The Power of Naming When he enlisted in the army toward the end of World War II, my father changed his name. A Jewish refugee from Germany, he was traumatized by and ashamed of his heritage, so perhaps that had something to do with his rejection of his birth name, yet it was also common practice back then for immigrant soldiers to change their foreign names to English ones. In any event, Karl Heinz Stiebel become Charles Harry Stevens. Did this matter? Changing his name made it easier for him to pass as “white,” which he did. At one point, though he considered himself an atheist, he attended a Methodist…
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Feeling Forsaken and Being Found in Psalm 22
Psalm 22 and Feeling Forsaken Psalm 22 starts with the line Jesus famously spoke as he hung on the cross: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? (1-3) In my years as a chaplain, I have listened to many people describe how forsaken they felt, abandoned by God, alone, and afraid. Most of them blamed either God or themselves. If they felt angry at God, they often felt guilty about it. Though I never felt guilty because of it, I was angry at God for many years. Not that I blamed God for…
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Pentecost and Spirit Guides
The Christian Pentecost According to the Book of Acts, when the disciples gathered to celebrate the Hebrew festival of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended on them in a form like fire, and She filled them with the power of speaking in tongues and prophesying. The apostle Peter spoke with such passion that thousands felt compelled to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Thus the Christian church was born. If this had been the first time humans had ever felt the touch of something awesome and spiritually terrifying, Peter would probably have had a hard time convincing his audience that Jesus was worth worshiping. Yet when we…
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The Least Will Become Great
The Least Among You When the evangelist Luke writes in Chapter Nine of his gospel that “the least among all of you is the greatest,” the sentiment is not new for the reader. In Matthew, for instance, when he’s berating the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy, Jesus says, “The greatest among you shall be your servant,” and “whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matt 23:11-12). [1] Humility was probably not a popular concept back then. It’s not particularly popular now, either, at least not in Western cultures. In hunter-gatherer societies, however, being humble is often more acceptable. Frans de Waal gives an example of such humility from the !Kung…
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Lent, Passion, and Repentance
Lent: A Time of Preparation for Easter As Easter approaches, some Christian communities celebrate Lent, a time of waiting and preparing for the triumphant return of Christ. According to a blog on the website of the Tullamore Parish, a Catholic community in Ireland, the most important way we can prepare for Easter is to do penance. What is penance? The Tullamore website calls it “self denial” and suggests we fast, give alms, and pray. [1] I think of penance as a kind of punishment, like the repeated prayers one speaks after confession or the self flagellation some sects practice in an effort to rid themselves of sin. Punishing Ourselves in Hope of…
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How We Heal
Healing in the Gospel of Mark The Gospel of Mark is full of miraculous healings. According to Tony Cauchi in “Healing in the Gospels,” [1] forty-one separate healing stories are scattered throughout the four gospels, and Mark tells eighteen of them. In each story, Jesus uses a touch or a word or even a bit of saliva to transform the broken and injured, the possessed and the infirm, even the very dead, into whole, vibrant, alive, and faithful individuals. The complete faith that fills those whose bodies and minds have been healed of disease is perhaps the most important part of each tale. Mark contrasts that faith with the ignorance…
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Finding Our Way to Holy Relationships
Everything Is God According to A Course in Miracles, what we see and believe about the world is an illusion. Our egos inform us that bodies and minds, concrete objects and forms, are all that exists, and that each existence is a separate self. Caught up in this illusion of a vast ocean of separateness, we feel lonely, anxious, and incomplete. Therefore, we seek out something that will fulfill us, complete us, ease our anxiety, make us whole. Born into these bodies, we have forgotten that everything is of God, that everything is God. In this state of forgetfulness, we look to someone or something outside ourselves to make things…
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Mystery, Metaphor, and the Story of the Flood
When Good Turns Evil There is, within the Hebrew Bible, a tendency for that which starts out as good to become bad. God creates the world and sees it is good, but it doesn’t stay that way. He creates humans in His likeness, so can how can we be other than good, if God is good? Yet, somehow we learn to sin. There was the trickery of a serpent, the jealousy of a brother. Over and over, we humans made mistakes. As time passed and generations were born, things just got worse. The wickedness and violence of humans increased until “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only…
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Advent, A Season of Hope
Why Celebrate Advent? This Sunday is the first of four Advent Sundays, culminating in a month-long Christian preparation for the celebration of Jesus’s birth. Not everyone celebrates Christmas, and among those who do, not everyone celebrates this time of Advent, of anticipation and waiting and hope. In his article “Seven Reasons to Celebrate Advent,” Ryan Shelton highlights spiritual gifts we can gain when we honor this time of preparation. [1] For instance, he tells us, according to Scripture, God’s plan for Christ’s life and death began at least thousands of years before Mary ever gave birth to him, and God’s plan is still coming to fruition today. We know this because…
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Pride and Humility
The Danger of Pride The Bible has a lot to say about the dangers of pride and the importance of humility. Chapter 23 of Matthew, for instance, includes the often quoted sentence, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted” (23:12). In Proverbs, we read, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov 16:18). James 4:6 states, “Therefore it says, ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’” But is pride always bad? The other day, I was talking with a young man who insisted pride could be a good thing. Because of pride, we accomplish deeds we…