garage door had been, and flew out of the garage.

It struck me that I had been that bird, and I think a lot of other people have been that bird. We are so narrowly focused and see only one source of light and we keep trying to get to it, and fail, and fail, and never realize that there is another way out of the mess, if we would just turn around.  A friend of mine, Ernie Campbell, who used to be the pastor at the Riverside Church in New York, wrote a book called "Locked in a room with open doors."  He suggested that we often keep ourselves in a place thinking that we are locked in when the doors are really unlocked if we would just try them.

There may well be a large open way out of our situation if we would stop beating ourselves against the window and look around.  It might actually be in the opposite direction of where we are trying to go. Like the bird had to fly in the opposite direction to get out of the garage, but it would have never made it out of that window.

What is Truth? Wanted More Pontius Pilates.

Someone suggested that the first encounter with Jesus makes you confused. That Jesus undercuts your absolutes. Jesus makes you doubt yourself.  The author pointed to Nicodemus who comes to Jesus seeking to get a handle on all this stuff. Nicodemus starts with the polite conversation, but Jesus confronts him with "You must be born again."  Nicodemus is blown away!  "How the hell is that possible?"  The first conversation with Jesus makes Nicodemus confused and outraged.

When you come to the end of Jesus ministry and Jesus is at Pontius Pilate's court (John 18:38), Pilate's encounter makes him ask the question, "What is truth?"  Pilate's encounter with Jesus and his political experiences makes him unsure of what is true and what is false.

I was watching Sen. Ted Cruz answer questions before the 2000 delegates to the Iowa Christian Convention.  Senator Cruz said that it was his intention on this campaign to speak only "the truth". He would not shy away from offending people, if they were unable to handle "the truth".

In fact, it seems to me that is one of the marks of the many candidates who are currently running for President. They all claim to know "the truth". They are absolutely convinced that they are right. When Senator Cruz said that he was going to speak "the truth" on this campaign, I knew immediately that what I wanted was more Pontius Pilates.  I think we need more politicians who are not sure they know the truth but are willing to seek it by listening, by talking with others, by exploring all the possibilities, and by being willing to say this is how I see things and there are others who see it differently and we can both enjoy the rights and privileges of this country.

What I think we need is more Pontius Pilates, more politicians who admit that they do not know what the "truth" is and who can live in that kind of ambiguity.

A Compromise Proposal--about marriage

Since there is such a great outcry from all those hurt by the Supreme Court's decision about the rights of same sex couples to be married, and all the religious people claim marriage is between one man and one woman, here is a proposal.


Since it seems to me that gay people have to have the right to get "married" because all the laws, tax codes, insurance policies grant to "married people" certain benefits,  being allowed to be "married" grants to gay couples those same rights and privileges.

Now supposed all the language was just changed to "civil unions".  All couple, gay or straight, would have to be "civil unioned" by the state.  Being "civil unioned"  would grant all couples gay and straight all the same benefits.

Any couple that wanted to be "married" would have to go to a religious group and have that group perform the ritual that blessed their civil union and made it a marriage.

I can understand why gays would not want civil unions if straight couples got married by the state. Gays want the same respect from the laws of this country as other citizens, but if all couples had to be civil unioned and that gave all of them the same rights and benefits, then the religious orders could do what they wanted about whether or not they would add the blessing to the civil union.  Religious orders might conduct services they call marriage for gay couple or they might refrain from performing those services.   The term "married" would designate that a religious group had blessed a civil union.  Those who did not go to get a religious blessing would, gay or straight, be called civil unions.

The civil union suggestion was first made as an effort to appease the gays, but it did not satisfy because it was different from what straights got from the state. This way all couples get the same certificate and the same benefits, and those who want the religious stuff can talk to a religious leader.

Future of Faith

It is going to be a new world we live in.  The Christian faith is going to be, as it has always been in this country, one of many. The major difference will be that it will not be given preferred status by law. The situation will be more like the church in the first two or three centuries when it was competing with the Roman and Greek religions. It was not given preferred status until the Emperor declared it the religion of the Empire.

The Christian faith will no longer be privileged before other faiths. The Jews, The Muslims, the Buddhist and others will have equal standing in law. The people who want to be Christians will have to be intentional about it the way Jews have to be intentional about their faith. The way Muslims have been intentional about their faith.

The impulse of all Religions to impose their values and laws upon the rest of the society will have to be rejected. Shari law can not be accepted in our society nor can the religious practices of Christians be imposed upon the rest of society.  Any laws and rules will have to be rooted in some common and general sense of values that are good for all society.

This will be a very rude awakening for most nominal Christians. The thought that this is a Christian nation has been an illusion.  The reality is that most of the early Christians came to this country to be able to practice their religion they way they wanted to and they all attempted to impose their religion on the whole community. That is how Roger Williams had to flee to Rhode Island.

It will be a great benefit for the Christian faith because it will decrease the number of joiners who simple tag along for various personal reason.