Month: March 2022

As with most prophets, Jeremiah was not especially popular among his contemporaries. Of course, after his warnings proved true, and with the safe passage of time, we effortlessly assume we’d have agreed with him. But we probably wouldn’t have.

It’s important to note, parenthetically, that the one and only test of a true prophet in ancient Israel was whether his or her prophecies proved accurate. There was no such thing as a genuine prophet whose predictions turned out to be false.

All things considered, we don’t much like prophets. That’s because they say things we don’t want to hear. They are the proverbial skunk at the picnic. And, boy, are they ever negative! Why not lighten up a bit, for God’s sake? Why get all bent out of shape?

The reason is that they’re after the truth. Thus, they reject the convenient lies and comforting half-truths we prefer. They refuse to play to our pet biases, assuring us everything’s just hunky-dory. And they’re not afraid to go against the crowd and its unquenchable thirst for conventional wisdom and soothing clichés.

Prophets seek neither plaudits nor personal affirmation. Just truth.

Continue reading “The Mirage of Immortality”

I have it on good authority that many church-going Christians don’t care for the liturgical season of Lent, which began this year on March 2.

The reason? I think it has to do with Lent’s emphasis on repentance. Yet what is repentance? Isn’t it bad? And isn’t it just a holdover from the church’s unenlightened past?

Well, no, it isn’t. A local pastor years ago, writing in his church’s newsletter, likened Lent’s call for repentance to periodically changing the oil in your car, to remove all the gunk that prevents it from operating at full efficiency. It’s the same for us. To repent serves as a prerequisite to experiencing life at its fullest, and in a godlier way.

Repentance, therefore, is aspirational. It involves giving up something that diminishes life in order to embrace something that enhances it. And don’t we all want that?

Continue reading “Losing Our Souls”

Manicheansim is an ancient Persian religion notable for its belief in strict dualism. The world is divided between the good – the spiritual world of light – and the material world of darkness. Thus, there are only two teams, if you will. One good, the other bad.

O, to be on the side of the good! O, to be on the right team!

When war breaks out, the lines are drawn. Not to sound too much like a Putin puppet, but aren’t there at least two sides to every conflict? After all, wars don’t happen in a vacuum. More to the point, is it in any way possible, amidst the fog of war, to engage in sober analysis? To ask questions? To have doubts? Or does entertaining any of these necessarily suggest callous disregard for the victims of war?

Apparently, the only legitimate stance these days is: Stop thinking and go along with the crowd! Get on the bandwagon! Beat the drums of war! Get ‘em! Get ‘em! Get ‘em!

Continue reading “Manicheanism”

Søren Kierkegaard, the 19^th century Danish philosopher, once characterized a certain personality type as continually “fighting for what has vanished.” Times change, but they stubbornly refuse to let go of the past, spending all their energy trying to recapture that which no longer exists.

In his landmark 1998 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel Huntington countered his former Harvard student Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 thesis that the collapse of the Soviet Union had signaled the “end of history.” Communism had lost, the West had won. The whole world would now align with Western values and live happily within a new world order orchestrated and administered by the United States and its Western European allies. Case closed.

Huntington contested this view, outlining a much more sophisticated and nuanced view of geopolitics. While it is true that WWII left much of the world in shambles, economically and culturally, and that America emerged as the ascendant, dominant force, the world since has changed.

Continue reading “Fighting for What Has Vanished?”