Are We On The Road To Ruin?

It happens after every major election, particularly when conservatives lose. Declarations of doom and despair accompany internecine recriminations and predictions that, as bad as things are now, they will, in all likelihood, get a whole lot worse.

A few days after the presidential election in 2012, I opened the local newspaper to the editorial section where I read this headline spread across the entire op-ed page in large type: “Obama’s Leading This Country Down the Road to Ruin.” That was the title for a column written by a prominent conservative pundit who is also a well-known evangelical Christian. In the second paragraph of his column that day he wrote, President Barack Obama’s reelection mirrors the self-indulgent, greedy and envious nation we are rapidly becoming.

I know a lot of my conservative friends still embrace the sentiment conveyed by that headline despite concrete evidence to the contrary. And a red-meat sentence like that one surely rallies the troops. There’s just one problem. It was not true then, and it is not true now.

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October Journal: Racism’s Last Gasp?

I am not a medical person, so I don’t know if this analogy works, but I’m going to try it anyway. Imagine a disease or condition which comes on slowly with symptoms easy to overlook. Eventually, however, the symptoms are so gross and the patient’s condition so degraded as to require extreme and/or radical treatment.

The treatment appears successful, and symptoms abate, only to reappear, and sometimes maliciously so. Each recurrence, however, surrenders to treatment and the benefits of overall improving health.

October Journal, Day 3: The View from the Back of the Shelf

In a market-driven economy like that of the United States, every aspect of life is touched (and often tainted) by the laws of the marketplace. Young capitalist entrepreneurs soon learn that, in response to the question, “How much is an item or a service worth?” the correct answer is always, “Whatever the market will bear.”

October Journal, Day 2: The Value of Keepin’ On

Despite the nightly news reports and the aggravating drone of the interminable presidential election campaign, there is much about our world to make us smile, to bring us joy, to cause us to sing. I mentioned some of those things in yesterday’s post. Still, so that you won’t think an alien from another planet has invaded my body and replaced my natural cantankerousness with some kind of foreign optimism, I do need to acknowledge that, although the big picture looks hopeful, the little picture, for any of us, can sometimes be frustrating and discouraging. In my own case, I sense that frustration most keenly on Sundays, and, well, it’s Sunday.

October Journal, Day 1: The Sky is NOT Falling

Everybody knows the children’s story about Chicken Little who gets hit on the head by a falling acorn and immediately assumes the worst, i.e. that the sky is actually made of some sort of solid matter and is beginning to rain down upon the inhabitants of Earth. Chicken Little undertakes to spread the news of impending doom to all his (her?) friends, most of whom are barnyard fowl with goofy, rhyming names.

The origin of the story is unknown but its roots are apparently ancient. Some say a version of the story may have been circulating in Jesus’s day. The ending of the story, and thus the moral it attempts to convey, differs depending on the version being told and the storyteller’s purpose, but one element remains the same in all versions. Chicken Little has misinterpreted the data. The end is not near. Doom is not imminent. The sky is emphatically NOT falling.

Introducing My October Journal

It scarcely seems possible that an entire year has passed since I undertook the publication of a new blog post every day during the month of October 2015. It was an arduous task, and one consequence was that I did not publish a single post in the following month of November. Still, the discipline was helpful, even if exhausting, for one who had never attempted anything close to a schedule that demanding in the four years (at that time) since I started the blog.

Like almost every other facet of my life in the past ten years, this blog, which I started in October 2011, has turned out far differently than I imagined. In the first place, it is still up and active. That surprises no one more than me. I assumed I would find the task so consumptive of time and mental energy that I would come up with some reason to abandon the effort within a year. That didn’t happen, and I’m glad it didn’t.

The Consequence of Meeting God Again for the First Time

Look, if you want to point out how far I fall short of the qualities and traits I admire and write about, you’ll need to take a number. It’s a very long line, and I myself am at the head of it. If you would prefer that I not constantly draw unfavorable comparisons between the beliefs and convictions I used to hold and those I have come to embrace in recent years, again that’s a big club, and I’m actually a charter member.

It is possible, if you follow me on Facebook, that your finger has frequently been poised to press the “unfriend” button beside my name. So far, however, you have demurred because either you believe I will eventually self-destruct, or you still cherish some flickering hope that I will come to my senses and recant my ill-advised excursion to the dark side. Since neither is likely, our continued association may be short-lived. And again, that is an ever-expanding fraternity.

“Mr. Lough, Are You a Liberal?”

Dear Mr. Lough:

So, let me see if I follow the line of thought you introduced in yesterday’s letter. One point in particular intrigues me. You say that “evangelicalism is the product of modernism.” I had always thought the two were diametrically opposed schools of thought. If I understand what you were saying, however, it seems that, while evangelicalism operates with a different set of presuppositions from modernism, it uses some of the same methodology to make a case for the version of Christianity it represents. Right?

MLK: He Taught Me to Dream

I grew up with a deep respect for persons, especially Christians, who refused to compromise their convictions even when standing firm cost them dearly. I remember sitting on the living room floor with my brother and sister while my mother read to us from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and Through Gates of Splendor, Elisabeth Elliot’s moving account of the death of her husband, Jim, and four others at the hands of those to whom they were attempting to bring the message of the Gospel. On those occasions, as my parents led us in prayer for a variety of concerns, I silently prayed for courage to be faithful to my convictions, even, if need be, to the point of death.

Nobody from the modern era embodies the idea of the courage of convictions better than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King was born in Atlanta on January 15, 1929. He was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. In recognition of his role in the effort to secure civil rights and racial equality in this country, and to celebrate his life as an example of courageous leadership in the face of overwhelming opposition, the US Congress in 1983 designated the third Monday in January as Martin Luther King Day. That is today.

I Can’t Stop Crying

I’ve been crying a lot over the past several days. (And indeed, I am crying again as I try to type this.) I’ve cried every day since June 17 as I’ve watched the news reports coming out of Charleston, SC. I’ve cried over the senseless and brutal murder of nine good people in a house of worship. I’ve cried for the friends and families of those victims, for the pain they are going through, and for the love and forgiveness they have shown in the midst of their pain.