Original Sin? Part One

Many modern/postmodern people are reluctant to talk about sin. Part of the reason is because of the sick theology from much of the church regarding that subject. Emphases on original sin, trivial sins, threats of hell, exclusive claims regarding salvation, and a judgmental, punishing God are a turnoff for people… Continue reading

A Clash of Worlds: Luke 10:25-37

(This sermon was preached 39 years ago. I was a college professor teaching religion in a Baptist college. Fundamentalists had chosen me as their target in that college with the intention of having me fired. Susan and I decided that we were no longer Baptists. The straw that broke the… Continue reading

Does God Have Sex Organs?

I decided to start referring to God as “She/Her” instead of “He/Him/His.” My rationale for such a decision was the following: for two thousand years God has been referred to as male within the church (with a few exceptions found in such groups as the Rhineland Mystics). I suggested that for the next two thousand years, the church should refer to God as female. That’s only fair, isn’t it? And then maybe after four thousand years of existence, the church can get beyond the question of God’s sex and simply let God be. Continue reading

A Privation of Good

Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but recordOne death-grapple in the darkness ‘twixt old systems and the Word;Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. (James Russell Lowell)… Continue reading

What Version Is Your God? (Based in large part on the writings of Brian McLaren) Matthew 5: 43-48

Occasionally I am asked by people from various walks of life, “Do you believe in God?” This question is often asked by those who have been seriously wounded by sick versions of religion which require belief in a wrathful, rigid, unforgiving, demanding, all-determining God. My answer is always the same:… Continue reading