Author: Tom Leinbach

A few days after New Year’s I visited a dentist who cheerfully announced how he thought 2020 had ‘a nice ring to it’ and that it no doubt would be a great year.

Oops.

Though I’ve never had any real interest in space travel, aside from cheering it on from the couch, I am now downright envious of those astronauts who recently, at supersonic speeds, were catapulted away from earth and into outer space. Oh, to be in orbit in the spring!

As a corollary to the cartoon above, I once saw one showing God, also with the requisite long white beard, sitting on a cloud, and pointing his TV remote at a distant earth frantically trying to change the channel.

Continue reading “Moral Confusion”

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. (C.S. Lewis)

On a related note, I just read an email from a former colleague announcing that his church’s leadership “prayerfully decided” to cancel worship services until September 6^th! By my count, his church will have been closed for six whole months. No doubt the heavens rejoiced!

Continue reading “Bubble-Wrapped Culture”

On two or three occasions I have introduced a Prayer of Confession into the liturgy of churches that hadn’t previously been using one. Why they hadn’t is a whole other post.

In any event, more than once I was told that such a move was “too Catholic,” a charge leveled not infrequently by diehard New England Congregationalists, generally when dismissing any idea deemed unattractive.

At one time a hot button issue, the doctrine of “papal infallibility” used to be one of the defining issues in the sometimes contentious squabble between Catholics and Protestants. It was a popular cudgel Protestants might use to establish Catholicism as non-biblical and heretical. (In actual fact, the doctrine of papal infallibility is far more nuanced and sophisticated than generally assumed – but that is also another post.)

Continue reading “Trained Poodles”

At a clergy gathering years ago, a pastor got up and made a brilliant observation: “Whenever I read the Bible,” he began, “it always surprises me. When I hear a pronouncement coming from the United Church of Christ, I’m never surprised.”

This is a crucial point. The uniformity of thought within the mainline Protestant churches today is appalling. And stultifying. As I’ve said many times, the rhetoric is generally warmed-over elite opinion cloned from “sophisticated” secular sources.

Yuval Levin, in A Time to Build, states what ought to be obvious: “Being exposed to influences we did not choose is part of how we learn to live with others, to accept our differences while seeing crucial commonalities, to realize the world is not all about us, and to at least abide with patience what we would rather avoid or escape.”

Continue reading “Homogenized and Interchangeable, Part II”

A church member once told me about serving in the Army in the 70s right after the debacle of the Vietnam War. It was a low point for the institution. The military today, on the other hand, ranks among the most highly esteemed institutions in the United States.

In any event, he told me of his frustration with the Army and the sense that it had become a kind of “Mickey Mouse” operation. Those serving with him tended to agree.

Then one day, while looking in the mirror, he noticed the name attached to his uniform – his own. It struck him. He thought, “I am the Army. It’s not just some abstract entity. And if there’s a problem with it, it’s up to me to do my part to make it better.”

Continue reading “Homogenized and Interchangeable, Part I”

I’m shocked – but really shouldn’t be. After all, it’s not as if I haven’t witnessed this time and again. Specifically, I’m talking about how flummoxed Christians seem to be when confronted with adversity, as with the current pandemic.

One notable example (about which I’ve previously written), occurred during the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. PBS ran a documentary entitled, Out of the Ashes: 9/11, the basic thrust of which was that amid such unmitigated evil faith has no good answers.

As proof, they paraded a bunch of bewildered religious leaders before the cameras who solemnly lamented that doubt was about the best one could hope for.

Continue reading “Vulnerability”

Years ago I heard a story, a parable really, about a young boy whose mother would pick him up every day from school. One afternoon she arrived at the appointed hour but he was nowhere to be seen. After about 15 minutes or so, he finally came running to the car.

“Why are you so late?” his mother inquired.
“A girl in class dropped her pottery jar,” he answered.
“So you stayed to help her pick up the pieces”?
“No,” the boy explained, “I stayed to help her cry.”

This story reveals something intrinsic to suffering. That what we really need when we’re suffering is to know someone else understands what we’re going through. People can sympathize with our lot but only those who’ve gone through something similar can truly empathize.

Continue reading “Why Is the Resurrection Joyous?”

One of the effects of the recent church lockdowns is that many if not most churches are now using technology to broadcast Sunday services, as well as other online opportunities for members to get together.

Yesterday being Palm Sunday, my wife and I tuned in to three separate services using my laptop. The following are my observations:

The first service was very creative. It used a script of various characters describing from their perspective the events of the first Holy Week, from someone who had witnessed Jesus overturning the tables of the moneychangers, to the woman who anoints Jesus with expensive oil, to Judas who was to betray him. Curiously, no attempt was made to connect any of this to what we’re going through with the coronavirus, something presumably uppermost in people’s minds.

Continue reading “Toothless Old Dog”

Crises tend to reveal who we are and what we believe. And that goes for the church as well. Consider these two examples.

I recently read a message from a local pastor about the COVID-19 outbreak. Did the pastor take the opportunity to delve into the deep spiritual, theological challenges confronting us in this time of need?  

Well, not exactly. Mostly the message was a plea that we recognize our interconnectedness, especially to the global community. The climax of the message focused on the central issue of our day – the sin of wrongly identifying the epidemic as “the Chinese virus.”

Continue reading “A Non-Essential Service”

Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, famously stressed the importance of interpreting the Bible as “narrative.” By this he didn’t mean it isn’t true, but that its underlying meaning is grasped in the form of story.  

Noted for his almost indecipherably dense Germanic writing style, with dependent clause upon dependent clause, our assignment in divinity school was to read only about ten pages at a clip of his landmark four-volume tome, Church Dogmatics.

So, years ago, I based a children’s story on it. With the youthful trusting faces surrounding me up in the chancel, I asked them if they liked a good story. They did.

Continue reading “The Stories We Tell”